Did Romney change his narrative?

We are slowly exiting the turbulent Convention/Debate polling period, and now we can begin to discern the effects of each party's efforts to change the race over the past month and a half. Obama entered September (late August) with about a two point lead, and it appears that he will exit with a lead in the 2-4 point range. The Democratic convention and Romney's 47% comments gave Obama the opportunity to run away with the race, but Romney's dramatic pivot from Tea Party severe conservative to Bush style compassionate conservative at the Denver debate, and Obama's lackluster performance there, cut off a real breakout by Obama.

Did Romney change the narrative of his campaign? He made a rhetorical change in the Denver debate, appearing to repudiate much of what he campaigned on during the primaries. His new approach was on display in late September at the Univision forum, so new Romney didn't come totally out of the blue. But it was a big change very late in the campaign, the kind of change voters can usually see through. It appears to have given voters cause to look at Romney again, and there are signs that women were particularly more open to voting for Romney after the first debate. Denver changed the media's tone about Romney, they decided that he was still in the race, but it didn't change how the media and voters view Romney, Obama's critique, embodied in Romney's 47% remark, stands.

The change in the polls looks to be mostly driven by changes in enthusiasm rather than by voters incorporating new information about a candidate. Democrats were not impressed by Obama's performance, and that lost enthusiasm showed up as Democratic voters dropping out in likely voter screens. Republicans were excited by a Romney who appeared to be able to connect to voters, and in some sense a moderate Romney gave them permission to support him, their rising enthusiasm pushed more Republican voters through the likely voter screens and buoyed Romney's numbers. Romney changed his narrative to the extent that his moderation gave Republicans permission to support him.

The Obama campaign reacted to defeat by doubling down on women's issues in their advertising and in the second presidential debate, and it looks like that solidified an eroding gender gap. Obama effectively maneuvered Romney into appearing to be a hectoring, overbearing, ignorant bully in the second debate, most dramatically in Romney's overreach on "act of terror" regarding the Benghazi attack ("Please proceed, Governor.")


Voters were very engaged with the debates, with more people watching both Presidential debates than watched the pivotal Bush/Clinton debates in '92. If there were ever an opportunity to change the course of a campaign these debates were it.


But in the end it does not appear that Romney changed the narrative of his campaign or the trajectory of the election. He may have accelerated Republicans coming home by a week or two (oddly by repudiating the Tea Party), but he didn't find new voters. If anything Obama comes out of the conventions and debates in a stronger position than he went in.

Building Android Cyanogenmod 10 for the Nook Color/encore

UPDATE: latest local_manifest.

A crew at xda have been working on CM10 for the Nook color, and I finally got around to building a copy for myself. I'm documenting my steps here.

I launch a c1.xlarge (High CPU) Amazon AWS spot instance, Ubuntu Server 12.04.1 LTS, with a bid of $0.20. The process below takes just over two hours, and the market price for a c1.xlarge is $0.07, so the total cost to build is about $0.21. I bid high to keep the box from being terminated.

You should be able to cut and paste the following into a terminal.

http://pastebin.com/TZwXbpXM

screen -S admin
sudo mkdir /mnt/android
sudo chown ubuntu /mnt/android
ln -s /mnt/android ~/
mkdir ~/android/system
mkdir ~/bin
export PATH=$PATH:~/bin
sudo apt-get -y update
sudo apt-get -y install git-core gnupg flex bison gperf libsdl1.2-dev libesd0-dev libwxgtk2.6-dev squashfs-tools build-essential zip curl libncurses5-dev zlib1g-dev pngcrush schedtool libxml2-utils libxslt1.1 g++-multilib lib32z1-dev lib32ncurses5-dev lib32readline-gplv2-dev xsltproc openjdk-6-jdk

git config --global user.email 'john@example.com'
git config --global user.name 'Android Build'
git config --global color.ui true

cd ~/android/system/
curl https://dl-ssl.google.com/dl/googlesource/git-repo/repo > ~/bin/repo
chmod a+x ~/bin/repo
repo init -u git://github.com/CyanogenMod/android.git -b jellybean
curl 'http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=vZFKdc8m' > .repo/local_manifest.xml
repo sync -j8
cd ~/android/system/device/bn/encore/
./setup-makefiles.sh
cd ~/android/system/vendor/cm/
./get-prebuilts
cd ~/android/system/
. build/envsetup.sh
brunch encore


All Done! Just copy the /mnt/android/system/out/target/product/encore/cm-10-*.zip file somewhere.

