The Three Dumbest Men in America

Dana Milbank dismantles the three clunkers who have run the American auto industry into the ditch.

This is not about a bail-out for corporate greed heads. This should be a discussion about immediate government intervention to save millions of American taxpayers their jobs and their livelihood.

We begin by packing these three arrogant jokers onto their private planes and sending them on a one-way trip to Nowhere.

The Attorney General of the United States collapses on stage and might be dead.

American car companies and millions of American families teeter on the edge.

The stock market fell more than 400 points and 5% with fears of a depression looming.

Citigroup is in free fall.

A court ruling shakes the administration's grip on prisoners unjustly held at Gitmo.

And the above-fold headline story of the L.A. Times is a follow-up on a bear attack three years ago.

(Memo to Congress: Do NOT answer the phone if down the road the L.A. Times or its Tribune Company parent comes calling for its own bailout).

Don't get me the wrong. The writer of this piece is a FABULOUS journalist and an even better editor (he's done great work on several of my pieces for the Times). He's also one of the sweetest of folks I know.  And his work deserves great prominence -- always. Make sure you read it.

But this is a silly and now all-too typical snafu in news judgment that tells you everything you need to know about the decline of a once-great newspaper.

At the moment I write this the above-the-fold lead stories on other major news sites:

Washington Post: Fears of Deep Recession Cause Market Relapse

New York Times: Stocks Drop Sharply and Credit Markets Seize Up

Chri Sci Monitor: How Deep a Recession?

ABC News: Attorney General Michael Mukasey Collapses During Speech

Drudge Report: AG Collapse on Stage in DC

Huffington Post: Clinton "On Track" To Be Named Secretary of State

As many have pointed out, the No-Drama-Obama operation is now bordering on public soap opera -- thanks to the stories about Hillary being considered, or asked to be, Secretary of State. If I had my druthers I'd just make her disappear.

That said, this just might be a superbly clever play by Barack Obama. That's pretty much the conclusion of our friend Bill Bradley who opines that the term "masterstroke" might not be over the top in describing Obama's move. What I particularly like about Bradley's take is what he has to say about how all this would impact Slick Willie himself. Make sure you read his whole post. Here are some of the money graphs:

That's what makes this look like a potential masterstroke for Obama, taking his once bitter rival and making her his ally and representative. It makes him look strong and confident. It also would make it virtually impossible for Hillary to challenge him in 2012, a prospect which looks very unlikely in any event. That is something Lyndon Johnson should have thought of when he refused to make Robert F. Kennedy his vice president in 1964.

While Hillary and Bill Clinton, especially Hillary, campaigned hard for Obama, they ultimately were not the keys to his victory. John McCain's inability to adequately respond to the financial crisis, the backfiring pick of Sarah Palin, and Obama's victories in all three presidential debates were much more determinative.

The move, which apparently has not actually been made, despite all the clamor about it, also looks like a mousetrap.

If Hillary withdraws from consideration, then Obama has made the effort he did not make around the vice presidency. And a shadow would be placed over her career in the Senate.

For, notwithstanding whatever reluctance she may have to make the move -- which some Clinton associates are talking up -- she and her husband are taking steps to make this happen.

Now that he's back in the country, the former president is submitting himself to Obama's vetting process. And he is saying that he would place future philanthropic and business dealings under the authority of the Obama Administration.

As the Wall Street Journal reported this morning, President Clinton has agreed to submit his future endeavours to strict ethics reviews by the White House counsel and the State Department's ethics office. Obama's White House counsel will be Greg Craig, a former Clinton Administration official who broke with the Clintons and leveled tough criticisms of them during the primary campaign.

Bill Clinton has agreed to publicly reveal all future contributors to the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative, something he flatly refused to do during the Democratic primaries. He's also agreed to publicly reveal "major" past contributors and has begun providing detailed information regarding his business dealings to Obama.

Bill Clinton has reportedly raised some $500 million for the Clinton Foundation, and another $15 billion or so for the Clinton Global Initiative. Both of which perform good works, in addition to the incalculable value they've afforded him from a public relations standpoint.

But those huge sums, especially for the Clinton Global Initiative, seem to come in large measure from foreign sources which may be very problematic. If they weren't, the Clintons would have revealed them during the Democratic primaries.

Bill Clinton is turning over a great deal of information about his operations to Barack Obama. In politics, that sort of knowledge is power.

