Convicted felon Ted “Series of Tubes” Stevens has, apparently, recognized that Begich’s victory is now inevitable, and has officially conceded the race. Which means, one can presume, that Stevens will not shell out the $15,000 for a recount–which means the drama is over and the election decided. And the Democrats chalk up one more vote in the Senate to help Obama get the job done come January.

Meanwhile, in Minnesota, as the official recount gets started, Al Franken scores a victory as a court gives him access to documentation of rejected absentee ballots, allowing his campaign to find ballots that might have been thrown out mistakenly and have them readmitted. With 18% of the recount done, Franken picked up about 40 votes, and now is behind by only 174.

Stumble it!

We’re down to 8,000 votes left to be counted, and Democrat Mark Begich has now doubled his lead over convicted felon and Republican Ted Stevens. Stevens, who had a 3,000-vote lead before early and absentee ballots were counted, saw his lead dwindle and then disappear, and now Begich has almost as much a lead as Stevens had held–2,374 at the moment–and with so few votes left to count, it is virtually unthinkable that Stevens could pull ahead.

However, the game is not entirely over. While Begich’s lead is now safely outside the margin that would require a recount, Stevens could still ask for one, and it would only cost him $15,000–chump change that could easily be made up with a bribe or two. On the other hand, Alaska’s ballot system is said to be reliable enough that a recount would have little chance of changing the outcome, and there is likely to be a fair amount of pressure on Stevens to let it be, by Republicans who would rather not deal with the spotlight of a convicted felon who stands to be ejected from the Senate anyway clawing for the slightest chance to overturn the standing results.

Considering the unlikeliness of Stevens winning and the probability of him being thrown out of the Senate even if he wins, I am not sure that I agree with the Alaska Daily News when they say a recount is likely to happen.

It looks like one way or another, Alaska is pretty much a lock for the Democrats. Next up: Minnesota, where Franken stands a better-than-average chance of overturning Norm Coleman’s 215-vote lead in the state’s mandatory recount.

Update: With only 2500 absentee ballots left to count, Democrat Mark Begich now leads by 3,700 votes. The news agencies are calling this a “win” for Begich. So now we have to wait until Stevens decides whether he will concede or pay for a recount.

Stumble it!

I have always taken job hunting seriously. I feel that it’s something you have to take on whole-heartedly, not half-assed. Me, I hunt down all job resources I can find, weed and sort, schedule interviews (schedule a few throwaways first so you can get some practice in), research the job and the company as well as you can, dress up and arrive a few minutes early (not too early), so forth and so on. In the end, if you’ve done it right, then you will have a few good job offers at least, and can take your pick.

But nowadays I am on the other end of the process. Like I was ten years ago, I now find myself making, not reading, the classifieds listings and sorting through resumes. Between then and now were the blissful years of only working, but recently I was called back in for a spell to manage again for a while. And it is depressing to see what comes forth when you list a job.

I mean, seriously. Far more than half the applicants do not have the basic, bottom-of-the-barrel, “must-have” qualifications for the job. Okay, maybe they think that they’ll get lucky, maybe they hope that the employer is aiming too high. But some of these people clearly just shoot out resumes to everyone in sight–the scattershot approach. Clumsy. Messy. Maybe even desperate. But hey, at the very least, take the trouble to send a separate email to every employer instead of lumping them all together in the Cc list for all to see.

You wouldn’t believe how sloppily some people put together these things. This time around, we needed several different positions filled, and included several in the same ad. Very few specified which position they were applying for, even though the positions were widely variant; I wound up having to read the resumes closely and guessing which position the person is applying for. Sometimes I have to read really close, because the information is often muddled. Education histories don’t specify what major the person’s degree was in. Employment histories leave out vital details. Heck, one person didn’t even bother to add which city he lived in.

Reading these things, it really makes me want to write down a primer on how to write a good resume. So here goes. Note that this is for an average job calling for moderate experience and qualifications–if it’s a minimum-wage job, just send a one-pager; if it’s for Rocket Science, then maybe send a tome. But most times, it’s in between. Points to consider:

• Format Counts: as superficial as it may seem, careful attention to formatting makes a difference. Don’t use templates–anyone who reads resumes for a living has seen them all and can spot the people who use the standard forms. Use a good font–Optima for sans serif, Garamond for serif. I can’t explain why, but many outstanding applicants I have interviewed had Garamond resumes. Use character spacing, small caps, regular tab settings, the works. Try to make it look neat, organized, and elegant. How your resume looks tells the employer how important this is to you.
• (If by email) Save your resume as a PDF: send both MS Word and PDF formats if you must, but PDF preserves formatting perfectly, and is a universal format.
• Use a cover letter: a cover letter is like a thesis statement–it explains very quickly to the employer why they should hire you. Explain what position you are applying for, and list the basics as to why you’re qualified. The cover letter should be three medium-length paragraphs–not too brief, not too long. If you’re sending your resume by email, then give a truncated cover letter in the email, and a full one in the cover page of your resume.
• Avoid the clichés: don’t say that you’re a “team player,” or that you “want to make a positive contribution to the company.” (Yes, I actually get those.) Be a bit more original than that. Sculpt your patter to fit the position. Don’t go too far or else you’ll make your interviewer gag. Reign it in.
• Cover the basics: Put your name, full address, telephone number(s), email address, and all vital information on the resume. Sounds basic, but you’d be surprised at how many people mess up this stuff.
• Customize: don’t use the same resume for every application. Research each job you apply for. Find out something about the company and the job you are applying for, and rewrite that specific resume to match it. Several times I have gotten resumes that were obviously intended for a different job, and it makes the applicant seem like they don’t give a damn. Generalized resumes usually give a weaker impression.
• Make it easy for the employer to be impressed: I can’t tell you how many times I have had to scour resumes for any indication that the person has the qualifications for the job. It should all be apparent, right up front. Education first–be brief but informative. Degree, major, university, years, honors. Then employment history–but here’s where you have to be careful. Don’t just go listing every job you’ve ever had. Do you think I care if you were a waiter at a pizza joint if you are applying for a job as a graphic designer? Okay, if you leave all of that out then there will be big holes and the employer will wonder why. So categorize: list the positions relevant to the job you are applying for first, then list other positions later, under a different heading. But don’t make the employer sift through every part-time and temp job you’ve had in order to find the few jobs that show you have the experience they want.
• Be specific where it counts: When you list qualifications specifically relevant to the position, then you go into detail. Make sure they’re aware that you know how to do the job in question. If you are applying for a job managing a bookstore, then mention the specific duties you had when you worked for Barnes & Noble, but leave out the details of how you were the personal fitness trainer to that country & western singer, no matter how cool that was.
• Be thorough but brief: Don’t take 30 pages to list the stunning array of publications you’ve authored and seminars you’ve given. Keep it to 2 pages, maybe 3. One page is too short, often not giving me enough reason to be impressed; more than three is showing off. If you’ve got so much, list only the most impressive stuff, and then add a note that there’s more where that came from “upon request.” If they’re interested, they’ll request. If you absolutely must, then send a brief resume and an “extended” resume–don’t force them to read a novel.
• Add references: most jobs will want them, and they will check them. List them in your resume. If you have letters of reference, okay–but make sure to give email addresses and telephone numbers for them to check, and alert your reference people that they may be contacted.
• Have everything ready, on request: anticipate what the employer might ask for. Have copies of every degree, every college transcript, every letter of reference, every supporting document you can think of, ready to fax/email/carry in upon request. They will ask for it; “I’ll have to look into getting that for you” is less impressive than “here, if you want the originals let me know and I’ll get them for you as soon as I can.”
• Spell check: nothing says “don’t hire me” more than spelling errors on your resume. Don’t just check for the squiggly red lines, actually read the thing, several times, and look for any errors, in spelling, wording, style, etc.

That’s everything that comes to mind right now. Follow these rules and your resume should be in the top 5 percent at least. As depressing as these resumes sometimes get, I always have the assurance that if I ever need to look for a job, I will most definitely stand out amongst the applicants.

Stumble it!

There’s been a lot of talk from the right that the United States today is a “center-right” nation; I noted this from Bay Buchanan about a week ago, and we’ve been hearing it a lot since–obviously it’s a widely-distributed talking point the right wing has created in order to give the impression that conservatives are still effectively, if not titularly, in control of things.

Of course, the idea is pretty silly, and falls apart under inspection–and not even close inspection at that. For the past two Congressional elections, Democratic candidates have been winning in large numbers–not just the Senators, where conservative seats have been coming up for challenge in larger numbers, but in the House as well, where everyone must be elected every two years. Obama–the recently elected Democratic president (with a bigger share of the popular vote than any president in the previous four elections), will have a near-super-majority in both houses this time, with more numbers on his side than any Republican president in the past, oh, who knows how long.

But then there is the fact that Americans self-identify as Republicans less and less, and as Independents and Democrats more; it’s hard to imagine a time when the right-wing brand name has been weaker.

Let’s put it this way: if the Republicans had the same thing the Democrats have now: super-majorities in both houses of Congress with the numbers promising to shift even more in their direction two years from now, a popular president in the White House who won by a very comfortable popular margin, and name-brand identification of the Democrats tanking–do you think they would accept claims that the nation was “center-left”? Hell no, they wouldn’t even accept the notion that the nation was center-right. They would claim that the nation had become solidly right-wing and would accept no argument about it, period.

The Dems are hardly that strident, but they do have one thing straight: whatever the nation is right now, it is certainly not on the right of the center line. How much to the left the country has tilted is yet to be seen, but it’s more than just a tiny bit, that’s for sure.

This latest “center-right” myth is simply yet another attempt to work the refs and create a myth that reality is much more right-wing than all the actual evidence says it is. In that sense, this is right in line with myths such as the “liberal media” canard we’ve been bombarded with for so long.

Stumble it!

There are a lot of reasons I prefer Mac over Windows (if you’ve read this blog regularly then you may scoff at that understatement), but let me give two examples of very small details that make a big difference sometimes.

First is the use of arrow keys and cursor movement in text. In Windows, using the left- and right-arrow keys to move left or right in text will go character by character. The up and down arrow keys only go up and down line by line–they cannot be used to jump to the beginning or the end of a line at either end of the document.

Go ahead–if you are using Windows, go to a text box or your browser’s address bar. Click somewhere in the middle, and then try to use the up-arrow key: after you reach the top line, nothing happens. You have to either keep tapping or hold down the left-arrow key until the cursor gets to the beginning of the line, or else use an alternate move (function-arrow-key?), something involving a two-handed keyboard move.

On the Mac, if you hit the up-arrow key after reaching the top, the cursor pops to the beginning of the line–or to the end if you down-arrow beyond the last line. This is such a natural and easy move that I am frankly astounded that Windows doesn’t do it. In fact, it seems to even be Microsoft’s preference–if you use MS Word for Mac, Microsoft has actually disabled this feature (at least with the up-arrow key), making it impossible for you to use it in that suite.

