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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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….

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.

They are all calling it.

Key races are tightening for Obama:

Colorado: Obama 56%, McCain 43%, 19% of precincts reporting. No change, with double the precincts reporting.

Florida: Obama 51%, McCain 48%, 81% of precincts reporting. Obama holding.

Virginia: Obama 51%, McCain 49%, 90% of precincts reporting. Obama pulling slightly ahead .

North Carolina: Obama 50%, McCain 49%, 84% of precincts reporting. Obama holding.

Indiana: McCain 50%, Obama 49%, 89% of precincts reporting.McCain holding.

TPM’s map is overloaded, so results are slow coming in to them. Elsewhere, NBC has Missouri tied, 49% to 49%, a good omen for Obama with 39% reporting.

Fox has called Virginia for Obama.

From Key States, latest numbers:

Everyone agrees on Ohio now. Like Pennsylvania, it’s not yet official; they could be wrong. But it doesn’t look like it. Other states:

Colorado: Obama 56%, McCain 43%, 9% of precincts reporting. Going for Obama; local news sources calling the state for him already.

Florida: Obama 51%, McCain 48%, 67% of precincts reporting. Obama holding.

Virginia: Obama 50%, McCain 49%, 85% of precincts reporting. Obama takes the lead.

North Carolina: Obama 50%, McCain 49%, 74% of precincts reporting. Tightening in favor of McCain.

Indiana: McCain 50%, Obama 49%, 85% of precincts reporting.Tightening in favor of Obama.

Missouri: McCain 52%, Obama 48%, 20% of precincts reporting. Tightening in favor of Obama.

…Wait for iiitt…

Networks have called Georgia for McCain (I still swear that TPM’s map read the opposite for a while…) as well as West Virginia. West Virginia was a lock for McCain, and Georgia was an outside hope.

But Ohio is the big news, after Pennsylvania. Calls for Ohio are now solidifying; it looks like Obama will take it. And McCain’s chances just went from “slim” to “only if god intervenes.”

Of course, it’s not over yet. But Obama is looking very, very good.

From Key States, latest numbers:

Correction: somehow, I got the numbers for Georgia flipped. I was wondering why it was so strong for Obama. I could swear TPM’s map said Obama had the lead, but I guess I mistook it.

Ohio: Obama 55%, McCain 43%, 14% of precincts reporting.

Florida: Obama 51%, McCain 48%, 54% of precincts reporting.

North Carolina: Obama 51%, McCain 48%, 45% of precincts reporting.

Indiana: McCain 51%, Obama 48%, 67% of precincts reporting.

Missouri: McCain 54%, Obama 45%, 7% of precincts reporting.

Georgia: McCain 59%, Obama 40%, 49% of precincts reporting.

First, Fox called Ohio for Obama. I stopped short of a cheer for that. One’s instinct may be to figure Fox never reports inaccurately in favor of Democrats, but I treat Fox as wholly unreliable. But now MSNBC is calling Ohio too. Others are yet to come, but I am still going to assume it’s too early to pop the champagne yet.

Update: Now CBS is on board in Ohio. But still, let’s wait and see a bit more.

If Obama wins Ohio, I see this as done.

Here are some current numbers:

Georgia: Obama 61%, McCain 39%, 34% of precincts reporting.

Florida: Obama 52%, McCain 48%, 48% of precincts reporting.

North Carolina: Obama 52%, McCain 47%, 32% of precincts reporting.

McCain leads by very slight margins in Indiana and Virginia (Virginia?), but remember, McCain now has to win ALL the battleground states to win it.

There was a minor emergency at school, and I got pulled away from the news just when key results started getting reported. Now I am at school and the emergency tamped down just enough for me to glance at the news and to blog a tiny bit.

BIG news: they have called Pennsylvania for Obama. If that call holds–and it looks like it will–then McCain’s chances of winning just got beaten down to “slim.” At best. And with the numbers coming in from Georgia, it seems like it may not be long before we hear the entire race being called for Obama.

More soon…. (not as if you don’t know all this already–if you don’t, GO WATCH THE NEWS!)

Kentucky called early for McCain; no surprise there. Vermont to Obama; again, no surprise. Hopeful numbers from Indiana; if Obama wins there, it’s a very good sign. Virginia is 56% to 44% in favor of McCain, but it’s just 3% reporting, and that can change greatly.

It could be a lot longer day than I expected.