Apple’s notorious penchant for secrecy has finally and dramatically been lifted with the revelation that Chief Executive Steve Jobs did not, in fact, have a liver transplant as originally reported by the company, but actually has been dead for more than a decade.

According to company insiders, the “Steve Jobs” we have seen presenting new iPod and iPhone models in recent years was actually the company’s “ultimate” iPhone—designed to look, act and even smirk like the original Steve Jobs—only with a somewhat longer battery life.

Unlike more primative iPhones, the iJobs model has parts that apparently can be easily replaced rather than having to toss the entire product for a new model. This accounts for the two separate organ transplants reported in recent months.

The iJobs model we have seen has a number of remarkable features that are lightening years ahead of any other so-called smart phone.

For one thing, it doesn’t look like a smart-phone at all. Not nearly as sleek in design, and sporting a pair of glasses (nice artistic touch there!) the iJobs comes complete with an amazing application that apparently no one else is able yet to download from Apple’s App store: iRich!

The iRich app allows the user–in this case, the only existing iJobs model known–to accumulate enormous wealth while promoting products that are designed to be obsolete within months of their introduction.

This is almost certainly the most brilliant aspect of the iJobs model we have seen.

What happened to the original Steve Jobs is unclear. Rumor has it that his ashes were secretly implanted in Dell notebooks as an act of pure spite. But this could not be confirmed.

Although the company refuses to comment, there is wide speculation that Apple will finally introduce a new iJobs model sometime next year–smaller, sleeker, and wearing contacts instead of eyeglasses.

For More Commentary, Please Visit www.notimetothinkbook.com, The Official Website For THE Media Book Of 2009, No Time To Think, Soon To Be Available In Paperback Edition

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For a few days, it seemed as if protesters in Iran were going to be able to force a new election in the wake of the fraud that took place there that claimed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been reelected by a landslide over opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi.

But then, the first wave of a crackdowns hit. Police and members of a religious militia  called Basij took to the streets to “disperse” those staging mostly non-violent protests.

As the days went on, “dispersal” led to the murder in the streets of a young woman named Neda who apparently was not even taking part in the protests at the time, according to her fiance.  He says she was “with her music teacher, sitting in a car and stuck in traffic” and just emerged from the hot car for a few minutes to catch some fresh air. Instead, she caught a bullet.

The crowds started to thin somewhat, no doubt because the people were rightly afraid of the repression unfolding on the streets of Tehran and around the country.

But having gone to the brink only to pull back somewhat, protesters actually now seem energized. They have no real leader but they now do have a martyr—the young woman called Neda.

A tighter fist promised

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are now stepping up their rhetoric…probably a prelude to stepping up their confrontational and repressive –not to mention anti-democratic- tactics.

“In the current sensitive situation..the Guards will firmly confront in a revolutionary way rioters and those who violate the law,” Reuters quotes from the Guards’ website.

One Iranian human rights activist I talked with today in Paris, says rumors are circulating that the clerics who have the power to fire the so-called “Supreme Leader” may resort to that in an effort to calm the waters.

But there is also plenty of evidence to suggest that the internal political power struggle inside Iran is likely to spawn more rather than less violent confrontations in the near future.

Too early to know how this will eventually play out!

For More Commentary, Please Visit www.notimetothinkbook.com, The Official Website For THE Media Book Of 2009, No Time To Think, Soon To Be Published In Paperback Edition

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In an echo of the infamous “Ford to City: Drop Dead” headline that a New York paper ran across its front page when the bankrupt city was about to be pushed off a financial cliff by the Ford administration, the august New York Times is pretty much saying the same thing to the Boston Globe: Drop Dead–it’ll be cheaper that way!

The Times owns the Globe but is threatening to close it down unless it extracts still more concessions from the Globe’s embattled employees who already are practically putting out the paper for free.

The Globe’s editorial union, the Boston Newspaper Guild, has rejected the latest proposed cuts from the Times: an 8.4 percent cut in pay plus at least one week per year of unpaid furloughs.

So the Times is now saying it will cut the pay next week of union members by 23 percent.

