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The summer before the 2010 congressional elections, the Democrats' prospects began to look alarmingly weak. On July 28th, President Barack Obama flew to New York City for two high-priced fund-raisers aimed at replenishing his party's war chest, largely with money from Wall Street. For a busy President, such events could be a chore. And Obama had never been a Wall Street type. In 1983, Obama, then a recent college graduate who wore a leather jacket and smoked cigarettes, took a job on the periphery of New York's financial sector: for a year, he worked for Business International, a firm that produced economic trade reports for multinational companies. According to Obama's mother, he told her that this foray into the corporate world amounted to "working for the enemy," as David Maraniss recounts in his new biography, "Barack Obama: The Story." By the time that Obama ran for President, in 2008, his relations with the financial industry had grown warmer, and he attracted more donations from Wall Street leaders than John McCain, his Republican opponent, did. Yet this good feeling did not last, despite the government's bailout of the banking sector. Many financial titans felt that the President's attitude toward the "one per cent" was insufficiently admiring, even hostile.
The planning for the fund-raisers seemed to underline this estrangement. Obama's first event was a 6 P.M. dinner at the Four Seasons. About forty contributors, many of them from Wall Street, had paid thirty thousand dollars each to dine with him. Some of the invitees were disgruntled supporters who felt unfairly blamed for the country's economic problems, and they wanted to vent about what they considered Obama's anti-business tone. But the President did not have enough time to hear them out—or even share a meal—because after only an hour he was scheduled to leave for the second fund-raiser, at the downtown home of Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue. At the Four Seasons, the President could spend about seven minutes per table, each of which accommodated eight donors. This was fund-raising as speed-dating.
The President's staff knew that Obama wouldn't have a moment to eat properly that day, and that it would be hard for him to do so while being the focus of attention at the fund-raisers. So time was set aside at the Four Seasons for Obama to grab a bite, in a "ready room," with Reggie Love, his personal aide, and Valerie Jarrett, his close friend, senior adviser, and liaison to the business community. This arrangement, however, inadvertently left the impression that Obama preferred his staff's company to that of the paying guests.
"Obama is very meticulous—they have clockwork timing," one of the attendees says. "After a few minutes at each table, a staffer would come and tap him on the shoulder, and he'd get up. But when people pay thirty thousand they want to talk to you, and take a picture with you. He was trying to be fair, and that's great, but every time he started to have a real conversation he got tapped."
The attendee appreciates that such events must get tiresome for Obama. "Each person, at each table, says to the President, 'Here's what you have to do . . .' At the next table, it's the same." Even so, he noted that Bill Clinton—who set the gold standard for the art form known as "donor maintenance"—would have presided over the same event with more enthusiasm: "He would have stayed an extra hour." After that Four Seasons dinner, the attendee adds, "people were a little mad."
Top Obama donors began grumbling on the first day of the Administration. "The swearing-in was the beginning of pissing off the donors," a longtime Washington fund-raiser says. "During the inaugural weekend, they didn't have the capacity to handle all the people who had participated at the highest levels, because there were so many." One middle-aged widow, from whom the fund-raiser had secured fifty thousand dollars, got four tickets to the swearing-in, but none of them were together. "She was so offended!" the fund-raiser says. "And I got no credit, by the way, for bringing her in. Important donors need to be cultivated so that they're there four years later."
As the Washington fund-raiser sees it, the White House social secretary must spend the first year of an Administration saying, "Thank you, thank you, thank you." Instead, the fund-raiser says, Obama's first social secretary, Desirée Rogers—a stylish Harvard Business School graduate and a friend from Chicago—made some donors feel unwelcome. Anita McBride, the chief of staff to Laura Bush, says, "It's always a very delicate balance at the White House. Do donors think they are buying favors or access? You have to be very conscious of how you use the trappings of the White House. But you can go too far in the other direction, too. Donors are called on to do a lot. It doesn't take a lot to say thank you." One of the simplest ways, she notes, is to provide donors with "grip-and-grin" photographs with the President. "It doesn't require a lot of effort on anyone's part, but there's been a reluctance to do it" in the Obama White House. "That can produce some hurt feelings."
