May 17, 2012

Saving Face or Saving Lives When Will Obama Lead

I’m running against President Obama as a candidate for the nomination of the Americans Elect platform. But I have deep respect for him as a person and voted for him in the last election. Overall, I think he’s done a B to B+ job in office.

I’m a tough grader, so that’s actually a pretty high grade. I’d give President Bush, the latter, a D, for example.

Unfortunately, our problems are so severe, that B+ isn’t good enough. We need to have bold, new Windows 7 64 bit key, transparent, simple, effective policies to fix health care, taxes, social security, energy, and Wall Street. We also need to face military realities squarely, with no regard for politics. We’re not getting any of this from this president.

The reason is simple. Our president has all the right values Where to buy windows 7 key, brains, and communication skills, but he doesn’t lead.

The latest example is his decision to publicly support gay marriage. Vice President Biden had to drag him into making this announcement. It was the right announcement — but it was the right announcement years ago. Real leaders don’t need to be told what to do. Nor do they wait to say and do what is right until it’s politically expedient. They stand up and let themselves be the first one that’s counted.

The first example of failed leadership was health care reform, which the president left for Congress to mismanage. Although the Affordable Care Act provides vitally important health insurance coverage for tens of millions Americans, its passage was another example of catastrophic success — do something terrific for some segment of society and leave a new, potentially enormous unpaid bill for our kids to pay. The Purple Health Plan shows you what the president should have endorsed.

Meanwhile, the president did nothing to address the enormous and exploding bills our children face from the existing federal health care programs — Medicare, Medicaid, as well as the massive tax subsidy to employer-provided health care, which is a primary reason that federal revenues have been declining as a share of GDP.

The second example was financial reform. The president sat back and let Congress pass Dodd-Frank Windows 7 activation key, which addresses neither of the two fundamental problems with the financial system, namely opacity and leverage. As a result, we have a full employment act for government regulators, with no reduction in the risk of financial meltdown and no assurance that Wall Street’s gambling losses won’t end up, yet again, in the taxpayers’ lap.

Yes, Secretary Geithner and Chairman Bernanke, I know you think the government made money on its Wall Street bailout. But you aren’t counting the real cost, namely the 27 million Americans who are out of work and short on work and the millions of retirees who lost much of their lifetime savings when the stock market fell by half. The Purple Financial Plan is what we need and what you and the president have failed to even consider, notwithstanding its support from a long list of experts, including seven Nobel Laureates in economics and former Treasury Secretary George Shultz.

The third example is Social Security. The president, who has proposed no reform, tells us that the program is in good shape, needs only modest reforms, and can be fixed in the future. But Table IVB6 in the just-released Trustees Report shows the opposite. It says that the system is 31 percent underfunded, meaning we need an immediate and permanent hike in the 12.4 employer plus employee Social Security FICA tax to keep the system handing out promised benefits through time. That comes to four cents of every dollar every American will earn from now through eternity. That’s not a modest problem. The Purple Social Security Plan fixes this problem, but don’t hold your breath for this President to propose it.

The fourth example is energy policy. What virtually every economist will tell you is we need to implement a substantial carbon tax and then have the federal government get out of the way and stop picking energy winners and lowers. Have you heard the president publicly advocate a carbon tax?

The fifth example is tax policy. We need a simple, broad based tax system, which taxes consumption, and which is much more progressive than the current system. Maybe I missed it, but the only thing the president seems to care about is raising the top rate of the existing, terribly flawed income tax. This isn’t going to really fix the tax system, nor will it make the system much more progressive.

The last and most important example of failing to lead is on Afghanistan. It’s clear to everyone, particularly the troops stationed there, that this experiment in nation building, like that in Vietnam and Iraq, has not worked and that whether it does work in the future is in the hands of the Afghans. Leaving our troops in that country for two more years appears to be a politically motivated decision that will save face (and not much at that), but sacrifice lives.

The president says he won’t leave our troops there a day longer than is absolutely needed. I don’t believe him. I don’t think the long-run outcome of Afghanistan will be any different whether we leave tomorrow, next month, next year, or in twenty years. But leaving our troops in harm’s way for no real strategic or security purpose for two more years is a truly terrible abuse of our military. If the President were a real leader, he’d announce a complete withdrawal in six months from Afghanistan.

