Vacation

My wife is on Vacation in Hawaii without me. One might think that this gives me more free time but actually Kristin does so much that I have much much less time. So posting on this blog will be decidedly light until she returns.

Site Traffic

I have been looking at my traffic statistics of my blog. I am pretty happy that my readership is growing. I had a nice spike during the election but that didn't survive the transition to post-election coverage with more focus on bikes. Now I have a reasonable readership that seems to be sticking around. I am enjoying blogging, it is an excellent release.

Let me know what you like about this blog. I keep tweaking the site as time goes on.

Surprise, everything we suspected about the NSA wiretapping program is true

Emptywheel has a great post up on how all the worst suspicions regarding the illegal wiretap program are true.

• All US communication was made accessible.
• Metadata about all communication was collected and used to choose what to look at further.
• Journalists were particularly targeted.

Go read emptywheel's post but you can see the rule of law was completely absent here. We already know that Senator's and Congressman's communication was caught in the net. We also know that choice bits of prurient interest were passed around between agents in a locker room atmosphere. This is an important revelation, but a very sad chapter in US history.

Important Posts from Other Blogs

Every day I read posts that I think are important and good, but I either don't know enough or have enough time to add my own commentary. Today I would try to put them together in a compilation post.

• Ezra Klein is always worth reading. Today he covers some of the issues on health care and how there is a lot of low hanging fruit out there in health care process that will both improve health care and decrease cost. He also mentions how there is opposition within the system to such changes. I recall the AMA on record opposing these kinds of checklists, which seems insane.


• Matthew Yglesias is another guy worth reading. One of his pieces today is on how the Financial sector has been recording very odd levels of profits since 1995 considering it is a service industry and should be very competitive. The second highest recorded industry is energy which makes sense. Read his post for the details.


• Paul Krugman - I think everyone should be forced to read this Nobel winning economist's writing given the current financial situation. I could link to a particular posting, but you should just read it all.


• Media Matters alerts us to a NYT article exhibiting exceptional amounts of stupid.


• Crook's and Liars has an excellent post showing Rahm Emanuel smacking down our center-wrong press.


• Dailykos has a nice piece on EFCA and why it is needed for our economic recovery.


• Crooks and Liars highlights another Chris Matthews smackdown of the Bush Legacy

That seems to be enough for the moment. Read and enjoy.

Blogrollup

Today I am going to share a number of blog posts that I found interesting and worthy of sharing. Almost all of this is political, but it is election season. All of this can be found on my google reader share page here. This page has more commentary on the various links.

1. Joe Biden on Fire - great speech. I link to commentary about this below as well, but this is the raw video and jedreport is always a good read. I was very impressed on Joe Biden's delivery and he does bring up the way that Sarah Palin really does feel like that bitchy popular girl. You know the one that always made fun of every you wore and did. Joe didn't use those words, he was more elegant in bring up the comparision.
2. Job Growth comparison between Clinton years and Bush years - A pointed chart that illustrates how the last 8 years have hurt us in job growth. Good chart, nice presentation.
   
3. Rep Chris Smith - Pushing God in the Schools. - Here we go, an idiot Republican congressman who thinks that God must be in our schools. This is just a warning, these radical nuts are out there and we will be living in a theocracy if we let them remain in power.
4. The Politics of Resentment - nice commentary from emptywheel regarding the video I link in #1 above. I found it an excellent read and companion to the speech above.
5. The Hollow Men - from Crooks and Liars. This one is very important. It talks about how the Republicans at the RNC had no problems with their double standard on torture. They all claimed outright that John McCain was tortured (he was, no doubt) but their own parties standard on torture (which John McCain supported) says none of the actions the Viet-Cong performed on him qualify as torture. I find this deeply distrubing and the torture issue and the disregarding of the Geneva Convention will be one of things that we will feel echos of for decades to come.
6. Real Vetting Roundup - dailykos. More Palin crap. If you aren't fully armed and ready to talk about why she is a liar, a crook, an eager consumer and seeker of earmarks, a pentocostal who believes we are approaching the endtimes, a member of a violent successionist organization, yada yada yada, click there and get some more info.
7. Best Daily Show ever? - more Jedreport. I haven't watched this yet but I love the Daily Show and trust Jed , if he says it is good, then watch it. The link goes to Jedreport but it has each of the portions of the show in embedded frames within it. That is easier then teasing out each segment on the indecision2008 web site.
8. Boxer fights back - Senator Boxer responds to McCain's acceptance speech. She does a bang up job here, very impressive.
   

Well, that's it for this morning. Take a look at these links and let me think, consider this an open thread. Though with the blog 1 day old, I doubt I have any readers besides my wife.
UPDATED - added one more - too good to pass up.