Kudos also to another good friend, Michael Balter, who on the issue of Obama's Clintonite cabinet appointments had the good sense to agree with...me! Says Michael:

I am not saying that Obama might not end up breaking every single one of his campaign promises. It's happened before. But the notion that his cabinet picks are an indication of what his policies will be seems, to me at least, to be illogical and inconsistent with the history of previous presidencies. All of these people will be under Barack Obama in the government, not above him, and there is no reason--at least no reason right now--to think that they will dictate to him or even influence him to change the core principles on which he ran for office.

Yet a third good friend, who posts comments here under the handle ModestProposal has a slightly differing view. He says he broadly agrees with my lack of concern over Obama's appointments so far and then warns:

But but but… here’s my concern. It’s only a question at this point, because we don’t have all the information, or all the appointments. Doesn’t the point come though when a foreign policy team built on the likes of Hillary, Joe Biden, maybe Holbrooke, Dennis Ross etc etc makes one wonder — how can a group of people who got it so wrong on Iraq, starting during the Clinton era when they had access to all the intelligence, be expected to shift course in both a different direction and also the RIGHT direction now?

Well, It's an excellent question. And MP's fears might, indeed, turn out to be true. We will have to see. But I don't think that Obama is either so naive nor so feckless. He just spent two years relentlessly battling and overcoming much of the Democratic Conventional Wisdom --especially on the issue of Iraq and on American foreign policy in general. I don't think he's throwing in the towel before his own inauguration. I am much more inclined to think he's setting up the board to play the game he promised. Maybe I'm the naive one. As they say on the network news: Time Will Tell.

Nope.  It's not that Obama is a secret Clintonista. It's that Obama is a Democrat. And the most seasoned, steady Democrats around with actual experience in running things --for the most part-- had something to do with the last Democratic administration. Duh.

Should those who Hoped for Change now feel short-changed? Hardly.

At least not yet.

I dunno about you, but if I were planning to make some real change and rock the boat in Washington I would want to come in loaded for bear, backed by a rock-solid team of veterans. And, most importantly, I'd want to carefully choose my battles.

I'd be saving my ammo for the titanic fight over public works and infrastructure investment, reversal of the Bush tax giveaways, the shut down of Gitmo, national health care and troop withdrawal from Iraq.  It's on those issues, by the way, that I will evaluate Obama's commitment to change. Not by his cabinet appointments.

Clearly, I wouldn't be crazy about the Hillary thing. I don't think he needs her. But then again, it might be safer to have her at Foggy Bottom rather than grandstanding in the Senate.

But I've got no problem with either Emanuel or Holder. Both are, indeed, card-carrying Clintonoids -- though Holder was an early and enthusiastic booster of Obama's candidacy. What they both have in common is a reputation for being totally competent if not deadly serious get-it-done administrators. I couldn't care less what their policy views are. I only care which directives they are given by Obama and how well they execute them.

As I said before, Obama's coming fight --if he chooses to fight for anything-- will be with Democrats, not the Republicans. It's a shrewd move to pack his team with Establishment Dems if he's planning to arm-twist the Democratic Establishment. You know, Nixon Goes to China and all that jazz.

It's crystal clear that the unflappable Obama wants a flapless transition and, if anything, he has closely studied the blunders of the Clinton administration's early days. Do you all remember that fiasco? Before he had even dropped his trousers in the Oval Office, Clinton had blown half his political capital on Zoe Baird and on clumsy and ill-prepared fight over gays in the military. What clout he had left he squandered in his first few months by breaking his own party -- not over any agenda of change, but rather to pass GHW Bush's cock-eyed NAFTA measure.

For the moment, I have to believe that Obama has somewhat more noble plans that that. He's lining up his soldiers. He's holding his fire for when it counts. We ought to be patient enough to see if he comes through and stop playing along with the media's cabinet guessing game. It's meaningless.

Here's a few thoughts on some things happening around me:

** The Joe Lieberman Story:

As regular readers already know, I was a premature anti-Lieberman type, refusing to vote for him and Al Gore in 2000. I knew he was a schmuck then. He's a schmuck now. Should the Senate Democrats strip him of his chairmanship or even expel him from the caucus because he was a strident supporter for McCain-Palin? Answer: Who cares? If the Democrats expelled every Senator who was a putz, they'd be down to very, very few members. Why not expel those who voted for war in Iraq? Those who voted for NAFTA? Those who backed down on banning torture? etc etc. Yawn.

