To Quiet Critics, Romney Puts 2012 Focus on Jobs

Mr. Romney makes the case, in private meetings with business owners and in appearances like a dinner speech here Saturday, that the halting economic recovery ? even after solid job growth in February, the unemployment rate remains at 8.9 percent ? provides a compelling rationale that he is the strongest candidate to create jobs and take on President Obama.

?I like President Obama,? Mr. Romney said, ?but he doesn?t have a clue how jobs are created.?

The message is well suited to Mr. Romney?s background as a successful executive and former governor, as well as the man who rescued the 2002 Winter Games from financial trouble. But it may also allow him to steer around criticism over the health care plan he created in Massachusetts, which to many Republicans looks distressingly similar to the federal law signed last year by Mr. Obama.

And it offers him a chance to sidestep the concerns of social conservatives, some of whom question his commitment to their causes and are uncomfortable with his Mormon faith.

As he moves closer to formally opening his 2012 presidential campaign, Mr. Romney has taken a far different approach than he did the last time. To avoid the risk of overexposure and early scrutiny, he is operating in a cautious, low-key fashion, building allies among Republicans by doling out money to candidates from his political action committee and testing themes on donors and other supporters with limited news coverage.

Mr. Romney is trying to present a more relaxed image to combat impressions that he is unapproachable and stiff. He has not been seen in a necktie for months ? not in television appearances, meetings with donors or political dinners, including the one Saturday evening, where he was one of the few men in the room wearing an open-collared shirt.

He turned up in the pit area of the Daytona 500 last month, mingling with race car drivers while wearing a Bass Pro Shops shirt. And last week, Mr. Romney, who put his wealth four years ago around $200 million, walked into Tommy?s Barber Shop in an Atlanta strip mall for a haircut. (Aides sent out a picture of him in the barber?s chair via Twitter.)

In the early maneuvering for the 2012 race, Mr. Romney has aimed his fire at Mr. Obama rather than any of his prospective Republican rivals, attacking the president as a weak leader who pursued a European-style big-government agenda for his first two years in office instead of focusing on jobs.

?The president points out that he inherited an economic crisis,? Mr. Romney told about 300 people at the Attitash Grand Summit Hotel. ?He did, and he promptly made it worse.?

?The consequence is soaring numbers of Americans enduring unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcies,? he continued. ?This is the Obama Misery Index, and it is at a record high.?

So far Mr. Romney has offered few specific details beyond general Republican philosophies, saying only that the country needs ?to believe in free enterprise, capitalism, limited government, federalism.?

He selected this town nestled in the White Mountains about 125 miles north of Manchester to offer one of the first extensive previews of his campaign themes. He shook hands with nearly everyone at the Carroll County Republican dinner in his first public visit to the state that holds the opening primary of the 2012 nominating season, a contest critical to his success.

?I spent my career in the private sector. I know how jobs are created and how jobs are lost,? he said. ?I have helped guide more than one enterprise that was in crisis. And I learned that there are three rules of every successful turnaround: focus, focus, focus.?

In his 2008 race, Mr. Romney shed moderate stances on abortion and gay rights to align with a conservative electorate, prompting questions about whether his positions were driven by politics or conviction. This time, a concentration on jobs and the economy signals a return to themes he struck during his successful bid for governor in 2002. Yet his record as governor also provides one of his biggest obstacles.

More even than his faith and his social-conservative credentials, questions about the health insurance plan he signed into law in Massachusetts have left him open to criticism from his party.

The White House has joined in, showering unhelpful praise on the plan, which, like the federal law, includes a mandate for residents to carry insurance.

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feeds | Amazon WordPress PluginHud 1 Settlement Statement

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=fe01b0f6bac622849a03cf209b71eaca

thomas tew rum issaquah school district the game tv show lasso of truth

South Korean government websites hit by DDoS attack

It seems that Wordpress.com is not the only website experiencing distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Major South Korean websites have also been hit by a DDoS attack, twice today, according to South Korean antivirus developer AhnLab.

About 40 web sites were targeted, including the presidential office, the National Intelligence Service, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Kookmin Bank, the defense ministry, and the US military in Seoul, according to BusinessWeek. The government issued its third-highest alert against online attacks.

"DDoS(Distributed Denial of Service) attack is now on Korean websites including government webpages," AhnLab said in a statement. "We're on emergency response with our all resources including ASEC and CERT, providing emergency antivirus solution. Additional DDoS attack occurred around 18:30 (Korean Time), not scored though. It just caused insignificant damages as users install antivirus and emergency solution from AV vendors, such as AhnLab, and other government organizations."

