Obama nominates Utah Gov. for China post

Jon Huntsman is imminently qualified to serve as America's Ambassador to China. He speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese, a result of his Mormon missionary work in China. He has also served in diplomatic posts before, having served as President George H. W. Bush's Ambassador to Singapore, which has a large ethnic Chinese population. Huntsman is serving his second term as Governor of Utah, and previously served in the George W. Bush Administration as Deputy U.S. Trade Representative. Another first-rate Obama appointment, and a bipartisan one at that (Huntsman is a Republican). Sending Huntsman to China is also a great way of getting a rival out of the way for 2012, when Obama is up for re-election. Up until now, Huntsman has presented a more moderate image for the GOP: he supported a ban on gay marriage in 2004 but supports civil unions and has been a leader for environmental causes as governor. My guess is that he saw the handwriting on the wall and figured barring some kind of catastrophe, Obama's prospects for re-election are pretty damn good. Political considerations aside, Governor Huntsman will be taking one of the most important diplomatic posts in the State Department, and will play a pivotal role in bilateral relations between the United States and China.

Move over Twitter!

While the chattering classes spend their time twittering away, I'm jumping on another bandwagon: Wolfram Alpha. It's a new search engine that will hopefully change the way people do research, and according to some it may even be a Wikipedia killer. That's too bad - I wish it were a Twitter killer instead.