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Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Monday, January 23, 2012
GOP race offers scattershot list of angels, demons (AP)
WASHINGTON ? In the short time since Mitt Romney tried unsuccessfully to leave the rest of the GOP field behind in New Hampshire, the presidential race has served up a scattershot cast of angels and demons as the candidates try to strike a chord with different slices of the electorate.
Capitalism was in, then out, then in again. Insurance companies got a sideways sympathetic nod. Mike Huckabee and Betty White proved to have some cachet. The press was an ever-popular whipping child.
Europe and entitlements, felons, food stamps and French: All were on the outs with one candidate or another.
Newt Gingrich even ran an ad faulting Romney for his language skills: "Just like John Kerry, he speaks French," it warned ominously.
The GOP challengers went after Romney's venture capitalist credentials with a vengeance ? most memorably when Texas Gov. Rick Perry rebranded him a "vulture capitalist" ? then eased up somewhat when they caught grief from the defenders of free enterprise.
For a little while, even insurance companies ? typically a popular target for politicians of any stripe ? got a little love after Romney said he liked the idea of being able to fire them for poor performance. The other candidates summoned a chorus of outrage at the notion that Romney would relish firing anyone.
Republican strategist Terry Holt said it all adds up to "a blizzard of buzz words" as candidates try to deliver a headline-grabbing quote that will get people's attention.
But does it work?
"Ultimately, it all blends together into a general sense of the candidate," says Holt. "The back-and-forth is lost on most people."
And there's been a lot of back-and-forthing.
Romney and Gingrich both ran ads trying to claim a little luster from popular conservative Huckabee by rolling out nice things he'd said about them. But it turned out Huckabee hadn't endorsed either of them, and both got a scolding from the former Arkansas governor.
President Barack Obama, watching the GOP race from the sidelines, had to be hoping that a little of Betty White's uncanny popularity would rub off when he taped a video piece for her 90th birthday in which he joked that the actress looks so good she should cough up her long-form birth certificate to prove she's really that old.
The GOP candidates trotted out plenty of reliable enemies ? "Obamacare," federal regulations, big government, the Dodd-Frank financial regulations ? but added some new ones to the mix as well.
Gingrich, catering to South Carolina sensibilities and its port communities, singled out the Army Corps of Engineers, complaining in Thursday's debate that the corps "takes eight years to study ? not to complete ? to study doing the port. We won the entire Second World War in three years and eight months."
Candidates' messages zigzagged all over in search of a winning line that would work with voters.
Earning money was good ? except if your name was Mitt Romney.
A super PAC supporting Gingrich made a half-hour movie attacking Romney for reaping "massive rewards for himself and his investors," complete with sinister music and a baritone-voice narrator.
Romney defended his capitalist credentials by lining himself up with the philosopher known as a father of capitalism, proudly announcing, "Adam Smith was right."
Perry managed to turn the news that U.S. troops had apparently been captured on video urinating on corpses in Afghanistan into an indictment of the Obama administration. The Texas governor accused the Obama team of piling on against "kids" who sometimes make "stupid mistakes."
It didn't do him much good: He was out of the race within days.
Then came the issue of infidelity: Gingrich chose not to comment on the details of his marriage to his second wife after she claimed that he'd asked her for an "open marriage" in which he could have both a wife and a mistress.
Gingrich managed to steer that conversation to the one enemy that all the candidates love to beat up on: the media.
"I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country," he declared.
But even rival Rick Santorum saw through the tactic, urging voters not to be swept away by Gingrich's blast at the press.
Republicans should "get past the glib one-liners, the beating up of the media, which is always popular with conservatives," Santorum said.
Democratic strategist Karen Finney said the Republicans' random list of friends and foes has emerged as candidates "try to pick off pieces of the Republican electorate" with very targeted appeals that will add up to an overall win in each primary or caucus state.
"The narrative is shifting based on the audiences they're speaking to," she said.