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feeds | Amazon WordPress PluginHud 1 Settlement Statement

Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/42697-south-korean-government-websites-hit-by-ddos-attack.html

jimmer fredette thomas tew rum issaquah school district the game tv show

As Health Costs Soar, G.O.P. and Insurers Differ on Cause

The new federal health care law may eventually ?bend the cost curve? downward, as proponents argue. But for now, at many workplaces here, the rising cost of health care is prompting insurance premiums to skyrocket while coverage is shrinking.

As Congress continues to debate the new health care law, health insurance costs are still rising, particularly for small businesses. Republicans are seizing on the trend as evidence that the new law includes expensive features that are driving up premiums. But the insurance industry says premiums are rising primarily because of the underlying cost of care and a growing demand for it.

Across the country, premiums have more than doubled in the last decade, with smaller companies particularly hard hit in recent years, federal officials say.

In New Hampshire, where the population is among the healthiest in the nation, according to various surveys, the insurance market for individuals, families and small businesses is extremely fragile. More than 90 percent of private employers in New Hampshire have fewer than 50 employees. Small and medium-size employers try to shop around for health insurance, but have few alternatives from which to choose.

This year, groups of more than 20 workers have been experiencing premium increases of around 20 percent, insurance agents say, while smaller groups are seeing increases of 40 percent to 60 percent or more.

?The rate of increase is phenomenal,? said Jean Pierre La Tourette, owner of Flora Ventures, a florist with 11 employees in Newmarket, N.H., near Portsmouth. When he was recently notified that the monthly premium for single employees at his firm was going up by $229, or 40 percent, to $789, Mr. La Tourette said, he felt ?a combination of anger and frustration.?

Economists and state regulators say health insurance is expensive primarily because health care is expensive.

?You won?t really address the cost of health insurance unless you address the cost of health care itself,? New Hampshire?s insurance commissioner, Roger A. Sevigny, said.

In a letter explaining Mr. La Tourette?s new rate, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield said it resulted, in part, from ?an increase in medical trends, especially the utilization of services and the underlying cost of health care, for all small-group customers.?

William P. DeLuca III and his family own several companies, including four car dealerships and the Bank of New England, which together have 550 employees in New Hampshire and eastern Massachusetts. To obtain a better rate, Mr. DeLuca said, he switched this year to Harvard Pilgrim Health Care from Tufts Health Plan. The Tufts increase would have been 23 percent, he said, while Harvard Pilgrim?s was 19 percent.

?It?s out of control,? Mr. DeLuca said. ?The cost of living is barely going up 1 or 2 percent a year. But we and our employees have to absorb these huge increases in health insurance costs.?

Some insurance industry lobbyists say the new federal health care law is driving up premiums. But Vincent Capozzi, senior vice president for sales and customer service at Harvard Pilgrim, said that only one percentage point of the increases here was attributable to the federal law, mainly its requirement for free coverage of preventive services.

Another percentage point results from new state laws requiring coverage of hearing aids and certain treatments for autism, Mr. Capozzi said. Most of the remainder, he said, reflects increases in the use and cost of medical care by small-group customers, with adjustments for demographic characteristics like age.

In many cases, insurance coverage is shrinking as deductibles are increasing and choices of hospitals are more limited. Robert I. Woodland, the president of the Woodland Design Group, said his company had experienced double-digit increases in premiums for seven years, even as benefits were whittled back. Most recently, he was notified that the rates were being increased 43 percent, so the monthly premium for a single worker would be $550, up from $384.

?Essentially, we have been paying a lot more for a lot less,? Mr. Woodland said. ?It?s outrageous. I cannot imagine charging my clients 43 percent more in a single year.?

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feeds | Amazon WordPress PluginHud 1 Settlement Statement

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=515b93d2a85980ca21e03195c57362df

lights out nyc school closings scelestious stephanie seymour and son

WOF: How often do you use your computer's optical drive?

[Weekend Open Forum] When Apple announced the first iMac in 1998 many were taken aback by the lack of a floppy disk drive. But it soon became obvious that it had been the right decision and shortly thereafter other manufacturers began to follow suit. The archaic technology was replaced by optical discs because they offered a lot more storage capacity at affordable prices.

With the proliferation of broadband connectivity and cheap USB flash drives we seem to be on the verge of another transition. The idea has been a tad slower to catch on but a few laptops have already dropped their optical drives for the sake of portability. With decent do-everything DVD burners going for less than 20 bucks and Blu-ray crossing the $100 threshold, optical discs are obviously going to live on for a while, but the truth is they are not as convenient as they used to be for consuming or transporting data and many of us rarely use them anymore.

