G.O.P. Faces Challenge of Wooing Back Bush Donors

?How are you doing? What are you feeling? What are you thinking?? Mr. Hoffman, a Florida real estate developer who was a co-chairman of George W. Bush?s presidential campaigns, said in describing the calls. But Mr. Hoffman, one of the Republican Party?s most sought-after fund-raisers, remains unconvinced that he should tap into his extensive network of contacts to raise money for any of them.

?None of the candidates have instantly identified themselves as a leader for the Republican movement,? Mr. Hoffman said. ?The Bush family were instantly identifiable as leaders.?

He is far from alone. Two and a half years after Mr. Bush left the White House, the formidable network of Republican donors he assembled has largely melted away. Fewer than one in five of Mr. Bush?s Rangers and Pioneers, the elite corps of ?bundlers? who helped Mr. Bush smash fund-raising records in his two runs for the White House and remain the gold standard of Republican fund-raising, have contributed to any of the current Republican candidates, according to a New York Times analysis.

Their absence underscores the challenges facing the Republican Party in what could prove to be a protracted primary campaign followed by a hugely expensive general election matchup against an incumbent president.

No Republican candidate for president this year has yet shown the kind of broad appeal that rapidly drew the party?s donor establishment to Mr. Bush early in his first run, with only Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, raising enough money in the early going to assure being competitive through this year.

In an economy that has drained pocketbooks and inhibited the emergence of a younger class of wealthy donors, no Republican candidate has yet been able to seize the imagination and loyalty of a new generation of financial supporters. While the eventual nominee will have an opportunity to unite donors now dispersed among the sprawling primary field and benefit from the pools of money backing conservative causes, none of the candidates have yet assembled the kind of big-check network that could be confident of keeping up with the fund-raising machine built by President Obama.

And some large bundlers, unsatisfied with the presidential field, are choosing to place their bets with the party?s Congressional wing or with independent expenditure groups, which offer them the ease of writing a single check instead of the grinding work of wrangling contributions from dozens of friends and business associates.

?Nobody is inheriting any kind of apparatus left over from the Bushes at all,? said Ray Washburne, a Dallas entrepreneur and former Bush Ranger who is backing Tim Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor. ?Everything?s going to have to be recreated. There are new players who want to play, and there are other people tired and done.?

More of Mr. Bush?s former supporters could still emerge later in the race or after the party settles on a nominee, as many Rangers and Pioneers did for Senator John McCain of Arizona, the nominee in 2008. Some may be awaiting the entry into the presidential race of Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, though some longtime Bush supporters said there was relatively little overlap between Mr. Bush?s network of financial supporters and the one built by Mr. Perry, a powerhouse fund-raiser in his own right.

And no fund-raising machine exists in perpetuity: Large networks of bundlers are built first and foremost on the personal loyalty to specific candidates.

?I tried to retire last time, and I really put my foot down this time,? said Bradford M. Freeman, a financier who led Mr. Bush?s California finance team and was among the top bundlers for Mr. McCain. ?I was a very close personal friend with President Bush. It was a labor of love.?

Some Republicans suggested the Bush fund-raising machine rested on circumstances that would be hard for other candidates to replicate. As the governor of Texas, the son of a former president and brother of a Florida governor, Mr. Bush could tap into three of the party?s most robust networks of supporters. In his first campaign, Mr. Bush ran during an economic boom and after eight years of a Democratic administration loathed by his party; during his second, as an incumbent during wartime.

Kitty Bennett, Griff Palmer and Micah Cohen contributed reporting.

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Pentagon Sounds Alarm on Threat of Budget Cuts

Less than 24 hours after President Obama signed a debt-ceiling bill calling for trillions of dollars in reduced government spending, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and top Pentagon officials said that large cuts to the Pentagon budget ? which has more than doubled since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 ? would imperil the nation?s security.

In a letter to Defense Department personnel posted Wednesday morning on the Pentagon?s Web site, Mr. Panetta warned that if a Congressional panel could not reach agreement on cuts to the nation?s deficit, ?it could trigger a round of dangerous across-the-board defense cuts that would do real damage to our security, our troops and their families, and our ability to protect the nation.?

