Backing up: data and the Bush Administration

+ Elephant Drive looks like an awesome way to back up your computer online. I expect them to get bought by Google any day now. We don't need it since we just bought an external hard drive to handle these duties. Because, you know, it's not data until it's backed up. ;-)

+ Tom's critique of the Bush Administration in today's column really zings:

The Bush team has gone from crowing, "Who's next?" after Iraq to concentrating today on not losing a series of fights that it readily began in the shadow of 9/11 but now seem unable to close out: most obviously Afghanistan and Iraq but also Iran and Syria, by extension, and even deeply troubled Pakistan - where bin Laden still hangs out - by proxy. Bush's next military intervention? Try the National Guard on the Rio Grande.

The Bush post-presidency began last summer with Hurricane Katrina, as did - to no surprise - the 2008 presidential race. In that domestic disaster, the administration's continuing failures in Iraq were revealed to be part of a comprehensive pattern of poor strategic planning, tone-deaf alliance politics - there, with state governments - and boneheaded crisis management.