How funny; I didn't even take any particular offense. Because I never got confused about Nancy Reagan's having done anything more than consult an astrologer: it was an odd thing to do, but once your husband—a lightning rod for political hatred—has been shot, you are bound to become overprotective.

Still, it was a careless moment for Obama, and it was classy of him to call her.

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Apparently, they've snagged Sarah Palin as a speaker.

Sign up here.

I hope I can go. Unfortunately, I seem to have come down with a bad case of employment, so it would be easier to engineer financially—and harder to swing in terms of time.

h/t: Robert Stacy McCain ("The Other McCain"—the journalist)

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Treacher's is, of course, more succinct than mine.

Dear Senator McCain,

I write to you in a spirit of overwhelming gratitude for your service to this country: your heroism, your work in the U.S. Senate (including the bills I disagreed with!), and your hard work campaigning to set this country on a different course.

I recently drove out to Clark County, Nevada, a week before the election to assist in "get out the vote" efforts in Nevada, and stood on the wet grass near the top of Henderson Pavillion in the cold to hear you speak and cheer you on, along with my freedom-loving friends.

On election night, I watched your beautiful concession speech, tears streaming down my cheeks.

I'm terribly grateful for all you've done.

I would, however, like to request that you issue a statement on behalf of Sarah Palin, who is being slimed, once again--but this time by people from your campaign (apparently), who do not even seem to have the guts to identify themselves.

I know you're recovering from a grueling Presidential campaign, but the unseemly behavior of your former team members is a disgrace--and an embarrassment to the GOP. If you could take a few minutes to denounce this behavior, I'd appreciate it.

Sincerely,

Joy W. McCann

Treacher apparently got the idea from DoublePlus Undead, via Down the Ticket.

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We're all clear that high turnout among black and Latino voters killed gay marriage in the Golden State, right?

The best roundup on this is probably over at Eric Scheie's Classical Values:

Out Magazine editor Aaron Hicklin has a piece in the Guardian titled "The success of Proposition 8 in California was one negative consequence of Obama's victory" and he does into some detail discussing something that isn't getting much play in the American press—that black voters (many of whom were voting in unprecedently large numbers, thanks to Barack Obama) voted overwhelmingly (70% to 30%) in favor of Proposition 8 (to ban gay marriage in California).

The Prop 8 vote was 52% to 48% , and considering that blacks were 10% of the voters (yet 6.7% of the electorate), and far more in favor of the initiative than whites or Asians, it's quite likely that had Hillary Clinton been the nominee, Prop 8 would have been defeated.

My emphasis.

Well, that is an inconvenient truth. Scheie remarks:

As a libertarian I have had reservations from the start about the wisdom of bringing the state into the bedroom where I never thought it belonged, and I also think a good privacy argument can be made against gay marriage from a libertarian standpoint. To focus on it as a "right" overlooks its misuse as an arduous bludgeon, which could be deployed by vengeful lovers and blackmailers against partners who never sought to be married, just the way marriage laws can be for straight unmarried couples. But my position is a fringe one, as I freely admit. Soon we will all be wedded by and to the state, and all bedrooms will be subject to examination and scrutiny.

It may be a fringe position, but it is my very own. The state should not be in the business of certifying marriages. We might very well need a legal mechanism for creating economic communality—particularly between two people who are not blood relatives, such as two elderly women who live together but are not lovers—but we do not need the state to define the word marriage. We really don't.

In fact, most people seem to have their morality and logic inverted: all anyone should have is a "civil union." It is up to one's church and one's social circle to determine if and when these unions constitute a "marriage."

Via Insty, whom I suddenly realize I disagree with. Eric claims to have found Reynolds' original assertion about gays 'n' guns, but Glenn has reiterated the gist of it countless times. Insty:

It's often struck me that opposition to gay rights, and opposition to gun ownership, have a lot in common. Most people opposed to each are concerned as much with symbolism as with practical effects (you often hear comments prefaced with "I don't want to live in a country where people are allowed to do that") and it seems more an aspect of culture war than anything else.

