For the first time since the Vietnam War, a Medal of Honor has been awarded to a living serviceman. The Medal of Honor is the highest military award America bestows, and not very many of them are handed out, so this is indeed news. There have been other Medal of Honor recipients since Vietnam, but all of them have been awarded posthumously -- a telling statement on the type of bravery it takes to earn this medal. And, inevitably, the word "hero" is used to describe the recipient.

But I've noticed something profoundly basic over the years -- heroes never call themselves heroes. Or, at least, not the ones I've ever seen or heard of. I really don't know why this is, maybe it is subjective on my part. Maybe I'm only noticing the ones who reject the label. But Army Staff Sergeant Sal Giunta, today's Medal of Honor recipient, seems to conform to this perception -- he really gets almost insulted that he's getting an award when other people around him aren't. Giunta voices this feeling in a stunning video which was shot by an embedded reporter.

The basic question of who, exactly, is a "hero" has always kind of interested me in a philosophical way. At times, the word gets bandied about in situations I would say just don't qualify (a "sports hero," for instance). But when we are at war, this sort of broadening of the scope of the term seems to shrink back considerably, so as not to cheapen the word when we have soldiers in the field.

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Republicans in Congress are going to be interesting to watch for the next two years, as they try to cope with the influx of the Tea Party Republicans who have just been elected to office. Some of these skirmishes are happening already, as both parties prepare to hold their official party caucus meetings this week, where they will vote on their leadership positions and on their policies for the next Congress. The Tea Party Republicans failed to elevate Representative Michele Bachmann to the lowest rung of the House leadership positions, causing her to withdraw her candidacy last week. But just today, the Tea Partiers seem to have won a policy battle over in the Senate, as the establishment Republican leader Mitch McConnell just announced that he has seen the light on banning earmarks -- a dramatic reversal of his position up to this point.

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Send in the clowns!

No, that's not a statement on Congress returning to Washington next week. Although if you choose to read it that way, I certainly can't stop you, can I? Ahem.

But for anyone who thinks that American voters just elected a bunch of clowns to represent them in Washington, I humbly draw your attention to Brazil, where they just elected a real clown to their Congress.

Francisco Silva, better known as "Tiririca" (or "Grumpy the Clown"), not only won his recent election in Brazil, but he received almost twice as many votes as any other candidate. Voters sent their message loud and clear -- We want the clown! The Brazilian political establishment is apparently not amused, as they are reportedly forcing Silva to take a literacy test before they'll allow him to serve.

In other clowning around, the media were quick to pounce on President Obama's use of "Slurpee" in his rambling "car in a ditch" metaphor, when the press corps decided to call the upcoming meeting of Obama and the new congressional leaders a "Slurpee Summit." What is it with this president and beverage-themed summitry? Sigh. The 7-Eleven corporation, naturally, took this metaphor and ran with it, to make a few bucks. Hey, if they can mine the media's idiocy for profits, then "more power to them" is what I say.

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I realize that today of all days I should be writing about veterans, and their contributions, and honoring their memory. If I had done so, I likely would have written about the organization Patriots' Pride, who is organizing marches and rallies today to call attention to the reality of gay veterans who have served our country's military in the past; or perhaps I would draw attention to the letter which appeared on the Get Equal site from the first gay Marine to be discharged under the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. I mention this not in any disrespect to all the other veterans who have served their country, but because "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is currently coming to a political showdown in the next few weeks.

But others will write such articles today, so I merely mention the subject in passing -- while wishing everyone a happy Veterans' Day, of course.

Instead, I'd like to address an issue of national security. An issue which also has enormous geopolitical and economic repercussions as well. But I'm going to take a roundabout way of getting to the point, I should warn everyone. Hey, by all rights, I shouldn't even be writing a column on a holiday, so you'll have to bear with me, I guess.

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President Obama conveniently scheduled a trip to Asia immediately after this year's midterm elections. This has worked, so far, as designed -- it removed Obama from the political scene in Washington, while serious jockeying for position takes place among both major American political parties (leadership elections will be one of the first things the lame duck Congress will do when it reconvenes next week). This also has allowed Obama a pause to consider exactly what his next political steps are going to be, now that he faces two years of a politically-divided Congress (with Republicans in charge of the House, and Democrats still nominally in charge of the Senate).

