Today is the beginning of a new era. A time of change. A glorious new beginning… Politics aside, we now have a President who understands the power of the internet. As of 12:01 p.m. EST, White House dot gov has a new look.

Powered by some form of ASP, it’s a valid XHTML site. Getting a Microsoft based site to validate is an impressive feat all by itself, but this one is done with style. As well as the usual stuff you’d expect on a government site, they’ve included a blog and photo galleries. Not only included the blog and galleries, but made them the face of the site. Rotating imagery, dynamic content, and enough RSS feeds to satisfy even… me.

I have to admit, I’m rather impressed. Who really knows how the Presidency will go, but I like the start. Neat, clean and very professional looking.  You could almost say, Presidential.

My hat is tipped to the designer. Beautifully done.

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. – Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Sent to me via e-mail, source unknown.

An email from Ireland to the brethren in the States… a point to ponder despite your political affiliation:

We, in Ireland, can’t figure out why people are even bothering to hold an election in the United States. On one side, you have a pants wearing lawyer, married to a lawyer who can’t keep his pants on, who just lost a long and heated primary against a lawyer who goes to the wrong church who is married to yet another lawyer who doesn’t even like the country her husband wants to run.

Now…On the other side, you have a nice old war hero whose name starts with the appropriate Mc terminology, married to a good looking younger woman who owns a beer distributorship.

What in Lords name are ye lads thinking over there in the colonies?

Filed under both humor and politics… is that redundant?

I look forward to seeing how this turns out.

“While I am prepared to show they lied on allegation after allegation, you have generously offered to pay one million dollars for just one thing that can be proven false,” Kerry wrote to Pickens. “I am prepared to prove the lie beyond any reasonable doubt.”

“When you have done so, if you can then prove anything in the ads was materially untrue, I will gladly award $1 million. As you know, I have been a long and proud supporter of the American military and veterans’ causes,” Pickens wrote.

I personally think Mr. Kerry will be eating crow here, but I may be wrong. I find it heard to think that Mr. Picket would put himself in the position to loose a public bet like this. He seems like a betting man to me, one that doesn’t loose much, or often.

A Clinton pet fable… foible… whatever

Socks, says Flangan, helped to humanize the Clintons, especially Hillary who took the cat with her on personal appearances. The cat’s ultimate fate was to be off-loaded and adopted by one of Bill Clinton’s secretaries.

Buddy, was killed 2002. Left unattended, he ran into the path of a car near the Clintons’ home in Chappaqua.

A similar fate befell Zeke, a Clinton pet that paid the ultimate price when it ran, unattended, near the Arkansas state capital and was struck by a car.

While I wouldn’t vote against someone just because they didn’t like pets, it might consider how they treated animals as part of my judgment on them as a human being. I’d give as much weight to how they treat animals as I’d give to how they treat people.

There is nothing wrong with avoiding contact with animals if you don’t like them, in fact I’d consider that a mark in your favor. Knowing yourself and your limitations is a good thing. It would be a big mark against you however, if you put yourself in contact with animals for some sort of personal gain, despite disliking them.

This story is sad really. Pets can bring so much enjoyment to a household if they’re treated properly. It’s a shame to instead see them treated like necessary household accessories.

Update: Here is a perfect example of the humanity to animals that I’d see as a positive attribute in a leader.

Alex at Alexanders Archive has commented on one of my posts. I believe he classifies my sentiment as “well deserved, but misplaced”. He’s probably right. I do however, still disagree with Columbia University inviting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak. Fortunately for them, they didn’t ask me. Of all the people who could speak, why invite him? Hearing all viewpoints is good, but his viewpoint is well known. Did he have anything new to add to the discussion, or did he just give another rant against the US, homosexuality, and any religion other than his own?

I do however agree with Alex that “Their desire to hear all sides of a very important contemporary argument should not be censored.” I’m curious though, if Columbia wants to hear from all sides… why do they continue the ban on ROTC?

Go read all of Alex’s post. I particularly like this part.

Iran’s president says there are no gays in Iran, and as wildly insane as that sounds (about as much as when Larry Craig says he “has never been gay”), Iran executed two gay teenagers by means of hanging not long ago. Some conservatives have said Mahmoud is right on this fact: there are no gays in Iran because he’s killed them all. Which is of course ridiculous, as much so as some of the denials we’ve heard. – Alexanders Archive

I’m not sure what to think of Fred Thompson as a politician, but I like this statement from him.

