Obama 2008 has a big problem. Most of America does not know the guy. Even those who have heard of him do not know the outlines of his life story.
Health care is going to be President Obama's signature achievement.
When you put those two together, it is a no-brainer that Barack Obama needs to be talking about his mother much more than he has. Barack's mother died at the early age of 53 when she was between jobs and lacked health insurance.
The voters need a story, they need a story they can attach the Obama name to.
Bill Clinton sold his life story as much as he sold his policies in 1992, and that campaign was a classic. The story of how his father died before he was born, the story of his drunkard stepfather who fired a gun at his mother in his presence, the shot hit the wall.
You got the humanize the brilliant candidate's awesome policy stands with his life story, otherwise it comes across like you are trying to impress people with the smarts. Policy proposals become more palatable that way.
Barack Obama has a compelling, compelling life story. But he can count on the vast majority of voters not reading his autobiography.
The average voter today says, I don't know the guy. That is the ground reality.
Barack Obama is going to be a global citizen president in a globalized world. This guy is so fortunate for his diverse heritage. This guy grew up white. He is Midwest. He is what they call heartland, and I call hinterland.
Barack Obama - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In The NewsJesse Jackson: Obama needs to bring more attention to Jena 6 CNN International Jackson says Obama "acting like he's white" in Jena case .... Civil rights leader later applauded Obama for "speaking out" on issue ..... Obama hopes prosecutor will "reconsider the excessive charges" ... the arrest of six black juveniles in Jena, Louisiana, on murder charges ..... Obama needs to be "bolder" in his stances if he wants to make inroads in South Carolina. Obama currently trails rival Sen. Hillary Clinton in South Carolina by 18 points .... "If I were a candidate, I'd be all over Jena," the prominent civil rights activist said Tuesday in Columbia, South Carolina, the The State newspaper reports. "Jena is a defining moment, just like Selma was a defining moment." ....... "He has remarkably transcended race, however the impact of Katrina and Jena makes America's unresolved moral dilemma of race unavoidable," he said. " I think Jena is another defining moment of the issue of race and the criminal justice system. This issue requires direct and bold leadership. I commend Sen. Obama for speaking out and demanding fairness on this defining issue. Any attempt to dilute my support for Sen. Obama will not succeed." ..... after a black student asked the vice principal if he and some friends could sit under an oak tree where white students typically congregated. ..... Obama formally released a statement on the case Friday evening after one of the teen's charges was thrown out, saying, "I am pleased that the Louisiana state appeals court recognized that the aggravated battery charge brought in this case was inappropriate." ...... "When nooses are being hung in high schools in the 21st century, it's a tragedy. It shows that we still have a lot of work to do as a nation to heal our racial tensions. This isn't just Jena's problem; it's America's problem." ...... "There is no excuse for the way the legal system treated those young people. ... This case reminds us that the scales of justice are seriously out of balance when it comes to charging, sentencing, and punishing African-Americans." ..... Americans of all races are traveling to Jena because they believe that how we respond to the racial tensions in Jena says everything about who we are as a nation
Yahoo Mash: Playing Catch Up to Facebook and MySpace?
Morgan Stanley Profit Tumbles 17 Percent
Intel WiMAX chips finally on the table New Zealand Herald by the middle of next year. .... 1.3 billion people to be in range of WiMAX wireless broadband networks by 2012, up from 750 million in 2010 and 150 million next year. .... Computer-makers Lenovo, Acer, Asus, Panasonic and Toshiba will embed WiMAX in their laptops, though computer giants Dell and HP are conspicuously absent from the line-up. ..... "WiMAX is less expensive than cellular infrastructure to roll out. ..... new standards such as 802.16J, which allows the range to be extended by using one base station as a relay to the main base station, means that coverage will continue to get even better .... Like New Zealand, Japan is selling radio spectrum in the 2.5GHz band which is likely to attract fierce bidding between established mobile players and new entrants betting on WiMAX.
