Events

My sister got her pilot certificate just to get me to shut up about jumping out of planes ("why jump from a perfectly-landable airplane?"). And if you think I love my dog, well, she outdoes me there, too. The combination means she has two dogs who each have their own airplane ear protectors. I can't imagine Parker in a Cessna, but I think he'd be at least as cute as this: By the way, she named her dog Codey, after the final approach fix on the runway 15 IFR GPS approach at Lincoln, Calif. Seriously.

Effective Sunday, Illinois has a plum political vacancy. Let the games begin! The choice of who will fill the remaining two years of Mr. Obama’s term now goes to Gov. Rod Blagojevich. ... Among those interested in the seat are U.S. Reps. Jesse Jackson Jr., Jan Schakowsky and Luis Gutierrez, all Chicago-area Democrats; state Veterans Affairs Director Tammy Duckworth, and retiring Illinois Senate President Emil Jones Jr. Now, for those outside Illinois, you have to understand that Illinois politics can...

Ed Kilgore at TPM Cafe has a good analysis: If today's conservatives succeed in convincing each other to embrace a more forthright message assaulting entitlements, progressive taxation, public education, regulation of corporations and Wall Street, just to cite a few domestic policy examples, they are almost certainly cruising for more electoral bruising. ...[C]onservatives today have almost completely internalized their own rhetoric about Obama's "radicalism," "socialism," "anti-Americanism," and so...

Mark Begich, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Alaska against convicted felon Ted Stevens, leads by three votes: The elections division still has over 10,000 ballots left to count today and thousands more through next week, but the latest numbers show Mark Begich leading Sen. Ted Stevens 125,019 to 125,016. The new numbers, reflecting nearly 43,000 absentee ballots counted today, are from all over the state. Election night, Ted Stevens led the Democratic Begich by about 3,000 votes. Alaska's House...

I took a couple of days off to visit my dad for his birthday. Any chance I get, I go to San Francisco, even though Chicago has become the center of the Universe temporarily. The Chicago Tribune reported this morning another bit of happiness from home: the original Goose Island Brewpub will remain open, instead of closing at the end of the year as threatened: John Hall, Goose Island's founder and chief executive, said he reached a last-minute deal with the pub's landlord to stay at 1800 N. Clybourn Ave....

From my dad, an advertisement for Canal + Plus:

I'm in the Illinois 5th, which has had quite some turnover in the past 15 years: Rostenkowski (1994), Flanagan (1996), Blagojevich (2002), and now Emanuel. Emanuel was by far the best of the bunch, and I'll be sorry to lose him in Congress—but he's the right guy to be Obama's Chief of Staff. In other good news, Obama officially won North Carolina, bringing his total electoral votes to 364.

The Chicago Tribune has a photo essay on what Obama's victory may mean to Chicago. Key points (to me, anyway): The unfair outflow of state resources to the Fed (we get about 70c of every Federal tax dollar we pay, compared with, say, Alaska that gets about $2 back), our Olympics prospects, and what happens when Air Force One lands at O'Hare.

Another Democratic pick-up: Oregon Senate to Merkley.

Via Talking Points Memo, Newsweek found that the $150,000 estimate of Palin's spending spree may have been, ah, conservative: One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family—clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy...