The Counting Goes On

Temperatures in the low 20s did not stop Minnesotans from counting more ballots yesterday. Coleman's lead has now increased from 120 at the close of business Friday to 180 after Saturday's count. But everything is partisan these days, even vote counting. Coleman has sharply increased challenging what are very likely to be valid votes for Franken so they don't count in the daily totals. For example, Coleman challenged ballots that were unambiguously marked for McCain and Franken on the grounds that anybody who voted for McCain obviously intended to vote for Coleman. Franken could have countered by saying: "OK, let's count all the Obama votes for Franken and all the McCain votes for Coleman" but he didn't, although Obama carried the state by 10%. When the challenges are resolved, we will have a better score. These challenges are merely designed to give the press and the voters the feeling that candidate X is ahead, so if the canvassing board ultimately rejects the bogus challenges, X's supporters will feel robbed and will gladly donate money for subsequent court battles.

Obama Wants to Create 2.5 Million Jobs

During the campaign, Barack Obama promised to invest in fixing America's crumbling infrastructure and create millions of new jobs. Now he has asked his economic advisors to come up with a plan. Bills to paint a bridge here, patch a dam there are easy to get through Congress if enough states and congressional districts get part of the pork. New this time would be an emphasis on wind, solar, and alternative energy. But if a congressman from Arizona is offered a big solar farm he is not going to say no, nor is one from Kansas going to turn down a big windmill farm.

Cabinet Slots Slowly Being Filled

According to the best leaks the following cabinet positions have been filled already:

What is also interesting is people who didn't make it. Politico has a story on five who were hoping for a top job and didn't get it. The hopefuls (and the jobs they wanted) are: Sen. Joh Kerry (Secretary of State), Gov. Bill Richardson (Secretary of State), Richard Holbrooke (Secretary of State), former Gov. Howard Dean (Secretary of Health and Human Services), and Susan Rice (National Security Advisor). Some of these may get other jobs, though, such as Richardson at Commerce and Dean likely somewhere.

Bush Legacy Remains to be Written

While President Bush's approval rating is at an all-time low, sometimes history looks more kindly at Presidents in retrospect than their contemporaries did. But sometimes not. Harry Truman retired in disgrace, but is now seen as a great President. Warren "Teapot Dome" Harding was popular in his time, but is now viewed as incompetent and corrupt. Lyndon Johnson was vilified for the Vietnam War when he was President, but now more and more people realize that he showed immense courage and skill in getting civil rights legislation through Congress. Here's an interesting take from our northern neighbor.

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