Thanksgiving Re-cap:

My parents swung by the Homestead, we packed the S4, then drove down to LA to spend our Thanksgiving with my sister and her family. Despite leaving on Wednesday in an attempt to avoid Holiday traffic, we were greeted with horrid bumper to bumper slogging to a tune of 28 miles in 151 minutes of driving. We crested Altamont Pass in a rain storm and finally hit Southbound I5 after three hours of driving. As usual, I took it personally when anyone attempted to outpace me so I was forced to keep an insane pace for the following 300 miles.

My mother prepared a cooler full of travelling food and I couldn't help but nosh on meatloaf and chips for SIX straight hours. We arrived LA late Wednesday evening and greeted my Sis, her husband, and the two girls with big smiles and hugs. We ended up chatting into the morning.

The next day, we attended Thanksgiving Dinner with my Brother-in-law's family. Damn, his sister-in-law can cook a mean dinner. She went all out following to a tee the most recent Williams and Sonoma Thanksgiving Dinner spread. It wasn't a surprise that I gorged beyond my gastro-intestinal limitations...as did my Father, who from this picture demonstrates exactly where I received this genetic disposition:



We succumbed to food coma in front of the HDTV at my In-law's In-laws (embarrassing) during the 1st quarter of the Dallas game and awoke during the 3rd quarter...at which time I staggered into the Dining Room to feed on some yummy dessert. My dad's belt was undone to accommodate his distended abdomen.

We had to get to bed early that night given we had to rise at 4 in the morning the next day to catch the Ferry to Catalina Island. The ferry ride out of Long Beach was a pleasure and the view into Avalon Harbor was gorgeous. Here are some shots.





Catalina Island is a bit larger than San Francisco, mostly uninhabited, has one large tourist town, and is quite a hit with campers, hikers, back-packers, and canoe'ers year round. We spent most of the day walking and hiking and eating at quaint little restaurants. That evening, my wife, my Brother-in-law, and my father and I hit the little strip for some imbibement. We spent a good part of the evening at a Karaoke joint on the beach...my wife SOO wanted to sing but very much wanted one of us to accompany her...we said "Hell NO" to that, but I promised her that the next time we hit a Karaoke bar, I'd be prepared to sing a song with her if we chose a song I felt I could sing well.

The next day, we rented a couple of golf carts and toured the rugged hills surrounding the town of Avalon. BTW, cars are an extreme rarity on Catalina Island. Everyone uses golf-carts, and believe me, I was in awe...I simply had no idea that one can modify golf-carts to the degree the locals modify these little bastards. Here is a shot of me taking the rental to the limits at one very tricky and precarious mountain road....hehehe. Just kidding.



And more shots of the scenery:




I would absolutely recommend a visit to Catalina Island. It is small enough that you can get the feel of the place and exhaust most of what the Island offers in two full days. If you decide to camp, I suppose you can make a good week out of it. I would certainly recommend that you trip during the hot summer months given the snorkeling looks fantastic!

Anywayz, the trip back home was mostly uneventful. We blasted through the portion of I5 from the Grapevine to Livermore at a 92 MPH average speed (not including gas and pee stops).

That's it for now.

"What Doesn't Kill the Far-Right Only Makes Them Crazier"

Its common to say that Political Campaign rhetoric has less to do with what that Candidate truly believes and more to do with what that Candidate WANTS you to believe...which leads me to the rhetoric I've heard from GOP campaigns as well as from extreme Right-wing pundits/talking heads.

Here are a couple of interesting articles:

http://tinyurl.com/5jag5s

http://tinyurl.com/5jgc2t

And a couple of pointed excerpts.

Intellectual violence. While not a new term, it perfectly defines what we're seeing now: accusations and smears that so severely confound logic they literally attack -- violate -- reality and the human intellect. It's like a berserk dervish of argumentative elbows and fists indiscriminately flailing around, thwacking anything in its orbit, so much so that constructing a counterpoint is literally painful, "Why the hell am I trying to debunk this?! Ow! My head".

The "Impeach Obama" Facebook groups, for example. No, I'm not making that up. They're real and there's a constant variety of disgruntled far-right Republicans joining up every day. And, to our total lack of surprise, they're not ashamed in the slightest to post comments like this one:

"Damn dems stole the election like they always do. GOD wanted McCain and Palin in the White House. That's why it's called THE WHITE HOUSE."

