10×10 / 100 Words and Pictures that Define the Time / by Jonathan J. Harris

Wicked cool way to browse the news. It’s beyond me to try to explain just now. Check it out.

A quick glance at the calendar on the left of this blog confirms it. I’ve been in a post-election funk. I just haven’t had the energy or interest to post lately, and I’ve only been breezing through my RSS feeds. I’ve had a couple of half-written post-election posts sitting in VoodooPad for weeks, but just haven’t wanted to work on them. The weeks after the election have seemed a bit like the aftermath of a bomb—a lot of noise, shouting, confusion, and rending of garments, little of it focused. I felt that the best thing to do was to step away a bit and get some perspective. The true impact of November 2nd will become apparent over the next few months; I’m not sure that participating in all the hand-waving does me any good right now.

In the meantime, my mother reminded me that Texan columnist Molly Ivins is alive and kicking and available on the web. I’ve read Ivins in the past and really dig her perspective, but never had access to her columns on a regular basis. Lucky for all of us, Working for Change posts and collects Molly’s musings all in one place. Clicking on the link will take you to the ongoing collection, with archives going back to April of 2000. If you haven’t read her yet, what are you waiting for? She’s smart, funny, tough, and sharp as a Ginsu.

I imagine I’ll be back to blogging soon. The time away has been good, and I’m collecting stuff to talk about. Hope all is well in your corner of the world.

This email has probably made the rounds, but I wanted to stash a copy here, too. Thanks to Cousin Stef for sending me a copy…
——
Dear President Bush,

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s Law.  I have learned a great deal from you and understand why you would propose and support a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage. As you said, “in the eyes of God marriage is based between a man and a woman.”  I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22clearly states it to be an abomination…  End of debate.

I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God’s Laws and how to follow them.

1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians.  Can you clarify? Why can’t I own Canadians?
2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanness – Lev.15: 19-24.  The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.
4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord – Lev.1:9. The problem is my neighbors.  They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath.  Exodus 35:2. clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?
6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination – Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this? Are there ‘degrees’ of abomination?
7. Lev.21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?
8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though Lev. 19 expressly forbids this:  27.  How should they die?
9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? Lev.24:10-16. Couldn’t we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14) I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I am confident you can help.

Thank you again for reminding us that God’s word is eternal and unchanging.

There’s a lot of energy out in the blogosphere—and by anecdotal accounts, in the real world, too—from people who are dedicated to understanding this election, and especially from those who aren’t happy with the results. Bloggers are responding to the recent unpleasantness with humor, anger, righteous indignation, and incisive analysis. Every post I read is dead on, and each misses the mark. We’re still too close to the election, I think, to understand it properly, but we can start to grasp it.

I’ve got some personal thoughts that I’m working up, myself. I think, however, that this is the last one of these round-ups I’ve got in me for a while. I’ll still post, but I’m going to do what I should have done a couple of days ago and take the advice of First Draft’s Athenae to step away for a few days. Some perspective will do me good. If I don’t get back to you for a while, Digby, First Draft, Fafblog and The Poor Man are doing some first-rate stuff. They’re well worth checking on a regular basis.

Back soon. Enjoy:

It was a close election

• Kevin Drum flips the meme.

• Sisyphus Shrugged points to some solid Kerry constituencies and suggests that this election may be a one-off. Referring to the higher number of Republican votes he says, “This isn’t a trend. It’s a ceiling.”

• Bush won by the smallest margin since 1916. (First Draft)

We want a divorce

• C.B. Shapiro makes a modest proposal. (Boing Boing)

• Atrios provides some supporting evidence. (Since he’s gone on a blog holiday, you’ll have to hit the main site, then scroll to the Tax Fairness Act of 2005.)

• Ogged cites irreconcilable differences.

• Bug Greg Knauss is still trying to hold the family together. (Waxy)

This could get ugly

• Orcinus has noticed the rise in ugly rhetoric, the intolerance and hate.

• And there’s no reason to believe that things will be any less restrained in D.C. (Talking Points Memo)

Panic

• Ken Layne is freaked out by Rove’s re-election strategy. (Shrillblog)

• Localroger has a timely look at It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis, a warning to the US against creeping fascism. (Kuro5hin)

• Another Kuro5hin article opines the Failure of the American Experiment. A bit premature, but I was fascinated by the idea that our country works better when states rights are stronger, allowing citizens to gravitate to states where the laws are more suited to their beliefs.

Don’t Panic

• No need to panic, just dig in and work. (First Draft)

• The Democratic Leadership Council has a pretty clear-eyed assessment of what went wrong and how to start preparing for next time. You can get there from here. (New Donkey)

• We’ve been here before, and we’ll get by. (The Poor Man)

• Do Something. (The Talent Show)

• We don’t need to change course. We’ve just gotta feed the boilers. (Hullabaloo) See also, The Poor Man’s Hammer of Truth.

