Blunt Rebuke.

‘Access for kids who have pre-existing conditions, who would be against that?’ Blunt asked a group of health care professionals in Springfield, MO. ‘But access for adults who’ve done nothing to take care of themselves, who actually will have as I just described every incentive not to get insurance until the day that you know that you’re going to have medical expenses–that’s a very different kind of story.‘”

Thanks, Roy! Republican congressman and ostensible chair of the “GOP Health Care Task Force” Roy Blunt actually comes out in favor of repealing the ban on denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, one of the few provisions in the recent health care law that usually garnered bipartisan support. For its part, leukemia declined to comment.

He can’t get no relief.

“‘Our nation finds itself in uncharted territory in the deep emptiness of space,’ Obama announced. ‘The Old Girl has limited supplies, no allies, and now, no hope. I never said this would be an easy journey. Yet I promise you this: There is a place where there is no war and no economic turmoil. It is where, according to the Sacred Scrolls handed down to us by the Lords of Kobol, the thirteenth tribe traveled over three thousand years ago. That place is called Earth. Not the other Earth. This Earth. It’s complicated. Anyway, I plan to take us there.’

Businessmen, they drink his wine: By way of my sis, word from The Onion is that President Obama has been depressed and distant ever since the BSG finale. “‘I’m a little concerned,’ first lady Michelle Obama was overheard saying at a fundraising event Tuesday. ‘When Firefly was canceled, he walked around like a zombie for a week, and Serenity was the only thing that snapped him out of it.’

Thoughts after the Quake.

“‘I was born in 1941, the year they bombed Pearl Harbor. I’ve been living in darkness ever since,’ Dylan said to introduce the song, or as a goodbye, or, as he hadn’t spoken before, as a hello. ‘But it looks like things are going to change now.’ At the end of the stage he stepped out from behind his electric organ and did a jig.

Thus was the freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’s happy reaction to Obama’s election Tuesday night. (As you may remember, he publicly backed the senator in June.) For many others, including yours truly, the feeling of the evening might best be summed up by one of Dylan’s esteemed contemporaries, Leonard Cohen: “Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Halleloooooojah!

For the first time since 1994, we have a Democratic president and a safely Democratic Congress. For the first time since 1964, we have a Democratic president entering office with a commanding mandate from the people. For the first time since…well, ever, we’ve reaffirmed our founding principles by choosing an African-American to lead us into the future.

I don’t want to overplay the “first black president” thing, because that’s not at all why we chose Sen. Obama. Still it must be said: With this election, we have shown the world — and ourselves — anew that the American ideal isn’t just a convenient myth, but a vision of the good that many of us still aspire to create every day. In the words of Cornel West, “To understand your country, you must love it. To love it, you must, in a sense, accept it. To accept it as how it is, however is to betray it. To accept your country without betraying it, you must love it for that in it which shows what it might become. America – this monument to the genius of ordinary men and women, this place where hope becomes capacity, this long, halting turn of the no into the yes, needs citizens who love it enough to reimagine and remake it.” And so we have, in a way the founders of our American experiment 221 years ago could barely have imagined.

Meanwhile, even with crooks like Ted Stevens and Norm Coleman still floating for the moment, our old friends the Republicans are now not only in full rout, but appear to be set to tear each other’s throats out in assigning blame for their repudiation at the polls. (Expect several further symposia of conservative hand-wringing, and a lot more intraparty shivving, along the lines of “Palin thinks Africa is a country,” in the weeks to come.) This gang will regroup — they always do — but for now the GOP has enough problems of their own to keep them busy. And, whatever ever they manage to accomplish as the loyal(?) opposition, it seems a safe bet that the Conservative Era that began with the defeat of Barry Goldwater in 1964 has now officially coughed up its last in 2008, with the defeat of fellow Arizonan John McCain.