Personally, I'd be delighted to live in a country where happily married gay couples had closets full of assault weapons.

I'd say "happily unioned," which is all any of us should be demanding of the State. The rest is just Humpty Dumpty-ism—an endless, unwinnable series of arguments about which words mean what, and to whom, and why.

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Well, wouldn't it? And if not, why not?

If you are with the person you love, and you enjoy the appropriate legal protections, what is it to you how others label it? I mean, it's annoying that they assign a different nomenclature, but surely that isn't something that a nice trip to the firing range won't fix, is it? Put some lead in the air; you'll feel much better afterward.

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"Welcome to Hotel Orwell."

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Uniting Americans.

I think I'm down with this.

Treacher is, however, a bit skeptical:

There's nothing easier than telling the guy you just beat that he should forget the depths you plumbed to do so.

And I forgot to mention the whole deal with, y'know, the last 8 years of lefty rage? It's just become such a part of the scenery, you almost forget sometimes. Plus Obama's voter fraud and credit-card fraud and constant lies about his past and false accusations of racism and the fact that he's already making far-left appointments and he wants to shut down talk radio because he can't handle criticism and all that other silly stuff we all need to get past now because we're going to need to work extra hard to pay for our own oppression. Whoops, there I go again!

Well, yeah: I understand that some of the graciousness-in-victory we are seeing is specifically calculated to keep us from turning on them in the same numbers, and in the same ugly ways, that they have been turning on us. I understand that the idea is to keep Obama Derangement System safe, legal, and rare—rather than let it become the status symbol that a good case of Bush Derangement Syndrome was for most of the past decade.

But the more we can talk across the various ideological fracture lines, the better. If we follow up these cute notes with healthy, respectful debate, we may—each of us—become less ideologically provincial.

Which would be a damned fine thing, in the long run.

We may need a "From 48 to 52 with Cautious Optimism," site, however, so we can ask simple questions like "you aren't going to take our guns away, are you?"

Or: "You're not really going to help Obama find a way around Posse Comitatus, are ya, Bro? 'Cause that's cold, Man."

UPDATE: Slublog— "Thanks, but no thanks."

UPDATE 2: Treacher found the best one, and preserved it for posterity.

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. . . on the Obama Presidency, "why law professors rule," what it means to have our first black President, and why it's acceptable—even chic—in academia to be wildly left-wing, but not even slightly right-wing.

It's 50 minutes long; go get a fresh martini (or a strong cup of coffee) before you start this one.

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Why would people be buying guns right now?

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Dr. Rice is, per Professor Althouse, "emotional" in this clip:

I guess that's emotional, for Condi. Personally, I think she's cutest when she's mad, but that's me. Backbone of steel, that one.

We all feel it. We all do. Even while folks like me, whose parents and grandparents were accused of things like "reading above their station." Sherri Shepherd of The View reminds us why this moment is a big fucking deal.

But after this year, as someone who does read above here station in life, I would sincerely like to remind the American electorate—particularly those of us who have two X chromosomes—that we must vote, to the degree possible, with our heads as much as with our hearts.

I was six years old when Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, but that death has loomed larger over my head than the death of either Kennedy brother.

So we celebrate. And we get to work.

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tackles the issue of "what is to be done":

I picked up a copy of Michael Barone's excellent book, The Almanac of American Politics, 2008 to see what senators are up for re-election. Here is what I found:

Democrats up for re-election—

Bayh, Evan (D-IN)

Boxer, Barbara (D-CA)

Dodd, Christopher J. (D-CT)

Dorgan, Byron L. (D-ND)

Feingold, Russell D. (D-WI)

Inouye, Daniel K. (D-HI)

Leahy, Patrick J. (D-VT)

Lincoln, Blanche L. (D-AR)

Mikulski, Barbara A. (D-MD)

Murray, Patty (D-WA)

Obama, Barack (D-IL) [and wouldn't it be nice to get a
Rethug into that one?]

