I Don't Like You Either

Bill Ayers on "Hardball"

Here's "the washed-up old terrorist," as McCain called him, speaking for himself but also with strange prescience.  Highlights:

Asked about his reaction to Palin's "palling around with terrorists remark, Ayers said: "I thought it was outrageous and profoundly dishonest, and I chose not to react to it at the time."

Ayers added, "I was on a board with President-Elect Obama, we did live in the same neighborhood, but the dishonesty of the narrative is that if you can place two people in the same room or prove that they took a bus downtown together, that they're somehow responsible for one anothers politics, policies, outlook, and behavior, and that seems to me to be patently absurd."

Tweety concluded that  "Ayers is a changed man." Uh, as Jason Linkins said, make of that what you will.

Dept of Valedictions (the Present Day): President Goofus & President Gallant

Obama unveils a stimulus package.

Bush unveils his self-portrait and says something (intentionally) funny.  Jon Stewart: "Is it possible that his entire administration was a set-up for that joke?"

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Clusterf#@k to the Poor House - President Goofus and President Gallant

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Blago-gate!

Obama's first "scandal"---and he's not even in office!  Things move faster than they used to and not always in a good way.

 Marc Ambinder points out that Obama has long considered Blagojevich a tumor on the Democratic party's behind (Ambinder put it a bit differently).  UPDATE:  This article suggests that maybe he hasn't thought so for that long.   And a Chicago reporter thinks Rahm Emanuel might have tipped off the feds to Blago's "Pay to Play" gambit. 

But the fall of the Illinois Democrat---while pleasing to those of us who like our government corruption free--does its part to wilt the petals in our winner's bouquet and we haven't even had the inaugural ball yet.

Snark O' the Day: The Supremes to Consider the Obama Birth Certificate "Controversy

Bark Bark Woof Woof woofs about this glorious waste of taxpayer dollars in the interests of settling once and for all a "worrying" "issue":

The United States Supreme Court is going to decide whether or not to hear a case claiming that Barack Obama is not a U.S. citizen and therefore ineligible to serve as President of the United States...

Judicial Watch: Clinton Ineligible to be Secretary of State!!!!!!!!

With Judicial Watch on the case, can anything save Hillary now?  BZZZZZZT!  She's out---and on a technicality!

Gawker has the nutshell version of the underlying law.  ABOVE WHICH NO ONE, NOT EVEN HILLARY CLINTON, IS!!

A New Clinton Administration?

by Blue Stockings | Doubtful.  Amazing the powers people attribute to Hillary, who didn't even beat Obama the first time.

The Mahablog discusses the gloomy forebodings of Clinton-averse right-wingers.

Colbert Wags His Finger at the Pope

...and in the Marvel Universe, Colbert won the popular vote but was defeated by Obama in the electoral college.

(Best line: "We Catholics use every part of the Jesus.")

The Daily Show: Baracknophobia! "Obama Won; A Wingnut Bought a Gun"

"Worst Dr Seuss book ever...."  And the media's lame puns just keep a-coming.

Because Obama is "incredibly similar to Hitler."  Hitler comparison analyst John Oliver explains:

A Swift Examination of Mr Obama's Serial Gaffes

by Mr J.Q. Public | On the heels of Powerline's concern about Obama's recent unseemly gaffes comes Jon Swift's withering summation of Obama's disastrous press conference.  It seems that Mr Powerline---I do not believe that is his name, but I haven't time at present to look him up---may be right after all, despite the mockery to which his piece was subjected by my liberal co-blogger.   Obama does require tutelage in speaking without going awry and should probably take W as his model, as Mr Powerline (again, apologies) suggests.

The Daily Show: The Obama Posse

The media follows his every move....

Nobody can show up our idiot media like Jon Stewart.

Powerline: "Undisciplined" Speaker Obama Should Take Precise and Careful Speaker Bush as a Model

by Teh Nutroots | Ha ha ha ha ha ha!  I love watching them clutching madly at straws, only to end up sticking them in their hair.  Via Sadly, No!, here's Powerline's latest air brick:

Bill Maher's New Rules for 11-7: Republicans Must Not Spend the Next Four Years Plotting to Bring Down Obama

by Nicholas | A great post-election wind-up at Real Time.

Crooks and Liars has the complete transcript.  Best line:

The hard core Republican base is like a stalker. Rejection just makes them crazier.

Well, there's this:

Shorter Bill Kristol

by Damozel |  Full version of article:  GOP Dog Days

Nutshell version:  While I shall stubbornly go on contending that it wasn't that much of a victory for Obama and the left, and that the public has not thoroughly repudiated me and my noxious brand of conservatism, I can no longer deny it:  Obama is as cute as cuddly puppy from the pound---if a puppy had a dry wit and charisma---and therefore formidable, and we conservatives can but trust that the worldbeating recession that we have willed to him may yet bring him down.

