David Chalian was fired by Yahoo News yesterday because he was caught saying something unflattering about the Romneys and their pals by NewsBusters. This is absolute bullshit. David was my direct supervisor when I interned at the ABC News political unit, where he was first deputy political director, and then promoted to director. He then worked for the NewsHour at PBS and then later Yahoo. He is a great journalist, with more intelligence and savvy than almost anyone I’ve seen,... Read more
This was a night of Republican politicians selling themselves for future campaigns. They are writing this one off. #gop2012 — Paul Fidalgo (@PaulFidalgo) August 29, 2012 Read more
Some have said that Romney’s lifestyle is overly privileged, pointing to the fact that he has an elevator for his cars in the garage of his San Diego home. This is not entirely fair. Romney owns many homes without garage elevators and the cars have to take the stairs. … After his governorship, Romney suffered through a midlife crisis, during which he became a social conservative. This prepared the way for his presidential run. He barely won the 2012 Republican... Read more
Members of Team Obama still believe the Electoral College favors them; they see little or no prospect for the opposition to be able to make significant gains with Hispanics, single women or young voters; they think Medicare and tax cuts for the wealthy are untrumpable trump cards; they view Romney as a weak candidate, whose résumé and background leave him vulnerable to populist attack; and they think their candidate’s skills and likability are far too powerful to derail. … the... Read more
Ultimately, the curated aspect of the homepage brings people to big brands, right?” [Wall Street Journal managing editor Raju Narisetti] said. “The trick is not to worry about where they’re coming from — the trick is what are they doing after they come. If they come sideways, can I get them to actually go to the homepage? That won’t happen if I diminish the value of homepage internally. I still need to make sure the homepage is engaging — just... Read more
The headline Washington Post chooses for its new poll showing a tight national popular vote race between the president and Mr. Romney says: But this is wrong in what it implies. The headline, and much of the chatter around it, will tell you that the race is a tie. But popular votes don’t decide presidential elections, Electoral College votes do. To get a better look at the actual state of the race, just go to FiveThirtyEight for Nate Silver’s forecasts,... Read more
invaderxan: A scale picture of the Earth and Moon, and the distance between them. The Moon’s a lot further away than you might realise… (clickthrough for a bigger version) Read more
After its beatdown of Samsung last week, a Fortune piece wonders who Apple will sue next. Analyst Florian Mueller: “If I were in Apple’s shoes the next company I would sue is not Google, but Amazon, which has an even weaker patent portfolio than Google and sells large volumes of Android-based devices with a subsidies-centric revenue model, which is even more of a threat to Apple’s margins than Google’s advertising-based model.” Amazon. That’s an elephant I hadn’t even considered. No.... Read more
My paraphrase of The Economist on Romney (words in bold used in the actual piece): “We’d love to love you, but you’re a strange man with mindless policy positions who says near-racist things. Please tell us you’ve been kidding.” Read more
It’s very likely that there will not be a living human being who knows what Neil Armstrong knew. It will all be for videotape and digital libraries, for historians and, if we’re very lucky, for poets, as well. But there will be nobody alive who actually knows. Not a single one of our fellow humans, anywhere on the Earth. That knowledge will be as dead in the world as Columbus is. One fewer person on the Earth was able to... Read more
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