IDF: Intel Promises WiMax Equipment by Next Year Wired News WiMax will bring "true mobile connectivity." WiMax will be a superior fourth generation network. WiMax will deliver broadband wireless internet service at speeds five times faster than 3G networks. .... With a planned $5 billion dollar build-out by Sprint, a growing ecosystem of WiMax device manufacturers, and some progress on the interoperability and standard fronts, the wireless technology is about to go public in a big way ....... consumers will see WiMax-enabled notebooks in 2008
Sprint Rethinking WiMax Venture Sprint Nextel Corp. is exploring new options for financing its ambitious plan to build a wireless broadband network known as WiMax
Big-name vendors lined up to offer WiMAX laptops
Verizon Wireless Expands Wireless Broadband Network to Oxford ... CNNMoney.com Oxford is the latest market to be added to the coverage, which is available to more than 210 million people across the country.
Anti-Syria Lawmaker Slain in Lebanon San Francisco Chronicle
Hewlett-Packard to install AOL services on PCs CNNMoney.com AOL said the portal will be set as the default homepage, and the toolbar and search will have default settings in various countries worldwide. All three features will be jointly branded.
Intel goes full speed on chip development San Jose Mercury News fresh evidence Intel has picked up the pace of technological development to the detriment of AMD. The new generation of plants will create circuits that are 45 nanometers, or billionths of a meter, wide, allowing chips to run faster and use less energy. ...... "Intel's strength is focusing on a goal and going like a bat out of hell." ..... "There really are some fundamental limits," said Moore, who suggested the limits may be reached within 10 or 15 years. "We will hit something that is fundamental.
Intel to ship next generation chips in November
Intel Ups Performance, Lowers Power Use In Upcoming Mobile Chips InformationWeek Enabling smaller, faster mobile devices is the company's goal in developing chipsets that promise significant improvements in processor performance, power consumption, and size. ...... the chipmaker plugged WiMax, the chipmaker's favorite wireless broadband technology. ..... 2008 will be the "year of WiMax ..... accessing the Internet on smartphones and other small devices is not a pleasant experience for most consumers, which is why more than 60% of mobile phone subscribers with access to the Web don't use the feature. ...... Adobe Integrated Runtime, or AIR, which would enable rich Internet applications to run outside the browser. "(Internet apps) become the first-class citizen of the desktop
Intel has new ideas for mobile computing CNET News.com Intel's a big company, with lots of money and smart people. It will need both to take over two separate industries. The company's official search for the next big thing is settling quite definitively on mobile computers. But this is actually two big things: not only does Intel want to create an entire new category of handheld computers called Mobile Internet Devices, it wants to set up a whole new network to service those devices. ..... Intel has been talking up WiMax for several years as an alternative to cellular networks and to the expense of wiring the world with high-speed cable.
Cisco Rides Global Wave for Business Video With 200th Digital ... CNNMoney.com using Cisco Digital Signage to communicate in real time in a dynamic and user-friendly way with employees, job candidates and clients across 70 of its offices in Belgium, the Netherlands and France. .... the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate.
Google Is Still More Of A Threat To Madison Avenue Than To Microsoft InformationWeek
Yahoo Buying Zimbra, an E-Mail Service for Businesses New York Times Zimbra, a start-up that provides Web-based e-mail to businesses and institutions .... $350 million .... Zimbra, a 100-person start-up founded in 2003, specializes in providing e-mail and calendar software to small and medium-size businesses, universities and Internet service providers. The company said it had nine million users. ..... Businesses typically pay Zimbra $28 a user, though universities pay only $1 for each student and $8 for each faculty member. .... just days after Google completed its purchase of the e-mail management company Postini for $625 million .... e-mail, calendar, word processing and spreadsheets and now slide presentation software. ..... Yahoo is the dominant e-mail provider on the Web, and had 181 million visitors in August .... Google’s Gmail sites had 18 million visitors in August.
