All we can do now is wait.

Dan and I voted around 1:30 this afternoon. We were told by a poll worker that 1200 people are registered to vote in our precinct and 600 had already voted, including 150 who were waiting in line when the building opened this morning. What does that mean? Maybe nothing, maybe a lot. We shall see.

I don't understand why Jews will vote for Obama.

Road Signs (AKA "Our tax dollars at work!")

As the midterm election season approaches, new road signs are popping up everywhere – millions of dollars worth of signs touting "The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act" and reminding passers-by that the program is "Putting America Back to Work."

On the road leading to Dulles Airport outside Washington, DC there's a 10' x 11' road sign touting a runway improvement project funded by the federal stimulus. The project cost nearly $15 million and has created 17 jobs, according to recovery.gov. However, there's another number that caught the eye of ABC News: $10,000. That's how much money the Washington Airports Authority tells ABC News it spent to make and install the sign – a single sign – announcing that the project is "Funded by The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act" and is "Putting America Back to Work." The money for the sign was taken out of the budget for the runway improvement project.

ABC News has reached out to a number of states about spending on stimulus signs and learned the state of Illinois has spent $650,000 on about 950 signs and Pennsylvania has spent $157,000 on 70 signs. Jill Zuckman of the Department of Transportation said, "The best estimate is that states have spent about $5 million of the $28 billion spent on road projects on signs.

Congressman Aaron Schock (R-IL) has joined the chorus of Republican outrage over stimulus signs and claims at least $20 million has been spent on them. He told ABC News, "I think it's a bit of an oxymoron to spend tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money, borrowed money, on a bunch of signs to tell them how we are spending their taxpayer money."

iTunes is currently playing: Give It Away from the album Also Known As Mary by Quincy Coleman.

The man needs a teleprompter ...

... to speak to a bunch of grade school kids?? OMG ...

iTunes is currently playing: Speak Like A Child from the album The Singular Adventures Of The Style Council by The Style Council.

Since when do politicians ...

... have to know what they are voting for ...

iTunes is currently playing: Things We've Handed Down from the album The Rainy Season by Marc Cohn.

Is the honeymoon over?

From Politico.com:

Now that he’s in office, Obama’s approval ratings are starting to normalize, as partisan back-and-forth picks up.

Just a week ago [prior to his inauguration], Gallup found an astonishing 83 percent approval of how he has handled his transition, showing he had even won over most Republicans.

The Gallup Poll on Saturday released the first job-approval rating for President Obama, based on interviews during his first three full days in office: 68 percent.

The new job-approval figure puts him at the upper end of opening poll numbers for presidents, but doesn’t set a record.

iTunes is currently playing: Somebody (Changed Your Mind) from the album All True Man by Alexander O'Neal.

Evidence that the NAACP ...

... has outlived any usefulness it ever had ...

iTunes is currently playing: The Fences from the soundtrack album Alexei and the Spring by Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Come on, Prez-to-be ...

... talk to Damon Weaver!

Cute video of the day:

iTunes is currently playing: Once In A Lifetime from the album Stop Making Sense: Special New Edition (1984 Film) by Talking Heads.

IT'S THE ETIQUETTE POLICE!!

Being Annoying Now Illegal In Michigan Town

BRIGHTON, Mich. -- Since when did being annoying become a crime? Since Brighton City Council approved a public conduct code Monday night, which includes fining someone up to $500 for being annoying.

One section of the bill reads, "It shall be unlawful for a person to engage in a course of conduct or repeatedly commit acts that alarm or seriously annoy another person and that serve no legitimate purpose."

The bill also states it's unlawful for anyone to insult, accost, molest or otherwise annoy any person in public.

The ordinance was modeled after one in Royal Oak, where the Brighton police chief previously worked.

The Livingston Daily Press & Argus reported that two council members expressed concerns for the language of the ordinance, but voted for it anyway.

Brighton officials said the ordinance would be subjective and the call will be made by police officers.

The amended ordinance takes effect Jan. 17, 2009.

iTunes is currently playing: I Really Didn't Mean It from the album Give Me The Reason by Luther Vandross.

Why not wait until the guy ...

... actually accomplishes something.

