Japan's economy is now officially in recession, according to those in charge of labeling such things, which means that they beat us again. While most believe that the U.S. has already entered a recession, it's not official until we have two consecutive quarters of negative growth, so we're just going to have to wait until January.

The elections are finally over, and the world is starting to seem normal again. Kind of. We also have two new long-awaited bloggers, so I felt that it would be a good time to meta-post. When we started dagblog, we didn't have a clear idea where it was headed. Mostly, we wanted a forum to express ourselves and our wacky ideas about the world, but it was never meant to be just for us. We hoped to bring in a number of talented writers with diverse interests and ideas to share the space.

I plan to make State of the Day a semi-regular feature in which I offer brief commentary on the news of the day. If readers like it, I'll try to do it daily, but no promises.

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Sorry to toot my own prescience, but no one else will do it for me. Last February, when Democratic primary fires still burned brightly, there was a lot of concern among Democrats that McCain would prove to be a formidable candidate because of his experience, military record, media popularity, reputation as a straight-shooter, and appeal among independents. I wanted to write about McCain's chances, but I concluded that attempting to predict the relative importance to voters of experience vs. change, national security vs. economy, straight-shooting vs. smooth-talking, etc.