Somehow, I don’t think this is going to be their top-seller:

This is a graphic from a Salon piece on presidents whose tenure coincided with transformational social change. Imagine the company he’ll keep after he’s sworn in:

I suppose it’s connected to this story, which has been lavishly linked: preparations for an official Obama holiday. But a weekly meeting at a McDonald’s restaurant does not seem to rise to the level of a mass movement, even if it’s held twice a day to get both the Breakfast Burrito and the BigMac demographic.  You can chalk it all up to enthusiasm and anticipation – harmless at best, a benchmark for the depths of disenchantment at worst.

Conservatives cannot help but be saddened and left out – the only possible event that could lift their spirits right now would be a headline that said REAGAN, BACK FROM THE DEAD, EATS BIN LADEN AND CRAPS TAX CUT, but pictures like this reminds the right that no one was ever this happy about Bush, even when the love was at its zenith. No one put him with George, Abe and Frank before he took office. Really, he was just The Next Guy, a caretaker in a post-history world. People forget how much “compassionate conservativism” stuck in the craw back then; the party’s own standard-bearer modified the terms in a way that managed to insult, mischaracterize, apologize, and reshape the debate all at once. It would be like a Democrat running on a program of “Logical Liberalism,” and not knowing why his own followers found the catch-phrase unhelpful.

Anyway. There are rumors of new Executive Decrees, which include magic Federal dollars for stem-cell research that uses human embryos - if you have any objections,  you hate science -  and a ban on domestic drilling and nat-gas exploration in public lands in Utah. (If you have any objections,  you hate the environment.) The two form a nice mirror image: the former was a ban put in place to preserve a particular definition of human life; the latter is a ban lifted to preserve the environment. Again, it’s understandable: we only have one Utah, but we can always make more people. As long as they don’t live in Utah.

Will executive unilateralism remain a bad thing, a threat to our rights, or suddenly gain favor with old critics? Hmmmm. Cue the Jeopardy! theme. That’s a stumper. Then again,  this is Washington we’re talking about. Heaped alongside the altar of politics are numberless goats with eyes open in shock. Principles be damned; when it comes to doing the things you want to do, there’s a knife for every throat.  

Hey, remember after 2004, when the interior of the country was viewed with deep suspicion for its insufficient interest in a John Kerry presidency? Crude maps called it JESUSLAND, a place opposed to liberty and education.  Well, shuck my corn and call me Orville: the red part of the country has been reduced to something that looks like a mild case of contact dermatitis.

The solid block of flyover Christiansts who spend every Sunday hopping up and down so they can get a head start on the Rapture appears to have turned into enlightened change-agent lightwalkers, and in a mere four years. Or, the people in the middle of the country weren’t all weirdoes who still harbored a grudge against the Renaissance, and viewed the coasts as they were greedy remoras fastened on the Real America.   In any case, no one will make mocking maps of them now.

The lesson, as always, is that things change. Things will change again. And I expect that the GOP leadership will conclude that since things do change, they can sit back and wait for it to happen again.  Which is a recipe for ensuring that the next such map has a thin red line like the one you used to use to open a Band-Aid.

I wonder if anyone would be talking about historic realignment and Change.gov and a new bright future if Hillary Clinton had kicked Fred Thompson to the curb in the same way. Probably not; even if the numbers had been the same, the results would not be described in the same techtonic terms.  Would it have been the same if McCain had rolled forth soaring rhetoric, and Obama sounded like Wally Cox? Irrelevant, of course, but that map, as conclusive as it looks, owes its hues to intangibles you can’t predict, and can’t manufacture. The Romans may have had too many gods, but there was one that seemed both wise and playful, just and capricious.

Fortune.

(This comes from the NYT election results site, here. (h/t Allahpundit @ hotair.com)  

I’m off to the Mall to sell razor blades so people can scrape off their “Question Authority” bumper stickers. Just remember: Dissent is still the highest form of patriotism. Except now it will be practiced by the lowest form of people. 

