Blog - Poker n' Face

Tegra 2-powered ViewSonic G Tablet lands for $399

While there should be plenty of tablets to choose from next year, the pickings are still slim for anyone that wants an iPad alternative this holiday season. One potential option, the ViewSonic G, has begun rolling out to retailers this month, including Office Depot.

Priced at $399, or $100 less than the cheapest iPad, the ViewSonic G offers a 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 SoC, 512MB of RAM, a 16GB SSD, and a 10-inch multitouch display with a resolution of 1024x600. That's plenty of real estate for basic use, but you can buy a docking station with HDMI output that'll let you watch 1080p videos on a larger display.


The slate itself carries a USB 2.0 port, a microSD slot, 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 connectivity, as well as a front-mounted 1.3-megapixel camera for video conferencing. The device weighs 1.55lbs and reportedly maxes out around 8-10 hours of battery life -- both of which are slightly worse than the iPad's 1.5lb body and 9-10 hour runtime.

On the software front, ViewSonic's product runs Android 2.2 (Froyo), and there's also talk of hardware-accelerated Flash. It seems like VIewSonic is advertising its own "G Tablet Apps Store," so we're not sure if the slate ships with the standard Android Market.

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/41367-tegra-2powered-viewsonic-g-tablet-lands-for-399.html

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In U.S. Sting Operations, Questions of Entrapment

Some defense lawyers and civil rights advocates said the government?s tactics, particularly since the Sept. 11 attacks, have raised questions about the possible entrapment of people who pose no real danger but are enticed into pretend plots at the government?s urging.

But law enforcement officials said on Monday that agents and prosecutors had carefully planned the tactics used in the undercover operation that led to the arrest of the Somali-born teenager, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, a naturalized United States citizen. They said that Mr. Mohamud was given several opportunities to vent his anger in ways that would not be deadly, but that he refused each time.

?I am confident that there is no entrapment here, and no entrapment claim will be found to be successful,? Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Monday. ?There were, as I said, a number of opportunities that the subject in this matter, the defendant in this matter, was given to retreat, to take a different path. He chose at every step to continue.?

Mr. Holder called the sting operation, in which Mr. Mohamud was under the scrutiny of federal agents for nearly six months, ?part of a forward-leaning way in which the Justice Department, the F.B.I., our law enforcement partners at the state and local level are trying to find people who are bound and determined to harm Americans and American interests around the world.?

A study this year by the Center on Law and Security at New York University, which tracks terrorism cases, found that of 156 prosecutions in what it identified as the most significant 50 cases since 2001, informers were relied on in 97 of them, or 62 percent. The entrapment defense has often been raised, but as of September, it had never been successful in producing an acquittal in a post-Sept. 11 terrorism trial, the study found.

The Portland case resembles several others in which American residents, inspired by militant Web sites, have tried to carry out attacks in the name of the militant Islamic movement only to be captured in a sting operation, with undercover F.B.I. agents or informers playing the role of terrorists and, as in this case, supplying a fake bomb.

In September 2009, Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, a 19-year old Jordanian citizen, was arrested and charged with placing a fake bomb at a Dallas skyscraper. In October, Farooque Ahmed, a 34-year-old naturalized American citizen born in Pakistan, was arrested and charged with plotting to bomb the Washington Metro after meeting with undercover agents and discussing his plans and surveillance activities, the authorities said.

Some Muslim leaders in Oregon questioned how the sting operation there was carried out.

Imtiaz Khan, the president of the Islamic Center of Portland and Masjed As-Saber, a mosque where Mr. Mohamud worshiped, said several people at the mosque had questioned why law enforcement helped orchestrate such an elaborate plan for a terrorist act.

?They?re saying, ?Why allow it to get to this public stunt? To put the community on edge?? ? Mr. Khan said.

