Highlights from President Obama's interview in Newsweek:
What's your reaction to Vice President Cheney's ongoing [criticism]? He's not quite twittering your administration [laughter] but he's coming fairly close.
You know, Dick Cheney had a strong perspective about national security. It was tested in the early years of the Bush administration, and I think it resulted in a series of very bad decisions. I think what's interesting is that, in some ways, Dick Cheney actually lost these arguments inside the Bush administration. And so he may have won early with Colin Powell and Condi Rice, but over the last two or three years of the Bush administration, I think there was a recognition among Republicans and Bush administration officials that these enhanced interrogation techniques that were being applied—that they had applied early on—were potentially counterproductive; that a posture of never talking to our enemies, of unilateral action, of framing national security only in terms of the application of force, often unilateral—that that wasn't producing. And so it's interesting to me to see the vice president spending so much time trying to vindicate himself and relitigate the last eight years when, as I said, I think, actually, a lot of these arguments were settled even before we took over the White House.
(Oooooh. Smackdown.)
What are you reading?
I'm reading this book called Netherland by Joseph O'Neill … It's about after 9/11, a guy—his family leaves him and he takes up cricket in New York. And it's fascinating. It's a wonderful book, although I know nothing about cricket.
(Me neither!)
Do you watch any cable news?
I don't watch cable news at all. The only television I'm watching these days is sports.
(Hey, me too! Well, do The Daily Show and Colbert Report count as "cable news"? I say not.)
And the last movie you saw?
Now, movies I've been doing OK [with] because it turns out we got this nice theater on the ground floor of my house … So Star Trek, we saw this weekend, which I thought was good. Everybody was saying I was Spock, so I figured I should check it out and—[the president makes the Vulcan salute with his hand].
(You have got to be kidding me.)
Very good.
Yes, absolutely.
Did you watch that when you were growing up?
I used to love Star Trek. You know, Star Trek was ahead of its time. There was a whole—the special effects weren't real good, but the storylines were always evocative, you know, there was a little commentary and a little pop philosophy for a 10-year-old to absorb.
A lot of U.N. stuff.
Yes, exactly, right.
(What he means to say is that the crew of the Starship Enterprise...were a bunch of socialists!)
Obama is apparently quite the geek. There was a story going roung a while back, never confirmed as real or not, from someone who interned on his presidential campaign. Well, it requires you to be familiar with the internet meme All your base are belong to us from the game Zero Wing. Here's the story:
ReplyDelete"The job (interning) involves getting him something to eat, maybe playing a little basketball with him, and basically chatting and getting whatever he needs between important things. During the conversation, apparently Zero Wing came up.
You know, the Sega Genesis video game. I don't know how.
And apparently, my friend made the off-hand comment of "All your base are belong to us".
And Obama leaned forward in his chair, quirked his eyebrow a bit, and responded "What you say?"
This is pretty interesting...
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing..
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Andrew
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