Virtually all of my media and software today comes from online sources, and for doing backups I usually resort to an external hard drive or even the cloud. With that in mind we want to ask you: how often do you use your computer's optical drive? For those that use it regularly, what do you primarily need it for? And for those of you who don't, would you say you are ready to drop it altogether? Let us know your thoughts.

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feeds | Amazon WordPress PluginHud 1 Settlement Statement

Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/42694-wof-how-often-do-you-use-your-computers-optical-drive.html

thomas tew rum issaquah school district the game tv show lasso of truth

WOF: How often do you use your computer's optical drive?

[Weekend Open Forum] When Apple announced the first iMac in 1998 many were taken aback by the lack of a floppy disk drive. But it soon became obvious that it had been the right decision and shortly thereafter other manufacturers began to follow suit. The archaic technology was replaced by optical discs because they offered a lot more storage capacity at affordable prices.

With the proliferation of broadband connectivity and cheap USB flash drives we seem to be on the verge of another transition. The idea has been a tad slower to catch on but a few laptops have already dropped their optical drives for the sake of portability. With decent do-everything DVD burners going for less than 20 bucks and Blu-ray crossing the $100 threshold, optical discs are obviously going to live on for a while, but the truth is they are not as convenient as they used to be for consuming or transporting data and many of us rarely use them anymore.

Virtually all of my media and software today comes from online sources, and for doing backups I usually resort to an external hard drive or even the cloud. With that in mind we want to ask you: how often do you use your computer's optical drive? For those that use it regularly, what do you primarily need it for? And for those of you who don't, would you say you are ready to drop it altogether? Let us know your thoughts.

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feeds | Amazon WordPress PluginHud 1 Settlement Statement

Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/42694-wof-how-often-do-you-use-your-computers-optical-drive.html

terrence j most popular thanksgiving side dish the game bet lights out

House Republicans Move to Uphold Marriage Act

Republican leaders had the option of inserting themselves in the case by introducing a resolution on the House floor and allowing members to speak out on the issue. Instead they released a statement of their intent on a Friday afternoon when the House was out of session.

By choosing that route, Republican leaders illuminated a central problem they face in the 112th Congress: how to reflect the priorities of traditional social conservatives when much of the party?s energy is focused on the federal budget and the national debt, the animating passions of the freshman class of lawmakers.

Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana set off a debate within the party last month when he warned fellow Republicans not to get bogged down in the cultural wars of yore and to ?agree to get along for a little while? on social issues.

Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio took to the political tightrope with an arabesque on Friday, when he announced in a news release that he would convene the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, made up of the three top Republicans and two most senior Democrats in the House, ?for the purpose of initiating action by the House to defend this law of the United States.?

By doing so, Mr. Boehner fulfilled a promise to the more conservative members of his caucus, who care deeply about the law, by stepping in to defend it. But he stopped short of creating the appearance of House members distracted from their spending fight by a battle over gay marriage.

The advisory group can now decide to ask courts to appoint it as a party in cases involving the marriage act or it can simply file a brief or make an argument as an interested observer.

?My personal preference would have been a resolution on the House floor,? said Bryan Fischer, the director of issue analysis for American Family Association, a conservative Christian organization in Tupelo, Miss. ?But the political landscape in 1995 meant that the law passed overwhelmingly,? he said. ?You may not have the same overwhelming majority on this resolution, so the optics may not be optimum.?

Support for action by the House to defend the marriage statute came from some conservative groups and lawmakers. But many freshmen in the Republican caucus were silent on the matter.

Representative Raúl Labrador, a conservative freshman from Idaho, has not mentioned the issue, said Phil Hardy, his spokesman. ?My boss is all about the budgets and finding the waste,? Mr. Hardy said in an e-mail.

Similarly, Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, who leads the House Tea Party caucus, has not addressed the statute, even as she released statements concerning President Obama?s budget, and freedom of choice in light bulbs.

?She does not support gay marriage,? said Doug Sachtleben, Ms. Bachmann?s spokesman.

?But I do know that right now she is particularly concerned about defunding Obamacare, this whole budget process,? he said. ?Those are the time-pressing issues for her.?

The minority leader, Nancy Pelosi of California, said in a statement that ?I oppose Speaker Boehner?s effort to put the House in the position of defending this indefensible statute.?

Mr. Boehner said that it was the president, not the House, that was diverting attention from the budget battles to focus on gay marriage, adding that the House was simply fulfilling an obligation to defend laws it had passed.

?It is regrettable that the Obama administration has opened this divisive issue at a time when Americans want their leaders to focus on jobs and the challenges facing our economy,? Mr. Boehner said. ?The constitutionality of this law should be determined by the courts, not by the president unilaterally, and this action by the House will ensure the matter is addressed in a manner consistent with our Constitution.?

