Drum Roll Please...

And Webster's Word of the Year for 2008 is...

Bailout.

:).

Read the rest here: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/25/national/main4632824.shtml

John

It's not quite the Nobel Prize, but John Updike has a new literary accolade: laureate of bad sex.

Updike, who has a long and graphic history of detailing coupling on the page, won a lifetime achievement award Tuesday from judges of Britain's Bad Sex in Fiction Prize, which celebrates crude, tasteless or ridiculous sexual passages in modern literature.

The judges, editors of Literary Review magazine, said Updike had been shortlisted for the prize four times in its 16-year history. "Good sex or bad sex, he has kept us entertained for many years," they said in a statement.

:)

J

JCVD

I saw JCVD today and it is a beautiful, beautiful piece of film-making, anchored by a powerful, and very moving performance by Jean Claude Van Damme.

See it. Right now.

:).

J

Turkey

This is just... how can this even be real?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-kjM1asH-8

God bless her soul.

J

Challenge This!

A very cool interactive story courtesy of Minnesota Public Radio that lets you decide how to count contested ballots in the Norm Coleman / Al Franken senate race recount. Considering Franken trails by less than 200 votes, nit-picky stuff like this is ridiculously important... and sketch bomb at the same time.

Check it out! How many of these votes would you count?

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2008/11/19_challenged_ballots/

Legacy

From The New York Times Magazine:

"Bush, locked in his Oedipal struggles — father and son, World War II and Vietnam, a faded generation and a fading one — again and again mistook rigidity for fortitude and never really evolved in office, as all presidents must. He rose up, using his innate trust of emotion and impulse, to meet the first challenges of 9/11, but then froze solid. At a time when the nation’s challenges, so fresh, so fast-moving, so startling, demanded constant reappraisal and response, he — the child of a president — thought it was about him: his issues, his battles, his heart. It’s not, at least not now.

In a time of crisis, the American public took hold of its system of self-governance, broken, over many years, by compulsive divisiveness, and said, Let’s try something new — and reach for history’s arc.

That’s why they, the people, sent Barack Obama onto the stage. The Bush era ended, officially, the minute he passed that top step and turned his face into the roar of the future."

To see how far George W. Bush has fallen check out this video from CNN.

No one would even shake his hand.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6Y_ncOVlDw

I feel sad for him.

J

Prop 8

An outstanding article from fivethirtyeight.com debunking the notion that increased African-American turn-out ensured the passing of Prop 8 in Califormia. Some telling passages:

"Certainly, the No on 8 folks might have done a better job of outreach to California's black and Latino communities. But the notion that Prop 8 passed because of the Obama turnout surge is silly. Exit polls suggest that first-time voters -- the vast majority of whom were driven to turn out by Obama (he won 83 percent [!] of their votes) -- voted against Prop 8 by a 62-38 margin. More experienced voters voted for the measure 56-44, however, providing for its passage.

...If California's electorate had been the same as it was in 2004, Prop 8 would have passed by a wider margin.

Furthermore, it would be premature to say that new Latino and black voters were responsible for Prop 8's passage. Latinos aged 18-29 (not strictly the same as 'new' voters, but the closest available proxy) voted against Prop 8 by a 59-41 margin. These figures are not available for young black voters, but it would surprise me if their votes weren't fairly close to the 50-50 mark.

At the end of the day, Prop 8's passage was more a generational matter than a racial one. If nobody over the age of 65 had voted, Prop 8 would have failed by a point or two."

Basically, Obama's new and diverse voters made sure Prop 8 passed by a small margin, as opposed to the large margin it would have passed by had they not come out.

Read the rest here:

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/11/prop-8-myths.html

J

Future

One of the best things that can come out of an Obama Presidency (aside from America becoming made out of gold, and sharing this gold with everyone) is the complete, total and radical over-haul of the Republican Party.

Yes, there are traditionalists out there who will want to continue down the same path of Guns, God and Sarah Palin to the White House, but reformers within the party understand that America is changing: it's becoming more diverse, educated, urban, and if the Republican Party is to survive, it has to leave its Sarah Palin's behind and find a true leader with a powerful, unifying, national vision. Right now, the Republicans have no one like that in sight, and I know that they are going to use the next four years searching through its ranks for their own Obama (maybe it's Bobby Jindal).

Obama's election proved that conservatives have to appeal "more to Hispanics, blacks, independents and younger voters," and "they cannot continue to insult the sensibilities of the educated class and the entire East and West Coasts." The party understands that the south's political influence is waning and that the cultural battles they have used to drive wedges into the electorate don't matter as much now.

