TALKING cocktails, drinks, bars, and bartending.

PREDICTING THE FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT, back in 1958.

DICK ARMEY: ‘Compassionate’ Conservatism Was a Mistake. Gee, do you think?

POLITICO: Obama apologizes to Nancy Reagan for ‘careless’ joke.

You’ve been elected President. Try not to speak carelessly if you can help it.

UPDATE: Heh: “I seem to recall also that Hillary Clinton had imaginary conversations with the shade of Eleanor Roosevelt.”

REUTERS: A BAD WEEK FOR STOCKS: “U.S. stocks broke out of their post-election funk on Friday, but on balance, the market hardly delivered a ringing endorsement of Barack Obama’s defeat of John McCain to be elected 44th president of the United States. Whatever the reason, since Election Day, major U.S. indexes are down more than 7 percent. For the Dow Jones industrial average .DJI and Standard & Poor’s 500 .SPX, that represents the worst ever conclusion to the week of a presidential election.”

RESPONDING TO THE OBAMA WIN with a recommendation for “relaxed vigilance.”

HURRICANE PALOMA approaches the Cayman Islands.

SARAH PALIN VINDICATED BY THE PLUM BOOK?

It should be noted that no jobs will be listed in the book for the office of the vice president. A spokesman for the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Reform explained that the vice president’s office is technically neither part of the executive or legislative branch.

It certainly doesn’t support Joe Biden’s claim that the VP is clearly part of the executive branch, does it ? I’m still standing by my take, though.

A LOOK AT Michael Crichton’s legacy.

HOW TO convert your Prius to a plug-in. What about a Highlander Hybrid? . . .

TODD ZYWICKI on Mormon-bashing by anti-Prop 8 activists: “So let me get this right–those who are upset about the passage of Proposition 8 in California have decided that the thing to do is to pick on the Mormons? So one marginalized group decides that the way to go is to vent their outrage against another marginalized group in society? Unbelieveable.” Actually, that’s pretty typical behavior.

UPDATE: It occurs to me that picketing a mosque would be per se racist. Except that they’d be afraid to, anyway . . . .

FREEDOM! Mandatory “community service.”

SOLAR CELLS get smaller and better.

HMM: China Might Accelerate Nuclear Power Ramp-up. We should do the same.

IF YOU VOTED FOR MCCAIN, you’re a racist. Just in case nobody had bothered to tell you.

VERONIQUE DE RUGY: “What happens to federal spending when the Democrats control both Congress and the presidency?” I guess we’ll find out.

A LIST OF THE best business and investing books of 2008.

THE 2012 CAMPAIGN starts in Georgia.

TOM COBURN on how conservatives should respond to an Obama win.

HOUSE OF Waxman?

CHARGES OF fraud in the Minnesota Senate race. “Mountain Iron uses optical scanning, so the Coleman campaign asked for a copy of the tape documenting the ballots cast on election night. St. Louis County responded by providing a tape that includes the newly-added 100 votes, and is dated November 2–the Sunday before the election. St. Louis County reportedly denies being able to produce the genuine tape from election night, even though Minnesota law, as I understand it, requires that tape to be signed by the election judges and publicly displayed.”

UPDATE: Reader Joshua Dixon writes:

I am a small town newspaper editor in a purplish part of Minnesota. Based on what I’ve read and observed, the Coleman/Franken election recount fails the smell test many times over.

With Minnesota election rules and the optical scanning system, each ballot must be checked, rechecked, accounted for and re-accounted for by a number of election judges. Each judge’s tally must match the others’, and with the scanning machine’s tape produced the night of the election. The machine prints out three copies of each ward’s results on a single tape, which has to be signed in triplicate by the judges, and sent to the county seat. A day or so later, each town or township gets back a third of the tape it sent in on election night for convassing at an open meeting.

According to the city clerk I talked to just a few minutes ago, the election night tape is considered public record, and anyone who wants to can walk in and ask to examine the tapes. When I asked if I could take a photo of the relevant part of this town’s results of the Coleman/Franken contest, she not only allowed it, she straightened the tapes (Ward 1 and Ward 2) so I could get a better picture (attached).

The Powerline story brings up some legitimate questions. Here are a few more: How can St. Louis County deny being able to produce the genuine tape from election night? They were provided with one tape containing three copies of the results, one of which was required to be sent back to the town of Mountain Iron for canvassing. Did they send Mountain Iron its copy of the tape for convassing at an open meeting? If so, why not just provide the town’s copy of the tape instead of the county’s? Were the county and city’s copies of the tape treated as public record? If not, why not?

In short: the explanations for Franken’s new votes just don’t work.

Perhaps the Department of Justice and the FBI will take an interest?

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Capturing and manipulating molecules with DNA tweezers.

CHRIS MATTHEWS SEES IT AS HIS JOB to make the Obama Presidency work.

OH, GOOD GRIEF: Vehicle downsizers now facing buyer’s remorse.

DAVE WEIGEL on the Libertarian Party and the 2008 elections.