It’s the the terror, stupid; or, the canard of “Moral Issues”

• The Democrats did not lose this election on moral issues, Paul Freedman explains. (via Kevin Drum)

• We in the blogosphere may have missed that the real ground war was going on out of our view in the churches and meeting halls. (The Poor Man)

• MUST READ: You think the Middle East is going to be impressed by our cowboy swagger? Check this out, and tell me we’re going to win a fanatical war with these folks. These guys make Karl Rove look like Ghandi.

• If conservatives expect their candidates to deliver on the Moral Issues thing, they’re going to remain sorely disappointed. And they better not look too deeply at their candidates. (Hullabaloo)

• Digby’s guest blogger gives up the fight.

If you’re reading this from outside the US, please take a moment to visit this website for some very important messages from concerned American citizens.

This is the brilliantest thing I’ve seen. Here’s your mandate.

On Monday, the day before the election, I wrote this:

Kerry will win, and America’s soul will be restored. There is no place in my world for the alternative.

Well, I give myself full marks for putting my balls on the table, but sometimes when ya do that, they get stomped on. Hard.

I hurt inside. I feel the way I did after 9/11, kind of stunned and punched in the gut. I’m generally optimistic, and hopeful that this will be a good thing for our party and our country in the long run. We’re going to have a rough patch, but we will come out of it a stronger nation. But right now I feel like something’s died.

I made a pledge to support whoever the President turned out to be, and I stand by that pledge. I also made a pledge to criticize whoever the President turned out to be, and I will honor that as well.

I intend to write more of my thoughts later, but for today, here is a collection of the rants and reactions I’ve been ingesting for the past couple of days. I imagine that the really useful analysis will show up once the pain wears off a bit, but it’s been helpful for me to read all the great writing that’s been pouring out of the blogs lately. Some really intelligent people are turning things over, figuring them out, dealing with their pain and trying to put it in perspective. It’s very hopeful. It gives one hope.

Election Theories & Random Thoughts

• As usual, Josh Marshall has a very good take on what this election means.

• Sid the Fish has the shorter election.

• Xeni at Boing Boing has a good collection of reactions from the Left.

• I think Al Franken pretty much hits it on the head in his usual style. After telling us what Kerry should have done better, he says:

You know I wouldn’t mind losing an election if it were an honest disagreement, based on facts, over values and policy. But that’s not what happened. A large majority of Bush supporters went to the polls believing things that were false.

• Jason Kottke says we’re all stupid.

• Functional Ambivalent crunches the voting numbers. Bush has no mandate.

• Digby agrees, and reframes the election. Read this. Don’t get gamed by Rove’s strategy.

Red versus Blue

• First of all, I think the newsies got a little dazzled by the primary red and blue flashing at them from their state maps. Those binary maps really don’t tell the story. Many of the races in those states were closer than they appeared on the winner-take-all electoral map. At Boing Boing we get a map with various shades of purple, representing percentages of Democrat and Republican votes by state. They also point us to a telling map at USA Today which breaks down the red/blue by county. UPDATE: Here’s another by-county data map. (DeLong) Compare it to this map from 1860. (Washington Monthly)

• Riding Fear to Victory – Republicans got out the vote by getting gay marriage on the ballot. (The Talent Show) [Has anyone seen evidence that this actually helped?] Edward at Obsidian Wings has an answer, though: Create a Defense of Marriage Act with some real teeth to it.

• Functional Ambivalent suggests we should give the Red States exactly what they want.

Looking Forward

• Tena at First Draft says, Never Give Up.

• Athenae, also at First Draft, sparks a really good conversation in this post, in which she asks what the Democratic Party stands for. Her commenters thrash this out pretty well, but I think she actually says it best. We’re the “party of individual freedom working for the common good.”

• Atrios also says we need to figure out who we are.

• On the other hand, The Poor Man says that we know who we are. We need to stop soul-searching and start building infrastructure.

Bitter/Never Surrender

• It’s not a contest, but TBogg would probably win “Most Bitter Assessment of this Election.”

• Orcinus doesn’t hold out much hope that the conservatives are really looking to build any bridges.

• At The Nation, Katrina vanden Heuvel says that our precious democratic institutions are under attack, and we must start thinking about how to resist.

• James Wolcott is ready to hang himself, but vows to carry on.

• Thomas at Seeing the Forest urges us to call our congressmen and tell them that we “expect them to fight tooth and nail against the Bush agenda.”

• Via Sisyphus Shrugged, Teresa Neilsen Hayden refuses to accept the results.

• From Boing Boing, Rich Malley says, buck up kiddos, and take a lesson from the other side.

• Hugh MacLeod has a pithy comment.

