My conservative friends (on Facebook) have whined and moaned about the conservative point of view “not being invited to the table” on healthcare legislation. So the President extends a personal invitation and this is the response:

GOP cool to Obama call for two-party health talks – Yahoo! News

But House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said his earlier efforts to reach out to Republicans “did not result in any serious follow through to work together in a bipartisan fashion.”

My guess is that the GOP doesn’t want to be on TV with the President again after the ass-whooping he gave them in the live Q&A a couple of weeks ago (yes, I know I’m very very very late to the game on this amazing video):

If you haven’t watched this, you should. Regardless of your views about the President or the GOP. AMAZING political history being made with TV cameras rolling. Listen to how the President responds. Calm. Measured. Knows his stuff. The GOP, in my opinion, looks outplayed and they are showing that they are sore losers, can’t govern, can’t (or are unwilling to) solve problems and that they aren’t bipartisan in the least. Their talk of bipartisan work can only be called one thing: lies.

I’d love it if Palin was the GOP nominee against Obama. None of her crib notes would help against a smarter foe (sorry I cannot get the clip to wait for a user to initiate the playing of it):

Above video from this post on Foxnews.com. Unfortunately the above video doesn’t address her amateur crib notes. This one shows Fox “News” “anchors” helping the “Palin is just folksy” narrative. It’s painful:

Or her hypocrisy around use of the word “retard”. Dems do it: they should resign. Rush Limbaugh does it: he was just joking:

Also. Her reality is clearly not The Reality.

GOP, when you gonna give it up and actually govern? o

I think this is the entrance to Armstrong Park in New Orleans. If it isn’t, I was clearly not hallucinating. It may have been a sign of some kind. o

Caught this in my Twitters from both @mulegirl and @Mike_FTW (Warning, NSFW Twitter background).

A great diagram accompanies this post:

A Failure of Empathy

Definitely a great takeaway on the iPad. o

Your mom.

I kid, but it’s true. One of the shortest sighted things that nerds do is project their dreams and wants onto devices. This is great, in theory, but your mom doesn’t care about RAM, Gigahertz or processor cores. Your mom wants to do some stuff.

As the days pass, the longer I think about the iPad, the more I think Apple is going after Amazon. I believe Apple will permit the Kindle app on its devices and is largely allowing multiple distribution channels on its devices. I can’t see that changing with the iPad. So how is Apple “going after” Amazon? Hardware.

Today a Kindle 2 is $289 on Amazon.com. A Kindle DX with a 9.7″ screen is $489. For $10 more for an iPad I get:

-8x the storage
-a color screen
-a touch screen
-a touch OS
-a better web browser
-a better media player (iTunes)
-works on my home/work/plane wifi network
-the ability to download apps that do other things like play Scrabble and do Crosswords

Still think it’s a shitty device? That Apple didn’t “try hard enough”? You aren’t the target. Reader buyers are. On flight after flight, I’ve had conversations about the Kindle. It’s a good reader. But navigating text with foot or endnotes? PAIN. That kills a certain segment of books I can read. Tech books with diagrams or code snippets on a Kindle? Nearly unusable in my experience. Your mileage may vary. Do not buy this device if you think that it will be a horrible reader. PLEASE.

Apple is an experiential brand; you love the Apple product because of what you experience while using it. Apple is about providing that experience across your entire life with the device; from the moment it arrives in the box, you unwrap it like a present and every time you touch it, you are reminded of how deeply Apple cares about the most mundane piece of the device. The iPad will be no different. I will guarantee that once someone touches one, they will think about where this might fit into their life.

The final piece of this for me is that $499 is a killer price for something that could replace a laptop for the most casual of users. In this category I include people who surf and do email, with some light productivity needs: YOUR MOM.

In short: a shit ton of people are gonna buy an iPad. o