Wed 9/12 - Choosing Between Zimbra and Exchange
What Next for Microsoft in China? BusinessWeek several embarrassing defections of top China execs, including one who wrote a tell-all book in Chinese that was a big seller. ..... Chen, 50, improved relations with the Chinese government so much that President Hu Jintao had dinner at Gates' mansion during his U.S. trip last year before traveling to Washington to see President George W. Bush. ..... "Before it was us-versus-them; the people in Redmond didn't understand what was going on in China and vice versa." ..... the percentage of counterfeit software in China has dropped to 82% from 92% in 2003. ....... To combat piracy—as well as Microsoft's Ugly American image—the company over the past few years also focused on building relations with local partners.
Digg Goes Deeper with Social Networking Currently, 15% to 20% of Digg's audience are registered users. The vast majority of the 20-million-plus users, by Digg's count, just read the posted stories. ...... "We all have a short list of probably 5 to 10 people whom we feel compelled to share certain information with." ..... the community has been demanding more personalization and privacy for a while, even going so far as to build Digg applications for Facebook where they can discuss articles with smaller groups. ..... the Digg community's well-worn reputation for overwhelming Web sites with traffic
Oracle broadens telecoms foothold VNUNet.com Oracle’s president and general manager, Bhaskar Gorti ...... the Netsure deal is part of a wider strategy aiming to boost Oracle’s presence in vertical sectors. .... “Quite apart from its significant reach in utilities and financial services, the company also has a presence in 22 industry segments.” ... Oracle is focusing most of its efforts on the energy and telecoms sectors, and that by broadening its offerings in this way, Oracle hopes to see off growing competition from SAP. ..... “When [Oracle chief Larry] Ellison was asked at the end of last year about whether the pace of Oracle’s acquisitions would slow down, his answer was that the next 12 months would be similar,” said Mitchell. “Larry has huge plans and growing the vertical markets is a large part of the strategy.”
Oracle Announces Enhanced Business Process Analysis Suite CNNMoney.com featuring unique closed-loop support to improve collaboration between business analysts and IT. .... the latest BPMN and BPEL standards and more closely aligns business and IT users, leading to greater productivity, operational efficiencies and innovation. .... an agile application platform that responds quickly to changing business requirements, helps boost productivity and reduce the business strategy to implementation gap. .... optimized processes that span multiple departments, with hundreds of dependencies and a multitude of back office applications .... enables business and IT managers to automate multi-step processes and simulate workflows to identify organizational, structural and technical problems before they occur.
Foolish Forecast: Reading Oracle's Silence Motley Fool Revenues. $4.34 billion would keep the average analyst happy, and that would be a 19% increase from the year-ago period's $3.66 billion. ..... a remarkably steady combination of earnings growth on autopilot and stable margins. Oracle also generates copious amounts of free cash flow, which tends to be invested in major acquisitions that form the basis of the company's growth. ...... SAP AG's "strategy of trying to build everything themselves using a 1970s-era proprietary programming language ....... Not that two companies with more than a $5 billion market cap combined could hurt mighty Oracle too badly, but the silence is still interesting.
Sun Aims to Double Sales in China Wall Street Journal pushing the country past Japan as Sun's largest market in the region ..... Sun's revenue in the Asian-Pacific region in the year through June 30 totaled $2.37 billion, more than a sixth of Sun's total world-wide revenue of $13.87 billion. Revenue in Asia grew 11%. ..... The company has almost 1,000 employees across four cities in mainland China. ...... Globally, Sun has been struggling for most of the decade to regain business lost after the Internet bust decreased spending by longtime customers. But the company has made a comeback in the past year, swinging to net income of $473 million for the most recent fiscal year from a net loss of $864 million the year earlier. ...... China -- which is second only to the U.S. in number of Internet users at 162 million ... fast-growing emerging markets, such as India and Brazil .... The number of people accessing networks with their mobile phones or playing online games makes the demand for Sun's products "exponential ..... develop global open-document formatting standards, privacy laws and open-source regulations.