Once Obama returns to the banks of the Potomac, however, he's going to have to chart a new way forward for his administration. And before he even considers what to do about the 112th Congress, he's going to have some more immediate choices to make. These initial choices will be Obama's first steps towards which way he's going to turn in his "midcourse correction." Obama will first have the opportunity to reshape his administration's makeup, and then he will have all sorts of opportunities over the next two months with the lame duck Congress.

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[UPDATED BELOW -- 6:45 P.M., November 9, 2010]

A missile apparently launched out of the ocean 35 miles west of Los Angeles last night, and the Pentagon has no idea what or whose it was. Now, I realize that we've all gotten a bit blasé over such things since the end of the Cold War, but this should really be front-page news, don't you think? If anyone either in the military or outside of it (a private American contractor who builds missiles, for example) got permission for such a launch, the Pentagon really should know something about it -- which they appear not to. Because if this was merely a matter of missed communications, that's one thing -- but any other plausible reason would be truly alarming. And the lack of knowledge at the Pentagon is disturbing, to say the least, when we're talking missiles being launched that close to one of America's biggest cities.

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Democrats in the 111th Congress may be down, but they are not quite out yet. Due to the quirky nature of our political calendar, the "old" Congress will reconvene in a week or so, and stay in session through December, and then the "new" or incoming Congress will be convened for the first time in January. What, if anything, this "lame duck session" will accomplish is an open question. They certainly won't have any shortage of issues to tackle, and this may well be the last chance Democrats get at moving their agenda forward for the next two years. Whether they will take this window of opportunity to do so or not remains to be seen, though.

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An interesting article caught my eye last week, but what with all the election hoopla, I haven't had a chance to write about it before now. But even if it went mostly unnoticed by the public at large, it was an important and downright scathing indictment of the Democrats' complete inability to get their message out, so it certainly fits in with our theme here on Fridays. Some may feel, perhaps, that the word "indictment" is too strong to use here. I disagree. In fact, I'll make the statement even stronger: this article is an absolute epitaph -- which should be carved into the gravestone laid on top of the corpse of the Democrats' efforts to communicate their virtues to the voters in the 2010 midterm elections.

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The 2010 midterm election's dust is finally beginning to settle. So far, I have avoided writing directly about it, mostly because there are so many other "what it all means" opinions out there available for public consumption right now -- which leaves little to be said that someone else hasn't likely already remarked upon. Also, elections are exhausting for political wonks, and I'm just now getting back up to regular speed on things. I must admit, I still don't have an overarching snapshot of the election, or of the future consequences on the next two years. You'll have to forgive me, but my thoughts are still a bit disjointed and less-than-cohesive. Today's column will reflect this, as I weave around the edges of the midterm election's impact.

To prove this point, perhaps, I'd like to open with a song lyric that's been running through my head from the British rock giants The Who. Now, this song has been a rock anthem and a staple on the radio pretty much since the day it was released, but it has recently been introduced to a younger generation for a new reason. I've always maintained that the song contains the absolute best maniacal scream in all of rock history (Rockdom?), bar none. This was duly noticed by the folks putting together a television show a few years ago, so a lot of people now know the song best through the clip played at the beginning of CSI: Miami. But the television theme, while making full use of this wonderful rock scream, mostly avoids the rest of the lyrics. This is no accident, as the song -- "Won't Get Fooled Again" -- is not only revolutionary in nature, but it's one of the most interesting revolutionary songs of the 1960s era. Instead of a "call to arms" or other revolutionary fervor, The Who decided to answer the question: "What happens the day after the revolution?" Which makes it fairly unique, lyrically (I should mention that it's also a great song, but that's really immaterial here for our purposes).

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A mixed bag for Obama

I realize there are other things to talk about on the day after Election Night 2010. Even if you restrict the subject matter to "President Barack Obama," I should by all rights be talking about his post-election statement and press conference this morning. But the calendar is the calendar, and I've already put this column off once for the election (it really should have run Monday...), so here we go with our monthly look at Obama's poll numbers. If you should feel a lack of content discussing the election is going to dissuade you from reading this column, I direct you to the entire rest of the media universe, where you can surely get your fill of that sort of thing today. This will be a more-abbreviated version of our Obama Poll Watch column, because there are so many other things to talk about today. We'll just take a quick look at Obama's poll numbers this month, and then everyone can get back to figuring out what this election "meant."

Obama got a mixed bag of candy and rocks this Hallowe'en, at the close of October. Feel free to make your own comparisons to the mixed election results, but we're talking here about the month leading up to the elections. Obama was out on the campaign trail in a big way, and his numbers were both up and down as a result. Let's take a look at the chart:

[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]

October, 2010

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