** The Great General Motors Bailout

Unless you're an unrepentant Marxist or a knuckle-dragging Republican, you ought to be supporting government intervention in General Motors. And let's call it that cuz that's what it would be. GM sucks, of course. But its failure could mean the economic collapse of literally millions of American families. Question is -- what sort of intervention? On this one, I'm with SMU economist Dr. Ravi Batra. His proposal, in simple terms: the government should buy about 2/3 of the shares of GM (each one currently worth a little more than a role of Charmin'). This would be a drop in the Treasury's bucket at these bargain basement prices. Then GIVE those shares to the workers of GM, convoke an immediate shareholders' meeting, vote out the chumps who have driven the company into the ground, and let GM emloyees elect a board and choose a CEO who actually knows how to build great cars. GM should heretofore build ONLY very efficient, very economic, relatively inexpensive cars -- and continue the manufacture of Corvettes, of course!

** Hillary As Secretary of State

Gawd no. Come on, Barack. Wait till you're in office a few months before you spring something ugly on us like this. Hillary, the gal whose hubby race-baited Barack? Hillary who played the fear card against Obama? I somehow thought we were voting for Obama so we could get rid of her. Anyway, I'm opposed to anything that Henry Kissinger is for. Let's hope this all blows over. My hope is that Bill and his Presidential Library are so soaked in greasy contributions, Hill can't be vetted.

** L.A. Weekly Decline

I promised you last week I would write in detail about the long, slippery slide of the L.A. Weekly. Haven't worked up the sufficient level of grim-ness yet to complete the task. And not sure anyone is very much interested. But will probably get to it next week sometime. Maybe.

** The Future of the HuffPost's OffTheBus

For the past fourteen months I had the treat of acting as editor of The Huffington Post's OffTheBus citizen reporting project. We humbly think it worked pretty well and broke some important new ground in trying to redefine journalism in the digital age. Our mandate, however, was limited to covering the '08 campaign. So as co-founders Arianna Huffington and Jay Rosen now make official, we are formally parking the bus and simultaneously will try to import its collective reporting methodology across the entire HuffPost. Still working out the details. And what role I will or will not play in this effort remains to be defined. I'm quite heavily involved in several projects at USC and a lingering book-to-be-written so sometime after Turkey Day I will try to sort it all out.

For those of you who live either in the Chicago or Los Angeles area, I have a question for you. Have you ever seen Governor Sarah Palin and Tribune Company Innovation Guru Lee Abrams together in the same room at the same time?

Come on, they've got to be the same person. Governor Gidget must don a chubby suit, flop on a wig and a few whiskers, lower her voice a few registers, and then pick up an extra salary now and then impersonating someone who knows how to retool American newspapers.

If not so, it might as well be. Listen to the video above featuring Abrams in L.A. the other night and you tell me: Does he seem to really know anything more about the media and journalism than, say, Ms. Palin does about the geography of Africa?

I mean, why doesn't this guy Abrams just cop right to it and say: 'I don't really know journalism works but I can see the L.A. Times from by bathroom window when I'm sitting down and doing my work."

There's a long line of people who'd like to have their own private sit-down with Mr. Abrams. Maybe about a thousand or so former Tribune employees who have been "innovated" right out of their jobs by his hare-brained, incomprehensible notions. The poor fool has already been repeatedly shredded in print.. and the fun continues. Retired L.A. Times city editor Bill Boyarsky has a bit of fun with Abrams based on this latest appearance of his in L.A.

Now in the best of Abrams' own typo-ridden, incoherent, AND UPPER-CASED memos, here's mine to him:

DUDE! LEE! Memo to YOU about your ultimate coolness. I was at the movies the other night watching Dark Knight and, WHAM, it hitted me right on. What we ought to be doing every day is like Bright Morning!!!! Get it? If we want to keep making the Times the BOFFO product it has already become, I think all we need to do is absorb the whole Batman thing into the advertorials and then spread them like NUTELLA across all the sections, remove the buy-lines, print some shit upside down and make it smell like LAVENDAR. I know it was re-assuring and easy when we could all laze around and think in linear and logical terms and even get paid for it. But now, its LIKE FLIE OR DIE! We're almost there...also. Only 650 reporters to go and it's like Mission Accomplished... It's great!

