"She walks, talks, sings, smells like Bob Dylan."

Heath Ledger raves about Cate Blanchett's "incredible transformation" into the character of Bob Dylan, whom she plays in the new movie "I'm Not There." Cate is one of a bunch of actors -- Ledger, included -- who play Dylan in the film. But Cate's the best -- "beyond astounding."

I can believe that. If you assemble a lot of actors in a film that's kind of a big acting competition, she wins. I observed this in "Coffee and Cigarettes":

When a movie is broken into a series of vignettes as this one is, critics usually can't resist saying which vignette is the best and grousing that some vignettes are better than others. With an ordinary movie, it doesn't seem worth saying that some scenes are better than others! But with each vignette, you get a new set of two or three actors, so it's hard not to single out, for example, Cate Blanchett. Patty Duke style, she plays two cousins who have the same face, but different hair, clothes, mannerisms, attitudes.

She was utterly fascinating and brilliant.

Listening for the gloat.

Howard Kurtz surveys liberal commentary on the the election, asking "whether they are being magnanimous in victory. Answer: Not."

(Am I giving Kurtz extra credit for ending his column with a quote from me? Yeah, probably. But I still like it for doing something I would have liked to do myself: Listening for the gloat.)

I guess I'd better rake my leaves tomorrow.

It was about 70° on Thursday, but they're saying there will be 4 inches of snow tomorrow, starting at noon. The gap between my first sleep and second sleep tonight is really long, but I can't go out in the middle of the night and do the leaves. That would be crazy!

Why haven't I done them yet? I've been really busy. Doing the leaves is not high on my agenda. It's just: Do them before the first real snow. Those minor dustings don't count. Damn. I do not have time for this tomorrow.

Why don't I hire someone? It's more trouble to do that than to do the leaves, and doing the leaves can be sort of fun if you do them when you're in the mood. But if the mood doesn't strike you before the real snow forces the task on you, then it's not cool at all. And it's not good coming on a day when I'm busy and when I can't sleep in the middle of the night.

In my middle-of-the-night alertness, I'm furiously trying to think of a solution, and I'm attracted to the idea that the predicted snow will turn out to be rain. I can't slot in the raking tomorrow. Certainly not before noon. It's going to simply have to be rain. And if it's not, my back-up attractive idea is: What does it matter if the leaves stay on the ground all winter? I've been here more than 20 years without letting that happen. Isn't it about time I let one thing go like that? And if the leaves ruin the lawn, that's a sign that I should hire people to completely redo the lawn next year. It would be a good thing. They can make it thickly plush, satisfyingly level, and shockingly green.

In my middle-of-the-night furious thinking, I see I've got a whole ambitious set of ideas about the failure to rake.

Outed and out.

Unrelated, presumably. Maher outs Mehlman. Mehlman to step down.

I've always liked Mehlman, but I thought he looked awfully worn out on election night.

So what was Condoleezza Rice doing two days after the election?

Photo-op-ing with Michelle Kwan.

Why is Rice suddenly drifting around in the afternoon TV section of American politics?

Bland inspirationalism for women.

That makes sense?

No.

Oh, why don't you just admit it?

Okay, I'm depressed about the election.

She asks herself a question, then answers it -- Rumsfeldianly.

What is it, exactly?

It's the failure of Americans to support the war. It's the folding and crumpling because things didn't go well enough and the way we conspicuously displayed that to our enemies. They're going to use that information.

For how long?

Forever.

ADDED: This post -- and my feelings -- are not about whether Republicans or Democrats have power. I dislike both parties. I voted for half Democrats and half Republicans. And I am not saying Bush has done a good enough job of fighting the war or defending his policies. You can look back over the last few months of this blog and see how little I wrote that can be interpreted as favoring one candidate or another. The only race I said much about was the Virginia Senate race. Go find those old posts and you'll see that, from "Macaca" on, I was hostile to George Allen, and, in numerous posts, I was positive about Webb.

What I'm concerned about is national security and, consequently, the way the election was fought and is being interpreted. I'm upset because I think we have sent a terrible message to our enemies: Just hang on long enough and continue to inflict some damage, and the Americans will lose heart and give up. You barely need anything at all. You might not be able to hijack a plane with a box cutter anymore, but you can take back a country -- a country we conquered with overwhelming military power -- merely by mercilessly and endlessly setting off small bombs in your own town day after day.

How much harder it becomes ever to fight and win a war again. Only pacifists and isolationists should feel good about the way this election was won.

I'm out of touch with my own opinion about the election.