Mr. Panetta?s letter was followed by a briefing to reporters by a senior Pentagon official who said that while he did not want to alarm people in the Defense Department, he saw the possibility of involuntary separations ? or the laying off of military personnel ? as well as layoffs and furloughs of civilians who work for the Pentagon.

?I?d rather avoid scaring our employees,? the official said, adding that although he did not expect huge across-the-board cuts, ?there would be very substantial effects? if they did occur.

The official asked not to be named under ground rules imposed by the Pentagon.

Wednesday?s sound of alarm from the Defense Department was its opening salvo in what are certain to be many months of battles over military spending and how much the Pentagon should have to give up in a new era of austerity. No one in the building disputes that the huge military buildup since the Sept. 11 attacks is coming to an end, but the Pentagon is already drawing a line about how far it is willing to go.

On Wednesday, that line was $400 billion in military cuts over the next decade ? and no more.

Although White House officials estimate that an immediate $1 trillion in cuts called for in the debt-ceiling bill will take $350 billion from the Pentagon over the next decade, the Pentagon official said that as he measured it, the cuts amounted to $400 billion.

(The difference is the starting point: the White House is measuring the cuts against $529 billion a year, the amount the Pentagon is spending in 2011. The Pentagon is measuring the cuts against $553 billion, the amount Mr. Obama requested for the Pentagon in the 2012 fiscal year.)

On Wednesday, the senior Pentagon official said that cutting $400 billion from the Pentagon budget over the next decade would be ?hard but manageable.? Beyond that, he said that a bipartisan Congressional committee assigned to come up with an additional $1.5 trillion in government budget cuts should take none of that from the Pentagon.

?I would expect them to focus on entitlements and taxes,? the official said. He added that although ?they have the right to focus on whatever they want,? more than $400 billion in budget cuts to the Pentagon would ?go from the hard and manageable to the not-so-manageable.?

The $400 billion reduction is a familiar number for the Pentagon; it is the exact amount that Mr. Obama asked in April that the department cut over the next 10 to 12 years. The new, virtually identical number replaces it. Pentagon officials are now reviewing where those cuts should come from.

Should the Congressional committee members not agree to an additional $1.5 trillion in reduced government spending by November, that would set off automatic across-the-board cuts of $1.2 trillion over a decade, with about half coming from the military. That possibility is what most alarms senior Pentagon officials, who say that adding some $600 billion in cuts on top of $400 billion would be cataclysmic.

Mr. Panetta, a budget director in the Clinton White House and a former House Budget Committee chairman, was nominated this year by Mr. Obama as defense secretary in large part because of his experience in dealing with the reality of budget cuts. But in his letter to Defense Department personnel, Mr. Panetta said across-the-board cuts would be ?completely unacceptable.?

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Debt Bill Is Signed, Ending a Fractious Battle

The bill, which passed 74 to 26, was immediately signed by President Obama, who took a final shot at his Republican opposition for what he called a manufactured ? and avoidable ? crisis. ?Voters may have chosen divided government,? he said, ?but they sure didn?t vote for dysfunctional government.?

Voters will render their verdicts on the merits of divided government next year, but its impact is now abundantly clear: the agenda of the 112th Congress will be dominated by continuous fighting over spending priorities and regulation, with a high bar for big debates on foreign policy and other domestic issues coming to the fore.

?When was the last time anybody said anything about Libya?? said Representative Phil Gingrey, a Republican from Georgia who was first elected in 2002. ?This is the way it is going to be until the election.?

In the seven months since the change of power in the House, the Washington discourse has shifted almost completely from the decades-long battle between both parties over how to allocate government resources to jousting over the moral high ground on imposing austerity, with seemingly none of the political or practical motivations that have historically driven legislation.

Republicans, though controlling only one-third of the process through their majority in the House, appear to have firmly snagged the upper hand in the legislative dynamics, largely because of their unwillingness to sacrifice ground even when their stance threatens both the government?s ability to operate and pay its debts, and their own prospects for retaining their jobs.

