Everybody's thankful for something

What am I thankful for, you ask? That's easy. Come the holiday season, my thanks is bountiful. But I have to admit that while I love my husband, my family, my friends and my dogs none of them are the target of my thanks during the holidays. Although the economy is in the toilet and I'm grateful to be gainfully employed, I'm not thankful for my job. I'm thrilled to be spending my first Thanksgiving in my own home, but I'm not thankful for my house or anything in it. I'm over the moon that come January 20th we'll have a new administration in the White House and I feel good about my part in that historic accomplishment, but I'm not thankful for it.

The sole focus of my thankfulness this holiday season?

Gravy.

God, I love gravy. I plan on making five cups of gravy. There will be eight of us for Thanksgiving dinner. And if there's not gravy left, I will be supremely pissed.

Hey - everybody has their priorities. And to all you folks out there who have been superseded on my thankfulness scale by golden, pourable goodness, Happy Thanksgiving anyway.

Schadenfreude

If anyone you are familiar with the fabulous musical Avenue Q, then like me you will find it impossible to think of the word schadenfreude without silently singing to yourself the words "F@#$ you, lady, that's what stairs are for."

I say this because I've been quietly singing that phrase to myself all day after reading this morning in the Huffington Post that Ann Coulter has had her jaw wired shut.

Now don't get me wrong. If Coulter has indeed broken her jaw, I'm sure she's in a heap o' pain. And having had some jaw issues of my own in the past, I know just how unpleasant that type of pain can be. And I really wouldn't wish a broken jaw on anyone.

However. The irony is almost too delicious to discount altogether.

"F@#$ you, lady, that's what stairs are for" indeed.

When your every press conference seems scripted by SNL

I'm not a Sarah Palin fan. No surprise there. But if I were her, I would find the staff person from her press office that allowed this interview to go on for three minutes with turkeys being obviously and rather gruesomely slaughtered in the background, and I would fire them. Immediately.

You have to be brain dead to allow television cameras to capture this horrific juxtaposition for this length of time.

Ah, sheesh. Just watch it. But lay off right around Thanksgiving. You'll ruin your appetite.

Small favors

Seemingly against all odds, Ted Stevens has officially lost in his Senate reelection bid. Now behind by more than 3700 votes and with only 2500 votes left to count, it has become statistically impossible for Stevens to prevail (even in Alaska). For the country, Stevens' loss offers two opportunities for celebration.

First, we can all rejoice that the good people of Alaska weren't faced with the embarrassment of having reelected a convicted felon to the Senate. After the slapstick that was the McCain/Palin campaign, Alaskans don't need any more farce in their politics. Considering Steven's egregious ethics violations and the honestly ridiculous gifts he accepted (has anyone seen that horrible fish sculpture?), it seems beyond belief that this is Stevens' first trip to the cookie jar. This is only the first time he got caught with his hand in it. Bravo to Alaskans for refusing to allow Stevens another opportunity to sell his votes.

More importantly, Stevens' loss ensures that Sarah Palin can't appoint herself to fill his seat, an outcome that several news outlets, including this one, had predicted might be in the offing if Stevens won. No Congress - and certainly not the current Democratically controlled one - wants to profane the dignity of its political body by allowing a convicted felon to continue as a voting member. If Stevens had been reelected, the Senate would have been forced to remove him from office, thus setting the stage for Palin to potentially appoint herself to fill the seat or (worse!) participate in a special election. Such an outcome would have given Alaskans the chance to vote for a felon and a maverick-y fighter who pals around with real Americans all in the same election cycle.

That's a hell of a lot of democracy to handle all at once. It's probably better this way.

Four cheers (and four stars) for Ann Dunwoody

We've come a long way as a nation this year. With Hillary Clinton's candidacy for president, the U.S. took its first serious look at a female presidency while demonstrating only minor squeamishness. But while Clinton still ultimately walked away from that campaign with a host of bruises from banging her head on a glass ceiling that refused to budge, Ann Dunwoody managed to obliterate the military's "brass ceiling.: Today, Dunwoody was officially promoted to four-star general, the first female in U.S. military history to achieve that rank. What's even more amazing to me is that Dunwoody has achieved this first as the culmination to a 33 year career in which she herself has never been in a unit commanded by a female. Not many women get to blaze trails like that in a lifetime.

Just to put this all in perspective, let's consider the meteoric rise of women in the military over the last fifty years or so. Following World War II, women's only access to the armed services was as a WAC, or member of the Women's Army Corps. The highest rank attainable as a WAC was that of lieutenant colonel. No woman could be promoted any higher. And choosing a career in the military meant choosing not to have children since no WAC was allowed to remain on active duty on becoming pregnant and as long as she had a child under the age of 18.