Another small thing that annoys me constantly in Windows is when you start an app and there is a delay in the app’s opening–sometimes for severals tens of seconds. The delay itself is annoying, but the real problem is that Windows, as far as I can tell, has no way of letting you know if the app is really opening or not. It usually looks just like nothing happened, that your command did not register. Many users think that they didn’t click the icon right or select the menu item correctly, and will wonder for a bit as to whether or not the app is actually opening. Worse, the machine will register repeated attempts to open the app, causing the situation to worsen. I have often seen people who think the move didn’t work retry opening the app, sometimes many times, only to have multiple instances of the same app open once the system has gotten around to drawing some actual windows.

On the Mac, this never happens. If you try to open an app, and you’re not sure if it registered, just look at the Dock–if the app is opening, then the Dock icon should be bouncing, or will have an indicator below showing that it has opened already. And if you happen to try to open the app again, it won’t open the same app more than once.

Stuff like this is what makes the UI so much more enjoyable.

Stumble it!

You’ve probably heard of the surge in gun sales after Obama got elected. This usually happens after a Democrat is elected president, but it strikes me as unusually short-sight and dim-witted.

For one thing, Obama’s stands on gun control are pretty moderate (not too different from John McCain’s, in fact), and a recent Supreme Court decision has upheld gun ownership rights; the idea that gun bans are imminent is weak at best.

However, far more significantly, any new gun laws that come about would be foreseeable pretty far in advance, especially any laws that outlawed various types of guns–the NRA and the Republican Party would both see to it that everyone knew what was happening well before it got to a vote. Obama won’t even take office for another two months, and the new Democratic gains in Congress similarly won’t take effect until then.

So the rush of gun buyers–in some places, up as much as 60%–is panic-buying by people who, to be quite frank, are not too smart. It seems to speak to their paranoia–that they seem to think that Obama and/or the Democrats will stealthily craft gun bans overnight and will send jack-booted thugs to round them and their weapons up the next morning. I would not be surprised if many of these people bury their guns in their backyards or otherwise try to hide them somehow.

Alternately, one could consider this opportunistic buying–people who had their eyes on such guns anyway, and this simply gave them an excuse to go out and make the expenditure. I doubt, however, that this explains all or even most of it, especially given the nature of the rhetoric out there, and how gullibly many hard-core right-wingers bought into so much of what the McCain campaign fed them.

Stumble it!

I know that I have often pointed out that right-wingers blame the other side for everything all the time, but still, they’re going to extremes with this one.

For years after Bush took office, the wingnuts claimed that everything bad about the economy was Clinton’s fault. The idea was that Clinton dug us so deep into a hole that Bush could not possibly be blamed for anything bad that happened economically (though any progress was immediately awarded to Bush).

So, naturally, since Bush, after eight years in office, is handing off a far worse recession, maybe even a depression, to his successor, Obama will get the same grace period, right?

Ha! Of course not. Obama won’t even take office until two months from now, but the wingnuts aren’t wasting any time–despite Obama not even being the president-elect for a whole two weeks yet, the right-wing talking heads are already blaming our current downturn on him, calling it “The Obama Recession.”

What’s the job description for a wingnut? “No critical thinking skills required”? Oh, I’m sure they’ll have some rationalization as to how it just happened to work out the way they’re claiming. I’m just surprised that they are being so transparent about it. I expected them to wait until a few months after Obama took office to start blaming everything on him. But now, anyone who accepts this has to believe that Obama has been working for years behind the scenes to engineer this recession, or that he immediately inherits the recession and the blame for it a few months before he’s able to do anything.

Like the claims made by the wingnuts during the campaign, this new line of crap will be believed only by the converted, by the Kool-Aid drinkers and the Loyal Bushies. The blatant nature of the lie is so transparent, however, that this stands to only help Obama with the moderates.

So, keep spouting, Limbaugh, Hannity, and all the others–keep spouting this laughable lie. The more you do, the more you highlight the fact that it’s a lie, and the more people will remember that it’s a lie for quite some time. You could have waited a decent amount of time, until after Bush had faded away and people had been hurting for a while, and then started blaming Obama–and a lot more people would have bought into it. But now, whenever you try to do that over the next few years, all anyone has to do is to remind everyone that you’ve been saying the same thing since two months before Obama even took office–and at that, the accusation will fall flat.

Stumble it!

Things are looking pretty good for Democrats in Alaska and Minnesota. In Alaska, Democrat Mark Begich now actually holds the lead, as early votes and absentee ballots continue to come in. First, a report came out when Begich passed Stevens and led by three votes; at the end of the day, Begich led Stevens by 814 votes, a turn-around from Stevens’ initial 3,000-vote lead. Some 35,000 votes still remain to be counted, but they promise more of the same, and it is unlikely that Stevens will recover. Still, it’s not over till it’s over.

In Minnesota, things are looking good for Al Franken. How can you tell? Because his Republican opponent, Norm Coleman, is so worried about the recount showing that Franken won that he has gone into full-fledged Florida-2000 mode, and is desperately screaming to everyone who will listen about how the recount is corrupt and invalid. Unfortunately, unlike Bush in 2000, Coleman faces a mandatory recount, does not have Katherine Harris skewing for him, cannot depend on the Supreme Court to select him, and cannot hold the whole country hostage by threatening to withhold the junior Senator from Minnesota from the people–it’s just not as urgent as not having a president.