Reid, Harry (D-NV)

Salazar, Ken (D-CO)

Schumer, Charles E. (D-NY)

Wyden, Ron (D-OR)

Republicans up for re-election—

Bond, Christopher S. (R-MO)

Brownback, Sam (R-KS)

Bunning, Jim (R-KY)

Burr, Richard (R-NC)

Coburn, Tom (R-OK)

Crapo, Mike (R-ID)

DeMint, Jim (R-SC)

Grassley, Chuck (R-IA)

Gregg, Judd (R-NH)

Isakson, Johnny (R-GA)

Martinez, Mel (R-FL)

McCain, John (R-AZ)

Murkowski, Lisa (R-AK)

Shelby, Richard C. (R-AL)

Specter, Arlen (R-PA)

Thune, John (R-SD)

Vitter, David (R-LA)

Voinovich, George V. (R-OH)

I wonder if Arnold Schwarzenegger might run against Barbara Boxer for her Senate seat, or if Chris Dodd will survive his ties to the housing crisis? Perhaps if conservatives and libertarians work together to defeat a few Democrats and keep Republicans in place, 2010 will be a more welcoming place for us.

I do know that there are some angry people in Nevada who intend to cause some big problems for Harry Reid in two years. I'd love to see Dingy Harry go, and I do think he's vulnerable.

Boxer is, too. More than she thinks. And I think there are people out there who are getting pretty tired of Chuck Schumer's face.

Organize, organize, organize. The bluer your state is, the more frustrated you probably feel: channel that into action.

The biggest danger to democracy right now, as I see it, is the prospect of open ballots for union voting in the ironically named "Employee Free Choice Act." The Democrats will be trying to force this one through again, and if they manage it they will unleash the ugliest elements of union thuggery, nationwide. "That's the Chicago way."

The Barone guidebook Dr. Smith mentions is available here.

And in case you need to get in the mood, John Sayles's short story collection The Anarchists' Convention might help you get there. Maybe we do need more goddamned conventions!

(Dr. Helen link via Insty. In case you were wondering what it takes to get an Instalanche these days. . . )

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I'm getting a lot more search traffic than usual for "Sarah Palin gaffes."

Who are you? Democratic operatives who still see her as a threat, or maverick loyalists who want to pin this debacle on the bitch who breathed new life into your, um, rather low-key campaign?

Let it go, boys and girls. You're just making yourselves look a lot worse.

But here you go. It's one of her worst misstatements ever.

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Some words from Macho-Sauce Man:

Via D.C. Thornton, who took care of me for a week while I toiled in the vineyards of Clark County, Nevada, attempting to undo some of the damage my fellow Californians seem to have accomplished in what is still, in many ways, the freest state of the Union.

If need be, the entire Free West may retreat into Utah and Arizona, but I don't think it'll have to: Nevada will go red again. It must.

Thornton says he isn't getting the "Keyes vibe": I kinda feel the same about Huckabee. I'm not a red-meat girl on illegal immigration, but a lot of my political allies are. My problem with Huckabee was his tax-and-spend leanings. I truly understand that there's a lot to be said for a politician who is also a musician—does anyone doubt the impact of Bill Clinton playing the sax, wearing dark sunglasses, on the Arsenio Hall show during the 1992 campaign?—but that is frosting on the charisma cake.

And from the libertarian (if not libertine) side of the party, I'd submit that Rudy Giuliani has every bit as much appeal as Huckabee does; he is a compelling speaker. But he is at the other end of the party—considered a RINO for quite different, largely complementary, reasons.

The trick is to find someone who has charisma—the "delivery system," as Zo puts it—but doesn't carry any baggage that is truly alienating to the base (open support for choice in Rudy's case; immigration and tax policy in Huckabee's).

We need someone who is popular without being a populist, and it turns out to be a taller order than we thought.