Shortly after discovering this, I was talking with a colleague and found myself instinctively trying to form a rational argument about why the Facebook members were wrong. It began with the obvious: "He's not even the president yet!" And then, after I segued into Article II and the constitutional grounds for impeachment, I stopped myself. What in name of Randall P. MacMurphy am I doing? Arguing against this crap is like explaining to a meth tweaker that the shadow people aren't real. That's when I decided that it'd be more fun to just infiltrate one of the groups and post comments like, "The moon landing was staged!" and, "Obama is a bionic -- just like his half-aunt! I have proof!"

Then on Monday, Michelle Malkin posted an item in which she referred to the president-elect as the "overlord-elect." And on Tuesday, Congressman Paul Broun told the AP, "You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I'm not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I'm saying is there is the potential." Uh-huh. On the scale of probability, "Obama is a fascist dictator" is about as likely as "Broun is a Jedi Master." But it doesn't matter. Reality is irrelevant.

And furthermore:

Who voted for McCain/Palin in bigger numbers than they even voted for Bush/Cheney? Only one shrinking group: uneducated white folks in the deep south and a few folks in Appalachia. Take away the white no-college-backwoods-and/or-southern McCain/Palin vote and the Republicans would have been approaching single digit electoral college oblivion.

The Republican Party is only a step away from becoming the fringe of the fringe, identified more with cross-burning weirdoes wearing hoods, folks like the Alaska secessionist party, all those gun owners stocking up on assault weapons before the "Socialist/United Nations/Obama/Muslim" conspiracy comes to fruition, than with anything remotely like a serious national political force.

The Republican Party--and I speak as a former lifelong Republican who, up through the 2000 primary campaign supported John McCain and even worked for him by arguing his case on various conservative and religious radio stations--is now the toy of the Rush Limbaugh windbags. These folks include outright crazies (such as Sarah Palin's Assemblies of God pals who are waiting for Spaceship Jesus to rescue them and/or rooting out "witches" from their midst), white racists and a few not-very-bright attention seekers, including Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity etc.

Read their blogs! Listen to their talk radio! You'll be in the twilight zone of front page tabloid fantasy on a par with Bat Boy Attacks! headlines. Bill Buckley roll over.

The Religious Right, the racists, the anti-gay hate-mongers are now not only marginalized but thoroughly out of step with even members of their own former constituency. For instance the Gordon College student newspaper (Gordon is an influential Evangelical College north of Boston) endorsed Obama this year. Many young evangelicals voted for the Democrats. James Dobson, Fox News, Limbaugh et al. were utterly powerless to do more than stir up hate. They are losing the next generation of their "base."

Meanwhile many former Republicans--like me--ran to Obama as fast as our legs could carry us and away from our willfully "we're not an elite" moronic former party. Republican commentators such as David Brooks and George Will mourned the loss of the Republican center. Others noted the Republicans have become anti-intellectual. "Anti-intellectual?" They wish! How about simply anti-literate?

I sometimes wonder if not Hope that most Conservatives were like my friend theProf. He is intelligent, fair-minded, and open to debate. But one thing is very clear: the GOP's Campaign rhetoric do NOT target folks like theProf. They target an entirely different demographic. I truly wonder if the Republican Intellectual Elite (theProf. included) feel as if they were left standing marooned by their own party; discarded and left without a voice. Does anyone within the GOP still speak to the CENTER? The far-right wing has soo closed ranks and begun calling out long-time reliable and loyal Republicans as "phony" and "fake RHINO's" that they've unwittingly diminished themselves when more than ever they need to reach out and expand their membership.

Anywayz, enough of that. This weekend, Randy "The Natural" Couture will be fighting Brock Lesnar in the biggest Mixed Martial Arts PPV in History. I'd like to see the "passing of the Torch" so I'm routing for Lesnar.

Later...

My Final Sarah Palin jab...