Mr. Khan said he and other Muslim leaders met regularly with the F.B.I. and other federal officials. In May, he was among a group of Muslim leaders in the Portland area who issued a statement condemning an attempted bombing in Times Square and thanking law enforcement for its ?outstanding work? in the case.

Jesse Day, a spokesman for the mosque and Islamic center, said the circumstances of Mr. Mohamud?s arrest had stirred ?some distrust, a little bit, in the tactics? of law enforcement.

The government?s 36-page affidavit filed in the Oregon case lays out a crucial conversation between Mr. Mohamud and an F.B.I. informer at their first meeting, on July 30, 2010. According to the affidavit, the informer suggested five ways that Mr. Mohamud could help the cause of Islam, some of which were peaceful, like proselytizing, and some of which were violent and illegal.

Mr. Mohamud, the affidavit said, immediately picked a violent crime: becoming ?operational,? by which he said he meant putting together a car bomb. The informer then offered to put Mr. Mohamud in touch with an explosives expert, setting off the chain of events that led to his eventual arrest.

William Yardley contributed reporting from Portland, Ore., and Scott Shane from Washington.

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Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=f9b266109d5571aaa76d7b9591f92e59

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Do I Need A Website Or Can I Just Be Social? [TNW Social Media]

In today?s social networks, particularly Facebook dominated world, many companies are asking themselves: Do I need a destination site or can I move all my online activities to the social networks I am on?

Here?s a great blog post I found from a year ago which predicted the decline of the Destination Web vs. the Social Web.

The Reasons Why You DON?T Need A Website:

1) Why work so hard to bring traffic to your website when Facebook alone has 550 million users? Do you know how long it would take you to get 550 million people to come to your site utilizing SEO efforts and buying ads? Today, companies can engage with potential customers and current customers on their Facebook page far better than on a static site, with many more social features of engagement than anyone could have ever dreamt of.

2) On Facebook you can integrate all of your other social activities right on your page by creating specific tabs for your twitter profile, YouTube channel, FAQ?s (Get Satisfaction) and specific landing tabs to expose your promotions, such as this one.

3) On Facebook you can even open an online store and sell your products. It?s called F-Commerce. Take for example, Pampers web store and Toy Story Facebook page.

4) Facebook?s Photos application is one of Facebook?s most popular apps and is the most popular photo directory in the world. On Facebook you can feature all of your product photos in nicely organized albums for the world to view.

5) On Facebook you can create company events ? whether virtual or offline ? and integrate them with the rest of your activities.

6) On YouTube you can aggregate all your videos and create a channel where you can feature special videos and create your own customized channel (though you can and should upload your videos to Facebook as well).

7) On LinkedIn, you can target all of your business contacts and initiate contact with them unlike on a static website

8 ) On Facebook, users can view Facebook Insights (or analytics) for all your pages. Here you will find information regarding your monthly active users, number of new likes, members? demographics and page views.

Here Are The Reasons Why You DO Need A Website:

1) Image is everything. And in today?s world, a company without a website is a company without a face.

2) Building your own database of ? users, clients, names. What will you do if tomorrow Facebook closes your page and you are left with no database of your own? You will be lost. You must have a database of your customers.

3) Search ? people today still search Google when looking for things ? a hotel in Paris, a new coffee-maker, etc. You want to be high up in those Google search results when they do their searching.

N.B. It will be interesting to see what happens with FEO (Facebook Engine Optimization) when search comes to play a more major role in Facebook?s existence.

4) Blogging ? creating a company blog enables you to make a name for yourself in your field. Look at Mint for example and what a remarkable job they did with their blog. Their blog got so popular that it was bringing tons of traffic to their site and increasing their brand awareness.

At the end of the day, it?s all about the cross-promotion of your different properties and maximized utilization of each and every one of them. Each of your social channels is supposed to promote your destination channels and vice versa. Your blog should be promoted on your Facebook page. Your Youtube videos should be promoted on your Twitter profile. Your Twitter should be promoted on your blog and your Facebook should be promoted everywhere. Take, for example, Skittles? amazing website which basically acts as an access point to all of Skittles? online social activities and acts as a catalyst of virality. Hopefully not only you will be promoting your different properties but others will as well and this will in turn help your SEO and increase the traffic to your site while also helping your social profiles thrive.

