I want to take a moment to apologize for up and disappearing on all of you several months ago. I’m afraid that shortly before the Christmas holidays, things got kind of crazy around my house. I found myself having some health problems, and in the midst of doctors and tests and things, I just couldn’t handle politics.

I kept meaning to come on here and write a post, explaining where I was and that I’d be taking a short break. But honestly, I was so mentally loopy from all the pain medication and just being under the weather, that I literally just forgot!! I’m so sorry!

I feel especially bad about all my friends who were concerned about me. I’m so sorry to make you all worry! But thank you to everyone who sent me concerned emails, checking in on me to make sure I wasn’t dead, hehe. Don’t worry, I’m still here!

Despite taking my little siesta from politics, I was kind of snapped back into it with all the drama surrounding the special election in Massachusetts for the late Ted Kennedy’s seat. I’m sure like many of you, I was glued to the news Tuesday night, waiting to see which way the voters of Massachusetts would go.

Let me just say, holy crap, was I ever shocked!! I mean, obviously I had hoped that the tides would turn and people would start to wake up to what the progressives have been doing within the Democratic party, and the effect their policies have been having on our nation after only one year of the Obama administration. But I seriously didn’t think that enough people had woken up yet to really sway an election away from the Democrats in Massachusetts!! It’s Massa-freaking-chusetts!!

But wow, I seriously couldn’t be more proud of my fellow Independents in Massachusetts! I’m not excited about this election because of Scott Brown, or because he’s a Republican – I refuse to put hope in a single candidate, or even a single party.

Rather, I’m thrilled with the outcome of this election because of the Independents of Massachusetts, taking a stand against monarchistic politics, rising up and declaring their independence from anyone’s political machine. Way. To. Go! The news kept making a big deal about how Democrats out-number Republicans something like 3-to-1 in Massachusetts, but what most people need to realize, they’re ALL out-numbered by Independents like me. And that’s what made the difference: independence.

I wish more people in this country would wake up and realize that loyalty to a single party or a single candidate isn’t the answer. Any one person can – and most likely will – let you down. And worse, party loyalty I think is just a tool to drive us apart.

Rather, I think the answer should be loyalty to principles. Loyalty to standards, beliefs, convictions; loyalty to our country, to what it stands for, its history, and how very bright its future could be if we stand by the principles we were founded on and the principles so many of us still believe in today.

But that can’t happen until more of us wake up and realize that our history has been skewed by far too many people with far too many agendas. We need to wake up, we need to familiarize ourselves once again with our own true shared history, and realize the legacy that we’re risking because of our complacency. We simply cannot be the generation that ends the dream of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, Jay, Adams, Paine, and all the other brave men and women who risked their lives, honor, and sacred fortunes to give us all freedom, liberty, and the prosperity we have all enjoyed for so very long.

So let’s keep it up! Let’s keep learning, keep educating others, keep rediscovering our principles, and keep fightin’ peacefully – but purposefully – for what we believe in. Massachusetts is just the beginning. We simply cannot stop now!!

I have so much more to say over the coming days. During my little siesta I had lots of time to think and I have a lot of thoughts I’d like to share with you. Particularly some thoughts I had recently about the other side of Alinsky’s influence on Progressives and the Democrat party. After having what I thought was just a friendly political discussion with a liberal friend – which he interpreted to be an argument – I was struck with an interesting thought about the other side of Alinsky’s tactics that I don’t think many people notice. Or at least, they don’t seem to talk about. Meaning, the effect those tactics have on Democrats, on liberals; what it means to them.

But I shall save that for another day, since this is long enough and I have to get some sleep! Congratulations to Scott Brown, but you should know, sir, we’re gonna watch you like a hawk!

But most importantly, congratulations to the people of Massachusetts! Congratulations on your hard-fought, hard-won independence!!

Thanks to our very alert commenter David, I’ve found out that my friend at Black & Right didn’t have entirely accurate information, and I’m sad to say I’ve reprinted the same inaccuracies! So I want apologize first off, but I also want to make a correction to my previous article, “Why I’ll Never Buy a Smart Car”. It turns out that it wasn’t even a Smart Car at all, but a Ford! While I’ve never been a fan of Fords either, the fact that it’s not a Smart Car kinda changes the whole premise of the post I wrote.