"There's always, `Who's the good guy and who's the bad guy,'" she said.
In this campaign, that lineup changes every day.
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RIM stock falls eight percent following CEO transition
RIM stock falls eight percent following CEO transition originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Jan 2012 18:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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DoD Using Plant DNA To Combat Counterfeit Parts
If a sample could be taken could the DNA not be recreated?
The main idea behind counterfeit parts is taking parts that are inferior, salvaged, or even a part in the same package but different functionality and passing it off as a more expensive part. If the cost of the counterfeit approaches the cost of the real part, there is no incentive. There are counterfeit parts targeted at specific industries or military parts that the DNA concept may not slow down.
Military contracting is THE big business with a lot of profit incentive to counterfeiters, no matter how expensive this process might be now I'm pretty sure this is not going to be all that effective in the long run.
Most of the counterfeit stories you hear about are where fake parts wound up in military applications rather than counterfeits specifically targeting the military. There is a high incident in aviation too. Why? Because these applications are low volume yet very long lived, and manufacturers move to new revisions or even quit producing the components for systems still in use. Contractors buy parts from brokers and other places where the pedigree of a part cannot be ascertained.
A better to battle counterfeiting might be to make military spec equipment a lot less profitable... *cough*
Military contracts are lucrative, but the profit margins are probably not what you think they are. Most of the reason the equipment costs more is due to the specifications it must meet coupled with the relatively low volumes the military consumes.
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Sunday, January 22, 2012
Obama pitches tourism, campaign on East coast (AP)
NEW YORK ? From the Magic Kingdom to the Apollo Theater, President Barack Obama on Thursday made the case for American tourism and his own re-election bid, mingling his political and economic agendas as he tried to stay ahead of the Republicans chasing after his job.
"I hope you know that the values you cherish, what you stand for, what you believe in, are the things I cherish and I believe in and I'm willing to fight for," Obama said at Daniel, an exclusive Manhattan restaurant, in the first of four glitzy fundraisers.
Presidential politics were not far from the surface during events on both ends of the East Coast, as Obama sought a piece of Florida's political spotlight ahead of a Jan. 31 Republican presidential primary with a high-profile appearance at Walt Disney World. Against the backdrop of Disney's Cinderella castle, Obama announced initiatives aimed at making it easier for citizens of China and Brazil to visit the United States.
"America is open for business," Obama said under Florida's picture-perfect blue skies. "We want to welcome you."
Later, the president told top donors in New York that he had made American foreign policy stronger during his first term, vowing that U.S. support for Israel's security is "nonnegotiable." He also defended his administration's approach to Iran, saying even Tehran has acknowledged that U.S. sanctions are having an impact.
The New York itinerary included a $35,800 per ticket fundraiser at the home of film director Spike Lee and an event starting at $100 per ticket at the famed Apollo Theater featuring performances by singers Al Green and India.Arie.
Outside the theater, more than 100 people demonstrated on behalf of several groups, including Occupy Wall Street and MoveOn.org, and some carried signs that read "Obama Wall Street Stooge" and "Capitalism (equals) `Democracy' for Billionaires."
Inside, Obama touted his administration's work on everything from health care to ending the Iraq war. But he warned an enthusiastic crowd of about 1,400 supporters that, "everything we did over the last three years is now at stake in this election."
At a separate fundraiser earlier in the night, Obama said the November election would be "as stark a choice as we have seen". He drew a contrast between the current crop of GOP presidential hopefuls and 2008 Republican nominee John McCain, who Obama said shared some of his views on banning torture, climate change and closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
"If you've been listening to the Republican debates, they have moved," Obama said. "I've stayed here. They've gone in a different direction."
Obama's trip to Florida marked an attempt by the White House and his campaign to steal attention from Republicans vying for the GOP presidential nomination. In recent weeks Obama held a live video conference with Iowa voters during the Republican caucus, Vice President Joe Biden held a similar event with voters in New Hampshire on the night of the state's first-in-the-nation primary and next week Obama will travel to Nevada, which follows Florida on the primary calendar.
