PunditGuy — Home

PunditGuy

Gingrich: Pelosi Dishonest, Vicious, Trivial and a Liar

“I don’t think the Speaker of the House can lie to the country on national security. This isn’t politics, this is national security.”

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich unloads on current Speaker Nancy Pelosi. His outrage is well placed and his articulation is crystal clear. Newt should appear on as many cable news outlets as he can and repeat this 4+ minute political confrontation. He should be on each Sunday news program this weekend.

On the other hand…

A year from now will any of this matter? We’re a country of sheep, led by an empty suit with a messianic complex. The majority of Americans can’t even identify Nancy Pelosi, and they definitely don’t understand the importance of this issue.

But this is a very big deal. I fear that U.S. service men and women will lose their lives because of the derelict Nancy Pelosi and her extreme lapse of judgement. Her self centered power grab is obscene. Pelosi and her leftist special interest groups are willing to throw anyone under the bus for political gain.

One year from now we may not be talking about Pelosi and whether or not she was briefed on waterboarding. But a year from now Americans will have suffered because of her, and our national security will be even further weakened. Our enemies are waiting.

Nancy Pelosi Lies

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi today accused the CIA of lying to her regarding the use of waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques employed by the Bush administration after 9/11.

The CIA isn’t the liar in this case. Nancy Pelosi is.

Pelosi gives conflicting reports almost hourly.

  1. She claimed she was never briefed on the use of enhanced interrogation techniques.
  2. She stated she had not been briefed about the use of water boarding.
  3. She confessed she did attend a briefing but there was no talk of any enhanced interrogation techniques.
  4. She confessed she was briefed but she wasn’t made clear on the definition of the techniques used.
  5. Today, she confessed she was briefed but was never told about the fact that waterboarding had been used on a terrorist suspect, even though terrorist suspect Abu Zubaydah had been waterboarded a month before she was briefed on the subject in Sept. 2002.

And it goes on and on…

Question: Does it matter that one of the left’s most revered leaders is a blatant liar?

Yes, it does. And Pelosi is a liar. She was fully aware of the use of enhanced interrogation techniques and is now only trying to cloud the fact that she knew from the beginning that the Bush Administration was actively employing the practice. It wasn’t very important to her to fret about “torture” back then, but now it’s in her best interest to use it as a political sledge hammer. That hammer is about to fall squarely on her own head.

The politicizing of our national security must end.

Random Waffle Violence

When visiting The Waffle House in Manning, South Carolina, be nice to the staff. If you come in crabby, you might just meet the business end of waitress packing heat.

In the immortal words of Howard Beale…”I’m as mad as hell and I’m not gonna take this any more!”

A Clarendon County waitress is accused of shooting a customer at the restaurant after the two had a dispute.

Yakeisha Ward, 29, is charged with assault and battery with intent to kill.

An early morning run for breakfast at the Waffle House on Paxville Highway in Manning turned terribly wrong for Crystal Samuel.

“I thought I was gonna get me an All-Star,” says Samuel. A popular meal on the menu. “Grits, sausage, toast, eggs and a waffle,” says Samuel.

She didn’t get what she came for. Instead, she says while she waited for her order, her friends started eating. That’s when Samuel says she was told they couldn’t eat from carryout trays inside the restaurant.

“I said what is your fuss about. I said we haven’t paid for our food. She (Ward) said well you all got to leave. How you want us to leave and we ain’t paid for the food yet,” says Samuel.

That’s when it got ugly. Samuel says she threw a waffle at the waitress. “I did actually throw some food but it didn’t hit her,” says Samuel. “That’s when she (Ward) jumped across the counter and we got into it,” says Samuel.

Clarendon County Sheriff Randy Garrett says the altercation continued outside where he says Ward got a gun from her car and a gun magazine from her trunk.

“It’s poor judgment on her part trying to settle this matter with a weapon. Either way she had time to think about what she was doing when she was walking to her car,” says Garrett. (WLTX)

090512051225_ward-web

I think it’s safe to say her mug shot exhibits a certain level of confidence and satisfaction in a job well done.

Should Text Book Publishers Fear Kindle DX?

Well, according to the rumors, yes.

