It’s Christmas

This was on the other night so I guess the holiday season can officially start:

As for me, I’m officially suffering from a case of the holiday blues.

The Facebook juggernaut

Already valued at about $43 billion, the company is generating revenue of over $2 billion:

Revenue will more than double from 2009, said the people, who declined to be identified because the privately held company doesn’t disclose revenue. Facebook had $700 million to $800 million in sales last year, and the 2010 figure was previously expected to be closer to $1.5 billion, according to two other people familiar with the matter earlier this year.

Facebook’s more than half a billion users have made it an attractive target for advertisers, including Coca-Cola Co., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Adidas AG. In October, Facebook surpassed Yahoo! Inc. when ranked by the number of global users, making it No. 3 behind Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., according to ComScore Inc., a research firm in Reston, Virginia.

“The love affair of consumers with social networks is an abiding one, so it’s not going to go away,” said Karsten Weide, an analyst with IDC in San Mateo, California. “All the big brands are there.”

Although I’m on Facebook, I’m not the biggest fan.  I see the practicality of some of the more practical information-sharing uses for businesses.  But unless I’m a beneficary of some of that hefty ad revenue, seeing my “friends” lame and idiotic status updates just irritates me.

Creating ringtones for your iPhone

Watch and learn:

This is by far the easiest way I’ve found to create a ringtone for the iPhone.

Senate Democrats to American taxpayers: “F— off. And then f— off some more.”

You’re welcome, bitches:

Senate Democrats have filed a $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill that would fund the government through fiscal year 2011, according to Senate GOP sources.
 
The 1,924-page bill includes funding to implement the sweeping healthcare reform bill Congress passed earlier this year as well as additional funds for Internal Revenue Service agents, according to a senior GOP aide familiar with the legislation.

The package drew a swift rebuke from Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee.
 
“The attempt by Democrat leadership to rush through a nearly 2,000-page spending bill in the final days of the lame-duck session ignores the clear will expressed by the voters this past election,” Thune said in a statement. “This bill is loaded up with pork projects and should not get a vote. Congress should listen to the American people and stop this reckless spending.”

Just a complete and utter disregard for the will of  American voters taxpayers.

Oh, and did I mention they’re Democrats?  By that I mean, there are Republicans in the mix too:

Despite strong opposition from Thune and Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), several Senate Republicans are considering voting for the bill.
 
“That’s my intention,” said retiring Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah) when asked if he would support the package.
 
Bennett said earmarks in the bill might give some of his GOP colleagues reason to hesitate but wouldn’t affect his vote.
 
“It will be tough for some, but not for me,” he said.

GOP Sens. Kit Bond (Mo.), George Voinovich (Ohio) and Susan Collins (Maine) also told The Hill on Tuesday they would consider voting for the omnibus but want to review it before making a final decision.

Hey Senator Bennett, don’t let the cloakroom door kick you in the backside on the way out.  Did I mention that these people are all a bunch of lying, sanctimonious douchebags?

Senator McConnell says he’s trying to stop this insanity:

“I think there are many Senate members who have provisions in it for their states who are also actively working to defeat it. This bill should not go forward,” he said. ”And regardless of whether members had some input in the bill much earlier in the year when the bills could have been moved to the floor bill by bill by bill, it is completely and totally inappropriate to wrap all of this up into a 2,000-page bill and try to pass it the week before Christmas.” 

“It’s completely inappropriate. I’m vigorously in opposition to it. And most of the members of the [Appropriations] committee are as well,” McConnell added.

For some reason, Mitch McConnell vowing to stop the bill from coming to a vote doesn’t fill me with any sense of confidence whatsoever.

If you’re looking for reasons why the American people are sick of politicians and don’t particularly care about the political process in this country, this whole episode is a prime example of one.

New Marist poll brings more bad news for Obama

As with all polls, take this for what it’s worth:

[...] President Barack Obama’s approval rating has dipped to its lowest point since taking office.  Currently, 42% of registered voters approve of the job the president is doing while half — 50% — disapprove.  Eight percent are unsure.  When McClatchy-Marist last asked this question in its November 24th survey, 45% thought his performance was on the mark while 48% thought it was subpar, and 7% were unsure.  Prior to this survey, voters gave Mr. Obama his lowest approval rating in early October. 

[...]

The change has occurred among members of the president’s own party.  74% of Democrats think Obama is performing well in office while 21% do not, and 5% are unsure.  Late last month, those proportions stood at 83%, 11%, and 6%, respectively. 

[...]

“President Obama’s recent criticism of both Democrats and Republicans and his attempts to move to the center haven’t exactly endeared him with independents,” says Dr. Lee M. Miringoff, Director of The Marist College Institute for Public Opinion.  “Instead, it’s ended up costing him support with his Democratic base.”

Punching hippies has its advantages.  For Republicans anyway.

(Hat Tip: Hot Air)

Christmas with Governor Christie

Governor Christie, with help from the Boston Pops, reads ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas. 