OPA-LOCKA, Fla. -- One South Florida city is planning to honor the president-elect with his own street.

Opa-locka plans to rename Perviz Avenue to Barack Obama Avenue on President's Day in February.

The city commission voted on the name change last week and officials say it is expected to finalize the approval next month. Opa-locka is a predominantly heavily African-American community north of downtown Miami.



iTunes is currently playing: Road To Nowhere from the album Little Creatures by Talking Heads.

Laugh of the Day

I just heard on the radio (sorry, I can't provide a link) that 64% of respondents in a new poll are pleased with Obama's performance since the election [emphasis mine].

And during the last 7 days he has done what, exactly??

iTunes is currently playing: Where Do I Go From Here from the album Even Now by Barry Manilow.

An honest mistake ...

... or an indication of things to come? You be the judge.

Warner Todd Huston writes today on NewsBusters.com:

The co-chair of Barack Obama's Transition Team, Valerie Jarrett, appeared on Meet the Press this weekend and used, shall we say, an interesting word to described what she thinks Barack Obama will be doing in January when he's officially sworn into office. She told Tom Brokaw that Obama will be ready to "rule" on day one. It's a word that reflects the worst fears that people have for Obama the "arrogant," the "messiah," that imagines he's here to "rule" instead of govern.

Jarret told Brokaw that "given the daunting challenges that we face, it's important that president elect Obama is prepared to really take power and begin to rule day one."

Someone needs to get to Jarrett and inform her that American politicians are not Kings and do not "rule" from office. But if this is the attitude of Obama's transition team, what does The One himself imagine he is about to unleash? Could the fears that Obama thinks he is being anointed America's King be far off with this sort of talk flying about?

It sounds like something Biden would say.

iTunes is currently playing: I Really Didn't Mean It from the album Give Me the Reason by Luther Vandross.

The back-peddling begins ...

From the WashingtonTimes.com web site:

Over the weekend President-elect Barack Obama scrubbed Change.gov, his transition Web site, deleting most of what had been a massive agenda copied directly from his campaign Web site.

Gone are the promises on how an Obama administration would handle 25 different agenda items - everything from Iraq and immigration to taxes and urban policy - all items laid out on his campaign Web site, www.BarackObama.com.

Instead, the official agenda on Change.gov has been boiled down to one vague paragraph proclaiming a plan “to revive the economy, to fix our health care, education, and social security systems, to define a clear path to energy independence, to end the war in Iraq responsibly and finish our mission in Afghanistan, and to work with our allies to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, among many other domestic and foreign policy objectives.”

“We are currently retooling the Web site,” said Obama spokesman Nick Shapiro.

The Kool-Aid should start to wear off soon.


iTunes is currently playing: I Was Only Telling A Lie from the album Dad Loves His Work by James Taylor.

QUICK! Get me the smelling salts!

A columnist with the Washington Post has admitted and detailed the lack of balance in her paper's coverage of the recent election!

The Post provided a lot of good campaign coverage, but readers have been consistently critical of the lack of probing issues coverage and what they saw as a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama. My surveys, which ended on Election Day, show that they are right on both counts.

The count was lopsided, with 1,295 horse-race stories and 594 issues stories. The Post was deficient in stories that reported more than the two candidates trading jabs; readers needed articles, going back to the primaries, comparing their positions with outside experts' views. There were no broad stories on energy or science policy, and there were few on religion issues.

The op-ed page ran far more laudatory opinion pieces on Obama, 32, than on Sen. John McCain, 13. There were far more negative pieces (58) about McCain than there were about Obama (32), and Obama got the editorial board's endorsement.

Stories and photos about Obama in the news pages outnumbered those devoted to McCain. Post reporters, photographers and editors -- like most of the national news media -- found the candidacy of Obama, the first African American major-party nominee, more newsworthy and historic. Journalists love the new; McCain, 25 years older than Obama, was already well known and had more scars from his longer career in politics.

The number of Obama stories since Nov. 11 was 946, compared with McCain's 786.

Obama deserved tougher scrutiny than he got, especially of his undergraduate years, his start in Chicago and his relationship with Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who was convicted this year of influence-peddling in Chicago. The Post did nothing on Obama's acknowledged drug use as a teenager.