Seriously, though: congratulations to President-elect Obama. Right or wrong - and I hope for more of the former, obviously - he’s my President now, dammit, and I’m not going to spend four years treating him with the contempt the Kos side heaped on Chimpy McPretzelchoker. He could turn out to be a horrible President. He could turn out to be a great one. History pushes people in unexpected directions. 

More to come, of course, but let’s not spoil the moment.

I got an email from David Byrne. Since I signed up to get a free MP3 from his website, this means I am automatically simpatico to the portions of his worldview that do not involve moving fingers across the surfaces of strings and keys, and hence am eager to hear from him.

Pardon the bulk mailing. I Can’t Vote. I am an immigrant with a Green Card and, therefore, I am not eligible to vote in a federal election.

Pardon the bulk mauling, David, but I Can’t Care. You’re a fifty-six year old man who’s been in the country since 1960.  Take the citizenship test already. It’s easy. No questions like “My God. What have I done? 

FYI - I can get drafted (luckily, Daniel Berrigan burned my draft board’s records) and I pay taxes, yet I cannot vote for President.

You can get drafted if there is a draft, and they change the rules to hoover up the geezers,  but otherwise, relax. As for paying your taxes yet being unable to vote for President, well, sorry, but we call that citizenship. Just because someone goes to France and buys a candy bar doesn’t mean their VAT contribution enables them to have a voice in EU policy.

On Election Day, I see my neighbors heading to the nearby elementary school to cast their ballots. The voting booth joint is a great leveler; the whole neighborhood - rich, poor, old, young, decrepit and spunky - they all turn out in one day.

True, and that’s nice.

But most of you can vote. What can I say? The Republicans have made us less safe than before 9/11

Says the man writing from a city that hasn’t been hit since  . . . oh, the date slips my mind. Nine – one – something or other.

started an illegal war they can’t - and don’t intend to - finish, removed what sympathy (after 9/11) and respect the world had for the US, and have robbed US citizens of many of their basic rights. Global warming? What’s that? Science and education? Investment in our future? No, thanks - we’ll stick with a good ‘ole hockey mom. Ignorant, and f*cking proud of it, as is always the case. 

(Asterisk added to keep the site from being banned for naughty language.) Since Mr. Byrne is not ignorant and f*cking proud of it, as is always the case, he surely knows that Alaska has the high total per capita spending on education, and New York is sixth. Alaska is ranked #10 in per capita higher ed spending; New York is # 46.  And if he thinks John McCain says “what’s that” to Global Warming, he might not have approached this election with an overabundance of facts

He continues:

Although it looks like a shoo-in, it ain’t over ’til Florida. And there are plenty of racists in this country who will vote against their own best interests. 

Persuasive gentleman, isn’t he?  We need smarter, more informed racists! Mr. Byrne, I love your music and think you’re brilliant. I will be proud to call you a fellow citizen. See you at the voting booth next time! I’ll even spot you the mid-terms. Four years. Start studying! Hint: there are only 50 states. It looks like a trick question, but it’s not. 

One of my favorite clichés of the pre-election coverage is the Venerated Republican Who Changes Sides. He can’t take it anymore! He can’t bear what his party’s become!  It’s someone the left would smear as a senile old Bircher if he didn’t cross party lines, but if he decides to vote Obama at the age of 93, it’s a sign that the carapace of evil has finally cracked and the small, vulnerable, damaged human locked inside has crawled out and asked for forgiveness. Hyman T. Hynderbeinder has voted Republican since he cast a vote for Coolidge, but this year he’s voting for Obama. Why? “The girl at the home always talks about him when she leans over and ties my bib around my neck. I have a nice feeling about him. And his twin.”