?The difference is the intensity here,? said David R. Mayhew, a political science professor at Yale. ?The Republicans have the Tea Party, and the Democrats don?t have anything of comparable animation on their side.?

Democrats, hamstrung in part by Congressional procedures and hewing to more traditional methods of compromise and negotiation, allowed Republicans to pull the center of debate much closer to their priorities.

?We could draw parallels and distinctions with other tumultuous times such as the Civil War,? Glen Browder, a former congressman from Alabama and professor emeritus at Jacksonville State University, said in an e-mail. ?But I do believe that this is something different from most Democrat-Republican struggles in our recent history. The traditional game of politics in which the two sides contest over control of issues and decisions for core constituencies has erupted into an intense struggle with critical ideological/philosophical divisions about what America means and how America ought to work.?

The compromise over the debt ceiling, which the House passed on Monday, has been denounced by Democrats as being tilted too heavily toward Republican priorities, mainly because it does not raise any new revenues as it reduces budget deficits by at least $2.1 trillion in the next 10 years. But it attracted the votes of many Democrats, if only because the many months of standoff had brought the country perilously close to default.

On Tuesday evening, Moody?s Investors Service appeared to echo the mixed feelings in Congress about the deal, saying it was not going to immediately lower the government?s AAA credit rating but also officially signaled that it was prepared to downgrade it unless more is done to deal with the deficit.

The wrangling in Congress also laid bare divisions within both parties, with the final passage in the Senate relying on the votes of the remaining center of each party ? 28 Republicans, 45 Democrats and one independent voted aye ? with the most right- and left-leaning members left ultimately on the sidelines.

In the Senate, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Mike Lee of Utah, both Republican freshmen blessed by the Tea Party, voted against the bill, mirroring their counterparts in the House, including a third of that chamber?s freshmen.

On the left, six Democrats and one independent rejected the bill, arguing that it placed too much burden on middle- and lower-income Americans. Among the Democrats who opposed the measures were reliable liberals like Senator Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey, but also Senator Kirsten Gillibrand  of New York, who voted in contrast to the senior member from her state, Senator Charles E. Schumer.

Robert Pear contributed reporting.

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Spending Cuts Seen as Step, Not as Cure

By the end of the 10-year deal, the federal debt would be much larger than it is today.

Indeed, both the government and its debts will continue to grow faster than the American economy, primarily because the new law does not address federal spending on health care.

That is the reason that the ratings agency Standard & Poor?s and its rivals still are threatening to remove the United States from their lists of risk-free borrowers, although the other agencies, Moody?s and Fitch, both said Tuesday that they would watch and wait for now.

It is also the reason that many conservative Republicans refused to vote for the agreement, calling it a grossly inadequate answer to a pressing problem.

?The current deal to raise the debt ceiling doesn?t stop us from going over the fiscal cliff,? Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, wrote Monday in an open letter explaining his opposition. ?At best, it slows us from going over it at 80 m.p.h. to going over it at 60 m.p.h..?

Proponents of the deal counter that it is an important first step, constrained by the political realities of divided government. Republicans want to reduce the debt solely through cuts in spending, while Democrats favor a mix of cuts and increased revenues.

Both parties are pointing to the 2012 elections as a national referendum on how to proceed.

?Is this the deal I would have preferred?  No,? Mr. Obama said Sunday in announcing the agreement. ?But this compromise does make a serious down payment on the deficit reduction we need, and gives each party a strong incentive to get a balanced plan done before the end of the year.?

The problem facing the nation has been clear for some time. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the federal debt is likely to exceed 100 percent of the nation?s annual economic output by 2021, largely because of the rising cost of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Americans will face higher taxes, particularly as investors begin to demand higher interest rates. Economists disagree about the amount of debt a nation can safely carry relative to the size of its economy, but there is widespread concern that 100 percent is too much, and that the weight of debt would begin to suppress economic activity.

