The suspects: her American roommate Amanda “Foxy Knoxy” Knox and her Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, pub owner Patrick Lumumba and a semi-professional basketball player Rudy Hermann Guede, arrested today in Germany.

Drugs and some kind of sex game gone wrong are the established scenario. But none of them are ‘fessing up, versions of what happened and who was where, when have shifted so many times since Kercher was “found” by Knox in a bloody pool under her bed the following morning that predicting where the truth lies has become nearly impossible.

As is often the case, the real-life CSI crew has not come up trumps but the telegenic faces of the protagonists are keeping the Italian public mesmerized.

Like a lot of journalists, my news diet is a fairly restricted one, most times leaving aside with nary a nibble stuff that I’m unlikely to cover. If you’re obliged to gorge on so many outlets every day, you tend not to bloat yourself with those men-biting-dog stories that fall out of scope. In the interest of preserving sanity, random deaths, murders, kidnappings are off my news menu.

But like everyone else here, I haven’t missed a single tawdry detail of the Perugia murder story, eating it up with obsessive zapping on seven major networks every night.

The dramatis personae is a catalog of the kinds of foreigners Italians find fascinating: young, pretty, footloose English-speaking women on a year abroad, the older, integrated Congolese musician who runs a business and the handsome black baller. Mixed up in this somehow is the “figlio di papà” (daddy’s boy) the quiet, bespectacled son of a prominent Southern Italian doctor with almost feminine good looks and the strange habit of always wearing a pocketknife coordinated with his outfits.

Italian media calls unsolved crime cases “gialli” (lit. “yellows” and publisher Mondadori sells mystery paperbacks in screaming yellow) and there’s nearly enough material — thanks to youtube and facebook — to shoot a movie from it.

The site entries have long been removed, but not before the media put together an ample package of images, considering none of the protagonists are public figures — Kercher in her vampire costume, Sollecito wielding a cleaver, Knox striking a pose, Lumumba playing at the club, and even Guede, on the lam until today, turned up in a shot embraced by fashion designer Giorgio Armani.

Identifying with the victim is another reason why I can’t keep myself away from the story. Kercher, by all accounts, was not nearly as stupid as I was at her age or any of the students I saw through a year abroad in Florence when I later worked for another school.

It’s not just me, either. There are over 3,000 people signed up on a facebook group called “Nobody should die in his/her Erasmus (Meredith Kercher RIP)” attest to the wrongness of her death. Thousands of foreigners come to Italy for that edifying year abroad expecting a few adventures, an overdose of museums, a little romance and ample amounts of wine tasting.

Most times we ex-pats taught them to avoid pickpockets, hoped they wouldn’t have to learn the meaning of “frottage” and bailed them out after they’d stolen an ancient knick-knack on a dare. Everyone made it home safely, in some cases none the wiser. The new suspect and ongoing silence are likely to draw the Perugia murder mystery out, as will an apparent copycat murder in Paris.

Stay tuned.

In the Saturday New York Times, Rick Klein, the senior Washington editor for ABC’s World News with Diane Sawyer is quoted saying the countdown clocks “satisfy a basic desire that we can bring politics down to crisp deadlines and hard numbers–stuff that’s usually the realm of sportswriters.” Too bad we don’t have more elections to satisfy that basic need for winners and losers. Will we start to see fencing or wrestling matches between political candidates?

The last government shutdown was before the Internet age got underway so I also wondered last week about the impact Facebook, Twitter and old fashioned email had on the dialogue, fundraising, and outcome on Friday night. The videos on YouTube from politicians as well as from those who would suffer from a shutdown made it harder for the elected officials to completely ignore the possible ramifications of their actions or inaction.

The rise of political cable shows has also changed the landscape since the last government shutdown. Watching Jon Stewart react to the end of the Glenn Beck show last week really made me laugh because of the absurd way news, satire, and commentary have been woven together to tell the story of how our government is being run and who is really in charge.

I love good stories with interesting characters, plot twists, clever pacing, stimulating scenery and unexpected endings. Can’t wait for the Return of the Budget Battle.

Listen to my weekly Tuesday noon Pacific webcast and podcast at Digital Politics Radio. This week my guests will be Chris Nolan, Spot-on, Amy Rubin, Strategic Productions, and Mark Davis, The Wrap, talking about political narratives.

Karen Jagoda is president, E-Voter Institute.

California Governor Jerry Brown is going to have a very successful third term since he’ll probably be able to solve – or claim he’s solved – the state’s budget mess next year. Brown – the Steve Jobs of politics – is going to be the beneiciary of what can only be called pent-up demand in both the venture capital business and the stock market. In other words, people who need to sell their stock to earn their keep (venture capitalists, angel investors) have plenty of customers (wanna-be shareholders). And the stock market’s increasingly looking healthy enough to support large-scale stock offerings.

This isn’t silliness – or Silicon Valley seduction – on my part; economist agree with me. Google’s 2004 public offering is widely considered to have saved Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first term, deferring some of state’s more difficult spending decisions (and adding to today’s woes).