...and it came out of Fox News. Carl Cameron, FOX News reporter covering the McCain Campaign, reported some shocking revelations regarding McCain Campaign insiders and their views on Palin. Apparently they've (McCain advisers and FOX) waited till after the election and are now airing the dirty laundry, as it were. Cameron reports how utterly stunned campaign advisers were of Palin's outright idiocy...and how sequestering her from the media was the only sane choice for their Campaign...such was the depth of her ignorance of basic civics, basic geography, basic foreign policy, and basic knowledge of world events.

My goodness, she believes that Africa is a country and not a continent, and could not name all the countries in North America! It goes on and on but here is the story from Fox, courtesy of YouTube:

http://tinyurl.com/66undl

Just incredible. Its obvious that Republicans are looking for a fall-guy/gal and the McCain campaign advisers have served Palin up on a silver platter. This will backfire. Too too many within the Republican Base love this women and the finger-pointing will only serve to further fracture a Party in the throws of an identity-crisis. There are Conservative talking heads (Rush, Coulter, Hannity, etal.) who believe that the future path of the Party is to become even "More Conservative", or at least stay the course and remind Americans of core Republican principles. However, there are are growing number of new Republicans that see the writing on the wall, recognize that the Party must re-make itself in order to appeal to the contemporary electorate...a Re-Branding, if you will.

Either way, the Republicans have been decimated during this Election Cycle.
Executive Branch: Democrat
House: 254 Dem / 173 Rep
Senate: 57 Dem / 40 Rep with Minnesota Senate seat toss-up and recount.
Governors: 29 Dem / 21 Rep
And currently, the Republican Party is searching for a Leader...but who will it be? The leading ranking Republican in Washington is a guy named Mitch McConnell...who is he?! Boy, the Grand Ole Party is in deep trouble.

It was fascinating to hear Lou Dobbs (a fiscal conservative and certainly not an Obama supporter) talk candidly and with contempt about what he was hearing from within the McCain Campaign...and he went on to say "If how the McCain campaign has and is operating is any indication of how they would have ran the country, My Goodness, Thank God they didn't win."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Presidential Election Post-Mortem:

WOO-HOO!! I can't even express how thrilled, proud, and relieved I am with Obama's win. I was a part of history with my vote and rushed home to watch the action unfold across a dozen stations on my TV. His stirring speech was his best to date and the throngs of jubilant supporters not only across the Country, but across the Globe put into perspective the importance and significance of the Obama selection. I cannot be more proud of My Country today.

Some thoughts, and I'm sure I'll have more as the days progress:

1. The World responds: http://tinyurl.com/6dqjt6

2. Polling methodology has come so far that despite claims of the Bradley Effect, and cell-phone users, and Likely vs. Traditional voters, and small sample sizes, etc, CBS/Time/Gallup/Rasmussen dead hit the percentages not only Nationally, but within the States as well.

3. And regarding polling, the massive exit polling on a number of different issues shed light on what I had suspected. Self-described Liberals have run somewhere within 22 to 27 percent of the electorate. That number has been quite stable for some 6 Presidential Election cycles. Self-described Conservatives percentages have dropped, however. The conservative demographic has held strong at high 30's since the Reagan years and has far outnumbered liberals for quite some time. Over the last 8 years, that number has slid incrementally to the low 30's, which is significant considering each percentage point amounts to about 1.5 million voters.

So the question is, where are they going? Some pundits say they are actually and literally "dying out". But to more accurately answer the question, they've moved toward the Center. The self-described Independent and Centrist figure has jumped to above 40 percent for the first time in history. However, despite this movement toward the center, I still believe that the majority of the Country is Center-Right.

Conservative ideology has certainly not lost its relevance. Case in point: Obama's platform included traditional Conservative talking points...he would not have won without it.

4. And speaking of relevance, a startling statistic emerged last night. White Men have been the most powerful and telling electorate throughout our History. How White Men vote had assuredly determined the Presidency....until NOW. McCain had a strong majority of the White Male Vote and LOST. The pundits across the stations (including FOX) made mention of this phenomenon's historic importance.

5. I am convinced that Obama's true running mate this year was certainly NOT Biden...it was the economic collapse. The collapse won it for him. Its just amazing that the Primaries were dominated by rhetoric regarding Iraq, Afghanistan, and Immigrants!

6. And lastly......NO MORE SARAH PALIN. Thank you lord.