If she can't be the boss, will she be the secretary?

I don't think I was the only one who was surprised by the revelation today that Hillary Clinton is on President-Elect Obama's short list for Secretary of State. But after the initial shock wore off, a few things started to make sense. Obama was basically honor-bound to offer Senator Clinton some sort of important position in his administration; he owed her that much. After a sometimes bitter primary season, Clinton was a tireless campaigner on Obama's behalf throughout the remainder of the election, and the weight of that support was no small thing.

As much as Obama owed Clinton, however, the only position that had ever been seriously bandied about - Supreme Court Justice - didn't particularly make sense. Clinton is too much of a politician and too much of a policy wonk to ever be truly happy on the bench. Not to mention the fact that there's something a little creepy about being repaid for all your hard work on the campaign trail by being offered a position that requires that someone die first. (Then again, isn't that what being offered the vice presidency is all about....?)

Then there's that sudden thawing of relations between former President Clinton and soon to be President Obama. What changed Clinton's mind? Was it his realization that Obama would soon be the leader of his party and his country that brought him out of his funk? Or was it a tacit agreement that a position like Secretary of State was waiting for Senator Clinton on the other side of the election?

All such political payback considerations aside, I think Clinton would be a fascinating choice for Secretary of State. She has the foreign relations credentials, she has the careful and strategic mind required for the job, and she would be a striking contrast to Condoleezza Rice.

Read it. Watch it. Buy it.

Read it: I am an avid Diana Gabaldon fan. Maybe even rabid. I started reading Gabaldon's Outlander series when my husband and I first moved to Germany. In a foreign country, barely knowing anyone, and without a job I stumbled into the only bookstore in town with a significant English language section and picked out the fattest books in the whole place - something that would really fill up my time. Not only did Gabaldon's Outlander books fill up the time, but there were also fabulously written, obsessively researched, and beautifully plotted - a trifecta that you just don't find that often in "popular" novels. With a healthy dose of science fiction, a smidgen of romance and a heaping helping of historical fiction Gabaldon's novels are hard to appropriately categorize. In bookstores I've seen them in both the romance and the science fiction sections but don't let these labels turn you off. I promise you that if you crack the first book, you'll want to work through them all. Which will leave you in the position I find myself in currently: waiting impatiently for the next book to come out in late 2009. And then I won't be so cranky all by myself.

Watch it: The MPAA ratings board is not something that often crosses my mind, or at least it hasn't since I turned 17 and didn't have to worry about whether or not I could get into the theatre to see an R-rated movie any more. The excellent - and more than a little disturbing - documentary, This Film Is Not Yet Rated changed all that. The most shocking part of this documentary for me was the horrifying realization that, in the MPAA ratings board, the American public unwittingly condones the kind of censorship of films that would be considered tantamount to book burning if the medium were written word. The MPAA, an agency with absolute power over ratings decisions - and thus near absolute power over a film's marketing and distribution - operates in almost total secrecy, apparently with no set guidelines for assigning ratings, and in collusion with studios. And yet, because American parents have no other means of determining whether or not a film is suitable for children - and because this information understandably matters to them - the MPAA's particular brand of censorship, heavily weighted against sexual scenes and nearly indifferent to violence, is thriving.

Buy it: After never owning a game system until well into my twenties, my husband I went all in with the Wii, and we've loved it. With so many games that we can play cooperatively as a couple, the Wii has given us another activity to enjoy together. Our favorite new game? Guitar Hero: World Tour. There's not a lot to say about Guitar Hero that hasn't already be said. Yes, it makes you feel like a rock god. Yes, you look absolutely ridiculous playing plastic instruments while obviously laboring under the delusion that you're a rock God. No, you don't particularly care. Why? Because you are a rock god, and as such are above such petty human concerns. The bottom line: it really is just that fun.

Throwing Palin to the wolves

I have to admit that I am taking unabashed pleasure in the sheer glee with which many in the Republican party - heck, many of McCain's own campaign staffers - are taking in throwing Sarah Palin to the wolves. Between the revelations that the $150,000 shopping spree may have been more like $200,000, the Republican lawyers supposedly dispatched to Wasilla to yank the clothes directly from the former VP pick's back, the renewed accusations of diva-like temper tantrums, and - this is my favorite - the claim (on Fox News!) that Palin had to be told that Africa was a continent and walked through the Iraq war timeline with pictures and finger puppets. All in all, it's been nearly too much schadenfreude for me to handle.