PS.  The country is still center right and Obama must govern accordingly.  That's the meme, and I'm sticking to it.

Blogger reactions at Memeorandum

Snark O' the Day: Did Obama Crib His Acceptance Speech from Hitler?

by Teh Puppet Mistress | Wingnuts all over the blogosphere are busily whipping themselves up into pleasurable extremes of terror.  It's worrying---what do bloggers such as the one cited below intend to achieve, one asks?---but also, if  you can preserve your detachment, exceedingly funny in a horrifying kind of a way.

From Scott at World O'Crap:

I thought the news of Obama’s victory would strike wingnuts in one of two ways.  Either they’d sit, stinking and unwashed in a corner of their room, blinking rapidly and speaking in tongues to a headless Barbie doll — what we might call “the K-Lo Option” — or else they’d attach a hobby horse to their computer chairs, sort of like those Cowboy booster seats you used to sit on at the barber shop, and charge at full gallop into the World Wide Web on a suicidal crusade of blood and thunder, hacking at heretics and heathens and howling in rage and agony like a gutted Mel Gibson at the end of Braveheart.  It never dawned on me that they would arise the next day, scratch their cat under the chin, pour a nice cup of tea, sit down at the keyboard, and in a prim, dainty, ladylike fashion, go quietly batshit insane, as though we’d entered an alternate universe where Jessica Fletcher from Murder, She Wrote was the star of Dexter. But color me abashed, because RenewAmerica is proudly offering Mary Mostert’s latest:

As we’ve said before, this wasn’t an election, it was the world’s longest Usenet thread, and Godwin’s Law is no longer an observation on probability, it’s a regulation imposed by wingnuts, sort of like those Homeowner Association bylaws that require everyone to landscape solely from the pre-approved list of shrubs, and to paint all exterior trim a uniform beige.....[More]

National Review Online Takes It to the Keyboards

by Teh Nutroots | Oh man.  Check out Sadly, No!'s two-minute version of the NRO symposium par excellence as they ponder the nation's Great Black Hope.   Then click on the link to the real one and laugh even harder.

Shorter Maureen Dowd (The Tracks of Our Tears)

by Blue Stockings |  MoDo likes nothing better than a sentimental-yet-wryly-tongue-in-cheek journal of self-discovery.  Are you wondering what MoDo is thinking now that her secret dorky crush has been elected president? (O Brave New World that has such people in it!) See The Tracks of Our Tears.

Shorter nutshell version:

Am I the only white person who finds it awkward talking to black people, now that electing Obama has made it de rigeur for the fashion-forward?  Strangely, some interpret well-intentioned attempts to probe their feelings about the election as false or condescending.  I must ask my African American friend to explain to me what her people want.

Barack Obama: What is He?

by Teh Puppet Mistress | None of us here or at Buck Naked Politics has ever mistaken Barack Obama for a progressive---so we are not going to suffer any pangs of disappointment as he continues to demonstrate this.  And make no mistake; he has already begun to do so. 

At this point, I am quite prepared to be contented that we have as our president-elect a fearsomely intelligent and--not to sound like Joe Biden--amazingly articulate Democrat and also (and this means a lot as well) the first African-American president ever.  Obama must certainly be one of the most intelligent presidents elected in my lifetime.  For now, that's change enough and change I can certainly believe in.

I do have Obama-supporting colleagues who are already bracing in anticipation for the inevitable let-down.

Via Balloon Juice, and writing about the Rahm Emanuel pick, Daniel Larison commented:  "[Progressives] are going to find themselves very disappointed to discover that Obama is, in fact, a Chicago politician who is interested in pushing his agenda rather than being the national psychotherapist they seem interested in finding."

Snark O' the Day: "Splitters!"

by Damozel |  I normally wouldn't draw our daily dose of snark from the same blog two days running, but TBogg is a master, and this---like yesterday's---is masterly, both in its ruthless efficiency and accuracy in identifying and lancing the latest unattractive inflammatory groundswell and its peerless use of pop culture references as the instrument of choice.  Yesterday, it was Galaxy Quest.  Today:  one of my top five all-time films, Life of Brian.

Obama got elected three days ago and the wingers are all depressed, which they consider to be proof that they are also now, and destined in the future to be, oppressed.  They're always mad, but now they're even madder---as well as in a panicky tailspin---and so the leading lights of the right are busily organizing a Republican Resistance movement.   

Sadly, their defeat has forced them to confront how much they actually hate one another.  None of them can agree even on the fundamentals of how to build a better GOP.

