Once in a blue moon, you load the front page of the New York Times and you see a headline that makes you feel all happy and fuzzy inside. Perhaps this world will not go careering to its doom after all, mayhap our world leaders will in the end choose for the common good instead of for smallminded self-centred patriotic insanity.

Today was such a day, as the NY Times runs the following headline:
Obama Offered Deal to Russia in Secret Letter

Read and enjoy. Thank God for a Democratic President with brains and basic human values. Let's hope Obama's plans come through and we don't end up in a new Cold War with Russia.

Finally, I think one can only be impressed by the speed and scale of Obama's first acts of government. After little more than a month, he has announced not only huge internal reforms that would have seemed improbable under any other president, but he's also made bold moves on the international diplomatic front.

As to the Rush Limbaughs of this world, who wish Obama to fail: there can be no apology for your stupidity. How can anyone who is half sane object to defusing the time bomb that was the Bush missile defense plan? How can anyone object to better education and health care?
As for Limbaugh, Scalzi has an excellent post on the danger professional mediabigots like Limbaugh pose for the GOP first, and the US democratic system second.
I am beginning to think that lobotomies are part of the GOP initiation rituals...

Excellent stuff by Maureen Dowd on the NY Times website. If you studied some Latin, that is!

I always loved weird literal translations like this. In fact, I once had a colleague with whom I had a deal to only send Babelfish'ed messages to each other... Hilarious stuff! Write your mail in English, then push it through Babelfish into another language you know. Or better, have it round-tripped into English :-) 

To me, it was a straight Joe Biden win. Palin did not screw up the way she did in the Couric interviews, but she was unable to hide that she really has no knowledge of her own on any of these topics, never mind having developed her own views.

Really, moderators in debates like this should have the guts to stop the whole thing until the candidates answer the questions. "I am not going to answer this question, instead I'll speak to the American people about..." I mean come on. Try that on an exam in college... :)