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May 17, 2012

Obama Faced Tougher Decisions Than FDR, Biden Says

(Credit: Esteban Felix/AP Photo)

Vice President Joe Biden today assured a group of campaign donors in Wisconsin that Republican criticism of President Obama’s leadership style doesn’t match up with what he’s witnessed firsthand.

“I’ve watched him make decisions that would make another man or woman’s hair curl replica watches,” Biden told the crowd of 150 inside the Italian Community Center in Milwaukee, according to a pool reporter on scene.

Biden, who has said he’s the last man in the room with Obama before a tough call, often attests that his boss has a “backbone like a ramrod.”

And today he said that mettle — and the “serious problems” Obama faced upon taking office — put the president in a class of his own.

“I think I can say … no president, and I would argue in the 20th century and including now the 21st century, has had as many serious problems which are cases of first-instance laid on his table,” Biden said. “Franklin Roosevelt faced more dire consequences replica watches, but in a bizarre way it was more straightforward.”

The vice president claimed that the complexity of the 2008 financial crisis presented challenges in a way the Great Depression of 80 years ago did not.

Biden also discussed the decision by Obama to authorize a covert raid into Pakistan to kill or capture Osama bin Laden replica watches, noting that nearly the entire national security team — including Biden — advised against the raid. Obama made the call anyway.

The only one on the team who agreed with the president, said Biden, was then-CIA director Leon Panetta.

“Nobody but one person in that entire apparatus said go,” Biden said.
 

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May 17, 2012

Flipboard CEO McCue Likely to Step Down From Twitt

According to sources close to the situation, Flipboard co-founder and CEO Mike McCue has approached Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and co-founder Jack Dorsey about moving off the board of Twitter.

It is not clear when McCue — who became a director of the San Francisco social communications company in late 2010 — will step down, but it could come soon.

The reason, sources said, is McCue’s growing feeling that the companies are on a product collision course, with a possible troubled or perhaps more attractive result.

In other words, Flipboard will either face increasing rivalry from Twitter or will end up as a possible acquisition target for it or other companies.

“How users consume and use Twitter is a key part of its future, and that is what Flipboard does well already,” said one person with knowledge of the situation. “There is going to be an inevitable crossroads for the two companies.”

Indeed, Twitter has bought several companies that help users read and discover, such as Summify.

The goal has been to better make sense of the massive amount of data that the service produces daily; to that end, Twitter has pushed to improve its user interface design on a number of devices.

And Twitter is a big part of Flipboard’s app, which is very dependent on the tweet feed and accounts for 70 percent of its links, sources said.

Flipboard is also more of a “mobile first” company, which is where Twitter is also headed even more aggressively.

Already popular on the Apple iPad Tattoo Machines Supplies, Flipboard launched its iPhone app late last year and it is prepping a version for Google Android soon.

That’s why, in addition to being a rival, it is also an obvious acquisition target for Twitter, as well as others such as Yahoo and Microsoft.

In fact, Google already tried to buy it last year Tattoo Machine Equipment, before Flipboard did a massive $50 million fundraising round that valued it at $200 million.

Its investors include Insight Venture Partners, Comcast’s venture arm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Index Ventures and a spate of well known angels, such as Dorsey, Facebook co-founder and Asana dude Dustin Moskovitz, Ron Conway, actor Ashton Kutcher and the investment company of former News Corp. exec Peter Chernin.

Co-founded by longtime entrepreneur McCue (Netscape, Tellme) and former Apple iPhone engineer Evan Doll, Flipboard launched to much attention in mid 2010.

Its innovative social magazine concept is attempting to make the social networking universe more accessible, consumable and Tattoo Ink Supply, perhaps most importantly, visually arresting via its rich app.

Essentially, Flipboard pulls information from media RSS feeds and sites such as Twitter and Facebook data streams and then reassembles it in an easy-to-navigate personalized format.

Google has mounted a competitor, called Currents, as has Yahoo with its Livestand offering, neither of which have gotten much traction. In fact, sources said, Yahoo is likely to shut Livestand down completely.

There have also been a spate of other similar readers, such as Pulse and Zite.

Spokespersons for both Flipboard and Twitter politely declined comment.

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May 17, 2012

How to Overcome Performance Anxiety Don’t Think o

“Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.” — Thomas Jefferson

Yikes. Is that a solution, or the DSM-IV definition of social anxiety disorder?