Stabilizing that ratio would require about $4 trillion in cuts over the next decade, according to a number of independent analysts. That is also the target that S.&P. declared the nation must meet, and it was the goal of the ?grand bargain? that Mr. Obama tried to reach last month with Speaker John A. Boehner.

The deal they reached instead contains cuts of at least $2.1 trillion over the next 10 years. By the end of that period, the federal debt could equal as much as 80 percent of economic activity, and rising. That assumes Congress chooses to preserve all of the Bush-era tax cuts, but even if Democrats succeeded in rolling back cuts for the wealthy, the ratio could reach 76 percent, and rising.

?This was a huge missed opportunity,? said Maya MacGuineas, president of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. ?Any sensible solution requires that you need to stabilize the debt so that it?s not growing faster than the economy.?

Ms. MacGuineas, like many independent observers, also is concerned that the government is cutting back on spending too quickly. The debt-ceiling deal would reduce spending by only a few billion dollars this year. But the two sides could not agree to include extensions of payroll tax cuts or unemployment benefits, both scheduled to expire at the end of the year. Stimulus spending also is winding down.

?We needed to be more aware that we didn?t derail the economy in the short run, and we needed more deficit reduction in the long run,? she said. If the deal undermines the economic recovery, she noted, the decline in tax revenues could worsen the problem.

Although it does not solve the basic problem, the deal would impose real constraints on spending. The law creates a bipartisan commission to identify at least $1.2 trillion in spending cuts by Thanksgiving. It also caps the amounts that Congress can spend over the next decade in a trillion-dollar slice of the federal budget called discretionary spending, which includes, among other things, financing for transportation, basic research and the national defense.

To comply with the law, Congress must reduce appropriations by about $25 billion for the budget year that begins in October. The following year, appropriations can increase by $4 billion. Every year thereafter, spending can grow to keep pace with inflation.

The Congressional Budget Office calculated the financial impact of the plan by comparing it to a situation in which spending kept pace with inflation throughout the 10-year period, and concluded that the government would save about $917 billion ? including interest on money it would not need to borrow.

Assuming that the economy continues to grow, the affected government programs will receive an ever-smaller share of the nation?s resources. Moreover, discretionary spending includes the cost of health care for veterans, which, like other health care costs, is climbing much faster than inflation, requiring a larger share of the available money with each passing year.

Proponents describe these constraints as necessary and significant.

?We are actually cutting spending,? said Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin. ?That?s cultural, that?s significant, that?s a big step in the right direction.?

Critics, however, are skeptical that Congress will follow through. They note that Congress imposed similar limits on spending in the 1980s and ?90s, only to grant itself repeated exceptions. They said that cutting specific programs would be a more credible strategy.

?It does nothing to address the real drivers of our debt,? said Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, explaining his decision to vote against the bill. ?It eliminates no program, consolidates no duplicative programs, cuts no tax earmarks and reforms no entitlement program.?

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Most ISPs deliver advertised speeds, FCC study claims

Most major U.S. Internet service providers deliver at least 82% of their advertised speeds, FCC Chairman, Julius Genachowski, revealed at Best Buy in Washington D.C. This is a major improvement over a similar study from just two years ago which concluded that actual speeds were often half of what was advertised. 

Of the 13 ISPs analyzed, DSL providers managed to fulfill 82% of their advertised download speeds during peak hours while cable companies delivered 93% and fiber-based services doled out 113%. For upload speeds during peak hours, DSL managed 95%, cable dished out 108% and fiber won again with an impressive 112%. Verizon performed the best (even while excluding fiber service) and Cablevision did the worst.

Genachowski exclaimed that the latest study presents the most comprehensive picture of U.S. Internet  performance ever, analyzing bandwidth delivered to 6,800 users of 13 ISPs who represent about 86% of the U.S. population. ISPs seemed happy to hear the news as well:

"True to the Chairman?s word [FCC Chairman], he was not satisfied with guesswork and instead insisted on conducting a fact-based inquiry into what was really happening in the marketplace.  The results are in, and it?s clear that consumers are getting high-quality broadband services from their ISPs.  Perhaps now we can get past the rhetoric about advertised vs. actual speeds and focus on the important task of ensuring all Americans have access to these broadband services.

