As you may have noticed, my posting rate has dropped off dramatically since the election.  I find myself unable to sustain my previous pace -- just under 100 posts/month!  Rather than let it continue to bleed out, I have decided to close the Purple State Blog.  I would prefer to end on my own terms and not just let it peter out. 

This has been a lot of fun and a great outlet during a wild ride through this presidential election cycle.  I appreciate all of you for checking in, subscribing, reading, and responding over the last nine months.  I also appreciate all of you who have asked me to keep it going.  It's been very tempting, but time and energy has become too precious, and the blog has accomplished all I had hoped for and then some.

So, thank you all very much.  And maybe I'll see you in six months -- when the next election cycle starts.  (Just kidding ... I hope!)

Your Purple State Blogger

An entertaining post from Cracked.com for all you children of the 80s.  (I had 12 of them.  These vehicles, not children of the 80s.)

Here's number 9:

Imagine showing up for war one day, and they tell you to get in this thing. The helmet this guy is wearing is going to serve about the same purpose as aluminum foil on a baked potato.

Jacob Weisberg has a nice little piece in last week's Newsweek on Obama's opportunity (and perhaps ability) to look beyond interest groups and face-value diversity in picking his White House team and cabinet.  He writes:

Obama can't avoid such considerations. But it makes sense for him to give greater weight to intellectual acumen and subject-specific knowledge than his recent predecessors have, both because of the depth of the problems he faces and because of his own style as a thinker and a decision maker.  Bush, whose ego was threatened by any outburst of excellence in his vicinity, politicized all policy and centralized it in the White House. 

Obama is intellectually confident, enjoys engaging with ideas and inclines to pragmatism rather than partisanship.  He can handle a Lincolnesque team of rivals or a FDR-style brain trust. And he's going to need one.

Amid all the media squwaking about assembling Clinton 2.0 and an apparent lack of ethnic diversity, the Obama team seems to be sticking to its campaign strategy of thoughtful, considered, qualified choices for top jobs. 

The times are too troubled to get all hung up on the usual Democratic political correctness.  Let's get the best minds in there and start moving in the right direction.

This is definitely worth a read, especially if cable news is giving you a headache.

(Photo from Flickr member Barack_Obama used under a Creative Commons license.)

Donald Rumsfeld writes an op-ed in the New York Times warning Obama against a potential Afghanistan "surge."

Yeah, 'cause this guy gives great advice.

(Photo from Flickr member Sam Sanford used under a Creative Commons license.)

The Daily Beast has a set of links to great articles on the coming slew of "quality" films.