Big donors were particularly offended by Obama's reluctance to pose with them for photographs at the first White House Christmas and Hanukkah parties. Obama agreed to pose with members of the White House press corps, but not with donors, because, a former adviser says, "he didn't want to have to stand there for fourteen parties in a row." This decision continues to provoke disbelief from some Democratic fund-raisers. "It's as easy as falling off a log!" one says. "They just want a picture of themselves with the President that they can hang on the bathroom wall, so that their friends can see it when they take a piss." Another says, "Oh, my God—the pictures, the fucking pictures!" (In 2010, the photograph policy was reversed; Rogers left the Administration that year.)
Creating a sense of intimacy with the President is especially important with Democratic donors, a frustrated Obama fund-raiser argues: "Unlike Republicans, they have no business interest being furthered by the donation—they just like to be involved. So it makes them more needy. It's like, 'If you're not going to deregulate my industry, or lower my taxes, can't I at least get a picture?' "
Democrats involved in the 2012 campaign say that the President and his White House staff have markedly improved their donor-maintenance skills. In June, Obama spent an evening attending a successful forty-thousand-dollar-a-head fund-raiser, along with Bill Clinton, in the Upper East Side town house of Marc Lasry, the billionaire C.E.O. of Avenue Capital Group. (Clinton is expected to help at other such events.) But if Obama hopes to catch up with his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, in the 2012 money race, he will need to get a lot more rich Democrats to empty their pockets.
In the past, a President's ability to charm the super-rich might not have mattered much. A decade ago, however, wealthy Democrats and Republicans began circumventing limits on direct campaign contributions by making enormous donations to political groups that were technically separate from campaigns but effectively served as their proxies, often by funding negative ads. In 2004, the outspoken liberal financier George Soros gave $27.5 million—then a record amount—to groups opposing President George W. Bush. The strategy provoked widespread censure. (The Republican National Committee accused Soros of having "purchased the Democratic Party.") Richard Hasen, an election-law expert at the University of California at Irvine, says that "a legal cloud hung over" such efforts to sway elections. But in 2010 the Supreme Court, in the landmark case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, ruled that groups could make "independent expenditures" without limits, because such spending amounted to "political speech." Subsequently, a lower court ruled, in Speechnow.org v. Federal Election Commission, that individuals could pool unlimited resources in order to support or criticize candidates, as long as these efforts were not explicitly coördinated with official campaigns. Since then, the number of indirect gifts has soared, giving rise to the "Super PAC," and very wealthy Americans have begun wielding increasingly disproportionate power in U.S. politics.
As Politico reported recently, a pool of only twenty-one hundred people has given a total of two hundred million dollars to the 2012 campaigns and their Super PACs—fifty-two million dollars more than the combined donations of the two and a half million voters who have given two hundred dollars or less. In other words, the top .07 per cent of donors are exerting greater influence on the 2012 race than the bottom eighty-six per cent. And this accounts only for publicly disclosed donations: much of the money raised during this election cycle consists of secret gifts to "nonprofit public-welfare" groups that claim to have no overt political agenda.
Obama's 2012 campaign has held a record number of fund-raisers, but it has focussed on collecting the relatively small sums of money that can be contributed directly to a federal candidate's campaign. This year, the limit on such "hard" donations is five thousand dollars per candidate, and thirty thousand eight hundred dollars to a national political party. Obama has consistently led Romney in direct donations, though the gap is narrowing. Romney, however, has overwhelmingly outpaced Obama in the kind of "mega" donations that have flourished since the Citizens United ruling. By the end of July, the two biggest Super PACs allied with Romney, Restore Our Future and American Crossroads, had raised about a hundred and twenty-two million dollars. The most prominent Super PACs allied with Obama, Priorities USA Action and American Bridge 21st Century, had raised only about thirty million.
By August, at least thirty-three American billionaires had each given a quarter of a million dollars, or more, to groups whose aim is to defeat Obama. At this point in the campaign, most of that money is funding attack ads in swing states like Colorado and Virginia. Federal-election reports indicate that twenty-seven of those billionaires have given large donations to Restore Our Future, which was founded by former Romney aides, and to American Crossroads, which was conceived by the Republican political operative Karl Rove. News reports have linked six of the billionaires to nonprofit social-welfare groups that aren't required to identify contributors. Earlier this month, one of those groups, Americans for Prosperity—which was founded, in part, by the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch—purchased a reported twenty-five million dollars in advertising time; the spots are now airing on television stations in eleven swing states. Though Americans for Prosperity is purportedly nonpartisan, its ads attack Obama for presiding over a growing federal deficit.
