The last time I posted was the night before the election. Senator McCain was a nominee. Governor Palin was the sweetheart of the conservative movement. Vice President-elect Biden was a Senator whose foot was perpetually in his mouth. (He was supposed to bring maturity, especially on foreign policy, to the ticket.)

Here, the Vice President-elect asks a man in a wheelchair to stand up:


Here, the Vice President-elect shows he hasn't mastered Sesame Street-level math:


AND here is a collage of the Vice President-elect being ... himself:


As a sidenote, if any of you were missing former Vice President Quayle (whom Dennis Miller referred to as the "Rosetta Stone of modern comedy), it looks like the next administration will have similar comic releif.

And, then, Senator Obama is now President-elect.

boy. do I feel great.

The first line of Article II, Section 2 of our Constitution states:

The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States;

So, in a few short weeks, President-elect Obama will have the responsibility of making life or death decisions about ... me, my friends, and co-workers. That gives me a feeling deep, down inside ... and I wouldn't describe it as "warm and fuzzy".

The President-elect ran on a platform that was a carbon copy of Jimmy Carter's.

Let's look back, through the rose-tinted glasses of remembrance, at the golden years of the Carter Administration, and the wonderful things of that era: double digit interest rates, gasoline rationing, the highest inflation that I remember in my life, the highest unemployment rates I remember in my life, "malaise", the "Misery Index", the Iran Hostage Crisis, and, my personal favorite, "Desert One".

IT GETS BETTER!

His staff is full of Clinton-era retreads!

The first and foremonst of this bunch is Rahm Immanuel. He was a Clinton "West Wing" staff member. He, like the President-elect, is from Chicago. Rahm, as you might not know, was the person that the writers for the TV show West Wing used a model for the character Josh Lyman.

This guy (Immanuel, not the TV character) stood up at a celebration dinner after Clinton was reelected in 1996, with a steak knife in one hand, and recited a list of Clinton "betrayors" ... after each name was recited, he shouted "DEAD!", and stabbed the table with his steak knife. Is it just me, or does this sound more like a scene from a bad gangster movie set in the 20's, than Presidential politics?

Which brings me to how, lately, the media has been up in arms about Rush Limbaugh calling the President-elect, and Rahm Immanuel "thugs".

This is nothing new. Rush has been doing this since mid-August. There is a reason.

During his August 27th broadcast, Rush talked about an article that he had read on the site, Politico.

In the 26 August article by John F. Harris, there is this paragraph (you might have to look a bit, it is near the bottom of the thrid page):

Bill Clinton believes the Democratic nominee, far from practicing a unifying, transformational brand of politics, has the political instincts of “a Chicago thug,” one longtime associate said. Clinton has told people that Obama allowed surrogates to try to suppress Hispanic turnout in the Nevada caucuses, and played “the race card” in reverse against the Clintons in South Carolina and other states.

By calling the President-elect a politcal "Chicago thug", he was just quoting a former President ... former DEMOCRAT President, let me correct myself.

Here is what I find funny.

The accusations being leveled against Rush is that his comments were "racist". As in "racist" against the President-elect. Which, of course, just confirms the stereotupe that all conservatives are "racist, bigotted, homophobes".

The funny thing is that IF there is an American politician who should be offended by this "racist slur" it CAN'T be the President-elect. It HAS to be Bobby Jindal, the conservative Repblican governor of Louisiana.

The word "thug" comes to the English language from Britain's involvement with India! The Thuggee were, basically, a bunch of highway robbers in India during 17th to 19th centuries.

It is a SPECIFIC racial/ethnic slur. IT IS NOT AIMED AT BLACKS/AFRICAN AMERICANS, AT ALL!

Unless, of course, the President elect is, now, claiming Indian descent, to go along with his African, and American/European descent.

Who knows? He might be.

Think back to the number of states that the first President Bush called home.