There’s an interesting post over at ZDnet by Violet Blue, describing how she was gang-attacked online after writing a post that offended some Apple fanboys.

The incident is convoluted. Blue apparently referred to someone at Macworld as a “Booth babe,” and the fanboys got offended and demanded that Blue apologize and call the women by her proper designation–”developer.”  Then it turned out that the woman was not the person the fanboys thought she was and was in fact a PR person. But the command to slander Blue had already been issued from on high, so the attacks and demands proliferated.

The particular story is convoluted, but Blue makes a valid point:

Apple fanboys, who seem to attack en masse whenever they are commanded to, have long since ceased being an asset to the company they so violently represent. 

A decade or so ago, when Apple was flat on back, the fanboys were a sympathetic bunch: A group of passionate if downtrodden devotees whose company had been crushed. Apple was an tiny underdog in those days, and it needed help and believers. And Steve Jobs’ vision and passion and commitment to product design were worth believing in.

But now, 15 years later, Apple is one of the richest and most powerful companies in the world. Apple has gone mainstream. All of Apple’s former foes and subjugators are reeling and scrambling to catch up.

And yet Apple’s fanboys still persist in acting as though they’re a threatened religious sect who must fiercely defend their cause or risk going extinct.

Needless to say, Apple doesn’t need this sort of support anymore.

Apple is now much richer and more powerful than the hated Microsoft ever was.

If you want to “think different,” these days, you have to buy Android. Or RIM.

In short, Apple has won.

So it’s strange to see Apple’s most passionate fans still acting as though Apple needs their support.

Read Violet Blue’s account of being gang-attacked by the fanboys >

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I went to the DLD conference in Munich a couple of weeks ago.

One of the cool things about the DLD conference is that they throw in speakers and panels on topics other than the latest buzzy consumer web feature.

Like space.

Before I got to the conference, I got an invitation to a special breakfast seminar about space.

That sounded cool, so I went. I sat in the back in the Google+ lounge eating three fried eggs and listening to folks from Virgin Galactic and Space Adventures (the company that shoots people into space on Russian rockets), and Esther Dyson, who has done the training to go into space.

Here are some cool things I learned:

• About 500 people have gone to space
• Soon, one panelist promised, 500 people will go to space every year
• Virgin Galactic, Space Adventures, etc., are opening space to normal people. Or, at least, to normal people with $200,000 to blow on a brief trip to sub-space (Virgin Galactic) or $50 million to blow on an actual space trip (Space Adventures.)
• The next few decades will be the ones in which people permanently move into space.
• What will drive us into space will be the same things that drove us to explore planet earth: The promise of unlimited resources and incalculable riches.
• The first trillionaire will be made from space (in one panelist’s opinion)
• The “ownership” of space hasn’t quite been worked out yet, and it won’t be until some private individual goes and plants a flag somewhere. Then the ownership issues will be worked out quite quickly.
• Our existing laws, one panelist says, suggest that if you go capture an asteroid, it’s yours. Some asteroids might be made of super-valuable stuff. So someone will eventually do that.
• Now that space isn’t just for governments anymore, some countries are rushing to cash in on that. Like Nigeria. Nigeria, apparently, wants to provide a platform of operations for anyone who wants to explore space.
• It used to cost you $20 million to be blasted into space by Space Adventures. Now it costs $50 million.
• Space Adventures is putting together a cool new space trip you can take–an orbit around the moon. This will cost you $150 million.
• Of course, if all you want is to be weightless for a few minutes, they can do that for you for $5,000 in a plane flying a special “parabola” trajectory.  Esther Dyson did that. She didn’t throw up.
• The reason going to space costs so much, by the way, is that it’s like building a 747 for a flight from New York to Sydney, Australia, and then throwing away the plane.
• 40% of astronauts get a special space-form of motion sickness. Even the badass fighter pilot astronauts.
• Of 8 private citizens who have gone to space, however, only one has gotten it.
• The difference is the time spent in space and the speed required to get there.
• A quick trip through sub-orbital space only requires you to go Mach 3 or 4, and your time in space only lasts a few minutes.
• An extended stay in orbit, meanwhile, requires you to go Mach 25.
• Guess how much the fuel cost is as a percentage of the total cost of an orbital space flight? (Guess–answer below).
• Most of the people who go into space find it a profound experience that permanently alters their worldview. There’s something about seeing how small the earth is and how thin the atmosphere is and how there aren’t any cultural or sovereign borders drawn on the planet that gets people thinking.
• One Space Adventures customer flew twice–he didn’t get enough the first time.
• The cost of fuel as a percentage of a space flight is only 1%. The bulk of the cost is labor. (All those dudes sitting in front of screens at NASA, etc.)
• Jeff Bezos, one panelist maintained, started Amazon to fund his space interest
• Some individuals are now rich enough that they could fund a mission to Mars.
• We are no closer to flying faster than light than we ever have been. The best we can do, one panelist said, is about one-tenth light speed. But someone recently decided that some things do go faster than light (neutrinos). So maybe there’s hope.
• But, nevertheless, even at sub-light speed, one panelist said, we could still colonize the galaxy in a couple of hundred thousand years.
• There are a hundred billion galaxies.