The move drew rebukes from gay rights groups and some Democrats. ?I think it?s sad that the speaker of the House wants to spend taxpayer funds to discriminate against people,? said Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and the lead sponsor of a bill to repeal the marriage act. ?It is his right to do this. But it is totally wrong.?

Mr. Fischer of the family organization said he would rather have the House than the Obama administration defend the act. ?We think the Department of Justice was making a pretty tepid and halfhearted defense,? he said. ?This is such an important public policy law it needs to be defended by someone who believes it is good.?

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feeds | Amazon WordPress PluginHud 1 Settlement Statement

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=d741bd91c726d7bdf33e7204d06ab852

lebron james twitter jimmer fredette thomas tew rum issaquah school district

Rumors of a possible Facebook Skype partnership persist

With 600 million users at your fingertips who wouldn?t want to partner with Facebook?

Rumors swirled this morning via a report in Bloomberg that Facebook has resumed talks with global VoIP service Skype, a partnership that would presumably offer Web video calls to anyone with a Facebook account within the social media platform. Bloomberg?s information comes from sources close to both Facebook and Skype.

We reported on the possible partnership last September when discussions between the two companies began, but nothing more was whispered, even after numerous Skype updates, including an October update that allowed Skype 5.0 users to SMS, chat or call their Facebook friends via Skype right from the News Feed.

While it?s obviously an incredible platform for Skype to grow its user base, it?s also a nice partnership for Facebook too- as Skype has been gobbling up talent over the past year and flirting with its own 100 million plus IPO. A Skype partnership would give Facebook a formidable foray into video calling, surely squashing the likes of Facetime and Gmail.

Interestingly, the Vonage app released for Facebook last summer, allowing Vonage users to call their Facebook friends for free never seemed to take off.

?Last year, we announced the integration of Facebook in Skype, so people can keep up to date with their Facebook friends through News Feed in Skype and even call and SMS their Facebook friends on any phone from Skype,? Facebook said yesterday in an e-mailed statement. ?With regards to any further integration, we don?t comment on rumor and speculation and have nothing to announce at this time.? [Bloomberg]

Hate the idea of a Skype-Facebook integration? Check out our favorite Skype runner?s up, vox.io for dead sexy VoIP calling.

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feeds | Amazon WordPress PluginHud 1 Settlement Statement

Source: http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2011/03/05/rumors-of-a-possible-facebook-skype-partnership-persist/

jimmer fredette thomas tew rum issaquah school district the game tv show

South Korean government websites hit by DDoS attack

It seems that Wordpress.com is not the only website experiencing distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Major South Korean websites have also been hit by a DDoS attack, twice today, according to South Korean antivirus developer AhnLab.

About 40 web sites were targeted, including the presidential office, the National Intelligence Service, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Kookmin Bank, the defense ministry, and the US military in Seoul, according to BusinessWeek. The government issued its third-highest alert against online attacks.

"DDoS(Distributed Denial of Service) attack is now on Korean websites including government webpages," AhnLab said in a statement. "We're on emergency response with our all resources including ASEC and CERT, providing emergency antivirus solution. Additional DDoS attack occurred around 18:30 (Korean Time), not scored though. It just caused insignificant damages as users install antivirus and emergency solution from AV vendors, such as AhnLab, and other government organizations."

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feeds | Amazon WordPress PluginHud 1 Settlement Statement

Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/42697-south-korean-government-websites-hit-by-ddos-attack.html

lights out nyc school closings scelestious stephanie seymour and son

Enermax to launch CPU coolers

Enermax to launch CPU coolers

Posted on 19th Feb 2011 at 10:32 by Richard Swinburne with 18 comments

During a brief discussion with Enermax recently, a PR person let slip that the company's planning to launch a new CPU cooler range, which will be based on the principles of vortex generator flow technology, while featuring a couple of Enermax's Twister bearing fans.

The cooler has six heatpipes that get direct contact with the CPU, while a Twister fan sits on either side of the tower. Meanwhile, the LEDs can be switched off using the little buttons below each fan in the picture. The fans *should* feature 4-pin PWM power connectors as well, but we don't know whether they'll be tied together with a single connector yet.


More information about the coolers is likely to start doing the rounds soon, though, as Enermax is encouraging folk to visit its booth in the usually wet (sometimes snowy), cold and miserable surroundings of the CeBIT tradeshow in Hannover, Germany, at the start of March.

Does this design look like a winner to you? Let us know your thoughts in the forums.

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feeds | Amazon WordPress PluginHud 1 Settlement Statement

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bit-tech/blog/~3/v-oENFSSRoA/

jimmer fredette thomas tew rum issaquah school district the game tv show