Why are liberals so condescending?

If you ever wondered, I think I now have your answer. You can read it here.  An excellent article by a political science professor from the University of Virginia.

Google and the NSA

Some of you may remember earlier in January when Google announced that their system source code was assaulted numerous times between December and January.  Google called this a massive attack and let us all know that e-mail accounts of human rights activists in Europe and the USA had been compromised.  I, along with many, do not have a category for a cyberattack.  We can categorize burglary, murder, assault, but a cyberassault is a different problem.

Google is taking this serious.  So seriously they have taken two steps.  First, they have demanded the Chinese government allow them to operate an uncensored search engine in China.  Up to this point everything searched through Google has to be censored in the land of the dragon.  Second, Google contacted the NSA about investigating the attack.

This may make you leery because the capabilities of America’s electronic spy agency are far overblown (maybe).  We really do not know what they’re capable of doing but I can guarantee you it is a lot.  I am of two minds with this.  First, any government agency teaming up with a private organization which has control of some of the private data of individuals make me nervous.  My ingrained American distrust of anything smacking of tyranny comes rising up.  Second is more pragmatic.  I expect the NSA has the ability to do a lot of good electronic investigating and I can only imagine Google collected an immense amount of data about the attack.  Investigating this properly can only increase our knowledge of and resistance to cyberattacks.  Google knows they need to protect their users data, so let us hope they do so properly.

President Obama’s First State of the Union

President Obama’s first State of the Union (SOTU) was given at a crucial time in his presidency.  Since his election in November 2008 swept the Democrats into power in Congress for the first time since 1994 President Obama has had a rocky road.  His nominees, though undergoing an intense vetting process, yielded several who failed to pay taxes and whose backgrounds were far from politically beneficial to the President.  His stimulus package, passed with ease, has been decried as a worthless purveyor of pork which will do nothing but add to our deficit.  His much championed climate change bill was DOA in the Senate and while both the House of Representatives and the Senate have passed health care reform bills, many House and Senate Democrats are of the opinion that the victory of Scott Brown in Massachusetts is a public rejection of Obama’s health care agenda.

In short, President Obama has a lot to talk about.  None of his major policy items, beyond the stimulus, have made it to his desk in this first year in office.  With the largest first year approval rating drop in history for a President (Rasmussen has a drop for the low 80s to the mid to high 40s), Obama needs to get momentum back on his side.  This speech is crucial to do so, since he will capture most of America as his audience and be able to put forth his agenda.

What I intend to do is to analyze the President’s speech from a transcript pulled from the White House web site.  There are numerous themes the President hit on, so I will address them one by one.  So sit back and enjoy.

SOTU, Part 2

Part 2.

State of the Union

By popular demand, I am going to put out some information on the State of the Union and give my meager analysis and opinion on what President Obama said.  Before I get back to work, I want to add this:

Not true.