Posted by Jed Lewison on Wed Jan 14, 2009 at 11:14 AM Pacific

Back and gone again

I've made a ton of progress on the project that I'm working on, and hope to be able to announce some more details about it in the next couple of days. (It's focused on video, and if you've liked Jed Report, especially during the campaign, you're going to really like it.)

I've still got a lot more work that I need to do, so my posting will continue to be irregular this week in anticipation of the inauguration. I'm missing blogging, but I think this short interlude is going to be worth it, especially now that it's the "lull" before the inauguration.

(It does feel weird calling this a "lull." Obama has already been such an active President-elect that it's nearly impossible to imagine him getting even more engaged next week when he's actually President of the United States. It's almost like the inauguration is almost more important as a catharsis than as the actual transfer of power, which has been going on now it feels like for months, dating back to July, when our Iraq policy began to move towards his withdrawal timeline approach.)

Anyway, one other semi-political thing that I wanted to mention was just how unseasonably warm the weather has been in Las Vegas. I'm not saying that to lord over those of you who are in the frigid depths of winter in the midwest, though if it helped boost tourism here, that'd be great. We need it. Even though it's in the mid-60s temperature wise (well above normal for this time of year), tourism traffic is in the dumps.

But even though the weather is been above normal in parts of the country like Las Vegas, the focus of the right-wing media, led by Drudge, has been on the cold temperatures elsewhere. It's true that it's so cold there that's of news value, but the reason why Drudge spends so much time focusing on it is because he thinks it disproves global warming.

You can cherry-pick in both directions, and just like what is happening in Las Vegas isn't proof of global warming, the chill in Chicago isn't proof that isn't.

This ties back in with something that Obama has said from the very beginning of his campaign, that transforming our energy policy is one of the three most important objectives of his presidency, along with getting out of iraq and creating universal health care.

Given the incredible economic opportunities that will flow from developing new, clean and renewable and domestic sources of energy, and given what it would mean for our national security, I can't think of anything more important for Obama's agenda in the next four -- and hopefully eight -- years.

And it's incredibly reassuring that Obama thinks that way too.

So with that, only six more days. Six freaking days! Wooo!