According to ProPublica, Americans for Prosperity and another conservative group have accounted for more than eighty per cent of spending by social-welfare nonprofits in the 2012 election cycle. Conservative social-welfare groups have already spent some seventy million dollars on television ads, whereas liberal groups have spent only $1.6 million.
Meanwhile, only three billionaires have contributed at least a quarter of a million dollars to Priorities USA, the largest pro-Obama Super PAC. George Soros has given money to the Super PAC American Bridge, which produces opposition research for liberal candidates. Warren Buffett, America's second-richest man, is one of Obama's most high-profile supporters, but he has declared that he will not support Super PACs, saying, "I don't want to see democracy go in that direction."
This imbalance has caused alarm among Democratic strategists, and Obama has warned—perhaps with some exaggeration—that, unless wealthy supporters make large gifts, he will become the only sitting President in recent history to be outspent in a campaign. In June, The Daily Beast obtained a recording of a fund-raising call that Obama made from Air Force One, in which he told potential donors not to be surprised if a couple of Republican billionaires "wrote twenty-million-dollar checks" to buy "all the TV time," leaving Democrats "flat-footed in September or October."
It's not easy for Obama to play the current money game, since he has repeatedly called it an unethical contest. He reserved some of the harshest words of his Presidency for the Citizens United ruling, saying that he couldn't "think of anything more devastating to the public interest." Indeed, advocates of campaign-finance reform think that it's perverse to fault Obama for being insufficiently solicitous of billionaires. Meredith McGehee, the policy director of the Campaign Legal Center, says, "The whole question of whether the President's donors are happy just boils down to how corrupting this whole system is. That the President, with all the other things on his plate, has to worry about keeping high rollers happy is just sad." She adds, "We're heading toward plutocracy, pretty clearly."
David Axelrod, the senior strategist of Obama's 2012 campaign, warns that the Citizens United decision may have permanently tilted the playing field away from not just Obama but all future Democratic candidates. "The Supreme Court is saying that campaign spending is a matter of free speech, but it has set up a situation where the more money you have the more speech you can buy," Axelrod says. "That's a threatening concept for democracy." He adds, "If your party serves the powerful and well-funded interests, and there's no limit to what you can spend, you have a permanent, structural advantage. We're averaging fifty-dollar checks in our campaign, and trying to ward off these seven- or even eight-figure checks on the other side. That disparity is pretty striking, and so are the implications. In many ways, we're back in the Gilded Age. We have robber barons buying the government."
Arnold Hiatt, the former chairman of Stride Rite shoes, has been one of the most consistent liberal donors in recent decades, and also one of the most vocal proponents of public campaign financing. Though he is sympathetic to Obama's fund-raising challenges, he also thinks that the campaign may have miscalculated. "The people who have the wherewithal have not been cultivated," he says. "Citizens United didn't come along until quite late. I think Obama thought he wouldn't need those people."
As Hiatt sees it, "Obama is in a bind." Throughout his career, the President has supported campaign-finance reform. Not only did he speak out against the Citizens United ruling; he initially declined to encourage supporters to donate to Priorities USA. By the end of 2011, however, Obama's campaign managers had realized that Super PACs opposing the President posed a lethal threat. At Obama's campaign headquarters, in Chicago, Jim Messina, the campaign manager, wrote "$800,000,000" on a whiteboard, and told Axelrod that the Republicans' indirect-donation network was capable of raising at least that amount to defeat Obama.
In February, after considerable debate, during which some advisers urged the President to stick to his principles and preserve his opposition to Citizens United as a political issue, the campaign bowed to the new economic reality and announced that it would begin encouraging donations to Super PACs that supported Obama's candidacy. Campaign officials even promised to send Administration members to speak to potential Super PAC donors—though Obama would not do so himself.
"We concluded we couldn't play touch football if they were playing tackle," Axelrod says, adding that the eight-hundred-million-dollar figure now looks quaint. He says that Republican spending in the Presidential race, including that of outside groups, may exceed $1.2 billion.
