Miscellanios 

BBC: "Anya Peters went from homeless blogger to published author in the blink of an eye."

My Sprint EVDO card works grrrreat in this hotel.

Josh Marshall: "This White House has mainly used 'classification' as a way to keep embarrassing information out of public view."

Checked in at the Hilton, across the street from Ground Zero.

We've all been here at one time or another. Well, at least I have.

Ron Paul the hero of 2008? 

Of course the Republicans are trying to tar and feather Rep Ron Paul, spin what he says to make it sound like he's a nut.

Even the Democrats aren't making as much sense as he is.

The things he's saying are surely what the politicos in Washington say when the cameras aren't on. We need more of that. Poor McCain, I can imagine at one point he might have said these things. But he's too sold out now to have any chance of winning if he did. His career would be over. But, you gotta wonder why he doesn't go ahead, because his career is totally over anyway, and the thought of more people dying, Americans and Iraqis, so he can hold on to a sliver of hope that he might win an election someday, suggests that he never really had any morals, he was just playing someone with them, in the hope of getting elected.

I'd like to shake Ron Paul's hand someday. I might even work for the guy, how about that! I honestly don't give a damn if the Republicans win or the Democrats -- I'd just like to see us, as a country, start using our brains, and start caring about not just ourselves but the poor schnooks who are dying. A little Golden Rule would help us feel okay about all the blessings we have.

As Maude used to say, and I think this every time I hear one of these guys like Blitzer or McCain (they're all the same) lie on TV -- God'll get you for that Walter. Well God won't only be getting Wolfe and John, he'll be getting you and me, if we stand around and don't do anything and let the bullshit continue.

Point of view is everything 

Les Orchard: "Twitter becomes immensely interesting when it turns out that you've amassed a group of contacts who tend to run in similar circles as you, because even their off-handed remarks and random burps have a decent chance of surfacing something interesting or entertaining. When it's good, this sets up a nice ambient chatter like sitting in a coffee shop filled with just your kind of people."

That's exactly right. And he goes on to explain that's why when reviewers look at Twitter, or other networking systems (like blogs) they see them as mundane. But it's like listening to random phone conversations, you'd think the same thing. But suppose you were listening to a conversation among people you know?

Twitter isn't private, so it's not exactly like eavesdropping, but it is personal. These days on the Internet we're experimenting with various mixtures of private and public, subscriptions and ephemeral connections. Almost no one watches the main Twitter page, yet that's probably where most of the reviewers go.

The naive reviewer hasn't got much to offer these days.

Wolf Blitzer interviews Ron Paul 

It's amazing how Blitzer protects his viewers from the new information that there might be understandable reasons why the US was attacked on 9-11. (Of course the information itself is old, what's new is that it's being aired on CNN.)

We've been killing huge numbers of people in the Middle East for a long time. If a foreign power was doing to us what we do to them, we'd be pissed, and we'd fight back. (As they are.)

Paul is right, of course -- and Blitzer is wrong. Paul is the only candidate of either party with the guts to cut through the nonsense and say what's obviously true. And Blitzer is the one that owes us an apology, for carrying the lies for so long. He's supposed to be a journalist, and his job is to be neutral and to find and tell the truth.

Ron Paul is good medicine for the US political system.

PS: If Giuliani is so good at protecting us, why did the attacks happen on his watch? Why no warning from Giuliani? Didn't he see it coming? Couldn't he prevent it? Why should anyone think he'd do any better if he was President?