Despite the right wing’s tinfoil-hat claims of election fraud, reports have been that the recount process has been strongly credible; even one Coleman staffer professed surprise at how transparent the process is, and the Republican governor confirmed that he sees no fraud or irregularities with the vote count. Meanwhile, Franken’s team has not been allowing Coleman’s legions of lawyers overrun them; Franken has sued for the release of voter lists which could reveal illicitly disqualified votes, citing one example of a woman who suffered a stroke being disenfranchised because her signature no longer matched.

With the recount, Coleman’s lead (already down to 206 from his initial lead of 725) stands to evaporate just like Stevens’ did. That would bring the Dems up to 59 votes, much closer to a bulletproof majority which could stifle Republican plans to obstruct progress and shut down Obama’s ability to carry out his promises.

Stumble it!

A lot of non-theistic or theo-phobic Democrats have been kind of worried about Obama and his religion; some felt that he was putting on a show, and others were concerned that his support of faith-based organizations signaled that he was a closet Christian waiting to continue Bush’s legacy of merging church and state. I think both were wrong.

From an interview Obama gave in March 2004, before his famous speech at the Democratic convention–this is pretty much what I want to hear from a Christian President of the United States:

Alongside my own deep personal faith, I am a follower, as well, of our civic religion. I am a big believer in the separation of church and state. I am a big believer in our constitutional structure. I mean, I’m a law professor at the University of Chicago teaching constitutional law. I am a great admirer of our founding charter, and its resolve to prevent theocracies from forming, and its resolve to prevent disruptive strains of fundamentalism from taking root ion this country.

As I said before, in my own public policy, I’m very suspicious of religious certainty expressing itself in politics.

Now, that’s different from a belief that values have to inform our public policy. I think it’s perfectly consistent to say that I want my government to be operating for all faiths and all peoples, including atheists and agnostics, while also insisting that there are values that inform my politics that are appropriate to talk about.

A standard line in my stump speech during this campaign is that my politics are informed by a belief that we’re all connected. That if there’s a child on the South Side of Chicago that can’t read, that makes a difference in my life even if it’s not my own child. If there’s a senior citizen in downstate Illinois that’s struggling to pay for their medicine and having to chose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer even if it’s not my grandparent. And if there’s an Arab American family that’s being rounded up by John Ashcroft without the benefit of due process, that threatens my civil liberties.

I can give religious expression to that. I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper, we are all children of God. Or I can express it in secular terms. But the basic premise remains the same. I think sometimes Democrats have made the mistake of shying away from a conversation about values for fear that they sacrifice the important value of tolerance. And I don’t think those two things are mutually exclusive.

This is not someone who says that god told him to invade Iraq; this is not someone who is trying to make religious dogma into law, whether it comes from true belief or pandering to a constituency. This is not someone who believes that you can only be moral if you are religious. This is someone who understands and upholds the Separation of Church and State.

Bush, I would be suspicious of, precisely because of his record: he was unabashedly willing to turn Christian law into U.S. law, Christian dogma into federal policy. When conservative Christian politicians talk about faith and religious values “informing” their official actions, they usually mean something else. Even when they pretend that religion is just showing them a moral way, the end result is usually an unacceptable intrusion of religious rules into public law. That’s how we get the whole abortion debate; that’s how we get bad family planning rules; that’s how we get judges willing to allow courtrooms to become display rooms for religious ornamentation. This is more than religion “informing” policy and law, it is religion dictating policy and law.

But what Obama is talking about is something else. He’s not talking about transferring the end product of religious faith into public policy and law; he’s talking about using the basic moral lessons, the beginning of religious faith–not the church doctrine–acting as a guide to making decisions. There’s a huge difference there.

For example, “love thy neighbor” is a moral principle; it tells us to show compassion to others, a general rule which addresses our own actions and from where our moral direction should come. But “homosexuality is bad” is something completely different: it is not a moral principle directing our own actions, it is a political interpretation of scripture written in primitive times, which proscribes the actions of others. Not a direction, but a conclusion. What Obama refers to as “religious certainty.” Night and day.

Obama’s take is the former: to learn lessons from the Christian faith which set a moral compass, which speak to our own feelings and compassion, which guide our hearts. This is completely different from someone taking the end product of organized religion and its political process and trying to implement it as the law which all must obey. Night and day.

I am an agnostic with leanings toward Deism, and I fear the marriage of church and state as a prelude to theocratic fascism. This is not to say that I hate Christianity or even dislike it. Nor that I need to see organized religion banned from the Earth. I simply have seen too much of the worst of Christianity applied to public policy and law and know that the consequences can only get worse if such continues.

What I do not fear are Christian principles–if they are indeed Christian principles; but not old-testament principles excused by a profession of the love of Christ. Yes, if they are a call to self-discipline and spiritual growth; but no, not the application of the political will of a stagnant “religious” body more intent on enforcing rigid dogma based on fear and hate than it is on nurturing spiritual growth and compassion. There are people who follow the teachings and traditions of Christ, and then there are people who dress themselves in the splendor of his clothing and then go out with picket signs saying “God Hates Fags.”

As I have said before, if Christianity lived up to its name and held above all else the words and actions of Christ, the world would be a lot better place. But too many Christians do nothing of the sort; despite professing Christ as their redeemer, their lord and savior, or their favorite philosopher, they base their moral compass and their corporeal actions upon the more primitive and even feral guidelines of the old testament. Instead of turning the other cheek, they want an eye for an eye; instead of “he who is without sin,” they prefer to smite the wicked, with themselves being the judge of who is wicked and who is righteous. But it need not even be new vs. old testament–but rather simply following the spirit, the true philosophy, that being one of morality turned inward instead of outward, of showing compassion and assuming spiritual responsibility for one’s own self. You just don’t see that too often.