Obama was greeted in the Orlando area by ads from GOP front-runner Mitt Romney blaming the president for the state's struggling economy. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, could take a major step toward securing the Republican nomination with a win in Florida's Jan. 31 primary contest.
"I have a simple question for you: Where are the jobs?" Romney wrote in an open letter to the president on Thursday running as an ad in the Tampa Bay Times. In a conference call with reporters, Romney said Obama was "speaking from Fantasyland."
While Obama carried Florida in 2008, the state is a top target for Republicans in the November elections. Florida twice backed Republican George W. Bush, providing the decisive electoral votes in the cliffhanger 2000 election that was decided after a 36-day recount.
Tourism is a key component to the economy in Florida, which has been battered by 10 percent unemployment and rampant home foreclosures.
The White House said more than 1 million U.S. jobs could be created over the next decade, according to industry projections, if the U.S. increases its share of the international travel market.
The tourism initiative is part of an executive order Obama signed. Its goal is to boost nonimmigrant visa processing capacity in China and Brazil by 40 percent this year; expand a Visa Waiver Program that allows participating nationals to travel to the U.S. for stays of 90 days or less without a visa; appoint a new group of chief executives to the U.S. Travel and Tourism Advisory Board; and direct an interagency task force to develop recommendations for a National Travel and Tourism Strategy, including promoting national parks and other sites.
The efforts to boost tourism were praised by travel and tourism groups, but one lawmaker said the decision to relax tourist visas could undermine national security. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said the administration was "pushing the envelope and using their authority beyond congressional intent," noting that only two of the 19 hijackers in the 9/11 terrorist attacks were interviewed by consular offices. He said Congress moved to require visa applicants to be interviewed as a result.
The White House says the travel and tourism industry represented 2.7 percent of gross domestic product and 7.5 million jobs in 2010. But the U.S. share of spending by international travelers fell from 17 percent to 11 percent between 2000 and 2010, due to increased competition and changes in global development, as well as security measures imposed after Sept. 11, 2001, according to the White House.
The approach was welcomed by Brazilian tourists Lilian Lara and Lindbergh Souza, who shopped along the resort's streets hours before the president's speech. Souza said the visa process was expensive, at $500, and time-consuming for Brazilians who don't live close to consuls in Rio de Janiero and Sao Paulo. "The whole process took me six months," Souza said.
___
Associated Press writers Mike Schneider in Orlando, Fla., and Cristian Salazar in New York contributed to this report.
___
Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120120/ap_on_el_pr/us_obama
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Karzai says he's met with Afghan insurgent faction (AP)
KABUL, Afghanistan ? Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai said Saturday that he personally held peace talks recently with the insurgent faction Hizb-i-Islami, appearing to assert his own role in a U.S.-led bid for negotiations to end the country's decade-long war.
Karzai made the announcement hours before he was to meet with American special representative Marc Grossman to discuss progress and plans for bringing the Taliban insurgency into formal talks for the first time.
"Recently, we met with a delegation from Hizb-i-Islami ... and had negotiations," Karzai told a meeting of the Afghan parliament, adding, "We are hopeful that these negotiations for peace continue and we will have good results."
Hizb-i-Islami is a radical Islamist militia that controls territory in Afghanistan's northeast and launches attacks against U.S. forces from Pakistan. Its leader, powerful warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, is a former U.S. ally now listed as a terrorist by Washington.
The president has met before with representatives of Hekmatyar, whose political allies hold seats in the Afghan parliament and Cabinet, but Saturday's public announcement seemed intended to bolster Karzai's insistence on inclusion in the U.S.-led peace process.
Karzai's statement was also a reminder that any negotiations to end Afghanistan's war will be more complex than just talking to the Taliban's Pakistan-based leadership, headed by Mullah Mohammad Omar.
