Decline and Fall

We can see a lot of the decline and fall of the MSM at the hands of those damnable innertube world wide web log, or "blog" startups what with their cursing and pajamas and whatnot in last night's press conference.

First, we have the Huffington Post's Stein:

"Today, Senator Patrick Leahy announced that he wants to set up a truth and reconciliation committee to investigate the misdeeds of the Bush administration. He said that before you turn the page, you have to read the page first. Do you agree with such a proposal? And are you willing to rule out right here and now any prosecution of Bush administration officials?"

Of interest for being the first non-plant blogger called on at one of these thing. Let's compare and contrast to the performance of the MSM, in this case the Washington Post's Michael Fletcher asked:

"What's your reaction to Alex Rodriguez's admission that he used steroids as a member of the Texas Rangers?"

I think we can all agree that that's pretty much exactly what anyone given one question would ask the sitting President. At least it failed to include the traditional four-paragraph lead-in. Been nice knowing you, MSM.

The Year We Make Contact

Interesting results from the folks over to Gallup. Turns out that, despite major (and continuing) assistance from the MSM, 'Merica is seeing right through this shit.

Seemingly forgetting the downright ruly 2-million person mob at their doorstep on Inauguration Day, seemingly forgetting that, in many cases, Obama carried their own districts by large, double-digit figures, seemingly forgetting that, you know, the economy is in freefall and that most everyone in America places blame squarely at the doorstep of the GOP; most of all, seemingly forgetting 2010.

On behalf of the mob

Ezra opines on the scene:

This is, in other words, no time for moderation. And on the Mall today, you could believe it. The press was seated directly before the podium -- I had a second-row seat to history, you might say -- and behind us stretched the long lawn. And all we could do was gape. It was a sea of people. Millions of people. A mass of moving, yelling, dancing, joyous humanity, filling every patch of green and surrounding the Washington Monument. The image richly recalled the iconic photographs of Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington. And the assembled politicians knew it. Up on the podium, you could see senators snapping pictures on their digital cameras, pointing at the crowd, shaking their heads in disbelief. They weren't pretending to be blase about the scene. This was different. This was dramatic. It was a screaming, laughing, cheering rejoinder to those who would constrain the scale of Obama's ambitions, or question his political assets.

And, as somebody out there moving, yelling, dancing, and actively being humanity: I agree on all points. You'd think the members of both the "loyal" Democrats as well as both the vigorous/healthy and the lunatic, nothing-will-move opposition from the GOP side would look out and have exactly the same moment...and, upon hearing Obama's own "the ground has shifted beneath them" line would combine the two streams of information and move out accordingly in the coming days and months. Instead, Jay Boehner gives us this:

I'm not sure that anyone knows exactly what [Obama] was trying to say.

Indeed, the meaning of the various threads at work on the day were quite muddy. I guess we know what we have to look forward to.

Stanford and Son

You can understand a lot about the iPhone and the iPod Nano (which cost more to produce yet still replaced (at the same price point) the most popular iPod ever, the "mini") from this quote from Steve Jobs, re: Macintosh 25th anniversary

“I don’t think about that,” he said. “When I got back here in 1997, I was looking for more room, and I found an archive of old Macs and other stuff. I said, ‘Get it away!’ and I shipped all that shit off to Stanford. If you look backward in this business, you’ll be crushed. You have to look forward.”

Then consider this, from the then-titan of the industry:

"I'd shut [Apple] down and give the money back to the shareholders."
--Michael Dell, 1997.

And, perhaps even more telling, this notorious quote from Jobs himself, to Fortune magazine in 1996:

"If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it's worth -- and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago."

Which is basically exactly what he did the next year. At any rate, worth considering the state of Dell today, run to the whim of Wall Street analysts, and the then-doomed Apple (Wired circa 1997: Silence grips Apple Deathwatch). One commoditized, the other innovated. This despite the fact that even Macworld magazine had inexplicably begun running Windows NT tips. And in every major instance, Apple's moves were greeted with derision and a fall in stock value (iMac, iPod, Apple Stores, iPhone were all (wrongly) crowned as the last gasp of a desperate company; after all, even might Dell couldn't figure out how to do bricks and mortar. My stars!).

This is ultimately Steve Jobs value to Apple. The actual products aren't nearly important as the corporate daring, the brass balls that are necessary to tack hard against the wind and discontinue your best seller in favor of something even better. Or to say "fuck it, we will put no floppy drive in there." And etc... Very few other companies of size do the same. Hell, very few Mom and Pops will make moves like that. Worth considering.

Simple Solutions to Simple Problems

John Glenn, first American man to orbit the Earth, on the upcoming interregnum in America's spacefaring capacity:

“I never thought I would see the day when the world’s richest, most powerful, most accomplished spacefaring nation would have to buy tickets from Russia to get up to our station,”

Umkay. I hear that India is in the Space Station market. Just give them the damned thing. That'll leave them significantly less money for ongoing nuclear development...

I'm all for teh Space Science and all, but that thing is a free-fall to nowhere in particular and costs ~$1bn per shuttle launch (setting aside for the moment the 1 in 50 potential for the death of seven, count 'em, SEVEN astronauts) to even get a refrigerator up there.
I say we go robotic and do all of our ant farms studies on the good Earth until the next ride arrives. We did the same throughout most of the 70s and the Republic is still here.

THIS IS NEXT

The clearest statement I've yet seen on where the GOP goes from here is available from this piece that quotes that lovable scamp, Newt Gingrich:

“Look,” Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker, said the other day (on the air, to Bill O’Reilly), “I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence. . . . I think that it is a very dangerous threat to anybody who believes in traditional religion. And I think if you believe in historic Christianity, you have to confront the fact.” For diversity’s sake, he added that “the historic version of Islam” and “the historic version of Judaism” are likewise menaced—which is natural, given that gay, secular, fascist values are “the opposite of what you’re taught in Sunday school.”

Warnings of violence from the ever mysterious, yet surprisingly well organized "other" couched in a pseudo-religious patina. Welcome to the next four years; Campaign 12, 'Merica Decides! has begun.

GOP: look out, Constitution Party, Here we come. Absolutely determined to become a predominantly southern, crazily religious splinter of a party. The real question, then, is: will the new major party be to the left of the current Democrat? Wouldn't surprise me, actually. All depends on the economy.

File under: Yep.

Nice to hear, not unexpected quote from the National Governors Association meetings:

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, the incoming head of the DGA, was more blunt: "Just to have an administration, a president, a vice president, who listened, engaged, and came to meeting prepared -- it's a brand new idea."

Competence! What a fucking concept. Next: It is discovered that Obama doesn't hold the very notion of "government" in contempt. Remarkable!