The house lights dim, the stage is dark save for one spotlight, the kind that follows your every move. You stand up to your moment — your big moment — to make a difference. OK, so maybe you’re just standing up to order your morning coffee. But the words fail you, your tongue ties, and in a fury you find that your jumbled mind has just ordered the nonexistent: double decaf lafté… No! No!, I mean, I meant latté! Double decaf latté! The crowd laughs wildly (in your head). Zap! That made a mistake feeling stays with you for hours. Meanwhile, the imagined audience, who never really noticed in the first place, has moved on to other business of the day, in which, shockingly, you do not play a starring role.

This is good news.

The humble and highly reassuring fact that we should be brushing our teeth with three times a day is that no one cares. Not in that way. Now, if you instead had stumbled and dropped that double decaf “lafté,” people would have swooped in to help. Fact is, once you make it past middle school, people mostly care in good ways, in the ways we need. People aren’t on the sidelines judging our lives with the clipboard and whistle, and neither should we. Mistakes, hiccups, guffaws, even awkward silences are the order of the day. At any given moment they are happening to millions across the globe. It’s not personal, not a deep, permanent flaw: it’s just part of being alive.

So, with apologies to Mr. Jefferson: We are the ones who perpetuate the unhelpful view that we are on display and that all the world is watching. But we don’t have to. We can instead choose to duck out from under the stage lights and realize that the idea that life is a high-stakes performance exists only in our own heads. And nota bene, if we do insist on focusing on what the audience is seeing rather than focusing on what we’re doing, well, chances are we might actually not do as well. You can’t be on stage and in the audience at the same time, time travel being what it is these days.

Whether it’s “order panic” that beleaguers you, or performances with a higher degree of difficulty, maybe even those with actual audiences who have bought tickets or are missing episodes of Mad Men to see you, know two things: First, you are not alone. Public speaking tops the charts from every fear survey since the beginning of number-crunching time. Second: These moments don’t have to be terrible, and could even be enjoyable if you heed one important detail. From athletes to virtuosos, making peace with your audience inevitably comes down to one thing: forgetting they are there. Except at the end, with the applause, at which point, your eyes and your heart should open wide.

Public speaking and other performance situations can breed fear in the hearts of the most decorated men and women, and can set those decorated hearts racing. But the moments that we dread are usually ones that we are supremely qualified to handle Cheap Tattoo Ink, if only the amygdala (the hub of the brain’s fight-or-flight system) in an effort to protect us from threat, wasn’t actually creating more of it by holding our minds and tongues hostage.

It’s not the situation that’s the problem — the task is easily in your range. The problem is your overzealous worry system that has you gearing up for an attack.

How do we turn off the alarms and do our best work? Whether we are asking where the bananas are at the supermarket, asking someone out on a date, or singing Puccini, remember that this isn’t about performing and being judged, it’s an opportunity to connect on the most basic level. And that’s what we all want. And that’s what we all do.

Here are five strategies to not let your amygdala ruin your day.

Stay in Your Time Zone: The Present: What’s the best use of your time, 15 minutes of catastrophizing or 15 minutes of planning to succeed? When you have an upcoming event, don’t project into the future doing the preview and cringe of worst case scenarios that aren’t likely to happen, stay in the here and now and do your job. Try something novel, focus on what you actually need to do right now to make things turn out better: practice, get advice, get sleep. This is what athletes do. Putting on their game face doesn’t mean focusing on winning or losing, it’s warming up Tattoo Machines Kits, concentrating on their feet, their swing, or their form. So stay in the present and give yourself the gift of being prepared Custom Tattoo Machine, not scared.

Think Process Not Perfect: When we do an event-in-review in our minds, we freeze frame on what we wish we’d done better or differently, and completely overlook the overall impression we’ve made based on all those (forgettable to us) moments that worked out just fine. Not every moment is a standalone spot-check of our self-worth. Lower the stakes, not the standards. We aren’t judged by single snapshots; we all have those moments that are less than flattering, but we are more than that. The feature-length films of our lives contain the good, the bad, and the ugly, and that total package adds up to something pretty great.

What’s Your Mission? How do we forget about the critic? Refocus on why you’re there in that moment. So you’re going to your first Al-Anon meeting and dreading the introduction. Remember, big picture is that you’re there to get support. And the people you’re talking to want to give it. Or, at a job interview, anchor yourself with truly what you can see draws you to the job and what you’d have to offer. Giving a fundraising presentation to a parent group? Don’t get hung up on the particular choice of words, focus on the meaning — that’s the message. Nothing burns through panic like purpose.