Amazing work by fattire, @krylon360, eyeballer, keyodi, sluo et al.

The debates are too late for Romney

Markos Moulitsas wrote a nice post on how narrative works in presidential campaigns, using Romney as an example:

From Day 1, all of Mitt Romney's foes had a clear narrative about him—he was a callous, heartless, elitist, vulture capitalist. In other words, "a dick." 

The stage was set by Occupy with their "99 percent" narrative, which allowed Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich to get mileage with their "vulture capitalist" attacks against Romney before the party establishment shut them down.
...
And why is that narrative important? Because as people become aware of such narratives, they then try to decide whether it's legit. If you can reinforce a negative narrative, you're winning.

The first step in changing the trajectory of a campaign is to lay out a new narrative, a narrative that can reinforce people's preconceptions (Alinsky's rule number 2: "Never go outside the experience of your people.") but work to your advantage. When people talk about the debates as Romney's last chance to turn this around they are referring to the way debates can be key to communicating a narrative. As Paul Waldman points out, a debate can turn an underlying critique into an open criticism that explains the whole campaign:

what happened was that reporters decided those were the key moments, and kept writing and talking about them in the subsequent days and weeks. Not coincidentally, the moments that get chosen are those that reinforce the conclusions the press has already come to about a candidate's character weaknesses.

The first debate is scheduled for October 3rd, just under a week away. Romney has not settled on a narrative for Obama, or even for his own campaign:

While Obama doles out his sustained-applause lines freely, Romney is still honing his message. The GOP nominee has rolled out tougher rhetoric on China as a currency manipulator in recent days in order to tug at Ohioans who have been hit by outsourced jobs. He also speaks in front of a tally board that features the historic level of national indebtedness.

Romney is not building any coherent narrative this week, he has nothing to build on next Wednesday. He's still auditioning new lines of attack. With nothing to build on, he has no chance to use the debates to change anything about the election.

Medicare could win the House for Dems

A new Gallup poll, completed before Romney's 47% tape aired, show Obama with a growing advantage on Medicare, 50% to 44% in swing states, larger nationally. A new Reuters poll is showing Romney support collapsing among seniors:

Romney's double-digit advantages among older voters on the issues of healthcare and Medicare - the nation's health insurance program for those over 65 and the disabled - also have evaporated, and Obama has begun to build an advantage in both areas.

This kind of collapse, where a core constituency of one party becomes disenchanted with the party's platform, usually shows up as a collapse of party id and a growth of independents, then in a growth of the opposition party's id. And sure enough, that is what we see Republican id collapsing in Huffpost's party id trend:





This large change in party id of suggests a wave election, and Nancy Pelosi now puts the Democrat's chances of picking up the 25 seats they need to win the House at 60%. Her strategy? "Medicare, Medicare, Medicare."

Romney's done, Senate's held, House?

The campaign will downplay their chances, and they have to keep the pressure up all the way through, but the Presidential election has been over since July, and the Senate was locked down over the Democratic convention. So the strategic question for the Obama campaign is how can they use Romney to help us take back the House?

Romney's 47% video, and his doubling down on that view of the electorate, gives Obama the opportunity to frame him and the Republican party as a Goldwater extremists, when the Democrats won the largest share of seats since the New Deal. Talk of improving House chances has erupted across the Democratic Internet, sparked by Sam Wang's house outlook giving Democrats a 74% chance of taking over (Dylan Matthews at the Post dug into Wang's data a bit more):

In summer polls leading up to the 2012 conventions, Republicans were behindDemocrats by a median of 2%, a 9-point swing from 2010. Consequently, many seats won in that Republican wave are now at risk

Karl Rove's American Crossroads appears to be pulling back from Romney to focus down-ballot. Josh Marshall of TPM posted a note from a correspondent suggesting TPM shift focus to the House. Nate Silver pointed out in August that the GOP majority was at risk, and since then polls have moved to suggest the Democratic wave he saw as a possibility. The Obama campaign has seen a party ID shift in their polling (they lower the Democratic numbers internally in case the shift is a mirage), which is another indication of a wave. The Huffington Post House outlook has more Republican than Democratic races to watch,  and as more congressional polling becomes available we should be able to test Wang's predictions from the national polls.