I’m afraid it’s awfully late here where I am (3:36AM) and I have to run to bed. My sleep deprived mind isn’t thinking clearly enough to come up with a good way of reworking the article right this minute. So after I’ve gotten some sleep, I’m going to do my best to rework it, republish it, and perhaps find a way to archive the original inaccurate article somewhere as evidence of the correction and David’s helpful commenting.

Anyway, I’ll work on that tomorrow, but I wanted to post this at least for now to let you know I got some inaccurate information and that I’ll be working on correcting it! I’m very sorry I wasn’t more thorough in my research before passing along this information! I promise that I will certainly try my best to be more diligent in the future.
I also want to say a huge thank you to David! Great catch, sir! I really appreciate it.
Good night, all! More tomorrow!

I apologize for the lack of new updates recently – my family and I have been getting the house ready for a visit with my siblings and their families. They’ll be arriving over the coming days as we all get geared up for the big family get together. While I’ll be doing my best to keep myself apprised of all the political goings-on, I won’t have as much time to spend blogging. I’ll do my best, but I’ll have to keep most of it under wraps; my liberal brother is here too, so we will all be doing our best to keep our tongues well bitten in order to avoid any confrontations.
So I’ll be blogging as much as I’m able, but I most likely won’t be as prolific as usual. My apologies, hope you understand!

I’ve decided it’s high-time I restructure the category list over there on the right, since it’s gotten unbelievably huge since the transition from campaign information to running an effective post-election opposition. So I’m going to do my best to reorganize & condense it into a more effective structure, while of course maintaining archives of the election-related stuff. I’ll leave all the original tags in place, so if you want to search on a specific campaign-related topic, you’re welcome to do so in the search box. I may also put together some kind of legend or something, to make it easier to look at all that stuff. I’ll post another update when I’ve gotten it all done, but it may take some time, so I thought I’d let you all know to expect some changes over the next day or two.
More later!

After discovering the rude disappearance of my side menu, I tried in vain to sort through the piles upon piles of code that made up my WordPress template. But alas, CSS is so far beyond me that it’s not even funny, so the reason for the egregious error eluded me. Without a solution in sight, I decided to do something drastic…
Completely redesign the site! Yay!
So now BarackNObama.net has an entirely new look, one that is complete with its side-menu-ness. Honestly, I’m really glad the previous site’s side menu decided to escape, because I actually like this look a whole lot more. It’s so much brighter, so much more cheerful, which is honestly necessary since all too often I’m blogging about wholly depressing topics. But hey, our country may be going to hell in a hand basket, but oooo look, a cute blue birdie!!

Speaking of that cute blue birdie, the birdie was just oh so cute that I didn’t dare remove it. After all, when I picked out this template I didn’t even have a twitter account to link to, so there would really be no point in keeping the cute blue birdie. That is, unless I finally swallowed my pride and opened up a twitter account.

You know, I never really understood twitter. It always seemed to me to be either a tool for the incredibly narcissistic, or for those with super teensy attention spans, or both. But my good friend Joey has been telling me about its wonders for the past few weeks. Which, knowing Joey, is quite remarkable – she’s even more skeptical of the latest Internet fads than I am. I always kind of look at Internet fads like this: it’s all been done before to some extent. For instance, Facebook is the new MySpace, and MySpace was the new Friendster. So what does that make Twitter? The new form of permanent, public, open-mic IMing? It just seemed so silly. Most of the “tweets” (oh gag, the lingo…) seemed to be stupid stuff no one would care about, like “Hey, I’m at the grocery store right now, buying Ben & Jerry’s. Aren’t I awesome?!”

Anyway, all rants aside, Joey assured me that twitter has evolved from those days – in her words, “it’s grown up” – so here I am, compelled to start my own twitter account because I picked out a new WordPress template with a cute blue birdie I couldn’t resist.
If you’re so inclined to join the twitterista (is that really part of the lingo or did I just make that one up?), you can follow me at BarackNObamaNet. As you also might have noticed, just to the left of that cute blue birdie is a little window featuring my latest tweets. I’m particularly proud of that little window – that wasn’t there in the original template. Oh no, I had to program that myself! And I’m oh so very proud of myself for doing so. I couldn’t repair my side menu, but I damn well wanted to make sure my new tweets filled up that otherwise useless space. When I finally got it working – through a great deal of wild ass guessing, throwing code around like darts hoping it’d stick somewhere – I literally did a little squeal and a happy dance in my office chair. So I sincerely hope you enjoy that little ‘Latest Tweets’ window, cause it sure wasn’t easy to set up.