I haven't had the time to settle in and think about how I feel about the new political landscape.

In the last week, I've traveled back and forth to Washington twice, first, to do two days of appointments interviews and second, to attend CNN's election night blog party. The first trip set in motion the second stage of interviewing, when we bring candidates here to Madison for full-day interviews. As the appointments chair, I'm caught up in a whirl of scheduling and hosting.

The second trip took the place of simulblogging the election from my calm TV room, with my customary distance from the political world. Immersed in the blog party, my resistance to politics surged and the usual flow of opinions got stifled. I'm still feeling a little fried from it all.

In spite of that, I recorded a BloggingHeads episode this morning, and I hope that comes out okay. I'll link to that when it's up, which is not yet. (Though you might want to go over there and watch Bob Wright and Mickey Kaus talk about the election.)

Anyway, I finally have a night of serenity, and I want to watch and read some news and see if I have anything to say. Even though I fretted that the Democrats would do dangerous things if they got power, I'm not alarmed. My tendency is to be fatalistic but optimistic. I assume the Democrats will shape up and live up to their responsibilities, and I like the new conservative blood they've transfused themselves with.

As for Bush, it may do him good to work with Democrats. It will bring out something new in him, and I think that so far he's handled himself rather well.

More later. Right now, I need to cook some dinner and watch some TV.

"The proceedings seemed more like a medical school seminar than an appellate argument."

Linda Greenhouse describes yesterday's oral argument in the abortion case.

What exactly was the procedure that the law, the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, sought to prohibit, the justices wanted to know. When, if ever, was the procedure necessary? What would be the impact of banning it? What alternatives were available to women seeking second-trimester abortions and to doctors performing them?...

Justice Kennedy’s questioning suggested that he had not made up his mind, despite his strongly worded dissenting opinion when the court struck down Nebraska’s version of the federal law six years ago, and despite his obvious distaste for the procedure at issue. Instead, his questions suggested that he remained open to persuasion that the law placed doctors in legal jeopardy and imposed an unconstitutional burden on their patients’ right to terminate their pregnancies.

One example was his response to the assertion by Solicitor General Paul D. Clement that it was never necessary for doctors to use the banned procedure because a more common procedure, one not covered by the statute, “has been well tested and works every single time as a way to terminate the pregnancy.”

Justice Kennedy responded: “Well, but there is a risk if the uterine wall is compromised by cancer or some forms of pre-eclampsia and it’s very thin. There’s a risk of being punctured.”

Since Justice O'Connor was the fifth vote in the previous "partial-birth" abortion case, we're especially interested in any cues that might have come from Justice Alito, but he said nothing at all. Scalia was "unusually disengaged." Chief Justice Roberts was active:

At times, he appeared to be trying to bolster the defense of the statute by the solicitor general. At other times, the chief justice appeared eager to find differences between the federal law and the Nebraska law. Differences in the way the state and federal laws defined the procedure could be the basis for a decision that upholds the federal law without disavowing a recent precedent.

That sounds as though Roberts was looking for a minimalist theory for upholding the federal law, while perhaps Kennedy was looking for a minimalist way to provide the fifth vote for striking it down.

What Kennedy does is important, and I think the Democrats acquisition of control of the Senate makes it easier for him to assume the position previously occupied by Justice O'Connor and vote against the law. There will be outcry against Kennedy, but those who are opposed to abortion rights can no longer hope for new openings on the Court to fill with solid conservatives. With the new Senate, any new Justices are going to be judges who operate much like O'Connor and Kennedy.

"It is virtually 100 percent that Webb is going to win the race."

So says Chuck Schumer, but the NYT is treating the question of control of the Senate as unresolved:

Democratic Party officials and some news organizations, including MSNBC and The A.P., declared Mr. Webb the winner of the election with a margin of less than one-half of 1 percent out of more than 2.3 million ballots cast. A candidate can request a recount in Virginia if the vote difference is less than one percentage point.

State officials were conducting a rapid canvass of the vote as part of a formal certification of the result. They could be done by Thursday afternoon, officials said.

Members of the Allen camp said earlier in the day that they expected the review would cut into Mr. Webb’s lead, but stopped short of predicting that it would reverse the outcome.

Mr. Allen will speak as soon as the canvass is done, said a senior Allen adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The adviser made it clear that if the margin did not narrow significantly, Mr. Allen would not challenge the result.

“He has no intention of dragging this out,” the adviser said.

I was dreading recounts and charges of fraud and voting machine failures, so it's good that this is winding to a close quickly, even though it must be hard for people to absorb this much change.

