Some have been dismissing the iPad as just “a large iPod touch: a great device to draw your inspiration from, but perhaps not the seismic shift in technology that we were expecting.” Hutch Carpenter sees it as much more; he’s sensing a seismic shift. Writing at Blogging Innovation, Carpenter says it’s Apple’s skill with design-driven innovation that will make the iPad a success. And what is the significant design-driven innovation in the iPad? It’s touch, of course: In...

Or so Fox News now seemingly suggests. What truly is stunning is how in recent years partisans will jump through all kinds of mental hoops to try and excuse things that people on their side do that they berated others on the other side for doing. You could say “mind-boggling” but now this is the norm. Outrage and ridicule is only directed at those who you seek to politically defeat, but you look the other way or play defense attorney if your own side does it. As noted in another post,...

On The Media spoke last week with Don Corrigan, editor of The Webster-Kirkwood Times, a small community paper published weekly. Two years ago in his Missouri town, reporters at that paper found themselves covering — and in one instance witnessing — the murders of some friends and neighbors: Probably the low point for me was a call about 1:30, 2 in the morning after this had happened, and The CBS Morning Show wanted an interview with our reporter who witnessed this firsthand. And I said,...

The old saying is the two things you cannot avoid are death and taxes but these days it seems politics are much more entwined with death and to me that is a sad thing. Certainly the death of a political incumbent has political aspects, especially where  the district is marginal and thus subject to takeover. But you do not discuss such things while the body is still warm. Although most of the mainstream on both the left and the right have been properly respectful regarding the death of Congressman...

John Darkow, Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Dude. If you don’t like being mistaken for Torquemada, stop acting like Torquemada (emphasis is in original):

There was one thing that surprised me about this past weekend’s “news coverage” – it’s not that the Tea Party Convention was covered but the fact that it was covered seriously. I would even go as far as to say that I was shocked …wait that’s too far… mystified to find that reputable news outlets were giving serious discussion and analysis to Tom Tancredo opening speech (and the entire convention for that matter). What I would describe shocking is reputable and respected...

I just saw the headline; don’t have details yet. I’ll post again when I do.

Ezra Klein makes what I think is an unassailable argument that the health care reform bill in Congress right now already does incorporate many Republican ideas:

Remember when Nancy Pelosi said she wasn’t briefed about the C.I.A.’s use of waterboarding and other forms of torture, and C.I.A. officials provided documentation that she had been briefed, and there was this whole huge back and forth about what she knew and when, and whether she should have gone public with her knowledge? Remember how Republicans in Congress at the time buttressed their argument that there should be no legal investigation or trials of Bush administration officials involved...

The image of a pet rabbit in a boiling pot arises after a night of passion in Nashville, with Sarah Palin auditioning for the Glenn Close role in a remake of “Fatal Attraction.” If the GOP establishment was hoping for a one-night stand with the Tea Party, Palin evoked some serious stalking ahead by promising to campaign for challengers to traditional Republicans: “Contested primaries aren’t civil war. They’re democracy at work, and that’s beautiful.” The...

Should the tea party movement be seen as a phenomenon as large and consequential as another Great Awakening? Glenn Reynolds thinks so: I attended this past weekend’s National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, and I came away feeling that I had seen something important. The Tea Party movement is part of something bigger: America’s Third Great Awakening. America’s prior Great Awakenings, in the 18th and 19th Centuries, were religious in nature. Unimpressed with self-serving, ossified,...

My Two Cents Raging Moderate, by Will Durst I’m only guessing, but a major problem with being president has to be people around you being more likely to stick their face in a cast iron oscillating fan than tell you the truth. Let’s say you slip and fall and rip a hole in your pants down to your ankle while spilling hot coffee on a little blind girl in a wheelchair in front of a nationally televised audience. The worst you could expect to hear from a staffer is “Well, that could have gone better.”...

Ok, the headline is nothing but snark, but for those of us living in the Empire State it might not seem like such a bad idea at this point. I mean, why mess around with yet another governor who might build up our hopes only to dash them on the rocks of scandal? Let’s just put in somebody who is already on the docket for some federal crimes. If you’re wondering exactly what it is that I’m going on about today, reports are circulating that the New York Times is getting ready to unleash...