On a more serious note, though I have been and might even continue to be an occasional contributor to the L.A. Times, I let my subscription lapse last month. reading what I want from the Times on the Web, they daily bundle began to pile up in my driveway the way Abrams' memos must pile up on the desk of his depressed employees.

By coincidence, these last few days I bought the paper out of a rack to read during a few solo lunches. And, wow, what a sorry thing it has become. In the space of a just a few years, the Tribune Company with jabbering dolts like Abrams leading the show have managed to turn the the once world-class Times into a third-class Times. Here's its biggest innovation so far: there ain't hardly nuthin' in it anymore!

I use weekends to post stories that are more important to me than to many others.

Let me then celebrate the legal win achieved by my valued friend John L. Smith, prominent columnist for The Las Vegas Review-Journal.

For three years it's been a horrific David versus Goliath battle for him against a cockroach that was, until recently, the third richest man in America -- Sheldon Adelson. Often described as "the George Soros of the Right," billionaire Adelson is the owner of The Venetian resort in Vegas as well as other foreign gambling operations and is a major financier of both the American and Israeli right wing.

He was pressing a libel case against Smith for his fine book 'Sharks in the Desert'  which mentions some of Mr. Adelson's less than wholesome business connections.

Smith had to declare pre-emptive bankruptcy and fight off Adelson with pro-bono legal assistance while simultaneously struggling to support a young child afflicted with brain cancer.

A happy ending this week, though. Adelson was forced to drop the suit when Smith's defense team won hard-fought access to Nevada Gaming Board files that would have been introduced into court and would have surely proven that Adelson was exactly the sort of scumbag that everyone knows he is.

Two ironic twists to this story. About a year ago --out of the blue-- I got a call from Adelson's Century City lawyer and he offered me a LOT of money to serve as an expert witness against Smith. My job would have been to whip up a "professional" critique of Smith's work and then be ready to testify against him court. I told the lawyer thanks for the offer but I try not to help reptiles destroy my friends. And I added he ought to do his homework better as I had written a favorable review of the book in question for the L.A. Times! You'd think for $800 an hour this lawyer would have had one of his minions do a Google search before calling me.

Second twist: Adelson's fortunes are in a BIG dip right now as the recession bites deep into the gambling industry. Couldn't happen to a more deserving S.O.B.

]]> http://marccooper.com/cockroach-sheldon-adelson-loses-big-time/feed/ http://marccooper.com/all-that-is-solid/ http://marccooper.com/all-that-is-solid/#comments Fri, 14 Nov 2008 07:24:58 +0000 Marc Cooper http://marccooper.com/?p=2216 Here's a link not to my latest, but rather to my LAST column for L.A. Weekly.  I will have a lot more to say about this -- probably over the weekend or early next week.

As I have briefly mentioned before, this separation was inevitable since the New Times group took over the Weekly a couple of years ago.  I expected to leave some time ago and it's rather a miracle I stuck out this long.

But the corporate owners have systematically buzz-sawed the place and are now far down the path of turning what was once the greatest of weekly metro papers into little more than a Pennyshopper. Not to mention that the Phoenix-based chain is absolutely intent in foisting on very liberal L.A. and the even more liberal readership of the Weekly a paper that not only borders on the reactionary but which from now on will pointedly ignore all international news, all national news and any sort of opinion commentary (except for the thinly disguised and embarrassingly-written conservative editorializing that gets passed off as  local "news" reporting).

Geniuses.

The paper is down to 50% of its peak of 210 and even 220 pages. It's print run has also been cut, so far, about 25-30%. It's being physically downsized as well from it's large tabloid format.  They can't make it free because it has  always been so. Soon they will have to pay folks to pick it up. 

It's all good, though. I am still overemployed, fortunately. And tonight I'm too busy playing with my new Blackberry Bold to write all the gruesome details. But, patience. They're coming soon enough. Stay tuned.

Corporate Tool

With all due respect to the skepticism of such revolutionaries as Judith Butler and others who disdain the corporate tool known as Barack Obama, there's an entire new generation who went out and actually did the grinding work of defeating the Bush administration (and of at least cracking the door open to some Hope).

I know this isn't nearly as constructive as participating in post-structuralist efforts within Western feminist theory to question the "presuppositional terms" of feminism.