So the final frontier will produce the first trillionaire.

Cool.

Any venture capitalists out there want to help me try to grab an asteroid?

SEE ALSO: Time-Lapse View Of Earth From Space

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When I got to Davos this afternoon, I was famished.

So I was excited to see that my hotel room had been pre-loaded with swag.

Specifically, there was a big brown bag marked “Azerbaijan.”

If I hadn’t already been to Davos once, I’d have been bewildered.

Azerbaijan?

But after last year’s Davos, I knew exactly what was going on. As part of its sponsorship of the World Economic Forum, Azerbaijan was giving all WEF attendees some swag.

And that swag, I was convinced, HAD to include something edible.

It was a big bag.

From Azerbaijan.

So, one of those boxes had to contain food, right?

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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The manufacturing processes of Apple and other electronics companies have come into sharp focus of late, with the revelation of more details about what life is like for the Chinese workers who make the world’s gadgets.

When one reads about these working conditions–12-16 hour shifts, pay of ~$1 per hour or less, dormitories with 15 beds in 12×12 rooms–the obvious assumption is that it’s all about money:

Greedy manufacturers want to make bigger profits, so they make their products in places with labor practices that would be illegal in America.

And money is certainly part of it.

But an amazing new article by Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher of the New York Times reveals that there’s a lot more to it than that.

The article illustrates just how big a challenge the U.S. faces in trying stop the “hollowing out” process that has sent middle-class jobs overseas–and, with it, the extreme inequality that has developed in recent years.

The reason Apple makes iPhones and iPads in China, the article shows, is not just about money.

Manufacturing an iPhone in the United States would cost about $65 more than manufacturing it in China, where it costs an estimated $8. This additional $65 would dent the profit Apple makes on each iPhone, but it wouldn’t eliminate it. (The iPhone average selling price is about $600, and Apple’s average gross margin is about 40%. So Apple’s gross profit on each iPhone is probably in the neighborhood of $250.)

The real reasons Apple makes iPhones in China, therefore, are as follows:

• Most of the components of iPhones and iPads–the supply chain–are now manufactured in China, so assembling the phones half-a-world away would create huge logistical challenges. It would also reduce flexibility–the ability to switch easily from one component supplier or manufacturer to another.
• China’s factories are now far bigger and more nimble than those in the United States. They can hire (and fire) tens of thousands of workers practically overnight. Because so many of the workers live on-site, they can also press them into service at a moment’s notice. And they can change production practices and speeds extremely rapidly. 
• China now has a far bigger supply of appropriately-qualified engineers than the U.S. does–folks with the technical skills necessary to build complex gadgets but not so credentialed that they cost too much.
• And, lastly, China’s workforce is much hungrier and more frugal than many of their counterparts in the United States.

On this last point, Duhigg and Bradsher tell the story of Eric Saragoza, an engineer who began working in an Apple factory near Sacramento in 1995. The plant made Macs, and for a few years, Saragoza did well, earning $50,000 a year, getting married and having kids, and buying a house with a pool.

Soon, however, Apple started shipping jobs overseas, because the costs of manufacturing in Asia were so much lower. Importantly, these reduced costs weren’t just about wages–they were about being closer to the supply chain and the willingness of the workforce to put in over-time.

Saragoza was soon asked to work 12-hour days and come in on Saturdays. But, understandably, he wanted to watch his kids play soccer on the weekends.

Saragoza’s salary was too high for him to take an unskilled job. And he didn’t have the experience and credentials necessary to move into senior management. In 2002, his job was eliminated. Apple, meanwhile, turned the Elk Grove plant into an AppleCare facility, with call-center employees making $12 an hour.

Recently, desperate for work, Saragoza took a job at an electronics temp firm. Assigned to the AppleCare plant, he was paid $10 an hour to test repaired iPads before they were sent back to customers. That job paid so little (and was presumably so depressing) that the now 48-year-old Saragoza quit and is looking for work again.

