“Will I Am, I want to thank you for being with us via hologram tonight.”

How do these decisions get made? Was there really no one at CNN who had ever seen the first Star Wars movie? Did no one think, hmm, I wonder if this will make us the laughingstock of one of the most important evenings in American history?

The Fox News roundtable is discussing whether America is now a “center-left” country.

… shorter every cable pundit: “Not that he’s won yet, but what kind of president do you think Obama will be?”

I know where I’ll be tuning in to watch the election returns :

It’s election night, and CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer is in New York talking to an Obama campaign strategist in Chicago.

But instead of the split screen or window TV viewers might typically see during live remote interviews, the Obama spokesperson will be projected as a three-dimensional hologram, making it appear as if he or she is in the Manhattan studio with Blitzer. The network plans to conduct similar holographic interviews with representatives from the McCain campaign in Phoenix.

Thank goodness for that. If CNN didn’t provide some flashy special effects, we might get bored.

UPDATE : Hahahaha. It’s as dumb as I expected it to be :

Okay, maybe I won’t be watching CNN all night. I dunno if I can stand them interrupting their campaign coverage to gush over their new toys.

Rush Limbaugh does not sound happy today.

Via Joan Walsh:

On MSNBC just now, Sarah Palin took a few questions from reporters clustered outside her Wasilla, Alaska, polling place. Unbelievably, she refused to tell them whom she voted for. Here’s what she said: “I am also exercising my right to privacy, and I don’t have to tell anybody who I vote for, nobody does, and that’s really cool about America also.” Verbatim.

Just got this email:

As a Salon reader, I catch pretty much every cartoon you do (and my weekly alternative The Austin Chronicle prints it, too), but I love having a compendium of the last years to refer back to, much like a satirical history of the loony political and cultural universe we live in. It’s an archive to hold onto, in the same way that Pogo did many moons ago. Also, I have to admit that even though there are many things to love about online info feeds, the feel and look of the printed page still holds a lot of weight for me.

Part of the writing process for me is thinking about how the cartoons are going to read in a month, or a year. Sometimes I think my stuff may actually read better in retrospect, for exactly this reason — it becomes a cartoon history of what we’ve just been through. Or as it says on the back of the book: HOW WE GOT TO THE PLACE WE ARE GOING.

Buy it here, if you’re inclined.

We now return you to your regular programming.

For New Yorkers, at least:

Tomorrow through November 11, if you go to Babeland with evidence that you voted (”your word of honor” is acceptable), you will receive free either a “Maverick sleeve” or a “Silver Bullet” mini-vibrator, depending on your particular physiological needs. These items are respectively a $15 and $20 value, and assure (but do not guarantee — see labels) that whatever the result of the election, you will receive some kind of satisfaction from it.

Also via Edroso, who’s liveblogging the day over at the Voice.

Atrios:

Person working polling place under mistaken impression that photo ID is necessary for first time voters (like me, just moved). Not true. Non-photo identification verification, such as voter registration card or utility bill, should be enough.

They were asking for photo ID here in Connecticut, the volunteer seemed vaguely annoyed when I asked about it. But according to the list of official documentation, a signed statement will also suffice. Just FYI. Every vote counts today.

But something — maybe the incipience of a wrinkle, suggesting that the Singularity cannot come fast enough — did momentarily put the Perfesser in a solemn mood, and he summoned an “Army of John Galts” to talk about how they would go off the grid if the socialist Obama prevailed, depriving the littlebrains of their essential crafts of law perfessin’, psychologizing, documentary filmmaking, and the like. One such — a newspaper columnist and a “private investor”! How will we do without his unique skillset! — writes:

I want to appease the new administration and not be too productive. So, upon Obama’s passing his new redistribution plan, I will slow my work schedule, lay off a few people (Obama’s got their back) and let someone else bust his tail since I will now be able to get “redistributed wealth” from those poor fools who are ambitious, energetic, work hard and have made good decisions.

It doesn’t occur to them that others will scramble to take their places — well, it does occur to one, but Kartik Gada believes that even immigrants, formerly besotted of America, will also be disgusted with Obama and follow the Galts to… Red China, or some other such paradise where they know how to treat an investor class. Then we’ll all be sorry.

They really believe it. The greed and stupidity of investors far bigger than the Perfesser have done what untold cadres of socialists and communists couldn’t manage in a century — destroyed the good name of American capitalism and put the better part of its assets under government control — and the would-be Galts are threatening to bugger off to China because America might elect a moderately progressive Democrat.

From alicublog. (As previously noted, Roy also blogs these days for the Village Voice.)