The best this year was a lady who hadn’t cast a vote since she said Yea for Ike, but she was voting for Obama this year. Why? He was a good straight man, good family life, honest. True enough. The CBS reporter didn’t press the particulars, though, possibly out of respect for her age; she’s got a century under her belt, plus change:

If you can’t trust a 106-year-old nun to be opposed pro-life, then all bets are off. Then again, it’s possible she doesn’t know which candidate takes a harder line on abortion, and which one would be inclined to vote “present” on a bill that allows doctors to perform third-trimester terminations “for the health, or mood, or overdue parking meter status, of the mother.”

Nuns! Explains this fellow, too: abortion is his main issue, but he can’t decide whether to vote for the guy who said life begins at conception, or the one who said the question is above his pay grade. You could blame the media for not making the distinction clear, but really, it’s not that hard to find out the deets. Some people just have a hard time figuring things out. There are people out there who have no problem with the whole Bill Ayers thing, because they heard from a friend that John McCain spent five years living with some Communists. Really! In a hotel and everything. 

My child no longer participates in Toontown, an online consensual hallucination provided by Disney. I’m glad; it had promise, but seemed limited, the graphics were chunktastic, and your character had names like Merry Flippy Pantswhistle. What annoyed me most were the foes the toons had to battle for jellybean points – they were called Cogs, and they were all businessmen, various forms of capitalists in robot form. The Disney execs who signed off on the project must have a big bin outside the office where they could place their sense of irony before heading in to work.

The monthly mailings always had a Cog Card; this was the last one.

Robber Barons. “Crime Does Pay,” it says under his evil face. Crime, in this sense, being the act of converting Cheerful happy Toontown into grim office structures for the purposes of unbridled capitalism. Seriously. Kids have no idea what any of this means, but they know Robber Baron evil, because he’s a Cog. Cogs wear suits and work in boring buildings and report to CEOs and make money. (Just like Mom and Da! But evil, in some not-quite-sure-how way.) But how do you make the depths of his perfidy known to the target audience? Study his dislikes:

Yes, kids, he’s opposed to  capital gains taxes. He’s not opposed to an increase, but he’s opposed to the very thing itself. Hardcore. 

I doubt this is the work of devious crypto-Marxists devoted to bringing down Disney from within, but lazy younguns who grabbed a phrase from the big box in their heads labeled “Business Stuff” with the third “s” backwards for comic effect.  It’s comforting to believe they’re that careless, because the idea of Disney building a children’s game around villains who are opposed to capital gains taxes is too depressing to consider. It’s like Elmer Fudd cutting anti-gun spots. 

The Cog also likes monopolies, you’ll note. But not extensions on copyright to protect valuable properties! That’s for the good guys. 

Just got this in the mail: McCain, in his last desperate hours, is reaching out to the party’s hard core. Just not his party:

Let’s open it up and see what it says . . . man, this is rough stuff.

The text says “As the father of three daughters, I owe Senator Clinton a debt for inspiring them and millions of other women to believe nothing in this great country is beyond their reach. . . I share Senator Clinton’s goal of promoting women to more important roles throughout our government. By the end of my first term, I promise you will see a dramatic increase in the presence of women in every part of the government. You have my word on it. John McCain.”

I know what they’re going for, but it’s the most remarkably odd piece of campaign literature I’ve seen this year. They look like a divorced couple reconciling at their daughter’s wedding. 

Another piece of advice for people who think they have it figured out. This time: taxes.