Meanwhile, in Shenzhen, a young project manager named Lina Lin coordinates the manufacture of Apple accessories for a company in the Apple ecosystem. She makes a bit less than Saragoza made a decade ago as an Apple engineer. She lives in an 1,100-square foot apartment with her husband, their in-laws, and their son. They save a quarter of their salaries every month.

There are lots of jobs in Shenzhen, Lin says.

So, yes, money is part of why all of our gadgets are built in China. But what started a couple of decades ago as a reach for efficiency has now resulted in the entire electronics-manufacturing ecosystem being lifted up and transferred to China.

Apple doesn’t build iPhones in the United States, in other words, because there is no longer an ecosystem here to support that manufacturing. There’s no supply chain, there aren’t enough super-low-cost workers, and there are not enough mid-level engineers.  And many Americans looking for work are still hoping for a return to jobs, salaries, and lifestyles that have simply disappeared.

This is a complex problem, and there’s no easy solution. But it’s a problem this country is going to have to fix. Or the massive middle class that once drove America’s prosperity will just cease to exist.

Now go read Duhigg and Bradsher…

How The US Lost Out On iPhone Work >

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Jim Cramer just went on a great Twitter tirade about the outrageousness of the tax loophole that allows hedge-fund and private-equity managers to pay 15% “capital gains” taxes while you and I pay much-higher “ordinary income” rates.

This loophole, which some think is one reason GOP front-runner Mitt Romney is scared to release his tax returns, is absurd.

To be clear:

There is no theoretical justification for it.

None.

The fact that the loophole exists is merely a function of the enormous power the financial industry has over Washington.

The argument that some hedge-fund moguls and their defenders make for the tax break is that, because they are paid based on the performance of their funds, their compensation somehow represents a “capital gain.”

That is just ridiculous.

Anyone paid any form of performance-based bonus could make this argument. 

Most hedge-fund and private-equity managers, including venture capitalists, are paid with a combination of a management fee (1%-3% of assets under management) and a performance-based fee (generally 20%-50% of the “gains” on their funds).  The managers are generally paid these fees regardless of whether the gains are due to their own performance or simply the market going up. (Most hedge funds are a horrible deal for hedge-fund investors, but since investors are still dumb enough to line up around the block to put their money in, that’s their problem).

In both cases, however, the fees the managers receive are compensation for service, not “capital gains.”

The justification for lower taxes on capital gains is to encourage people to invest capital for the long term. Capital investments generally help the economy, by funding new companies and projects. The capital that is invested, moreover, has already been “earned” (and, thereby, taxed.) So there are reasonable arguments for having lower taxes on long-term capital gains than on ordinary income.

But the management and performance-based fees paid to hedge-fund and private equity managers are NOT capital gains. They’re ordinary income. Just because they don’t arrive in a monthly paycheck and are based on performance doesn’t change that.

Now, there are some instances in which hedge-fund and private-equity managers have their own capital invested in their funds. And there are other instances in which the managers take their management fees and reinvest them in their funds.

In these cases, when the managers actually have their capital at risk, they should be entitled to capital-gains tax treatment.

(Mitt Romney’s income may well fall under this category. As long as he paid taxes on his management fees when he received them, and then reinvested what was left in the funds, his income should be treated as capital gains. But if he simply deferred his fees and is receiving them now at a 15% tax rate, it’s no wonder that he’s terrified about releasing his returns.)

In his tweets, Jim Cramer says that, in private, his hedge-fund friends know how outrageous this tax treatment is and can’t believe that they have persuaded the government to give it to them. But he also says they’re smart enough not to say this publicly, lest they threaten the golden goose that allows them to pay less than half the taxes other executives pay.

One smart thing that hedge-fund and private equity managers did, of course, was come up with the term “carried interest” to describe their performance-based fees. Calling these fees “carried interest” makes them sound like something other than fees, and thus helps the managers make the argument that they should be treated differently than normal income.

But they shouldn’t be treated differently. They’re normal income, albeit performance-based.

And the sooner this preposterous tax loophole is eliminated the better.

SEE ALSO: Jim Cramer Goes On Twitter Tirade About Hedge-Fund Tax Rates

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In his new book, Inside Apple, Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky reveals a fact sure to shock anyone who views Apple as the quintessential Silicon Valley-culture company.

Apple employees have to pay for their own food.

What?!?!

