"The man can handle a brush. And we thought he could only clear brush. The president who came across as a paint-by-numbers executive in public life can actually paint in private life.
It’s weird because W.’s presidency was not a reality-based undertaking; it did not look carefully at the world. And yet his paintings reflect meticulous optical observation."
Well, I was no fan of the Bush administration, whose overseas miscalculations (a misguided entry into Iraq that altered the Iraq-Iran equilibrium and the beginnings of an inane ground war in Afghanistan), combined with providing US financial institutions with carte blanche powers to destroy the US economy and rob Americans blind (sale of newfangled financial instruments premised upon worthless real estate coupled with the 2007 cancellation of the Uptick Rule), set the US on the road to a meltdown. But is Obama any better? A supposed genius who claims to have visited 57 states (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpGH02DtIws), who escalated American involvement in Afghanistan, and who has done nothing to regain control over avaricious banks and hedge funds, has failed to change America's course.
But back to Maureen, who, in her opinion piece, expressed her solipsistic concern that her precious e-mails might have been hacked:
"It’s already too late to stop sending embarrassing e-missives, with a decade worth of hand grenades out there rolling around.
Just as Obama knows in his heart that, while seductive, drones need limits, so we know that, while seductive, e-mails need limits — because sooner or later, the Chinese or some bitter hacker in his basement or some 10-year-old kid is going to make all our titillating e-mails public.
The rule of thumb in Washington used to be: Don’t do anything that you wouldn’t want to see printed on the front page of The New York Times. The new rule is: Don’t send an e-mail you wouldn’t want to see printed on the front page of The New York Times. (Especially if you work here.)"
Well, in Maureen's instance, I wouldn't worry too much. The New York Times is morally and financially approaching Chapter 11, and if plagiarism didn't sink her career there, I doubt that anything can. An e-mail scheduling a Botox injection over the brows? A description of a tragic end to a torrid relationship? Who cares?
In fact, the real danger does not involve Maureen's e-mails. Rather, we are in a new era in which hostile nations, such as Iran, possess the ability to bring down American power grids, disrupt air traffic, halt financial market trading, and throw a monkey wrench into telecommunication networks. Some of these systems possess some small measure of protection, while others are wretchedly exposed to hacking.
The storm, far greater in magnitude than that just experienced by America's Northeast, is brewing, and inadequate precautions have been taken to batten down the hatches.
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