Hiatt worries that Obama's reversal may be too little, too late. "He said he'd accept money from Super PACs, but he's done nothing to encourage it," Hiatt says. "It's cost him dearly."
Hiatt is a member of the Democracy Alliance, a group of wealthy liberal donors led by Rob McKay, an heir to the Taco Bell fortune. In November, Hiatt asked the President to speak to the group, but Obama declined; the White House said that he was too busy. In June, 2011, the Federal Election Commission announced that candidates could be "featured guests" at Super PAC events, but such interactions remain a legal gray area. Hiatt believes that Obama was concerned that giving the speech would violate the spirit of campaign-finance law, which bars candidates from "coördinating" with outside fund-raising groups.
Romney has played by different rules. Last year, he declared, "I'm not allowed to communicate with a Super PAC in any way, shape, or form. If we coördinate in any way whatsoever, we go to the big house." Yet he has come very close to crossing that line. He has communicated directly with Super PAC supporters on many occasions, stopping only at directly soliciting funds from them.
In July, 2011, Romney attended a private dinner in New York, purportedly to show his appreciation for two dozen current and potential donors. After delivering brief remarks, he departed, leaving the solicitation of funds to others. In June, Romney mingled with wealthy supporters at a weekend retreat at a Utah ski resort. That same weekend, the Huffington Post later revealed, two hundred wealthy guests attended a nearby luncheon featuring a speech by Karl Rove, the architect of American Crossroads, the pro-Romney Super PAC. Technically, the two events were independent, though even that distinction was blurry; the luncheon was sponsored by an investment fund led by Romney's eldest son, Tagg, and the finance chief of Romney's campaign, Spencer Zwick. And in July, at a fund-raising breakfast in Jerusalem, Romney sat next to the top donor to pro-Romney Super PACs: the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who has so far spent $41.1 million of his $24.9-billion fortune on the effort to defeat Obama and other Democrats, and has pledged to spend as much as a hundred million dollars.
Of the proposed Democracy Alliance event, Hiatt says, "Obama wouldn't have asked for money, but he could have addressed a group of very wealthy progressive donors who have a Super PAC." In the end, Hiatt says, Obama must have considered it "too close for comfort." Part of Obama's reluctance, he believes, was based on principle, and another part was personal. "Obama is not a lover by nature," Hiatt says. "He is so private, and so emotionally and intellectually honest. He doesn't like to stroke people."
Many top Democratic donors are as disheartened as Obama is about the top-dollar gamesmanship unleashed by the Citizens United ruling. Many wealthy liberals oppose the very idea of Super PACs. A Democratic billionaire told me, "I'm happy to spend, but not on Super PACs. They don't seem like they should be legal. They're undemocratic." Asked if he'd continue to abstain if it meant that Obama would lose, he said, "I find it hard to believe Obama won't win."
Arnold Hiatt has not yet given money to Priorities USA, the Super PAC. Instead, he has tried to persuade other, even wealthier liberals to do so. "If I put a million dollars in, I'd like to know it has company," he says. "We can leverage it, to raise a hundred million." But so far the Democrats have lacked what is known as a "lead donor": a high-profile figure who contributes a splashy amount and signals to other big players that it is time to do the same. "It's really sad," Hiatt says. "You could buy this election for a billion dollars."
Another major Democratic donor asks, "Where's Penny Pritzker? Where's George Soros?" Pritzker, a businesswoman and the billionaire heiress to the Hyatt Hotel fortune, was Obama's campaign-finance chairperson in 2008. Both Pritzker and Soros have given five thousand dollars to Obama's official campaign, but neither has given money to Priorities USA. "Whatever it is that has made George Soros and Penny Pritzker not write checks to the Super PAC is a very serious weakness," the major donor says. Also missing from the Priorities USA roster is the insurance-company mogul Peter Lewis, who donated millions to Democratic efforts in 2004; this year, he is reportedly focussing his giving elsewhere, including on a broad campaign to legalize marijuana. In 2008, David Geffen, the Hollywood music and film producer, made headlines by breaking with the Clintons in favor of supporting Obama. This time around, Geffen has contributed the legal maximum amount to the Obama campaign and the Democratic Party, but he has given nothing to Priorities USA. Two acquaintances of Geffen's say that he has complained about Obama's remoteness since becoming President. (Geffen says that he "totally supports this President.")
