President Obama gave a speech today in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Billed as a speech on the economy, it may provide an early forecast of what is likely to be the overarching theme of Obama's State Of The Union speech next month. While this speech has not gotten a whole lot of attention so far, one phrase of it is garnering some mild interest: the idea that America is experiencing a "Sputnik moment." What remains to be seen is whether this talking point is going to catch on and become an actual Democratic narrative next year. It certainly is worth mentioning, due to the almost complete lack of any Democratic narrative these days. Whether it inspires the public's imagination, though, is an even tougher row to hoe.

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So the good news this week was apparently that giant mutant space monsters are not, in fact, about to arrive and (assumably) enslave humankind and eat our children for snacks.

In other news...

Sigh.

What caused the alien freakout was a press release by N.A.S.A., in which they announced the discovery of an arsenic-based lifeform, which could be a clue in the search for extraterrestrial life. The carbon-based lifeforms on the blogosphere interpreted this to mean saucers full of bug-eyed monsters would soon be landing on the White House lawn, which (shockingly) turned out not to be the case. Whew!

On a more serious note, this week dawned full of promise, and is ending in a rather downbeat fashion for Democrats. The current subject of discussion among Democrats on Capitol Hill seems to be not whether, but in fact how much President Barack Obama is going to cave on the Bush tax cuts fight. That, to be blunt, is not a very good place to end the week on.

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[Below, in lieu of my usual daily article, is my weak attempt to convince everyone to dig deep, open your wallet, and send this site lots of your spare money. Truth be told, I hate these pledge drive sorts of things myself, and I fully admit I'm not very good at it, right up front. My plea below tends to meander all over the place before trying to brainwash you into making a fat PayPal donation (before your mental powers recover). But then, I guess, that's what you would be supporting in general, since that's kind of what we do here, isn't it? Well, except for the bit about brainwashing you into sending money, I was referring only to the "meandering all over the place" part of that, really. Plus, as a bonus today, there are kittens.

If you're interested merely in helpful nuts-and-bolts details on how to donate, please click on the fundraising logo (which should now appear both on the main page, and at the top of every article), and you'll get to such practical instructions. I know that both the instructions and the logo need a bit more work, I'll try to improve both this weekend. I should also mention that any donations you make are in no way tax deductible, so don't try to claim me on your 1040, because it won't work. Just to warn you. ]

The ChrisWeigant.com 2010 Holiday Fundraising Drive Kickoff

For your viewing enjoyment this year, we introduce... (drumroll, please...):

Kittens!

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Remarkable Stability

President Obama just had his most stable month ever in the public opinion polls. This month also caps off a truly remarkable year of polling stability for Obama.

Of course, were you to just read the headlines or listen to the soundbites on television, you may have a different impression. "Obama's poll numbers tanking!" seems to be the conventional stupidity (I just can't bring myself to call such nonsense "wisdom" even with a qualifier) parroted in the media for roughly the past year.

True, Obama's poll numbers did "tank" in 2009, but since then they have neither dropped precipitously nor recovered -- they have remained fairly stable. Which is the story pretty much everyone has been missing.

Before we get to all of that in more detail, let's take a look at the updated chart for Obama:

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America could be on the verge of finally getting rid of the officially-sanctioned discrimination against citizens willing to serve their country in uniform because of their sexual orientation. Then again, it could be on the verge of setting up an even bigger fight on the issue outside the halls of Congress. Either way, this historic debate is about to be put front and center in the political world this week.

The two officers charged with surveying the military's opinion on life after "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) have now issued their report. As was previously leaked, this report shows pretty plainly that the overwhelming majority of the people currently serving in the military would not have any problem with allowing gays to openly serve their country.

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President Barack Obama has a busy week scheduled, as Congress begins the lame duck session. Everyone in Washington has a few busy weeks ahead, until the 111th Congress wraps up business and heads off into the sunset, but President Obama will be at the center of this whirlwind. So it's worth taking a look at how the week is going to play out. To put it in football-watching terms, we're just returning from the "two-minute warning" commercial break, in the fourth quarter. And anything could happen.

Tonight, Congress may pass a few things which in normal times would be fairly unremarkable and likely passed by voice vote only, but in these partisan times may be fought tooth and nail by Republicans eager to deny any legislative victory to the president. The Senate is taking up the radical issue of insuring the safety of America's food, for instance. Listen for news from the Right that this is some sort of Socialist plot, I guess.