Health Plan Overhauled at Wal-Mart
Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site effective at midnight tonight. .... In addition to opening the entire site to all readers, The Times will also make available its archives from 1987 to the present without charge, as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the public domain. There will be charges for some material from the period 1923 to 1986, and some will be free. ....... our projections for growth on that paid subscriber base were low, compared to the growth of online advertising ...... many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com ..... “What wasn’t anticipated was the explosion in how much of our traffic would be generated by Google, by Yahoo and some others ...... The Times’s site has about 13 million unique visitors each month, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, far more than any other newspaper site. ..... “The business model for advertising revenue, versus subscriber revenue, is so much more attractive,” he said. “The hybrid model has some potential, but in the long run, the advertising side will dominate.” ........ The Wall Street Journal .. has nearly one million paying online readers, generating about $65 million in revenue. .... has talked of the possibility of making access to The Journal free online. ..... The Los Angeles Times tried that model in 2005, charging for access to its arts section, but quickly dropped it after experiencing a sharp decline in Web traffic.
Age of Riches: Hedge Funds and Private Equity Alter Career Calculus So he, too, decided to forgo an M.B.A.. Instead, he raised $5 million and started his own hedge fund ...... The fund now manages $300 million out of offices in New York and Dallas, and Mr. Hammond, 28, enjoys seven-figure payouts. ...... The flood of money into private equity and hedge funds over the last decade has made billionaires out of people like Kenneth Griffin, 38, chief executive of the Citadel Investment Group, and Eddie Lampert, 45, the hedge fund king who bought Sears and Kmart. These men are icons for the fast buck set — particularly the mathematically gifted cohort of rising stars known as “quants.” ....... bright enough to be top computer scientists or medical researchers are becoming traders instead, and they measure their status in dollars instead of titles. ....... Many of the brightest don’t covet a corner office at Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley. Instead, they’re happy to work at a little-known hedge fund run out of a two-room office in Greenwich, Conn., as long as they get a fat payday. ...... What sets the new crowd apart is the need for speed and a thirst for instant riches. ..... the changing nature of money-making ..... In many banks and investment boutiques, traders with math and science backgrounds now contribute more to the bottom line than the white-shoed investment bankers who long presided over Wall Street. And traders tend to be less likely to go to business school. ........ you may see M.B.A.’s less represented in the lists of the world’s richest people ...... The number of students who earned M.B.A.’s in 2005 was about 142,600 ..... Management fees charged by funds — typically 2 percent ..... At funds that manage $1 billion to $3 billion, people with just a few years of finance experience will make $337,000 this year ..... successful traders said in interviews that they relished the challenge of their jobs, in addition to the lofty paychecks. ....... because today there are more self-made millionaires — and billionaires — than ever before, 20-something traders seem bolder in their monetary ambitions ...... “Going to business school is a way for people to try to open the door, to try to get into a company or hedge fund. But if you’re already there, it doesn’t make sense to go.” ...... Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse have changed their tune on business school. Instead of pushing all their young employees into M.B.A. programs, banks are telling the best ones to stay put. ...... learning a different product or a different group here at Citi would be more valuable ..... ......buying and selling companies“Most banking — and that includes private equity — is about deals and about relationships” involves relationships and company analysis skills. ..... If he were looking at someone who went to Harvard Business School after the two-year analyst program at Goldman, “I’d be suspicious,” he says. “I’d be saying, ‘What was it you were doing wrong that you couldn’t get a promotion at Goldman or did not pursue an opportunity with a private equity or hedge fund?’ ” ...... calculates the cost of going to a two-year business school to be at least half a million dollars for the average bank employee — $250,000 or more each year in lost salary, plus $50,000 a year in tuition and living expenses. ...... financial engineering. ..... says he likes to hire people fresh out of school so he can teach them himself. ..... “If you’re a superstar, and you’re very good, you’ll grow very rapidly in this field.” .... “If you are trying to raise money for a hedge fund, you will need that network” ..... math equations are likely to be scrawled on white boards around the office and young people hold the purse strings to millions of dollars in investor money ..... a billionaire by 40,” the magazine said. “Or, then again, they could be belly up and bust.” ..... he has seen people go to hedge funds and get fired in six months “because they couldn’t hack it.”
Rather Files $70 Million Lawsuit Against CBS
Wal-Mart Won't Carry $200 HD-DVD Player Wired News
