AUDIO: The Ed Schultz Radio Show with Lizz Winstead & Laffy

By GottaLaff

Can you tell this means a lot to me?

Seriously, what a blast, and what an honor. Lizz Winstead is so gracious, such a generous, sweet, funny pal, she nearly... nearly... made me get over my nervousness.

Okay, no she didn't, but she made it a whole lot easier.

I hope you like it:

Alabama county celebrates official Obama holiday

By GottaLaff

We hear a lot of criticism of President Obama, and how the honeymoon is long over, how people are disenchanted. Oh yeah? Well, we'll show them! Here are some who are still very enchanted:

The rural, mostly black county has proclaimed Monday as an official holiday celebrating the election of the nation's first black president, Barack Obama. It's one of Alabama's poorest counties, but it's sparing little during five days of festivities.

County employees, as well as city workers in Marion and Uniontown, will get a paid holiday Monday as government offices close, culminating a series of events including an old-fashioned civil rights rally and march, a golf tournament, a weekend carnival and a parade Monday through Marion.

"I feel great about the holiday," said county maintenance worker Leon Brown. "It's history. It's the first time ever we've had a black president. I hope it's not the last time ever." [...]

The Obama holiday was proposed by Commissioner Albert Turner Jr., whose father was one of the marchers beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in the 1965 "Bloody Sunday" voting rights march in Selma. [...]

He said another reason for the holiday was to let the nation know the role Perry County played in protests that led to passage of the Voting Rights Act. Some of the events recall the demonstrations.

"It's not that we're celebrating Obama. We're celebrating America living up to it's creed that all men are created equal," Turner said.

Then a Rushpublic did his Rushpublic thing and found a way to spin a very positive moment into a negative:

But Michael Brooks, a Judson College professor who is a Republican Party official in Perry County, wondered if the five days of events celebrating Obama's election wasn't a little too much for the small, poor county.

"I question whether we needed another paid county holiday in the middle of a recession," Brooks said. "For the first year, it seems it could have been a bit more modest."

Yeah, celebrating is way too much for people bursting with pride to handle when they're trying to find a silver lining during tough times. What could they be thinking?

G.O.P.: Grumpy Old Poopyheads.

High school student Matt Morgan displays his Obama Day holiday tee shirt as he attends a rally at the Marion Military Institute in Marion, Ala., Friday, Nov. 6, 2009. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)

Early voting in Evansville

Sniff. An emailer describes his early voting in Evansville, Indiana to Ben-

For me the most moving moment came when the family in front of me, comprising probably 4 generations of voters (including an 18 year old girl voting for her first time and a 90-something hunched-over grandmother), got their turn to vote. When the old woman left the voting booth she made it about halfway to the door before collapsing in a nearby chair, where she began weeping uncontrollably. When we rushed over to help we realized that she wasn't in trouble at all but she had not truly believed, until she left the booth, that she would ever live long enough to cast a vote for an African-American for president. Anyone who doesn't think that African-American turnout will absolutely SHATTER every existing record is in for a very rude surprise.

Pic via.