Yesterday, President-Elect Barack Obama received his first deep intelligence briefing, also known as The Bad News. Here is what he learned:

1. Chief source of carbon emission: Printing money for the bail-out.

2. The jobless rate counts looking for work as a full-time job.

3. Loose nukes now available only in blister-packs of six.

4. The Taliban are now twice as fierce, having discovered the awesome power of having a good breakfast.

5. World of Warcraft: Totally fact-based.

6. American is unprepared for any biological attack that involves nookie.

7. The fate of the earth depends upon the President taking time every summer to personally fight the invasion of demonic space aliens who look surprisingly like brush.

8. The Constitution was suspended by secret Presidential order in 2002. The country is now governed by a Magic 8-Ball in a secret annex of the National Archive. The good news: Signs point to yes.

9. Sarah Palin accidentally was briefed first. So, yes, Alaska has been engaged in a secret air war with Russia, Africa is now a country…

10. The Iraq War has actually been over since 2005. What’s been going on since then is what counts in Iraq as peace.

11. As the result of extensive plastic surgery, Osama Bin Laden has successfully penetrated this country, and, what’s especially awkward for you, Mr. President-Elect, is that he’s been living in the Chicago suburbs under the name … wait for it … “William Ayers.”

[I know that’s eleven of them. That’s so you can disregard the one you like least. And thanks to Crosbie Fitch for coming up with this idea in his comment on a prior post. Crosbie also points to South Park‘s take on it.] [Tags: obama politics humor ]

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Yesterday Obama received his first “Here’s what’s really going on” intelligence briefing.

[Tags: obama ]

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Obama has posted his tech policy.

It’s like someone who understands and values technology and the Internet was elected president.

By the way, the Change.gov site welcomes our comments.

[Tags: obama net_neutrality e-politics democracy technology ]

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I’m listening to Bob Kuttner on Fresh Air talk about the topic of his book, Obama’s Challenge. He’s saying that FDR led in part by seizing opportunities to teach us, including his very first fireside chat.

Interesting. We are certainly in a “teachable moment,” as they say. And we have a president-elect who is a learner and has actually been a teacher. I’m so ready to be taught. (Of course, I’m so ready for our new president to do everything that our current president can’t manage to do, including learn and lead.)

Here’s Peter Leyden’s talk in Copenhagen last month about how the Obama campaign used the Internet.

[Tags: obama leadership peter_leyden e-politics ]

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If John Kerry had won in 2004, I would have woken up the next day smiling because we had wiped the smirk off America’s face. The long snarl of the Bush administration would have been over.

But this morning I woke up weeping with joy. As I had gone to bed weeping.

Not just because we elected as president a black man — yes, of mixed race, but that’s how it works in this country — although that would have been enough.

Not just because of the wave of joy that his election unleashed.

Not just because that joy itself occasions joy. This was not a grudging acceptance.

But also because something I never even imagined happened yesterday: We not only elected a black person to the presidency, but racial progress itself became a symbol of something larger.

Yesterday I would have said, along with many others, that there is no frame more pervasive, insidious, or toxic than that of race in this country. Today, with our embrace of this man — and his glowing, loving family — we framed race in something larger.

We elected Obama in the face of an old politics of division driven in its extremity to caricature. For once we said no to that. Enough! The global crowd that gathered yesterday was expressing — I believe without facts but with all my heart — its weariness with division and its deep yearning to be together in peace.

The defining moment in our country’s continuing struggle against racism wasn’t about race. We found something bigger. At last, at last.

This is not to say the struggle against racism is over. Of course not. Yesterday did not desegregate our cities or wipe clean our prejudgments. Four years of images of that gorgeous black family in our White House will make a far larger difference, and it will make the difference right at the perceptual level, where our worst prejudices cower.

To live up to the ideal we just embraced, we have to do intentionally what Obama does by nature. He listens to those with whom he disagrees, but he responds only to the goodness expressed in even the most fear-driven of statements. Ignore the small, the petty, the self-involved, the defensive, and respond to the moments of goodness in all of us.

This is a practical program. I’ve seen it adopted on purpose and I’ve seen it work. Avoiding getting dragged into negative shoutfests is basic troll management. Learning to hear and respond to what is good and shared in an expression we find detestable is harder. The best teachers do this routinely. We can all learn to do it. We can. Yes, we can.

It is a big part of how Obama brings out the better nature in us. It is a big reason the unrelenting and unreasoned negative campaign aimed at him failed.

It is also a task performed historically all out of proportion by African-Americans. That is a blessing we have not deserved, but could not have survived without.

No more Bush. I felt an almost physical relief. My shoulders rose. My back straightened.

I can look out at the world for the first time in my life and say I am proud to be an American without feeling a need to explain why, and first getting some apologies out of the way.

I know Barack Obama is going to disappoint us. I know I will deeply disagree with some of his policies. But I trust his deliberative process and I trust his open heart.

Our children last night said that they were jealous that my wife and I got to live through the era of great heroes, that we can talk about the times we saw JFK, RFK, and Martin Luther King, Jr., and how we were moved by them.

I told them they had seen that moment tonight. But they knew that already.

And we get four — eight! — more years of watching this man — that one — approach a podium to speak, knowing that our best natures are about to be summoned.

So forgive me for weeping as I relearn that we are not fully human when we are without hope.

[Tags: obama president_obama election politics peace ]

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From Martin Varsavsky:

On November 5th Americans will discover that the world did not hate them. That they just hated Bush.

(Knocking wood.) And (knocking entire old-growth forests) maybe we’ll discover that we don’t have to hate ourselves. May the war between the Red and the Blue begin to end.

It will not be a love-in. In particular, the culture warriors on the left will discover that they didn’t elect a tribal leader. They elected (feverish wood-knocking) a person with liberal values who will continue to repudiate the touchstone liberal issues precisely as touchstones, just as he has done throughout this campaign: Drill, baby, drill, if you can find places where drilling truly wouldn’t hurt the environment. Merit pay for teachers, baby, so long as all teachers are paid respectful wages. Obama’s hope is that we can get past the kneejerk positions that are used to test the loyalty of the faithful, that is, that are used to drive our country apart.

It’s not compromising, in which each side grudgingly gives up a little. It’s certainly not triangulating, by which cowards flee to the least dangerous position. It’s called listening — finding what’s best in what’s being said. It is the only way we heal. It’s what Obama has been about throughout his life.

So, get ready for some hope. It’s going to sting at first.

[Tags: obama politics liberals hope knocking_wood ]

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Remember this “wassup” ad? Here’s the update. BoingBoing says it’s the same cast.

[Tags: politics obama humor ]

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85 versus 95. And we all wish them both well.

[Tags: obama mccain politics ]

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