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The Senate Republicans by invoking filibuster struck down a bill that would extend the Bush Tax Cuts to the middle class but not the wealthy. All the Republicans needed was less than 60 votes for closing the filibuster and Taxcuts for the Middle Class were killed. This matches the Republicans earlier killing of extending unemployment

The NYTimes is publishing two views of what happens after the elections from Paul Krugman, liberal and conservative David Brooks. Both are at least agreeing on the starting premise: The GOP will likely take the House and possibly the Senate in the upcoming elections. But they could not be more different on their assessment of

It has been said here before but now that Marketwatch’s Darrell Delamaide agrees – it bears repeating. The Achilles Heal for President Obama appears to be his nominal interest in, flawed understanding of and/or declining excellence of his advisors  in Economics and Governance. Darrell argues that it will not be the GOP but the Herbert

There is not a lot that you would find that Marketwatch and the NYTimes would agree on – but the overvalue of the Chinese Yuan/Renminbi, the bankruptcy of Chinese promises to raise their currencies value and the fierceness of the Chinese Economic offensive lead by a cheap but increasing in quality manufactured goods base is

The Supreme Court and Chief Justice Roberts have a mixed reputation on its rulings of late. After promising gradualism, in his confirmation hearings, Chief Justice Roberts promised respect for precedent and a gradualist approach. But in the Fall of last year, the Chief Justice was instrumental in broadening the scope of the Citizens United case

Apple’s announcement today, the new Lion 10.7 Mac OS X with Multi-touch confirmed that as a politician Steve Jobs would be hopeless in the current political climate. Here was Steve Jobs telling his audience that they, Apple, have studied the problem and multi-touch just does not work on vertical screens – so Apple will not

This year has already seen the death of Microsoft’s Kin smartphone; but if Engadget’s Joshua Topolsky is right, add Palm to the list. What, you say? Palm, which has been bought out by HP, looks to have made a good software upgrade with with webOS 2 but the hardware is pre-2010 with screens at 3.2″

Apple CEO Steve Jobs uncharacteristically  joined the Apple Quarterly Financial Report announcement and proceeded to fire up the troops at Google, RIM and TweetDeck by trashing their positions in the marketplace. See an Apple Centric view at MacWorld and a more neutral accounting of Steve’s remarks at ZDnet.  But more telling were twoIT  players that

Diverse IT pundits agree on one thing – Windows Phone 7 to be announced on Monday is going to be a train wreck. The only question is how big and how fast. First, eWeek establishes why Windows Phone 7 will be way behind the state of the smartphone art with this ten point presentation. Now

RIM is the Rodney Dangerfield of electronic  gadget development – they get no respect. How can a  Waterloo Canada  firm possibly beat the likes of  Silicon Valley stalwarts Apple and Google ? But with the announcement of the RIM Playbook Tablet, RIM scored very big with some  very astute software engineering. But first lets us

One of the quixotic problems of US politics is how the Republican Party can be so blatantly elitist in policy as it caters to the very rich; yet establish the smear of being elitist onto the Democrats. It is almost as if they can blame the Democrats for the GOP’s  loyalty to plutocrats who they

Having just endured an epithet laced derision of all things socialist from a well-to-do friend, Your Takethe5th editor could empathize first hand with Paul Krugman’s editorial about The Angry Rich. Yes, its true they are very angry – not just my friend but an echo experiences attending a Board of Trade meeting and other social

The PC market is seeing a profound split or forking in the road on how Computing is served to the public. It is creative versus utility usage. The result should see in the next  2-3 years a profound drop of 30-70% in classic PC sales [think desktop, laptops and most clamshell notebooks]. PCs will be

It is already Fall in terms of the rush of new computing and technology news. Here are 5 stories that may have missed your attention in the wake of Google Instant Search and Apple’s Rescinding of the Law against  Application Generators. TheRegister – Microsoft debating whether to embrace and extend HTML5 as IE9 Sep 15th

With the iPad, Apple created the 1/2 of the  DOC – Display Only Computer, a highly portable, light, full day of work device. The iPad is  targeted for media play, gaming and Web surfing. The key innovation was no keyboard or mouse attached to this iBeauty – multi-touch and gestures would do thank you very

There are two stories in todays news that fit together like Yin and Yang. One is a tale of courage by a top ranked high school cross country runner as she hits the wall in the state championship meet in California. The other is about  the President faltering at the wall of fierce, ‘destroy him’