The White House has a blog now but I'm not going to add it to the blogroll until someone writes "fuck" on it or calls Mitch McConnell the "Honorable Douchebag from Kentucky".-TBogg
Marc Thiessen joins an echo from the right describing Bush's number one accomplishment: preventing another 9/11.
At first I thought this was a bit like claiming that the best thing about Bush's presidency was that there were no zombie attacks. (Though I suppose a slightly better analogy would be that the best thing about Bush's presidency was that there was only 1 zombie attack.)
In a BBC World interview (which I have not yet tracked down), Thiessen discusses how advanced interrogation techniques directly prevented attacks on Heathrow and on the Library tower in Los Angeles.
First I heard of that. I recently saw a PBS breakfast in Washington panel (which I can similarly only reference obliquely due to my poor search foo). Bruce Schneier snuck in a question as an audience member, and, more on point, a former Reagan advisor claimed the Bush presidency didn't markedly deviate from the foreign policy of the Clinton or prior administrations, but described Bush's unique inadequacy in explaining his decisions to the public.
Is it possible that Bush was secretly balancing difficult utilitarian priorities and choosing torture over massive civilian casualties? Could that be possible?
If there is a choice between torture and massive civilian casualties, Sam Harris has a great argument on that score.
Via the Kansas City Star:
GooseGrade.com, a popular Web 2.0 startup that lets readers find mistakes and suggest corrections to bloggers and other online authors, estimates that there are at least 60 million pages on the Internet containing a misspelling of Obama's first name. Leading the pack is "Barak", followed closely by "Barrak" and then "Barrack".
Having read the above this morning I was filled with trepidation as I realized I wasn't sure if I had been spelling the President's name "Barack" or "Barrack". Major kudos to our site, as the last two posts show the correct spelling, saving me face for at least one more day.
I realized today while checking my Facebook page that there are two types of Barack Obama supporters: those who are happy that they chose to vote in Barack Obama for President, and those that appear to support the immediate creation of 'Barack Obama Day'. I think it is abundantly clear in which group I fall.
San Francisco is currently descending into riots, inspired by the embedded footage. It is not an easy thing to watch.
Yes... THE Eliot Spitzer, is a columnist for Slate. While it is mildly surprising that he is employed by Slate, it should come as no surprise that his pieces are insightful and lucid. In his recent piece, he makes a plea to Obama to use his planned "infrastructure/stimulus package" to build the American infrastructure of the future, not patch up the infrastructure of the past.
Spitzer focuses on the following items, but refuses to declare that the list is complete or static: smart meters (adjusting pricing per peak demand), alternative energy infrastructure (hydrogen, natural gas for transportation), electronic medical records (increased efficiency + accuracy), Internet services upgrades, robotics teams for every high school (and competitions that are funded to near equivalency of sports teams).
The robotics teams sounds enjoyable, but not feasible. Electronic medical records have been on the table for years, and is probably the most realistic (money + time invested). The first two seem to be the most intriguing to me, if only because the U.S. energy policy seems to be the one area that most people are willing to change.