Post convention, last chances for Romney

Conventions are one of the few opportunities a presidential candidate has to change how they are perceived by the broad American public, and with that change the trajectory of the election.  It is clear that Romney has wasted his convention, neither the convention nor his choice of Ryan changed anything about the way he is perceived by the electorate. Instead both reinforced the story the Obama campaign has been telling about Romney. Romney's remaining opportunities to significantly impact the election are the debates, but with no groundwork laid for a new story of Romney's candidacy he faces an impossible task. With the polls at status quo Romney loses.

Meanwhile the Obama campaign is more and more confident that they have this thing sown up. It's hard to argue with them, though Rahm and Democratic insiders I've talked to warn of hubris. The natural growth of minority share of the electorate, combined with Romney's disastrous performance among Hispanics, put this election out of reach for the Republicans. The election appears to be close, and will be fought on the ground to the last day, but the Obama campaign has a margin for error and Romney is out of opportunities to take that away.

I would bet the Democratic convention organizers are shifting emphasis from engaging Romney to outlining what Obama intends to do with another four years. Obama may use convention starting tomorrow as an occasion to set a course for America, rather than to reintroduce himself to the public.

The late season of a presidential campaign

Some of my rules for understanding the endgame of a presidential election:

• Voters draw their economic verdict on the incumbent by June.
• Late summer polls, after the primary bump and before the convention bumps, show the underlying state of the race.
• National polls become volatile and misleading through the convention and debate season.
• The results of a campaign's actions take a few weeks to show up in polls, immediate poll reactions are often misleading.
• The candidate making 'bold' or 'dramatic' moves late in the campaign is losing.

Presidential campaigns are large, slow moving things. It takes a lot of thought and effort to shape the opinions of a couple hundred million people. There is little room to change things in the last quarter of a campaign, if your strategy is not working and the underlying trend is against you, then you are probably out of time to change strategies.

Obama's knockout punch?

Obama's Bain attacks on Romney have begun hitting home (expressed in their purest form in Obama's brilliant "Firms" ad), and Romney appears to have been knocked senseless by them.

There was a chance, a few months back, that the economy would do Romney's job for him. Obama would have had real trouble winning with unemployment stuck at nine or ten percent. But unemployment dropped to the low eights, and that economic improvement is baked in to the election. Voters have made up their minds about Obama's economic performance: it's not great, but it's not disqualifying. The economy won't move enough in the remaining three and a half months to change that conclusion.

Obama's job has been to solidify his disillusioned base, disqualify Romney, then show America a vision of the future. In December of last year Obama signaled a shift from moderate centrism, bending over backward in an attempt to accomodate Republicans, to core Democratic values in his Osawatomie, Kansas speech. He began putting each of his achievements -- auto industry bailout, stimulus, financial reform, race to the top -- into a progressive context. Then, as the election year began, he touched each base: women, with Sandra Fluke and Planned Parenthood; African Americans with Trayvon Martin; Gays with his endorsement of gay marriage, and Hispanics with executive implementation of the DREAM act. In each instance Obama's appeal to his base was also an appeal to the basic decency of the American people. By June Democratic enthusiasm for Obama had recovered and outpaced Republican enthusiasm for Romney.

Romney's job was to win his primary, then convince enough Obama voters to support him. Obama won in 2008 with significant margins, and new voters, more and more of whom are college educated or Hispanic, are much more closely aligned with the Democratic party. Romney does not have the option of simply solidifying his base, he must convince Obama supporters to switch. But Romney is so beholden to an extremist Tea Party base, which hates Obama with a passion, that he is unable to craft an appeal to people who don't. He spent the primary moving right as he faced more and more extremist candidates.