That’s about it from me for tonight. I hope to be blogging and tweeting (a little part of me dies each time I say that…) more often over the next several weeks. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the new design and any other improvements you think I could make. No guarantees I’ll actually be able to accomplish them, mind, but I can sure try. Thanks!

Forgive me, but it appears that the sidebar menu has decided to go on holiday and I can’t seem to reach it (oh no! Maybe it’s in Argentina!! Shame on you, Sidebar, shame!) Um, anyway, I’m still trying to figure out what’s happened. I kinda suck at CSS, though, so it may take me a while. Sorry for the mess and confusion!

I’m heading out of town tomorrow and will be gone for at least a week, if not longer. I’m going up north for some medical treatment (no, not Canada, I’ve had enough socialized medicine for one lifetime) , so if it goes well I may end up staying longer. So we’ll see. I will be taking my laptop, so I should be able to answer emails, but I’m not sure how much time – if any – I’ll have to write new entries. So I apologize for the forthcoming gap in new NObamaness! I promise I’ll make it up to you when I get back home.

In other news, I apologize for not writing a post about the tea parties which swept the nation. Unfortunately I was unable to attend my local tea party due to my health, but I was with all of you in spirit! My congratulations to everyone who attended for keeping the tea parties peaceful, pleasant, and within the law! (Although I was a bit disappointed with Washington, DC! What were you guys thinking, throwing a box of tea bags over the White House fence?!?! As a fellow Washingtonite, I’m ashamed – unless it was a tourist who did that, you all should have known better! I’m honestly shocked no one was arrested, they certainly would have had probable cause. Such lunacy! Surely you all must realize that stunts like that aren’t doing the movement any favors – thanks so much for putting a dent in our credibility.)
Other than that, I definitely have a post brewing in my brain over the vulgar sexual insults that certain news anchors in the MSM threw around that day (I’m looking at you, Anderson Cooper! Any respect I may have once had for you, it has been thoroughly flushed down the drain.) I thought I was to the point where nothing from the MSM could shock me anymore, but that unfortunately did. I wish the FCC would follow through on their pledge of consistency and slap NBC with a fine or two for their participation in that vulgar tirade. But yeah, like that’ll ever happen.

Back to packing for me! I’ll see you all in a week! In the mean time, everyone keep up the great work and hopefully I’ll be well enough to see you at the next tea party!

I wanted to apologize to everyone for that long drought without posts; I’ve been going to see doctors pretty much every day for the past two weeks and it’s absolutely wiped me out. But hopefully I’m through with that for at least a little while and I’ll slowly be able to get back to posting as normal.
Thanks for your patience!

As I’m sure most of you have noticed, I haven’t blogged in a while. The simple reason for that is I have company visiting for Thanksgiving. A lot of company. Seriously, this house is chock full. And it’s going to get even more crowded tomorrow, as even more family members arrive.
Another reason besides just being busy with company has to do with a little family rule my parents have established in an effort to keep the peace. That ultra liberal brother I mentioned, the one that ultimately led to me creating this blog for fear of his personal reprisals, he’s coming. To prevent any sort of nuclear explosions, my Mother has outlawed any political discussions for the duration of the Thanksgiving holiday. Since I’m normally the one who recounts the daily political news to the rest of the family, I’m going to avoid reading the news while everyone’s here so that I’ll avoid any accidental slip ups out of force of habit. So I’m taking the week off so I can spend some time with the family and prevent any catastrophes. It’s shaping up to be an already stressful week anyway, since my Father’s brother died last week and my ultra liberal brother has taken it upon himself to drop one hell of a bombshell via email shortly before their arrival. Everybody’s already on edge anyway, so I just don’t think politics will help any.
I hope you all might consider stepping away from the news for a little while too. There’s been so much stress lately that I would hate for it to taint anyone’s turkey or anything. So take some time for yourself, shut the world outside, and keep it from poisoning your home over the holidays.
Have a lovely Thanksgiving, everybody! See you in a week or so.