One gaping hole in coverage involved Joe Biden, Obama's running mate. When Gov. Sarah Palin was nominated for vice president, reporters were booking the next flight to Alaska. Some readers thought The Post went over Palin with a fine-tooth comb and neglected Biden. They are right; it was a serious omission.

Will any other papers follow suit??

iTunes is currently playing: It's Not Abnormal At All from the album BBC1 John Peel Session by Yazoo.

Charlie Rose & Tom Brokaw: "Who is Obama?"

ROSE: I don't know what Barack Obama's worldview is.

BROKAW: No, I don't, either.

ROSE: I don't know how he really sees where China is.

BROKAW: We don't know a lot about Barack Obama and the universe of his thinking about foreign policy.

ROSE: I don't really know. And do we know anything about the people who are advising him?

BROKAW: Yeah, it's an interesting question.

ROSE: He is principally known through his autobiography and through very aspirational (sic) speeches.

BROKAW: Two of them! I don't know what books he's read.

ROSE: What do we know about the heroes of Barack Obama?

BROKAW: There's a lot about him we don't know.

[Transcript from RushLimbaugh.com.]

iTunes is currently playing: Who Am I from the album Ultimate Petula Clark by Petula Clark.

Understanding the Presidential Election

Newsweek has a lengthy (7 chapter) piece on the recent presidential election called Secrets of the 2008 Campaign. The article includes the following paragraph that totally sums up the phenomenon of Obamamania:

Obama understood that he had become a giant screen upon which Americans projected their hopes and fears, dreams and frustrations. Maybe such a person never really existed, couldn't exist, but people wanted a savior nonetheless. As a bestselling memoirist he had created a mythic figure [emphasis mine], a man named Barack Obama who had searched and quested and overcome travails, who had found an identity and a calling in public service. Obama recalled that he often joked with his team, "This Barack Obama sounds like a great guy. Now I'm not sure that I am Barack Obama, right?" He added, pointedly, "It wasn't entirely a joke."

If this information had been released prior to the election, do you think the headlines would have read "OBAMA ADMITS TO BEING A FRAUD"? Nah, I don't think so, either.



iTunes is currently playing: BEHIND THE MASK from the album Faker Holic - YMO World Tour Live by Yellow Magic Orchestra.

Brainless ObamaHead ...

... who is in for a rude awakening when she has to pay her own mortgage in January.

iTunes is currently playing: Outta Mind from the album Angels In The Crowd by Wendy Woo.

Hey, Barry, call off your THUGS in Philly!!!

iTunes is currently playing: Go Where You Wanna Go from the album Up-Up And Away by The 5th Dimension.

Socialism for Dummies - Lesson One

Political satirist Paul Shanklin explains "redistribution of wealth" on The Rush Limbaugh Show:

[audio:ObamaHalloween.mp3]

iTunes is currently playing: They Can't Take That Away From Me from the album Portrait: Past Perfect (Disc 3) by Billie Holiday.

Fun-loving liberals celebrate Halloween in West Hollywood ...

... by hanging Sarah Palin in effigy.

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. (AP) ― A Halloween decoration showing a mannequin dressed as vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin hanging by a noose from the roof of a West Hollywood home is drawing giggles from some passers-by and gasps of outrage from others. The mannequin is dressed in brunet wig, glasses and a red business suit. Another mannequin dressed as John McCain emerges from a flaming chimney.

Chad Michael Morisette, who lives in the house, told CBS 2 News that drivers and bus passengers have been stopping to snap pictures of the macabre scene. Morisette says the effigy would be out of bounds at any other time of year, but it's within the spirit of Halloween.

He says "it should be seen as art [emphasis mine], and as within the month of October. It's Halloween, it's time to be scary it's time to be spooky."

If I were to "celebrate" Halloween by hanging Obama in effigy in my front yard, I believe I would be arrested for a hate crime. I guess those laws don't apply when the hate is directed toward a white woman instead of a black man.

I'm waiting for Senator Obama to express his outrage ... and waiting ... and waiting ...

iTunes is currently playing: Gone Too Far from the album Windows and Walls by Dan Fogelberg.