-- Bob Quinn, AT&T Senior Vice President

Despite the apparent enthusiasm of AT&T and others, it is worth noting that the the FCC's testing methodology changed since the previous study, according to Richard Bennett, a senior researcher at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. The new methodology supposedly addresses critics' quality concerns with the sample data from the 2009 FCC study, a study which painted a substantially more dismal picture of American ISPs. Such changes could account for significantly higher percentages this time around, although there is little evidence of conspiracy as of yet. The FCC says it is working on publishing the raw data for public consumption online.

As one last interesting bit, researchers also discovered that half of Americans who volunteered for the study could not correctly report the advertised speed of their broadband connection.

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Instagram hits 150 million photos uploaded, with 15 added every second

Instagram, the darling of iPhone photo apps, has officially hit over 150 million photos uploaded since its launch 9 months ago. According to Instagram, its 7 million users worldwide are uploading 1.3 million photos every single day ? that?s 15 photos per second. And out of those 150 million, 80% are filtered. 

?To say that we?re excited and humbled by the initial success of Instagram would be an understatement. Although this milestone marks a significant accomplishment of our team of 4 folks so far, I believe it marks the beginning of what?s to come. We?re one of the fastest growing social networks in mobile ? having remained in the top 25 free apps in the app store for over a month now. Where mobile apps come and go, Instagram has continued to see unprecedented growth in users and usage?

We?re constantly amazed by the range of photos shared on Instagram. Instagrammers snap photos of everyday moments with friends and family, but they also document more significant personal moments, like weddings and honeymoons. There are Instagram photos from major events like the World Series and the Grammys, and some Instagram photos have even made the national news. Artists and celebrities have begun to give fans a unique look into their lives through photos, while brands like Burberry have started to realize the power of communicating with their followers through images.?

-Instagram founder Kevin Systrom.

Check out the 150 millionth photo here:

Credit: janefot

Instagram arrived in the App Store on October 6, 2010, as a way for people to snap photos of their lives and share them through fun filters. Download the iPhone app here. And sorry, no word yet on Android.

For more on Instagram, check out our most recent posts.

Instagram opens a realtime API for a ?more connected and transparent world.?
The Complete List of Top Instagram Apps.
UK Band ?The Vaccines? use Instagram to crowdsource new video.
An 80-page dissertation on what makes Instagram tick.

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Spending Cuts Seen as Step, Not as Cure

By the end of the 10-year deal, the federal debt would be much larger than it is today.

Indeed, both the government and its debts will continue to grow faster than the American economy, primarily because the new law does not address federal spending on health care.

That is the reason that the ratings agency Standard & Poor?s and its rivals still are threatening to remove the United States from their lists of risk-free borrowers, although the other agencies, Moody?s and Fitch, both said Tuesday that they would watch and wait for now.

It is also the reason that many conservative Republicans refused to vote for the agreement, calling it a grossly inadequate answer to a pressing problem.

?The current deal to raise the debt ceiling doesn?t stop us from going over the fiscal cliff,? Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, wrote Monday in an open letter explaining his opposition. ?At best, it slows us from going over it at 80 m.p.h. to going over it at 60 m.p.h..?

Proponents of the deal counter that it is an important first step, constrained by the political realities of divided government. Republicans want to reduce the debt solely through cuts in spending, while Democrats favor a mix of cuts and increased revenues.

Both parties are pointing to the 2012 elections as a national referendum on how to proceed.

?Is this the deal I would have preferred?  No,? Mr. Obama said Sunday in announcing the agreement. ?But this compromise does make a serious down payment on the deficit reduction we need, and gives each party a strong incentive to get a balanced plan done before the end of the year.?