I suppose that this dovetails with the Republican mindset, where you have people professing an undying love of America but who clearly hate the people living in it; these “Christians” profess a love of Christ but turn away from him when it comes to his clearly expressed words and actions. It’s about professing love for something but rejecting it in fact, professing humility but acting arrogantly.

That is why, despite Obama’s history, despite his late decision to become a churchgoer, despite his exposure to other faiths and his tolerance for them, Obama strikes me as more of a genuine Christian than any of the fundamentalists of the religious right who praise Jesus but self-righteously practice intolerance, suspicion, and hate.

Obama, however–he’s a Christian I can believe in. And, I believe, a model for those who think faith should be a part of the political arena. As with all my other beliefs, my agnostic side tells me that I have to wait and see what the facts bear out. But as much as I can have faith, in this matter I do.

Stumble it!

Sachi and I found this several days ago, and I have seen it mentioned in more and more blogs and news stories. Apparently, it’s become a mini-craze, or at least a viral video, though this is streamed video. Someone in San Francisco has a Shiba Inu who had a litter of six puppies, and set up a video camera over the puppies’ sleeping box. And since Sachi just adores Shibas, especially Shiba puppies, this channel has been getting a lot of play in our household.

If you missed their younger days (they are currently five weeks old), you can view their previous videos on the main site. But here’s the feed, usually on the air during daytime hours in the U.S.:

A few images from the past for a sample:

When I last checked several days ago, just under a million views had been recorded; now it’s up to 1.75 million. I have to wonder if Shiba Inus, a less-known breed in the U.S., might get a big surge in popularity after this.

Stumble it!

That’s Google for you, always adding new features & stuff. They went and added video chat, like Skype, to their GMail service. Here’s how it works:

The service requires a software plug-in to be installed. If you don’t have it but someone tries to invite you to a video chat, then you are prompted to download the software:

Otherwise, you can just go to the software download page and get the software without prompting. I have installed it on Macs and PCs, works great on both, at least the machines I tried it on. Once you download the software, just install it–you’ll have to shut down your browsers for that.

Once you finish the install, Google will attempt to re-open your browser and go into your Chat settings. If that doesn’t happen automatically, then restart your browser, log into GMail, go to “Settings,” and then click on “Chat.” You’ll see a new section for “voice and video chat,” in which there is a “Verify your settings” option. If you expand that, then you can make sure that your camera, mic, and speaker are all working properly. If you are logged into Skype or another program which uses video, you’ll probably have to turn that off first–usually, the video can only be used by one program at a time.

Once everything is set, you should be able to see green video camera icons next to GMail chat buddies who have this plug-in activated. Just start a chat, and then under “Video & more,” choose “Start a video chat.” It’s just like making a Skype call. By clicking on the arrow button at the top right, you can make the video chat a separate window, which you can go full-screen on.

To be honest, this is more useful if you happen to have GMail open all the time, which you don’t usually have; it’s not like Skype, which can automatically start up when you start your computer, so it is more useful for video chats at appointed times, unless you do keep a GMail page open all the time, or have an app which emulates a browser but is dedicated to just the one page (though I haven’t tried the video out on such apps yet).

Either way, chalk up one more very nicely-done app for Google. (Side note: my school now uses Google Apps for Education, which gives us GMail-driven accounts but with our educational domain name–and our email system got this upgrade Tuesday, just like all GMail users got–cool.) Seriously, I don’t know why most people still use Yahoo and Hotmail–I can only guess that it’s the same reason so many people still use Internet Explorer 6: because they have been using it for a long time and just don’t know that a lot better stuff is out there.

Stumble it!

Here’s a doozy:

CNN Anchor Tony Harris: How will we — “we,” big “we” — make this work? I’m talking Republicans, Democrats, independents, Libertarians. Republicans — do Republicans want to work with a President-elect Obama?

Bay Buchanan: Well, it all depends on which direction the country — Obama wants to take the country. If he is really going to govern from the center and recognizes that the nation is center to right, then we’re gonna work with him, just as we worked with Bill Clinton to get welfare reform.

In other words, “we’ll be bipartisan as long as the other side does what we want them to do.” Yeah, that’s bipartisanship.

I am really, really glad that the Dems have won such a commanding majority, else we’d be in for four years of rather horrific gridlock. Remember, the Republicans in the Senate used the filibuster at least three times more in the last session of Congress than it had ever been used before; they blocked virtually every single Democratic initiative out the gate. Even as they blamed Democrats as being the “do nothing” Congress, they crowed openly about how being obstructionist “worked for them.”

Republicans have, for too long, been far too greedy, far too insistent on having everything go their way. Remember when they got more of their judicial appointments confirmed than any party in living history–98 percent were approved–and then screamed that the Democrats were being “obstructionist” because they refused to rubber-stamp the most egregiously extremist and corrupt right-wing judges that even some conservatives gagged at?

For me, the best representation of this attitude was that one Republican woman who complained about Starbucks coffee cups when it was found that more of them had left-leaning quotes printed on them than right-leaning quotes: “oh well, I’m not surprised. I’m used to being under-represented.” This was 2005, when Republicans had held the White House, both houses of Congress, had a stronger voice on the Supreme Court, and had a media filled with right-wing voices–and here was this woman whining about how she was “under-represented” because her coffee cups disagreed with her more often than not.

