obama’s cabinet seems to be coming along nicely:

• Secretary of State: Hillary Clinton? (Bill has agreed to disclose his foundation donors; looks like a move forward in the vetting process.)
• Secretary of the Treasury: no choice yet; the short list seems to be Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geitner, and Laura Tyson.
• Secretary of Defense: unknown
• Attorney General: Eric Holder
• Secretary of the Interior: Ken Salazar? mmmmaybe….
• Secretary of Agriculture: Tom Vilsack? Michael Pollan? (the botany of desire is a great book, btw) Charlie Stenholm?
• Secretary of Commerce: Penny Pritzker?
• Secretary of Labor: the short list still looks rather long
• Secretary of Health and Human Services: Tom Daschle
• Secretary of Housing and Urban Development: several options
• Secretary of Transportation: Jane Garvey?
• Secretary of Energy:
• Secretary of Education:
• Secretary of Veterans Affairs: Tammy Duckworth and Max Cleland appear to be in the running
• Secretary of Homeland Security: Janet Napolitano

on monday, the research advisory committee on gulf war veterans’ illnesses issued a report concluding that Gulf War syndrome is a distinct physical condition.

apparently this contradicts earlier findings of the IOM, and it may have an impact on the position taken by the office of the special assistant for gulf war illnesses. then again, it might not. from the website, GulfLINK “was established in August 1995 to provide on-line access to medical, operational, and intelligence documents from the 1990-1991 Gulf War. Its purpose was and is to provide Service members, veterans, and any interested person with information on what happened during that war that might have affected the health of those who served.”

inneresting.

President-elect Barack Obama has offered the nomination of Secretary of Health and Human Services to his close ally Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the former Democratic Senate leader who was an early supporter of Mr. Obama’s run for the presidency.

this is an interesting choice - my preference would be for someone with a more practical health background (but when was the last time we had that, really?), but at least daschle’s been involved in the ongoing discussion about our nation’s health care system.

many other, more erudite sources around the web have pointed out the problems with the media’s scapegoating of the black voter population (which i perpetuated in my post below), so i’ll just link to them rather than replaying all the arguments here.

the moderate voice links to and reprints a portion of the message from kathryn kolbert, president of people for the american way;

a post on dailykos goes after CNN’s sampling methodology among other things (i don’t agree with all of the assertions, but it’s worth the read);

and raymond leon roker at huffpo has even more.

now, that said, if CNN’s sample was correct as to distribution of the black vote (if not the overall percentage of the vote that was cast by black residents of california), it does beg the question as to why 70% of california’s black voters cast a ballot in favor of prop 8. andrew sullivan links to more.

and what of the mormon support? apparently the LDS church pulled out all the stops in supporting prop 8. an LA times op-ed piece looks at the mormons’ own history of non-traditional marriages, opining that “there is no religious group in our country that should be more tolerant of “nontraditional” forms of marriage than those of us whose ancestors were polygamist Mormons, who were persecuted because of their “nontraditional” marriages.”

oh well.

wednesday morning, i bought the last newspaper in the box at my bus stop. i almost never buy hard copies anymore - too much waste. but wednesday’s paper was special, and i figured it would make a nice $.50 keepsake.

by 4:00pm wednesday, there were lines around the city for the “special election edition” of the post. at 6:00, en route to the sisters of mercy¹ gig at the 9:30, a guy tried to sell me a copy of the special edition for five bucks. i told him i’d snagged one that morning from a newspaper box. “no! this is the SPECIAL EDITION!” he insisted.

turns out the one i got is, indeed, the special edition. go figure. now i have to decide what to do with it - frame it? newsprint is awful to keep - too much acid in the paper. or i could sell it on ebay, i suppose.

at the 9:30, both the opening band (a surprisingly good hypernova²) and andrew eldritch mentioned the election results. “congratulations on getting your country back.” AE intoned. and while the concert was good, the only thing that distinguished it from their gig on halloween at the trocadero³ was eldritch’s annoyance with a guy up by the stage.⁴ there’s a certain humor in the contrast between AE’s deep singing voice during lucretia my reflection and his higher-register, leeds-accented threats of bodily harm.

i hear the sons of the city and dispossessed
get down, get undressed
get pretty but you and me
HEY! back the fuck up! do you want me to kick you in the fucking head?
we don’t doubt, we don’t take direction,
lucretia, my reflection, dance the ghost with me

###

in other election news, what’s up with the rampant homophobia evidenced by black voters in california? everyone needs somebody to oppress, i guess.

and so it goes.
____________________________
¹ goth band from leeds. website generally unchanged for nearly a decade.
² rock band from tehran. yup, tehran. amusingly earnest lyrics, good music, annoying flash-based website. click at your own risk.
³ that’s right, i saw them in philly on halloween, and in DC on wednesday. i could drive down to richmond to see them tonight, but that would just be silly.
⁴ and if at all possible, even greater quantities of fake smoke in the air. i have it on good authority that by the middle of the sisters set, the smoke had invaded even the bathrooms, where it was impossible to see one’s reflection in the mirror through the haze.

for awhile there, i was seriously concerned that mccain was going to take virginia by a spread equal to the number of votes nader received. but the commonwealth pulled through it.

mccain’s concession speech was eloquent and gracious. too bad his campaign wasn’t. but it reminded me why i supported him in 2000, and why i was so impressed when i worked briefly with his office in 1997.

and now I want a krispy kreme.

i really, really like this photograph. ap or getty photo, via huffington post.

update: alejna linked to these photos in the comments, and i think they’re well worth main post status. the shoes photo she mentions is here.

sarah palin: no mackenzie allen.

jacob levy, always well-written, asks the following:

At some point I’d like someone to ask some voter who invokes the “people who remind me of me” standard about the arrogance and narcissism of it - what makes you so great that similitude to you is a relevant criterion for the presidency?

amen to that. (although i don’t think those people will necessarily recognize the word “similitude.”)