"There's been no thanks for anyone!" the major Democratic donor says. He adds that in 2008 he gave "multiple millions" to groups working to elect Obama. But, he notes, although he has attended various White House functions, and has met Obama on several occasions, "I don't think they have a clue who I am. I don't think they even know how much I gave." He says that he has been introduced twice to Jarrett, "and neither time did she remember who I am." Instead, he says, "she seemed to think she was blessing me by breathing in the same space." Despite repeated pitches, he has not yet given money to Priorities USA. In his view, the Obama White House has not followed the fundamental rule of donor maintenance, which he himself has practiced while fund-raising for other causes: "You have to suck up!" With Obama, he says, "I don't know if it's a personality thing, an ego thing, or an intellectual thing. I just don't get it. But people want to be kissed. They want to be thanked."
Obama, he says, is "so interested in doing the right thing that he thought other people would be interested in him for doing the right thing, and he thinks that's all that's needed."
Axelrod defends the President. "He's worked hard to raise the money we need and by no means takes that support for granted," he says. "He appreciates it. But he's not carnivorous about it. He doesn't see himself as Fund-raiser-in-Chief."
Obama sought the Presidency in part because he hoped to alter the relationship between powerful financial interests and those who govern. On his first day in office, he banned lobbyists from his Administration. He later noted, "One of the reasons I ran for President was because I believed so strongly that the voices of everyday Americans—hardworking folks doing everything they can to stay afloat—just weren't being heard over the powerful voices of the special interests in Washington." During the 2008 campaign, he discouraged supporters from contributing unlimited sums to "527 groups," the predecessors of Super PACs.
Obama acknowledges that his record on campaign-finance issues is not entirely pure. In 2008, after championing campaign-finance reform in the Senate, he broke his own pledge to accept public financing as a Presidential candidate, and became instead the first nominee since Watergate to depend entirely on private funds. The decision was pragmatic: he was so popular that he handily raised more money than John McCain, ultimately spending a record-breaking seven hundred and forty-five million dollars. In 2007, Obama admitted that he suffered "from the same original sin of all politicians, which is: We've got to raise money." But he insisted that he would fight to reform the system: "The argument is not that I'm pristine, because I'm swimming in the same muddy water. The argument is that I know it's muddy and I want to clean it up."
Maraniss, the Obama biographer, believes that the President's attitude toward money is complicated. "There is a misimpression that his family was alienated from the capitalist system," Maraniss says. "Not so." He points out that both Obama's grandmother Madelyn Dunham, a vice-president at the Bank of Hawaii, and his mother, Anne Dunham, an anthropologist who developed a microloan program for Indonesian artisans, worked in the financial realm. But it's also true that Obama never had any interest in business, and that instead of pursuing more lucrative opportunities he chose to become a poorly paid community organizer in Chicago. While attending Harvard Law School, Obama spent his one summer at a corporate firm debating fellow-associates about the need to "give back" to society.
Obama met his wife, Michelle, at the firm. Although the two were Ivy League graduates, it's often forgotten how atypical their economic backgrounds were in those circles. The First Lady emphasized this at a recent campaign event in New Hampshire, explaining that Barack "knows what it means when a family struggles," for "he is the son of a single mother who struggled to pay the bills and put him and his sister through school." Michelle herself, as a child, lived in a bungalow on Chicago's South Side which was so small that her parents slept on the living-room couch. While she was at Princeton, her aunt worked nearby, as a domestic servant. According to Jodi Kantor, the author of "The Obamas," Michelle and Barack shared an early conviction that the gap between the rich and the poor had less to do with hard work and merit than with "opportunity, power, access and wealth." Obama continues to see economic success as the result of many factors besides individual effort, and, consequently, he may be less awed by wealth than others.
During his rise in Chicago politics, Obama won over many rich donors, including Pritzker. But, in his book "The Audacity of Hope," he writes warily of their seductive influence. He describes the "law firm partners and investment bankers, hedge fund managers and venture capitalists" whom he courted for donations to his 2004 Senate campaign as mostly "smart, interesting people," who asked for no specific favors. Yet, Obama wrote, politicians who spent too much time among the wealthy risked losing touch with the "frequent hardship of the other 99 percent of the population—that is, the people that I'd entered public life to serve."