There are only a few months left in the campaign, Romney is running away from his record as governor, and he wants his tenure at Bain to be off limits. So Obama has a free hand to define Romney as an un-American, job destroying plutocrat. This message is aimed squarely at the white working class, Obama's most dangerous weakness and Romney's only real opportunity take Democratic votes. Some Democratic observers are still skeptical of Obama's chances, but at this point the possibility of a Romney win looks more and more remote.

The Latino hit

Obama's DREAM executive order is still reverberating through the campaign. It was well timed, just five months before the election, after the Republican primaries and after Republicans 'came home' and Romney's numbers bounced, just before a Supreme Court decision on immigration which would amplify Obama's message. Obama carefully used Sandra Fluke and Trayvon Martin to drive a culture war wedge between Republicans and most Americans back in March, then he endorsed gay marriage in May (giving a significant boost to pro-gay marriage efforts in a number of states). Immigration was the remaining big wedge issue. With immigration Obama was much less subtle. Each of these moves frame cultural issues in a way that puts Obama in a positive light to most Americans, and in a way that sends the Republican base into an alienating frenzy. Romney ends up caught between American values and an increasingly marginalized base. On immigration in particular Romney is effectively skewered and unable to respond coherently, while Obama opens up more opportunities in swing states, which generally have large and growing Latino populations. Conservatives tend to think of these moves as merely addressing the Democratic base, but in fact they present a stark choice to white Americans: do they want to turn back to the past or move forward into the future. Most of white middle class America is moving forward, and enough identify with Obama's vision of America's future to give him a sufficient share of the white vote.

Windows Phone 8 and Nokia

Microsoft has put another nail in Nokia's coffin with yesterday's Windows 8 announcement. Nokia is being squeezed from both ends of its market: it's low end devices can't compete with Chinese Android smartphones, and it's high end Lumia 900 is equivalent to a mid-range Android phone at best. Microsoft has announced that Windows 8 will not run on current Windows Phone 7 phones (it is too fat for those platforms) so Nokia will have to come up with a new line of much higher end phones that can run Microsoft's new, heavier OS. Those phones will not compete on price with high-end Android and iPhone phones, so Nokia's high end business will go nowhere. Nokia has no mid-range line, other than the now obsolete Windows Phone 7 handsets. And Nokia has just laid off many of the people who were working on a lighter, low-end OS, so they have no low-end platform with which to preserve their low-end business.

With this move Microsoft has finally abandoned the decrepit Wince kernel they had attempted to reskin as Windows Phone. But by dropping a bloated NT kernel into an embedded environment they made their usual mistake of assuming that Moore's law will make up for crap software performance.

Engadget ran almost a dozen brief takes on Window 8 mobile, but to me they read as curiously detached from any awareness of the reality of mobile hardware. These commentators seem to have completely bought into the pointy-headed notion that mobile and desktop platforms are now basically the same and that a unified OS, from kernel to UI, can serve them equally well. Write once, run anywhere is a common mistake that amateur programmers and people removed from actual development on these platforms make, the most recent major failure being Java, which morphed into so many different solutions over the past twenty years that it lost all coherence and became primarily a database language.

Mobile, tablet and desktop are distinct UIs, and require distinct interactive metaphors. Their display, memory, cpu, battery and bandwidth constraints are also distinct, and applications must respect each device's limits. A kernel designed for the ever expanding capabilities of desktop computers will never fit well into the tight confines of a mobile phone. Microsoft's developer support, which is also geared to the ever expanding desktop, will never cultivate developers who can build apps that run well on tablets and phones. They will develop crippled versions of desktop apps, just as Microsoft web development tools encourage web apps that are crippled versions of ancient client server applications.

Whither Nokia?

All Things D's Ina Fried reports on Nokia's latest earnings call. "The company said that its smartphone business is even weaker than expected amid stiff competition from Apple and Android products." As expected, Android is squeezing them on the low end, according to Elop:

The strength of Android, particularly as it pushes down in price point, is clearly something that has caused a lot of challenge.