I think we do need fresh blood: Palin is a good start, and we know Louisiana is going to lose Jindal sooner or later, for the good of the country (preferably after fixing the systemic problems in Louisiana). But there are a lot of bright people out there, and we need to cultivate their talent, while studying the things Axelrod did right, and continuing to garner wisdom from the old hands on our side, such as Rove and Gingrich; those guys have been through the political wars, and we need to listen to them as we recruit new talent.

In California, the task is drastically different: our party is very bifurcated here, and we need to continue to find people like Schwarzenegger and Riordan who can bridge the divide between the Christians in the Central Valley and San Diego and the Log Cabin folks in West Hollywood, who are "out" in their sexual orientations—but not in their politics.

We might start by getting Tammy Bruce to admit that the letter after her name looks a lot less like a "D" these days, and more like an "R." And by reminding the party's right wing that Goldwater didn't disown his gay son—any more than Cheney disowned his gay daughter. Any more than Catholic voters turned on Reagan because of his divorce, or evangelicals abandoned him for not attending church on a regular basis.

How do we keep the tent big without watering down our message? We do it by focusing on three key issues: security/defense/foreign policy, economics, and civil liberties such as speech rights, privacy, and gun rights (and the seemingly irrelevant right to smoke and eat foods that contain sugar and trans-fats: once we concede to the state that it can monitor our health, we have declared what we are, and are simply haggling over the price).

"Stay safe, and shoot straight."

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Iowahawk manages to punctuate our national celebration over racial trancendance with . . . well, a tart word or two:

Yes, I know there are probably other African-Americans much better qualified and prepared for the presidency. Much, much better qualified. Hundreds, easily, if not thousands, and without any troubling ties to radical lunatics and Chicago mobsters. Gary Coleman comes to mind. But let's not let that distract us from the fact that Mr. Obama's election represents a profound, positive milestone in our country's struggle to overcome its long legacy of racial divisions and bigotry. It reminds us of how far we've come, and it's something everyone in our nation should celebrate in whatever little time we now have left.

Less than fifty years ago, African-Americans were barred from public universities, restaurants, and even drinking fountains in many parts of the country. On Tuesday we came together and transcended that shameful legacy, electing an African-American to the country's top job -- which, in fact, appears to be his first actual job. Certainly, it doesn't mean that racism has disappeared in America, but it is an undeniable mark of progress that a majority of voters no longer consider skin color nor a dangerously gullible naivete as a barrier to the presidency.

Read the whole thing; he's over his hangover, and on a roll.

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It was timing, luck, and organizational prowess that pushed Obama over the edge with a six-point margin:

It is a tribute to his skills that Mr. Obama, the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate, won in a country that remains center-right. Most pre-election polls and the wiggly exits indicate America remains ideologically stable, with 34% of voters saying they are conservative—unchanged from 2004. Moderates went to 44% from 45% of the electorate, while liberals went to 22% from 21%.

Mr. Obama understood this. He downplayed calls for retreat from Iraq, instead emphasizing toughness on Afghanistan, even threatening an ally, Pakistan, if it didn't help more to exterminate al Qaeda. Mr. Obama campaigned on "a tax cut for 95% of Americans," while attacking "government-run health care" as "extreme" and his opponent's proposals as hidden tax increases.

What Mr. Obama and his team achieved was impressive. But in 75 days comes the hard part. We saw a glimpse of the challenge Tuesday night. The president-elect's speech, while graceful and at times uplifting, was light when it comes to an agenda. That may have been appropriate, but it also continued a pattern.

Many Americans were drawn to Mr. Obama because they saw in him what they wanted to see. He became a large vessel into which voters placed their hopes. This can lead to disappointment and regret. What of the woman who, in the closing days of the campaign, rejoiced that Mr. Obama would pay for her gas and take care of her mortgage, tasks that no president can shoulder?

The country voted for change Tuesday. But the precise direction of that change remains unclear. Mr. Obama's victory was personal rather than philosophical. The soaring hopes and vague incantations of "change" that have characterized the last 21 months were the poetry phase; a prosaic phase is about to begin.

So we keep our hands clean, and avoid stooping to some of the lows we saw in those who opposed Bush and demonized McCain. And we organize.

