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It’s interesting, in so many of the election post-mortems, how it is blithely assumed that part of the country has grown more conservative, more separated from the Enlightened parts. (Check out the RSS feed from the New York Times referenced here.) Very strange, given just how liberal the U.S. would look today to visitors from times only decades in the past. I’m from North Carolina, a Red state with Blue cities. I was born in the rural Red part, and I remember something about the state where I grew up and still live. No matter where what political color you were, what mattered in such important factors as where you went to school — just back three decades ago — was the color of your skin. (That’s still true in a lot of ways, thanks to neighborhood schools, magnets, school transfers, white flight, and a million other reasons, but it isn’t explicitly a legal matter anymore.) ...

Senator-elect Barack Obama, then a State Senator in Illinois, addresses the Democratic National Convention with a speech that would resonate with Americans no matter what party had hosted it: On behalf of the great state of Illinois, crossroads of a nation, land of Lincoln, let me express my deep gratitude for the privilege of addressing this convention. Tonight is a particular honor for me because, let’s face it, my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely. My father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small village in Kenya. He grew up herding goats, went to school in a tin-roof shack. His father, my grandfather, was a cook, a domestic servant. ...

sigh…

Born on this day: Christopher Wren Arthur Rimbaud John Dewey Bela Lugosi Art Buchwald Mickey Mantle Tom Petty Viggo Mortensen Snoop Dogg and me… My Geek Horoscope: Libra - Despite all your lobbying efforts you won’t be able to convince Apple to release OS X for the Commodore 64.

Oh, good. Our administration has protected Iraq, and by extension the world, from the danger of a small Islamic peacekeeping force under the command of the UN. I’m sure our troops are grateful to our government for saving them from a slightly increased likelihood for peace, free elections, and UN involvement. Yep, busy with such problems as this, it is no wonder the administration’s thought capacity has become so dangerously overextended. ...

Ron Suskind writes in The New York Times Magazine about Bush’s “faith-based” presidency. While the article runs on the anti-Bush side — Suskind isn’t coy about what he thinks of “Bush’s faith” vs. the world of reason and picks and chooses the worst quotes, as most folks do when they are trying to prove a point — it brings up an interesting point: Is faith without doubt good for a fallible human being? Even — or perhaps especially — as a person who respects faith as much as I do, and who has and probably always will be a Baptist at heart, the idea of having certainty that your words are the voice of God bothers me a great deal. ...

You know, I can only laud the fact that Saddam Hussein is out of power, but for President Bush to say over and over again that the world is safer now that has happened is to ignore events such as the removal of Iraq’s nuclear weapons research facilities by parties unknown, while we’re nominally in charge.

I’ve never read a Laurell K. Hamilton book, but my wife has read some of them, and therefore the description of Incubus Dreams from the New York Times Book Update actually makes sense to me: Is a vampire serial killer preying on strippers? :)

BUSH: Gosh, I just don’t think I ever said I’m not worried about Osama bin Laden. It’s kind of one of those exaggerations. Of course we’re worried about Osama bin Laden. We’re on the hunt after Osama bin Laden. We’re using every asset at our disposal to get Osama bin Laden. George W. Bush, Third Presidential Debate, October 13, 2004 Hit the Wayback Machine… Q “But don’t you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won’t truly be eliminated until he is found either dead or alive?” ...

Excerpts from the second Presidential debate: BUSH: “I remember sitting in the White House looking at those generals, saying, ‘Do you have what you need in this war? Do you have what it takes?’ I remember going down to the basement of the White House the day we committed our troops as last resort, looking at Tommy Franks and the generals on the ground, asking them, ‘Do we have the right plan with the right troop level?’ ...