Back in 2004, when the market in tech stocks was slowing, Google sold $1.6 billion worth of stock in its initial sale to the public, giving it a (real market) valuation of about $23 billion. But what’s going to happen over the next year or so – if all goes well – is going to make that $1.6 billion seem like Monopoly money for the state’s treasury.

Consider the valuations (theoretical) of companies expected to start selling their stock on the public markets next year. Facebook’s investors believe it to be worth at least $50 billion. Groupon, the discount coupon site thinks is worth $25 billion. Zynga, the game company, puts its worth more than $5 billion. The most recent number on Twitter was just under $8 billion. Yelp, the ratings site, clocks with with a modest $200 million valuation. Add in another handful of smaller companies with more modest valuations – LinkedIn, FourSquare – and figure there’s another lot of stock that can be sold to enthusiastic buyers.

Valuations – insiders’ estimates – aren’t written in stone. And they’ve often have precious little to do with how much stock is sold or its acutual price. But there’s been enough activity on Silicon Valley’s private equity markets – where share of all these companies are trading nicely – that it’s pretty clear whatever’s sent to Wall Street will get a warm reception.

Why? Most of these companies (unlike their dot.com predecessors) have revenue, earnings and have had for at least three years – time during which they’ve been unable to raise money on the public markets. They’re making money, in other words, not getting it from investors or shareholders. That doesn’t necessarily justify the valuation – at this point, that’s just a number based on shareholders’ ides of their holdings – but it makes their ability to raise money on Wall Street a more than reasonable expectation.

So it’s not unrealistic to use some of the prices in those private equity markets as a reference point. Let’s say of the high-profile companies here does about what Google did – sell at about $80 a share. And let’s say each sells around 20 million shares (including sales of stock by founders and employees). That would give each company a Google-like valuations in the low billions. And there’s more than one of them. And it’s not just the first time sale; once a stock is public it can be bought and sold again and again. And anyone living in California who sells shares has to pay the tax man.

These days, the capital gains rate (the rate you pay if you sell your stock within days of acquiring it – which your accountant will demand you do if you’re employed by any of these companies) is whatever your income tax rate is. That’s going to be at least 30% for anyone working at any of the companies under discussion here.

No, it’s not the $11 or so billion that Brown needs to plug holes in the state’s current budget. But with the cuts he is making, it’s more than a drop in the bucket. What it will give Brown is the room to negotiate real change in how California runs its finances.

For municipal and local elections, our Virtual Slate Card saves campaigns money and extends their reach.

Banding together, individual candidates can buy more online than they could on their own and organizations, groups and parties get to show their support – and spread their message – in a targeted way across a county, state or city.

There are more details about this Pollie-Award winning innovation on our site.

We’re also reminding folks about our Facebook app program for persuasion and influence campaigns. Unlike “pages”, Facebook apps provide a great way to gather data about supporters – ages, email and other demographics. That information can also help target online ad buys when it’s time to widen the scope of your efforts.

You can test our “Sample App’ by clicking this link. Accept it, invite some friends to use it then send us a note. We’ll give you a peek at the back-end data we’ve collected – yours included – and tell you how it can help your campaigns.

Our TrendSpotter iPhone app will had its first public beta test at this week’s AAPC. Spot-on debuted the audience meter during the conferences closing general session featuring a discussion between four political insiders. Using TrendSpotter, members of the audience were able to indicate agreement or disagreement with what panelists were saying – as they were saying it. And since TrendSpotter offers real-time reporting of audience reacation, users cculd see what everyone else in the room was thinking – as they were thinking it.

You can see how TrendSpotter looks and performs by checking out the slideshow on our Facebook SampleApp. Just click on over.

For more on the app an other Spot-on Spring 2011 releases, listen to Spot-on founder Chris Nolan in conversation with eVoter Institute’s Karen Jagoda. That interview is in two parts; here’s one and here’s the second.

Since online doesn’t “move the numbers” it’s often seen as an “extra” for a well-funded campaign. Or worse: a waste of time and money.

That’s when Team Spot-on starts thinking about the location of the nearest bar and its hours of operation.

You long-time readers will know there’s growing evidence that online does affect voter sentiment. And since – with reason – no campaign is willing to entirely forsake television advertising for online, polling data can’t accurately measure online ad performance separate from television.

But this is beside the point. One medium does not replace the other.

So let us take this opportunity to point you skeptics out there to some info collected this last cycle: Polling data from Global Strategies Group showing a lift in numbers for TV and online. Our own numbers showing a dramatic increase in site traffic during an online-only campaign in Los Angeles. And there’s this round up from ClickZ on the search for a GRP for online.

There’s also increasing frustration with the kinds of creative being developed for banners – one we share. This article in on the tech news site Mashable is a good overview. If you want the strictly political take, the NYTimes’ Matt Bai took a few shots at the “Internet” president and wondered why Obama hasn’t done a better job of engaging online.

For those of you more interested in numbers than art, let us suggest you check out the useful Google Analytics. This FREE online measurement tool can tell you what’s bringing visitors to a website, what they do once they arrive and how long they stay. And in this off year, you’ve got lots of time to play around with it!

