Fulfilling another one of his major campaign promises, President Obama has now removed all combat troops from Iraq. After more than seven years, this pointless, costly war is finally over. That’s certainly good news. But is it really over?

We still have “support” troops in Iraq, and it’s unlikely that we’ll stay out if the country appears to be falling into civil war. While it was a bad idea to invade in the first place, and it was pretty obvious that there was no way the occupation was going to go anywhere near as well as President Bush predicted, the invasion and subsequent mismanagement makes the country our responsibility. We needed to get a functioning government into place (although imposing a modern democracy on a third world country is, shall we say, not easy), get the violence under control, declare victory, and get out. Metaphorically speaking, anyway…I don’t think anybody’s actually declared victory in Iraq since Bush’s stunt on the aircraft carrier all those years ago.

Mission accomplished?

GM has already repaid $6.7 billion in Treasury Department loans, but the rest of the $50 billion bailout was converted into equity; the US owns 60.8% of GM. The government is expected to begin selling its stake in GM as soon as the initial public offering is made, which could come as early as Friday.

In related news, Ford posted a $2.6 billion profit for the second quarter; Chrysler lost $172 million, which was a $25 million improvement over the previous quarter (and a huge improvement over the fourth quarter of last year, when it lost $2.7 billion).

BP drilling crews have also nearly finished a relief well that should allow them to permanently plug up the formerly leaking well; drilling temporarily stopped so engineers can check that it is still correctly aimed at the broken well. The well was previously sealed by pouring thousands of gallons of mud and cement through the containing cap that has been containing the oil since mid-July, but that is considered a temporary fix; the new well, which should intersect next weekend, will allow the leak to be permanently sealed.

Posting to resume after the honeymoon.

Housing sales are expected to remain low for several months, after people rushed to complete home purchases before the April 30th deadline for the homebuyers tax credit.

The encouraging news on housing, along with better than expected earnings from FedEx,  pushed the Dow Jones up 72 points.

The good news is that supposedly the well is completely sealed off, with no oil leaking. It remains to be seen whether the pressure inside the well will remain steady; a steady pressure would indicate that oil is not leaking around the cap. Meanwhile, one of the relief wells is 150 feet away from intersecting the leaking well; after the test is complete, drilling will resume so the leaky well can be finally killed.

The other major piece of good news is that the financial reform bill finally passed the Senate, as three republicans  - Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Scott Brown of Massachusetts – joined with democrats to break the GOP filibuster.  (Democrat Russ Feingold voted against the bill on the grounds that it isn’t strong enough). The republican leadership, of course, immediately called for repeal.

Public interest groups praised the legislation, which has been languishing in the Senate since the House passed it in June. The law attempts to avoid the need for another wall street bailout by setting up an advance warning system for banks that are deemed too big to fail, setting new limits on speculation by banks, and regulating the derivatives market. It also launches a new customer protection agency.

Many regulations called for by the law still need to be drafted over the next two years; it is expected that those opposed to reform will be donating heavily to republicans in order to water them down as much as possible.

Spaceport America is a great example of where innovation can depend on government investment; can you imagine this thing being built without government involvement?  The Spaceport, which is expected to cost about $200 million altogether, is about sixty percent complete and has so far created over 600 jobs. Just this month, they finished a 10,000 foot runway and are looking for contractors to actually run the facility. If I was in New Mexico, I’d want to get in on one of those hard hat tours they offer.

Remember when SpaceShipOne won the $10 million X-prize a few years back?  Its successor, SpaceShipTwo (yes, they’re very creative) first launched on March 22 of this year; the ship is currently being tested at Scaled Composite’s home base in Mojave, California, but will then be moved to Spaceport America for commercial flights.

Image credit: Spaceport America

Now, if I was a  multi-billionaire, I’d be tempted by the company that plans to send tourists to the moon, even if it does cost $100 million a pop..

The manager of whitehouse.gov has now announced that they will be releasing four custom-built modules back into the Drupal community.  These consist of:*

The Node Embed module improves screen-reading support

The Gov-Delivery module improves dynamic email

The Context HTTP module improves caching decisions

The Akami module allows integration with the Akami CMS.

This is cool as it shows this administration recognizes the importance of the principles of open source software; these improvements, done with tax dollars for government purposes, will now be available for anyone to use, free of charge. Isn’t that good news?

* Hat tip to Linux Pro Magazine for information used in this article

During the year-long debate over health care reform, one of the biggest problems was a lack of information; people were constantly attacking the bill over things that weren’t even in it, for allowing things it specifically prohibited, etc. While much of that was deliberate misinformation put out by Fox News and the republican party, there wasn’t really a good place to see all the relevant information collected in one spot, either.

This week, as required under HCR, the Department of Health and Human Services launched HealthCare.gov, with the purpose of helping people understand their options and rights under the new law. I clicked around the site a bit and found it informative and easy to use. Even the HTML code seems nice and clean, so I’m going to have to say “good job!” to whoever was responsible for building it.

Want to know how the law affects you this year? This site seems like a good place to start.

Yesterday, the Commerce Department released official figures on Q1 2010; the GDP grew at an annual rate of 2.7%, normally considered a healthy rate but much slower than the 5.6% growth experienced in Q4 2009.