Obama's New White House Blog

President Obama pledged to make his the most transparent and accountable administration in American history. His new website is a great start. You can check out the brand new, clean and lean White House website and the new White House blog. Tuesday's entry Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov is written by Macon Phillips, the Director of New Media for the White House. He is just one of the people who will be writing this blog.

I like the attempt at including interactive elements. A blog is one way to connect with people. Not sure when true interactivity starts on the blog. No comments allowed at this time for the blog. I can imagine comments on this blog would be a logistics nightmare. We'll see what happens.

The World Watches

We may be in the midst of crisis, but this sunny inauguration day was picturesque. You could sense the excitement in the air. Despite the chilly temps in the 30s--the reflection pool in the mall was frozen--millions crowded the mall to catch a glimpse of the inauguration ceremony on the jumbo trons.

Obama's speech was optimistic, challenging all of us to grow up as Americans and "set aside childish things."

Obama reminded us that our greatness as a nation can never be taken for granted, it must be earned through "honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism."

His words ring true. We do need to grow up and face our challenges. It is a new era of responsibility to ourselves, our nation and our world. 

"Our challenges may be new... But those values upon which our success depends--hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism--these things are old... What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility--a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task."

We are a great nation that is forever linked to the world around us.