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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sea Otter who wrote (185646)	1/26/2010 3:14:29 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 361858

Obama’s Credibility Gap ______________________________________________________________ By BOB HERBERT Op-Ed Columnist The New York Times January 26, 2010 Who is Barack Obama? Americans are still looking for the answer, and if they don’t get it soon — or if they don’t like the answer — the president’s current political problems will look like a walk in the park. Mr. Obama may be personally very appealing, but he has positioned himself all over the political map: the anti-Iraq war candidate who escalated the war in Afghanistan; the opponent of health insurance mandates who made a mandate to buy insurance the centerpiece of his plan; the president who stocked his administration with Wall Street insiders and went to the mat for the banks and big corporations, but who is now trying to present himself as a born-again populist. Mr. Obama is in danger of being perceived as someone whose rhetoric, however skillful, cannot always be trusted. He is creating a credibility gap for himself, and if it widens much more he won’t be able to close it. Mr. Obama’s campaign mantra was “change” and most of his supporters took that to mean that he would change the way business was done in Washington and that he would reverse the disastrous economic policies that favored mega-corporations and the very wealthy at the expense of the middle class and the poor. “Tonight, more Americans are out of work, and more are working harder for less,” said Mr. Obama in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in August 2008. “More of you have lost your homes and even more are watching your home values plummet. More of you have cars you can’t afford to drive, credit card bills you can’t afford to pay, and tuition that’s beyond your reach.” Voters watching the straight-arrow candidate delivering that speech, in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Depression, would not logically have thought that an obsessive focus on health insurance would trump job creation as the top domestic priority of an Obama administration. But that’s what happened. Moreover, questions were raised about Mr. Obama’s candor when he spoke about health care. In his acceptance speech, for example, candidate Obama took a verbal shot at John McCain, sharply criticizing him for offering “a health care plan that would actually tax people’s benefits.” Now Mr. Obama favors a plan that would tax at least some people’s benefits. Mr. Obama also repeatedly said that policyholders who were pleased with their plans and happy with their doctors would be able to keep both under his reform proposals. Well, that wasn’t necessarily so, as the president eventually acknowledged. There would undoubtedly be changes in some people’s coverage as a result of “reform,” and some of those changes would be substantial. At a forum sponsored by ABC News last summer, Mr. Obama backed off of his frequent promise that no changes would occur, saying only that “if you are happy with your plan, and if you are happy with your doctor, we don’t want you to have to change.” These less-than-candid instances are emblematic of much bigger problems. Mr. Obama promised during the campaign that he would be a different kind of president, one who would preside over a more open, more high-minded administration that would be far more in touch with the economic needs of ordinary working Americans. But no sooner was he elected than he put together an economic team that would protect, above all, the interests of Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry, the health insurance companies, and so on. How can you look out for the interests of working people with Tim Geithner whispering in one ear and Larry Summers in the other? Now with his poll numbers down and the Democrats’ filibuster-proof margin in the Senate about to vanish, Mr. Obama is trying again to position himself as a champion of the middle class. Suddenly, with the public appalled at the scandalous way the health care legislation was put together, and with Democrats facing a possible debacle in the fall, Mr. Obama is back in campaign mode. Every other utterance is about “fighting” for the middle class, “fighting” for jobs, “fighting” against the big bad banks. The president who has been aloof and remote and a pushover for the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries, who has been locked in the troubling embrace of the Geithners and Summers and Ben Bernankes of the world, all of a sudden is a man of the people. But even as he is promising to fight for jobs, a very expensive proposition, he’s proposing a spending freeze that can only hurt job-creating efforts. Mr. Obama will deliver his State of the Union address Wednesday night. The word is that he will offer some small bore assistance to the middle class. But more important than the content of this speech will be whether the president really means what he says. Americans want to know what he stands for, where his line in the sand is, what he’ll really fight for, and where he wants to lead this nation. They want to know who their president really is. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

To: Sea Otter who wrote (185646)	1/26/2010 5:20:47 AM
From: see clearly now	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 361858

Nice people don't win when they the real enemy is as sophisticated as described in 8+ minutes........ Catastrophe Capitalism Source: NAMOMI KLEIN thenation.com abeldanger.blogspot.com This Canadian Lady has a longer term perspective, brilliance and exceptional communication skills.......