Our political Quote of the Day comes from independent commentaror John Avon’s take on the Tea Party convention in Nashville, which he attended. He begins it this way: As the National Tea Party Convention concluded this weekend, it’s clear that the Tea Partiers are propelled by two competing claims — a principled commitment to fiscal conservatism and a serious case of Obama Derangement Syndrome. The first group remains true to the roots of the movement as it emerged almost one year...

Much comment about Sarah Palin’s performance at the Tea Party convention (including from yours truly on a CNN panel) noted that her speech did contain some substance and that she is a political force who GOPers hoping to run for President (and Democrats) may have to contend with. But did she also show that she has limited talents and a seeming unwillingness to grow?

WASHINGTON — If President Obama gets to sign a health reform bill, as I believe he will, one reason may be Rep. Jay Inslee’s difficult experience renovating his kitchen. He told his kitchen story at a House Democratic caucus held after Republican Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts sent Inslee’s colleagues into paroxysms of dismay, chaos and fear. Brown’s triumph reduced the Democrats’ majority in the Senate to “only” 59, and this led many...

Now that the hub-hub over the Superbowl is finally fading away, we have time to turn our attention to the more important, but often sadly overlooked sports which make up the American way of life. These include activities such as eight-ball, shuffleboard, horseshoes and Foosball. What is it that makes sports such as these so superior? They are some of the only competitive athletic activities you can engage in while eating chicken wings and consuming copious quantities of alcohol. But even better than...

A conservative’s perspective.

And House Democrats push back.

Are rocky times ahead for the United States and China? Ted Galen Carpenter, vice-president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, thinks so and explains why in a must-read post on RealClearPolitcs. Here is the beginning of it: A nasty spat has erupted between Washington and Beijing over the Obama administration’s arms sales to Taiwan. As soon as the US made the official announcement of the US$6.4 billion package last Friday, Beijing responded with both harsh words and...

Eric Allie, Caglecartoons.com This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

How has it all seemingly gone wrong for President Barack Obama? Providing a unique, and uniquely French prospective on the question, is historian Alexandre Adler, who suggests that at root of the president’s problem is ironically, a failure to truthfully communicate in a way “more in keeping with some of his deepest intuitions.” In one meaty section of his analysis, Alexandre Adler writes for Le Figaro in part: There emerges in the person of the president an image of haughty...

So for all the hype and panic the ad turns out to be nothing. All it was is Mom talking about how she had a rough time with Tim and almost lost him a number of times. Then some humor with her and Tim and a link to the web site. That’s it. No mention of abortion, no agenda, nada. Which likely explains why CBS approved it.

There are rumblings now that New York’s Gov. David Paterson will resign once a New York Times expose about a purported sex scandal involving him is published.

Monte Wolverton, Cagle Cartoons This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

On my way to tennis this morning, I was listening to NPR and caught the end of an interesting conversation on an alleged correlation between the Super Bowl winner and the stock market. However, I didn’t catch the name of the professor who had done such a study. Curious as to how my stocks will be doing after tonight’s Super Bowl, I “Googled” the subject and hit the jackpot. The professor is finance professor George Kester at Washington and Lee University. In an article on Newswire.com,...

New York Times columnist Frank Rich must not read The Moderate Voice. In a column today in the Times, discussing the reaction to Adm. Mullen’s testimony on “don’t ask, don’t tell,” Rich says: A funny thing happened after Adm. Mike Mullen called for gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military: A curious silence befell much of the right. If this were a Sherlock Holmes story, it would be the case of the attack dogs that did not bark. Rich contends that, perhaps with the exception...

TPMDC reports,  Report: Shelby Blocks All Obama Nominations In The Senate Over AL Earmarks: Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has put an extraordinary "blanket hold" on at least 70 nominations President Obama has sent to the Senate, according to multiple reports this evening. The hold means no nominations can move forward unless Senate Democrats can secure a 60-member cloture vote to break it, or until Shelby lifts the hold. "While holds are frequent," CongressDaily’s Dan...

UPDATED: Battelle got it exactly right. The ad ran, the one in the original post below. Schmidt’s Google Blog post from after the game invites us to view the rest of the ads in the series. Jeff Jarvis doesn’t get it, tweeting: Disappointed Google didn’t make a new commercial appropriate to the Super Bowl. France? Football? Google? ++++++++++++ A standard line I used to use in lectures on marketing in a Web 2.0 world, “Google’s method is viral attraction followed by...