Want to contribute? Help them out? Then check out their new website: http://rebuildtheparty.com/

It's basically a list-generator for their database, but you get a chance to outline what you think the party has to do entering the 21st Century.

Here's what I wrote:

"Don't start building your party around a potential 2012 candidate (because none of them are encouraging right now). Build your party around the sentiment that prevailed last Tuesday: more hope, more love, more big ideas and vision... just become Democrats."

:)

J

Barack...

He won with one of the broadest coalitions in history, and when John McCain said that the American people have spoken, and "they have spoken clearly," it was an understatement. Obama received the most votes for a presidential candidate ever. He's brought people who have never been together, together, and he is now carrying the hopes of so many millions. Hope is a heavy thing, and as America moves forward to face its most difficult challenges in a century, it is their most valued weapon.

This election has re-shaped the American political landscape in remarkable ways. For one, Obama's election was a sound rejection of the anti-intellectual, culture war politics of fear that has come to define American politics under the Republicans: Nixon, Reagan and the Bush's. And it also marks the end of Sarah Palin's rise in politics. Make no mistake about it, American's have rejected the mean-spirited base she represents, and only one VP candidate on a losing ticket has ever gone on to lead a national ticket... and that candidate lost (Bob Dole). If anything, this startling repudiation of the Republican Party will hopefully lead to its re-invention, and yes, it is possible. There are powerful, multicultural voices in the party (like Bobby Jindal), and if the Republicans can find their true identity as the party of big-ideas, hope, and giant steps... the party it once was... then that will be an amazing thing for America.

Another encouraging element of Obama's win was his share of the youth vote. 66% of young people chose him as President. And these are the very young, first time voters, aged 18-29 that we keep hearing about in the news. Reagan solidified the Republican Majority for decades by sweeping young people, recruiting a future generation of Republicans to carry the torch and ideals forward. Obama has done the same thing, and if he holds true to his pledge to promote more national service and community involvement for Americans, then we will have an engaged group of young people, looking to change America from the bottom up... and that is a powerful and hopeful sentiment. The possibilities in this are endless, and I believe that America's young will do amazing things. They did amazing things for his campaign... who knows what they will do for America.

And then there is the African-American community, I'm sure many, waking up this morning and wondering if last night was a dream. To experience such a sweeping sense of change, despite the burden of American's troubled relationship with race must have been over-whelming. When the news networks cut away to Jesse Jackson during Obama's victory speech, his face wet with tears, it was a powerful and very moving moment. Obama was on stage thanks to "the work and sacrifices of Jackson and his generation of aging or long-departed activists, men and women who did not appear onstage with the president-elect, but who sat in and marched and protested so that Americans like Obama might be treated as Americans." So many before Obama had worked and given their lives to make his moment possible; they faced dogs, and hoses, and bullets. Obama's victory was a testament to their hard-work, to their courage and to the resolve of hope. As McCain whipped up the fringe of his party, promoting the kind of racial fear and hate that came to define the Civil Rights struggle, Obama offered the prospect of healing those divides: "As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours: We are not enemies but friends ... Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection."

Finally, Obama made clear in his victory speech that he faces many challenges as president, and that to get there and meet these challenges will take more than a single term, and will take the help of the millions who voted for him. He is lowering expectations because he knows that running a campaign is far different than running a government. He did not have to make the kind of painful compromises that come to define so many other presidents of the past. Yes, he stepped back from promises during his campaign, like his vote on the FISA bill, as well as his pledge to accept public financing. And yes many were quick to anger and weariness (myself included) when it seemed like he was transforming from the revolutionary Obama in the primary, to the safe, centrist politician that won last night. But make no mistake: we will be disappointed during his tenure (at least at first), but the potential for true greatness is achievable, and something that all Americans will have to fight for.

Yes, Obama will bring inspiration back to the white house, and he will work hard to sell us on some of his future compromises, and yes some of them may hurt deeply. But we must not be weary too easily. We must never be quick to despair. I really, truly believe that "we will overcome," and to do so will take guts, and hope, and spine... and unity. Always be united. Because man... a united people can do anything.

I was proud to witness history last night, and to witness the election of a thoughtful, smart, and very articulate man to the presidency of the United States.

Like I wrote before, love and hope won last night. Love and hope will bring about the change we need.

Yes we did.

:)

J

Beautiful...

This goes beyond politics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW-6DpC-mj8

It was a nice video that captures an important theme of Barack Obama's campaign: that his coalition captures "young people who voted for the first time and the young at heart."

If you have friends and family in the United States gently remind them to vote tomorrow (or today if they can).

J