It’s a tad late in the storm season for this, but tell that to the people of Haiti: Less than a year after the island nation was rocked by a cataclysmic earthquake, Haiti is now in the path of a powerful tropical storm, Tomas, that could do considerable damage if it keeps picking up steam.
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Tablet sales affecting netbooks? Seems everyone’s been suggesting that lately, from Best Buy to ASUS , with much of the blame placed on Apple’s iPad for mining the gap , so to speak. Add Microsoft to that chorus — specifically GM for Windows Product Management Gavriella Schuster. Referencing the pink netbook sitting between her and Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Nick Eaton, Schuster said, “These are definitely getting cannibalized… these are really a second device. But they are getting cannibalized” ( SPI’s emphasis, not ours). Given Windows’ dominance in the netbooks, she’s probably got some hush-hush numbers that color her opinion. Then again, speaking of color, perhaps she just doesn’t like pink. Netbooks are being ‘cannibalized,’ says Windows GM originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Nov 2010 18:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …At least the few that are left : An elder statesman of the moderate Blue Dog Coalition is calling on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to step down from party leadership after a historic election in which she presided over the loss of 60 seats and control of the House. Utah Rep. Jim Matheson, a co-chair of the Blue Dogs, told POLITICO Thursday that Pelosi should not be a candidate for minority leader – a sign that other Blue Dogs are ready to pounce if Pelosi doesn’t voluntarily cede her power. “No,” Matheson said flatly when asked if Pelosi should seek the job. “We just got whupped.” Matheson, one of a handful of Democrats who still represent districts that backed John McCain in the 2008 presidential election, said he does not have a favorite candidate in mind to support for minority leader. But he contends that Pelosi is no longer in position to lead the party. “I’m just suggesting that when you have the largest turnover since 1948 then it’s time to shake things up,” said Matheson, who watched as more than half of the Blue Dog districts flipped into Republican hands on Tuesday night. I heard on the radio today the Heath Schuler, another Blue Dog, has announced a challenge to Pelosi for Minority Leader. Frankly, I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t retire from Congress altogether. That’s what usually happens when a Speaker is ousted. If the Dems are smart (and when was the last time that happened?) they’d flush the entire leadership and start over.
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By Ruth Marcus In one of Tuesday’s most disturbing election results, the losing candidates didn’t even have opponents. Related Entries October 31, 2010 Haiti Braces for Future Quakes October 23, 2010 Cholera Threatens Haiti
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There's a cable news channel out there operating with a single partisan voice, and doing its best to scare the pants off of viewers as the new Congress approaches. Listening to much of the media, you might think that network was Fox. But in fact Fox has a wealth of opinions on air, though most of its prime time hosts are consistently conservative. And while certainly a number of critics try to paint FNC as “fear-mongers,” it's been MSNBC that has really gone full force with the doom-saying this week. Baltimore Sun media critic David Zurawik is absolutely livid about it, and has devoted considerable space this week to bashing MSNBC for its apocalyptic tone. read more
Continue reading …By Richard Reeves It may not get much done, but the first session of the 112th Congress, convening in January, will be fun to watch. Related Entries November 3, 2010 Moore: 1, Berlusconi: 0 October 26, 2010 ‘Fable III’ Gives Gamers Gay-for-Play Options
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The columnist and radio host, who appears on this site every week, has issued a salty rant over the conservative Democrats and pundits who are already blaming liberals for their party’s losses. If you’re a progressive and find yourself frustrated by the election, be sure to read Sirota’s entire post for cathartic release. In the excerpt below, he explains what, in his view, really happened. David Sirota via Open Left: The facts are painfully apparent. Though hundreds – if not thousands – of people in D.C. are professionally paid to pretend these facts require debate and analysis and parsing and speculation and press releases and pithy Tweets and Sunday Show roundtables and C-SPAN symposia and to-camera cable-TV rants and lengthy thousand-page books, they don’t require any of that. They are simple. They are obvious. They are undeniable: 1. The Democratic Party shit on its base with its policies, as noted above. 2. This demoralized the Democratic base, which responded by not turning out to vote. As CBS News notes, “Hispanics, African Americans, union members and young people were among the many core Democratic groups that turned out in large numbers in the 2008 elections (but) turnout among these groups dropped off substantially, even below their previous midterm levels.” 3. In cause-and-effect style, the result of all this was, as the Washington Post reports, a freshman congressional class that is primarily made up of angry, white, lunatic-conservative assholes. So yes, all of you who are wasting all of our time pretending this isn’t the basic point-A-to-point-B story of the election – and there are a lot of you out there – please, if not for me, then for everyone else: Go fuck yourself. Read more Related Entries November 3, 2010 Blue Dogs Get Taken to the Pound November 3, 2010 Rich Media, Poor Democracy
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Getting shellacked in the midterm elections has evidently motivated President Barack Obama to consider his strategy for the next two years, and he’s taking the bold new step of—wait for it—arranging a group huddle with eight big players from the two dominant parties. Sigh.
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By Mr. Fish Related Entries November 3, 2010 Blue Dogs Get Taken to the Pound November 3, 2010 Rich Media, Poor Democracy
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