Out With the Old, In With the New: Or, "Adios, W!"

I took a half day off from work today to watch the inauguration (and avoid any traffic snarls headed eastbound from my house, or the what I expect to be awful post-inauguration traffic headed outbound later in the day).  I was about to get back to work and had stepped outside to take advantage of a bit of daylight in cutting a few more standards for the home library when a big jet flew overhead.

I thought for a moment, "Hmm, wonder if that's Bush headed to Texas?  The timeframe seems right..." Indeed, when I glanced up, there was what formerly was Air Force One in its 747 glory.  I only wish I'd had my camera outside with me to remember this moment: seeing W head home, no longer the resident of the White House.  I gave a quick "see ya" wave to the plane and thought of that bit of good southern hospitality: don't let the door hit you on your way out!

Well, I've got to get back to work; plenty to do for the office before the week's up, and I've got a lot of PowerPoint slides to create, software to install and evaluate, and more.

Flying High with the Magic Wall

No, I haven't taken up recreational hallucinogens--but flying home this weekend from a business trip to Monterey, California, I did a double-take while waiting to board my first flight from tiny Monterey Peninsula Airport.

"Huh, that looks like CNN's John King," I thought as a silver haired gent came around the hall from a session with the TSA.  John King, aka "Mr. Magic Wall," he of the gigantic touch-screen display used throughout the 2008 Presidential election, and former CNN White House correspondent, was who came to mind.

Sure enough, on his heels was none other than CNN political correspondent Dana Bash, their lead reporter for coverage of John McCain's campaign for the Presidency.  The two sat down to wait for the flight; after a moment, Dana put her head tiredly on John's shoulder.  (The two, I found out later, wed in May.)

I'm sure both are seasoned travelers,  but apparently not well enough to choose the best seats on the little SkyWest Embraer 120 turboprop: King and Bash had been assigned the absolute back of the plane.  (I, on the other hand, held the coveted 9C, an exit-row window seat with several feet of legroom--one of my favorite seats in the United fleet).  In LAX, we all ended up on the same flight again: United 44, the red-eye to Washington-Dulles (yay for my upgrade finally clearing!)

I figured the pair were taking a well-earned vacation after the arduous election season; after all, Monterey is quite the destination for leisure travelers.  However, I had wondered why the two looked exactly like they do on TV, down to well-coiffed hairdos, and after getting home and taking a brief nap, I found out why: John King had interviewed California "Governorator" Arnold at his home in the Monterey area, then flown back to Washington... where he went in to work after the red-eye to sit in for Wolf Blitzer's Sunday program.  I don't know how TV personalities do it; I can barely function after a red-eye, and here King was on live television, apparently none-the-worse-for-wear.

And no, I am not a member of the celebrity-worship cult; I just found it interesting to share a flight with Mr. Magic Wall.  I mean, when you have a Saturday Night Live skit making fun of your raison d'etre, you're somebody.

Change Has Come

I'm proud to be a Virginian right now.  Sitting in California, I saw my home state called for Obama--an inevitable result as I'd watched the county-by-county returns and had seen how many votes were outstanding in Fairfax and Arlington Counties (heavily Obama areas)--and then had but minutes to go before the west coast polls closed with their certain results.  At 220 electoral votes with the Virginia call, California alone was going to be enough to put President-elect Obama over the edge, and so it did.

Watching the Election Results Roll In

So here I sit in scenic Monterey, California, where I'm currently on a business trip.  Having voted absentee in-person a couple of weeks ago, I proudly wore my "I Voted!" sticker and picked up my free Starbucks coffee (buying a slice of tasty pumpkin loaf and tipping the barristas well for the freebie).  Now I'm ensconced in my hotel room glued to CNN and the election results--with my Web browser pointed to CNN, the Washington Post, NPR, and my favorite online discussion forum, Flyertalk.

