I’ve long since warmed up to the concept and have posted nearly 3,000 largely nonsensical “tweets” in my time. It’s only been recently though that I’ve started to see the real power of the mass of information cycling through the service on a given day.

What if one could harness Twitter messages from the general populous based around a single topic or event? Enter Politweets, slapped together over a weekend or so by Doug, Gabe, Min, Dan, and myself. What Politweets is doing is observing Twitter for messages mentioning any of the Democrats or Republicans currently vying for their respective party’s nomination in the Presidential primaries.

We launched Politweets yesterday, focusing the launch date around the New Hampshire primaries. Clever, right? Anyway, the site gives you an absolute, up-to-the-second view of the political musings of the Twitterverse. I’ve frankly been astounded at some of the observations one can cram into 140 characters available. In addition to displaying lists of messages, we also keep track of the frequency candidates are mentioned (displayed in the center column of the main page).

Speaking for the rest of the crew, we’re all exceptionally proud of how this turned out. We’re far from done, though. We’re cooking up additional features that’ll help visitors drill down through the data and make some real sense out of the mash. It’s going to be good, rest assured.

Thus far we’ve gotten great reviews. A sampling of sites talking about Politweets:

• Politweets: Twittering Politics on ReadWriteWeb
• Politweets Tracks the Primaries. Why Didn’t Twitter Build This? on Mashable
• Politweets, a political buzz tracker based on Twitter on ZDNet

Heck, we even got a mention on Wired. Cool stuff.

The primaries are just heating up, so keep your eye on Politweets!

Stewart repeatedly points out here that he is not, in fact, a journalist, but merely a comedian. Fans of the show, including Moyers, will likely disagree with Stewart’s assessment of his relevance, but there is no denying that a growing number of people are getting their news and viewpoints from Comedy Central. The interview covers a number of topics, but Stewart is at his best here, as on his show, at distilling the problems of U.S. foreign policy.

From the interview:

But war that hasn’t affected us here, in the way that you would imagine a five-year war would affect a country. I think that’s why they’re so really — here’s the disconnect. It’s sort of this odd and I’ve always had this problem with the rationality of it. That the President says, “We are in the fight for a way of life. This is the greatest battle of our generation, and of the generations to come. And, so what I’m going to do is you know, Iraq has to be won, or our way of life ends, and our children and our children’s children all suffer. So, what I’m gonna do is send 10,000 more troops to Baghdad.”

So, there’s a disconnect there between — you’re telling me this is fight of our generation, and you’re going to increase troops by 10 percent? And that’s gonna do it? I’m sure what he would like to do is send 400,000 more troops there, but he can’t, because he doesn’t have them. And the way to get that would be to institute a draft. And the minute you do that, suddenly the country’s not so damn busy anymore. And then they really fight back, and then the whole thing falls apart. So, they have a really delicate balance to walk between keeping us relatively fearful, but not so fearful that we stop what we’re doing and really examine how it is that they’ve been waging this.

I highly recommend you watch the full interview on PBS’ site.

Presidential adviser Karl Rove blamed the war in Iraq on Monday for dragging down President Bush’s job approval ratings in public opinion polls. “People like this president,” Rove said. “They’re just sour right now on the war.”

…

“I think the war looms over everything. There’s no doubt about it,” Rove said during a question-and-answer session after a speech on the economy at the conservative think tank.

Full story: Rove Blames Iraq War for Low Bush Numbers

According to the Treasury Department, the forty-two presidents who held office between 1789 and 2000 borrowed a combined total of $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions. But between 2001 and 2005 alone, the Bush White House borrowed $1.05 trillion, more than all of the previous presidencies combined.

I’ll try to avoid dragging politics into this site, but this was worth mentioning. I’ve read some amazingly awful figures about the Bush Presidency, but this one was new to me. Unbelievable.