“At a time of great crisis with mortgage foreclosures and autos, he says we only have one president at a time,” Frank said. “I’m afraid that overstates the number of presidents we have. He’s got to remedy that situation.”

Imagine getting roasted by this guy. It’s gotta be one helluva trip.

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PIRATES!

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My nipples are hard.

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Is going to be unleashing Sarah Palin on the world.

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Google invades your privacy by publishing anonymous flu search demographics..

… while Government “protects your homeland security” by tapping phone calls without warrants, detains militants without trial or judicial process, etc etc…

I won’t even bother linking, because I know Drudge will cycle out his cash-box URL before the sun is nigh it’s zenith …

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In the “exciting ramfications of an Obama win” department, we can file this bit of good news: Chuck Todd is writing a book about Obama’s victory.

According to editor Errol McDonald, who approached Mr. Todd with the idea about a month before the election, the book will be divided into four sections: Battleground states, emerging battleground states, receding battleground states, and all the rest. Mr. McDonald said the book will come with an introduction by Mr. Todd and Mr. Gawiser (who is NBC’s Elections Director) and an appendix that will “give very surprising facts based on the data.”

Chuck Todd, NBC’s Political Director, really came into his own this election by being a voice of reason (usually) in a mad spun world. In the primaries, he was the voice of reason saying Clinton had no real chance at the nomination, and he was one of the first on the major networks—who were still well behind the indy sites—to put Obama over 270 in their Electoral College predictions. I’d also put him as a front runner for taking over Meet the Press. He made his bones with this election, and we’re going to see a lot more of him.

Yet another great thing about this Obama victory; new political stars to watch and follow. I tell you, every day it’s something new that makes me realize how fantastic this victory is.

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What a difference a week makes! This time seven days ago, I was a nervous wreck, so sure that any number of catastrophic potentialities would certainly occur to derail the Obama campaign. By Wednesday afternoon, simply looking at the cover of the pre-election New York Magazine, with Obama on the cover, and speculation of what his adminstration might look like if he won, was enough to choke me up. I became rabid with superstition. It was so bad in the end, that I had kept my final Obama donation effort—purchasing the Jonathan Hoefler poster, 3rd from the top—in it’s original shipping packaging, sure that if I opened it before hand I would jinx Obama and doom the nation. Silly me (or not so silly me, maybe that did do the trick…)

Needless to say, we won, and it was glorious. All day I was a nervous wreck. The wait for the end of the day was agonizing. But once it came, things happened fast and furious. I had seen the exit polls, but so wary of 2004, a part of me refused to believe them. They were too good, showing 10+ in PA, 8+ in OH, 5+ in VA, 4+in FL. Too good, I thought. realistically, it was exactly what should have been expected based on the final days of state polls, but I had readied myself for the worst, I forgot to let the possibility of the best seep in.

It was when they called Pennsylvania almost immediately, however, that I first knew. Seeing PA go blue so quick made me realize “the exit polls are right. The exit polls are right. When Ohio fell, it was all over, and I was ready for the celebratory scotch. Ironically, whereas I had been so fearful of defeat for so long, I was the first of my friends to call victory when Ohio fell. I knew the map, probably a lot better than anyone around me, and I knew that without a huge McCain theft in uncontested territory, Obama had just won the Presidency. The entire night was breakneck speed, but I clearly recall all of it. I’m so thankful for that.

We did have one humorous hiccup, however. I was watching the post-Ohio returns at a friends house (choosing to stay in bunker mode at my “command center” until victory was certain) when the hour came up to 11pm. Just as the polls were closing on the west coast, and official projections of victory were possible, my friend’s DVR kicked over to record a preset show! After about 4 seconds of yelling and flipping out, order was restored, we we just caught the official announcement of Obama being declared the next President of the United States.