We live in a world where word spreads fast. Take advantage of certain technologies and applications which you don?t need to develop on your own while understanding which basic utilities and functions you do need to program on your end so as to not only properly function but even succeed as a business.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2010/12/01/do-i-need-a-website-or-can-i-just-be-social/

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Sidebar: A Witness Lies, the Court Shrugs and Veterans Are Outraged

WASHINGTON

Elven J. Swisher wore a replica of a Purple Heart on the witness stand when he testified that the defendant had tried to hire him to kill three federal officials.

Asked about the medal, Mr. Swisher pulled a document from his pocket to show that he was entitled to it and many others for his service in combat in the Korean War.

Mr. Swisher said the defendant, David R. Hinkson, an armchair constitutionalist with eccentric views about the tax code, had asked him how many men he had killed. ?Too many,? Mr. Swisher recalled saying.

All lies. Mr. Swisher had never seen combat, had killed no one and had served without distinction. The document was a forgery. Mr. Swisher has since been convicted of lying to federal officials, wearing fake medals and defrauding the Department of Veterans Affairs of benefits for combat injuries.

But the jury knew none of this, and with Mr. Swisher?s testimony it convicted Mr. Hinkson of soliciting three murders. He was sentenced to 33 years for those crimes, along with 10 years for tax evasion, and he is serving his sentence in the maximum-security prison in Florence, Colo.

When Mr. Swisher?s lies came to light, Mr. Hinkson challenged his convictions for soliciting the murders. The jury had believed him guilty of more than loose talk, he said, only because Mr. Swisher had falsely presented himself as a battle-hardened killer.

But the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled against him last year by a 7-to-4 vote.

Mr. Swisher?s lies, the majority said, were no big deal. There was no reason to think the jury would have come out differently had it known of ?Swisher?s routine, rather than heroic, military history,? Judge Carlos T. Bea wrote.

That decision has outraged veterans.

William F. Mac Swain, the national president of the Korean War Veterans Association, told the appeals court in a brief filed after the decision that ?its reasoning and language are a slap in the face to veterans and jurors alike.?

The majority opinion implied ?that the average American no longer attaches any significance to a veteran?s wartime service,? Mr. Mac Swain continued.

In fact, he said, jurors are likely to believe those who have sacrificed to defend them and are likely to reject the testimony of those who have falsely claimed entitlement to honors for which others have bled and died.

That was not just speculation. One of the jurors at Mr. Hinkson?s trial, in Boise, Idaho, in 2005, later said he would have voted to acquit had he known the truth.

?I was surprised to hear that Mr. Swisher was allowed to tell such lies which created the misimpression that he would be a good ?hit man? candidate based on having been a decorated combat veteran,? the juror, Ben S. Casey, said in a sworn statement. ?These lies discredit him as a witness and therefore discredit the rest of his testimony.?

Mr. Mac Swain?s brief was prepared by John W. Keker, a prominent San Francisco lawyer who earned a Purple Heart in Vietnam. In an interview, Mr. Keker said the majority?s ?dismissive and even supercilious attitude? about military service ?drove me out of my mind.?

?The idea that jurors wouldn?t be tremendously affected if they knew someone had lied about getting their war decorations was just astonishing,? Mr. Keker said.

After reading Mr. Keker?s brief, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski switched his vote. He said the brief and a recent Supreme Court decision had made him realize he had ?underestimated the trust some jurors would have placed in Swisher if they thought he was a decorated combat veteran, and the likely backlash if they learned he was a fraud.?

But the tally the second time around, in July, was still 6 to 5 against Mr. Hinkson.

Dennis P. Riordan, one of Mr. Hinkson?s lawyers, said he was working on an appeal to the Supreme Court, where the justices have lately been quite engaged with the meaning of military service.

The decision Chief Judge Kozinski referred to, for instance, granted a new sentencing hearing to a death row inmate, George Porter Jr. In an unsigned unanimous opinion, the justices chastised Mr. Porter?s trial lawyer for failing to tell the jury about ?Porter?s heroic military service in two of the most critical ? and horrific ? battles of the Korean War,? service for which he earned two Purple Hearts and other distinctions.

On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in another case about a Korean War veteran. It concerns David L. Henderson, who missed a filing deadline for veterans? benefits because he was bedridden from the very disability for which he sought help.

At the argument in Mr. Hinkson?s case in the Ninth Circuit, there was much discussion of medals and their meaning.

Judge Harry Pregerson, who would end up in dissent, said he and his father had both earned Purple Hearts. ?So I know what it?s about,? he said.

A lawyer for the government, on the other hand, argued that Mr. Swisher?s lies had been inconsequential.

Judge Pregerson asked the lawyer, John F. DePue, what he was wearing on his lapel. It turned out to be a Distinguished Service Medal.

?I honor you for your service,? Judge Pregerson said. ?When I look at you, I say, ?This guy?s got credibility standing there.? ?

?You?re impressing us,? Judge Pregerson said, and then he seemed to refer to Mr. Swisher. ?And if a guy is wearing a Purple Heart medal, that?s going to impress some people, too.?

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House Censure: Humbling to Some, but Not All

In the genteel parliamentary history of the House of Representatives there lurk rowdy days of rough-and-tumble brawls, beatings, chokings, fistfights, upended hairpieces, stentorian demands for apologies unheeded and a lot of sneaky conduct and foul-mouth talk. Some did nothing bad, or almost nothing.

But they all wound up where Representative Charles B. Rangel, a Democrat from Harlem, is expected to find himself this week: in the well of the House, facing the shame of formal censure. The choreographed mortification ritual has played out more than a score of times since 1832. Convicted by peers, the transgressor ? all have been men ? stands before the assembled members and a packed gallery of spectators and reporters as the speaker reads the rebuke.

?What it?s saying is you?ve brought disgrace to the House of Representatives, you?ve discredited the institution that you serve in,? said Ilona Nickels, an author and expert on Congressional affairs. ?You have impugned the integrity of our proceedings. You?re a disgraceful person. And you?re going to stand there in the well of the House and we?re going to read these charges against you and we?re going to, in essence, say, ?Shame on you.? It doesn?t really help your résumé, or your obit for that matter.?

It is also a moment of truth, not for the fainthearted.

On Oct. 27, 1921, Representative Thomas L. Blanton, Democrat of Texas, faced it with deep anxiety. He had been convicted of entering in The Congressional Record a letter that was, in a colleague?s words, ?unspeakable, vile, foul, filthy, profane, blasphemous and obscene.? It involved a squabble between union and nonunion printers, and by today?s standards was relatively mild stuff.

As the speaker finished his condemnation, Mr. Blanton turned ashen and fled the chamber. ?In the corridor he fell exhausted, striking his head on the marble floor,? The New York Times reported. ?He rested a few minutes on a couch, refused medical aid and shuffled to his office, tears running down his face as he forced his way between spectators and members who were leaving the session.?

Not all of them cry and carry on. Depending on the offense, its probable fallout and the thickness of a politician?s skin, censured members have shown humility or defiance, perhaps relieved that the practical consequences are only dishonor and a need to face voters at the next election, well short of immediate expulsion, if slightly more humiliating than a slap-on-the-wrist reprimand. (Officially, there have been 22 acts of House censure, but some are debatable because the censures appear to have been politically motivated.)

As censurable violations go, the seriousness of Mr. Rangel?s fall somewhere in the middle. He was convicted by a subcommittee of the House ethics committee of 11 violations, including improper fund-raising, failing to pay taxes on rental income and failing to report income on Congressional financial-disclosure forms ? not of stealing fortunes, battering colleagues or cornering pages in the anterooms.

It was much worse in 1873, when Representatives Oakes Ames, Republican of Massachusetts, and James Brooks, Democrat of New York, were censured for bribery in the Crédit Mobilier scandal, in which millions were skimmed from stock sales during construction of the nation?s first transcontinental railroad, the Union Pacific.

In 1870, three Republican congressmen ? Benjamin F. Whittemore of South Carolina, John T. Deweese of North Carolina and Roderick R. Butler of Tennessee ? were censured for selling appointments to Annapolis and West Point. And in 1979, Representative Charles C. Diggs Jr., Democrat of Michigan, was censured and resigned after being convicted of mail fraud and padding his staff payroll.

Many 19th-century censures were for ?unparliamentary language,? a grab-bag for name-calling, mud-slinging and insults, mostly in Civil War-era debates. But in 1864, Representatives Alexander Long of Ohio and Benjamin G. Harris of Maryland, both Democrats, were cited for ?treasonable utterances? ? backing the Confederacy.

?When you look at the list for all the various reasons people were disciplined, it really is a function of the times,? Ms. Nickels said. ?Every era has its own ethos ? what?s considered horrible and what?s not considered horrible.?

Kerri MacDonald contributed reporting.

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LinkedIn rival Viadeo gets clever with your contacts [TNW Apps]

While LinkedIn tends to get most of the attention when it comes to social networking for professionals, Viadeo is doing particularly well for itself in parts of Europe, Asia and South America and now claims over 30 million users worldwide. The service, which offers a similar featureset to LinkedIn, has now launched a rather smart new address book.

This newly updated section of the site not only brings all your contacts? details (email address, phone numbers etc) together in one place, rather than having to head to individual profiles to work out how to reach that useful sales lead. It updates itself too, meaning that you always have the most up-to-date contact details available to you.

To improve privacy, you can choose to share ?personal? or ?business? details with different contacts. This should be good if you want to share, say, your mobile phone number with your closest contacts but not with that guy who keeps pestering you about the project you?re still busy working on. You can even choose to share absolutely no details at all with some contacts if you like.

While it doesn?t tend to get much mainstream tech press, Paris-based Viadeo is busy expanding through acquisitions (it bought business social network ApnaCircle in India, for example) and by specifically targeting emerging markets.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/apps/2010/12/01/linkedin-rival-viadeo-gets-clever-with-your-contacts/

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In U.S. Sting Operations, Questions of Entrapment

Some defense lawyers and civil rights advocates said the government?s tactics, particularly since the Sept. 11 attacks, have raised questions about the possible entrapment of people who pose no real danger but are enticed into pretend plots at the government?s urging.

But law enforcement officials said on Monday that agents and prosecutors had carefully planned the tactics used in the undercover operation that led to the arrest of the Somali-born teenager, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, a naturalized United States citizen. They said that Mr. Mohamud was given several opportunities to vent his anger in ways that would not be deadly, but that he refused each time.

?I am confident that there is no entrapment here, and no entrapment claim will be found to be successful,? Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Monday. ?There were, as I said, a number of opportunities that the subject in this matter, the defendant in this matter, was given to retreat, to take a different path. He chose at every step to continue.?

Mr. Holder called the sting operation, in which Mr. Mohamud was under the scrutiny of federal agents for nearly six months, ?part of a forward-leaning way in which the Justice Department, the F.B.I., our law enforcement partners at the state and local level are trying to find people who are bound and determined to harm Americans and American interests around the world.?

A study this year by the Center on Law and Security at New York University, which tracks terrorism cases, found that of 156 prosecutions in what it identified as the most significant 50 cases since 2001, informers were relied on in 97 of them, or 62 percent. The entrapment defense has often been raised, but as of September, it had never been successful in producing an acquittal in a post-Sept. 11 terrorism trial, the study found.

The Portland case resembles several others in which American residents, inspired by militant Web sites, have tried to carry out attacks in the name of the militant Islamic movement only to be captured in a sting operation, with undercover F.B.I. agents or informers playing the role of terrorists and, as in this case, supplying a fake bomb.

In September 2009, Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, a 19-year old Jordanian citizen, was arrested and charged with placing a fake bomb at a Dallas skyscraper. In October, Farooque Ahmed, a 34-year-old naturalized American citizen born in Pakistan, was arrested and charged with plotting to bomb the Washington Metro after meeting with undercover agents and discussing his plans and surveillance activities, the authorities said.

Some Muslim leaders in Oregon questioned how the sting operation there was carried out.

Imtiaz Khan, the president of the Islamic Center of Portland and Masjed As-Saber, a mosque where Mr. Mohamud worshiped, said several people at the mosque had questioned why law enforcement helped orchestrate such an elaborate plan for a terrorist act.

?They?re saying, ?Why allow it to get to this public stunt? To put the community on edge?? ? Mr. Khan said.

Mr. Khan said he and other Muslim leaders met regularly with the F.B.I. and other federal officials. In May, he was among a group of Muslim leaders in the Portland area who issued a statement condemning an attempted bombing in Times Square and thanking law enforcement for its ?outstanding work? in the case.

Jesse Day, a spokesman for the mosque and Islamic center, said the circumstances of Mr. Mohamud?s arrest had stirred ?some distrust, a little bit, in the tactics? of law enforcement.

The government?s 36-page affidavit filed in the Oregon case lays out a crucial conversation between Mr. Mohamud and an F.B.I. informer at their first meeting, on July 30, 2010. According to the affidavit, the informer suggested five ways that Mr. Mohamud could help the cause of Islam, some of which were peaceful, like proselytizing, and some of which were violent and illegal.

Mr. Mohamud, the affidavit said, immediately picked a violent crime: becoming ?operational,? by which he said he meant putting together a car bomb. The informer then offered to put Mr. Mohamud in touch with an explosives expert, setting off the chain of events that led to his eventual arrest.

William Yardley contributed reporting from Portland, Ore., and Scott Shane from Washington.

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Blog - Poker n' Face

Amid Deficit Fears, Obama Freezes Pay

?The hard truth is that getting this deficit under control is going to require some broad sacrifice, and that sacrifice must be shared by employees of the federal government,? Mr. Obama told reporters. He called federal workers ?patriots who love their country? but added, ?I?m asking civil servants to do what they?ve always done? for the nation.

The pay freeze amounted to an opening bid as the president and Republican Congressional leaders begin jousting in earnest over tax and spending policy. It also illustrated how Mr. Obama can use his office on occasion to get ahead of newly elected Republicans; they had been talking about making such a move when they assume control of the House and additional Senate seats in January.

But while the move represents a gesture toward public anger over the anemic economic recovery and rising national debt, the $5 billion to be saved over two years will barely dent a deficit that has exceeded $1 trillion for the past two years. And even those savings would be swamped by the multitrillion-dollar costs of the bigger issue dividing Mr. Obama and the Republicans ? what parts of the Bush-era tax cuts to extend beyond their Dec. 31 expiration, and for how long.

That issue and others will be on the agenda on Tuesday when Mr. Obama will host the House and Senate leaders of each party at the White House for the first time since the midterm elections.

Tuesday will also be the last day for emergency federal assistance for about two million Americans who have been unemployed for long periods, and on Friday a temporary measure providing money for government operations will run out. The two parties are at odds over both matters, with many Republicans opposed to additional unemployment aid and demanding more cuts from domestic spending for the fiscal year that began in October.

Mr. Obama nonetheless expressed optimism that the meeting would be a productive fresh beginning.

?We can?t afford to fall back onto the same old ideologies or the same stale sound bites,? he said.

As Mr. Obama made his comments at the announcement of the pay freeze, the bipartisan commission he established in February to propose ways to reduce the growth of the national debt entered a final two days of negotiations over combinations of spending cuts and revenue increases. In a sign of the struggle to find a compromise that could attract Democratic and Republicans votes, the commission chairmen ? Alan K. Simpson, a former Senate Republican leader, and Erskine B. Bowles, a chief of staff to President Bill Clinton ? decided to meet privately with members one at a time on Monday and Tuesday instead of convening all 18 members.

The Republicans on the panel are generally opposed to raising taxes and the Democrats to big changes in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson revised their draft debt-reduction package over the Thanksgiving holiday break to reflect members? criticisms. Their goal is to reduce projected deficits by nearly $4 trillion over the coming decade. That is roughly the same amount that would be added to the national debt by extending the Bush-era tax rates ? a juxtaposition that underscores the contradictory impulses of elected officials as constituents demand smaller deficits and low taxes.

In advance of Tuesday?s bipartisan White House meeting, Mr. Obama and Democratic Senate leaders conferred by phone to try to coordinate strategy.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi planned to have the House vote on the approach that she, Mr. Obama and the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid, prefer, which would extend the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for income up to $250,000 a year for couples and $200,000 for individuals. But faced with defections from Democrats in swing districts and states, they are considering fallback plans, including one that would keep the Bush-era rates in place for income up to $1 million.

Senator Charles E. Schumer, a Democratic Senate leader from New York, is the main proponent of that plan, which he is labeling the ?millionaires? tax.? He has picked up adherents among Democrats facing re-election challenges in 2012, including Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Claire McCaskill of Missouri.

The lame-duck session of Congress could end up passing a temporary extension that kicks the matter, like other issues, into the next Congress, which convenes in January. On Monday, the House approved a Senate measure that blocks until Jan. 1 a scheduled 23 percent cut in doctors? reimbursements from Medicare ? once again buying time to resolve the costly issue.

The pay freeze Mr. Obama announced wiped out plans for a 1.4 percent across-the-board raise in 2011 for 2.1 million federal civilian employees, including those working at the Defense Department, and it would mean no raise in 2012. The freeze would not affect the nation?s uniformed military personnel, and civilian workers who are promoted would still receive the higher pay that comes with the higher grade or position.

The move would save $2 billion in the 2011 fiscal year that ends Sept. 30 and $5 billion by the end of two fiscal years. Over 10 years, it would save $60 billion, according to Jeffrey Zients, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget and the government?s chief performance officer.

While Congress has final word on federal pay, the president?s freeze seemed certain, given the political environment; if anything, lawmakers may go further by cutting pay. Republicans noted that some of them had called for a pay freeze for months. ?We are pleased that President Obama appears ready to join our efforts,? said Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the incoming Republican majority leader.

With Republicans vowing to make deep budget cuts, Mr. Obama must decide how far he is willing to go and where he will draw a line. He pointed out that he has already called for a three-year freeze on domestic discretionary spending, found $20 billion in savings from eliminating or scaling back unnecessary programs, identified $150 billion in improper payments.

The federal work force is an obvious first target, if one fraught with political risk for a president who relies on union support. Opponents of big government have been trying to build a political case that federal employees are being overpaid. In a report in June, Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute, a libertarian research organization in Washington, found that federal civilian workers had an average annual wage of $81,258 in 2009, compared with $50,464 for the nation?s private-sector workers. Average federal salaries rose 58 percent from 2000 to 2009, compared with 30 percent in the private sector.

Union leaders, though, cited other data showing that federal workers were paid 24 percent less than their private sector counterparts, and they accused Mr. Obama of playing politics. ?Sticking it to a V.A. nurse and a Social Security worker is not the way to go,? John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in an interview.

David M. Herszenhorn contributed reporting.

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