Boehner's Path to Power Began in Southern Ohio - New York Times

The same Cape Cod houses dot the roadsides, among a smattering of family businesses. On the hill where Mr. Boehner grew up with 11 siblings, there are remnants of the fence that kept cows at bay. Mr. Boehner’s sister tends the bar his family ran through much of the last century.

With Republicans increasingly confident that they will capture the House in November, Mr. Boehner stands likely to become speaker and to lead his party’s effort to turn the nation in a new direction after two years under President Obama and the Democrats. It seems that almost everything about him stems from this spot at the southern tip of Ohio.

It defined his political viewpoints, shaped by his working-class Roman Catholic family. It formed his passions (golf, football, more golf), kindled his love of sharp clothes (and his caustic commentary about others’ wardrobes) and presaged his political trajectory, one influenced by his experience as a businessman and largely ignited by a lobbyist who became his patron and the first of many lobbyist-friends in his orbit.

Mr. Boehner — now Mr. Obama’s Gucci punching bag — has by his own account and those of people who know him remained as unchanged as Reading, just outside Cincinnati. “He’s been conservative, he’s been consistent and he’s been tan,” said Bob Hagan, an Ohio state representative who served with Mr. Boehner (pronounced BAY-ner) in the Statehouse in the late 1980s.

For Republicans who hope to recapture the House, the challenge is to shift the focus from Mr. Boehner’s country club image and tangerine hue back to his Midwestern conservative résumé, which they hope will attract a frustrated electorate.

But the effort by Democrats to portray Mr. Boehner, 60, as lazy and retrograde — speak loudly and carry a large cocktail — is equally arduous. He is a man who paws through large briefing books for committee meetings, Democrats who have worked with him acknowledge. He can foil challengers with his charm, as his opponents in his first Congressional race found out. He is surprisingly emotional, given to occasional waterworks during House speeches or three-hanky stops among supporters on the campaign trail.

Mr. Boehner explains his rise from a childhood with little money to the Congressional leadership by recalling his ambition to improve his life.

“I was determined, I was miserable and I didn’t have anything,” he said in a recent interview in his Capitol Hill office, as he pulled on a series of Camel cigarettes (filtered). “I was trying to make something out of nothing.”

Mr. Boehner’s parents were Democrats, and politics did not define his upbringing, nor even really infuse it. “We were lucky to know who the president was,” said George Luning, a high school classmate of the congressman. “His dad owned a bar, and I think being around older people who had their opinions about this or that all day made it so when he got home, he didn’t much want to talk about that stuff.”

The culture wars that would later define the Republican Party were also far from the minds of the boys of Reading. “There just weren’t as many issues then,” said Jerry Vanden Eyden, Mr. Boehner’s closest childhood friend. “You didn’t know anything about gays, you didn’t know anything about abortion, you didn’t know anything about a lot of the social issues they got today,” he said. “We didn’t hear about it, didn’t worry about it, didn’t talk about it, didn’t think about it.”

It was work, and taxes, that politicized Mr. Boehner.

“Growing up, we were probably Kennedy Catholics because we were a strong devout Catholic family,” said Bob Boehner, the congressman’s older brother, who like all his siblings eventually switched party allegiance. “But the first time you get a real job and get your paycheck, you look down and you wonder, where’s the rest of your money, and they explain to you that that’s the tax you have to pay to the government, you start thinking more and more about becoming a Republican.”

Jennifer Steinhauer reported from Reading, Ohio, and Carl Hulse from Washington. Eric Lipton contributed reporting from Washington.

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Netflix PS3 App Ditches Disc, Adds HD and Surround Sound - Wired News

PlayStation 3 just leapfrogged Xbox 360 and snagged the best Netflix experience on a videogame console yet.

The new Netflix application for PS3, rolling out for download Monday, will enable Netflix subscribers with PS3s to watch movies and TV without a disc. Some titles will even stream in 1080i HD and 5.1 digital surround sound.

Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” streaming-video feature has been available for PS3 since late last year, but it required a Blu-ray disc in order to access the service. Now, by running Watch Instantly as a native PS3 app on the console, users can ditch the disc altogether. Netflix also has a new user interface, optimized for the PS3 controller’s analog joysticks.

In the new UI, search especially seems smartly designed for the PS3 controller, using an alphabetical grid and intelligent auto-complete to minimize the pain of text entry, as seen in this still:

Still from Sony PS3 promotional video.

I even like the way the controller buttons control common text-entry commands in context — like Space, Delete and Enter. There are keyboards available for PS3, but being able to use the controller well is a real asset.

Netflix has not only continued to bring its streaming service to seemingly every device with a screen, but to make that service better. Still, among consoles, the announced PS3 app stands out: Xbox users don’t have 1080i or surround sound, and Wii users have only now added search to their service, which still requires an “Instant Streaming” disc.

Adding media services has become part of the continued rivalry between Xbox and PS3, along with new motion-capture interaction devices like PlayStation’s Move controller and Xbox’s Kinect.

Besides videogame consoles, Netflix can now stream to personal computers on Windows and Mac; TiVo, HD, Roku, Logitech and Apple TV boxes; Windows Phone 7 and all iOS devices; and a wide array of net-connected TVs and Blu-Ray players, including those using Google TV.

Roku’s players, which began as Netflix-only boxes, will soon be available in retail stores through a partnership with Netgear.

Netflix on PS3: Disc-free Next Week [Playstation Blog]

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NPD: US Videogame Hardware Sales Fall 19% In September - Wall Street Journal

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See a sample reprint in PDF format.Order a reprint of this article nowOCTOBER 14, 2010, 8:20 P.M. ETUPDATE:NPD: US Videogame Hardware Sales Fall 19% In September ArticleCommentsmore in Business »

(Updates with background throughout)

SAN FRANCISCO (Dow Jones)--U.S. video game industry sales fell in September, painting a potentially grim picture for the crucial holiday shopping season.

U.S. sales throughout for video game software, hardware and accessories fell to about $1.2 billion, a drop of 8% from roughly $1.32 billion in the same month a year earlier, according to market research firm NPD Group. Analyst Anita Frazier ...

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