The problem is, Republicans like Buchanan don’t seem to realize that their bargaining position has been whittled down to almost nothing. With even more Republican Senate seats coming up for election in the next round (the last round where Republicans stand to lose the most, after Democrats won big the last two times), there will probably be at least a few Republicans who won’t want to be held up as the ones who blocked progress.

While Republicans may be able to hold on to the barest sliver of obstructionist power, the fact is that they are marginalized now more than they have been for a long time–maybe more than they have been ever, all things considered. To still go about with such arrogant hubris, demanding things be done their way or not at all, is flirting with disaster.

Stumble it!

This from the WaPo (via Kevin Drum):

The financial world was fixated on Capitol Hill as Congress battled over the Bush administration’s request for a $700 billion bailout of the banking industry. In the midst of this late-September drama, the Treasury Department issued a five-sentence notice that attracted almost no public attention.

But corporate tax lawyers quickly realized the enormous implications of the document: Administration officials had just given American banks a windfall of as much as $140 billion.

The sweeping change to two decades of tax policy escaped the notice of lawmakers for several days, as they remained consumed with the controversial bailout bill. When they found out, some legislators were furious. Some congressional staff members have privately concluded that the notice was illegal. But they have worried that saying so publicly could unravel several recent bank mergers made possible by the change and send the economy into an even deeper tailspin.

“Did the Treasury Department have the authority to do this? I think almost every tax expert would agree that the answer is no,” said George K. Yin, the former chief of staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, the nonpartisan congressional authority on taxes. “They basically repealed a 22-year-old law that Congress passed as a backdoor way of providing aid to banks.” …

The change to Section 382 of the tax code — a provision that limited a kind of tax shelter arising in corporate mergers — came after a two-decade effort by conservative economists and Republican administration officials to eliminate or overhaul the law, which is so little-known that even influential tax experts sometimes draw a blank at its mention. Until the financial meltdown, its opponents thought it would be nearly impossible to revamp the section because this would look like a corporate giveaway, according to lobbyists.

Is it just me, or did we get snookered? And I don’t just mean the sudden and probably illegal huge tax break outlined in the article above, but the general bailout situation itself?

Remember, the $700 billion number was more or less pulled out of Henry Paulson’s ass; it did not represent a quantification of any real need, but a number that sounded good enough to calm investors’ fears. And I’m beginning to wonder if all or part of this whole thing has been a scam.

Not that there hasn’t been a financial crisis, but rather that there has been an opportunistic grab for money like there was after 9/11, only this one was far more immediate. Did we really need to give away $700 billion? Just like we were held hostage to our fear after 9/11, so have we been now; instead of fearing the specter of terrorism, we’ve simply been presented with a new boogeyman, and have been told to fork over ridiculous sums of money. And we’d better not complain or talk about not doing it, or else the financial markets will blow our economic brains out.

And yes, I know that Obama was in favor of the bill. I never said he was perfect, nor that I’d agree with him all the time–though his support for it is one of the few things that makes me wonder if I’m just being paranoid.

But even if the bailout is needed, I still am under the impression that we’re getting cleaned out, if not by the primary giveaway, then by the billions that will fall through the cracks, or are simply stolen via corruption in the system.

Either way, it seems like this is little more than a last-minute looting of the treasury by corrupt institutions which have become aware that the gravy train is soon ending. The change in the tax law comes across as a sign of the gates to the treasury being opened for the fatcats to charge in and plunder.

Stumble it!

Before the 2006 midterm election, this is what the balance of power looked like in Congress:

And what it looks like after the 2008 election, just two years later:

Now, look at those numbers and tell me that Democrats in Congress haven’t been given a big, fat mandate.

Stumble it!

Obama revealed his economic stimulus package, and it looks pretty clear that he is staying true to his word: that he believes in an economy that works from the bottom up, that it grows not when you give massive tax breaks and giveaways to corporations and the wealthy (in the hope that they’ll decide to spend some of that on hiring people so the money will work its way back into the economy), but that it works best when you give the money instead directly to the lowest ranks of society–jobs for the lower & middle class instead of cash gifts to the rich, for example–knowing that they will spend the money in ways that will kick-start the economy. In other words, cut out the wasteful middleman who usually takes a huge slice of cream off the top.

Obama’s economic plan has at its heart a move to start rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure. To me, this is a no-brainer–as Roger K. Lewis as the WaPo points out, infrastructure is a “capital expense” because “money spent for labor and materials yields something durable, useful and often financially productive.” Bush just blew $700 billion on bailouts for irresponsible banks, much of which we might never see again. Obama might have gotten behind it because he knew that fighting for a more responsible package would have simply made things worse, not to mention helped lose him the election, but I have little doubt that his approach would have been far different had he been the author and the president who pushed it. (And he did push an alternate plan which would have given more money to people trying to keep their homes rather than the banks that were taking them away.)

This infrastructure push is one example of that mindset: spend money on things that will bring a return and boost the economy, rather than the right-wing method of throwing wads of cash at people already flush with it in the hope that enough will fall through the cracks and create some jobs somewhere. Obama’s plan has heft–invest in roads & bridges, railways, seaports, water, energy systems, and schools. The immediate effect is to create many new healthy construction jobs, pump money into the lower & middle class, pump up local economies where the projects take place, and then sit back and profit from the results for the next half century.

Believe it or not, Bush has been against such projects. And we wonder why our bridges are collapsing, why our construction jobs are disappearing, why local economies are drying up.

