The leading lights of the right wing freak show (Anne Coulter and Rush Limbaugh) accuse Markos of having an unintelligible accent (he doesn't, FWIW), and attacks the Democratic Party as the party of immigrants.

Which raises the question: what exactly is wrong with representing citizens who moved to the United States because they want to live in this great nation?

Does Rush and Coulter really think that my grandpa, who moved to the U.S. during the Holocaust after escaping World War II (and still has an accent) should be expatriated back to Germany? Is that really what they want the GOP platform to be?

The call took place at 6:45PM Eastern:

Incoming White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement that President-elect Obama and US Airways Captain Chelsy Sullenberger had a five-minute phone call Friday:

"At 6:45 PM, President-elect Obama spoke with Capt. Chesley Sullenberger III, the pilot of US Airways flight 1549," wrote Gibbs.

"The President-elect told Capt. Sullenberger how proud everyone was for the heroic and graceful job he had done in landing the damaged aircraft yesterday.

"The President-elect also thanked his crew and the many people on the scene in New York for ensuring the safety of everyone on board the plane."

Somehow, during his farewell speech, Bush couldn't be troubled to even mention the heroism of not just Sullenberger but the passengers and rescuers.

...must begin with an 'a' and end with a 'hole.' Politico brings us the latest -- now he's complaining that Obama is getting sworn in with his middle name, Hussein:

The congressman says he doubts Obama's sincerity when he explained that he chose to use his middle name so as to be historically consistent with past inaugurations, when America has heard the full names of its presidents echo from the inaugural stand.

"Whatever his reasons are," King said, "the one he gave us could not be the reason."

He continued: "The society is a little strange about this. If you're speaking the truth and in an effort to be objective, there should be nothing off limits in a free society, [but] there are many biases building and clearly a double-standard."

When the GOP wonders why it has sub-zero approval ratings, they need look no further than clowns like King.

America will breathe a collective sigh of relief in 45 minutes when shrub gives his farewell speech.

I think I'm going to watch it. Are you?

As for the meaning of the Bush presidency, I think the kindest thing you can say about it is that W. proved that anyone can be president -- even the incompetent yet privileged scion of a powerful political family that includes several members of Skull and Bones and a former President.

Err...that's not exactly a positive, I guess.

Whatever. I sure am glad that in 2008 we actually had a merit-based election though.

75% of Republicans approve of the job George W. Bush is doing as president of the damage George W. Bush did to America and the world.

75% percent!

That's just amazing. Nothing good happened while he was president, and much of the blame for that falls on his shoulders. And it's not like he actually delivered anything meaningful to the GOP base, other than creating one hell of a mess for Barack Obama.

I mean, he abandoned the free market. Abortion is still legal. And it's still illegal to shoot target practice in your local supermarket shopping lot.

So what the hell do these crazy GOPers see in shrub? They are just weird.

Yesterday:

We're still awaiting confirmation that this is indeed Will's house from the transition, but your pool is satisfied with the documentation.

Your pool has been told it's a dinner party.

And, thanks to an enterprising photographer, a shot through a window showed op-ed stalwarts William Kristol and David Brooks are also part of this unlikely gathering of tight, right suits.

Today:

Obama held a meeting with several columnists and liberal commentators this morning, following up on last night's dinner with conservative writers, according to sources with knowledge of the meeting.

The group included the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne and Eugene Robinson, the Wall Street Journal's Gerry Seib, National Journal's Ron Brownstein, the New York Times Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd, The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan, and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, among others.

Yesterday must have sucked. But today sounds pretty cool (with an exception or two).

I've made a ton of progress on the project that I'm working on, and hope to be able to announce some more details about it in the next couple of days. (It's focused on video, and if you've liked Jed Report, especially during the campaign, you're going to really like it.)

I've still got a lot more work that I need to do, so my posting will continue to be irregular this week in anticipation of the inauguration. I'm missing blogging, but I think this short interlude is going to be worth it, especially now that it's the "lull" before the inauguration.

(It does feel weird calling this a "lull." Obama has already been such an active President-elect that it's nearly impossible to imagine him getting even more engaged next week when he's actually President of the United States. It's almost like the inauguration is almost more important as a catharsis than as the actual transfer of power, which has been going on now it feels like for months, dating back to July, when our Iraq policy began to move towards his withdrawal timeline approach.)

Anyway, one other semi-political thing that I wanted to mention was just how unseasonably warm the weather has been in Las Vegas. I'm not saying that to lord over those of you who are in the frigid depths of winter in the midwest, though if it helped boost tourism here, that'd be great. We need it. Even though it's in the mid-60s temperature wise (well above normal for this time of year), tourism traffic is in the dumps.

But even though the weather is been above normal in parts of the country like Las Vegas, the focus of the right-wing media, led by Drudge, has been on the cold temperatures elsewhere. It's true that it's so cold there that's of news value, but the reason why Drudge spends so much time focusing on it is because he thinks it disproves global warming.

You can cherry-pick in both directions, and just like what is happening in Las Vegas isn't proof of global warming, the chill in Chicago isn't proof that isn't.

This ties back in with something that Obama has said from the very beginning of his campaign, that transforming our energy policy is one of the three most important objectives of his presidency, along with getting out of iraq and creating universal health care.

Given the incredible economic opportunities that will flow from developing new, clean and renewable and domestic sources of energy, and given what it would mean for our national security, I can't think of anything more important for Obama's agenda in the next four -- and hopefully eight -- years.

And it's incredibly reassuring that Obama thinks that way too.

So with that, only six more days. Six freaking days! Wooo!

I'm in the finishing stages of working on a project I've talked about a few times in the past, but as I make the final push, I need to take a couple of days to focus on it more or less exclusively.

Consequently, today and tomorrow, I'm going to take a hiatus from blogging, though I might sneak in a quick comment or two, and will update a headline or two.

In the meantime, I can recommend Paul Krugman's constructive op-ed in today's NYT offering specific ideas for President-elect Obama's economic recovery plan. He's got some good ideas that will be good for the economy, and anything that's good for the economy is also good politics.

So I turn on the TV to watch the Eagles vs. Giants and what do I get?

A lovely screen saying: "No need to call us - we are aware that this TV station is temporarily unavailable... We'll have this channel back as quickly as possible. Sorry for the interruption."

Lovely.

Updated with screenshot (10:40AM):

Update 2 (10:53AM):

It sounds like part of the problem might be the local FOX station is having problems with its broadcast tower. Believe it or not, DirecTV relies on an over-the-air signal to broadcast to all of its customers in Vegas.

In any event, they've enabled another feed of the game to watch it in Standard Definition, whcih is better than nothing, but given the amount I pay to DirecTV each month, it's absurd that their HD signal is broken. They should get a direct feed, like the cable company does.

Update 3 (11:23AM):

D* has now made an HD channel from Los Angeles, 399, available. Good move, but it shouldn't have taken so long.

President-elect Barack Obama shows John McCain what it means to put country first.