Of course, I tend to sober up when I remember that the very same people who are trashing her now are the people who were assuring the American people with straight faces and uncrossed fingers that this woman was fit to lead this nation. That tends to wipe the smile right off my face. Because I can think of no more despicable political act - no better way to demonstrate how little the McCain camp really seemed to care about this nation - than the fact that, knowing what they seemed to know about her character and her qualifications, they nominated her anyway.

To the loser go the crap speeches

I have never heard McCain give such a lackluster, passionless, flat, sincerely insincere speech as he did when giving his concession speech. He didn't even bother to slow to down at the applause lines.

President Obama

Switching madly back and forth between CNN, NBC and MSNBC. Texting with my husband and IM'ing with a good friend. And blogging all the while. That's how I will remember the moment that Barack Obama became the first black man to win the presidency.

Ich Leibe Es

Full of wine and Chinese food that I rushed like a mad woman to buy on the way home, I am finally starting to achieve calm and confidence that Obama is going to win this election. I have been so moved by the amazing turnout for this election and by the equally amazing stories to come out of it.:

On the way home listening to NPR, they mentioned one of their bloggers who is a poll worker in Santa Monica, CA. A woman in ACTIVE LABOR came into her polling place to vote today before going to the hospital to have her baby. They let her go to the front of the line since she was having contractions as she stood there.

A sorority sister in Kentucky waited two hours to vote this morning before having to leave to make a job interview she could not miss. Last I heard, she had returned to the polling place to wait again after the interview and was in her third hour of waiting.

My husband's sister (shout out to you, Christina) sent me a link to this article from Yahoo about an elderly woman who, following a stroke, needs a feeding tube and cannot walk. Yet she still voted from an ambulance and on a gurney.

Another story from NPR that I heard on Monday was about a gentleman who, much like the late Christopher Reeve, was paralyzed from the neck down. With his daughter's assistance, he still managed to cast his ballot.

I love these stories so much because they demonstrate so clearly what can happen in this country when the people are presented with real choice - not the damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't choices we've been faced with so often recently, most notably in both 2000 and 2004. I don't have any idea if Obama can sustain this level of idealism; when he can no longer blame Bush for the problems this country faces - when, in fact, they become his problems - this sense of unity may fade into the background. But at this moment, Obama seems to have the type of mandate that Bush claimed to have, but which few presidents actually enjoy. My hope is that he can sustain it and achieve real change.

Stupid Kentucky

I hate that the first state called for McCain is Kentucky.

I'm not surprised by it, but I hate it.

I feel a little sick

I thought that the 2004 election would be a benchmark for me as far as emotions go. I was living in Germany at the time, attending a German university and working to complete a degree in American Studies in a program with a multi-national student body. As a consequence, I was frequently reminded of the international goodwill that President Bush's policies, especially with regard to Iraq, had squandered. Most Europeans I spoke with were willing to give Americans a pass on electing Bush in 2000; no one could have foreseen how 9/11 would give the president such an unprecedented mandate to expand executive power, trample civil liberties, and wage an unpopular war. But the consensus seemed to be that if Bush were reelected, the responsibility for his policies would fall squarely on the American people. It's the old chestnut: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

Watching that election from the outside, I simply couldn't imagine that Bush would be reelected. Going into election day, the race was obviously close; but polls seemed to indicate that Kerry had a real chance. And then that chance disappeared. I felt absolutely sick. I was embarrassed for my country in the same way I would have been embarrassed for an otherwise strong and intelligent friend who had married a misogynist, afraid that the world would judge her for her choice of mate and not recognize the powerful woman she really was. I wanted more for my nation, and I couldn't understand why my nation didn't want more for itself.

I thought that was as bad as it could get. But this is so much worse. Because if tomorrow night ends with a President-elect McCain instead of a President-elect Obama, the disappointment will be crushing. Not because I am an Obama-maniac. I think anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that while I have become an Obama supporter, my support has been tempered by disappointment in many of his choices and in what has seemed at times to be his sense of entitlement towards the office of the presidency. Too, I fully understand that Obama's success to this point has been highly dependent on the failing economy; without it, he would not be in the seemingly strong position he finds himself in today.

Nevertheless, a McCain presidency strikes absolute terror in my heart. I am terrified that my military husband will be killed in one useless war or another waged by a war-mongering McCain. I am terrified that the anti-American, socialist and communist name-calling that has characterized the McCain campaign will indelibly color a McCain administration, possibly leading to a new era of McCarythism. I am terrified that illness would put a President Palin in office, leaving what is perhaps the world's most powerful position in dangerously unqualified hands.

Eight years have shown us the damage that one man can do to this country. I feel sick thinking how much worse things could get under McCain. And I'm not sure whether or not enough Americans agree with me.