“Columbia University gave a public forum today to a tyrant to spread his lies and deceit. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made a mockery of free speech by standing in front of an auditorium of academicians and students and denying the existence of the Holocaust and his deadly intentions toward Israel.

“I find it ironic that Iran’s president accepted an invitation to speak at Columbia University, since students who dissent on Iranian campuses are not met with debate, they are met by a gun and imprisonment. – Fred Thompson

Strange week. I’ve been randomly shifting between idle moments during meetings and periods of great productivity at my computer. I obviously haven’t been posting here though. I’ll see what I can do about that.

Here’s a Budweiser commercial that aired once during the 2002 Super Bowl. This is their way of paying their respects to those who lost their lives in the September 11th tragedy.

This was supposed to be the Thursday edition of Open House, but of course it’s Friday morning. So without further ado, this is the Friday edition of Open House, and comments and trackbacks are now open. If your site doesn’t support trackbacks, use the Wizbang Standalone Trackback Pinger.

This has got to be one of the stupidest ideas I’ve ever heard of.

Strip-mining regulations may be revised to relax rules on environmental damage

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration wants to quit requiring coal-mine operators to prove that their surface mining will not damage streams, fish and wildlife.Under proposed new regulations that it will put out today for public comment, strip-mine operators would have to show only that they intend “to prevent [such damage] to the extent possible using the best technology currently available.”

So… What’s to keep them from saying that they “intend” to prevent damage, then doing whatever they want? I’m speechless.

I’m somewhat surprised that more politicians haven’t talked about this. I probably shouldn’t be.

It’s said that a man’s home is his castle, but across America some property owners are being rooked by local bureaucrats and politicians and having their private property confiscated by local governments for the supposed public good. – Fred Thompson

Mitt Romney’s campaign web site is up and running. It probably has been for a while, but I only recently noticed it. Here’s a few of my thoughts on the site.

Before I start with my usual review, I thought I’d mention the Five Brothers Blog. Mr. Romney has his sons blogging for him on a subdomain of his political site. A nice touch I thought. It’s dynamic nature should help drive traffic. Five people writing about Mitt Romney should definitely get good placement in the search engines. It seems to be well written too. They’re all following the campaign’s direction I suppose, but they all sound sincere. I think this aspect of the site will turn out to be big benefit as the campaign goes on.

Style
A fairly simple color palette, red, white, blue with a couple grays. Simple, but well done. The palette gives it a very clean and neat look, and the layout takes advantage of that.

The home page plays a sequence of campaign photos with links to press releases. They had the decency to run the photos fairly slowly, which is nice. A lot of sites seem to try to rush images by you at a rapid rate, but this isn’t unpleasant. It’s also, with one exception, the only moving part of the site, which is nice too. Too many sites find a technology like this scrolling images, and use it repeatedly. One moving image is interesting, two is annoying, and three will get you convicted of cruel and unusual punishment by any jury. The one exception I mentioned is a flash piece the plays when you hit the site for the first time. It’s a clever little bit of flash that shows Mr. Romney appear to walk out into your browser and welcome you to the site. My screen capture above shows him in the lower right corner. While it is clever, and is well done, I’m still undecided on whether it’s a benefit to the site or not. I’d think it would be found annoying by most people, but I could be wrong. It didn’t annoy me, but I’m a geek, and I’m fascinated by this sort of technological geekery.

The layout is mostly a three column affair. Nice and neat, everything in it’s place. They’ve so far stayed away from the clutter that can infest this sort of site. Hopefully they’ll continue that trend.

White space is used well. A fairly tight layout, but not too much so. Everything flows nicely, with no crowding.

It’s a fixed width page, which is a negative for me. I almost always think a fluid layout would be better. That said, this layout does work well. I wouldn’t hold it against the designer too much that this is fixed width. It probably wasn’t their choice anyway.

Structure
The site structure is decent. Almost entirely CSS with a table thrown in a couple of times. All tables appear to be used appropriately for tabular data of one kind or another.

While the site does view well in a variety of browsers, it could use some help. It has an unusually high number of validation errors and warnings. They appear to be mostly from the use of outdated or inappropriate coding. No individual problem is severe, but I’d be concerned that out of date browsers might have problems here. More than anything it looks like the Doctype doesn’t match the coding. Someone has upgraded the Doctype to something newer than the code can support. Again, not a big thing, but it should be fixed.