Hizb-i-Islami, also based over the Pakistan border, has ties to al-Qaida and has launched deadly attacks on U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Fighters loyal to Hekmatyar also have strongholds in Baghlan, Kunduz and Kunar provinces in the north and northeast Afghanistan.
There is also the feared Haqqani network, which maintains close ties to both al-Qaida and the Taliban and commands the loyalties of an estimated 10,000 fighters. The Haqqanis have been blamed for a series of spectacular attacks, including suicide bombings inside Kabul.
By showing he can bring at least one major faction to the negotiating table, Karzai may hope to increase his standing in a tentative peace process that has recently been dominated by Washington. The U.S. has repeatedly said that formal negotiations must be Afghan-led, but Karzai is reportedly uneasy with his government not being directly involved in recent preliminary talks with Taliban representatives.
"It should be mentioned that the Afghan nation is the owner of the peace process and negotiations," Karzai said. "No foreign country or organization can prevent (Afghans) from exercising this right."
U.S. representative Grossman recently stressed that any future negotiations would include Afghanistan's government, and said he would meet Karzai on Saturday.
"After our meeting with President Karzai, we will decide what to do next because we take his guidance and advice in an Afghan-owned and Afghan-led process," Grossman said Friday at a stop in India.
The Taliban have vowed to keep fighting as they explore a possible political resolution to the war.
A member of the NATO military force in Afghanistan was killed Saturday in an insurgent attack in southern Afghanistan, the coalition said. The statement gave no other details, nor the nationality of the casualty.
The attack comes a day after an Afghan soldier opened fire on French troops during a training exercise, killing four of them and prompting France to suspend its training programs.
Insurgents clashed Saturday with government forces in the town of Barmal in Paktika province in eastern Afghanistan, said Maj. Abdul Rahman, who coordinates coalition and Afghan operations in the area.
Afghan security forces killed two of the attackers and recovered their guns and a rocket-propelled grenade, he said. Two other attackers wearing suicide bomb vests moved in, but their explosives detonated prematurely and both died at the scene. One civilian was wounded in the attack, he said.
The Paktika governor's office said four attackers were trying to enter the town's main bazaar and then move toward government offices and military bases nearby. Before they could, Afghan security forces engaged them in a one-hour gun battle and all four attackers were killed, it said.
Separately, four Afghan civilians were killed Saturday morning when their truck struck a roadside bomb near Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province in the south, the Ministry of Interior said.
On Friday, insurgents attacked Afghan border policemen in the Gulran district of Herat province near the Iranian border in western Afghanistan, said Sulaiman Khan, commander of a border police rapid reaction unit in the area.
He said four border policemen were killed immediately when their vehicle was attacked by militants firing from several different directions, and a fifth died on Saturday.
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Kathy Griffin strips for David Letterman
CBS
David Letterman gave Kathy Griffin his undivided attention on "Late Show."
By Ree Hines
Comedian Kathy Griffin ushered in the new year sans dress alongside her annual countdown pal Anderson Cooper, and on Thursday night, she decided to relive the moment by stripping down for "Late Show" host David Letterman.
"Every year, I try to up the ante a little bit," Griffin told Letterman of her New Year's Eve antics. "You know, I've done it (on CNN) for?five years now and I've been fired four years in a row. So this year, I thought, 'What can I do to not get canned?'?... I thought it would be appropriate -- Times Square -- to create sort of a moment, so I took my clothes off. And I didn't tell Anderson. I really didn't tell anyone."
After sharing a clip of her nearly nude holiday moment, the 51-year-old then said, "I'll do it right now."
"Go ahead," Letterman replied.
With no more incentive necessary, the former "My Life on the D-List" star peeled off part of her dress and gave Letterman and his audience a show.
Between stares and snickers, the clearly thrilled host simply said, "Aw, man!"
Does anything Griffin does shock you anymore? Share your thoughts about her latest antics on our Facebook page.
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