Teleprompters

Michael Gerson Defends Obama??

It seems a bit odd, that President George W. Bush's former speechwriter would use his column to defend President Obama's use of the teleprompter. But it's not if we accept the fact that Gerson writes primarily to defend the concept that prepared remarks are no less authentic than an off the cuff response. After all, Gerson made his career carefully crafting ideas for Republican politicians. Regardless, this is a good article about "the importance of writing to the process of thought" and governing.

Also, speaking as a former Rhetoric major, I'm a bit sick of hearing "rhetoric" used interchangeably with "bullshit." I'm glad someone else feels the same. (even if it's a Republican)

Here's what's been keeping me going these days...

This movie looks like it has three awesome things: Monsters, Aliens, and the City of San Francisco. I'd be a sucker not to see it!

Finance and such

This week people finally calmed down a bit about AIG and their band of merry-million-dollar-bonus-having executives. I think the so-called "populist outrage" over AIG was mostly a fabrication of the media, but that doesn't mean there isn't something there. Anyway, I saw a few interesting articles written this week about American anger towards the financial industry that I thought I'd pass along.

On Wednesday, Nate Silver, the genius behind FiveThirtyEight.com, posted a brief story about his friend, and former wall street banker, Vijay. Silver uses the biography of his friend to effectively denounce "blanket assertions that Wall Street business people are 'greedy, selfish and utterly immoral.'" He also makes a great point against that the proposed (and now dead?) Bonus Tax idea is discriminatory in nature. The only critique I have of Silver's argument is that he dismisses the idea that greed, particularly the greed of the financial industry, is bad.

For more on the evolution of the financial sector from a boring and stable industry into one that balooned up and exploded, see Paul Krugman's article in this morning's New York Times.

Yesterday, Josh Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo.com posted his ideas on what he called the "social contract under strain."

I don't want to summarize this article because I think it should be read as a whole. But I will post this short passage that seems to be vital to arguments that approve of the outrage over executive bonuses:

"When the companies have come to the taxpayer hat in hand, begging for money, at that point you're into the average citizen's moral space, in which it becomes her or his business whether you really deserve that much money -- something that people just don't think is their business as long as you're talking about private corporations making or not making money in whatever way they're able."

Ok. It's Friday, so enough about AIG.

A Facebook Glitch

My friend, Tom Krieglstein, recently encountered an interesting glitch on his Facebook account. He was accidentally given administrative control of some very large corporate Facebook pages, including Delta Airlines, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Microsoft, and the Star Wars fan page. You can see Tom show off this glitch on AllFacebook.

In a conversation about the glitch and Facebook's recent upgrade with PCWorld, Tom states his belief that problem was due to "a kink in the new code." However, Facebook claims this was an "isolated inciendent."

Facebook "fixed" the problem today by removing Tom as an admin from all pages, including Swift kick and Red Rover, which he actually owns. Hopefully this problem is resolved shortly.

Wild Things

Quick Thoughts before we begin...

So, I created this blog a long time ago and was uncertain what I wanted to do with it. All I knew was that I'm an opinionated asshole and had a lot of free time on my hands, so why not do something constructive?

It was a good idea, but, as is often the problem with wanna-be-creative types such as myself, I didn’t know how to channel my opinions and ideas into something that would be interesting and fulfilling. Should I apply my trivial knowledge of pop culture? Should politics be the focus? Should I get incredibly vain and tell you how I spend most days hanging out with my dog, Rascal, on the couch playing wii sports and watching rerun episodes of How I Met Your Mother over and over?

My tentative decision is to begin without rules. It’s difficult enough to stare at this blank screen and create content, so I’m not going to make that process more difficult than it needs to be. Also, I’m hoping I’m not narcissistic enough to subject you, dear reader, to too many details of mine and Rascal’s lives, but I suppose we’ll see how that works out. ;)

That’s all for this round. Here's Rascal: