Entries for April 2009

By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Ummm. Brownie's still doing a heckuva job.

In case you missed it, Michael Brown, the guy who was in charge of FEMA during the little thundershower that wrecked New Orleans, was on Fox today lambasting the Obama administration for its handling of the swine flu outbreak. Seriously.

He has about as much credibility talking about this as Dick Cheney does talking about the efficacy of torture.

By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Sarah Palin is a twit. Errr. What I mean to say is that she is—what?—tweeting? Does that then make her a twitterer? A twitterizer? A twitterist?

She's on Twitter, and if you'd like to join the (as of this writing) more than 7,000 people following her (including a number of big journalistic and political names) you can click here (but don't click here).

She is of course only the latest pol or hack to enter the Twitzone, but she may be jumping on this bandwagon after its completed its own arcing leap over the shark. According to Nielsen, while Twitter saw explosive growth during March, it was unsustained—60 percent of users did not come back:

By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Joe Biden—the vice president, not the surgeon general, in case you were wondering—has been getting plenty of hard-earned criticism and ridicule on the 'net today for his intemperate remarks this morning on the Today Show to the effect that wise Americans will avoid being enclosed with each other like, well, the plague.

By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

If the current swine flu H1N1 flu outbreak does reach pandemic levels, it will not only be the first global pandemic of the 21st century, it will be the first globalized pandemic ever. This struck me reading the New York Times front page story on the outbreak this morning. It's not simply that the world has gotten smaller in a physical/travel sense—people move around faster thanks to open borders and airplanes, thus increasing the speed with which these diseases can spread.

By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Neo-con Ken Adelman has an interesting and admirable blog post over at one of Foreign Policy's blogs. He makes a conservative case against torture.

By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Some of the craziness that gets shots around the Internet (usually by chain-E-mail) can be either amusing or horrifying, depending on how seriously you take its spread.

By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Have you heard the one about how Barack Obama is one of the least popular modern presidents—less popular even than the villainous George W. Bush? There are a couple of big problems with the assertion: First, it's nonsense, second it's meaningless.