“The flip side of responsibly held secrets, however, is trust. A perfectly open world, without secrets, would be a world without the need for trust, and therefore a world without trust. What a sad sterile place that would be: A perfect world for machines.”

“Almost overnight, Barack Obama overhauled his White House and rewrote much of the script. Now all he needs is a happy ending.” On the self-examination and cabinet shuffling over the last two months, and what it could mean for the next two years. If anything it’s incredibly promising that Obama is willing and able to rethink everything and actually take the hard steps to implement a change of operations.

Dozens of violent, fearful, hateful incidents from just the last three years, leading up to the recent shooting of Representative Giffords. “On June 26, 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court embraced the National Rifle Association’s contention that the Second Amendment provides individuals with the right to take violent action against our government should it become ‘tyrannical.’ The following timeline catalogues incidents of insurrectionist violence (or the promotion of such violence) that have occurred since that decision was issued.”

I asked a question, and it got answered.

On Cablegate, especially how the Pentagon Papers and our basic societal comprises play. “Whatever happens, though, this is new ground, and needs to be hashed out as an exemplar of the clash of basic principles that it is.”

“Still, why does it matter what some politicians and think tanks say? The answer is that there’s a well-developed right-wing media infrastructure in place to catapult the propaganda, as former President George W. Bush put it, to rapidly disseminate bogus analysis to a wide audience where it becomes part of what ‘everyone knows.’ (There’s nothing comparable on the left, which has fallen far behind in the humbug race.)”

"It is they, fronted by President Obama, who are behind the charter school movement. Their goal is to make franchises of our schools, docile, low-cost industrial robots of our teachers, and McStudents of our children. This, despite the fact that the best academic studies of charter schools have shown that they perform no better than public schools and in many cases perform worse. Sometimes much worse."

A good interview, and explains Obama's long-game strategy explicitly. His indignation at progressives and Democrats complaining about the state of things when much has actually been accomplished is reasonable, but his final statement bothers me. "We have to get folks off the sidelines. People need to shake off this lethargy, people need to buck up. Bringing about change is hard — that's what I said during the campaign. It has been hard, and we've got some lumps to show for it. But if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren't serious in the first place." OK, but what does that mean? What's going to make a difference with ten-to-one odds and enormous corporations and special-interest groups lined up on the other side? Your base gave you a lot of money to help you get elected, but is that what you're asking them to do again, deep in a recession? They need direction, advice, some instruction or insight. What exactly do you want us to 'try harder' at?

"Meanwhile, in Oregon, the mosque sometimes attended by Mohamud was victimized today by arson. So the FBI did not stop any actual Terrorist plots, but they may have helped inspire one."

"He was condemned to death for telling the ancient Greeks things they didn't want to hear, but his views on consumerism and trial by media are just as relevant today."

The Roma story.

"A day in the life of the President." "Durable achievement demands a long time horizon—something that the country as a whole seems to have lost. We can’t wait for the carrots to grow—we keep pulling them up to see how they’re doing. Thus, deeply complex problems, from illegal immigration to the BP oil spill—problems that by definition have no quick or easy solution, despite their obvious urgency—become easy emblems of presumptive failure, whatever the president may actually be doing to address them."

I asked a question and it got answered: "The rally, hopefully, will get a lot of people who have become frustrated with the political process engaged again. To the extent that it succeeds in that, I’m for it. If it does it while being entertaining, I’m doubly for it."

"These are the folks whose policies helped devastate our middle class. They drove our economy into a ditch. And we got in there and put on our boots and we pushed and we shoved and we were sweating and these guys were standing, watching us, sipping on a Slurpee."

"A stimulus too small to significantly reduce unemployment, a TARP that didn’t trickle down to Main Street, financial reform that doesn’t fundamentally restructure Wall Street, and health-care reforms that don’t promise to bring down health-care costs have all created an enthusiasm gap. They’ve fired up the right, demoralized the left, and generated unease among the general population."

A good summary of the actions taken and what lies ahead.

An International Monetary Fund veteran explains how the US financial situation is like that of a less-powerful nation's developing economy. Oligarchy, corruption, and the financial sector's control of the government — it's not good.

Getting politics wrong and getting pop wrong.

I want to revisit this later; it is an interesting retort to Michael Pollan and others' condemnations of current farming techniques.

Attempting to answer the question, "what is white culture?" and reporting on those who have tackled it before.

The extent to which large 'environmentalism' groups are actually destroying the environment with their corporate connections.

On what Farmville is (not a game) and what it means (nothing good).

DADT is homophobia, and the denial of equal rights to homosexuals is caused by hatred and fear. Period.

"That's some serious neanderthal action going on."

"I had this vision of the future — a ruined empire, run by number crunchers, squalid and stupid and puffed up with phony patriotism, settling for a long slow decline."

Why I don't think I'm a curmudgeon for thinking the green Iran icons are a joke. "…if you believe for one minute that publicly agreeing with an echo chamber is changing anyone’s mind, behavior, or outlook, you need to stand up, locate your disused front door, walk the fuck through it, and then go spend a full (unwired) day doing something to actually help another person."

Details on the new Oahu Bike Plan, which includes 600 miles of planned bike lanes and trails. They're trying to be pragmatic, which is nice. Here's hoping this actually happens. I'd be STOKED.

"I’ve long assumed that if you followed the news, the stories behind the headlines would become plain."

Obama's always been silent about copyright and bootlegging, but Biden's been, apparently, quite the industry advocate and technology ignoramus.

Stylistic changes in the Obama White House. "I've got to do something about these plates. I'm not really a plates kind of guy."