By the way, also joining the Republicans on the road to oblivion Tuesday night, alas, was my old laptop, a victim of post-return celebratory spillage. (Jamesons: Good for Jimmy McNulty and jubliant Dems, Bad for computer hardware in and around the television area.) Normally, inadvertently frying my growing-ancient-but-generally-reliable PC would’ve completely ruined my day. As it was, I took the news about like Baxter eating the whole wheel of cheese: “How’d you do that? Heck, I’m not even mad; that’s amazing.” (And, fortunately, the hard drive, and the dissertoral files therein, were salvageable regardless.)

One much more depressing skeleton at the feast Tuesday night, about which Ted at Gideonse Bible, Chris at DYFL, and others have written eloquently: the passage of the idiotic Proposition 8 in California, which seemingly won with quite a bit of help from first-time Obama voters. It’s irredeemably sad not only that a day that saw so much progress was marred by Prop 8 and its like around the country, but that so many of the voters who helped strike a fatal blow against enduring racial prejudice at the national level seemingly had no qualms about encoding anti-gay bigotry into the California constitution.

Perhaps I’m dense, but I fail to understand how the institution of marriage could somehow be threatened by the state recognizing the unions of same-sex couples, particularly in a day and age when so many straight folk (myself included) have already had marriages that failed. (As my old boss used to say of the thrice-married Bob Barr back when he supported the Defense of Marriage Act: “Which marriage is he defending?”) By the way, particularly galling on the Prop 8 front, I think, is the strong imposition of the Mormon church into the battle on the side of the anti-gay zealots. One would think, of all people, the Mormons might have some sense of the damage that can be wrought by the state involving itself in stringent definitions of marriage. But, no, apparently what was good for two ganders in the eyes of the Mormons isn’t good for the goose. For shame.

Still, the Prop 8 debacle notwithstanding (I have every faith that within a decade, that law will seem as knee-jerk, narrow-minded, and embarrassing as it in fact is), Tuesday was otherwise a great night for America. What it now befalls us to remember is that, while we should savor them while we can, the path of progress before us will likely offer few such moments of jubilation in the months and years ahead. When it comes to change, it really is “uphill all the way.”

Given the economic and diplomatic travails already before President-elect Obama, he’ll have his work cut out for him from jump street. And those out there old enough to remember President Clinton’s first days in office, and how quickly things seemed to go south then (the sanity-restoring ’93 budget bill notwithstanding) will know that a Dem president and Dem Congress is no guarantee of progressive legislation in the offing. We won’t see the change we want — and voted for — without maintaining steady and unyielding pressure on all the machinery of government in the months and years to come. Now is not the time to sit back and let our new president try to do all the heavy lifting, but to stay involved as citizens and keep the progressive ball moving forward. (And, hey, keeping one’s head in the game may help to mitigate those postpartum existential crises The Onion warned us about.)

In an election held eighty years ago (i.e. in the living memory of one Ann Nixon Cooper), Herbert Hoover, the longstanding Secretary of Commerce widely revered as “the Great Engineer” and “the Great Humanitarian,” decisively defeated Al Smith, the Catholic Governor of New York. “Given a chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years,” Hoover had promised in his nomination speech, “we shall soon with the help of God be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation.” And, while he obviously had his detractors, many across the country viewed Hoover as a miracle-worker who could singlehandedly steer the country to these new great heights. “We were in a mood for magic,” journalist Anne O’Hare McCormick wrote of the Hoover inauguration. “We summoned a great engineer to solve our problems for us; now we sat back comfortably and confidently to watch the problems being solved.

For his part, Hoover was less sanguine about his prospects. “They have a conviction that I am some sort of superman, he fretted. “If some unprecedented calamity should come upon the nation…I would be sacrificed to the unreasoning disappointment of a people who expected too much.

Who among us think Hoover a superman now? History doesn’t stop with a war or an election or the collapse of a governing ideology, be it Communism or Conservatism. It grinds inexorably on, always uncertain, always equal parts danger and opportunity, and all too often deeply laced with irony — Time and time again in our American story, nothing succeeds like abject failure, and nothing fails like a great success. So let’s not rest on our laurels by any means: The election of 2008 was a campaign hard-fought and hard-won, but the battle continues, and in many ways the real work before us is only now just beginning.

