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Okay, I’m just going to do this and maybe it will relieve some of this “congestion of the brain.” (I learned yesterday that apparently this was a commonly-cited medical condition in the Victorian Age; along the same lines of Alan Moore’s musings in Voice of the Fire I suspect it may be due for a comeback.)

I’m a little weirded-out, since Christmas. Those days between Christmas and the New Year are always kind of an odd limbo, IMO, mind you; it’s like we’re left with this vexing stub at the end of every year as a result of the historical accidents which see the actual Solstice, our beginning-of-winter festival of light, and the change of the calendar year on three different days.

I still don’t feel quite right, though, even per what usually passes for “normal” with me. Everything just seems awfully depressing. What’s the point, how can anyone really be hopeful for the future?

People can, obviously, and I do marvel at it. Today, The Economist front page had a story from its print edition, from back in November, which I’d not seen before. In which the remarkable Arianna Huffington manages to look around American and note the plentiful evidence of a slide toward “third world” status… and then suggest that “2011 is going to be all about hope 2.0.” Seriously? You’re older and wiser than me, good woman, so I would be happy to believe you’re right, but, wow. I don’t know how one can stare into the abyss and see redemption in the darkness, like that. (more…)

i haven’t been paying enough attention to be able to make intelligent predictions about the results of today’s senate primaries, but i can confidently predict how they will be covered (i’d say ‘spun,’ but that phrasing implies the active manipulation of coverage by political operatives, as opposed to the much more depressing reality that the art of spin is more or less obsolete because beltway hack framing is already the operating system that the brains of political reporters run on).

if halter and/or sestak win, we’ll hear about how lincoln and specter are honorable ‘moderates’ who were hounded off the ticket by out-of-state liberal pressure groups & bloggers funding attack ads. this will be presented as the perfectly symmetrical equivalent to the purges and purity tests being carried out against moderate republicans. they will point to this exquisitely balanced rorshach inkblot of hyerpartisanship, and they will bemoan the loss of civility and the extreme ideological rancor as universal and uniform ills of our political discourse across the spectrum. the WH will have very little to say about it, but if pressed for comment they’ll say more or less the same thing.

if lincoln and/or specter win, it will be read as a move to the center as the democratic party recalibrates for the inevitable walloping in november, and a signal that the public is clamoring for their elected officials to work together toward bipartisan solutions. robert gibbs will shout it from the rooftops of pennsylvania avenue. (this will not stop the same commentators five months from now from repeating and implicitly validating GOP assertions to the effect that these moderate democrats are effectively — by virtue of the D after their names — liberals poised to reap the just anger of an electorate in the throes of anti-incumbent fever. it may or may not stop the WH from saying more or less the same thing either before or after the general election.)

just watch, it can only go one of two ways. smart reporters already have two versions ready to file for either contingency. tell me tomorrow whether i’m right.

i got just want i wanted for my birthday: john mccain strapping on his bib and tucking into a big ol’ bowl of shit. today’s q-poll shows huge leads for obama in OH, FL and PA. the rest of us were playing it cool last week, but it looks like gray’s instinct was dead-on.

debate-night pundit commentary notwithstanding, viewers saw obama as the winner by a wide margin, and this week’s polling bears that out, along with reflecting voters’ apparent disgust with mccain’s “suspension” stunt. (the letterman thing probably didn’t help either.) it’s hard to see how the biden-palin debate reverses that dynamic. and don’t forget, voters still have two more opportunities to see mccain, cranky and up past his bedtime, behave like a petulant child as obama debates circles around him.

34 days to go. tick-tock…