Politico:

“The president acknowledged he needed to do better,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporter after the meeting, though he stopped short of saying Obama offered an apology.

But Gibbs said the president did plan to increase “all kinds” of communication with the GOP, include informal phone calls and other unpublicized interactions.

House Minority Leader John Boehner, addressing reporters after returning from the White House to Capitol Hill, described the long-awaited session as a “nice meeting” and said “I think spending more time will help us … find common ground.”

Senate Republicans leaders told their members at an afternoon caucus meeting that the White House gathering went well, in part because Democrats didn’t appear “arrogant,” officials said.

Still, GOP leaders – led by Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Republican Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia— held firm on their previous vow to extend tax breaks permanently for all income groups – not just families earning less than $250,000, as Obama and other Democrats advocate.

This is symbolic of the difference between Republicans and Democrats at least since 1994: Republicans fight aggressively for their agenda, damn the torpedoes, while Democrats run from theirs, even when they have popular opinion on their side.

With no killer handsets, and the stuffy, suit and tie image that they have tried so hard to shed still lingering, Microsoft need to pull something impressive out of the bag soon if they are going to compete in the mobile phone market.

Windows phone 7 is not selling

You mean like releasing a completely overhauled mobile operating system with a simultaneous global marketing blitz?

Level 3 Communications Issues Statement Concerning Comcast’s Action

Level 3 Communications Issues Statement Concerning Comcast’s Action

And there are those whose objections have a physiological basis as well as an ideological one: the pitch and timbre of her voice, the rhythms of her speech, her syntax, and the way she coats acid and incoherence with cheery musical inflections join together in a sickening synergy that distresses the listener, triggering a fight-or-flight reaction. When Palin talks, my whole being wails, like Nancy Kerrigan after Tonya Harding’s ex-husband kneecapped her: “Why? Why? Why?”

I tested video calling using a pre-release, tablet-optimized version of Qik, the software being preinstalled for this purpose on the Tab. Results were mixed. It will work over either cellular or Wi-Fi connections, but the version I tried wasn’t tuned for cellular, so we used Wi-Fi. In my conversation with a Qik executive, the call at first failed to go through. When it did go through, it worked fine for awhile, and then failed when I tried a feature designed to hide my image. Later, the audio dropped altogether.

Walt Mossberg

This is why people love Apple products. They don’t ship pieces of shit.

Populism imposes its own humiliations on anyone considering a run. How many times can you stand in front of an audience and state: “I will always put the people of X first”? (Quite a lot of times, to judge by recent campaigns.) This is to say no more than that you will be a megaphone for sectional interests and regional mood swings and resentment, a confession that, to you, all politics is yokel.