Book! It's Got an Intuitive, Touch-based Interface!

What with all the Kindle 2 release brouhaha, I got a real laugh out of yesterday's comic over at Penny Arcade. ;)

We Need a New Dream

It's obviously been hard not to think about the greed and short-sightedness that's got us in to the current economic predicament. But something really crystallized for me while reading a quote from the graphic novel The Watchmen (the same dialog is in the movie, too -'natch).

As they attempt to quell a riot, the Nightowl and the Comedian have the following short conversation in the midst of the chaos:

Nightowl: But the country's disintegrating. What's happened to America ? What's happened to the American dream ?

Comedian: It came true. You're lookin' at it.

We need a new American Dream. One that's not dreamt by spoiled, shallow, greedy children.

Someone's a Fast Learner

Our new president is demonstrating that he learns quickly...very quickly:

Lessons Obama learned from stimulus deal.

• Take your case right to the American people.
  
• Don't let bipartisanship become the barometer of your success.
  
• Face up to criticism, be pragmatic without being unprincipled.
  

Yep, sounds like a good start to me.

But Really, He Loves America

Conservative bloviator Rush Limbaugh has told a publication regarding Pres. Obama, “I hope he fails.” The sordid details can be found on Joe Garofoli's blog in the San Francisco Gate.

Just another example of how much conservatives love America...

Jan. 20, 2009 - the End of an Error

Yes, we did :) [and BTW, the Whitehouse website just got a lot more useful]

Patrick Farley sums it up nicely in The Bush Years: All Circus, No Bread:

“Trying to explain what was wrong with the Bush Era feels like trying to vomit up a cannonball. I don't think my jaw can stretch that wide.”

Parker in the Wilderness

Kathleen Parker, one of the only halfway decent writers the Republicans had, has been cast into the outer darkness. Yes, she's lost her position at the National Review, to wander "the wilderness in rags and swaddling cloths, lamenting the loss of her soul and shaking her chains like Jacob Marley." [Wonkette]

Parker was one of the only conservative writers I thought had a decent handle on one of the main issues which caused the Republican implosion during the 2008 election. So of course it's no surprise that the conservatives expelled her. Hey, the truth hurts!

Luckily, you can still read Parker in the Washington Post.

QotD for 7 Jan., 2009

On the fate of the Church in the West, Counterlight writes in a comment thread over on Preludium:

I think that as goes Spain these days, so goes the rest of the West (including the USA); a greatly shrunken church dominated by fanatics who accelerate shrinking church attendance by alienating the rest of the population; a church that wears a heavy millstone of rightwing and reactionary politics around its neck in an increasingly cosmopolitan country.

Pretty much sums it up as far as I'm concerned. And although I'm quite certain TEC will stand as a thoughtful and liberal-minded counterpoint to that, I fear that thoughtful and liberal-minded Christianity will remain a smaller sect within a small sect.