So, I spent the past week recuperating and recollecting the past. I’ve been reading any embedded accounts of the campaign I can, and anxiously awaiting the real McCain post-mortems (no they haven’t started yet.) I came down with a bit of a cold this past week, most likely from the release of months of stress I had been carrying. But I also wanted to savor this victory. The megablogs all dove right in on what we should expect Obama to do, who the GOP will turn to in 2012, whether or not this is a progressive mandate. All good stuff, but not for me, just yet. This isn’t just a big victory, like my team winning the World Series. This is a fundamental shift in the way our nation is going to govern. Right now, to ask whether Obama is going to be excessively liberal, or a bipartisan centrist completely misses the point of this victory. Competence in government is back, people. Whether he can get accomplished everything he wants in his first 100 days or 100 weeks is not the story to me. The mere fact that the Constitution will mean something again is what matters. The mere fact that our Government will seek to uphold laws, and not break them, is what matters. We’ll get to the rest when the time is right. For now, I can love politics again. I’m no longer the guy spewing bile and vitriol at our President, convinced he’s destroying the nation at every turn. Policy is worth talking about again. Actual change in people’s lives is possible again. Progress is here again. That’s why this victory matters.

So with that, hopefully, we return to regular blogging. There’s going to be some changes here, I’m sure. We’ve spent so much of the past 2 months focusing on McCain/Palin that we’ve got to find a new target (most likely the GOP bootstrapping efforts). There’s also no more polls to fret over, which is probably the single greatest change in my day to day lifestyle than anything. Now we are free to talk ideas and not reactions, so we’ll see what we can do about getting to that. So keep checking us out, and for those who stuck with us during the end days of the campaign, thank you so much. We’ll try to keep giving you more of what you’ve asked for.

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Most people won’t recognize the name, but if you share an appreciation for street art like I do, this interview will be a nice reflection of Obama from a fairly non-political perspective.

Shepard is the artist behind the iconic “HOPE” and “PROGESS” illustration that has in many ways branded the Obama campaign for the youth demographic. Last year I ordered one of the t-shirts he was selling on his site as soon as I saw the image. It was simply beautiful. It looks awful on a t-shirt, but I didn’t care.

Shepard is one of the more well known stars of the urban art world. His work is not outwardly politically motivated when you compare him to someone like Banksy, which makes his art for the Obama campaign all the more special and unique. I think we all tap into some ethereal idea when we think about Obama, and that ineffable quality naturally becomes a conduit of expression for artists.

I can absolutely garuantee that his poster will be written about in art history books. As the dust settles and the art buffs end up having cocktails with the sociologists and the political junkies, the impact of this imagery will eventually crystallize.

Speaking from a purely philosophical place, Obama became in many ways less of a politician and more of a resonant frequency that people all eventually began vibrating at. He galvanized a collective social passion, something that I have never seen before and possibly something that America has not seen since before I was born (maybe the 60’s?). I think that explosion of wide-eyed enthusiasm only further alienated him from the people who “didn’t get it”, as they saw many of us jump onto this bandwagon that barreled through the American condition like a bull in a china shop. What was it we were all diving into? We must have looked like complete fools to those that didn’t feel what we felt. We probably still do.

Now that the votes are in, we can talk about things outside of a purely political context. Because it’s no longer about electoral victory, all that is left is the substance that Clinton and McCain so relentlessly denied the existence of. It feels damned good, and any post-partum depression that may exist in me now that the election is over is seemingly trumped by the satisfaction of no longer having to devote my mental bandwidth to satiating my inner political junkie.

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Arab President-Elect Barack Obama unwittingly hired secret Israeli Mossad spy Rahm Emanuel to be his Chief of Staff.

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Maybe you’ve heard the news, but the grassroots on the right thinks things are in pretty bad shape. Bad enough, that they felt the need to start a website! Check it out at www.rebuildtheparty.com. It was pretty hastily done, however, so I went ahead and did them the favor of proofreading the site. The results are below:

Hey guys, happy to help! Let me know if you need anything else!

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