TBogg considers the struggle of the emergent warring sects to find some common ground, and their ensuing abject failure:

Divided we stand"...no...wait...um... "united we flail" ...no, that's not it. Crap, I think I wrote it down on a Wendy's napkin. Look in the back seat of my car.... Oh, here we go....

He's got the list, the clip, and the final word. 

Jon Stewart Will Miss His Bush Impression the Most

Jon Stewart discusses victory night coverage and the electoral college.

Election Night Speeches: Obama's Victory Speech; McCain's Concession

Obama:  Yay!

Jesus's General: A Wingnut's Halloween Carol

by Blue Stockings | I'm not sure how we managed to miss this, but it should become a classic. It begins:

Come with me to the pumpkin patch
And see what is most scary!
The GOP turns ghouls to glee
And bites off the heads of fairies!  (More at Jesus's General)

The picture alone is worth a click.

Jesus's General has also posted---approvingly of course---the video of the mean lady who sent tiny Obama supporters off weeping and candyless.  That'll teach the little socialists not to share!

Snark O' the Day: Who is Megan McArdle?

by Teh Nutroots | ...that is to say, the Megan McArdle employed by The Atlantic as their so-called econoblogger?

Susan of Texas provides a clue.

The first time, you think Megan has a tin ear for insulting and potentially damaging comparisons.

Barack Obama will break 90%--or do really well, with third-world dictator popularity levels.

But by the second time, you know it's deliberate.

This is not particularly urgent, since my voting "options" were New York and DC; in both places, the question is not who will carry the state, but whether Obama will get a mere 80% or so of the vote, or achieve Saddam Hussein-like vote totals*.  *Before you say it--no, not by fixing the election, by being so popular that he achieves fairly what Saddam achieved by force.

Gaaaaah.  That just might be a "subtle" enough dog-whistle to confuse the people who read her column (judging strictly by the comments). 

Polling News for the Faint-Hearted Progressive

by Blue Stockings | This is why I try to ignore polls and commentary on polls.  What's the point in false reassurance NOW if it means that you are confronted unprepared with REAL reality later?  What's the point in making yourself sick with anxiety NOW only to find later that it was all---to quote (partially) Palin---"for naught"?

Marc Ambinder reports on the jazzed up Rick Davis, all in a lather of excitement at the way McCain campaign dirty tricks are bringing it home.

A "jazzed up" Rick Davis enthused that John McCain is the middle of "the greatest comeback  you've seen since John McCain on the primary."

Davis, on a conference call with reporters, said that the campaign has had "the best ten days of polling" since the convention.

"We think we've shaken off the effects of the financial collapse that have suppressed our numbers prior to the last debate. Our own data has us dead even in the state of Iowa."

The dead panned Ambinder remarks, parenthetically, "(Davis said that the Obama campaign's data was also close in Iowa -- although the Obama internal polling gives Obama a double-digit advantage.)"

We Don't Like You Either: Scary Rictus-Grinning Bill Kristol (The Daily Show Interview)

Talk about your Halloween horror shows....

HuffPost:

Bill Kristol knocked his own paper, the New York Times, on "The Daily Show" last night, and repeated his prediction that John McCain will win the White House on Tuesday.

Jon Stewart joked with the error-prone Kristol, who he has mocked before, "You can't look at past performance as a predictor, otherwise you wouldn't be, obviously, still a pundit."

"You're reading The New York Times too much, Jon," Kristol told Stewart, only for Stewart to remind him that he works there. "Oh, it's a very fine newspaper — on one day of the week.

Rachel Maddow Interviews Obama

Another excellent interview for posterity.

part 1:

Colbert Joins Other Prominent Republicans in Endorsing Obama

Heh.

82 Year Old Helen Philpot Kicks Some "Undecided" Ass

by Blue Stockings | . As the lady says, If You Are Undecided, You’re Not Paying Attention.  (McArdle and Althouse, take note).   In answer to a plangent inquiry from an undecided voter who can't decide how to decide, Helen writes:

Oh Cecilia, bless your heart.  We have only been at this for two years, sweetheart.  There were over 40 debates during the primaries and most recently we have had three Presidential debates and one Vice Presidential debate.  Honey, I trust you can read.  Please do because this is important.  And I am not trying to be mean or dismissive...

Jon Stewart Interviews Barack Obama

What is it the kids say?  It's FULL OF WIN.  Yeah!

Another Awesome Campaign Ad: "Whassup"

Gawker:

Remember those Budweiser "Whasssssssssupppppppppppp!!!" ads, that made you want to crush and kill everyone in your path? Yes, well someone has put the idea to use for the sake of good.

Ron Howard's Awesome Obama Ad

With Andy Griffith and the Fonz!

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die