Via my dad, via the San Francisco Chronicle's excellent Mark Moford: Whiskipedia.
And 28 other things to be happy about:
Women and minorities appear to be galvanized by Hillary Clinton's presidential run. Youth and college-educated voters appear to be galvanized by Barack Obama's. No one at all is truly, deeply galvanized by Mitt Romney or John McCain or crazy little Mike Huckabee, and everyone is generally repulsed by the fetid little tyrant that is Rudy Giuliani. All of this, remarkably, seems just about exactly as it should be.
Fred Thompson has withdrawn from the presidential race.
What's funny is he polled better than either Giuliani or Paul, suggesting that what little sense Thompson had still far outstripped the other two.
You know what that means? Only one year—just 366 days—until the worst president we've ever had leaves office.
I'll be raising a glass to that later today. You should too.
I just got back from an event in Chicago which convinced me that Obama will win the White House. 375 days, 12 hours to go.
In a completely unrelated vein, I am watching Parker try to destroy a Tyvek FedEx envelope. I think I've finally found a substance he can't destroy.
Update: Nope. He can destroy it just fine. I'll be seeing that Tyvek tomorrow morning.
Just now on Talking Points Memo: "At the moment, it's Rudy about 300 votes ahead of Ron Paul."
Stop the presses!
I've had a number of conversations with friends recently about the 2008 elections. A couple are afraid we're going to repeat the 2004 elections, in which we Democrats believed the day before the election we were going to win, but woke up the day after to a brave old world.
Today we've seen the first hard number that shows, without a doubt, we're going to rout the Republicans this year: tonight, an all-time record 227,000 Democrats caucused in Iowa, almost double the number in 2004.
We're mad as hell, and we're not going to take it any more.
Via Marc Andreesen (yes, the Marc Andreesen), from Variety:
[O]verall music [CD] sales during the Christmas shopping season were down an astounding 21% from last year. From the week of Thanksgiving up through the day before Christmas Eve, 83.9 million albums were sold, a decrease of 21.38 million from 2006's 105.28 million.
It's important to realize, as the RIAA simply can't grasp, this has nothing to do with piracy. Suing people isn't the answer; getting a clue and selling over the Web is.
The city of Half Moon Bay, Calif., is in danger of dissolving after losing a major lawsuit:
Half Moon Bay is wrestling with unpleasant options for responding to a court ruling that officials say threatens the "very existence of our city government"—a $36.8 million judgment against the city for turning a proposed housing development site into wetlands.
Under the worst-case scenario, officials say, Half Moon Bay would become the first Bay Area city forced to dissolve, and the coastal town's land would become an unincorporated part of San Mateo County.
As of this moment (12:00 EST), less than 400 days remain in the worst presidency in U.S. history.