Let us look to navigate the turbulent waters ahead with a deep and abiding faith in our new captain, but also with our own eyes to the sea.

(Presidents pic via Hal at Blivet and Patrick at Supercres.)

…and Stretched Iron.

By way of Bitten Tongue, the Onion reports on the questionable decision by Paramount to make a movie based on the Iron Man trailer. It’s funny because it’s true…just remember how the film made from this preview turned out. (By the way, one scene they’ll be shoehorning in that surprisingly solid Iron Man trailer: two minutes of Robert Downey Jr. getting cute with repulsorlifts. Um, ok.)

Vote or Die.

“We can’t deny the facts, people. All we will get by electing an African-American is Texas-size space particles crashing into the Earth’s surface, mega-tsunamis that barrel into the Appalachian Mountains, and 6.6 billion dead people.” Howard Wolfson, take notes: By way of The Oak, The Onion preempts a potential Clinton campaign line of attack: “Do We Really Want Another Black President After The Events Of Deep Impact?” “I’m not suggesting that President Freeman was directly responsible for the creation of the Wolf-Beiderman comet or its Earth-bound path. That would be ridiculous. What I am saying is that under the watch of a black man that comet destroyed the entire Eastern seaboard. So, if history is any indicator, a vote for Barack Obama in 2008 is essentially a vote for the complete and total obliteration of the human race.

Faaantastic.

Experts Warn: NBA Season May Begin Sometime In Next Three To Six Weeks.” Yes, it’s true. In fact, our first look at Isiah’s up-tempo tweaks to the Knicks will occur tonight, in a pre-season game against the aging New Jersey Nets. (Yes, I’ll probably watch it, even though the Knickerbockers will no doubt once again be terrible all season. In fact, with that in mind, this may just be the year I finally break down and order the League Pass.)

Garden of Freedom.

“‘We are engaged in a battle with people who hate our team and our way of playing basketball,’ Thomas said in an interview Tuesday. ‘We cannot afford to second-guess ourselves. You are either with the New York Knicks or you are against them.’” It is as we feared. As The Onion reports, Isiah Thomas has no exit strategy for the New York Knickerbockers.

The Duke’s Demise.

Another week, another Republican goes to jail. Today, it’s Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-CA), who once invoked 9/11 to push a flag-burning amendment and whom prosecutors have been eyeing for months. (“Duke,” “Hammer,” “Casino Jack,” “Scooter,” “Mayor of Capitol Hill”…really, the fact that every high-ranking GOP official has a street name should tell you something.) At any rate, Cunningham pleaded guiltyto charges of conspiracy to commit bribery, mail fraud and wire fraud, and tax evasion for underreporting his income in 2004.’…[P]rosecutors said Cunningham admitted to receiving at least $2.4 million in bribes paid to him by several conspirators through a variety of methods, including checks totaling over $1 million, cash, rugs, antiques, furniture, yacht club fees and vacations.

Update: In related news, The Onion has more on the continuing GOP meltdown: “As of [last] Tuesday, Topeka mayor William Bunten, 74, is the nation’s highest-ranking Republican official not facing indictment or public reprimand. ‘I have always prided myself on running a clean campaign, a clean office, and cleaning house when necessary,’ Bunten said. ‘”However, I have no comment on the charges facing my party’s leadership, fundraising apparatus, known associates, or advisory staff.’

Update 2: Via War Room, here’s Boss DeLay on his lieutenant back in June: “Duke Cunningham is a hero…He is an honorable man of high integrity.” Uh, yeah, if you say so.

It’s Funny Because It’s True.

Bad form, I know, but this week’s Onion is particularly amusing. Take, for example, Hundreds Of Republicans Injured In Rush To Discredit Kerry. “‘It’s bad down here,’ Savannah (GA) General Hospital director Lloyd Sautner said. ‘We were still treating hurricane victims when all these politicians were hurt in the whirlwind of manufactured controversy.’” I also liked Bush Campaign More Thought Out Than Iraq War and Terry Gilliam’s Barbeque Plagued by Production Delays.