Day: November 5, 2008

The Blue Land of Enchantment

Tom Udall won the senate seat 61-39.

Congressional districts 1 and 2, both currently held by Republicans, went to the Democratic candidates 55-45. The third seat (Udall is the incumbent) went to the Democrat 56-30-14.

Obama won New Mexico 57-42.

New Mexicans approved $14.7 million for senior citizen facilities; $11 million for public, academic and tribal libraries; $57.9 million for health facilities; and $140.1 million for special school and higher education facilities.

Best line of the day, Obama-style

Atrios had this item from Newsweek’s Special Election Project:

The debates unnerved both candidates. When he was preparing for them during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying, “I don’t consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, ‘You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.’ So when Brian Williams is asking me about what’s a personal thing that you’ve done [that’s green], and I say, you know, ‘Well, I planted a bunch of trees.’ And he says, ‘I’m talking about personal.’ What I’m thinking in my head is, ‘Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I f—ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective’.”

It’s a long story

As I was putting my older son to sleep last night, I had just heard about Ohio. I explained to the boy that Obama was going to win the election and become the first African-American President of the United States. The boy looked up at me, eyes filled with wonder, as one’s kids will on occasion, and said, “Really? The first? How can that be?”

ari — The Edge of the American West

November 5th

Today is the birthday

… of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Art Garfunkel, 67. Bridge Over Troubled Water

… of Sam Shepard. He’s 65. An inductee as a playwright into the Theatre Hall of Fame, Shepard was also nominated for the best actor Oscar for playing Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff.

… of Peter Noone (Herman of Herman’s Hermits). He’s 61. No, Peter isn’t in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter

… of Bill Walton, 56. He’s in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

… of football hall-of-famer Kellen Winslow. He’s 51.

… of Bryan Adams, 49.

… of Oscar-winner Tilda Swinton, 48.

… of Tatum O’Neal, 45. Miss O’Neal won the best supporting actress Oscar at age 10 for Paper Moon.

Vivien Leigh (who died at age 53) was born on this date in 1913. Miss Leigh was voted best actress twice — for Katie Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind (opposite Clark Gable) and for Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (opposite Marlon Brando).

Leonard Franklin Slye was born in Cincinnati on this date in 1911. As Roy Rogers he’s an inductee into the Country Music Hall of Fame, the only person to be elected twice — as the King of the Cowboys and as a founder of the Sons of the Pioneers (“Tumbling Tumbleweeds,” “Cool Water“). Rogers died in 1998.

The journalist Ida Tarbell was born on this date in 1857.

By the early 1900s, John D. Rockefeller Sr. had finished building his oil empire. For over 30 years, he had applied his uncanny shrewdness, thorough intelligence, and patient vision to the creation of an industrial organization without parallel in the world. The new century found him facing his most formidable rival ever–not another businessman, but a 45-year-old woman determined to prove that Standard Oil had never played fair. The result, Ida Tarbell’s magazine series “The History of the Standard Oil Company,” would not only change the history of journalism, but also the fate of Rockefeller’s empire, shaken by the powerful pen of its most implacable observer.

. . .

“The History of the Standard Oil Company” would be hailed as a landmark in the history of investigative journalism, as well as the most comprehensive study of the building of Rockefeller’s oil empire. In 1999 it was listed number five among the top 100 works of twentieth-century American journalism. …

American Experience

Eugene V. Debs was born on November 5th in 1855.

Labor leader, radical, Socialist, presidential candidate, Eugene Victor Debs was a homegrown American original. He formed the American Railway Union, led the Pullman strike of the 1890’s in which he was jailed, and emerged a dedicated Socialist. An idealistic, impassioned fighter for economic and social justice, he was brilliant, eloquent and eminently human. As a “radical” he fought for women’s suffrage, workmen’s compensation, pensions and social security — all commonplace today. Five times the Socialist candidate for president, his last campaign was run from federal prison where he garnered almost a million votes.

Labor Hall of Fame

Morons

Via Daily Kos

Campbell Brown: For those people who have been worried about the possibility of one party controlling Congress and the White House, the last president to do that, of course, was….?

John King: Ah, that was Bill Clinton, and…

Brown: Jimmy Carter! Jimmy Carter had… Bill Clinton had Democrats in the House and in the Senate?

King: Very briefly.

Brown: Very briefly. [Crinkles her nose] Didn’t go so well.

King: No it didn’t.

OK, class: Who was the last president to have one-party control of both houses of Congress?