JUST ANOTHER ELECTION:

That huge voter turnout? Didn't happen (DAVID PAUL KUHN, 11/8/08 , Politico)

Despite widespread predictions of record turnout in this year’s presidential election, roughly the same portion of eligible voters cast ballots in 2008 as in 2004.

Between 60.7 percent and 61.7 percent of the 208.3 million eligible voters cast ballots this year, compared with 60.6 percent of those eligible in 2004, according to a voting analysis by American University political scientist Curtis Gans, an authority on voter turnout.

Keep the W voters and Maverick wins.

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YUP, THAT'S JUST WHAT WE NEED... (via Neil Goldsmith):

Gingrich 2012? (Robert Novak, 11/07/08, Real Clear Politics)

In serious conversations among Republicans since their election debacle Tuesday, what name is mentioned most often as the Moses, or Reagan, who could lead them out of the wilderness before 40 years?

To the consternation of many Republicans, it is none other than Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House.

Gingrich is far from a unanimous or even a consensus choice to run for president in 2012, but there is a strong feeling in Republican ranks that he is the only leader of their party who has shown the skill and energy to attempt a comeback quickly.

...the quintessence of the House GOP.

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THE OMEN? ( via Rick Turley):

While it doesn't necessarily make our new president the Anti-Christ, Friend Turley notes that the evening lottery number in IL on November 5th was: 666

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IT'S RAHM'S CALL NOW:

Hamas leader says ready to talk to Obama - Sky News (Reuters, 11/08/08)

Hamas is ready to talk to U.S. President-elect Barack Obama but he must respect the Palestinian Islamist group's "rights and options", its leader Khaled Meshaal said in an interview on Saturday.

In a visit to Israel in July, Obama played down the chances of negotiating with Hamas unless the group renounced violence and recognised Israel's right to exist.

Under the outgoing U.S. President George Bush, the United States refused to talk to Hamas. "It's a big change -- political and psychological -- and it is noteworthy and I congratulate President Obama," Meshaal said in the interview with Sky News website from the Syrian capital Damascus. "But as a result of the election and the change, he should know he has duties to the United States and in the whole world and in hotspots, especially in the Middle East." "...we are ready for dialogue with President Obama and with the new American administration with an open mind, on the basis that the American administration respects our rights and our options," Meshaal told Sky.

He said the new U.S. administration would have no choice but to deal with Hamas if it was going to help resolve problems in the region. "The American administration, if they want to deal with the region, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli conflict, they have no other option than deal with Hamas because we are a real force on the ground, effective," he said. "And we are a movement that won a majority of votes in the election. Second of all, it's not right that Hamas poses any danger to anyone."

Just the threat that he'd quit gives the new chief of staff an effective veto over decisions like this.

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THE ANGLOSPHERE JUST KEEPS DRIFTING RIGHT:

New Zealand PM concedes defeat (The National, November 08. 2008)

The New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark conceded defeat in the country’s election today after the National Party leader John Key won enough seats to lead a conservative coalition.

“As is obvious to all, tonight has not been our night,” Ms Clark told supporters in Auckland.

“I congratulate John Key and the National Party on the result they have achieved.”

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MUTT?:

Goldendoodle talked up as first dog: Breed reportedly in running for Obama family (Linda Matchan, November 8, 2008, Boston Globe)

There's been talk that 10-year-old Malia Obama has put in a bid for a goldendoodle, a cute, fluffy crossbreed between a golden retriever and poodle. At his news conference yesterday, Obama dropped a couple of other hints. An Obama dog has to be hypoallergenic, he said, since Malia has allergies. Ever the populist, he said the family was leaning toward a shelter dog, and "a lot of shelter dogs are mutts like me."

Goldendoodles became popular in New England about four or five years ago, and in some circles - the purebred ones - they're still considered underdogs.

"The goldendoodle is not a recognized breed," said Patty Bullock vice president of the American Dog Breeders Association, which registers dog breeds with a "verifiable three generation pedigree," according to its website. "A lot of people think they are taking the best traits of each breed. This is an absolute fallacy. . . . They take dogs of two different breeds and breed them together, and it's just a mutt."

The Wife's labradoodle cost so much she won't even tell me what it was--after I said anything over $300 would be outrageous.

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BACK IN THE DAY...:

Stick, skateboard, Baby Doll enter Toy Hall of Fame (AP, 11/07/08)

The lowly stick, a universal plaything powered by a child's imagination, landed in the National Toy Hall of Fame on Thursday along with the Baby Doll and the skateboard.

The three were chosen to join the Strong National Museum of Play's lineup of 38 classics ranging from the bicycle, the kite and Mr. Potato Head to Crayola crayons, marbles and the Atari 2600 video game system.

Curators said the stick was a special addition in the spirit of a 2005 inductee, the cardboard box. They praised its all-purpose, no-cost, recreational qualities, noting its ability to serve either as raw material or an appendage transformed in myriad ways by a child's creativity.

