Friday, November 12, 2004

New Year's Eve

LOML and I will be taking in dinner at Chicago's fabulous Tru this New Year's Eve with our friends Brenda and Stefan. "And we can go dancing afterward!" cried LOML.

Well, I s'pose I'll be able to put those West Coast Swing moves to good use. By the time New Year's hits I'll have had 9 weeks worth of lessons from Jimmy Mulligan. Jimmy's a great guy and a fantastic instructor. He'll be at the 2004 US Open Swing Dance in a couple of weeks. Here's hoping he, er... well whatever it is you say to dancers before a competition.

Thursday, November 04, 2004

Not 40 states...

...but it was a victory and a majority of the popular vote. Kudos to John Kerry for not carrying out the threat to litigate the vote all over the electoral map. Not sure what was up with John Edwards goofy non-concession concession, but then I'm not worried about it. No one will long remember what Senator Breckgirl had to say.

A note on the usual MSM call to "Reach out to the middle" which should always be read as "Come left!" The fact of the matter is that I'm perfectly willing to "reach out". However if the people on the Left don't reach back, there's nothing I can do. An example post from Democratic Underground which excerpted over on The Corner this morning:

I really don't care what happens anymore. From here on out, we get exactly what we deserve whether it's a fiscal depression, increased poverty, return to witchhunts, terror attacks, whatever. I don't blame the rest of the world for hating us. I hate us too.

The Snarky Me would say "did you ever NOT hate this country?" but the Reaching-Out Me would say "There, there... the economy is going well, and a rising tide lifts all boats. How 'bout a latte?" Would the unidentified poster take me up on the offer? I dunno. Probably not.

I really hope that the Democrats will come home to where the people of this country are... and I don't mean the people of the Upper East Side and Malibu, but those of us in the much-scorned "fly-over" country. They will need to ask themselves why it is that not a single Democrat won election in the South. (Not in the Senate, anyway, and not one southern state went for Bush.) And they'll definitely need to re-evaluate the question of faith. Could it be that they are gasp wrong about their stereotypical notions of people of faith? (Note to Katie Couric: if you wouldn't dream of calling Blacks "you people" or "these people", please don't call me, as a person of faith in that way, 'k?) Here's a clue: the second part relates to the first part. It isn't the whole story, but it is an important factor.