At Google, Facebook, and other Valley icons, the free food and fun is legendary. What’s going on at Apple? What OTHER things don’t we know about the place? Well, for one thing, says Mr. Lashinsky, it’s not much fun to work there, and you don’t get paid all that much.

Produced by Robert Libetti & Daniel Goodman

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Ads by Pheedo

We love our iPhones and iPads.

We love the prices of our iPhones and iPads.

We love the super-high profit margins of Apple, Inc., the maker of our iPhones and iPads.

And that’s why it’s disconcerting to remember that the low prices of our iPhones and iPads–and the super-high profit margins of Apple–are only possible because our iPhones and iPads are made with labor practices that would be illegal in the United States.

And it’s also disconcerting to realize that the folks who make our iPhones and iPads not only don’t have iPhones and iPads (because they can’t afford them), but, in some cases, have never even seen them.

This is a complex issue. But it’s also an important one. And it’s only going to get more important as the world’s economies continue to become more intertwined.

Last week, NPR’s This American Life did a special on Apple’s manufacturing. The show featured (among others) the reporting of Mike Daisey, the man who does the one-man stage show The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, and the NYT’s Nicholas Kristof, whose wife is from China.

You can read a transcript of the whole show here. Here are some details:

• The Chinese city of Shenzhen is where most of our “crap” is made. 30 years ago, Shenzhen was a little village on a river. Now it’s a city of 13 million people–bigger than New York.
• Foxconn, one of the companies that builds iPhones and iPads (and products for many other electronics companies), has a factory in Shenzhen that employs 430,000 people.
• There are 20 cafeterias at the Foxconn Shenzhen plant. They each serve 10,000 people.
• One Foxconn worker Mike Daisey interviewed, outside factory gates manned by guards with guns, was a 13-year old girl. She polished the glass of thousands of new iPhones a day.
• The 13-year old said Foxconn doesn’t really check ages. There are on-site inspections, from time to time, but Foxconn always knows when they’re happening. And before the inspectors arrive, Foxconn just replaces the young-looking workers with older ones.
• In the first two hours outside the factory gates, Daisey meets workers who say they are 14, 13, and 12 years old (along with plenty of older ones). Daisey estimates that about 5% of the workers he talked to were underage.
• Daisey assumes that Apple, obsessed as it is with details, must know this. Or, if they don’t, it’s because they don’t want to know.
• Daisey visits other Shenzhen factories, posing as a potential customer. He discovers that most of the factory floors are vast rooms filled with 20,000-30,000 workers apiece. The rooms are quiet: There’s no machinery, and there’s no talking allowed. When labor costs so little, there’s no reason to build anything other than by hand.
• A Chinese working “hour” is 60 minutes–unlike an American “hour,” which generally includes breaks for Facebook, the bathroom, a phone call, and some conversation. The official work day in China is 8 hours long, but the standard shift is 12 hours. Generally, these shifts extend to 14-16 hours, especially when there’s a hot new gadget to build. While Daisey is in Shenzhen, a Foxconn worker dies after working a 34-hour shift.
• Assembly lines can only move as fast as their slowest worker, so all the workers are watched (with cameras). Most people stand.
• The workers stay in dormitories. In a 12-by-12 cement cube of a room, Daisey counts 15 beds, stacked like drawers up to the ceiling. Normal-sized Americans would not fit in them.
• Unions are illegal in China. Anyone found trying to unionize is sent to prison.
• Daisey interviews dozens of (former) workers who are secretly supporting a union. One group talked about using “hexane,” an iPhone screen cleaner. Hexane evaporates faster than other screen cleaners, which allows the production line to go faster. Hexane is also a neuro-toxin. The hands of the workers who tell him about it shake uncontrollably.
• Some workers can no longer work because their hands have been destroyed by doing the same thing hundreds of thousands of times over many years (mega-carpal-tunnel). This could have been avoided if the workers had merely shifted jobs. Once the workers’ hands no longer work, obviously, they’re canned.
• One former worker had asked her company to pay her overtime, and when her company refused, she went to the labor board. The labor board put her on a black list that was circulated to every company in the area. The workers on the black list are branded “troublemakers” and companies won’t hire them.
• One man got his hand crushed in a metal press at Foxconn. Foxconn did not give him medical attention. When the man’s hand healed, it no longer worked. So they fired him. (Fortunately, the man was able to get a new job, at a wood-working plant. The hours are much better there, he says–only 70 hours a week).
• The man, by the way, made the metal casings of iPads at Foxconn. Daisey showed him his iPad. The man had never seen one before. He held it and played with it. He said it was “magic.”