Rove is right: in just a few years, there are likely going to be some very disappointed people out there who will be ready to join the "loyal opposition"—or, if Obama takes things too far Chicago—the resistance.

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displays her ignorance of:

• the fact that human beings are omnivorous mammals, and it is in our nature to kill;

• the fact that the Commandment about killing that is part of the Judeo-Christian ethic refers to murder—not mere homicide;

• the fact that children are not as stupid as she imagines;

• what white people think. (Blacks are "killers"? You've got to be kidding. There are vicious people in every demographic, but black men and women of every race are pretty underrepresented among mass murderers; in each case, one has to resort to dictators to create any real balance-of-evil for murder. Serial killers in the West are white men, almost without exception. The history in this country is of black people as victims of white violence. In the past few decades there has been some of the reverse, but that is dwarfed by black-on-black crime.)

• Islamo-fascists glorify not just murder, but suicide, and teach their children from birth that these are both wonderful things, as long as Westerners and Jews are dying along with you, and in greater numbers.

I dunno, Walker: why not suggest that Obama really dumb down the English language in expressing what needs to happen to Bin Ladin? Why not have him use pig Latin? "I will hunt down Bin Ladin, and ill-kay him."

Via Memeorandum.

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Purple Avenger's got it all scienced out.

Me? I plan on infiltrating the Republicans, and keeping them away from religious extremism and strange, paranoid theories about Obama.

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"I'm approaching Victorville, and all is well. I thought I'd call earlier than I said, so you could crash soon."

"Thanks; I'll see you in the morning, Dear."

"I'll probably be in around 11:00; I'm taking it easy, here. No rush. I'm just listening to music and sipping my McDonald's coffee."

"Good; just drive safe."

I creep into the condo very close to 11:00, kiss him on the cheek, and whisper very softly, my voice overpowered by the sound of his sleep machine. "Don't ever leave me like that again, okay?"

He shifts slightly in his bed, which to me suggests a feeling of culpability—a consciousness of guilt.

"Traipsing across the desert like that for eight days on some quixotic mission to get some old white-haired Senator elected President? For heaven's sake . . . what were you thinking?" I continue, softly.

He denies none of it—damning evidence that he realized from the beginning that it might turn into a huge waste of time.

Hey: everyone is a revisionist historian in his/her interpersonal relationships. I just like to start early.

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I think Tim Blair was still in town—but that's no excuse. It's a crazy salad, but I'd scroll down to the point where Burge starts exit-polling the contents of his liquor cabinet.

Even if I'd been home, I wouldn't have thought to do that.

And once I find my headphones, or it isn't late at night, I'll go back to check out his son's guitar video—both of his kids are as talented musically as he is at . . . cars, satire, drinking, and just kind of chilling-without-being-a-douchbag. You know: just Iowahawking. That's what he does, and he does it like no other.

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Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

h/t: Write Enough.

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and for the struggle to re-build a Small Government coalition; re-work campaign-finance guidelines, and buttress the security/integrity of our polling procedures, I must pause and say that a part of me is gleeful that the "racial barrier" has been broken WRT the Presidency.

This wasn't quite what I had in mind, of course: I wanted someone who looks and sounds like Morgan Freeman, and thinks like Thomas Sowell. I'm sure most of you recall that I tried hard to draft Condi Rice, before she made it utterly clear that she had zero interest in the job (and before A the H and I began arguing whether it was she, or G.W. Bush, who was more responsible for the flaws in our foreign policy lately).

Yeah: Larry Elder, "the Sage from South Central," had to spell it out for me—"no Condi, get used to it"—when I interviewed him two years ago at the Liberty Film Festival. Elder was right. And I know we'd need a crowbar to pry Sowell out of academia, where his approach to economics and his passion for scholarship are desperately needed.

But on a certain level it's still cool to have a black President. Can we have V.F. Blanchard next time? Or, perhaps, the first choice of Desert Cat's wife, Alfonzo "Zo" Rachel of Macho Sauce Productions?

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