In choosing Windows phone Nokia jumped from a burning platform into the fire. Nokia is closing facilities and firing tens of thousands of workers in an effort to stay afloat, but cutting staff won't win people over to the Windows phone platform. Sales of the Lumia 900 haven't had any impact on Windows phone market share, even after massive promotion from Nokia, Microsoft and AT&T. News of Nokia restating earnings and Q2 forecasts undercuts their claim that the phone is performing as expected.  They must change course to survive in the market. Nokia can't become Apple, so their choice is to adopt Android or fade out.

Update: Dan Rowinski at ReadWriteWeb weighs in on Nokia's options:

Elop today said during a conference call that Nokia needs to “compete with Android aggressively.” To do that, it must develop not just one great Windows Phone in the United States, but several. The Lumia 900 is a good device, but it is available only through AT&T. Nokia needs at least one major device on every U.S. carrier and then a mid-range device that spendthrifts will look to if the top phone proves too expensive. And it means teaming with Microsoft (which has said it will help) to create Windows Phones that are available across the world at entry-level prices.

 But there's no such thing as a great Windows Phone, much less several. The Windows Phone kernel is wince, app developers won't adopt it now any more than they did a decade ago, and squeezing it down to work well on entry-level hardware is a fantasy.

My Raspberry Pi

I got my Raspberry Pi from Newark.com last month.

Took me a little bit to get it working. My Nook simple touch micro-USB adapter works fine. My first microSDHC card in an adapter didn't work so I had to run out to Radio Shack to get a compatible SDHC card, but once I did and loaded their Debian image everything worked fine. 

I got MPD and NFS set up and tried using it as a music server. The forums are right, the PCM drivers aren't there yet. The sound was barely decipherable. I'll try a USB DAC.

Transferring lots of files to it over rsync via ssh killed the RPi, but NFS seems to work fine. I also want to get Go running on it. 

Google beats Oracle on copyright claims

Google's arguments on Java copyright have prevailed over Oracle's in their Android patent/copyright case. The copyright side of Oracle's case always struck me as much weaker, and much less was at stake in any case, but this ends Oracle's attempt to own some aspect of Android. Oracle can appeal, but their case was weak, their patent case gets weaker as one of their two patents is about to be invalidated, judge Alsup bent over backwards to accommodate Oracle, and his reasoning is clear. Oracle would have a much higher bar to clear on appeal.

Google always argued that this case was more FUD than substance, and they were right.

I'll update as I read more.

Android beats Oracle patent claims

The verdict on patents went largely as expected, no infringement. Most of Oracle's claims were dismissed before the case went to trial, one of the four two patents at issue in trial is about to be overturned, and software patent claims tend to fall apart once tested in court. Only people who think Florian Mueller is an authoritative source on software patents will be surprised by this verdict.

Oracle's copyright claims are all that remain at issue in this trial. The jury found only 9 lines of RangeCheck code as infringing, they could not decide Oracle's larger SSO claims on API headers. So the SSO claims are up to judge Alsup.

The only remaining patent threats to the Android ecosystem are Apple's "We have a patent on rounded corners" and "We've patented s/\b(999-999-9999)\b/<a href="call:$1">$1<\/a>/g", claims so weak that Apple won't take on Google directly, and Microsoft's behind-the-scenes machinations. Both of these are rear-guard attempts by aging companies to keep a lid on innovation, and both are likely to go the way of all the patent claims against Linux.

Hopefully Google will continue on the course of knocking down patents rather than settling. Knocking down software patents expands the competitive space for all players in the software industry, and makes room for small, disruptive players to transform whole business segments.

Nook & Microsoft?

Barnes & Noble has settled with Microsoft on their patent dispute, and taken Microsoft on as a partner in their soon to be spun off Nook business:

The new subsidiary, referred to in this release as Newco, will bring together the digital and College businesses of Barnes & Noble. Microsoft will make a $300 million investment in Newco at a post-money valuation of $1.7 billion in exchange for an approximately 17.6% equity stake. Barnes & Noble will own approximately 82.4% of the new subsidiary, which will have an ongoing relationship with the company’s retail stores. Barnes & Noble has not yet decided on the name of Newco.