The Media

• The media in general may be broken, but CNN certainly is. (Joi Ito)

• Some great insights on the press and the election from PressThink. Also, where does the press go from here?

Voting is Broken

• International election monitors in the US find it extraordinarily difficult to monitor for fairness. (Joi Ito)

• And, I’ve lost the link now, but as someone pointed out, making voters wait in line for hours to vote amounts to voter suppression. There’s no excuse for this. Voting needs to be fixed.

International Reaction

• I have some contacts overseas, and I’m afraid Joi Ito’s reaction is pretty typical: “The people of America have failed us today.”

Bright Spots

• From The New York Times’ article on Bush’s press conference:

“Mr. Bush’s victory appeared to clear the way for a reshuffling of his cabinet, with John Ashcroft, the attorney general, and Tom Ridge, the homeland security secretary, likely to leave for personal reasons, according to administration officials.”

• The youth vote actually did turn out, and in higher numbers than ever before. (The Regular)

Digging In

• Bob Beckel isn’t ready to shake hands. From the sounds of this, he won’t be ready anytime soon. (News Hounds)

• God Bless Molly Ivins. She tells us how to cure a chicken-killin’ dog. (Working For Change)

• Maureen Dowd gets pretty damn blunt about what she thinks about the Republican’s conciliation.

Republican Reactions

I honestly can’t take too much of this. For all the righteous indignation over the actions of the Left, the Righties seem to think they have license now to behave badly, and with impunity. Last night I watched a bit of Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn. One of the so-called comedians actually said that he thought Muslims should be thankful that we even allow them on airplanes with us after 9/11; they should be begging us to fly on “our” airplanes. Jesus, man; could you be an uglier American?

In fairness, some Democrats are overreacting, too, (This Blog Sits At…) and not all Republican reaction has been of the shit-for-brains variety, of course, but it’s a little tough to take nonetheless.

• Shark Blog has a breakdown of why Kerry lost. I take issue with most of it, but especially points One (What the hell does being a “regular guy” have to do with being qualified to be lead the country?) and Four (Kerry’s “global test” comment was taken out of context and cynically manipulated).

• The Talent Show links to a Bush supporter who’s basically giving 48% of the country the finger.

• Functional Ambivalent also samples a few choice words from some gracious and humble Republicans.

• Right on Red perplexes me. Johnny Walker Red seems like a sane and reasonable guy, but he says stuff like “Kerry has made a lot of divisive, destructive statements in this campaign,” and, “After decades on the wrong side of history, John Kerry has finally made the right decision.” I have no idea what he means. Further, a commenter says, “Kerry has shown himself to be an unprinicpled, traitorous, elitist, poser jackass.” To which JWR replies, in part, “the war on the moonbat Left is still on, 100%. Now they’re really gonna get wacky.”

There’s your conciliation, right there.

Damn. I don’t know who pointed me to Fanatical Apathy today, but thanks.

Read Adam Felber’s concession speech.

Read Adam Felber’s concession speech NOOOOOOW!

Just a few things before I hit the hay…

• At Sisyphus Shrugged, we get a sense of some of the court challenges we could face before it’s all over. Whatever happens, we’re going to need to get this voting thing figured out.

• Michael Bérubé is serene, and I tend to agree with him. I’m hopeful that John Kerry can pull it out, but I’m prepared to let George Bush clean up his own mess.

• Brad DeLong suggests that the Republicans may take home a few lessons from this campaign.

• I believed you, Jimmy Breslin. (Newsday)

• The Rhetorica Network has an interesting piece about the shift taking place in media.

Just listened to Ken Blackwell, the Secretary of State in Ohio, on CNN. He sounds very credible, and confident that he’ll deliver an accurate vote in that state, even though it may take up to 11 days before we know the final results.

Ah, the waiting. These are not TV-friendly elections.

I must admit, I’m stunned. I believed in what many—including many Republicans, it seems—thought would happen: that the undecideds would break for Kerry, along with newly-registered voters and a mobilized youth vote. I really thought we’d see a Kerry victory, and early. I’m not sure what went wrong.

It’s not over yet, but what seems clear is something we all should have known all along: this country is closely divided and we have got to find a way to come together. Whoever wins will have a lot of work to do to bring the rest of the country to their side. Bush and the Republicans would have to contend with a very disappointed and freshly mobilized Democratic contingent. The Democrats—win or lose—will have to somehow come to grips with the fact that they have not connected with conservative and rural voters. Kerry would also have a tough road as president, especially should he win the electoral vote but lose the popular vote.

There are a lot of other ramifications of this election and we’ll all have fun teasing them apart over the next couple of weeks. For now, we just have to watch and wait.

Larry King’s getting cranky and impatient. I think he wants to get some sleep. Not a bad idea.