Stanford Center for Internet and Society

This video was UTTERLY MEZMERIZING to watch. Really an incredible event in modern American politics.

Partial transcript:

"Part of the reason I accepted your invitation to come here was because I wanted to speak with all of you, and not just to all of you. So I'm looking forward to taking your questions and having a real conversation in a few moments. And I hope that the conversation we begin here doesn't end here; that we can continue our dialogue in the days ahead. It's important to me that we do so. It's important to you, I think, that we do so. But most importantly, it's important to the American people that we do so.

Our President, last night:

"I know how unpopular it is to be seen as helping banks right now, especially when everyone is suffering in part from their bad decisions. I promise you – I get it.

But I also know that in a time of crisis, we cannot afford to govern out of anger, or yield to the politics of the moment. My job – our job – is to solve the problem. Our job is to govern with a sense of responsibility...

The Brits nail it better than the Daily Show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtGSXMuWMR4

Amazing how a couple edits and on-the-street interviews can transform fuzzy thinking into something that seems insightful.

Jeffery A. Salter in The New York Times: "In the 1990s, Jaron Lanier was one of the digital pioneers hailing the wonderful possibilities that would be realized once the Internet allowed musicians, artists, scientists and engineers around the world to instantly share their work. Now, like a lot of us, he is having second thoughts...

An inside chonicle of the kerfluffle (a.k.a "Tinselgate") over the White House xmas tree, with an ODR emphasis added:

"During the first three weeks of December, the White House schedule of fetes and receptions proceeds without incident. The Wish Tree is groaning with wishes. Oprah and HGTV praise and immortalize our efforts. Everyone is happy. Even Pat Nixon’s old Faberge orbs, polished up and reused in one of many bipartisan gestures, are happy.

DEC. 23: THE BLOGSPLOSION

Some grody little snapshots find their way to Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government Web site HQ....

Interesting uproar over the actions of the "social media" reporter of STLToday.com. The long and the short of it: the blogger asked the question "what was the weirdest thing you ever ate?" and a commenter posted the logical, lewd, immature response. The blogger deleted the comment. It was posted again. The blogger then saw from the IP address in the comment admin interface that the comment was coming from a school. The blogger notifies the school, who hunts down the (anonymous) commenter, who resigns on the spot.

Martin Wolf in the Financial Times:

"...these views shaped how I have responded to the financial catastrophe of the past few years. I was convinced that, without the policy responses we saw, the world would have experienced a still greater depression. Policymakers could not stand idly by while such calamities unfolded. We could not, in such times, even take the survival of civilisation itself for granted. Never before had I felt more strongly the force of John Maynard Keynes’s toast “to the economists – who are the trustees, not of civilisation, but of the possibility of civilisation”...

I appreciate this understanding of economic stability as an enabler of progress instead of the source of progress. Economic chaos prevents solutions to other challenges. Economic sustainability (and development) creates conditions where social, environmental, educational improvements are possible, but economic stability does not inevitably lead to these improvements.

John Richardson for Esquire: "These days, the argument that Obama hasn't accomplished anything may be the only example of real bipartisanship in America.

Here's the conventional wisdom in a single paragraph: Three hundred and sixty-four days after he was elected president, Obama is still stuck in Iraq, hasn't closed Guantánamo, is getting deeper into Afghanistan, hasn't accomplished health-care reform or slowed the rise in unemployment. His promises of bipartisanship are a punch line (see above). And there's still no peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. What a failure! What a splash of cold water in the face of all our bold hopes!

But the conventional wisdom is insane. Consider the record:

Our President:

"Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, distinguished members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, citizens of America, and citizens of the world:

I receive this honor with deep gratitude and great humility. It is an award that speaks to our highest aspirations -- that for all the cruelty and hardship of our world, we are not mere prisoners of fate. Our actions matter, and can bend history in the direction of justice.

Ezra Klein interviewing Stenny Hoyer in the Washington Post:

"This is a United States Senate that has had more cloture votes in one year than in the '60s and '70s combined. They had three cloture votes on whether to extend unemployment benefits, and that bill passed 97-0! The reason this issue needs to be raised is that, ultimately, the political representatives will respond to the demands of the public. Now, the public has been polarized. Every night on television, they listen to polarizing people. We’ve gone from Walter Cronkite to angrier people who are trying to incite them.