Florian Mueller gives the Florian Mueller take (Yay patents! Stupid open source lawyers.):

The fact that Barnes & Noble partners with Microsoft proves, if anyone still needed any proof, that its mostly antitrust-related "patent misuse" allegations against Microsoft, which the ITC threw out even ahead of trial and refused to reconsider, were bogus claims borne out of desperation (for lack of patents that could be used to bring counterclaims), possibly misguided by certain lawyers who self-servingly raised totally false hopes in Barnes & Noble's management as to what they could achieve by shouting "antitrust! antitrust!"

 The actual story looks more interesting. Microsoft has invested $300 million for a minority stake in a spin-off of a $1.3 billion dollar business. Microsoft also gets some unspecified royalty payments on patents from that new business. B&N is a retail book store in trouble, it needs saving. Microsoft is a software business with a lot of cash, but at imminent risk of decline. It needs a way forward in the industry. Forward is the Apple, Google, Amazon direction: content stores on many devices.

Nook gives Microsoft a key content platform and two avenues forward. It gives them a content store that Microsoft's clout can help expand to music and movies, it adds that store to Windows Phone/7/8, and it gives them a hedge in an Android tablet platform. Microsoft gives Nook money.

All in all not a bad deal for some dodgy patents and $300 million dollars.


Update: PaidContent weighs in, with some clarity on where the patent litigation was heading, and why Microsoft would pay $300 million to make it go away:

By settling with B&N, Microsoft avoids an ugly court battle that might not have been decided in its favor. Like most companies that wield patents as weapons, the goal is to prevent competition and maximize royalties. Microsoft has no dog in the e-reader fight, so the partnership with B&N makes sense for Microsoft anyway.

Update 2: Now TechCrunch, but with more details (money):

A section called “Commercial Agreement” notes that Microsoft will be paying the Barnes & Noble subsidiary $180 million in connection with revenue sharing on the Nook app that B&N will make for the Windows 8 platform. This is nonrefundable, the filing notes. Microsoft is also paying $125 million (equal to $25 million over five years) “for purposes of assisting NewCo in acquiring local digital reading content and technology development.” This, too, looks to be nonrefundable.

So, maybe the number is over $600 million. More reason to think this would expand the Nook store beyond books. If the number Microsoft is investing is over half a billion, Microsoft looks more like the desperate party. The danger for B&N is that they go the way of Nokia, anchored to a sinking platform.

A venerable wince

Jean-Louis Gassée wrote an analysis of Nokia's situation which contains this key piece of speculation:

Apparently, the current Windows Phone OS is built on the venerable Windows CE kernel. Setting veneration aside, Microsoft would have decided to use a more modern foundation for Windows Phone 8. And said modern foundation would not run on today’s hardware.

Classic Microsoft, and hence the paucity of developers embracing Windows Phone. No amount of marketing can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, the people writing code have to deal with the real platform, not the glossy ads. Apple's solid Unix foundation in iOS, plus the thin Objective-C framework, are a winner in mobile. Android's Linux, plus a heavy Java framework, struggles. But a Wince OS with yet another half-baked Microsoft framework is DOA for developers.

And more from Dan Frommer, on Microsoft's terrible mobile comback and Windows 8 prospects:

But it will, again, have to be so amazing that people and/or carriers will really take notice and consciously switch their allegiance. And the odds of that happening, based on Microsoft's track record in mobile, are slim.

 The only, desperate, hope I've seen came from a comment on Gassée's piece:

An Android injunction as a result of the current Oracle-Google trial (Probability? Is anyone paying attention?) would open the doors wide open for Nokia Windows phones

 The probability is practically non-existent. At worst a judge would order payments on RAND terms, but it is far more likely that Oracle will lose in its attempts to copyright Java.