Now, I've been fairly confident for some weeks--since Republican candidate John McCain repeated his "The fundamentals of the economy are strong!" gaffe on the eve of the worst economic crisis the United States has seen in nearly a century--that the Democrats would carry the day.  But it's still an anxious evening of fascinating, edge-of-the-seat politics, and each called state brings a sigh of relief as the big must-haves roll in for Obama (Pennsylvania being denied the McCain camp earlier this evening the biggest so far--even though NPR had already called the race there earlier, I pumped my fist when CNN confirmed the call).

I do wish I could be at home with Beth and the Papillons to watch the results, but being in the Pacific time zone, I at least get to stay up "late" and catch all the returns without having to sit up until well after midnight.

That "Independents for Obama" bumper-sticker on my car is going to feel good in a few hours, I suspect.  (I'm a Libertarian by philosophy, and have voted for both major parties regularly--but I certainly do have my favorite in this race, and it's not Bob Barr.)

More to come!

Careful with that Box, Pandora...

So America's favorite lipsticked pit bull (or is that pig?) has now decided to "take off the gloves" and start mud-slinging in earnest in her party's failing bid for the White House: Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin is questioning Barack Obama's judgment and playing the fear card by accusing Democratic candidate Obama of past associations--"palling around with," to use the Governor's folksy vernacular--with 1960s radical William Ayers.

This is clearly a desperate bid by the Republicans to divert attention from the massive economic problems the United States currently faces, which between the traditional "hands-off" regulatory stance of the Republican party--a contributory factor to the crisis--and the immense unpopularity of the administration whose actions (and inactions) also directly led to the economic meltdown, is a must for the party's presidential hopes.  It's a bid to cast the Senator from Illinois as lacking judgment.  And it's a bit of fearmongering, bringing up "terrorism" in a disingenuous fashion which tries to capitalize upon Senator Obama's middle name (Hussein) and persistent but factually-challenged rumors that the candidate is a Muslim; in other words, Sarah Palin wants you the voter to believe Barack Obama is in fact an Islamic terrorist in disguise.

Here's the problem, though: Obama's association with Ayers had already come up and faced scrutiny during the primaries with little effect; Ayers is certainly not a terrorist today, and due in part to the COINTELPRO scandal--where the FBI illegally spied on US citizens--he was never convicted of any terrorist activities, either.  Nor is his relationship with Senator Obama particularly close.  Apparently Governor Palin slept through her history classes, or at least the Democratic primary.

And the real kicker: should the Obama campaign want to sling some mud of their own and call up skeletons of questionable associations from Senator McCain's political closet, there's one Charles Keating, McCain's political mentor from his early days in the House and Senate.  Yes, the same Charles Keating whose criminal actions in the Savings & Loan collapse of the late 1980s and early 1990s led to a Congressional inquiry--an inquiry John McCain found himself smack in the middle of.  Though McCain escaped with only the official criticism of his judgement, his role in the Keating Five still stands as a blemism on his political record.

Even worse, the Keating Five scandal involved an economic crisis with eerily-similar parallels to the current subprime mortgage meltdown and subsequent fallout.  A crisis which found John McCain right at ground zero.

Should the Obama campaign wish to respond to Governor Palin and the McCain camp's criticism of his past associations (ironic, given Palin's own remonstrations to Senator Joe Biden during their Vice Presidential debate not to "look backwards") by brining up the Keating Five, John McCain will have not only whiffed on changing the subject away from the economy, but he will have brought the spotlight keenly into focus on his own role in a very similar economic collapse.  Not to mention things like former McCain chief economic advisor Phil Gramm, who called Americans "whiners" in a "mental recession," and whose deregulation--championed by McCain, no less--directly contributed to our present global economic mess.  (And need we be reminded of McCain's repeated "the fundamentals of our economy are strong" or his primary claim that he didn't know much about the economy?)

Yep, that's great judgment there, Senator McCain and Governor Palin.  My, what a Pandora's box Palin is opening in what may go down as one of the worst blunders in election history!

Change is coming.  It's just not the "change" McCain and Palin have strangely adopted as their own campaign slogan of late.