Another element of Obama’s plan is to give money to states to support their faltering social support systems–buying food for families that don’t have enough money, extending unemployment benefits for people who have lost their jobs for long periods of time–you know, frivolous stuff. Or what right-wingers call “welfare”–something they approve of if it’s a billionaire who just lost his yacht, but not if it’s a hardworking average Joe who’s trying to work but can’t find it, or a single mother working two jobs to raise her kids but still can’t make ends meet. These people aren’t investing in junk bonds or stashing their loot in the Caymans. They’re spending pretty much everything at home, money that goes right back into the economy. But conservatives see these people as greedy welfare queens who don’t deserve it. Give Paris Hilton a bigger inheritance instead–after all, she earned it more, didn’t she?

Obama is also looking to help out the auto industry, but also seems intent on using that influence to help steer them toward those green technologies he’s been talking about.

In short, Obama is not wasting any time in doing everything he can to deliver on his promises, and to create a stimulus package which has the best promise of having the strongest impact on the economy.

Even as he remains careful not to officially kick at the heels of the current administration, he has made it perfectly clear that he seriously intends to waste no time in getting to work–and already he sounds smarter, more determined, and more effective that the administration still in power.

Stumble it!

The presidential election is over, and we all know Obama won–but he won 365-173–more than two-thirds of the electoral college in his favor. That may sound like a landslide, but really, the only president to get fewer electoral votes in the past 30 years was George W. Bush; everyone from Reagan to Clinton got more electoral votes than Obama did this time.

On the other hand, let’s all remember that when Dubya won in 2004 (with a lot fewer popular and electoral votes than Obama got), he was awarded a “mandate” by many conservatives, especially Dick Cheney–a claim that the media echoed. Not just the conservative media, but it is notable what people like Bob Novak said that the time:

Q: Bob Novak, is 51 percent of the vote really a mandate?

NOVAK: Of course it is. It’s a 3.5 million vote margin. But the people who are saying that it isn’t a mandate are the same people who were predicting that John Kerry would win. … So the people who say there’s not a mandate want the president, now that he’s won, to say, Oh, we’re going to accept the liberalism that the — that the voters rejected. But Mark, this is a conservative country, and it showed it on last Tuesday. [11/06/04]

And now, with Obama winning over McCain by 7.4 million votes, double the “mandate” margin that Bush got? Novak writes:

But Obama’s win was nothing like that. He may have opened the door to enactment of the long-deferred liberal agenda, but he neither received a broad mandate from the public nor the needed large congressional majorities.

Another argument that Bush supporters pushed in 2004 was that Bush was voted for by the largest number of Americans in history; what they didn’t note was that he was also voted against by the largest number of people in history. Obama was voted for by what is now the largest number of people ever–and the number who voted against him is less than those who voted against Bush in ‘04. So he has a mandate then? Of course not–only Republicans get mandates.

But it’s OK–Obama’s not trying to claim any mandates. Instead, he claimed humility, and asked to be everyone’s president, promising to give both right and left his attention and respect.

What’s still interesting, though, is the Senate. The Dems now have 55 seats, a 7-seat pickup; Jim Jeffords and Joe Leiberman constitute two other seats that are “independent,” but currently caucus with the Democrats If they are both counted on the Dems’ side, that gives them 57 seats. Not a filibuster-proof majority.

But wait, three races are still undecided.

In Alaska, Republican (and convicted felon) Ted Stevens has a 3257-vote lead over Democratic challenger Mark Begich, out of a total 221,713 votes–but something is definitely suspicious. In an election where voter turnout was the highest in generations, the Alaskan election showed a decrease in turnout, suggesting that not all the votes were counted. In fact, 9500 early votes and more than 50,000 absentee votes–which so far have favored the Democrat–have yet to be counted. That’s about one-fifth of the total vote–so Stevens may yet be defeated, and the Dems could pick up another seat.

In Georgia, Saxby Chambliss (you know, the guy who ran a despicable campaign where he compared triple-amputee war hero Mac Cleland to Osama bin Laden) seemed to win, but undercounts there also corrected that impression–and while Chambliss still got more votes, he failed to clear the 50% hurdle, so there will be a special runoff election which he still could lose.

But the closest race as of the moment is in Minnesota, where Norm Coleman claimed victory over Al Franken. But hold on, Norm–you only won by about 700 votes, close enough to trigger an automatic recount. Coleman did not show much class or cool–in addition to claiming premature victory, he also criticized Franken for not fighting against a recount. A recount mandated by law.

And Franken would have good reason to demand a recount, even if it were not required by law: he is quickly gaining on Coleman. First Coleman was ahead by more than 700 votes, then that fell to 450, and now he’s ahead by only a few hundred votes. And a recount will probably turn up a lot more votes for Franken: most of the “undervotes” (votes made but not counted due to errors or omissions) come from Democratic districts. Some may simply not have voted for a Senator, but many probably did but the machines failed to recognize them. That will be cleared up upon manual inspection of the ballots. Franken may yet win this thing.

And if the Dems win all three of those seats, then they will have a total of 58–and here’s where Leiberman apparently thinks he’ll have the most traction, as he’s the 60th filibuster-breaking vote. Not that he’d still vote with the Democrats.

So, should the Dems tell Leiberman to get lost? Leiberman did all but literally stab the Dems in the back, not just by siding with McCain, not just by speaking at the Republican convention and attacking Obama, but by actually campaigning for Republicans in the House and Senate. Unless Leiberman is a complete hypocrite who acts whatever way benefits him most in any given week, it is hard to see him breaking Republican filibusters anyway. But Leiberman is a scumball, and the Dems should simply do without him.