What do I think about the Democrats taking over both houses of Congress? I don't have much feeling one way or the other. I mistrust both parties. I'm hopeful that the kinds of candidates the Democrats relied on to win -- people like Webb -- will transform the party and make it into something I can support.

"Is he stepping down? You bet. Does he admit defeat? Not by a long shot."

"Is the country going to miss the way he acted smarter than everyone else and often preempted media questions by interrogating himself as a rhetorical device? Sort of -- the way you might miss your father's spankings."

Losing Donald Rumsfeld -- the style perspective.

I always enjoyed his rhetorical style, but some people haaaated it. Like Calvin Trillin:

[H]e has been amazed at Rumsfeld's ability to be at once brashly know-it-all and disarmingly homespun. "It was a wonderful mixture of arrogance and 'Aunt Harriet' language" like goodness gracious, Trillin says. "I don't think anybody can match that."

... Trillin writes that Rumsfeld conducted his press briefings "as if trying patiently to explain the obvious to a class of slow third-graders. (Might you prefer to be briefed by someone less arrogant and condescending? Yes. Do we always get what we want? Of course not.)"

I like sharp, colorful characters on the public scene. But if you don't approve of what someone is doing, too much style is irritating as hell. Presumably, the new guy will present a blander image, part of the whole new program of making everybody feel better about everything.

Will the new guy do anything different? We shall see.

Echoes of last night's blogger party chaos.

"I say, why all the glum faces?"

The President cracks a joke to begin his press conference.

"'Utterly absurd.' Not to mention, utterly un-watchable."

The Columbia Journalism Review blog talks about the CNN blogger party (and quotes me):

[L]ast night CNN hosted a blogging party at Tryst, a cafe on 18th Street in Washington, D.C. The network was careful to invite bloggers from across the political spectrum...

Having crammed their blogger petri dish with crabby pundits of every stripe, CNN producers throughout the night broke away from their otherwise excellent election coverage to wade into the blogging abyss at Tryst. There, surrounded by the dim glow of laptops, bloggers offered CNN cameras loads of dubious wisdom. Occasionally, the cameras would pan across the room, capturing the magic of bloggers in action -- essentially, people typing.

All of which proved, once again, that the act of writing a scorching blog post looks no different on camera than the act of writing the world's most mind-numbing inter-office memo. And neither makes for good television -- a fact that at least one blogger who attended the Tryst party owned up to this morning.

"Waking up this morning in my quiet hotel room, I realize how insanely hard it was to try to watch the election returns at that blogger party at Tryst," writes Ann Althouse. "The notion that we were in some way bringing you the news is utterly absurd."

Not to mention, utterly un-watchable.

Could it have been good television? I think there was a different path that could have been taken, but that is probably not what CNN would dare to do. The party atmosphere was beautifully staged, but to the extent that we were there to be blogging, it falls flat. We're just typing. Plus, the party is wildly distracting. How are you supposed to write or even perceive things that you can write about? I think we should have been miked and monitored, not interviewed and not seriously expected to write anything on the spot. Collect us in a room as bloggers, but then show us in something more like a reality show style. There actually were a lot of great conversations going on, and I think would have been cool and different to eavesdrop on us.

I'm back.

Hi, everyone. I'm back from Washington, with a class to teach in a couple minutes, but I just wanted to drop a post here in case you wanted to start talking about the Rumsfeld resignation, the knife's edge split in the Senate, what the task for the Democrats is now, and other post-election things.

UPDATE: Class is over. Now, I'd really like to see what you folks have been writing. I have over 400 unread comments. Time to speed read.

"Quite damaging, wide-reaching, nefarious and mean-spirited."

Reactions to Wisconsin's "yes" vote on the marriage amendment.

Crystal Hyslop, 55, of Madison, helped rally Fair Wisconsin volunteers for a final late-afternoon push of canvassing... [She] said she's been with her female partner for 26 years. Before Tuesday's results were known, she said she would "just be devastated" if the measure passed. "The first thing I'll think is, 'Why do they hate me?'"

[Julaine Appling, president of the Vote Yes campaign,] said supporters of the ban don't hate gay people.

"For us, this amendment was not personal," she said. "This was about protecting the institution of marriage that we will collectively hand down to the next generation. We didn't see Fair Wisconsin or the individuals comprising it as our enemy, and we do not see them as second-class citizens."

She said she was proud that her side "never fell prey to bashing" people.