To: Sea Otter who wrote (185646)	1/29/2010 3:33:04 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 361858

CA’s McCracken Seeks Cloud Computing & Security Deals (Update1) By Katie Hoffmann Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) -- William McCracken, CA Inc.’s new chief executive officer, said he will probably buy a company in the next two months to compete with larger rivals International Business Machines Corp. and Oracle Corp. CA will spend at least $300 million a year on cloud computing and security software acquisitions this fiscal year and next, McCracken said yesterday, after the company announced his appointment. He has been chairman of Islandia, New York- based CA since 2007, and replaces John Swainson, who retired Dec. 31. CA, which posted its first quarterly sales gain in a year yesterday, has invested in cloud and virtualization software, which can help customers use their computers more efficiently. CA can gain share in those growing markets without being attached to a hardware company, as are some of its bigger competitors, McCracken said. “We want to be the heterogeneous, bring-it-all-together guy,” said McCracken, 67, who spent more than three decades working at IBM. He declined to comment on any specific deals. Oracle gained the fourth-largest maker of server computers after completing its purchase of Sun Microsystems Inc. this week. IBM, which gets about 80 percent of sales from software and services, is the world’s biggest maker of servers, computers that run corporate networks and Web sites. The cloud computing model lets clients store and access data on an external server to avoid the cost of maintaining their own. Spending on cloud computing will more than double to $44.2 billion in 2013 from last year, according to research firm IDC in Framingham, Massachusetts. Oblicore Deal CA has spent about $200 million on purchases this fiscal year, said McCracken, who joined the board almost five years ago. CA bought closely held Oblicore Inc. this month to gain software that helps manage cloud service agreements. The company had $2.6 billion in cash and cash equivalents by Dec. 31. CA rose 14 cents to $22.49 at 9:41 a.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares climbed 21 percent last year. Sales in the third quarter ended Dec. 31 rose 8.3 percent to $1.13 billion, the company said. That topped the average estimate of analysts in a Bloomberg survey. Per-share profit, excluding some costs, was 43 cents a share, also exceeding projections. The company reaffirmed its fiscal full-year profit forecast of $1.60 to $1.71 a share. That compares with the $1.68 average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg. McCracken left IBM in 2001, after running the printing division. He also headed global marketing for the personal- computer unit for four years and held other titles within the division, including president of its Europe, Middle East and Africa business. He holds a bachelor’s degree in physics and mathematics from Shippensburg University. Swainson, 55, who also spent more than a decade at IBM, announced plans to retire in September. He took over CA in February 2005 after his predecessor was indicted in a $2.2 billion accounting scandal. Under Swainson, CA’s revenue rose in each fiscal year except 2009. To contact the reporter on this story: Katie Hoffmann in New York at khoffmann4@bloomberg.net Last Updated: January 29, 2010 09:42 EST

To: Sea Otter who wrote (185646)	2/1/2010 6:48:57 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 361858

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To: Sea Otter who wrote (185646)	2/3/2010 6:57:51 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 361858

Cisco CEO Sees 'Strong' Business Spending online.wsj.com Cisco Systems Inc.'s quarterly profit rose 23% as the maker of networking gear posted its first sales increase in a year. Chairman and Chief Executive John Chambers said the results provided clear indication Cisco was entering the second phase of an economic recovery. "During the quarter we saw dramatic across the board acceleration and sequential improvement in our business in almost all areas," Mr. Chambers added. The capital spending environment looked "very strong" in the quarter, he said. As a result, Cisco will begin to increase expenses at a faster pace. The company, which trimmed it work force last year, said it planned to hire 2,000 to 3,000 new workers over coming quarters. The tech industry is looking for a boost from businesses that seem poised to spend more to upgrade or replace aging information technology systems, as the economic recovery is underway. Cisco has noted stabilized demand in the U.S. For the quarter ended Jan. 23, the world's biggest maker of Internet-connectivity equipment posted a profit of $1.85 billion, or 32 cents a share, up from $1.5 billion, or 26 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue jumped 8% to $9.82 billion. In November, the company estimated sales would rise 1% to 4%, better than Wall Street's expectation at the time. Product sales improved 8.6%, while service sales jumped 5.6%. Last month, Cisco announced it would restructure its Asia-Pacific and Japan operations and create a new segment focused on Greater China, a region where Cisco already has a big presence, but is also seeing increasing competition from local vendors. But Cisco and other tech giants have been advised to review their business operations in China, after Google Inc. said its operations had been a victim of sophisticated hacking.