Whether it’s going to be 56 or 59, or even 60, the Democrats now have a lot more influence and sway than they did before. If Obama can influence Republicans who may cooperate–like moderate Republican Senator Olympia Snowe from Maine, they won’t need to sway too many votes.

Whatever the case, Obama has more of a chance than believed to avoid the massive tidal wave of obstructionism that the Republicans have been dishing out over the past two years.

Who knows, maybe we’ll actually get some stuff done.

Stumble it!

The hope that comes from the results of this election is not just pipe dreams and rainbows; the change that comes is palpable and very real. It’s not just a slogan, it’s something very real, very different. It’s not a matter of race, it’s not even a matter of party. There are a number of qualities which are significantly different. And with the new administration, we will see something that we have sorely lacked for the pasty eight years. There is no telling what will happen, exactly, but there are certain truths which promise the hope that I and so many others now feel.

We will no longer have an anti-intellectual president who can so easily be influenced by the last voice to speak to him. This is more than just a matter of someone who says dumb stuff once in a while; in the office of the president, I want the smartest person I can think of. Call me elitist, but in January, the IQ in the Oval Office will climb significantly.

We will no longer have a government run by cronies and insiders. Whatever you think of Obama, he’s his own man. He’s not a some dupe who can do little more than just bring a name to the table, winning a presidency his staff to control. Obama’s staff will be chosen by him, not the other way around; Obama will use them, not the other way around. With Bush, it was all about who surrounded him; with Obama, those around him will inform and support, not control. You won’t see this president expressing surprise at the policies that his vice president dictates.

We will have a truly humble presidency. Not a weak one; that we’ve seen amply demonstrated in the past year or more. Humility is not weakness, it is a strength. It is the ability to see that you are fallible, recognizing your weaknesses–and thus being more able to defeat them. Bush, in 2000, said that a humble president would garner respect–and in that, he was right, only that he was not even close to being that president. He was arrogant to the extreme. Even now, the right-wingers like Novak are trying to rationalize how the “mandate” Bush supposedly had in 2004 is not Obama’s despite his far more commanding victory. But Obama is not claiming a mandate, nor, like Bush in 2006, is he claiming that the voice of the people in their shift is somehow an excuse for him to do whatever he planned to do anyway. Obama has voiced that he is not just president of those who elected him. Bush claimed that also, but never acted as such. Betcha Obama lives up to his word a lot better.

We have a president who respects the law. Already they have shown the signals: in an organizational chart they have recently released, the Obama team not only puts the vice president within the Executive branch, but they put the president and his office all under the Constitution, which resides above everything else.

We will have a president who is a constitutional scholar, not one who treats the Constitution like toilet paper.

We will have a president who will garner international respect, not embarrass us.

This will not be an administration that will start wars for ideological reasons, or without a well-thought-out exit strategy, or any war lacking an honest and respectable rationale.

This will not be an administration which will casually and repeatedly violate the law and then unabashedly refuse to prosecute itself.

This will not be an administration which will stack the ranks of non-partisan offices with ultra-partisan plants.

Obama will not vacation for two months out of the year.

Obama will not allow industries to waltz into the White House and write their own government policy.

Obama will not institute policies of pre-emptive strike, torture, or spying on his own people.

I know: I am setting the bar too low by comparing what we know Obama will and will not do relative to the Bush administration. After the worst presidency in history, anyone would shine.

But it is such a relief that even these basic principles will be covered, that it is reason to view the future with hope. Right now, our expectations are simply that our president will not be a disastrous idiot.

And who knows–Obama may even exceed our expectations. Call me an optimistic fool.

Stumble it!

Damn.

This really wasn’t the best week for the election to happen for me. What should have been a milestone event in my life in which I could revel, ponder, luxuriate, and (of course) blog my little heart out, just happened to fall at a time in which I have been more busy than I have in months. And I just got married twice on two continents and led my branch campus through an accreditation process. This week–and, in particular, since the morning of the election–has been the worst. I have literally not had more than 20 minutes to myself without having work to do. I am looking at staying up until 5am tonight working on the school’s Arts Day video.

* Sigh. *

Well, after Arts Day. And the post-wedding party we’ve planned for the past few weeks. Yeah. After that.

For now, though, just one comment: even discounting my being almost too busy to notice much, I think that my reaction to this election was far more muted than I expected. The strongest sensation was relief, something other people I know also reported. And with that, a bit of a light feeling, like a glow or a buzz, maybe how you feel after a hard workout almost.

I guess that’s what hope feels like. It’s been such a long time, I’d forgotten.

Stumble it!

Work has avalanched–otherwise I would be comparing the tableau (such as I was able to observe) at the Obama acceptance speech vs. the McCain concession speech. Later, when I have a free three minutes….

Stumble it!

Not that we needed this to make it official.

Amazing–McCain’s supporters are heckling him for saying gracious things about Obama–not just regular heckling, but shouting, pained and angry, “NO!!!” for McCain’s appeal to support the president and the country. Stuff like that. It’s striking. This is not a crowd willing to make a gracious concession–they are bitter, and are making that clear in their reactions.

This is what McCain has left behind: a large core of Americans who more than just disapprove or disagree, but who violently reject the idea of cooperation and joining together. Obama did not engender this hatred: McCain is chiefly responsible for it.

Stumble it!