Some running photos and commentary from election day in Orleans Parish and beyond.

Lined up at 6a in the 7th Ward of New Orleans

Short lines at Holy Angels school, Upper Ninth Ward, New Orleans. About 9a.

No wait in the Lower Ninth Ward, either, at the Martin Luther King Jr. school, about 9:30a.

All quiet in the Uptown/University area of New Orleans, around 10a

No line to vote in Metairie, LA, outside of New Orleans. Midday.

When it comes to the last days of, well, anything, the big old machines of media begin churning up reams of paper in an attempt to come to grips – or at least present the illusion of thinking about – what is about to happen. And these days, the big idea filling all those papers is The New Liberal Era In America, alternately phrased as The Conservative Crackup, The End of the Reagan Era, The Return of Big Government, ad nauseum.

Newsweek, never contrarian, has offered up not one but two visions of the direction an (apparently) impending Obama Presidency will go, a...

While the Congress attempts to prevent Wall Street from self-immolating by printing money like Zimbabwe on holiday, our good friends to the west – Jefferson Parish, LA for those of you not down with Louisiana geography – have come up with an altogether different solution to the financial crisis. While most rational human beings blame the current mess on poor regulation and a proliferation of complicated financial instruments, there has been a certain segment of  the Right that has traced the blame back to History’s Greatest Monster. Their ultimate target is, of course, poor people, because who else could’ve engineered this massive collapse of the value of mortgage-backed securities?

Some of that brilliant logic has apparently struck Louisiana State Representative John LaBruzzo (R-Metairie), as he recently proposed that the state begin paying poor people to get sterilized. He put his concerns this way:

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The race is accelerating now. Each day brings 20 new state polls and every media outlet in the country seems to be running a national tracking poll. Ad buys are being expanded, spinners are furiously spinning, and Ohio is tied; it’s nearing the end. It will surely get yet more rapid as Nov. 4th approaches – and I will surely never again attempt to watch Obama’s YouTube channel – so there ought to be a brief discussion of an interesting moment on the television screens this week.

Campbell Brown on CNN

Though the banking industry continues to collapse like a flan in a cupboard due to ever more ingenious ways of punting debt – henceforth known as “sophisticated financial instruments” – I won’t be overreacting and attempting to talk about economics or anything of the sort. Instead, there’s still an increasingly irrelevant election to determine who will be burned in effigy in a year or two when we’re all living in McCain/Obamavilles made out of surplus cow-patterned computer boxes.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way. There are actually a plethora of candidates for the Presidency that our leaders aren’t telling us about. In fact, right here in Louisiana, they’re actively conspiring to keep these choices off of the ballot, depriving citizens of their rights to throw their votes away on marginal and/or insane candidates.

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While I remain interested – as do all Americans – in the rich tapestry of idiomatic English, I did happen to read something this week that was not about farm animals or cosmetics. It was, instead, about sex, cocaine, and the Department of the Interior, making this the most improbably interesting sentence in the 159 year history of that storied agency. Otherwise, you might know them from their Seal, which celebrates the majestic buffalo, almost driven to extinction by white people taking vacations.

As the New York Times reports, the Interior Department is responsible for more than that terrible trip to the Grand Canyon you took when you were twelve. Indeed, the Minerals Management Service of the department is responsible for controlling things like offshore drilling and collecting royalties for oil and natural gas. The story the Times...

Politically, it’s that season where the only thing going on is constant polling and a smattering of horribly produced advertisements. With Obama spending most of his money on the “ground game” – which is boring – I decided to go through and watch every McCain ad on his YouTube channel that was less than 3 minutes long and didn’t make me want to crash a jet into a remote forest in order that I might live the rest of my life away from all electronic media. If Barack Obama ever releases any ads that amount to more than an avalanche of white people, we’ll discuss those, too. To the blagowebs…

Video: Man in the Arena

Finally, finally, finally, someone hired Philip Glass for a campaign ad. Fortunately, this ad is long enough that when your buzz kicks in, it’ll still be going and then it might make some sense.

Video: 624787

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Everybody’s talking about it, almost all the time. It’s been the topic since Rudy imploded and McCain went from also-ran to last-man-standing. The End of an Era. The Conservative Crackup. The Termination of the Contract With America. Other things, too, I’m sure, in a David Brooks column. The GOP is now likened to a cornered, wounded animal; its only electoral defense to lash out desperately at Barack Obama, hoping to hit an angry pastor or a Muslim headdress.

But even now, only year two in the Demise of Rovism, mythologi...

At this very moment, in America, a vice president is being created. Information is leaking out ofclosed roomsabout people sitting in rooms with people discussing people. And now that the time has arrived, peopleother than Iare engaging in futile speculation and petty criticism. The premier entry in that category comes today courtesy of Talking Points Memo blogger Josh Marshall, who has unearthed shockingexorcism-relateddocuments about Louisiana governor, VP possibility, and Catholic convert Bobby Jindal.

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