Political satire started in prime time as Sarah Palin preempted SNL with a parody of herself at the Tea Party convention. “How’s that hopey-changey stuff working out for you?” she twinkled during a $100,000 standup (to be donated to “the cause,” destination unclear) for hundreds who paid $349 to hear her pummel Obama with one-liners about everything from bailouts to the Christmas bomber (in the war on terror, “we need a commander in chief, not a professor of law...

Simon Johnson, who has made a career of studying and intervening in countries that have sovereign debt crises, has a very blunt post today, “Europe Risks Another Global Depression.” Notice the full stop; there is no passive aggressive question mark at the end to give him any wiggle room should it all blow over. Considering his expertise about identifying when countries have gone past the event horizon, that is quite worrying. Things could get real ugly real fast, with the financial markets...

And so the 24/7 media jumps into the fray. Some images of Sarah Palin at the Tea Party Convention have now emerged that she probably wishes didn’t and some others that won’t spark debate but, rather, provide more context for the environment in which she made her speech. THE FIRST GROUP qualifies a bit of an eyebrow raiser. Did Palin have crib notes on her hand? It looks that way. GO HERE. So does this mean those who keep using the Obama teleprompter line will ignore yet another politician...

Our political Quote of the Day comes from a must-read-in-full column by Nashville Post Politics’ Kleinheider on the Tea Party movement, Sarah Palin and the GOP. Here’s the first part of his piece: The tea party movement is dead. The one I was familiar with anyway. Judson Phillips held it down and Sarah Palin drove a stake right through its heart live last night on C-Span in front of an unsuspecting audience. Sarah Palin didn’t give a tea party speech last night. She gave a partisan...

Hey, football fans. Huddle up. Here it is, eight hours before kickoff at this writing, and I can’t decide who to root for in the Super Bowl. I’ve been back and forth as an out-of-control yo-yo for two weeks. I have no dog in this show. My place kicker, who went the entire season without missing one from 40 yards out, missed two against the Jets and you know the rest. Really, it’s no fun going into a game without silently rooting for one team or another. I like both teams and expect...

I’m mad as hell and can’t stand it any longer. I’ve heard conservative and moderate Democrats, Republicans and Independents complain too much taxes, too many regulations and a trend of socialism taking over our lives. President Barack Obama said he’s been accused of being a Bolshevik. I’m mad as hell because these complainers have failed to offer workable alternatives. And yes, I agree that some proposals by Republican congressmen and Senators fell on Democratic deaf...

In an old-fashioned war, you don’t tell the enemy where and when you’re going to attack. Counterinsurgency is different. The WaPo reports: For the upcoming Battle of Marja, the element of surprise has already gone by the wayside. NATO ministers and commanders, gathering Thursday and Friday in Istanbul, could barely contain themselves about a major military offensive set to launch 2,000 miles away in southern Afghanistan. Ignoring the usual dictums about keeping battle preparations...

How Did Sarah Palin Do Among Independent Voters In Her Tea Party Convention Speech? Here’s a CNN discussion (I was on this one with independent voter analyist Nicole Kurokawa) that aired after her speech last night: GO HERE to view her whole speech and decide for yourself.

One of the most dramatic moments of campaign 2008 was when Republican candidate Senator John McCain announced that he was suspending his campaign and immediately flying to Washington due to the seemingly collapsing economy, in a take charge imagery moment. But in Henry Paulson’s new book, On the Brink, now excerpted in the Wall Street Journal, the ex-Treasury Secretary gives an insider’s account that contends McCain really did not have any plan at all.

Analysis: Iranian Quickstep: 1 Step Forward, 2 Steps Back By Jonathan Spyer Latest Ahmadinejad statement suggests that Teheran still believes it can find a few partners for the dance it has been performing since 2003. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad this week told Iranian state television that “we have no problem sending our enriched uranium abroad.” In so doing, Ahmadinejad appeared to agree to the long-standing plan for the export of the greater part of Iran’s enriched...

