• reaganHaving inherited a recession and sporting a 10.4 percent jobless rate, the GOP managed to only lose 24 seats in the House and hold a 54-seat majority in the Senate during the 1982 midterms.
• obama Under similar circumstances – and a much lower jobless rate – many analysts are predicting that Dems will lose the House and may lose the Senate come November. How about that for parallels? source

• Posterous is growing, yeah, but Tumblr is basically going to be the next Twitter. Eight million unique visitors per month versus less than two million? It’s not really a contest. (Though in Posterous’ defense, though, other companies such as Reddit have complained that these stats  aren’t always accurate – we know, for example, that our stats are totally off and our numbers in July, for example, are nearly triple what Compete says they are.) source

• 
  Glenn Beck: Nazi-obsessed The fact of the matter is, there are dozens of clips that feature the Fox News talker bringing up Nazi Germany. We’re going to use this one because he cries in the clip. If this were an isolated incident that’d be one thing, but he regularly does this song and dance.
• 
  Lewis Black: Stop it, Glen With this bevy of ammo, “The Daily Show’s” most gleefully annoyed commentator went on the attack, noting how Beck is the guy who regularly brings up Nazis. Inspired even for a “Daily Show” rant, Black makes a totally convincing argument in his spiel.
• 
  Newt: Full steam ahead Just days after Black’s deafening rant, Newt Gingrich compared the Obama administration to Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia (something he says in his new book). You’d think Black’s rant would perhaps quiet the Nazi comparison racket. Nope. Not so much.

• 2004 Six Apart announces that they’re going to limit the free version of their Moveable Type.
• 2006 Moveable Type makes it free for personal use again, after open-source WordPress quickly leapfrogs it.
• thurs. Ning, a free social network creator, decides to start charging all users – including the many free users.
• today Social network hubs Grouply and grou.ps, offer to take on Ning’s old users. See the parallels, kids?

• So, Pope Benedict’s got 99 problems, and a cover-up is one. The Pope is in the middle of one massive modern scandal, one which has already tapped his shoulder personally. He should consider his next move carefully, because he’s looking just like Richard Nixon right now. Here’s how (we ganked most of this from an Atlantic article, by the way, but we figure they won’t mind):

First way: What did he know, anyway?

• Nixon While he wasn’t involved with
  the Watergate scandal directly,
  his White House denied the scandal even after finding out, claiming
  they had “no knowledge” of what took place that fateful night.
• Benedict While nobody’s claiming he committed any abuse himself, he reportedly found out about the scandal while a cardinal. The Vatican claims “no knowledge”; sound familiar?

Second way: The cover-up

• It’s not the crime that gets you… it’s the cover up.
• Former President Richard Nixon • Regarding the Watergate scandal, which ultimately was a fairly minor case in the grand scheme of things. If he came clean early and fixed the problem, he would’ve been fine! Similarly, the Pope could’ve saved himself a lot of grief if he had dealt with the incidents on his watch – a Wisconsin sex abuse case and a German priest’s case (which, admittedly, he may not have known about). The lesson here? Deal with things when first happen; they hurt less.

Third way: Shooting the messenger

• Nixon During the scandal, Nixon held a very negative opinion of the press, claiming “the press is the enemy” to his long-suffering aides.
• Pope Over the weekend, the dude said he won’t be “intimidated by petty gossip.” His aides made even more direct attacks on the media.

Fourth way: Thinking you’re infallible

• The Pope is believed to be infallible; Nixon only thought he was. One thing that Pope Benedict has over Richard Nixon is papal infallibility, a concept that many misunderstand. He’s infallible on specific dogmatic matters – matters which probably don’t include sex scandals. Nixon, on the other hand, famously claimed in 1977 that “When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.” Too bad the Supreme Court disagreed with him. source

