Most memorable moment:

Standing 20 ft. away from our president-elect in a crowd of 50,000 with my son on my shoulders on a beautiful fall day listening to history being made .

Resolutions:

1) (Yes, cliche) Health--I actually began this goal in the late summer/early fall of 2008, but I wish to continue losing weight.  While I should be around 160-170 for my height, I got up to about 220.  I am now at 192, so I lost about 28 or so pounds already (this Chicago food does not help my cause).  I also quit smoking and took up jogging.  I now run about 4 miles and ride my bike 6 miles every other day, and walk about two miles every day.  I hope to reach my goal sometime in the spring of losing another 20 to 30 pounds.

2) PhD program.  I have my emphasis picked out (American Studies ) and my school of choice.  Now I have to get three letters of recommendation which, besides the rush for a due date by Feb. 15, should not be too difficult, and my letter of intent (much more difficult) completed. If I don't complete it this year, it will not be the end of the world--my wife actually wants to stay put, but she realizes I have further ambitions so will accomodate me.   I have been putting it off for a couple of years, so I think I should make it top priority now that my kids are walking (i.e. fending for themselves).  Which leads me to #3:

3) Be a better father and husband.  Hey, I'm doing pretty good under the circumstances of being an Attachment Parenting dad, but there is always room for improvement.  Especially now that the little ones are fending for themselves. :-)

4) Maintain my own blog and keep a regular voice here at SC.  I believe writing is important, and what better way to write than to use the wonderful medium of the web to give a voice to yourself.  My blog is called "Signicide " (h/t to a colleague at my university for the clever Derridean title.  He said he would use it for a band which will never come to fruition, and he is computer illeterate for the most part, so I think I'm safe in 'borrowing' it).  The website is not much to marvel at at the moment, but I hope to improve it over the coming year (if Brendan wishes to add the site to the 'Member Blogs' list, he has my permission).  I also hope to maintain a more regular showing here.

I hope everyone success in their own resolutions!

Sarah Palin most desirable celebrity neighbor: poll

If they had to live next door to a celebrity, American adults would most like to be neighbors with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and chat show host Oprah Winfrey.

...

Republican vice presidential candidate Palin topped the poll of most desirable celebrity neighbors with 14 percent, closely followed by Winfrey, who was particularly popular with women.

You go girl!  :)

"The Good, the Bad, and Joe Lieberman" and can be seen in full here:

www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/02/wolcott200902

Here's some excerps:

"Maddow’s sparky enthusiasm at being the new kid on the block stood in marked contrast with the granitic monotone of Fox News hosts such as Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, who tried to gin up scary-Obama controversy with their customary one-two of jabbing fingers and gritted dentures, relying on a right-wing playbook from the Clinton-bashing era that’s as stale as one of Roger Ailes’s old stogies."

"Poetic justice doesn’t get more perfectly crafted than the spectacle of Fox News political analyst Karl Rove—Bush’s “brain,” the intellectual architect of the permanent Republican majority, the reigning dean of the Lee Atwater school of cutthroat division, ...watching his dream castle wash out to sea as Pennsylvania and Ohio went for Obama, and with it his hope of spending the rest of history gloating with both baby cheeks."

"Michael Barone, a once stolid and reliable fixture (co-author of the authoritative Almanac of American Politics and senior writer at U.S. News and World Report) who has slanted so far right in recent years that the straw has come out of his head. A week after the election, in a speech in Chicago, he gave voice to quite a faux pas. “A roomful of academics erupted in angry boos Tuesday morning,” wrote Mike Allen and Andy Barr at Politico in one of the year’s cheeriest ledes, “after political analyst Michael Barone said journalists trashed Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republicans’ vice presidential nominee, because ‘she did not abort her Down syndrome baby.’ ” Beneath the jovial masks of his fellow journalists lurked a ghoulish zealotry, Barone claimed. “They wanted her to kill that child.… I’m talking about my media colleagues with whom I’ve worked for 35 years.” The boos and angry walkouts provoked by Barone’s aspersions were the first clues that his speech wasn’t going over very well. In an apologetic e-mail explaining how his big mouth had strayed into foul territory, Barone wrote that he “was attempting to be humorous and … went over the line.” Abortion humor in a roomful of academics—gee, what could possibly go wrong? Barone’s self-inflicted injury was clinching evidence of how Ann Coulter’s callow brand of group slander—liberal-trashing one-liners delivered with a hiccup—has rancidly seeped into the Republican mainstream."

"Conspicuous as a two-time loser in 2008 was Hugh Hewitt, a blogger, radio host, and Promethean twit possessed of an infallible gift for getting it pompously, egregiously wrong."

"Its habitat destroyed, picked off one by one, the Republican Moderate is going the way of the auk and the dodo, fading into extinction...To those who pine for a cooperative spirit of partisanship, who bathe in the healing bubbles of Washington sages David Broder and David Gergen, the demise of the Republican Moderate is an occasion for elegy. But to bugle-blowing conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh, the appropriate send-off to Chris Shays and his ilk is good-bye and “good riddance.” The Republican Moderate, a political animal that goes by the disparaging acronym of rino (Republican in name only), is a useless excrescence, sapping the vital essence of conservatism. Moderation is emasculation in the minds of militant conservatives."

& lastly: "Joe Lieberman ooze. Aligning himself with the wrong team, having the effrontery to show up grinning on the stage at the Republican convention, Lieberman was the loser’s loser of the 2008 election—in the immortal words of Groucho Marx, Go, and never darken our towels again!"

Long Cliff Notes version.  Go & see for yourselves.