ADDED: But it looks as though the gay marriage ban may fail in Arizona. Imagine that! Arizona getting out in front of Wisconsin. So much for the progressive tradition. I just noticed that news via Instapundit, where I'm also seeing that Michigan has voted down affirmative action. After all that litigation defending affirmative action, the people say no.

What happened last night?

Waking up this morning in my quiet hotel room, I realize how insanely hard it was to try to watch the election returns at that blogger party at Tryst. The notion that we were in some way bringing you the news is utterly absurd. We were struggling to watch it -- hear it -- on TV, something you could do not only more directly -- that's always the case -- but also more easily. To be on camera, under the lights, in the middle of a whirl of activity, expected to perform on cue the way you ordinarily perform naturally in the privacy of your home... oh no! The obvious analogy is to a porno movie!

But now, able to read the news in this calm setting, I see in a glance what I was struggling to see all night:

Democrats seized control of the House of Representatives and defeated at least four Republican senators yesterday, riding a wave of voter discontent with President Bush and the war in Iraq.

But the fate of the Senate remained in doubt this morning, as races for Republican-held seats in Montana and Virginia remained too close to call as Election Day turned into the day after. Democrats would need both seats to win control of the Senate as well.

In Montana, Senator Conrad Burns, a Republican, was trailing Jim Tester, a Democrat, by a narrow margin. The race in Virginia — between another Republican incumbent, Senator George Allen, and Jim Webb, his Democratic challenger — was so close that some officials said it would have to be resolved by a recount.

That prospect could mean prolonged uncertainty over control of the Senate, since a recount can be requested only after the results are officially certified on Nov. 27th, according to the state board of elections. Last year a recount in the race for Attorney General was not resolved until Dec. 21.

But the Democrats’ victory in the House — overcoming a legendarily efficient White House political machine — represented a dramatic turnaround in the fortunes of the party and signaled a sea change in the political dynamics in Washington after a dozen years in which Republicans controlled Congress for all but a brief period.

That's through the eyes of Adam Nagourney. He's seeing drama. I love the way the Democratic victories count extra because there was a "legendarily efficient White House political machine" artificially boosting the Republican side. When the Republicans win -- don't you know? -- it's not because people actually want them to win, but because they have devious ways of jacking up the numbers. That way, if Democrats win even a modest margin, it's a dramatic turnaround, a sea change.

Perhaps it is better to party -- as on an Oscar night -- because the dribble-out of information is so slow. You want to be there, witnessing the news as it becomes available, even though you could read it in a few seconds the next day, but there's just not that much to see. Better to enrich the experience with a lively real-life room that minimizes your screen-staring time. I was there for 8 hours trying and failing to watch the news. I felt overwhelmed by the strange visual noise of two dozen bloggers hunched over laptops under looming, multiple, high-definition Wolf Blitzers striding alongside walls of blue supergraphics. My reaction was to move into the imagery. I couldn't think and analyze. Not at all. I dealt in pictures.

The crazy mix of dark and bright lighting blurred many of my photographs, giving them an expressionistic quality -- very James Ensor -- that reminds me now of how painterly my brain got last night:





To answer your question: I had only two small glasses of red wine.

Some folks were collecting Cosmopolitans while others -- notably Jeralyn Merritt here -- kept their writer's minds cooly centered in Language World:



I know. You're thinking: Who are the foreheads? The left-most forehead is Atrios -- Duncan Black -- who seems like a sweet guy. I had a little conversation with him in which I told him he reminded me of Madison blogger Jeremy Freese and that comedian Tom Bodett. Duncan didn't know who either of those guys were. The Easter-Islandish forehead in the lower right corner? I can't tell you who that is. If that's you, claim your forehead. Otherwise it's the Forehead of the Unknown Blogger. And lord knows what fervid thoughts roil therein.

And who are the blurry guys, you may ask. Picture 1 is Alex Pareene of Wonkette, wearing his "no Wonkette" T-shirt and waving a filtered cigarette about, and Nick Gillespie, of Reason Magazine and Hit & Run, who entertained me with his opinions, like about how there are only a small handful of cities left in America that are not culturally defunct. Madison, Wisconsin was culturally vital once, back around 1968. But since then and forever into the future, nothing. Picture 2 is TRex, who wrote about me on his blog -- Firedoglake -- after I blogged a (clear) picture of him last night. He said:

Ann Althouse came by a few minutes ago and took photos of me and John Amato. Amato was nice to her. I just growled under my breath and kept typing.

Ha ha. That's what I expected from half the bloggers: just growling and keeping on typing. It was actually surprising how un-socially-awkward most bloggers are. But thanks to TRex for embodying the stereotype I'd had in mind.