It also makes very real the possibility of the demise of the 137 year old Globe…which would leave Boston with only one other major daily newspaper, the tabloid Herald, which is just about right for wrapping fish in…small fish!

Will be interesting to see if the great New York Times ends up closing one of the nation’s best and best known newspapers!!

For More Commentary, Please Visit www.notimetothinkbook.com, The Official Website For THE Media Book Of 2009, No Time To Think, Soon To Be In Paperback Edition

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Will America finally catch up with the rest of the civilized world when it comes to medical care?  Has the time finally come?  Maybe.

Photo by Stevebott

In the news today, this: Sen. Edward Kennedy’s health committee has actually gotten around to circulating a draft bill that would , if passed, (BIG if)  give all Americans health insurance.

Everyone would have to get insurance…those who can’t afford it would be provided subsidies. Most interesting would be the creation of a public, “affordable access” plan, says an Associated Press dispatch. It would provide “government sponsored health care to Americans not eligible for Medicare, Medicaid or other programs,” reports the A.P.

Private insurance companies, of course, are running scared (which means spending more on lobbyists to defeat this) that they would have to compete with a government run program which would drive health care costs lower!  Imagine that. Lower. No wonder the insurance companies want to see this bill DOA.

But Kennedy, who is suffering from brain cancer, may just get this measure (or one close enough to it) passed and onto the president’s desk by the end of this summer.

If he does this, he would have done more as a U.S. Senator than the last five presidents combined to help the American public do battle with one of the main causes of economic misery in this country.

People who lose their jobs, lose their health insurance. People who want to move for a better job, worry about loss of coverage. Employers worry about hiring people because they have to spend so much on health insurance.

Under Kennedy’s plan, people would have the right to go to any doctor they wish, while insurers would be required to offer care even to those with pre-existing conditions…something they usually do not do now.

Good for Ted!

For More Commentary, Please Visit www.notimetothinkbook.com, The Official Website For THE Media Book Of 2009, No Time To Think, Soon To Be Available In Paperback Edition!

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What is good for GM is clearly no longer good for the country…as was once the unofficial motto of the auto giant…now that it has entered into bankruptcy.

Taxpayers—you and me—now pretty much own GM–along with all of its problems.

The biggest problem it has still is—it make cars that more and more Americans do not want to buy!

By effectively nationalizing GM, the question now is whether the government can mandate that GM build cars that are more competitive with European, Japanese and even Korean ones.

Yet, the Obama administration insists it doesn’t want to be in the auto building business and has no intention of running things day to day…that is for the “experts” to do.

But aren’t these the “experts” that caused the problem to begin with? Even if the old GM executives are replaced with new blood from elsewhere in the auto industry, like minds tend to think and act alike.

Seems to me that once the government makes the decision to buy some 60 percent of General Motors, like it or not, it is in the auto production and even marketing business.

Time to start acting that way.

For More Commentary, Please Visit www.notimetothinkbook.com, The Official Website For THE Media Book Of 2009, No Time To Think–Soon To Be Published In Paperback Edition

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The California State Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Prop 8 which banned same sex marriages in the “golden state.”

But it did something truly weird when it also ruled that the 18 thousand or so same sex marriages already on the books could stand!

In other words, the court created two classes of citizens—gay couples who are viewed as being legally married in California, and gay couples who want to be but now cannot!

On the state level, about the only thing that can be done now is for those opposed to Prop 8 to get another proposition on the ballot to overturn Prop 8.

There is also another way.

Federal Court Intervention?

Two well known, high powered East-coast lawyers have filed suit in Federal court seeking to overturn the effects of Prop 8 on the grounds that it violates the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. They are seeking a federal injunction against Prop 8 until such time that the federal court decides the issue.  The hope of the lawyers involved is to lay this case at the doorstep of the U.S. Supreme Court…but that could take years…certainly many, many months.

For More Commentary, Please Visit www.notimetothinkbook.com, The Official Website For THE Media Book Of 2009, No Time To Think—Soon To Be In Paperback Edition

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