If you are opposed to higher taxes on the rich – well, let’s back up. If you start out by questioning the definition of “rich,” you’re one of them. “Rich” is like “racist” – the surest sign of the guilty is the failure to admit your problem. If there are a lot of people who make less money than you do, you’re rich, and it doesn’t matter how you got where you are, or whether that poor fellow over there who works for Wal-Mart – and don’t worry, we’ll belittle him as a three-toothed inbred cousin-marrying NASCAR Oxycontin-popping gun-nut in just a minute – made some life choices that may have affected his earning potential; the existence of disparity is sufficient to prove that something is wrong. Or at least suggest that something must be done. As a wise man said: half the people in the country live below the median income level. Half. In this day and age.
So if you don’t want to help them - that’s what you mean when you oppose taxes, after all -  you’re selfish. If you protest that you’ll have to spend less, or invest less, or save less, or give less to charity, well, you had better start making more money, then. Go on; out to the woodshed; squat over that straw nest and pop out some more golden eggs, or whatever it is you do.  Incidentally, you should spend less, because you spend money on things you don’t need, and we don’t have to know what they are to know you don’t need them, just like we don’t have to visit your house or neighborhood to know that the former is too big and the latter too far away.  You should invest less – put your money in Main Street, not Wall Street. (This does not include spending money on Main Street on things we think you don’t need. It means investing it. Consult a professional; we’re not clear on the details.) You shouldn’t save less, because saving is a virtue. Also, we can tax the interest.

Charity? Don’t worry about it. Taxes have the same moral power as charity. As Sen. Obama said in the parable of the peanut butter sandwich, sharing is called “Socialism” by some wingnuts. He was correct to scoff:  It’s not whether you give of your own free will or whether you are compelled to give; it’s the giving that counts, not the rationale.

Actually, the most important part is the separation of you and your property; that provides a deep glow of inner satisfaction you cannot possibly imagine, unless you have experience at the communion rail handing out the wafers. It’s quite astonishing how the self can be so exalted by selflessness. Anyway:

Where the money goes after that or what it actually accomplishes is secondary. Still very important, though; we will always need a “program” to which we may point with pride every few years. First we will take credit for creating the program; then we will run for reelection on a promise to increase funding for the program. You may question whether more money will help – well, you’re the person who complained when the program was begun! You we should listen to?

Think of it this way, if your sclerotic brain is still capable of synaptic activity: the money you give to, say, an organization that fixes cleft palates in 3rd world kids has little overhead, and a low public profile. If the money is filtered through a government agency, it will help pay the salary of someone whose job consists of raising awareness about cleft palates in the 3rd world. Right now hardly anyone knows this charity does great work, because no one sends out press releases on UN stationery about World Cleft Palate Day. Your contributions may fix the odd face here and there, but they have no PR impact. No wonder the world hates us.

But we’re getting off the subject, which is: hand it over. There is a static amount of wealth, and it has to be spread. Think of it this way: People are the bread, money is the butter. The government is the knife.

How broad, and how sharp? As broad and sharp as need be.

Illegal residents everywhere stream for the borders, as the next president signals the reign of terror to come. If you are illegal, you will be deported. And not just because you’re his aunt:

Watch CBS Videos Online

Mind you, a year ago she would have been a reminder that we need to reexamine our immigration laws in this country and find humane solutions, but that was in the primary season. Now? Load her in the catapult.  If McCain had made a deport-the-illegals speech, it would have been shouted in mis-quoted form from bullhorns in rallies nationwide, but Obama can say it for three reasons:

A) His supporters don’t believe it will happen, or

B) His supporters agree that illegals should be deported, and not just the politically inconvenient ones. It’s good that he’s said this, because it shows he’s a man of the middle. Or

C) These things simply do not penetrate the brain. It’s like Bush saying “I will personally legalize peyote by executive verdicting”  at the height of his popularity; it would have bounced off the adamantine layer some people construct around the part of their brain that handles these things. At least the “Lost in Space” robot had the decency to shout DOES NOT COMPUTE and start smoking when unable to deal with competing realities.

UPDATE: In the interests of fairness, a phrase I’m sure I grow sick of quite quickly, I should note that I don’t think McCain has the immigration issue figured out, either. But the notion that Obama is a deportationist in his heart, and would act to make deportation a priority of his administration, doesn’t square with the early days of his professional trajectory. Unless you think someone goes into community organizing so they can tell the INS where the lawbreakers live.