Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Your Morning News 1.7.09
Posted by Josh in apple, Barack Obama, CES, CIA, Democrats, Gaza, Isreal, macworld, Matt Yglesias, Senate, steve jobs, Transition 2008, Your Morning News
The Israeli invasion of Gaza continues unabated, and the debate continues to rage internationally about civilian casualties. Yesterday. Israeli forces shelled a UN-run school filled with civilians, killing 40. It seems likely that the Israeli soldiers were returning fire at a few Hamas gunman who fired mortars from the school, but the incident underscores the fact that Israel is doing next to nothing to minimize civilian casualties.
Tom Friedman proves, yet again, that he writes for the New York Times and I don’t with a great column that put the Gaza conflict in the context of the greater Middle East. Raise a point from the article over lunch or in case your boss mentions the conflict to you and you will sound smart. Don’t feel bad about ripping off Times columnists, I do it all the time.
Senate Democrats, ever the masters of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, are raising a stink over President-elect Obama’s choice of former Clinton Chief-of-staff Leon E. Panetta for CIA director . Obviously, the Obama team goofed by not consulting with the Senate Intelligence Committee, but it seems to me that there is no real basis for criticism of his pick. As Matt Yglesias twittered a few minutes ago, “The case for putting a CIA veteran in charge of the CIA would be more compelling were the CIA’s record not so unimpressive.” If this goes beyond a few nasty media quotes and the dems really try to derail the appointment, that would be stupid.
January means the Consumer Electronics show and Macworld. Despite the recession, many of the gadgets on display at CES are just as cool as previous years. While Apple announced some interesting new innovations (a new macbook pro and DRM-free music), CEO Steve Jobs had to bow out of the convention for health reasons. Applewaters and fanboys are trying to decide if the keynote was boring because there were no really mindblowing innovations or products or just because of Job’s absence. Also, this has raised the question that if Jobs even leaves the company or takes a less prominant role, will Apple be able to continue its market and media domination?