This is making the rounds. Video of the President talking iPads and Computers...

Pretty funny moment.

White Board: Goolsbee on the National Wireless Initiative (VIDEO)

Goolsbee speaks to the propeller head in us all:



In this White House White Board Austan Goolsbee, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, explains the National Wireless Initiative, which will help America win the future by building a 21st Century infrastructure.

President Obama's speech on the National Wireless Initiative (VIDEO)

President Obama discusses the National Wireless Initiative in Marquette, MI, a proposal will help America win the future by building a 21st Century infrastructure.

Finally, on a lighter note, the President gave his autograph on an iPad...

Courtesy Gizmodo.

A brothah' did this too. Good for him.

I don't know what the app is he chose to use, but there are a lot of finger-drawing apps on the iPad. The results are here:

This is why I stopped reading Huffington Post, Part 348

Swear to God, this is one of the headlines on the Huffington Post right now:

WATCH: Obama Campaigned On Net Neutrality -- Has He Lived Up To His Promise?

Lemme get this straight. Two private Companies get together and decide to impose a tiered-system on at least part of the internet (something, last I checked, Obama's FCC doesn't like), and it's the President's fault??

Apple and Amazon versus the State of Connecticut

Ugh.

Well, I'm willing to take one for the team(s) (I own both) if it'll get Richard Blumenthal elected to Chris Dodd's Senate seat.

Citing "potentially anticompetitive ebook deals," Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is investigating the relationship between Apple, Amazon and publishers. Blumenthal claims Apple and Amazon have struck exclusive deals with publishers that would block smaller ebook distributors from offering better prices.

Courtesy Gizmodo.

He's still leading the WWE Lady by like a gazillion, so...

Glenn Greenwald's defense of himself...

This is Glenn Greenwald's defense of yesterday's actions.

I'm sorry, but I'm not buying. Legally, he may be correct, but ethically??

However reprehensible Joe Klein's thoughts and statements were and are (they're certainly not polite), he still has a right to them. He still has a right to keep them private, if he so chooses. He still has a right to even a basic understanding of privacy. Is Glenn Greenwald really going to act as sole artiber, sole judge and jury to determine what should and shouldn't be held private? Apparently he is.

And in the end, no matter what Greenwald says Joe Klein wasn't discussing or setting Policy, which we as a collective group of citizenry have a right to know. One Journalists personal opinions about another? Is there really a "public interest" in knowing this? Especially when the Journalist being insulted is the apparently has sole determination of what the "public interest" apparently is?

This is no different that me and a bunch of friends getting together, and Glenn Greenwald or someone else reaching into the middle of that conversation with a tape recorder (secretly) and collecting our private thoughts and insights, then publishing them because he thought they were in the public interest. Sorry, this is the act of a scumbag. This is why I don't trust Greenwald, I don't trust his acolytes online, and look with building suspicion with those who solicit his opinions. I'm talking about you, Bill Moyers.

Klein's complaint that "twice in the past month, [his] private communications have been splashed about the internet" is revealing. The first incident was when he went to a beach party, spat a slew of insults (I'm not only a "civil liberties absolutist" but also "evil") in front of a group of people, all while speaking with an individual he didn't know but who happened to be a prolific and excellent blog commenter, sometimes blogger and I.F. Stone's granddaughter. She then wrote about what he said in a very widely-linked post. That's who Klein, in yesterday's post, bizarrely called a "rather pathetic woman acolyte of Greenwald's."

The second incident happened yesterday. Klein belongs to "Journolist," a secret online club where several hundred liberal journalists, pundits, bloggers, editors, policy experts and the like gather to discuss various matters, all organized by The Washington Post's Ezra Klein. It includes some of the most influential people in the profession. I'm not a member and never have been. Yesterday morning, one of the participants (whose identity I don't know) emailed me to advise me that Joe Klein was sending out extremely insulting and derogatory emails to the entire group about me, and forwarded that email discussion to me, telling me he thought it was wrong that I was being repeatedly attacked by Klein in front of hundreds of people -- including many people who are my colleagues and peers -- without my knowledge and without being able to defend myself. He told me I could do whatever I thought was best with what he sent. I then posted some of those emails on a site I use to post documents, and briefly mentioned it on Twitter. That -- a political rant in front of strangers on a beach and an insult fest sent to hundreds of journalists -- are the ostensibly "private communications" to which Klein is referring.

I don't think there's anything wrong at all with journalists emailing one other to discuss various political issues as they do on Journolist. Journalists, like everyone else, are entitled to have private conversations, and privacy can facilitate more candid discussions. But when hundreds of highly influential opinion-makers gather to talk about politics, that is a matter of public interest. If participants in that discussion agree to keep the discussions confidential, they should abide by that. But the rest of the world isn't bound to honor that secrecy. That's what journalism and leaks are about: disclosing and publishing other people's secrets that are a matter of public interest. That's what journalists do all the time, or at least should do: inform the public what powerful people are saying and doing in "private." Unless you're Tim Russert, you don't need "permission" or "authorization" to publish what you learn. Beyond that, the very idea that someone has the right to attack and insult someone who isn't present in front of hundreds of people -- and then demand that the entire world, including the target of the attacks, honor that discussion as secret and private, that the target has no right to publicize it or respond -- is ludicrous beyond words.

Time: Joe Klein vs. Glenn Greenwald.

Listen, I acknowledge that I'm a bit of an anomaly, I'm a Liberal who can't stand Glenn Greenwald. Sorry. I think he's an impratical a-hole, an armchair leftist, if you will.

Well imagine my surprise when I see this blogposting from the Kos at his midday open thread. I'll summarize, while quoting it exactly:

Joe Klein, Asshole.

Ooookay, I says to myself. What'd Joe do now?