Nor is it half as engaging as constructing a theory of ethics in which the responsible self knows the limits of its knowing, recognizes the limits of its capacity to give an account of itself to others, and respects those limits as symptomatically human.

But, hey, as the Brits used to say: a place for everbody and everybody in their place.

I, for one, am quite happy to have raised a daughter who -- if I am correct-- has never read a lick of Butler but has still managed to somehow hobble through the first 24 years of her life. She was also among those corporate lackeys who spent much of the last month as useful tools of the insidious Mister Obama.

She now presents us with quite a striking picture gallery from her tour last week as a platoon leader in the Nevada ground war.

Deconstruct this!

P.S. My Annenberg colleague Jon Taplin also posts a great back scenes slideshow of the Obama family on election night.

Here's some of the predictable bile from a so-called "unrepentant Marxist." He's very upset that Barack Obama has been elected and has succeeded in co-opting so many folks like me. It's quite a thing when one is so virulently accused of being "decent." I apologize.

I did learn something from him, however. I hadn't known until now that I actually work for the National Endowment for Democracy (all this time I thought on was on "The Company" payroll as my stipend checks are post-marked Langley).

Have pity on this fellow. He probably hasn't had a date since high school.

One quick thought: Can't tell you how bored I am by all the angst over who Obama will or will not appoint to his top positions. Obama is going to be heading up an entirely Democratic administration, all three branches. If he's going to do anything of value, the greatest resistance will come not from the defeated Republicans but from the more conservative wing of his own party -- which is MOST of his party by my reckoning.

To be effective, he's going to need to employ some of those same characters as his political henchmen because they are the ones who are going to have do the head-knocking for him on Capitol Hill. Appointing a bunch of progressives, as they are called, would only mean his task would be harder -- not easier. This is about getting stuff done. Not about providing feel-good therapy for a fleet of hand-wringing Prius pilots.

To date, Obama has shown tremendous discipline and steadiness in shaping and forwarding his message. He seems like anything but a feckless waffler. If, indeed,  he's going to have to take the DLC types head-on in the months to come, nothing seems better than to use a few of their own as HIS battering rams. Who you appoint as your minions means jack. What matters is what you actually get done.

We'll see soon enough.

Shocking, isn't it?

A second shock, Barack Obama was the candidate of the Democratic Party. Not of the Peace and Freedom Party. I know it's hard to digest, but true. Third, the American left has failed, let me repeat that, FAILED, to create a credible on-the-ground anti-war movement having initially ceded that task to a gaggle of wack jobs from a sectarian cult known as A.N.S.W.E.R. The payback for that little mistake of 5 years ago has been the evaporation of said movement. So It's not clear to me which instrument the Left is going to use to exert pressure on the new admin to get out of Iraq.

Nor do most good-thinking liberals I know actually do very much, if anything, to actually contribute to a vigorous American union movement except to pay it occasional lip service from afar. After all, union members rarely run in the same social circles as professional activists.

By contrast, actual real-life union members are not sitting around moping about Rahm Emanuel this weekend, but less than a week after the election they are already ratcheting up their local and nationwide organization to pressure the Democratic congress to pass the much needed Employee Free Choice Act -- a measure that could radically redraw the face of American labor and dramatically expand the organized and progressive electorate. Let's hope we can gin up some "critical support" for this push from the left field bleachers.

Here's an excerpt of Michael's great posting:

Let's take a look at just how influential those progressives who rejected Obama turned out to be. One measure might be how well third party candidates did in this election. The answer: pathetically. Ralph Nader managed 0.5% of the vote, and Cynthia McKinney a paltry 0.1%. Oh, I know, the system was stacked against them, they couldn't raise anywhere near the kind of money that Obama and McCain did, the media didn't pay any attention, they weren't included in the debates--the usual excuses for leftists who have not yet understood that organizing means convincing people who do not yet agree with you to join your movement.

Perhaps this is the best moment to get something out of my system: Leftwing as I am and expect to always be, my gut feeling is that Americans should get down on their knees and thank the stars that at long last they have elected as their president someone who is as smart as Barack Obama. Why? Because in terms of the person, this is as good as it gets in today's America. As for the policies Obama will pursue, that will be determined by three primary factors: The demands of the constituency that elected him, the kind of grassroots movement those who want to push him to the left can muster, and his own inner lights. And I do think that Obama has the potential to be one of our greatest presidents, if for no other reason than that the crises we are facing call for a great leader of Lincolnian or Rooseveltian proportions.