The problem facing the nation has been clear for some time. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the federal debt is likely to exceed 100 percent of the nation?s annual economic output by 2021, largely because of the rising cost of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Americans will face higher taxes, particularly as investors begin to demand higher interest rates. Economists disagree about the amount of debt a nation can safely carry relative to the size of its economy, but there is widespread concern that 100 percent is too much, and that the weight of debt would begin to suppress economic activity.

Stabilizing that ratio would require about $4 trillion in cuts over the next decade, according to a number of independent analysts. That is also the target that S.&P. declared the nation must meet, and it was the goal of the ?grand bargain? that Mr. Obama tried to reach last month with Speaker John A. Boehner.

The deal they reached instead contains cuts of at least $2.1 trillion over the next 10 years. By the end of that period, the federal debt could equal as much as 80 percent of economic activity, and rising. That assumes Congress chooses to preserve all of the Bush-era tax cuts, but even if Democrats succeeded in rolling back cuts for the wealthy, the ratio could reach 76 percent, and rising.

?This was a huge missed opportunity,? said Maya MacGuineas, president of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. ?Any sensible solution requires that you need to stabilize the debt so that it?s not growing faster than the economy.?

Ms. MacGuineas, like many independent observers, also is concerned that the government is cutting back on spending too quickly. The debt-ceiling deal would reduce spending by only a few billion dollars this year. But the two sides could not agree to include extensions of payroll tax cuts or unemployment benefits, both scheduled to expire at the end of the year. Stimulus spending also is winding down.

?We needed to be more aware that we didn?t derail the economy in the short run, and we needed more deficit reduction in the long run,? she said. If the deal undermines the economic recovery, she noted, the decline in tax revenues could worsen the problem.

Although it does not solve the basic problem, the deal would impose real constraints on spending. The law creates a bipartisan commission to identify at least $1.2 trillion in spending cuts by Thanksgiving. It also caps the amounts that Congress can spend over the next decade in a trillion-dollar slice of the federal budget called discretionary spending, which includes, among other things, financing for transportation, basic research and the national defense.

To comply with the law, Congress must reduce appropriations by about $25 billion for the budget year that begins in October. The following year, appropriations can increase by $4 billion. Every year thereafter, spending can grow to keep pace with inflation.

The Congressional Budget Office calculated the financial impact of the plan by comparing it to a situation in which spending kept pace with inflation throughout the 10-year period, and concluded that the government would save about $917 billion ? including interest on money it would not need to borrow.

Assuming that the economy continues to grow, the affected government programs will receive an ever-smaller share of the nation?s resources. Moreover, discretionary spending includes the cost of health care for veterans, which, like other health care costs, is climbing much faster than inflation, requiring a larger share of the available money with each passing year.

Proponents describe these constraints as necessary and significant.

?We are actually cutting spending,? said Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin. ?That?s cultural, that?s significant, that?s a big step in the right direction.?

Critics, however, are skeptical that Congress will follow through. They note that Congress imposed similar limits on spending in the 1980s and ?90s, only to grant itself repeated exceptions. They said that cutting specific programs would be a more credible strategy.

?It does nothing to address the real drivers of our debt,? said Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, explaining his decision to vote against the bill. ?It eliminates no program, consolidates no duplicative programs, cuts no tax earmarks and reforms no entitlement program.?

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Debt Fight Over, Obama Promises Action on Jobs

After being cloistered in Washington for a month haggling with Congressional leaders, Mr. Obama will embark on a bus tour of the Midwest the week of Aug. 15 ? a chance to show his commitment to reviving the economy in a region of important electoral battlegrounds, and to turn the page from the tangled, often toxic, debate in the capital.

On the policy front, Mr. Obama shifted quickly to pushing Congress to adopt a raft of familiar measures to stimulate the flagging economy, including extending the payroll tax suspension for workers, beefing up benefits for the unemployed, approving trade agreements and investing in infrastructure projects.

?While deficit reduction is part of that agenda, it is not the whole agenda,? a grim-faced Mr. Obama said in the Rose Garden moments after the Senate approved the debt limit deal. ?Growing the economy isn?t just about cutting spending.? He later added: ?That?s not how we?re going to get past this recession. We?re going to have to do more than that.?

