If you have a job, hold on tight. Not only did the unemployment rate hit a 14-year high of 6.5 percent in October, many experts think it could reach 8 percent or higher next year. This year already has seen 1.2 million jobs disappear, more than half in the past three months. In terms of jobs lost, this recession is beginning to make the post-Sept. 11 period look like a mild funk. At least Wall Street is in a better mood today.
Not only did the Christmas commercials roll out after Tuesday’s election, the 2012 speculation did, too. Rod Dreher of the Dallas Morning News and NPR writes: “I’d put money on a Barack Obama-Bobby Jindal (in photo) match in 2012. If Obama is the Democrats’ Reagan, then the Louisiana reform governor has the potential to be both the Republicans’ Bill Clinton – in that he could revive a defeated and demoralized party – and its Barack Obama, in that he is young, brilliant and widely appealing. Besides, there simply aren’t any other Republicans left standing today who could unite the GOP’s shards after this epic smashing.”
Having survived administrations filled with transplants from Little Rock and Austin, the White House probably can adjust to the Chicago way. Still, it’s a concern that “No-Drama Obama” has picked “Rahm-bo” – Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill. – to be his White House chief of staff. As the Associated Press said about the former Bill Clinton adviser: “In contrast to Obama’s collegial style and that of his top campaign advisers, Emanuel is known as a foul-mouthed practitioner of brass-knuckled politics who relishes both conflict and publicity. He once mailed a dead fish to a political foe.”
After beginning the campaign of 2008 by seeking the GOP nomination for the biggest job of all, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., was the only member of the Kansas delegation not on the ballot Tuesday. In the end, Brownback had this to say about the historic election: “To go from Rosa Parks and Linda Brown to President-elect Barack Obama in one generation proves that anything is possible in America. I congratulate President-elect Obama and his family. We should all savor and celebrate this moment in history. I am also thankful to John McCain, whom I supported, as an American hero who even in defeat put his country first and sought to heal our division.”
“There is absolutely no diva in me,” Sarah Palin told reporters the morning after the election. But some of John McCain’s aides beg to differ, judging from the array of stories, all based on unnamed sources, about the GOP vice presidential nominee’s wild 2½-month ride as McCain’s running mate. Among the painful new anecdotes: That Palin and McCain rarely spoke during the campaign. That she pushed (in vain) to deliver her own concession speech Tuesday. And that one of the last straws for the McCain camp was the revelation that she had taken a call from a prankster posing as French President Nicolas Sarkozy. But such finger-pointing can’t obscure the fact that the years-long McCain campaign owns Tuesday’s loss.
If you have a job, hold on tight. Not only did the unemployment rate hit a 14-year high of 6.5 percent in October, many experts think it could reach 8 percent or higher next year. This year already has seen 1.2 million jobs disappear, more than half in the past three months. In terms of jobs lost, this recession is beginning to make the post-Sept. 11 period look like a mild funk. At least Wall Street is in a better mood today.
