What a ride. Of course, now I want to see that "first hundred hours" Nancy Pelosi talked about actually happen.

I'm almost in shock. I hoped it would happen, but to see it materialize? Wow.

Freude, schoner Gotterfunken
Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken,
Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder
Was die Mode streng geteilt;
Alle Menschen werden Bruder
Wo dein sanfter Flugel weilt.

Wait. Oh, yeah!

Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle!

OK, enough with that - now it's time to start fixing things.

It's going to take *forever* to write all these thank-you notes, though.

Christmas came early!
And happy birthday to Mom, Suzanne M, and Michael Roberts!

It almost makes me sad I left.

...no, it doesn't.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
Chairman of the Democratic National Committee Howard Dean

Yanno, this is technically my between-cons-and-holidays dryout spell, but this calls for a drink.

I'm still not convinced, completely. I like the trend.

What steaming pile of mess is the current Congress going to leave for the Dems to clean up (besides what's already on the pile, I mean)? A lame-duck Congress can do some *serious* damage. I fear for what might lie ahead in the next few weeks.

And all together now: please god, Democrats, don't screw this up.

And a hard task it is.

I'm so f-ing happy, I could just shoot someone!

I want to extend an open invitation to all the neocon's to go on a duck hunt with me.

(aside) and I mean "duck"

Woot!

As someone said upthread; now let's get to work.

First thing we do is yank Dick Cheney out of that undisclosed location he's hiding in, sans shotgun...
Um, no. First thing we do is repeal the Torture Act. Let's bring some dignity and honor back to the country.

Check out http://americablog.blogspot.com for the vid.

Not that it was a secret or anything to bloggers (and others), but I'll bet most of Larry King's audience didn't have a clue.

Oh, I think the truly progressive Dems are going to remember Rahm spending LOTS of money on his chosen few and little or nothing on them. I'm pretty sure they're gonna remember that really well.

MKK

In Virginia, where Allen is entitled to a recount, there's really nothing to recount, because the state uses mostly no-paper-trail electronic machines; the canvass that's now going on, which just checks the arithmetic, is about all there is to do.

But zowie! Speaker Pelosi! Leader Reid!

I was in a good mood this morning; good enough to come to work despite a cold.

I was in a better mood when I heard that Rumsfeld got pitched.

Somewhat worse mode after some dental work and upon learning that I needed a root canal.

Now . . . wow. I almost can't believe it will last.

* * *

I called my parents this evening to thank them for their part in this; they were polling place attendants up in No Place You Heard Of, NY.

Fourteen hours they were at it! Said that about 450 people come through. Not bad for a town that can't keep a pizza parlor in business.

Feeling better today than I thought I would. No-Talent is outta here!

And if they did, I would sing along, and perhaps tap dance.

Yes, filk along with me, in honour of Rummie.

"You got the B****** OOOOOUUUUUUTTTTTT!!!"

Congrats from Down Here - I'm really looking forward to our Prime Miniature adjusting to the New Direction On Iraq. We want our troops back home too.

We've had top people investigating new areas of science all along. take "intelligent design", for example. top, top people I tell you.

The Wall Street Journal (sorry no link, would be pay, if you're a subscriber you know how to go there and search) asked some people who were around at the last turnover in 1992. There, they met for just one day after the election. Turns out it's really depressing to show up and walk around the Congressional offices, where almost everybody you see is a staffer who's about to be turned out on the street. Best bet is they're just gonna go back home and lick their wounds.

I'm surprised and delighted by the scale of the victory. When you won the house, I thought to myself, "well, that's a successful landing at Normandy and they've established a secure beachhead". I wasn't expecting the Liberation of Paris as well, but with the Senate going Democratic it looks like you've achieved that, too. It's just a shame we have to wait two years for the final assault on Berlin.

Oh yeah, and bugger Godwin.

(OK, so you've only got two-thirds of your government back, and may have to wait another two years before you can hit the trifecta, if you'll excuse the expression. But you know what they say about two outta three.)

You too, eh? It was quite a day for dentistry, I made a long-procrastinated visit myself, although mine was nowhere near as bad as I expected.

My son has a kidney problem. I WANT my frickin STEM CELL RESEARCH. And something tells me the rest of America kind of agrees, you know, with that whole "America in the forefront of science" thing.

Have you ever read The Only Moral Abortion Is My Abortion? I think that a whole lot of Americans who might well be against the whole idea of stem-cell research in principle will and do change their minds when one of their relatives gets diagnosed with a condition that stem-cell therapy may someday treat.

(OK, so you've only got two-thirds of your government back

Ross. this is the way our government works. Best we can do. But, before Tuesday I thought "best we could do" wasn't good enough. Now I think we might just make it. (I am proud to be in the party of Nancy Pelosi and Jon Tester.)

If it's any comfort, stem cell research is going on elsewhere - Sweden has quite a good record on the subject. Even the US withdrawing their (admittedly considerable) funding does not mean nothing gets done.

If Dems sit upon America's throne, we will have: (...) Abortion clinics on every corner. (...) Schools engineered for European secularism cloning (...) Condom machines under every lamppost.

Where will we find the money to build all those abortion clinics? And the maintenance of all those condom machines will cost a pretty penny... I am willing to shell out the money for cloning Europeans though, especially if that means I finally get my very own Fanny Ardant. Only for the purpose of helping with work at the office, of course.

'Schools engineered for European secularism cloning'
This sounds like comment spam. Seriously, what is it supposed to mean?

According to the link Serge posted we will also shortly see
'Same-gender marriages blessed on every blissful boulevard.'
Try saying that seven times quickly.

Excellent news about the election results. May all your boulevards be blissful.

Sorry; my surprise and happiness at seeing the outcome of your election have been bouncing off my innate cynicism.

"And it will afford me some comfort as I wander to think that you pulled down your own house when you destroyed mine." (Shudder.)

*sigh* I loved Arizona dearly. It had a kind of surly leave-me-alone-I-have-a-gun charm that I still miss, even if they did pass stupid laws like that...

Arizona, at least, had an English-as-the-official language bill, which passed handily. Since I don't live in the state any longer I'm not familiar with the details -- I wouldn't even have known about it if we hadn't had friends from Arizona who happened to be in town on Election Day who were watching the returns with us.

Stupid humans.

(Writing that comment made me stop and wonder -- is there still a point in making jokes like that? When we've got people with some sense in charge of things now? What a lovely thing to wonder.)

Ooooooh, that feels good...

Once he referred to "Muslim Murderers Global." (Sounds like a Muslim heavy metal band or something)

World O'Crap and Sadly, No! often mock his columns and those are always my favorite posts because his writing is so bloody surreal.

Regarding the English-only legislation: My big question is, if people like Swank, Bush, Rummy, etc. speak their own private dialects, are they going to be sent to prison or what, since they are not speaking English, the national language? Or are they sent to re-education camps where Berlitz makes them work with tapes?

So, someone who really wanted to make a stink could get that silly thing overturned.

And with that very graceful concession speech he made, he might actually have a shot, at least here in Virginia. That would have been gone gone gone in a long, drawn-out recount debacle. He made the only sensible tactical move he could have made.

Er, it computes if you contemplate the power implications of the phrase "barefoot and pregnant."

Once you understand that a woman is "supposed" to be a wife and mother in the home of some man upon whom she is dependent, then it computes.

I'm not given to finding patriarchal oppression under every third rock, but it does a dandy job of explaining this particular paradox.

Er, it computes if you contemplate the power implications of the phrase "barefoot and pregnant."

Once you understand that a woman is "supposed" to be a wife and mother in the home of some man upon whom she is dependent, then it computes.

My slightly different take:

Sex is not for fun. Sex is for a purpose (breeding). No one, but especially women, for whom that purpose is their most important (or only) legitimate function in life, has the right to evade that purpose. Contraception is evading that purpose and using sex just for fun, which is wrong. Abortion is doubly wrong, because adds murder to the sin of using sex for something other than breeding.

It comes down much the same result, of course.

Daniel...a friend of mine in college once characterized the situation this way: "Looking for sexism under every rock would be crazy if sexism were not, in fact, under every rock."

Look for communism under every rock and you're a nutbar. Look for dirt and a few grubs under every rock and you're entirely sensible. Patriarchal oppression is more like dirt and grubs.

What was that line from Frankenstein vs The Space Monster? The alien, who looked like a cross between Peter Lorre and a Vulcan tells us:

"We as a species are extinct. That's why we need some new breeding stock."

Xopher -- the point to my "I'm not given to finding" disclaimer was precisely to indicate that I don't think patriarchal oppression is under quite so many rocks as its more activist foes say it is. It's obviously under a lot of rocks, but since many who use the phrase pretty much think it's under every rock, I wanted, and want, to distinguish myself from that group.

It isn't just that sex is supposed to be only for reproduction, or that women's function is solely as breeding machines. It is also that it's too good for the poor. Poverty should be pleasureless (this is why some people object to poor people having a smoke or a beer -- not because they're unhealthy or morally bad, but because the poor should not be spending anything on pleasures). I think, though I may be wrong, that this is a peculiarly American view.

My brain is weird.