Palin’s entire 41 minute long speech (which was covered in its entirety by C-SPAN) has just been put up on YouTube. I haven’t listened to it yet but will offer my thoughts and analysis after I have. Enjoy! UPDATE: THE FOLLOWING IS A PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT OF PALIN’S KEYNOTE SPEECH: (0:00-5:00) I’m so proud to be an American. Thank you so much for being here tonight. Do you love your freedom? If you love your freedom, thank the vets. Any of you here serving in uniform, past or...

I live in Tennessee so I suppose I should comment on my home state hosting the infamous Tea Party Nation “convention” at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville. The intra-tea party kerfuffle is quite entertaining – a tea party activist from Dandridge, about 40 miles away from me, called the Nashville conclave a “bunch of snakes.” But the real problem is the very name. TEA Party stands for “taxed enough already”. It apparently stands on the vanguard against Obama’s...

After telling members of the inaugural national Tea Party convention what they wanted to hear in a speech Saturday night, the Nashville dining hall roared with chants of “Run, Sarah, Run” when a moderator during a question period asked Sarah Palin if she planned to run for President in 2012. Palin, the former governor of Alaska, avoided an answer. She did say her first action as president was reduce government spending in an effort to bring the national debt under control. She also said...

There are those in Spain today, laughing at Prime Minister Zapetero’s appearance at America’s annual National Prayer Breakfast. The implication is that as an ‘avowed enemy of Christianism,’ he’s a hypocrite. And by the looks of it, according to right-wing columnist Federico Quevedo of Spain’s El Confidencial the once-coveted visit to Obama’s side isn’t likely to do him any political good. The event has already unleashed a veritable river of ink; We’ve...

Just to give you all a place to discuss, debate, etc on the big game. I’m not much of a footbal fan but by family loyalty I’m rooting for the Colts but I wouldn’t mind seeing the Saints win. If I had to guess I’d suspect the Saints win it but we will find out tomorrow.

Somewhat lost in the hype over the Super Bowl is the fact than New Orleans is electing a mayor tonight. Based on early returns it looks like Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu is an easy winner.

Glenn Greenwald on the label “terrorist” (emphasis in original):

ABC News has just reported that the Americans held in Haiti and charged with child abduction and criminal conspiracy have fired their Haitian lawyer. For more details, background and updates please click here.

Let me preface this post by reminding folks that IANAL (I am not a lawyer). Example of White House Flickr Photo The U.S. government policy on photographs and copyright is pretty straightfoward: photos produced by federal employees as part of their job responsibilities are “not subject to copyright in the United States and there are no U.S. copyright restrictions on reproduction, derivative works, distribution, performance, or display of the work.” Why, then, is the Obama White House...

That’s the question in big, bold letters on the cover the new New Republic. What TNR’s editors mean by that is what a lot of liberal writers have been saying since the morning after Scott Brown became the 41st Republican in the Senate. Does Barack Obama have the guts to get health care passed, or is he just another Democrat who gets scared and runs to the center when the GOP scores an occasional victory? What’s unusual about the editorial in TNR is that it’s thoroughly contradicted...

I just read an article in Slate by Jacob Weisberg that speaks directly to one of my biggest frustrations in political discussions: the fatalistic shoulder-shrugging platitude, “What do you expect? They’re all politicians and politicians are all the same.”

Fred likes liking. I do, too. “Liking” is a feature of the Disqus comment software we use on this blog. Clicking the “Like” button next to a comment earns the commenter a positive reputation point on Disqus and helps other readers discover popular comments. Fred says: I often reply to a comment that I like without adding anything to the discussion just to signal that I liked it…I’d like to encourage everyone who wades into the comments to start doing this as well. Many...

Sen. Richard Shelby is having a surprisingly easy time of it with conservative bloggers who usually are very much opposed (at least verbally) to earmarks and pork projects. With a couple of notable exceptions, even centrist bloggers are remarkably sympathetic toward Sen. Shelby:

As the Tea Party movement holds its first big convention this weekend — amid talk about it consolidating and expanding its constituency, becoming a potent force in American politics, and awaiting a big speech by former Arkansas Gov. Sarah Palin — a new poll finds that to many Americans the movement is still a yet-to-be-completely-defined, kind of blank slate: So the question becomes: will what those Americans who are yet to make up their minds see and hear coming out of the convention...

As someone who was a huge supporter of John McCain in 2000 and who registered as a Republican to vote for him in the 2000 California primary, I second the views of THIS COLUMN by Dana Milibank.