Ryan Phillippe and the Obama T-Shirt

Better than Fred

New York magazine reports on Alphacat, who does a better Obama impression than SNL's Fred Armisen.

Obama state Google correlations

Courtesy of Kottle...

Check out the correlation generator at StateStats. I'll leave the explanation to the site, but I played around with it for a while, and so far the search for "hybrid" has the highest correlation with "voted for Obama." 

---J.S.

Metaphor for stimulus money that's only barely Obama related

As the Washington Post details today, the government efforts to use infrastructure spending to revive the economy might take a bit too long to ramp up, and people might spend a tax break too quickly. Of course, the economy needs both. Coffee+sugar--long-term stimulus + short-term energy. It's not an exact science...but neither is economics. 

--J.S.

Yet Another Obama Doll

Sure, my newborn son was happy about the University of San Francisco T-shirt, but nothing made him smile like his new Barack Obama doll.

Pointing toward the future with his left hand and ready to pound the podium with his fisted right, this big eared but loveable figurine made both Gavin and his daddy think about the word "change" in a new way (if only for a moment).

---D.R.

Team of rivals

Much has been made about Barack Obama hiring a "team of rivals" in his administration. Some have rightly noted that the term is overblown, and others have noted that the Team of Rivals was not actually all that effective. But the main narrative is that it's an effective way to encourage dissent within the White House.

I want to point out how limited the term "rival" is at least in terms of professional background and to some extent ideology. First of all, before Clinton and Obama fought for the presidency, they were both relatively liberal Democratic senators, a group numbering in the dozens. "Rival" Robert Gates is a member of the Bush administration for sure, and a former director of the CIA, but he is also a former college president, a position that requires tact and fund raising skill as much as intellectual vision. Janet Napolitano is a governor, Eric Holder a former office holder, Larry Summers, a former Treasury Secretary and president of Harvard--all insiders, part of an elite group that has access to real power in the United States. And not only are they insiders, but they are either former or current government office holders or politicians, whose job description includes smoothing rough edges of their own personalities.

It's interesting to note the derivation of the term rival--according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it comes from the Latin, rivalis--meaning "one living on the opposite bank of a stream from another." Or in other words, same stream, different bank.

In a sense, this is a team of rivals not unlike a national Olympic team is a team of rivals. Athletes might compete against one another for years and years, but then are thrown together on the same team every four years--after competing against each other for the same spot on the team. Sound familiar?

--J.S.

Entertainment Weekly on Obama and pop culture

Benjamin Svetkey speculates on what our president-elect might mean for the entertainment industry. My own take is that it won't mean too much immediately, unless you count news programs as entertainment--the interview with Barack and Michele Obama was one of 60 Minutes's largest audience in years. More about that later...

--J.S.