Obama, Maraniss says, "showed no disdain for raising money," but he demonstrated less reverence for wealthy backers than many other politicians did. Maraniss sees Obama as a man with "a moviegoer's or writer's sensibility, where he is both participating and observing himself participating, and views much of the political process as ridiculous or surreal, even as he is deep into it." He adds, "I think donors can sense this ambivalence."
A former adviser to the President points out that Obama rose so quickly in national politics that "he never built a relationship at all with traditional Democratic donors." Just a dozen years ago, in 2000, Obama had so few Democratic Party connections that he couldn't get a floor pass at the Democratic National Convention. In 2004, he ran for the U.S. Senate in Illinois, and was one of several contenders in a Democratic primary; big, national donors were not inclined to involve themselves in the contest, and therefore did not get to know him. That year, however, he gave a galvanizing keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention. Vaulted to fame, Obama no longer needed to search for money—it flowed his way. He was in the Senate for only two years before announcing his Presidential candidacy, and during that time he was the most sought-after attraction at other Democrats' fund-raisers. He spent little time cultivating his own donor network. "Obama didn't develop the deep personal relationships with fund-raisers that most people have by the time they run for President," the former adviser says. By contrast, Bill Clinton, who had been collecting supporters since his undergraduate days, at Georgetown, had a huge network in place when he ran for the Presidency, in 1992.
When Obama ran for the Presidential nomination against Hillary Clinton, in 2008, most of the traditional large Democratic donors supported her. His other rivals—Joseph Biden, Christopher Dodd, and John Edwards—had, after years in the Senate, also developed finance networks. The Obama campaign was forced to build an alternative financial base, consisting of a few major Illinois donors, such as Pritzker, and an intricate network of small- and medium-sized donors, many of whom were new to national politics. Obama's team famously utilized social media to engage first-time, small donors.
But, as Richard Wolffe writes in "Renegade," his book about Obama's 2008 campaign, contrary to Obama's "carefully cultivated image, the money did not grow at the grass roots." Before Obama secured the Democratic nomination, funds raised on the Internet accounted for only a fraction of his haul. Instead, he attended a back-breaking number of fund-raisers, and asked everyone he and his supporters knew to contribute to his campaign the maximum legal amount of hard money, which was then forty-six hundred dollars. Obama's operation, Wolffe writes, was "a hybrid of corporate management and community organizing." It was not a chummy collaboration between a candidate and super-wealthy players. Harold Ickes, the veteran Democratic strategist, says, "The Obama people were tutored in the context of small money. They saw the big money as corrupt."
Bill Clinton, by contrast, was so inventively solicitous of the rich that he was accused—falsely, he insisted—of auctioning off sleepovers in the Lincoln Bedroom. People raising Democratic funds this year say that wealthy donors regularly complain of getting poorer treatment than they did during the Clinton years, when the President and Terry McAuliffe, his campaign-finance chairperson, formed a tireless tag team. One fund-raiser says, "There used to be regularized dinners, and stays at the Lincoln Bedroom or Camp David. This President spends his time with his friends, and doesn't much suffer being around people just because they gave money. He does more than you think, but it's a different culture. It's much less than either Bush or Clinton. Those Administrations knew when it was somebody's birthday, or someone's grandson's bar mitzvah."
Hiatt, the former Stride Rite chairman, has witnessed at first hand the difference between Obama and Bill Clinton. In 1996, Hiatt divided half a million dollars among thirty-eight congressional candidates (all of whom were committed to campaign-finance reform). He recalls, "That gave me the dubious distinction of being the second-largest contributor to the Democratic National Committee, which I shuddered at." In the spring of 1997, he says, President Clinton invited him to a dinner. When he arrived, he found thirty top contributors seated around a table. "It was so vulgar," he says. "The biggest donors were closest to the President. On his right was Bernard Schwartz, of Loral Corporation, who was later given permission to launch a satellite in China." (Schwartz, who was cleared of accusations that his donations were improper, says he is "truly sorry" for having given large sums, in indirect gifts, to Democrats—a strategy that he calls "inimical to the well-being of politics in the country.") After dinner, Hiatt recalls, Clinton "stroked the fat cats," asking each donor for his thoughts, and obligingly taking notes.