• To those who argue that piecemeal health care reform is worse than no health care reform, I have five words: the 1957 Civil Rights Act.
• Slate columnist Fred Kaplan • Regarding another piece of legislation that was watered down to nothingness. It’s forgotten about now, but the legislation was the small push that led to much larger gains for the Civil Rights movement, and later much tougher legislation. It was testy at the time, too – Strom Thurmond filibustered the bill for an entire day, by himself – but the legislation led to big gains in the end. “The 1957 Civil Rights Act was a preposterously small hinge that helped swing open a very wide gate,” Kaplan notes. “It’s not out of the question that a pared-down health care bill might do the same.” source

• Avatar is looking good in its third weekend, dipping just 9% from last week. Not bad for a movie that had a relatively modest launch for a blockbuster. The secret to its success? The same as “Titanic” – staying power. But even if James Cameron’s latest can’t keep up, his trump card might be an even bigger deal.

• Titanic’s track record:
  

• $1.8 billion total lifetime run – in 1998 money (holy crap)

• $200 million budget for what was expected to be a huge bomb
• $600 million in domestic grosses – in 1998 money! Holy crap!

• $28.6M Titanic’s first-weekend box office take – decent, not spectacular
• $35.5M Titanic’s second-weekend take – it went up by an astonishing 23.8%
• $36M Titanic’s biggest week, which didn’t come until week six, by the way source

• How Avatar’s catching up:
  

• $1 billion worldwide already – in just three weeks!

• $280 million the most likely budget for “Avatar”; totals have varied as widely as $250 million and $500 million
• $150 million has been spent on marketing the movie alone, which Fox is taking on the cost of

• $77M Avatar’s first-weekend box office take; it was hurt by snow
• $75M Avatar’s second-weekend take – down only 1.8%
• $352M Avatar’s domestic gross after a $68 million third weekend source

• The 3D wildcard:
  

• $3-5 the markup the 3D adds to ticket prices source

• Big investment Cameron’s film took years to build because of the fact that the technology had to come first, both for filming and in the theater. Cameron paid to build the technology himself along with a bunch of investors.
• Residual effect Fortunately for Cameron, he can sell the cameras to other filmmakers. “Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D” has already used it. Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson’s “The Adventures of Tintin” soon will.
• Cash for conversions Even better for studios, the technology is relatively easy to build into older films. For $30 million, a popular hit like, say, “Titanic,” can have a brand new life in 3D. It’s like a money machine for Hollywood. source

• Will it beat “Titanic”?
  

• Before inflation, probably. After, it depends. It’s probably not likely that the movie will hold up sixteen straight weeks at No. 1 like Titanic, but it’ll have a good shot of holding on tight thanks to the fact that it’s going to be in IMAX (where it’s made $66 million already) for months. But at the very least, it’s looking like it has more staying power than “The Dark Knight,” the biggest hit of the naughts. Well, before “Avatar.”

• -19% week-two dip, good enough for a second week on top in a week with a lot of wide releases source

• A week and a half ago, we tried out this new service called TypeKit, and noted a few things about it: It costs money, it’s currently invite only, and it uses a tiered font system. It seemed pretty cool nonetheless. Then we tried Kernest. And we have to say, Kernest simply does it better.
  
  Why’s that, ShortFormBlog? There’s fewer, less confusing barriers to entry, it doesn’t use Javascript (very key), it costs less (even more key) and (best of all) the DRM is less complicated.
  
  A la carte, not subscription. Right now, Kernest’s selections are largely open-source, freeware or donationware. Most of TypeKit’s selections are big commercial fonts. We think this is mostly an exposure/hype thing rather than a quality thing, because TypeKit’s been a Twitter trending topic a few times. We’re convinced that they simply need attention from the media.
  
  It’s not perfect yet, though. Our biggest complaints about the service at the moment all relate to the interface: Simply put, this list needs to be more like this list, and it needs to be more intuitive overall. In our opinion, TypeKit’s interface is a little cleaner from the backend. (But on the other hand, Kernest doesn’t hide its assets from the user for trial viewing, as we found with TypeKit’s list with no links.) But what Kernest is offering seems to be just a little better on the frontend. What do your users care about? Seriously? source

• 51% of people rate alcohol as more dangerous than pot source