Importantly, Shenzhen’s factories, as hellish as they are, have been a boon to the people of China. Liberal economist Paul Krugman says so. NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof says so. Kristof’s wife’s ancestors are from a village near Shenzhen. So he knows of what he speaks. The “grimness” of the factories, Kristof says, is actually better than the “grimness” of the rice paddies.

So, looked at that way, Apple is helping funnel money from rich American and European consumers to poor workers in China. Without Foxconn and other assembly plants, Chinese workers might still be working in rice paddies, making $50 a month instead of $250 a month (Kristof’s estimates. In 2010, Reuters says, Foxconn workers were given a raise to $298 per month, or $10 a day, or less than $1 an hour). With this money, they’re doing considerably better than they once were. Especially women, who had few other alternatives.

But, of course, the reason Apple assembles iPhones and iPads in China instead of America, is that assembling them here or Europe would cost much, much more–even with shipping and transportation. And it would cost much, much more because, in the United States and Europe, we have established minimum acceptable standards for the treatment and pay of workers like those who build the iPhones and iPads.

Foxconn, needless to say, doesn’t come anywhere near meeting these minimum standards.

If Apple decided to build iPhones and iPads for Americans using American labor rules, two things would likely happen:

• The prices of iPhones and iPads would go up
• Apple’s profit margins would go down

Neither of those things would be good for American consumers or Apple shareholders. But they might not be all that awful, either. Unlike some electronics manufacturers, Apple’s profit margins are so high that they could go down a lot and still be high. And some Americans would presumably feel better about loving their iPhones and iPads if they knew that the products had been built using American labor rules.

In other words, Apple could probably afford to use American labor rules when building iPhones and iPads without destroying its business.

So it seems reasonable to ask why Apple is choosing NOT to do that.

(Not that Apple is the only company choosing to avoid American labor rules and costs, of course–almost all manufacturing companies that want to survive, let alone thrive, have to reduce production costs and standards by making their products elsewhere.)

The bottom line is that iPhones and iPads cost what they do because they are built using labor practices that would be illegal in this country–because people in this country consider those practices grossly unfair.

That’s not a value judgment. It’s a fact.

So, next time you pick up your iPhone or iPad, ask yourself how you feel about that.

SEE ALSO: The Shocking Conditions Inside Foxconn [PHOTOS]

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Oh, the hand-wringing and excoriation!

This week, the techo-chamber exploded with indignation when Google had the gall to “personalize” search results by adding a couple of social features.

“Worst mistake in the company’s history” screamed one observer. (Our Matt Rosoff, who is seriously smart, so his view is worth considering.)

“Google just made Bing the best search engine,” concluded Gawker’s Matt Honan, who’s also very smart and makes a reasonable observation.

“Outrageous!” yelled pretty much every other tech pundit, especially after Twitter, et al, began howling about how Google is abusing its monopoly yet again by promoting its own services (Google +) at the expense of theirs.

So in the wake of this apparently earth-shattering and obnoxious move, I have a simple question:

Has anyone who isn’t a tech pundit even noticed that Google has changed anything?

And, for those who have noticed a change, a follow-up question:

What’s your reaction to it?

If I hadn’t heard the screams of the techo-chamber all week, I’m not sure I’d have noticed the change. But I have now noticed it. And, so far anyway, here’s my reaction to it:

It’s a very minor positive improvement, one that could easily be made a lot better.

Here’s how the change has manifested itself in my search results: There are now a few avatar-photos and a little link at the top that invites me to look at “personal results”:

If I click the “personal results” link, I get some Google + postings on this topic:

Same for another search:

And the “personal” version of that one:

Would I have noticed this change if not for the screaming? Probably not. I’ve been dimly aware in the past year or so that little avatar pictures have started getting mixed into my Google search results and that people I know have “liked” or “plussed” or whatever certain results. That’s been curious and interesting, but it’s certainly not a big deal, and I’m not sure I’d call it an improvement.

So is this new personal results thing a positive improvement?

Yes, I guess. It gives me another sort of interesting option to check out, and it gives me this without totally cluttering the page or making it less useful.

Could the new option be made a lot better?

You bet it could.

It could be made a lot better if Google included Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Gmail results in the “personal” tab. Because I actually don’t know many people who aggressively use Google +.

If Google mixed Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Gmail results in the “personal” tab, and organized these results in a way that wasn’t too cluttered or cacophonous, I could see it actually being a pretty cool feature.