Such social affirmation is the goal of most big Democratic donors, the former Obama adviser says: "Usually, it's not about favors. They want the chief of staff calling to get their opinion. Or they want to say, when they are out in the Hamptons, that they were just talking with the President."
But Obama still rarely calls donors. One fund-raiser estimates that even now, at the height of the election season, he probably makes only a few such calls a month. Chicago supporters who have raised money for him for years say that it's just how he is.
A Chicago donor, who has attended events at the White House, and describes the President as "unfailingly courteous, warm, wonderful, and generous," notes that Obama has never called him. "He's more of an introspective guy than either Bill Clinton or George Bush," the donor says. "He's fantastic in small groups, but he's not the kind of guy I would go out and have a beer with. But, by the way, that's not my thing, either. I'm busy, and he's got more important things to do."
In addition to being less of a glad-hander than most politicians, Obama is also the first President in a long time to have small children in the White House. Some Washingtonians have complained that Obama rarely goes out at night or socializes with members of Congress, preferring to spend time with his family. Jodi Kantor, in her book, points out that the President is unwilling to miss dinner with his family more than two nights a week. This doesn't leave much time for strategic socializing.
A few big donors, such as Robert Wolf, a former top executive at UBS, have become genuine friends of Obama's. But, for a politician, Obama is unusually self-contained. In this regard, some have likened him to Jimmy Carter. Gerald Rafshoon, who was Carter's media adviser in the White House, agrees that Carter had little appetite for massaging donors or Washington power brokers. But, Rafshoon says, Robert Strauss, the former chairman of the Democratic Party, persuaded Carter to do it anyway: "Carter didn't like fund-raising, but he did it. He also knew he had to have dinner with senators like Russell Long. We also had thirty dinners in the residence for the press. It paid off." Perhaps, he suggests, Obama needs more advisers telling him, "This is necessary. Do it."
As Sheldon Adelson has shown, a single billionaire donor has the potential to make a critical difference in an American Presidential race. For this reason, there has been intense interest, on the Democratic side, in gauging the intentions of George Soros, who is ranked seventh on Forbes's list of the wealthiest Americans. Over the past thirty years, no benefactor has contributed more to liberal causes. Campaign donations have been a small part of his philanthropy, but in 2008, four years after he made his record campaign donations, he gave five million dollars to help elect Barack Obama. This kept expectations high for 2012.
Soros declined to comment for this article. But several people familiar with his thinking suggest that Soros—who was born in Hungary, and who has made his fortune in global investments—is currently preoccupied with other issues, such as the fate of the European Union, and is not inclined to take an outsized role in the 2012 Presidential campaign. As an advocate for greater government transparency, he is reportedly uncomfortable with the burgeoning role that secret donations now play in U.S. elections. In addition, confidants say that, although he still supports Obama, Soros has been disappointed by him, both politically and personally. Small slights can loom large with wealthy donors. When Soros wanted to meet with Obama in Washington to discuss global economic problems, Obama's staff failed to respond. Eventually, they arranged not a White House interview but, rather, a low-profile, private meeting in New York, when the President was in town for other business. Soros found this back-door treatment confounding. "He feels hurt," a Democratic donor says.
"They pissed on him," a confidant says. "He didn't want a fucking thing! He didn't want a state dinner, or a White House party—he just wanted to be taken seriously."
A second Soros confidant has a different view. Although he acknowledges that Soros might have contributed far more money to Obama if the Administration had engaged with him more intently, he said, "Part of me respects Obama for not spending more time with him. This President doesn't want to spend a lot of time with donors. You have to admire that."
Still, some critics suggest that the failure to tap Soros shows that the Democrats are no match for the Republican money machine that conservatives began building in 2010. "We just don't have a Karl Rove type—we need a political celebrity," a top fund-raiser for Obama says. Priorities USA is headed by two former White House aides, Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney. "The guys running Priorities are very good at politics, but they have zero fund-raising experience," the Obama fund-raiser says. "Fund-raising is all about relationships." After a rough start, Priorities USA has hired several more experienced fund-raisers, and done better. But one of those veterans says, "It's the hardest thing I've ever done."