I click on the link (where it says asshole), and prepared to open up whatever Time Magazine column to see what the deal is.

Only I'm not opening up Time Magazine's webpage, I'm opening up something called UT Documents. (And I have no idea what UT stands for.)

Now, clearly UT Documents a blogger.com site (it's even using the same template as good ol' Fort McHenry here). I think it's run by Glenn Greenwald. I say that because is his name and bio is up top.

And what follows that is a running email exchange between Joe Klein and Glenn Greenwald.

Okay.

Now, Glenn holds himself to the highest Journalistic standards. Well, acutally, he spends a lot of time demanding others hold to these high Journalistic standards. So my first question is, did he let Joe Klein know he was going to publish this email exchange?

A disclosure of this nature isn't subject to flexible journalistic standards, which Glenn is apparently now displaying. Either he told Joe or he didn't. If he didn't, not cool. Not cool at all.

I just checked Salon.com, and Glenn's last posting was August 30th, 2009. Yesterday. And as I've posted before...that posting about D.C. Nepotism was bang on target.

So, as I said...not cool at all.

Joe Klein (not surprisingly) concurs:

Twice in the past month, my private communications have been splashed about the internet. That such a thing would happen is unfortunate, and dishonorable, but sadly inevitable, I suppose. I ignored the first case, in which a rather pathetic woman acolyte of Greenwald's published a hyperbolic account of a conversation I had with her at a beach picnic on Cape Cod. Now, Greenwald himself has published private emails of mine that were part of a conversation taking place on a list-serve. In one of those emails, I say that Greenwald "cares not a whit for America's national security."

Oh my God, Glenn. You've put me in the position of having to defend über-insider Joe Klein. Think about that.

For the past several years, Greenwald has conducted a persistent, malicious campaign to distort who I am and where I stand. He is a mean-spirited, graceless bully. During that time, I have never seen him write a positive sentence about the US military, which has transformed itself dramatically for the better since Rumsfeld's departure (indeed, he ridiculed me when I reported that the situation in Anbar Province was turning around in 2007). I have never seen him acknowledge that the work of the clandestine service—performed disgracefully by the CIA during the early Bush years—is an absolute necessity in a world where terrorists have the capability to attack us at any time, in almost any place. Nor have I seen [him] acknowledge that such a threat exists, nor make a single positive suggestion about how to confront that threat in ways that might conform to his views. Therefore, I have seen no evidence that he cares one whit about the national security of the United States. It is not hyperbole, it is a fact.

In the end Joe does summarize his feelings about Glenn Greenwald. Oddly, they reflect my own (for the most part):

I am not a religious reader of Greenwald--he does go on, and on--and it's possible that I missed extensive posts in which he praises the Armed Forces or makes positive suggestions about how to track possible communications between terrorists abroad and their confederates here. But I sort of doubt that. What I have seen from him, ad nauseum, are intemperate attacks in which he questions the character of--no, it's worse than that: he slimes--anyone who has the temerity to disagree with him.

I agree with Greenwald on some things, and appreciate his insights on others. But he is a thoroughly dishonorable person--as he proved by releasing my private emails--and, when it comes to his oft-trumpeted belief in the right to privacy, a stone hypocrite as well.

I'm sorry if this offends people who are fans of Glenn Greenwald. But my problem isn't really what he complains about...it's how he complains. It's how he draws lines in the sand, its how...as Joe put it...he attacks anyone who has the temerity to disagree with him. He doesn't try to probe, understand, negotiate or...reason; all does is attack. This is a pattern with him.

And in this case, like Joe said, he seems to have added hypocrisy to the list.

'Onion' Editor Calls HuffPo Headline 'Wildly Sensational'

For once, I'm not alone...

Recovery.gov

By the way, Recovery.gov is officially online!

I would have chosen Microsoft, but...(VIDEO)

It's still hysterical...

Serious, serious stuff...

Apparently, at some point last week (and I don't know how I missed it), the President-Elect was seen working out with...a Zune.

I say again...the President-Elect was seen...not with an iPod, but with a Microsoft Zune.

I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit...

Friends don't let friends buy Zunes.

If you want to punish your child for something they've done that's really, really terrible, you buy them a Zune.

Appleworld, of course, melted down.  (Ya think?!?!)

When Zune-gate blew up around Obama, hundreds of bloggers and internet readers couldn't get enough. "NOOOOOOOOOOOO," one iPod-loving user wailed on the blog Engadget. "I want my vote back!"

"Excellent news," a pro-Zune user wrote. "Nice to see he doesn't conform to the crowd and taking style over substance."

Even Philadelphia City Paper reporter Neal Santos, who broke the news that Obama was using a Zune, felt the need to say more. "I don't know for sure that it was his," Santos said in an update to his Zune post. "It could belong to one of the many Secret Service dudes that were at the gym."

Noticing all the chaos the news was causing, the typically coy Obama press shop felt the need to respond. "The president-elect uses an iPod," an Obama spokesman told the Wall Street Journal.

Whew.

HuffPo: More Obama Transparency...

Sam Stein:

Barack Obama will publicize the names and agenda items of the groups that are meeting with its transition team, the campaign announced on Friday. Moreover, the public will be allowed to review and discuss the information on Obama's website, Change.gov.

It's just the Transition process, but hopefully this'll translate into a similar process in the White House.And, it'll make it difficult for future Presidents to explain why they don't share similar information.

Imitation is the sincerest form of...something.

The President-Elect oughta sue hyper-conservative Israeli Politician Benjamin Netanyahu for copyright infringement.

TPM: Obama Transition Team Staffs Up Internet Outreach Crew

Obama seems to be moving in the direction of making Whitehouse.gov, an actual place to hang out and learn about what's going on in Government.

Looking at Whitehouse.gov, I can only hope so.