Amazon.com Inc. on Wednesday plans to unveil a new version of its Kindle e-book reader with a larger screen and other features designed to appeal to periodical and academic textbook publishers, according to people familiar with the matter.

Beginning this fall, some students at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland will be given large-screen Kindles with textbooks for chemistry, computer science and a freshman seminar already installed, said Lev Gonick, the school’s chief information officer. The university plans to compare the experiences of students who get the Kindles and those who use traditional textbooks, he said.
More

Amazon has worked out a deal with several textbook publishers to make their materials available for the device, Mr. Gonick added. The new device will also feature a more fully functional Web browser, he said. The Kindle’s current model, which debuted in February, includes a Web browser that is classified as “experimental.” (WSJ)

Are the text book publishers that are working with Amazon thinking clearly?

Amazon has already put the fear of God into trade book publishers with their heavily discounted NYT Best Seller titles for the Kindle. Who’s to say that Amazon won’t also do something similar with text books?

I can see it now. Hello student! You know that text book your professor says you have to buy? Yeah, the one in the book store that costs $150? Well, look no further. Get your Kindle edition for $39.95.

What student wouldn’t immediately jump on a deal like that? Sure, the discount isn’t likely to be that deep (is it?), but the fact that the book will be discounted is enough for the student to happily slap down dad’s credit card.

Text book publishers need a digital strategy, to be sure. Most STM publishers have been digital for years now, so models exist. If text book publishers are hoping Amazon makes their digital market, they’ll won’t be happy at the end of the day. They’ll watch their print sales drop along with the revenue they depend upon. Amazon can be a great channel partner, but no one should give them control of that channel.

MORE: Engadget has a video and details of the new Kindle DX hardware.

Lexcycle Acquired by Amazon

Lexcycle, the company who created the Stanza book reading software for the iPhone, has been acquired by Amazon.com.

Stanza allows users to browse a library of around 100,000 books and periodicals for the iPhone, many of them in the ePub format — a widely accepted standard for e-books that Amazon has yet to support with its proprietary Kindle platform.

In its blog post, Lexcycle said, “We are not planning any changes in the Stanza application or user experience as a result of the acquisition. Customers will still be able to browse, buy, and read ebooks from our many content partners.”

It is not clear how much Amazon is paying for the year-old company with offices in Austin and Portland. But the move indicates Amazon wants to consolidate its position on mobile devices, particularly within Apple’s ecosystem, which may include a tablet computer later this year. The Lexcycle team should also help Amazon stake out ground on Google’s Android phones, the Palm Pre and Windows Mobile devices — and perhaps eventually turn to more open e-reading formats.

“It’s very early days for e-books, and we believe there is a lot of innovation ahead of us,” said Cinthia Portugal, a spokeswoman for Amazon.com. “Lexcycle is a smart, innovative company. and we look forward to working with them to innovate on behalf of readers.” (NYT)

eBook sales last year were about 1.5% of all sales, so there’s lots of room to grow. Amazon has a huge stake in the business with its Kindle eBook reader and sales of Kindle compatible eBooks. The question now is, will Stanza continue as a product or will Amazon throw it away and steer Stanza users towards its iPhone Kindle app? Amazon needs customer names, they don’t need a second iPhone app.

Congrats to the guys at Lexcycle. Just last week I listened to Neelan Choksi at the London Book Fair. No wonder he had a perma-smile on his face! 🙂

London Book Fair Observations

Day number one of the London Book Fair is complete. Even though the business climate is difficult for most publishers, the show floor was busy and one could almost sense a bit of optimism amongst the exhibitors. Attendee traffic was brisk for most of the day and I didn’t notice many empty stall spaces. The aisles seem a bit wider than in years past, and that is usually an indication of fewer exhibiting publishers. All in all though, it was hardly noticeable.

Like last year, everyone is talking about digital this and digital that. This year a “Digital Zone” is set up in hall 2. The zone is actually a pad of 8 stands melded together to make an island of small kiosk’s and a theater for product and service demonstrations. I sat in on a couple of the demos, and for the most part they were informative. One must remember though that this is a publishing show, and as such, those who demonstrate need to know their audience. The term “.epub” was thrown around with abandon, and it could have easily been misunderstood by the majority. The XML standard is being heavily pushed by most everyone, so much so that the term is freely used both as a noun and as a verb.