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[Program Note: I'm sneaking out of the office early for Thanksgiving this year. Below is last year's column, which I've posted for two reasons: (1.) the link to the Thanksgiving Proclamation site is worth it on its own, and (2.) it fills what would otherwise be a noticeably empty column space here today. If you'd like something better to read right before Thanksgiving, you could always look up my first Thanksgiving column, one of my early attempts at humor. It's a bit dated (you may have to Google some of the names to remember the references), I warn you. Have a happy Thanksgiving everyone (except our neighbors up in Canada, who got the whole holiday out of the way with weeks ago, of course)! This column will return next Monday, just in time for prime lame duck season.]

This article originally appeared November 26, 2009.

Because yesterday's column was a wee bit un-holiday-spirit-ish, I offer up my thanks today. I am thankful for the web. I am thankful that I can sit in front of a machine and have at my fingertips perhaps not the sum of human knowledge, but a pretty close approximation (the closest the race has ever seen since, perhaps, the library at Alexandria).

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It's going to be a short one today, folks. Since Congress is on yet another one of its week-long vacations, politically it has been a pretty slow week. Even the mainstream media is left fanning the flames of the airport security foofaroo in a desperate attempt to fill their allotted timeslots, in the absence of any real news out of Washington. Well, actually, even if there were such news coming out of Washington, the media would likely still be distracted by the shiniest object in their (quite limited) ability to perceive these things.

But, media-bashing aside, all we've got for you today is a series of unconnected musings, which of course leads us to the altar at which Herb Caen worshipped: Three-Dot Journalism. So without further ado (and with lots of ellipses... of course), we bring you the following random thoughts...

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[With apologies, of course, to Dean Jonathan Swift.]

The Transportation Safety Administration (T.S.A.) is now finding out what it is like to be caught as the bad guy in a viral video. Corporations now take this sort of thing seriously, ever since an airline smashed a flier's guitar and got lambasted for it in an online video (which turned out to be wildly popular). But the T.S.A. is a government agency, meaning that the normal corporate defenses (a vast P.R. campaign, for starters) are not likely to do much good. The People (well, some of them...) are absolutely fed up, and they're demanding change, after all. However, the fickle nature of public opinion means that if security is loosened and a plane blows up as a direct result, The People will then be screaming "Why didn't you keep us safe?!?" It seems an unsolvable problem, which is why I write today in the hopes of offering a constructive new idea to the debate.

A quick review of the problem is necessary to understand all the complexities involved. In the early days of aviation, Americans who flew commercial flights did not have to surrender their Fourth Amendment rights in order to do so. They were not searched in any way. This all changed in the 1970s, with a wave of hijackings. Some people, knowing they wouldn't be searched, carried weapons onto planes and then threatened to use these weapons in order to hold the plane hostage. These people hijacked planes for various reasons -- some political, some merely monetary (collecting a ransom to let everyone go, for the most part).

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Well, I don't know about anyone else, but I thought that was a pretty good week for Democrats.

Maybe it's just the subject matter I've been tackling this week, that could contribute to my spirit of optimism, I suppose. I began the week examining the increasing and interesting struggle for power between the Tea Party Republicans and the entrenched-establishment Republicans, which is always both fascinating and amusing. Tuesday, I reflected on heroism as President Obama awarded the first Medal of Honor that went to a living recipient since the Vietnam War -- an uplifting subject matter if there ever was one. Wednesday, I got to interview the chairman of the Populist Caucus, Representative Bruce Braley, who was a little-noticed success story for Democrats in the midterm election (he had millions in outside anonymous donor money spent against him in some vicious attack ads, but instead of retreating from being a Democrat he proudly stood up for Democrats' recent achievements in his campaign -- and he won re-election as a result). And yesterday I wrote what could be read as a preamble to today's column, about Democrats and the lame duck session of Congress (more on this in a bit). [You can read any of these at my site, as I didn't want to over-link this paragraph with all the individual article citations.]

All in all, pretty positive subject matter all around. Of course, there were a few disappointments, but on the whole what I would call a pretty good week for Democrats -- something they haven't enjoyed in a while.

But mostly the optimism centers around what could happen, and not what actually has happened yet. Meaning that, once again, I have gotten my hopes up a bit. Perhaps this is naive and they will come crashing down to reality by New Year's Day, but that's the risk you always take when quaffing from the eternal spring waters of Hope.

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