Hello, daggers. Thank you so much for all your for dedication, hard work, and sacrifice this past year. A special shout out to Orlando for delivering the once-red state of Indiana.

It's bad enough the government will soon be doling out billions and billions of taxpayer dollars to bail out the bloated, mismanaged U.S. auto industry.

But please, please, do not give any of that money to the nation's car dealers.

I first learned about the concept of micro-lending in 1996, when I had the opportunity to meet Muhammad Yunus of the Grameen Bank. Professor Yunus founded the bank in 1983, to provide small loans to poor Bangladeshi women who wanted to start small businesses. To date, the bank has served over seven million women and, in 2006, Professor Yunus and the Grameen bank were the recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Funny short by filmmaker Ilya Chaiken, set during the great power outage of '03. It was a bizarre moment in New York. The city stopped for almost 24 hours, depending on where you lived. People couldn't get up to their high-rise apartments or hotel rooms. I had a date scheduled that night, but with the mobile network down, I couldn't reach her, so I went to find a friend of mine instead. I had to creep up a dark stairwell, using my cell phone as a flashlight, to leave a note on her door.

Many of you out there share my disappointment in California's approval of Proposition 8.  However, over the last week I've heard too many voices, even those rising from prominent gay communities like the Castro district, that have been far too quick to blame black voters for the proposition's passage.  The evidence being offered here, we are told, comes from exit polls.  How solid is this data?  As it turns out, not very.

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've always been a bit puzzled by our rush to declare something over. I suppose it shouldn't be so surprising since, as a nation, we suffer from a mad case of ADD, always enthusiastically moving on to the next new craze, be it hula hoops, cabbage patch dolls, energy drinks, or those cute boy bands made up of brothers with floppy hair.

For more information about protests in NYC go to http://theimpactinnyc.devinguinn.com or http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=33598248873.

Find out about protests in your area at JoinTheImpact.com.

The day after Obama won the election, a Republican friend of mine on Facebook joined a group that planned on getting together on Inauguration Day to mourn 'The End of Capitalism as We Know It'*.

Members of the group were waxing bitter in the message board, complaining about how Obama was a socialist who was going to destroy the U.S. economy.

I had to laugh ... and cry.

As if this year didn't suck enough, Random House and Ann Coulter are leaving one last skid mark on our soiled 2008 Fruit of the Looms before the Waterford drops.

Behold it in all of its glory. Yup, nothing rings in holiday cheer quite like the Coultergeist. I put it a notch below running down the stairs at Grammy's Christmas morning to find the severed head of 'Geoffrey the Giraffe' under the tree.

And in keeping with the spirit of the holidays Random House is keeping the title of the comic book a secret -

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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Day 7.
T + 168 hours since the electoral map Doctors told me it was a 'B.'

10,080 minutes since my grey matter learned happiness could venture beyond the 'first slice of Fudgie the Whale' territory. (Not even the thought of Chuck Todd doing 'Just for Men - Facial Hair' pitch work in 20 years could hold a candle)

Yup, it was grand, euphoric, spectacularly refreshing. Step right up, jut your hand into my 10-gallon hat of ripped up positive adjectives, pull two out and I'll nod in agreement (Magnificently...Grandiose...Sure, that'll do).

Obama recently gave his first press conference as President Elect despite the fact that "President Elect" is not actually an office.

Ring the bell, school's back in, break it down ... Stop. Question time!

10) Ok, several days have passed. Are you still smiling and dancing, or do you find yourself suffering a bit from some sort of post-partum-like depression?

9) Not that I would know anything about this, but which is a more important element of looking good on the dance floor: Rhythm or self-confidence?

8) So I turned 35 this week. Is it lame that one of the things that most annoys me about this age is that I can no longer check off the 18-34 age group in surveys?

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.

As has been well documented at TPM, John McCain ran a deceitful, jingoistic, superficial, nationalistic campaign which grew ever more incendiary towards the end. But there is one place that McCain did not go. He did not ultimately base his campaign on racial polarization. Yes, there were a few subtle coded messages, and McCain's attacks on Obama's patriotism harbored a racial undercurrent. Yes, there were Muslim rumors and Rev. Wright ads by third parties that McCain failed to publicly deplore.

Looks like Prop 8 is going to pass in California. It's a shame that on a historic night in American politics, the voters of one of this country's bluest states may have decided to take a step backward for civil rights. Hate to throw out anything negative out there on a day like today, but the lack of leadership on gay marriage by leading Democratic politicians, including our President-elect and Vice President-elect, is probably one of the reason the progress has been halting at best on the issue.

Not that it matters, but for the record: Nader may have cost Obama Missouri; Barr may have cost McCain North Carolina. Also, if Franken loses, he can thank Jesse Ventura acolyte Dean Barkley. Chambliss, unfortunately, appears to be eking out a victory, but if he doesn't, Libertarian Allen Buckley will have played a part. (FYI, Chambliss must break 50% to avoid a runoff.)