Let's talk about who really elected Obama. There is no question that progressives and left-leaning liberals had a lot to do with helping Obama get on the electoral map, and in particular with beating Hillary Clinton. Yet Obama only won the nomination after months of hard-fought struggle, and he only barely squeaked by, despite Clinton's many, many errors, her refusal to repudiate her vote for the Iraq war, and her blatant opportunism (not to mention explicit and implicit appeals to racism.)

Once the general election campaign began, the role of the left took a smaller proportion still. The real credit goes not primarily to those progressives who gave "critical support" to Obama (a group I count myself part of), but to the tens of thousands of campaign workers who actually gave their time and energy and knocked on doors and staffed phone banks and the hundred and other organizational things it took to get him elected. In other words, the credit goes most importantly to those who really changed peoples' minds--and to the people whose minds were changed.\

On that final point, let me refer to you this one posting which quantifies just what the Service Employees International Union did during this election. Not counting the last week of the election, when efforts were redoubled, the SEIU:

• Made 4,405,136 phone calls.
• Sent 2,562,689 pieces of mail.
• Registered 85,914 voters.
• Helped more 10,982 people vote early.
• Distributed 52,005 workplace flyers.
• Made workers' voices heard by investing $13 million in independent expenditure ads that have run more than 10,000 times
• Election protection work in Ohio; Lake County, Indiana; Florida; Colorado; Virginia and other places made sure that the voices of working people were not silenced and that every vote would count and be counted in this election.
• Held more than 600 events across the country to ensure voters knew which candidates stood on the side of Americans who wake up and earn a paycheck every day.

Now, my friends, that's a whole different definition of what is meant by "critical support."

Obama is not the Messiah. He is not a Socialist. Thank God, he's not a hoary old knee-jerk "progressive" of the sort that traditionally racks up 1 or 2 percent of the vote.

He's quite obviously an extremely intelligent and liberal politician and social leader whose objective is to build a LIBERAL GOVERNING MAJORITY that can actually initiate and pass significant reform legislation. Sorry to break this news to you, but self-styled progressives, socialists and even liberals do not --even remotely-- constitute an organized electoral majority in this country. So to pass that legislation, Obama must build working coalitions and alliances and even, gasp, make deals with and compromise with a whole lot of unsavory people who you or I might not want to sit in the same room with. That's just one reason why he's the President. And why we are arguing with each other about his purity on this little-read blog.

P.S. One other thought I'd like to add. I had the privilege of spending the last week of the campaign, as you know, in Nevada with an entire team of young SEIU activists. Last night I was at a 30th birthday party for one of them along with 22 of his like-minded peers. Let me gleefully report to you that the overwhelming majority of this new generation of activists REALLY have NO organic relationship nor any real interest in the radical political formations born of the 1960's. No surprise there, I hope, fellow boomers. Back in the midst of the Sixties I remember us being curious about those who had come before us, specifically in the 30's, But we felt no links and little resonance. If I'm not mistaken that's why we fancied ourselves as the New Left.

Well, here's a news flash to my graying old New Lefties. There's a New New Left out there and -- thankfully-- it looks, acts and thinks very little the way we did. It has learned from our mistakes, fortunately. And it wants to get things done. This, of course, strikes the old fart left wind-blogs as being reformist, or sell-outs or whatever. Actually, it's about wanting to actually get things done, about meeting the population where it really is, and by moving it forward. Not by confronting it.

Keep in mind this little-forgotten anecdote. When the fringe (and it was only the fringe) of the New Left went off the tracks and the Weathermen arose, some of their actual slogans were "Serve The People Shit" and "Fight The People."

This wasn't politics. It was a form of mental illness. The farther the new activists are from this sort of Looney Tunes, the better.

We've spoken a lot about how the election of Obama represents a generational changeover inside the American political system. Perhaps it's time to see the same transition within the activist left. I had to laugh when I saw the emergence of Progressives for Obama. Its original membership list read like the Madison chapter of the AARP (though it did eventually broaden out a bit). I think it would be quite refreshing if all the 50-60-70 year old progressives still hanging around and offering all their years of invaluable advice would consider a different option: how about just getting out of the doorways and geting out of the halls, and realizing that their old road is rapidly aging. The times, they are a changing.

There was a nice big protest Saturday night out in front of the L.A. Mormon Temple. Lots of people are upset by the way the good Christians of the LDS financially supported the successful campaign to strip California's gays and lesbians of their rights to be married. Nice, little Christians.

This seems just a tad ironic coming from a sectarian cult that was based --and not so covertly continues to countenance-- group sex polygamy. Like, um, it's unhealthy for kids to grow up in a house with two married Moms but somehow it's God-like to be raised in community of inbred bible-thumping cluster-fuggers.

Now, some folks say this sort of attitude, and/or the mounting protests against the Mormons, is some sort of bigotry. You know, Mormon-bashing.

I say, so what?

As the late, great George Carlin would point out with great relish: one;s religion is something quite different than race or ethnicity and should hardly fall into the "protected" category of the latter. You are born into and involuntarily remain in this or that ethnic group. It seems sort of unfair to bash anyone for that.

Religious persuasion, as it is politely called, is --by contrast-- something quite voluntary. At least by the time you achieve the age of reason, it's your choice to either step away from the hooey in which your deluded parents immersed you or to  continue you worship of myths and man-made icons. In the case of the Mormons, it would mean stepping away from a particularly bigoted cult. You have no moral claim to protection against criticism, ridicule or sustained protest. If you don't like it, tough. Pray hard enough and maybe Jesus will shield you.

Until then, let the protests continue.

Here's a few more conclusions I've reached.

Looking forward...

First, that absolutely, positively, definitively almost nobody has assimilated the full impact that will hit this nation when Obama is sworn in. The more I think about what it means that America has elected a black president, the more amazing it seems. The consequences are simply immeasurable. This is totally uncharted territory.

Second, in the next handful of months we are either going to see some fairly historic and sweeping change or, if not, some shattering disappointment. A hundred days into the Obama administration, America is either going to have some sort of national health care system, workers are going to be able to more freely organize unions, there will be massive government support for failing homeowners, and there will be a clear time table of troop withdrawal from Iraq or... we will have some very deflated balloons.

Looking backward...

For all the carping and pot-shotting at polls, they turned out to be extremely reliable indicators of Tuesday's results. TPM has a nice compilation of the numbers.

Here's what we see. Just as most polls suggested, Obama won by a healthy 6% point national margin and garnered more popular votes that any U.S. presidential candidate in history. His margin of victory -- 7 million votes-- is twice the gap GW Bush achieved in 2004.

After zillions of words and thousands of man-years of punditizing over Obama's supposed weakness to win over those grungy rult belt states, he coasted to victory from Wisconsin to Michigan to Iowa to Ohio to Pennsylvania and then tossed in Indiana and Virginia.

Obama, contrary to the Conventional Wisdom, did great aming white voters -- winning a greater percentage than John Kerry.

After hearing for months that he had trouble getting traction with Latinos, he won them by a greater than 2 to 1 margin.

And Barack Hussein Obama took close to 80% of the Jewish vote.

The Democratic Party is no longer a regional coastal party. The 50 state strategy is a reality.

By every metric, his victory was a blow-out. As I said last night, he has literally buried the Reagan majority of the last 25 years.

Let the reconstruction begin.

Photos: Natasha Vargas-Cooper

Las Vegas, Nevada – My good friend Micah Sifry framed this historic day perfectly right about noontime. “The hands that picked the cotton are the hands that are picking the next President of the United States.”

Barack Obama’s election tonight is laden with so much significance it seems an impossible task to even attempt any systematic unpacking. But this much is for certain: the full impact of the Oval Office being occupied by a black man has yet to hit home. This single fact alone overshadows every other facet of his campaign and of this election.

Call it a cliché, but it is something I thought I would never see in my lifetime. Some of my friends, as recently as midnight last night, still didn’t believe it possible. But here we are at a moment of national redemption. And it’s a victory that conservatives and liberals, right and left, should claim and celebrate with equal pride.

This is no longer the America of forty or even of twenty-five or as few as ten years ago. Things do change and, sometimes, for the better. Racism, ignorance, bias and prejudice have neither evaporated nor been abolished. But anyone who believes our boiler-plate political discourse emerges intact from this stunning moment needs to be dispatched to the same pasture where John McCain will listlessly spend the rest of political eternity. No longer can it be said that a black child cannot dream of becoming President. No longer can it be said that Americans are but some TV-doped sheeple, easily managed and manipulated by some sort of right-wing media conspiracy. You thought that nothing would ever be the same after 9/11? Well, how about after a black man, his black wife and two black children move into the White House?