Of the things publishers are struggling with, monetization is tops. While everyone agrees that digital is no longer a futuristic dream, it is a reality of the day, the debate over pricing and channel ownership has just begun. There is still so much for a publisher to learn. Most acknowledged that the key to addressing digital today is the length at which a publishing house is willing to take risks. Experimentation is key, yet in these difficult economic times, it isn’t easy for anyone to play with capital.

The complex discussions are being tempered by the extraordinarily nice spring weather here in the UK. If things get too stuffy inside, one only needs to walk a few hundred feet to bask in the warm 70 degree sunshine.

Greetings from Gloucester Road

I’m in London for the book fair, which officially starts on Monday. I’m looking forward to attending a digital seminar tomorrow. It will give me something additional to do on Sunday, which is traditionally my “get acclimated to the time zone” day. This year I brought along my Dell Mini 9 instead of the full fledged Thinkpad. So far, I’m mostly concerned with getting on the net, and that’s what these things are best at. If I have to remote in to my work machine, that’s when the rubber will meet the road. We’ll see how well the Mini does. If things get interesting at the seminar tomorrow, I’ll blog about it here. I’ll be twittering as well, so if you want, you can follow me.

MORE: Well, I would have blogged about the seminar I attended today, and I probably would have twitter’d a bit too IF THERE WAS WIFI! That’s right, there was no internet in the room. A conference about digital books, digital publishing models and all sort of other digital talk, but with no internet available to the attendees. In fact, Neelan Choksi, COO of Lexcycle (the folks who make Stanza) commented that this was the first conference he spoke at where he wouldn’t be able to get on Twitter and see what the crowd said about his presentation. In 2009, not having an internet connection during a conference like this is unheard of. A major mis-step by the organizers. Other than that, the room was packed with jetlagged people who probably would have rather been outside in the London sunshine than inside a poorly lit room on a Sunday afternoon. While some of the speakers made good points, all in all, it was not a very memorable event.

The “Rights” Problem

Mike Shatzkin writes about a serious issue facing big publishers. That issue concerns publication rights owned by publishers, and what they know or don’t know about those rights. This is something I’ve also thought about and it really is a big deal. Most publishers have a terrible system for storing rights information about a book they’ve published. That terrible system is typically paper based and searchability is extremely difficult. The ramifications of this organizational nightmare will soon come to a head once Google builds the Book Rights Registry, something they’re compelled to do as part of their settlement with the AAP and the Author’s guild. Publishers will find that they need to invest lots of time and money into the process of pulling data from paper and inputting it into the Google database. My bet is they won’t do it, and as a result, thousands of books will remain orphaned. That’s a shame.

On Royalties and Advances

Since I’m in the business of paying royalties, not collecting them, I’ll refrain from a lot of comment on the whole royalty advance issue and whether there’s any rhyme or reason to it all. The discussion is interesting though, and a few folks are collecting their thoughts on the matter.  Bookends, LLC attempt to answer the age-old question, “what’s the story with earning out royalties?”.  The Sunday NYT book review section recently published an essay “About that book advance…“, which brought this thorough author perspective response from Mike Shatzkin. Finally, Evan Schnittman of OUP comments from the publisher side of the tracks.

Next Week – London

I’m heading to London on Friday for my annual trek to the London Book Fair. Besides the normal business meeting schedule, I’ve got plans to attend the following seminars:

  • Strategies for digital publishing in a time of uncertainty (4/19 – Cromwell Room)
  • Getting the best out of your digital deal: Commercial and legal issues (4/20 – Thames Room)
  • Introducing the dedicated digital reading device to the UK consumer (4/20 – Cromwell Room)
  • “Where’s the Money” Digital Keynote (4/21 – Cromwell Room)

I’m also looking forward to watching demos from LibreDigital and Code Mantra.

LBF is a more manageable event than, say, the monster Frankfurt Book Fair. Rather than being spread across 8 buildings, LBF fits comfortably inside Earl’s Court. This years fair runs from 4/20 through 4/22.