Andrew Stuart Morrison plotting the overthrow of the Bush administration
Today, we introduce you to Times New Roman Online, Andrew Stuart Morrison’s “Canadian Opinion from the Left Coast” wherein he keeps “score in an increasingly rough neighbourhood”, which is to say, as a neighbour to the increasingly scary and unstable political behemoth to the south.
Although a “Canadian and … interested in Canadian politics and the general matters that effect us all,” Morrison “has been steered of late by a compulsion towards reporting on the Bush administration’s direction and handling of the War on Terror, simply because it is the biggest story of (his) lifetime,” and because he disagrees utterly “with the ways in which this child president has steered the U.S. ship of state (and Canada by proxy)”.
Morrison is a regular commentator at Billmon’s Whiskey Bar, which was voted Best American Political Blog (his site is linked there). He’s also listed on the U.S. website Political Puzzle, and comments regularly, on Tacitus, Eschaton, and Washington Monthly’s Political Animal, among others.
“It’s weird being a Canuck, stuck out here in West Van, finding myself wading knee-deep amongst the heavies of the United States, the strength of my arguments being the fact that I come from the Great White North. Of course, I’ve been thoroughly insulted by U.S. right-wing commentators as a Canadian, been described as a Commie, decried as a meddler, and told categorically to put my own house in order (ie. Canada) before daring to question our southern neighbour. After all, I’ve been told, if it wasn’t for the U.S., we’d all be speaking Russian up here in our igloos. Silly bunch, these Yanks … sort of an anthropology project at times.”
“Nevertheless, to be ‘keeping track of an increasingly rough neighbourhood’ is a continuing joy, and I wish I had more time to dedicate to TNRO. I am a workoholic with a young family so I sometimes have to skip a day or two. At other times I have trouble turning the tap off.”
One of the most readable and consistently articulate / well-written blogs I’ve run across in my (relatively) short life as a blogger, Morrison’s Times New Roman blog offers cogent opinion on topics ranging (today) from an incisive commentary on how Dennis Miller has ‘irresponsibly squandered’ the goodwill that he was afforded by many in so carelessly adopting the agenda of the American right, to a short essay on President George Bush vs UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and commentary on the recent election in Spain, following the devastating Al Qaida attack of March 11.
Also one of the best progressive ‘link’ sites I’ve found (go see for yourself), do yourself a favour: check out Times New Roman Online, bookmark it (also available as a weblog link, to your right, under BC/Vancouver), and visit Andrew Stuart Morrison’s ‘left coast’ blog often.
Microsoft’s New Service Pack 2 gives Windows XP a major face-lift
Microsoft has just released a close-to-final version of the second major update to their Windows XP operating system, which adds new, much-anticipated security tools to the heart and soul of their virtually ubiquitous commercial operating environment.
Windows XP Service Pack 2 — due out some time in the second quarter of 2004 — includes a number of positive changes to key operational security aspects of Internet Explorer (including a configurable pop-up blocker that will now be turned on by default); a much improved Windows Update service that is intended to make it significantly easier for the end user to automatically install critical updates to the operating system to keep viruses, Trojans and worms at bay; and the creation of a Windows Security Center, a new tool that not only simplifies access to security settings in various Windows components, but includes as well a powerful new firewall and one-stop, centralized access to all necessary security components (firewall, antivirus, spyware control, and more) that your computer, and your family, requires to surf the Net safely.
And that’s all just for a start. There’s much more to come.
In an address to the recent RSA Security Conference that was held in San Francisco, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates provided the first public introduction to Windows XP Service Pack 2. To view his informative and quite fascinating address on Windows Media Player video, click on this link.
Hey Kid, Your Backpack is Ringing
Encouraged by inexpensive calling plans and concerned about safety, more parents are buying cellphones for their young children.
“I text-message my friends more than I call them,” says Amanda Gerber, 12, who got her own cellphone about a year ago after trying to convince her parents that she needed one. Amanda, a seventh-grade student, says she uses the phone primarily to keep in touch with her parents but also talks to friends.
Amanda’s mother, Lyndsey, says the phone gives her peace of mind in case Amanda needs a ride after school … (or) … “If she’s meeting a friend at the mall, it’s so convenient.”
Read Jeffrey Selingo’s story in the New York Times (registration required).
Lifting The Shroud: Finally, The Public Will Know the Truth
In a searing, book-length indictment of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism stategy, Richard A. Clarke, The White House’s former counterterrorism director, says that the Bush White House failed to take the al Qaeda threat seriously before Sept. 11, 2001, and by Sept. 12 was trying to pin the attack on Iraq.
Barton Gellman writes in the Washington Post: For Clarke, then in his 10th year as a top White House official, that day marked the transition from neglect to folly in the Bush administration’s stewardship of war with Islamic extremists. His account — in Against All Enemies, which reaches bookstores today, and in interviews accompanying publication — is the first detailed portrait of the Bush administration’s wartime performance by a major participant.
Acknowledged by foes and friends as a leading figure among career national security officials, Clarke served more than two years in the Bush White House after holding senior posts under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. He resigned 13 months ago yesterday.
“The president, he said, ‘failed to act prior to September 11 on the threat from al Qaeda despite repeated warnings and then harvested a political windfall for taking obvious yet insufficient steps after the attacks.’ The rapid shift of focus to Saddam Hussein, Clarke writes, ‘launched an unnecessary and costly war in Iraq that strengthened the fundamentalist, radical Islamic terrorist movement worldwide.’”
The charges, quite obviously, go right to the heart of Bush’s re-election campaign strategy, which has consistently sought to position the sitting president as as a ‘war president’ whose vision and leadership have made the United States a far safer country. Needless to say, given Clarke’s revelations, The White House finds itself in massive damage control today.
The first salvo of Clarke’s media tour came last evening, on the CBS news affairs programme, 60 Minutes. CBSNEWS.com has a full report on the segment, and a video excerpt. Here’s Joie Chen summing up the interview — and the White House response — on the CBS Evening News.
The New York Times’ Paul Krugman also weighs in.