Top: Neel Kashkari, the Interim Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Stability in the United States Department of the Treasury

Middle: A bald eagle

Bottom: Sam the Eagle

All of them enjoy: Posing in front of flags, clawing eyes out, eating fish, not being endangered, being noble and majestic.

Fun facts:

• Only Neel is actually bald

• Ben Franklin lobbied to make Neel our national bird

• Two out of three have seen Gonzo naked

• Kate is shopping around a pilot for a buddy sitcom with Neel and Sam as long-lost brothers. It's called Kash & Kari. NBC midseason replacement for Kath & Kim perhaps?

Fairly unbalanced

Fox News (I'm still obsessed!) ran a piece today about the Obama family getting ready to decorate the White House and relaying what sort of food first families have enjoyed. (Chelsea liked Kraft Mac and Cheese! And Obama's little girls like ice cream.) Awwww. (Unrelated: I want to be those kids' white nanny in some sort of '80s sitcom scenario.)

But this is Fox News, so things took a turn to the predictably racist early on in the comments, with each bunker huddler frantically clacking their fingers over the keys to get their fried-chicken jabs in first.

Hey guys, anything new in the last few days? Did I miss any history or anything? Phew.

I went to NBC's Election Plaza, or Freedom Central, or The Place Where Hologram Wolf Blitzer Can't Hurt You or however they were billing it on Tuesday night. Not the McCain crowd you might expect to find in Midtown.

This was truly the most insanely happy crowd I've ever been a part of. Everyone chatted happily and cheered wildly and counted down to the California polls closing together. My favorite quote of the night was from two guys behind me. First guy: "It's like New Year's Eve!" Second guy: "Yeah, but it means something!"

I'll spare you my waxing poetic about everyone in this diverse group crying and cheering and hugging each other, but suffice to say, it was magical. Any time you high-five a stranger yelling out of his sunroof is a good day in my book.

Then! I went to Times Square, where there was literally dancing in the street. Some guy with dreadlocks started banging on a drum and everyone was jumping and singing like World War II just ended. It was like a commune of happy hippies all took E and went to a nightclub.

No one was saying Obama will necessarily be a great president, but there was such a feeling that good had won out over evil, logic defeated mudslinging and America's good name will be restored, I just hope he can be half the leader the crowd is hoping for.

Obama eve!

Just a reassuring image to get you through a tense night.

Election '08: Is it too late to bring back the Whig party?

This one's not trying to be funny, it's just one girl's quadrennial election-y rant.

My new obsession is the Fox News message boards. The bunker-huddlers who populate the comment section are exactly as fascinatingly grammatically incorrect, racist and conspiracy loving as you might imagine. And I. Can't. Look. Away.

Reading the comments is like a window to the mind of your ignorant relatives who may not have their facts straight, but will shout down any logic with Fox-supplied talking points. They may not know what Socialism is, but they know that dark fella is a wealth distributor. (Because, obviously people without college degrees are all very concerned about protecting their $250,000 salaries.)

It dawned on me that their blind acceptance of what they're told to believe from Karl Rove, Fox, et al. mirrors their adherence to their black-or-white worldviews on religion. There's no nuance in this, no shades of gray for people who refute statistics with "gut feelings" or anecdotes. ("I don't believe polls because me and none of my friends haven't ever been surveyed so I think the mainstream media is just twisting their facts LIKE ALWAYS." Or "McCain's gonna win cause in my whole office there's only one guy who says he's for Obama.") These things happen when you go around in circles in the same small town your whole life. It becomes a homogenous vortex.

In hindsight, "Change" is probably not the best word to throw at people scared of having the only life they can imagine altered an iota.

So, for the bored or easily amused, here's a smattering of comments from their site. On the site, a disperportionate number of them begin with "WAKE UP PEOPLE!" and tell you what Jesus would want and choose to not believe that Obama's life was in danger before they predictably devolve into threats about poop and death. First Amendment, yo!

(Click to enlarge.)