Analytics users have chimed in with their own take on what works and how some of Google metrics can be customized. One of the better how-to’s on this topic, well worth a read comes from blogger and entrepreneur Om Malik. Google has a helpful blog on the subject as well.

Last election, we got a new query – one we don’t think can be dismissed very easily. Online news outlets are increasingly asking that candidate and campaign sites have explicit privacy statements posted on the candidates or campaign website.

It’s part of the increasing interest in online privacy. News outlets, large and small, are worried about the potential danger (and liability) of encouraging their readers to go to sites where their email addresses or other details might be collected and used for nefarious purposes.

Some of this is certainly lawyerly over-caution but the hue-and-cry over the use and misuse of information that sites can collect is simply too loud at this juncture for anyone on the web to ignore.

What to do? Make sure your campaign site has a privacy policy from Day One. It doesn’t have to be complicated. One national news outlet was happy to provide us with appropriate wording that would pass muster with their policy mavens.

“ElectGreenGene.com respects your privacy and we are committed to keeping your personal information confidential. We do not sell or share your information with outside parties. You may always opt-out of receiving communications from us. If you don’t want to receive future e-mail communications from ElectGreenGreen.com please email ‘unsubcribe@electgreengene.com’ and we’ll remove you from our lists.”

We’ll write more about this issue in the year ahead. For more background on the privacy debate and how it’s affecting political ad campaigns, you can have a look at some past blog posts.

- Online Ad Targeting: Now a Consumer Issue

- Politics and Privacy

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But when Hollywood writes our sales pitches for us we make an exception.

A goofy little episode of TNT’s goofy little series, “Leverage” made us laugh so we’re passing it along for your winter storm-waiting couch lounging pleasure. If you’re a Comcast subscriber you can watch it via Fancast.

In “The San Lorenzo Job” Timothy Hutton, a leader of a gang of thieves, plays a political consultant who needs to take the underdog candidate to victory. He wears a white suit throughout so, of course, he gets punched. But the look the little send-up provides of the use of online media has some savvy insights.

And, of course, you know what they say about life imitating art…

Along those same lines, we’ll point you to this Xtranormal short “So You Want to be a Political Operative.” Yet another reason to stay away from the shop shows.

Hope you had a happy holiday. Stay warm and dry this week.

First up, Kate Kaye over a ClickZ has a run-down on 2010 Election trends. Campaigns spent more money online but they still didn’t spend enough say Patrick, Andrew, Josh and all the others (we’ll let you match the blind quotes to the names). There’s also a nifty little display ad art gallery.

That’s in contrast to predictions that have been rolling in pretty steadily since mid-November. Analysts and ad houses are predicting more movement to online. And least two firms think online now rivals newspapers or will soon surpass it in spending by brand advertisers. And, yes, we do have to ask. If it’s good enough for Tiffany, Toyota and Toshiba, how come it’s not good enough for politics? Over at Engaged, they’re asking the same question using well-respected Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker’s data.

We’ve written a lot about online privacy and all the debates about what advertisers can and should do. In Washington, they’re starting to hold hearings. This is the “educational” section of the Congressional debate where balloons are floated and popped. This month’s offering is “do not track” listings (a little like “do not call)” and the White House has formed a committee, too. Always nice to see a crowd – which is gonna grow. The result: Campaigns should be sure and find out if vendors will co-operate with this proposed opt-out.

Along those same lines, we’d like to call your attention to a trend we’ve noticed with some news outlets: The need for privacy statements on candidates’ and campaigns’ destination websites. In other words, if you’re CandidateGreenGene.com with a site set up to capture email and donations, you may be asked by an online publisher to include a privacy statement on that site before you ads can run. This isn’t a big issue – not yet – but Spot-on’s had more than one outlet call the need for such statements to our clients’ attention. Expect this to hang around as long as government agencies continue to put pressure on advertisers and publishers.

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Here’s Kaye’s story.

The Whitman campaign followed most of the golden rules: Start early. Target and optimize your efforts. Don’t just looking at political ‘pages’ for ads but at an overall online media strategy that combines smart use of targeting with media buying at the local level. We’d also point out the lack of emphasis on search-based advertising.

The only point we here at Spot-on would add: You don’t need $3 million to do this. The strategy Whitman used can be scaled down to the local level very nicely. Feel free to ask us how.

Earlier this year when the Wall Street Journal started its series on online privacy we suggested that campaigns’ use of targeting services might come under scrutiny. A week or so ago – while we were all heads-down for 11/2 – the Wall Street Journal provided a bit more meat for that bone. In not one but two stories, the Journal looked at online targeting and its use by campaigns.

RapLeaf, a San Francisco company that’s been aggressively courting the political community, found itself front and center in the WSJ’s coverage. As did broader efforts associated with online services that require registration. This isn’t on quite the same level as a look at campaign finance but, well, it’s getting there and campaigns are smart to start thinking – and looking carefully – now about the way they use online targeting.

In a little footnote, Politics Magazine is carrying a Q&A today with Spot-on founder Chris Nolan. It’s a discussion about local California races and what’s happening – or not – online.

Enjoy.