Obama

I don't think anybody who reads my blog will be surprised to find that I am glad Obama won. It was a mandate-level victory, and Obama's 52% of the popular vote was something only achieved a handful of times in the modern era.

Watching the morning news talk shows (MSNBC's Morning Joe to be specific) I was struck by the commentariat's statement that America is a "center-right" country. Tom Brokaw, hawking a new book about the Baby Boomers, said that the proof of this was (rough quote) "Baby Boomers 40 years ago would ingest whatever they were handed at a rock concert, now they read labels at Whole Foods."

WTF?!?!? Now showing common sense is a conservative virtue? Don't get me wrong - I'm not a raging liberal, but what exactly would it take to suggest to the commentariat that America had moved to the left?

In other news, jeff_duntemann is thinking big thoughts about voter fraud. I respect and generally agree with Jeff, although I think we voted for different folks in this election. More to the point, part of the voter fraud issue is the issue of picture IDs.

Currently in America, we use drivers' licenses as a stand-in for a National ID card. Much like our use of Social Security numbers as a stand-in for personal serial numbers, this approach doesn't work. If you don't know how to drive a car, you don't need a drivers license, and it is perfectly legal to have multiple Social Security numbers. In short, trying to shoe-horn these systems into additional uses causes problems.

Enough ramblings for now - I'm still trying to dig out at work.