Think the Best of Your Audience and Focus on the Best, Too: OK, let’s say you can’t forget that your audience is there. Fine. But if that’s the case, then remember who they really are. Chances are they are not hungry wolves waiting to attack you, given the fact that they want or need to hear what you have to say. Yes, there will always be the grumpy person here and there, but not every bell tolls for thee. The guy snoring in the front row is tired. The cranky, know-it-all guy in the fourth row was that way before you came along, and will continue to be that way long after you pack up and head home. So as you are looking out at the sea of faces, make good choices. Fix your gaze on the smiling faces who are nodding their heads in agreement or tapping their feet to your beat, rather than the ones that are shaking their heads or busying themselves with their Blackberries.

Finesse the Flaws: I’m OK, You’re OK: A grade-school music teacher conveyed one of the most basic lessons of life, as often happens in those tender years: If you make a mistake during a performance, as long as you don’t jump up and down pointing to yourself accusingly and have your facial expression or gestures say in so many words “That was me!” then the audience will not even notice. Beyond that, as adults, we can learn how to finesse a mistake to our advantage: Find a humorous excuse and join with your audience rather than seeing them as the madding crowd, say: “Let’s try that again,” or, “Oh — this could be a very unfortunate moment, let’s all pretend that didn’t happen, OK?” Then keep going, and people will see what a cool, well-adjusted person you are who knows full well that a small glitch or stumble over words barely scratches the surface of your vast, limitless self-worth. Or, if you’re not quite up for that interpretation, know that you will have totally faked them out. Bravo! Well done.

This concept of leading the way through a mistake was demonstrated to me, unforgettably, a few years ago at a rock concert. Russian-born singer-songwriter Regina Spektor was performing at the Electric Factory, a gritty venue for diehard fans in Philadelphia. In the middle of an amazing show, Regina suddenly forgot the words to the song she was singing. Without missing a beat, she gestured the microphone out to the audience and we were more than happy to fill in. No one was judging Regina at that moment, I’m pretty sure we all felt like her new best friend. Not wanting to merely leave it at Wow, that was a close call!, Regina took that moment to a new destination. At the end of the song, she said, “This is so exciting! I made the biggest mistake of my tour… in PHILADELPHIA!!” The crowd went wild. Yes we were watching, and by dint of a few forgotten lyrics, we all connected in that moment, and it was even more sublime.

For more by Tamar Chansky, click here.

For more on emotional intelligence, click here.

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May 16, 2012

LiqhtSquared Moves Toward Bankruptcy

Hedge-fund manager Philip Falcone’s LightSquared Inc. venture is preparing for a potential bankruptcy-protection filing, as negotiations with lenders to avoid a potential default faltered, according to people familiar with the matter.

The two sides still have until 5 p.m. Monday to reach a deal that would keep LightSquared out of bankruptcy court Discount Christian Audigier Clothes, and there were some indications over the weekend that a final decision hadn’t yet been reached on the company’s fate. Still Cheap Marc Jacobs Dresses, the two sides remained far apart and people involved in the negotiations expected LightSquared to begin making bankruptcy preparations in earnest.

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May 15, 2012

Sarkozy’s Delusions

Check out the washingtonpost.com’s Insider’s Guide to Davos.

Nicolas Sarkozy

The other economic commonplace disproved by Davos: There’s no free lunch. There is a free lunch everywhere you go here, mostly involving undersized Emmenthal-on-pumpernickel sandwiches.

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The larger challenge to the economist’s worldview came last night from French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the biggest big shot to make it to the World Economic Forum this year. Sarkozy delivered a passionate keynote address, which, in another era, would have been framed as an avowal of ”third way” economics, threading the needle between inhumane capitalism and impractical socialism. But because the term “socialism” remains politically unpalatable even in France, even after the financial crisis, Sarkozy framed his alternative as a “kind of capitalism.” His argument is that untrammeled market economics threaten human values. Or, in words of the official translation: “We will not reconcile our citizens to globalization and to capitalism, if we are not capable of offsetting market forces with counterbalances and corrective measures.”

