Sometime in January, we were driving Dybbuk, then just about to turn five, home from his Aunt Feygeleh’s when he blurted out, “What about Obama?”

Nonplussed, Domestic Partner and I reacted exactly as we had when my youngest brother’s daughter informed us she had just had her First Holy Communion—we fell silent, gave each other a quick glance, and simultaneously yelled “Congratulations!”

In this case, after the silence and the quick glance, we simultaneously said, “What about him?”

As I’d reported earlier, Dybbuk had been transformed by Feygeleh, who essentially acts as his third parent, into a raging, Hillary-hating Obamaniac.

Dybbuk had been a wiseass for as long as we could remember. One day during his second year, I found myself covered in regurgitated milk, I asked him whether he’d just spit on me, or if he’d actually thrown up. He answered, “I threw down.” Days later, I stopped him from pulling his mother’s hair and said “that hurts, how’d you like if I did that to you?” I gently gave his hair a yank. He responded by pulling it himself and laughing while repeating, “Daddy, ouch!” His latest forum for mischief was Hebrew school. The teacher had asked the class to improvise a play about the Sabbath, and Dybbuk asked why the topic had to be something Jewish.

Don't vote for any Republicans at the federal level, regardless of your opinions on social and foreign policy issues, on generational equity grounds. And don't vote for any incumbents of either party in the New York State Legislature, on generational equity grounds; because they have favored (former) producers of public services to an unfair degree over consumers of such services (other than the super rich who do not require them); because they have represented the interests of those with special deals, privileges and favors over those without; and because New York State barely be classified as a democracy.  The vote is symbolic, but if you are going down to vote for President anyway, take the opportunity to vote no.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/02/AR2008110202309.html

The responses to my unapologetically pro-Obama pieces on this election have come in two varieties; The first is where some Cro-Magnon, usually a pro-life lunatic or a Republican operative, vents their spleen:

“So let me get this.. about people of color….yes, because if this election has taught us nothing else it's that any comment made, no matter how true, must be motivated by racial hatred unless it equates to fawning over a candidate. Truly pathetic.”

During the discussion thread on a piece I published about three weeks ago called “The_Return_of_the_Welfare_Queen”, about the Republican effort to create a straw man/scapegoat story about a purported Democratic/ACORN conspiracy to commit voter fraud on a national scale, I got into a discussion with an anonymous poster who was quite obviously a Republican operative peddling a discredited fairy tale about how, two years ago, a black Democrats won a Westchester State Senate election by bussing in loads of ineligible voters from the Bronx.

Miffed by this idiocy I wrote: “Of course, you didn't have the evidence to prove it in court, but when has that ever stopped the Republicans from spreading libelous lies about people of color?

Every five years the U.S. Census Bureau conducts a census of government employment and finances in the United States. The finance data for 2007 is due out next summer; the employment data was released (thus far on their “ftp” site only) last week. It will take a great deal of work data for me to reorganize the data for states and counties (including data for all local governments within a county) into usable form, as I did for 2002. To put the election for President into perspective, however, I have whipped up a summary of federal, state and local government employment at the national level (attached). The data show that the federal government accounted for just 12.3% of the 22 million U.S. government employees in 2007. A few exclusively federal categories, national defense and international relations, the post office and the space program, accounted for more than half of all federal workers. Excluding as well other functions that are primarily divided between federal and state governments, such as social insurance administration (mostly Social Security at the federal level, unemployment insurance at the state level) and natural resources, the federal government accounted for just 2.6% of government employment. These categories, and (more importantly) state universities and prisons, account for most state government jobs.

Looking at the vast majority of government functions, local governments account for 85% of total government employment. Federal governments collect and distribute money, but local governments do the work. The next President will only directly administer, for the most part, national defense, the post office, and collection and distribution of money via Social Security and the IRS. He will influence much else, but only in association with the Congress and state governments, which control the flow of funds to other organizations. Obama vs. McCain is just one piece of the decision. Aside from foreign and military issues, control of Congress and the State Senate are as important or more important.

http://www.politickerny.com/azipaybarah/332/billionaires-helping-maltese

 Serf Maltese, the Republican State Senator facing a tough re-election race against Democratic City Councilman Joe Addabbo, is getting help from two billionaires today.First, Michael Bloomberg will campaign with Maltese in his Western Queens district this afternoon.