But the debt ceiling plan, with its emphasis on cutting government spending, underscores the constrained atmosphere in which Mr. Obama is operating. While he promised on Tuesday to present new ideas to encourage companies to hire workers, a senior aide acknowledged that Mr. Obama had no ?magic beads.?

And given the polarized climate on Capitol Hill, winning legislative approval of his initiatives, already daunting in most cases, will be that much more challenging.

Mr. Obama?s embrace of deficit reduction provides him an opportunity to help win back the independent voters who were crucial to his victory in 2008. But the president may need to do some repair work with Democrats angered by the deep cuts in the plan ? and a perception, held by some liberals, that Mr. Obama was rolled by the Republicans in the House.

On Wednesday, he will attend a Democratic fund-raiser in Chicago on the eve of his 50th birthday, his first chance since the end of the debt showdown to frame a contrast with the Republicans in a purely political environment.

?There are parts of the base that are discouraged,? Ted Strickland, a former Democratic governor of Ohio, said in an interview. ?I don?t know that it?s the result of any personal animosity toward the president, but going forward it?s going to be important for him to inspire us, lead us, challenge us and be a real leader.?

White House officials dispute that the president is in trouble with Democratic voters, whom they say support the debt compromise by solid margins. But there was considerable fence-mending among important Democratic constituency groups. On Tuesday morning, Mr. Obama met with leaders of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. at the White House, while other Democrats scrambled to explain the positive aspects of the deal to influence liberal groups.

Compared with previous landmark legislation, Mr. Obama was uncharacteristically low key in the wake of the Senate vote, in effect keeping the deal at arm?s length. He signed the bill, known as the Budget Control Act of 2011, into law in the Oval Office, with only a few advisers watching and no Congressional leaders on hand. Only a White House photographer recorded the moment. Aside from his remarks in the Rose Garden, he gave no interviews.

While Mr. Obama is hitting the road, White House officials said he would not promote the deal, about which he himself has said he has qualms. If anything, he seems likely to let the matter drop for at least a few days. As one senior aide said, ?You want to let the acid out of the air after it?s over.?

Still, heading into an election year, Mr. Obama?s advisers say he will be able to point to his role in the debt negotiations as proof of his ability to be a mature, responsible leader who is able to rise above Washington?s relentlessly partisan fray. The president alluded to that on Tuesday, saying it should not take a ?timer ticking down? to disaster to get Republicans and Democrats to work together.

?Voters may have chosen divided government,? Mr. Obama said, ?but they sure didn?t vote for dysfunctional government.?

David Axelrod, one of Mr. Obama?s closest advisers, said the negotiations showed that ?he?s been willing throughout the presidency to forgo scoring the cheap political point to serve the larger interest.?

After Labor Day, the White House also plans to hold town-hall-style meetings where Mr. Obama can talk about the issues, like Medicare and Medicaid, that dominated the recent fiscal debate and will resurface again when a Congressional committee convenes to hash out a second set of deficit-cutting measures. The president will also challenge Republicans to propose their own ideas for reviving the job market.

Mr. Obama?s willingness to engage in serious deficit reduction, aides said, could buy him credibility for his other economic proposals. But Mr. Obama is unlikely to unveil any major new stimulus proposals, since he has exhausted most of the obvious policy options.

?Did he just find a little bit of oxygen to pursue a portion of his economic agenda?? said Jared Bernstein, a former chief economic adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. ?He may be able to move some helpful things, but even if he can?t, he can certainly go out and push for them.?

The relief in the corridors of the West Wing that an economic calamity had been averted was palpable. But few officials disputed that the deadlock had been a costly distraction from the administration?s agenda. Party surveys show that Mr. Obama has been sullied ? along with all politicians in Washington ? with independent voters.

The vote tally in the House and the Senate, while stronger than many administration officials had expected only days ago, underscored deep divisions among Democrats across the country. In some states, there was a split between urban and rural legislators, while in other battleground states, entire delegations opposed the plan.

