"Even Richard Nixon has got soul" - from Neil Young's "Campaigner"

1) So long, it's been (somethin', somethin') to know you... Geez Georgie, there you were surrounded by staff and family, explaining the last eight years, and no sooner do you finish then ABC starts running an episode of "Scrubs." Ouch. It was almost like it didn't happen. Hey Georgie, when things calm down we'll catch up for lunch, okay. You take care now, Georgie.

2) "Here's a little ditty by a young dude named Yeats and it goes like this..." Blago Agonistes. C'mon, face it, you all know he's only guilty of one thing - political malpractice. Or, as former Louisiana Gov. Earl Long put it: "Don't write anything you can phone, don't phone anything you can talk face to face, don't talk anything you can smile, don't smile anything you can wink and don't wink anything you can nod." [Hey Mr. Prosecutor, good luck with that whole "jury of his peers" thing.]

3) Chauncey Gardiner goes to Washington (again): Seventy-one-year-old Roland Burris comes to town, stays cool, stares down his fellow Democrats, stays on message, and wins. Hey Harry Reid, we got your post-racial politics right here! Burris for Senate 2010.

4) Wasn't it called "Andersonville?" Conservative talking head Larry Schweikart, author of "48 Liberal Lies," on Fox 1-13-09: "If there was a Gitmo in his time, [President Abraham] Lincoln would not have shut it."

5) Pearls of Washington Wisdom #485: Former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey explaining what it's like to be in the minority party in the Senate: "The chairman [of a committee] - especially with 58 to 59 in the voting caucus - drives the car and chooses the destination. The ranking [minority member] rides shotgun on a good day. On a bad day, he or she is in a carpool with the chairman's staff." [Wash. Post 1-13-09]

6) Forget "Political Science," let's just start calling it "Political Math": Jan Witold Baran, former general counsel to the RNC, explains a contested election: "The position of candidates in disputed elections depends on whether one is perceived as ahead or behind in the vote count. The tactic of someone who is ahead is to declare victory and create an air of inevitability. The tactic of someone behind is to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the opponent's claim." [Wash. Post 1-7-09]

7) Worst campaign slogan of the year so far: Terry McAuliffe's anouncement that he would be running for Governor of Virginia included the words "Yes, we can do it again this year."

8) R.I.P. former Rhode Island Sen. Claiborne Pell, at age 90: Diplomat, investment banker and wise old pol. A man from another time, back when you could truthfully utter the words, "I yield to the gentleman from Rhode Island." Looking back on his 1960 race for the Senate decades later, Pell recounted, "My opponent called me a cream puff...Well, I rushed out and got the bakers' union to endorse me."

9) From the "What passes for political commentary these days" Department: This whole Ann Coulter "thing" - Since when does anyone have to get their nose rubbed in the marketplace of ideas by someone who's never even gotten a street paved? Whatever happened to good old fashioned shunning? Quick, Food Channel, give her a cooking show!

10) What Lyndon knew and when he knew it: From the LBJ tapes archive [CBS News 12-4-08], the President calls VP Hubert Humphrey and urges him to pick Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye as his 1968 running mate: "He answers Vietnam with that empty sleeve. He answers your problems with Nixon with that empty sleeve. He has that brown face...The South can't get mad at him because he's colored. And he would appeal to every other minority because he is one." HHH replied that the move would, well, "I guess maybe it just takes me a little bit too far, too fast."