It’s unimaginable to yet measure what impact a President Obama will have on the way America is seen around the globe. It will be as confounding for others to think about us the same way they did a year ago as we did about ourselves. And, if I might say, just in the nick of time.

Perhaps History itself demanded that we pass through the pain and humiliation of the Bush era in order to merit the relief granted by this election. We have been forced to suffer through the most vile of administrations, one that has shown total disdain for the constitution, for the rule of law, for basic humanity. And this is the second most important takeaway from the election. After nearly three decades in which the power structure pandered to, exploited, refined and capitalized on all the worst of our collective base instincts, along comes a candidate who speaks only to our most humane and compassionate side. That says something striking about Barack Obama. And says it even more about the American people. One more victory we shouldn’t hesitate to claim.

Third, this is a generational change that makes not only good headlines and easy reporting narratives, but which also serves as a great gift to our children and theirs. The election of Barack Obama liberates a new generation from the now-dreary debates of a self-obsessed Boomer generation – be they wilting flower children or graying warriors of the right. I might be quick in saying so, but Obama’s landslide also effectively buries the most vicious of American political gargoyles – the culture war. If not to Siberia, well then to the wilds of Alaska, have been exiled those who have so cynically divided and polarized us on the bogus issues of Gays, Guns and God. Good riddance.

I make no predictions as to where this tectonic shift will lead us. As McCain himself said recently, “Nothing in American is written.” The future, thankfully, is finally in the hands of a new generation. And at the very moment I write this sentence, I see thousands of young people around me in this ballroom explode in ecstasy as NBC officially projects Obama as the 44^th President of the United States. What a moment! I, too, am overcome by emotion as it all seems at once so unreal and yet so well-earned by all of us. I can only compare this to the sensation I felt exactly twenty years ago at 3 am one October morning in 1988 when Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet lost his own self-engineered plebiscite and was voted out of power. Throngs poured into the street and strangers embraced and cried and danced just as they are here, this very moment, in the Brasilia ballroom of the Rio Hotel.

Just like that glorius night in Santiago , no one knew what loomed in the future. It was enough to know, in fact, that once again a future was even possible.

Tonight we know that a black man whose middle name is Hussein has been elected president. The ghosts of Jim Crow and Bull Connors have been exorcised from the most tenebrous shadows of American life.

We know that we have witnessed the collapse of an entire political era based on the narrowest and greediest principles of social Darwinism.

We know that Americans resisted and rejected a puerile campaign of fear commenced by Hillary Clinton and then shamelessly escalated by a doddering John McCain.

We know that Americans are capable of repudiating those who would impose upon us a politically illiterate huckster as a vice-presidential candidate.

We know that Americans can no longer tolerate the exercise of torture in the name of freedom.

We know that Americans will soon demand the shut down of Guantanamo.

We know we will no longer suffer the indignity of watching a President unable to speak in public and incapable of understanding and – uninterested in—the world around him.

We know we will have a new President who demonstrates an intelligence, a thoughtfulness and a seriousness that has long been a stranger to the White House.

We know that when asked if we could do it, we answered with a throaty "Yes We Can!"

And we did.

***PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA****

Getty/istockphoto.com

THE NETWORKS WON'T TELL YOU, BUT THE PAGE WILL:

BARACK OBAMA WILL BE THE 44TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

DEMOCRAT WINS OHIO AND BREAKS MCCAIN'S POLITICAL BACK.

McCain can win only if he takes San Francisco.

The partying here is now underway. I feel like I had just a baby.

New Mexico has just gone Obama.
And Florida is about to go as well. McCain has been locked out. Happy faces here at the Rio.

I've arrived at the Rio just off the Vegas Strip where Democrats have set up a celebration/media center. Like the rest of you, I'm going to watch the returns. I'll be back later tonight when I have something of at least marginal value to say.

One glitch: contrarian that he is he wanted to write in a candidate. No can do he was told. No way to do that on a voting machine, at least not here. He asked then for a paper ballot. No can do he was told

Meanwhile unofficial exit poll results are drfiting in from GA,Ohio, PA and VA. They show a surge in black voters. And they are going as high as 98 percent Obama

As my friend Micah Sifry just said on the phone "The hands that picked cotton are now picking the president of the United States."