There are also some accessibility issues. A lot of images don’t have alt coding for instance. While this might be insignificant on a blog like mine, a campaign site needs to be really active on this. If you don’t give your viewers the information they came for, they’ll get it at another candidate’s site.

Content
The kind of political jabbering you’d expect from a campaign site. Nothing you wouldn’t expect with the possible exception of what could turn into a decent blog.

What would I change
I’d really only change the structure. Get the Doctype matching the code, and clean up the accessibility issues. Leave the style alone, and execute the style a little better with some cleaner code.

Summary
I’m a little surprised actually. It’s better than I thought it would be. Candidates seem to be taking the web much more seriously this campaign cycle, which is a good thing. A lot of people are using the web to do political research, and not taking it seriously can really hamstring a campaign. I think Mr. Romney will be well served by this site if it’s maintained properly.

Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, Right Celebrity, DeMediacratic Nation, The World According to Carl, Blue Star Chronicles, The Amboy Times, Leaning Straight Up, Conservative Cat, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

I saw a political website that I liked for Fred Thompson. I even like the URL, I’m With Fred dot com. Most politicians take themselves way too seriously, and I thought this was a nice change. This will be a simple review, I just had a few comment I’d like to make.

The key to this design in my view is the simplicity.

• Simple color scheme
• Simple graphics
• Simple layout
• No animation or flash in the basic site design

I was shocked. A nice clean layout without all of that @#$% that this sort of site usually has. Political sites are usually design by committee nightmares at best. Maybe this will turn into one of those, but the initial site is refreshing.

A blog with open comments was another nice touch. I was particularly impressed by the fact that Mr. Thompson actually appeared to be doing some of the blogging. We’ll see how that turns out. I’ve been less than impressed with celebrity blogging as a whole, but his first few posts were not bad. No long diatribes. Just short notes about current events for the most part.

I’m not sure what I think of this campaign politically, but I’m impressed with the way they’ve put together this site and using it to their advantage. It appears to be well thought out, and well executed. While this alone won’t get my vote, it will keep me watching to see what he has to say. When it comes down to it, keeping people watching what Fred Thompson has to say should be the primary purpose behind this site, and in my opinion, it’s fulfilling this duty well.

Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, Blue Collar Muse, Committees of Correspondence, third world county, Right Truth, The World According to Carl, The Amboy Times, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Just too good to pass up. I’ve followed with some interest Al Gore’s crusade for cutting pollution and living carbon neutral lifestyles. I’m all for cutting pollution, but his practice of flying around the country and the World to speak on the subject that I find the most odd. How can he afford the carbon offsets that he assures us that he purchases? Simple, he is one of the owners of the company… That’s right, he buys them from himself.

The Profit of Doom

Gore is chairman of the firm and, presumably, draws an income or will make money as its investments prosper. In other words, he “buys” his “carbon offsets” from himself, through a transaction designed to boost his own investments and return a profit to himself. To be blunt, Gore doesn’t buy “carbon offsets” through Generation Investment Management – he buys stocks.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, The Virtuous Republic, Perri Nelson’s Website, The Random Yak, basil’s blog, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate’s Cove, Stuck On Stupid, The Pink Flamingo, The Amboy Times, Cao’s Blog, Leaning Straight Up, Conservative Thoughts, Right Voices, and Pursuing Holiness, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

I was going to stay out of the Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan discussion, but this is one of the stupidest public statements I’ve ever heard. I just couldn’t pass it up.

“they have both assured me that it was never their intention to malign anyone’s faith, and I take them at their word.”
- John Edwards ’08 Blog

“I take them at their word.” Does that now mean something different than it used to? If you take them at what they blog about, then it seems obvious then Ms. Marcotte at least, clearly meant to malign someone’s faith.

Don’t get me wrong, I can understand hiring them, even keeping them, though I wouldn’t have done either. What the Edwards campaign seems to be ignoring though, is that these bloggers, like the rest of us, have spent a lot of time and effort defining themselves on their blogs. To read their blogs is to know who they are. Suggesting that they are somehow something different than that, is doing us a disservice. Hire them, fire them, or keep them, I don’t care. Just don’t lie to yourself or to us about who they are.

h/t Hot Air and Patterico’s Pontifications.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, The Virtuous Republic, Perri Nelson’s Website, A Blog For All, The Random Yak, Big Dog’s Weblog, basil’s blog, Shadowscope, Stuck On Stupid, Cao’s Blog, The Bullwinkle Blog, Jo’s Cafe, Conservative Cat, Conservative Thoughts, third world county, Faultline USA, stikNstein… has no mercy, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Dumb Ox Daily News, Right Voices, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Today’s quotes come from John Adams, second President of the United States.