The question is whether Sarkozy’s kinder, gentler form of capitalism exists. He thinks it is possible to get capitalists to behave better by reminding them of their responsibilities to society. He also thinks that it’s possible to distinguish between healthy capitalism that creates jobs and wealth, on the one hand, and unhealthy “financial capitalism” on the other. Sarkozy described the economic situation that precipitated the crisis as one “in which those who lived on unearned income left the workers far behind, in which the use of leverage, to an unreasonably disproportionate extent, created a form of capitalism in which taking risks with other people’s money was the norm Tattoo Supplies, allowing quick and easy profits but all too often without creating either prosperity or jobs.”

As accurate as parts of that description are, I don’t think capitalists are likely to become nicer, more generous, or less rapacious because of the crisis. And I don’t think Sarkozy’s distinction between good “entrepreneurship” and bad “speculation” will hold up for long. It brings to mind the line, apocryphally attributed to George W. Bush, that the French don’t even have a word for entrepreneur. In real life, all entrepreneurs are speculators (even if not all speculators are entrepreneurs.) In real life, entrepreneurs are as motivated by greed as hedge-fund managers, if not more so. Financiers, who fund entrepreneurs Tattoo Supplies, play an equally vital part in job creation. And speculation is just a word for investment someone doesn’t like. The notion of capitalism without it is, well, very French.

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May 14, 2012

What Happened in the Strait of Hormuz

The USS Port Royal Discount BCBG Dresses

Just how serious was the half-hour standoff Sunday morning between three American warships and five Iranian speed boats in the Strait of Hormuz? Did we come close to war? Was there any provocation? Was the Pentagon’s version of events Replica Herve Leger v neck, as the Iranians claim, a fake?

In response to the Iranians’ charge, the Defense Department released excerpts from a videotape of the incident. In response to that Replica DKNY Clothes, the Iranians issued their own video. Both clips are strange. They are also very different from each other. There’s a good reason, however, for the strangeness and the contradictions.

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The Pentagon’s footage shows five speed boats making provocative maneuvers a couple of hundred yards from an American warship. Speaking in English over the standard radio frequency, a U.S. Navy officer identifies his ship. Suddenly, an Iranian voice, in heavily accented English, is heard saying, “I am coming to you. You will explode in [unintelligible] minutes.” The voice sounds superimposed; it is much louder than the other voices; there’s also no background noise of engines or waves, as there would be if the speaker were on one of the speed boats.

Meanwhile, the Iranians’ footage shows an American vessel in the distance. An Iranian, speaking through a radio, says, “Coalition warship 73. This is Iranian patrol boat.” We hear the American say Discount Herve leger strapless, “I read you loud and clear.” A bit later, the American says, “We are in international waters.” In short Replica Christian Audigier Clothing, nothing momentous is going on at all. It is, as the Iranian foreign ministry shrugged afterward, “ordinary.”

The likely explanation for the differences is this: The two videos are of two different incidents. During his Jan. 7 news conference, Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff, commander of the U.S. 5th Fleet, noted that American and Iranian ships have many interactions that are usually civil and peaceful, then he said:

In fact, this group [of U.S. warships] had passed an Iranian navy ship earlier in its transit and exchanged quite correct radio communications with that Iranian ship.

This earlier contact—with its “quite correct” communications—is probably the one depicted in the Iranian video. (I thank William M. Arkin, who writes the Washington Post’s Early Warning blog, for this insight.)

As for the threatening Iranian voice in the Pentagon’s videotape DKNY Dresses sale, it sounds so different, so removed, because it was removed. Some officials now say that the warning was probably a radio communication from someone on shore—presumably a Revolutionary Guard commander, but who knows. That doesn’t make the warning any less ominous, at least to the U.S. captains on the scene at the time; it only explains why it might sound disconnected. It’s worth noting here that, as Pentagon officials acknowledge, the audio and video tracks were made separately and were pieced together later. Again, there’s nothing necessarily nefarious about this; it only explains why the audio seems a bit out of synch from the video.

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May 14, 2012

Born Again

President Barack Obama

The “birther” myth is the political equivalent of a horror-movie villain: Not only does it refuse to die, but every time someone tries to kill it, it only comes back stronger.

The latest incarnation: a bill approved 31-22 by the Arizona House of Representatives on Monday that would require 2012 presidential candidates to offer proof of citizenship in order to qualify for the ballot. The proposal has little chance of becoming law. For that to happen, the state Senate would have to pass it and the governor would have to sign it. But it’s still the closest birtherism has come to being codified.