But I’m still not sure I’d ever click on it.

Why not?

Because there are very few Google searches I do in which I care about “personal” results.

The searches in which I care about “personal” results are the ones I do in my email box or Twitter feeds.

The broader searches, the ones I do on Google, work just fine without “personalization.”

I suppose if Google ever becomes expert at doing personalized product searches, this could be helpful. If I were searching for a product and I noticed that three friends had bought one version of it and three other friends had bought another version, and there were a super-simple way to ask them pros and cons, I might want to use that feature.

But otherwise, I’m not sure I care about “personalized” search results. The generic kind work perfectly well. And I’ve already got Twitter, Facebook, et al, to tell me what my friends are interested in.

So I ask again:

Has anyone who isn’t a tech pundit noticed this change? If so, do you care?

SEE ALSO: Google May Have Just Made The Worst Mistake In Its History

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Yesterday, I explained the truth about the “Ron Paul Media Blackout” — the conspiracy theory repeated endlessly by Ron Paul fans annoyed that their candidate isn’t given more coverage in the mainstream media.

I explained that, as far as I was concerned (as the editor of a major publication), we couldn’t write about Ron Paul enough–because Ron Paul’s ardent fans are so dedicated that they take everything we write and pass it around all over the place.

So there certainly isn’t a Ron Paul Media Blackout here at Business Insider.

I also explained why we and other publications don’t write about Ron Paul even more–namely,

1) Ron Paul can’t win the election, and

2) most mainstream voters think he is a nutbag.

Not surprisingly, Ron Paul fans were not happy about that explanation.

I instantly got lots of emails beginning with the dreaded “You, sir…” and lectures about how my job is just “to report the news.”

To which I responded:

What news is it that we are not reporting?

The news that Ron Paul finished third in Iowa? (We reported that.) The news that Ron Paul wants to chop $1 trillion of government spending next year and, thereby, temporarily destroy the economy? (We reported that.) The news that Ron Paul wants to abolish the Fed? (We reported that.) The news that Ron Paul wants to end most of our international interventions and take us back to an isolationist state? (We reported that.) The news that Ron Paul may have actually won the Iowa caucuses? (We reported that.) The news that Ron Paul has totally locked up the “youth vote”? (We reported that.)

And then I added another question:

Would Ron Paul fans be lecturing me about what my job is and starting their emails with the dreaded “You, sir…” if I were writing columns arguing that Ron Paul is going to somehow pull off a miracle and win the Presidency and arguing that his policies would, in fact, be great for the country?

I doubt it.

But I’ll go ahead and ask that question, in case any Ron Paul fans want to dispute it.

And then I’ll leave you buy reiterating the truth about Ron Paul, in case any folks out there think that my job is not to “just report the news” (whatever that is), but, rather, to tell the truth.

Ron Paul can’t win the Presidency because too many Americans think he’s a nutbag.

They think this mainly because of many of the Ron Paul policies articulated above. These policies are just too far from mainstream ideology for majority voters to take them–or any candidate who espouses them–seriously.

I understand that that might be annoying to some Ron Paul fans, who are sick of politics-as-usual, think the country has huge, intractable problems, and wish that everyone else in America saw the world the way they do.

And Lord knows there are plenty of reasons to be sick of politics as usual and that the country has huge, intractable problems. There are, and it does.

But Ron Paul fans who love Ron Paul because they think that he alone is telling them the truth should also recognize another truth when they hear it:

Unless/until Ron Paul seems more reasonable in his views, he can’t win the Presidency.

SEE ALSO: DEAR RON PAUL SUPPORTERS: Here’s The Truth About The “Media Blackout”

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See Also:

• DEAR RON PAUL SUPPORTERS: Here’s The Truth About The ‘Media Blackout’
• You Won’t BELIEVE How They Count The Votes In Iowa
• The Net Worth Of The American Presidents: From Washington To Obama To _____

The early results from Iowa are costing people money on Intrade.

Ron Paul contracts for an Iowa victory have soared in price in the past few hours, while Mitt Romney contracts have tanked:

Of course, Intrade gamblers haven’t completely lost their minds:

Romney’s odds of winning the overall nomination haven’t dropped much.

SEE ALSO: The Latest

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See Also:

• PETER SCHIFF: Only Ron Paul Can Save America
• Rick Perry Spent $6 Million In Iowa But Forgot To Do One Little Thing
• One Candidate Is Going To Drop Out After Getting Crushed In Iowa Tonight