But Jim Messina, the manager of the president?s re-election bid, said the discord among Democrats in Washington did not reflect what campaign officials were hearing from rank-and-file supporters of the president through nightly telephone calls and door-knocking.

?There?s a lot of enthusiasm, and I don?t see anything as contentious as this coming down the pike in terms of an intraparty situation,? said David Plouffe, a senior adviser to the president. ?There will be a unified, motivated and very aggressive Democratic Party supporting the president next year.?

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Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=feaa7434879ce62000f2dec461f2e82b

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Asus Eee Pad Transformer's successor to launch this October?

The successor to the Asus Eee Pad Transformer will arrive in the next few months, says Asus Chairman Jonney Shih. In fact, it may just be two months away (October 2011), according to Eee Pad Transformer supply chain makers cited by DigiTimes. Shih refused to share details about the second Transformer device, such as screen size, price, and launch date, with Forbes, but he did promise would be "impressive."

In terms of timing, Shih only said that Asus will unveil more tablets before the end of the year. "We're running so fast, we can't wait until [the January] Consumer Electronics Show." Two months ago, we learned that Asus is working on its first quad-core tablet, built around Nvidia's Tegra 3 (T30) quad-core processor, codenamed Kal El. During a recent tech demo, Nvidia mentioned that products using the Tegra 3 SoC will be arriving as early as next month.

So far in 2011, Asus has announced four tablets, three running Google's Android and one powered by Microsoft's Windows. The Eee Pad Transformer is the most popular one so far, and Asus has made a point to call it the most popular Android tablet on the market. Sales are growing and production is ramping up, recently surpassing 400,000 units per month. "Other companies have cut down their [manufacturing] orders," said Shih. "The Transformer is the only one that is increasing."

The Eee Pad Transformer sets itself apart from the tablet competition with an optional chiclet-style keyboard dock that essentially transforms the device into a netbook. Besides making the device much more convenient to type on and handle productivity tasks, it also extends battery life from around 9.5 hours to 16 hours thanks to a second battery within. The actual device costs $400 for the 16GB Wi-Fi only model, although the dock will set you back an extra $150.

The Transformer has a 10.1-inch 1280×800 IPS Gorilla Glass capacitive touchscreen display, a 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 5MP rear and 1.2MP front cameras, a Micro SD expansion slot, and HDMI out. You'll also find speakers and audio jacks, USB 2.0, 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1 connectivity, as well as a G-sensor, light sensor, gyroscope, e-compass, and GPS. It also comes with Asus' Waveshare interface, which includes MyNet (streams media to networked devices), MyLibrary (digital bookstore) and MyCloud (cloud storage and remote access tool).

The Transformer comes with Android 3.0 (codenamed Honeycomb) but is upgradeable to Android 3.1 (codenamed Honeycomb) via an over-the-air update. Asus is currently testing an update to Android 3.2 (codenamed Honeycomb).

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/44933-asus-eee-pad-transformers-successor-to-launch-this-october.html

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TNW?s Daily Dose ? 24 hours of tech news in 5 minutes [Audio]

More evidence emerges that Apple is gearing up to launch the iPhone 5 next month, Microsoft is facing to legal action from a disgruntled Xbox Live Gold customer, and Twitter ditches its old website design completely while launching a new look for the iPad. It?s all in today?s Daily Dose.

You can catch The Daily Dose every Monday through Friday right here on The Next Web. Make sure to hit the subscription button of your choice below to get The Daily Dose as soon as it?s available.

TNWDailyDose 03-08-2011 by TNW Daily Dose

Apple reportedly orders 10 million iPhone 5 units, shipping in September Read more

Microsoft accused of double-billing Xbox Live customers in class action lawsuit Read more

Old Twitter Being Retired This Week Read more

Slick new Twitter.com for iPad goes live, rolling out gradually. Read more

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/dailydose/2011/08/03/tnw%E2%80%99s-daily-dose-%E2%80%93-24-hours-of-tech-news-in-5-minutes-audio-17/

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