"Windows Phone also hasn’t penetrated the market as strongly as expected"

What idiots expected Windows Phone to penetrate the market? Why do people take PR "analysts" seriously?

Everyone is pivoting off of this Reuters story on Nokia Lumina's disappointing performance in Europe.
TechCrunch,  SlashGear, CNet, MobileBurn. Not a big surprise to anyone who has done development on Windows Phone.

When your opponent is drowning, throw the son of a bitch an anvil

- James Carville

March 2, 2012: Obama calls Sandra Fluke
March 25, 2012: If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon

I'm waiting for the Latino hit.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks

Dan Lyons has a funny, pointed post covering what I mentioned earlier, in the context of Path's privacy violations:

Arrington and Siegler can try to play journalism police all they want, but the fact is they have turned themselves into hacks for hire and as such have lost all credibility. They’re not the only ones working this racket. Now we have PandoDaily, a new tech blog crated by their TechCrunch pal Sarah Lacy and funded by CrunchFund and a bunch of other VCs and angels whose companies PandoDaily aims to cover.

But what is hilarious is the reaction Dan's attack provoked, Arrington:

He says that our insanely over subscribed venture fund is just a joke. He says our work at TechCrunch over the last six years is a joke. He says MG is a joke. He drags Pando Daily and Techmeme into the fight and trashes them too.

I’m surprised that my mother wasn’t mentioned, frankly.

Oh my fur and whiskers!  Then Siegler:

That passion is conveyed in our writing. And it’s conveyed when we meet with startups. Ask any company in our portfolio why they accepted us as investors. That Dan Lyons would imply it’s some sort of shakedown shows how very clueless he is.

And it shows exactly why he could never do what we do. His words reek of jealousy. Of disillusionment. He’s angry. He doesn’t get it. And worst of all, he simply does not matter anymore. The only time he did was as a joke. He’s that guy who used to be that guy that was pretending to be Steve Jobs once upon a time. That must be extremely frustrating.

It's hard to believe people could be this obtuse, the other possibility is that Lyons hit too close to home. Given the amount of projection the latter is most likely. Then again Siegler just discovered how defensive patents work, and only recently discovered how ignorant he is, so maybe he really is that dim.

Newt as a Republican Symptom

Tom Edsall, in his opinion piece Newt Gingrich and the Future of the Right in the New York Times, echos my Newt take:

But the country is going through a profound restructuring in moral and economic thinking and the danger for Republicans is that their current coalition might become obsolete. If the party doesn’t adapt, the alternative is that its power centers — the Christian right, anti-immigration forces, and proponents of policies that benefit the affluent at the expense of the less well-off — will refuse to adjust, in which case the party risks going the way of the Studebaker.

It's not just the growth in hispanic voters that threatens the viability of the Republican coalition, the entire country is shifting away from them.

Suicide is part of their culture

The perfect intersection of blogger boiz, o-bot and reality distortion

Exactly what Anglachel was writing about.

https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/164196027333750785

The Best Defense

There have been a flurry of wild claims that Google is Evil lately, mostly around social search and Google's new privacy policy. A bunch of TechCrunch alums at their new site Pandodaily are particularly incensed, posting dozens of sensational posts in the past week with titles like I Guess We Have Google’s Answer: Search Results Are No Longer Sacred (a classic in the "when did you stop beating your wife" genre), Evil, Greed, And Antitrust Aren’t Google’s Real Problems, Relevancy Is (good old anecdata), and that old yellow journalist's trick SPYW Update: Is Google Back-Pedaling Ahead of Company All-Hands?. Most of these pieces take decent reporting by people like Danny Sullivan and twist it beyond recognition.

Meanwhile Apple released it's fiscal 1Q2012 numbers (covering 4Q2011), showing obscene profits, and the New York Times front-paged a huge story on the abusive conditions in the factories that generate Apple's profits, showing how Apple has been complicit in the abuse. Somehow the Apple news only merited a few mentions in Pandodaily's ticker.

Muddying the waters is a classic technique of crisis PR, usually accomplished by pitching sympathetic reporters. Setting up a whole news site for the purpose is audacious. We'll see how this works out for Apple.