Democrats have dutifully condemned the bill. One Phoenix legislator said it’s turning Arizona into “the laughing stock of the nation.” White House spokesman Bill Burton dismissed the measure and others like it on CNN as “fringe right-wing radio conspiracy theories.” Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly wrote Discount Hale Bob Dresses, “The fact that fringe lunacy is being taken seriously at this level suggests a strain of contemporary Republican thought that’s gone stark raving mad.” Even some Republicans are rushing to distance themselves from the bill, particularly senatorial candidate J. D. Hayworth, whom John McCain has tried to tie to the fringiest elements of the Tea Party movement.

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But shouldn’t the real reaction be, This again? Why, more than a year into Obama’s presidency, are we still talking about whether he is constitutionally allowed to serve?

The birther movement lingers because it means different things to different people. For liberals Cheap Chloe Dresses, questioning Obama’s citizenship is tantamount to racism. Anyone who does it hates black people and is simply trying to disguise his prejudice—conscious or not—by implying that Obama is a foreigner.

For conservatives, though, demanding to see Obama’s birth certificate has become less of a real-world concern—after all, Obama released his Hawaii birth certificate during the 2008 campaign—than a symbolic way for Republican politicians to show that they, too Marc Jacobs Dresses sale, are worried about America. They don’t have to actually believe Obama was born in Kenya to associate with the birthers.

The trick has been defining birtherism down. Look at how politicians on the right talk about it—or, more accurately Replica White Herve leger, around it. It’s rare that an elected official will call for Obama to produce his birth certificate, a la Orly Taitz. More often, he will simply raise questions—innocent questions!—about Obama’s origins. “What I don’t know is why the president can’t produce a birth certificate,” said Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri when ambushed by a video blogger last July. “I don’t know anybody else that can’t produce one. And I think that’s a legitimate question.” (When the interviewer pointed out that Obama had indeed produced a birth certificate, Blunt dismissed him.) Other times, they won’t endorse the birther argument so much as decline to reject it. As Sarah Palin told a radio host in December: “I think the public rightfully is still making it an issue. I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t know if I would have to bother to make it an issue, because I think that members of the electorate still want answers.” (Italics added.) It’s not about Palin, see. It’s about the people. They want answers.

Even Republicans who want to require candidates to produce birth certificates don’t sound especially up in arms about Obama. Tommy Stringer, a member of the South Carolina General Assembly who introduced a bill similar to the Arizona measure Discount Emilio Pucci Dresses, told the Washington Independent that the birth certificate the Obama campaign provided “satisfies” him, barring evidence that Obama was born elsewhere. So why did he introduce the bill? It’s about transparency, he said. It’s this kind of do-si-do that allows politicians on the right to associate themselves with the birthers but not necessarily be of them.

It’s also good politics. A recent New York Times/CBS News poll found that only 58 percent of Americans believe Obama was born in the United States. Entertaining this notion without endorsing it thus works as a conservative dog whistle. It shows that politicians understand the concerns of the far right, even if they don’t plan on joining it.

The irony of all the birth-certificate proposals—similar bills have been introduced in six states—is that they contain the seeds of the birther movement’s destruction. The moment Obama calls their bluff and hands his birth certificate to the Arizona secretary of state Replica BCBG Dresses, it’s over.

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May 14, 2012

Toyota releases extra tough Land Cruiser GX for Au

This Land Cruiser comes from the factory with not only the ability to ford deep water, but the intent, as well.

There are many reasons to love Australia. Beautiful beaches Buy DKNY Dresses, fantastic surfing, miles of unspoiled countryside and balmy winters all do much to stoke our appreciation of the country. We can now add the bare-bones Toyota Land Cruiser GX to that list. Toyota says that it created this particular vehicle for those customers who “tend to abuse Bandage dresses sale, not just drive” their vehicles. That certainly sounds like our kind of people.

The Land Cruiser GX features vinyl floor mats, vertically-hinged rear barn doors, 17-inch steel wheels and Replica DKNY Clothing, best of all Buy Christian Audigier Clothing, a snorkel. Yes Herve Leger gown sale, this Land Cruiser comes from the factory with not only the ability to ford deep water, but the intent Cheap DKNY Clothing, as well.

In addition to the aquatic equipment, the Land Cruiser GX is packed with an auxiliary fuel tank for traversing the open wastes, plenty of under-body protection and an honest-to-goodness metal key. A 4.5-liter twin-turbo V8 diesel engine sits at the heart of this beast of burden coupled to a six-speed automatic transmission with full-time four-wheel drive courtesy of a Torsen differential. We’re in love. Follow the jump for the full press release.