"It's very open-ended, all-natural, the perfect price -- there aren't any rules or instructions for its use," said Christopher Bensch, the museum's curator of collections. "It can be a Wild West horse, a medieval knight's sword, a boat on a stream or a slingshot with a rubber band. ... No snowman is complete without a couple of stick arms, and every campfire needs a stick for toasting marshmallows.

...when tv's were mostly black and white--though we had a color one (with a radio and turntable built-in)--and got less than 10 channels of broadcast tv (if you lived near enough a city and turned the rabbit ears just right) and there were no computers or video games and there wasn't a youth league for every sport known to man, kids used to have to use their own imagination to come up with games to fill the long empty hours.

Sure, you had to have a basketball to shoot hoops; a bat, a ball and a couple gloves for Hit the Bat; and a football for Smear the Queer, but for a lot of games you just used what was to hand. Thus, games like tag, hide and seek, and Get Whitey require no equipment at all (though the last does necessitate a token honky), while the part needed for Kick the Can is obviously easily acquired. And then there was the stick.

We had a catalpa tree in our backyard and not only were its "beans" ideal for cracking over each other's heads, but it served as the "game board" for quite possibly the most boring pastime ever created (okay, second to soccer). We'd scour the neighborhood looking for the most gnarled and misshapen sticks we could find and then each toss our barked beauty into the upper branches of the tree. Whoever's stayed aloft the longest won. This was a contest that could take not hours but days, weeks, even months. If you got your hooked just right it would stay up there until an especially vicious storm or even the occasional Nor'Easter. Heck, for all we know, the Other Brother's twisted marvel from that one week in June 1968 may still be up there.

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WHICH MISAPPREHENDS THE REPUBLICAN CRISIS:

Republicans, This Is the First Day of the Rest of Your Lives (Stuart Rothenberg, 11/06/08, Real Clear Politics)

[E]ach time a party has suffered big losses, frustration boils over. It happened after the 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992 and 1994 elections.

Moderates and ideologues in the losing party always seem to disagree about who was at fault and what steps the bloodied and bruised party needs to take to get back on the winning track. After the 1964 and 1974 elections, some predicted the disappearance of the Republican Party. And reports of the death of the Democratic Party were greatly exaggerated after the 1972, 1994 and 2004 elections.

While the near term is not rosy for Republicans, party members will now be able to turn the page, on what was tantamount to a four-year election cycle.

Maybe President Bush wasn't responsible entirely for high gasoline prices, a mortgage foreclosure and financial crisis, Republican ethics lapses on Capitol Hill, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and a seemingly endless litany of depressing news stories. But the GOP was never going to recover its standing until the Bush years ended. Tuesday night marked the beginning of the end.

Note that nothing in that litany is a Bush policy, whereas the congressional Republican opposition to immigration reform, the Paulson plan, etc. did real damage. Indeed, John McCain and Barack Obama just competed to see who'd be the more competent administrator of Clintonism/Bushism. It's helpful to the Party to move on from W the man, but the winning candidate in '12 will run on W's politics.

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WHAT'S THE MANDARIN FOR KATRINA?:

Rise and Fall of Chinese Dynasties Tied to Changes in Rainfall: The record in a stalagmite tells a tale of how previous changes in climate affected human civilization (David Biello, Scientific American)

In the late ninth century a disastrous harvest precipitated by drought brought famine to China under the rule of the Tang dynasty. By A.D. 907—after nearly three centuries of rule—the dynasty fell when its emperor, Ai, was deposed, and the empire was divided. According to the atmospheric record contained in a stalagmite, one of the causes of that downfall may have been climate change.

"We think that climate played an important role in Chinese history," says paleoclimatologist Hai Cheng of the University of Minnesota, a member of the scientific team that harvested and analyzed the stalagmite from Wanxiang Cave in Gansu Province in northwest China. The stalagmite reveals, for example, that the vital rains of the Asian monsoon weakened at the time of the downfalls of the Tang, Yuan and Ming dynasties over the past 1,810 years.

"The climate acted," Cheng says, "as the last straw that broke the camel's back."

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MR. DAWKINS IS GONNA NEED MORE BUSES:

Global survey: youths see spiritual dimension to life: In the most ambitious such review to date, young people in 17 countries most often defined spirituality as belief that life has a purpose, belief in God, and being true to one's inner self. (Jane Lampman, 11/07/08, The Christian Science Monitor)

A study released last spring by the German research firm Berthlesmann Stiftung found that 85 percent of young people in 21 nations called themselves religious, and 44 percent said they were deeply religious.

In the US, a UCLA study of undergraduates from 2003 to 2007 broke some ground on spirituality. It found that while attendance at religious services decreased dramatically for most, their overall level of spirituality – defined as seeking meaning in life and developing values and self-understanding – increased.

When asked what it means to be spiritual, young people in the Search survey most commonly responded: believing there is a purpose to life, believing in God, or being true to one's inner self.

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