In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.

No man who ever held the office of president would congratulate a friend on obtaining it.

It may be just me, but the level of political speaking has gone down since the arrival of the “sound bite”. US Presidents used to say things like this, now we have discussions about the definition of “is” and how do pronounce “nuclear”. In an era where anything they say can and will appear instantly around the world, politicians try to please everyone rather than say what they think. Nothing leads to a mediocre speech faster than trying to please everyone.

Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth. – Rex Stout

Mr. Stout was one of my favorite authors when I was a kid. He wrote the Nero Wolfe series in case you aren’t familiar with him. Do you think he was talking about John Edwards? Isn’t it a shame that he and his wife can only afford “a functional home with room for her children to play outdoors and a large kitchen to entertain friends and family.” Must be tough.

Trackposted to Right Pundits, Perri Nelson’s Website, Mark My Words, The Random Yak, Big Dog’s Weblog, basil’s blog, Shadowscope, The Bullwinkle Blog, Conservative Cat, Wake Up America, third world county, The HILL Chronicles, stikNstein… has no mercy, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Planck’s Constant, Dumb Ox Daily News, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

In the news, a British citizen’s ” phone was bugged by US intelligence agencies… …without the permission of the British secret intelligence services.

Authoritative leaks say the extraordinary revelations will be published this week by Lord Stevens and is bound to raise fresh questions…

In the era of the Patriot Act, this shouldn’t come as a big surprise. Our government has been caught yet again spying on someone inappropriately. Yet another black mark on the civil rights record of George W. Bush… Except of course, this wasn’t during his Presidency. Apparently President Clinton’s administration played fast and loose with the rules too. I can hear the cries of moral outrage from here. People taking to the streets to protest the Clinton administration’s treatment of Princess Diana… Sorry, my mistake, those were crickets outside my window.

The Dilbert Blog has an interesting thought on the possibility that electronic voting machines can get hacked.

I believe those worries are totally misplaced. Now don’t get me wrong – there’s a 100% chance that the voting machines will get hacked and all future elections will be rigged. But that doesn’t mean we’ll get a worse government. It probably means that the choice of the next American president will be taken out of the hands of deep-pocket, autofellating, corporate shitbags and put it into the hands of some teenager in Finland. How is that not an improvement?

I’ve given that idea some thought, and I’ve realized that in an odd sort of way, I find it reassuring. Weird I know, but he’s right. It isn’t going to be some corporate schmuck that hacks it successfully, but some geek. We could do worse.

Senator John McCain is guest blogging at the Captain’s Quarters. He pulls no punches about how things should be done, and how they’ve been done in the past.

Time for Decisive Action on North Korea

They have missiles, and now they claim to have tested a nuclear device. Eventually they will have the technology to put warheads on missiles. That is a grave threat to South Korea, Japan and the United States that we cannot under any circumstances accept. North Korea also has a record of transferring weapons technology to other rogue nations, such as Iran and Syria.

The President is right to call on the Council to impose a military arms embargo, financial and trade sanctions, and, most importantly, the right to interdict and inspect all cargo in and out of North Korea. I hope the Council quickly adopts these sanctions, and that all members enforce them.

Now, we must, at long last, stop reinforcing failure with failure.

I’m seeing some odd similarities between my recent experiences with horses and the Senatorial campaign here in Virginia (Jim Webb is running against George Allen.)

This morning I spent about twenty minutes trying to find two horse in a large pasture. It was dark and foggy, and the horses are dark brown. They chose this morning to ignore my calls and wait for me to find them. At least once I passed within thirty feet of one of them without knowing it. I walked past and she remained quiet. Only after I found that particular horse did she whinny, quite loudly, right in my face. Once they were both found, I removed their muzzles (keeps them from overeating) and let them enjoy the rest of the day in peace.

Politics around here seems to be going the same way. Lots of darkness and fog, not much in the way of useful noise. I have no idea what either of them stands for, they just keep blathering on about how bad the other one is. I have no idea who to vote for because from what little I hear, they could both stand to be muzzled.