WP doesn’t allow embedding of this video format, so click-through the link and enjoy.

Federal Judge rules individual mandate provision in Obamacare is unconstitutional

Not a death-blow yet, but a massive kick in the groin:

The Obama administration’s requirement that most citizens maintain minimum health coverage as part of a broad overhaul of the industry is unconstitutional because it forces people to buy insurance, a federal judge ruled, striking down the linchpin of the president’s plan.

U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson in Richmond, Virginia, said today that the requirement in President Barack Obama’s health-care legislation goes beyond Congress’s powers to regulate interstate commerce. While severing the coverage mandate, Hudson didn’t address other provisions such as expanding Medicaid that are unrelated to it. He didn’t order the government to stop work on putting the remainder of the law into effect.

This is huge, and I’m sure the Obama administration will try to appeal the decision.  The law’s other provisions remain in tact, but the premise of the legislation, that the pool of the insured needs to increase in order to lower costs, depended on the individual mandate.

The corporate ladder vs entrepreneurship

An interesting piece in today’s New York Times on how recent college graduates are ditching the presumed, conforming career path of corporate America, and blazing their own trails. 

…[Scott] Gerber started the Young Entrepreneur Council “to create a shift from a résumé-driven society to one where people create their own jobs,” he says. “The jobs are going to come from the entrepreneurial level.”

[...]

Council members assert that young people can start businesses even if they have little or no money or experience. But whether those start-ups last is another matter. Roughly half of all new businesses fail within the first five years, according to federal data. And the entrepreneurial life is notoriously filled with risks, stresses and sacrifices.

But then again, unemployment is 9.8 percent; Mr. Gerber’s in-box is flooded with e-mails from young people who have sent out hundreds of résumés for corporate jobs and come up empty. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, only 24.4 percent of 2010 graduates who applied for a job had one waiting for them after graduation (up from 19.7 percent in 2009). What do some people have to lose?

THE lesson may be that entrepreneurship can be a viable career path, not a renegade choice — especially since the promise of “Go to college, get good grades and then get a job,” isn’t working the way it once did. The new reality has forced a whole generation to redefine what a stable job is.

Moving away from a resume-driven society sounds great to me.

Marist poll: Romney best choice for Republicans

We’re still too far out from 2012 to put credence into any poll, but this McClatchy-Marist survey is not good for Obama.  It’s so bad in fact, that Mitt Romney would win in a potential matchup:

President Barack Obama’s approval ratings have sunk to the lowest level of his presidency, so low that he’d lose the White House to Republican Mitt Romney if the election were held today, according to a new McClatchy-Marist poll.

The biggest reason for Obama’s fall: a sharp drop in approval among Democrats and liberals, apparently unhappy with his moves toward the center since he led the party to landslide losses in November’s midterm elections. At the same time, he’s gained nothing among independents.

“He’s having the worst of both worlds right now,” said Lee Miringoff, the director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion at Marist College in New York, which conducted the national survey.

“As he moves to the center, he’s not picking up support among independents and he’s having some fall-off among his base. If his strategy is to gain independents and keep the Democrats in tow, it isn’t working so far.”

Once again, Republicans have a chance to win by default.  Not because their candidate is so much better, but because the Democrat just sucks that much more.

Plus, there’s this bit:

[President Obama] easily defeat Republican former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, however. He’d get 52 percent of registered voters and she’d get 40 percent, if the election were held today.

The key in each matchup is independents.

Romney had the best advantage over the president among independents, preferred by 47-39 percent. Independents break for Obama over Huckabee by 42-40 percent. Palin fares much worse among independents.  They favor the president over her by 52-35 percent.

For the record, I’m of the belief that the President is doing irreperable harm by punching the hippies sticking it to his core base of supporters–the progressive/liberal left that mobilized en masse during the 2007-2008, along with various others who were duped by the Greek columns. 

That being said, pissing off these people means that Obama is moving towards the center, which is more in tune to where the majority of Americans stand.  Nobody really knows how that will affect his bid for reelection.

As for Sarah Palin, I’m pretty much convinced that the best role for her would be as head of the RNC.  My web surfing casual observance of various polls over the past few months show little if any positive news for her if she ran in a national campaign.  Her favorables are typically below where they should be, and she rarely fares well in head-to-head matchups with the President.  But again, 2012 is a long way off.

The iPad is killing off the newspaper industry

Not a surprise, but still eye-opening:

[...] 84.4% of iPad owners primarily use their iPad to follow breaking news and current events. As a result, newspaper subscriptions, once the staple of the newspaper industry, are being cannibalized by the iPad. Slightly more than 30% of iPad owners do not subscribe to a newspaper, preferring to consume news on their tablet device. Of the 931 respondents that have a newspaper subscription and read an hour’s worth of news each day on their iPad, more than half (58.1%) intend to cancel their newspaper subscriptions within six months. A growing 10.7% have already canceled their subscription and have switched to iPad-only reading.