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May 13, 2012

Is Michael Wolff a Parasite

A dispute today between Sharon Waxman of the Wrap and Michael Wolff of Newser proved the old barroom maxim that every fight ends up on the floor.

By the time the bouncer separated them, Waxman had accused Wolff’s content-aggregation site of “parasitism Replica Philip Stein Watches for Cheap,” because it summarizes other sites’ stories and gives them only scant credit; Wolff had sneered at Waxman’s enterprise as “a low-traffic news site about the movie business”; the Wrap’s chief operating officer had asked Newser to give more conspicuous credit; Newser’s chief executive officer had put Waxman on notice that her charge that Newser was a “free-rider” skirted libel; and Waxman, invoking the “hot news doctrine,” promised to send Newser a cease and desist letter demanding that they “stop using (abusing) our content.”

It’s hard to take Michael Wolff’s side in any dispute, but that shouldn’t automatically cloud our judgment. At the risk of being dragged into this fight about ego, hurt feelings, libel threats, intellectual property, and lawyers Where buy best Replica Wyler Watches, allow me to side with the despicable Wolff. Waxman calls him a parasite, but I think he’s a host. And the limited success of his site, which serves copy in sushi-size mouthfuls, is trying to tell Waxman something about the Web audience.

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It’s hard to argue with the headline of Wolff’s attack on Waxman: “The New News: I Can Say Anything You Can Say Shorter.” Newser’s rewrites of copy from the Wrap, not to mention Slate, the Associated Press, Radar, Politico, the Guardian Fake Hublot Watches for sale, and about 1,700 other sites do a pretty good job of cutting to the meat of stories. Take, for example Best place to buy Replica Maurice Lacroix Watches, Newser’s 140-word distillation of my 1,025-word piece  urging Diane Sawyer not to take ABC World News’ anchor chair last fall. As a Brobdingnagian among journalists, I don’t much like seeing myself cut down to Lilliputian form. But I’ve got to admit that Newser has a knack for finding the most salient 75 to 150 words in a piece for excerpting and rewriting.

Newser is pretty good at this but nowhere near as good as Jim Romenesko, another news aggregator whose ability to detect the very germ of the story, sometimes buried beneath layers and layers of sediment, and to extract it still astonishes me. How wonderful it would be to send Romenesko my raw copy for some of his expert analysis about what’s interesting and what’s new and then rewrite my stories around those findings! The lesson that Romenesko (and, to a lesser degree, Newser) teaches is that the mattresses of words that journalists rest their stories on aren’t always as precious as we think they are. Sometimes shorter is better. And even when shorter isn’t better, sometimes shorter is good enough to satisfy the average reader.

Waxman grouches in her piece that she wouldn’t be so irate about Newser’s condensation of her copy if it produced lots of traffic for the Wrap, but it doesn’t. “In our 14 months of our [sic] operation, Newser.com, with an audience of about 3 million unique viewers per month, has sent us precisely 1 Where buy best Replica Omega Watches,600 users,” she writes. From this we can deduce one of several things: 1) that Newser readers are so satisfied by the digest of Wrap copy that they don’t feel the need to click through to the Wrap after reading; 2) that Newser readers would click through if they could find the link, which I’ll agree Newser makes it difficult to find; or 3) that Newser readers find Wrap stories so insufficient they don’t even click to view the digests, let alone click the hard-to-find link back to the Wrap. If that’s the case, the copy theft that Waxman seems to be complaining about isn’t really taking place.

I suspect that what’s got Waxman so furious is not that Newser rewrites and condenses its copy Replica MB&F Watches, which a million blogs do, or that it makes finding the links back to the original source difficult, which it does, but that Wolff is attempting to make a business out of rewriting and condensing other people’s copy. She imagines that her stories contain value and that Wolff’s contain none, that he’s snaking page views that rightly belong to her. Neither is true. The fact that about 2.5 million unique users visit Newser each month indicates that abbreviating and rewriting other publications’ copy for maximum effect—something journalists have been doing since the dawn of journalism—is a smart idea. Newser’s moderate success might be trying to tell the Wrap that it should write snazzier headlines, offer—as an option—brief versions of long stories, and do a little aggregating of its own.

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