There are essentially three deep wells of Democratic cash in the country: New York, Los Angeles, and Silicon Valley. So far, the high-tech industry has not contributed large sums to Obama. Some prominent Democrats, such as Chris Hughes—a co-founder of Facebook who helped manage Obama's Web strategy in 2008—have devoted themselves to campaign-finance reform instead. Hughes and his husband, Sean Eldridge, have decided not to give money to any Super PACs, and to match any donations they make to candidates with donations to groups working to diminish the role of money in politics. Asked about Obama's reluctance to court the extremely wealthy, Hughes described it as "a virtue."
John Emerson, the Democratic National Committee's Southern California finance co-chair, says that many tech barons have "a distaste for Super PACs—they don't want to spend on thirty-second ads. There's a sense that there's something wrong with that process. Instead, you see people very involved in specific issues. So Tom Steyer"—a billionaire hedge-fund manager in San Francisco—"almost single-handedly defeated an initiative that would have gutted auto-emission standards in California. And Jeff Bezos is putting money into supporting same-sex marriage." (Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has given $2.5 million to a gay-marriage campaign in Washington State.)
So far, Obama's most notable support has come from Hollywood. Jeffrey Katzenberg, the C.E.O. of DreamWorks Animation, has given one of the largest donations to pro-Obama Super PACs: two million dollars. The actor Morgan Freeman and the comedian Bill Maher have each given a million dollars to Priorities USA. The difference in temperament between Clinton and Obama is felt particularly keenly in Hollywood, however. Donna Bojarsky, a political adviser to the entertainment community, says, "Clinton is a voracious consumer of popular culture, and he loved California." A California fund-raiser says, "Clinton was so good, it raised the bar." Democratic operatives in the state recall that Clinton habitually called them before flying out, to catch up on gossip and learn whom he needed to see. The Obama entourage is all business: donors are rarely invited to fly on Air Force One or ride in the President's car. The personal touch is missed. As the California fund-raiser puts it, "Ego is a big part of the business out here."
Katzenberg has been invited to a state dinner at the White House, but he has never met privately with the President. "One of the things we so love about this President is his integrity, and his attempts to bring new ethics to Washington," the fund-raiser says. "But it makes our job harder."
Obama's relationship with people in the finance industry, meanwhile, remains badly strained. "We lost Wall Street," a Democratic fund-raiser acknowledges. "They think they're so important, the driving force behind the country. . . . Their view of the White House is 'How dare they?' " Donors at financial firms currently account for eight of Romney's top ten sources of campaign funds. None of Obama's top ten sources of cash are financial firms. The change from 2008 is dramatic: four years ago, as Bloomberg News reported, seventy-five per cent of the campaign donations given by employees of Goldman Sachs went to Obama and the Democrats. This year, the ratio has been nearly reversed, with Democrats collecting just thirty per cent of the Goldman contributions.
Given the huge fortune that Romney accumulated in the private-equity business, the promises that he has made to lower taxes on capital gains, and his refusal to commit to ending tax advantages for hedge funds, his appeal to Wall Street executives is not surprising, Axelrod says: "Romney's basic pitch to the financial people is 'I am you! I'm your guardian! I will protect your interests! I won't touch carried interest. I'll repeal Dodd-Frank' "—the Wall Street regulations that were passed after the 2008 financial crisis. "That's obviously going to find an audience with some of these folks."
It is an article of faith among some Democrats that liberals give money to politicians for altruistic reasons, whereas Republicans make campaign contributions as self-serving investments, in order to protect future profits. "It's a business expense for them," Axelrod says. "They'll make it back in no time." Jonathan Collegio, the spokesman for American Crossroads, the Republican Super PAC, dismisses such thinking as "puerile," arguing that there are no more "nefarious motivations" behind Republican donors than there are behind Democratic donors, which include major unions promoting their members' economic interests.
Yet Tom Perriello, a former Democratic congressman from Virginia who was defeated in 2010 after a flood of outside conservative spending in his district, and who now focusses on campaign-finance issues at the liberal Center for American Progress, argues that the economic incentives for wealthy conservatives are far more obvious. He says of Sheldon Adelson, "He's got billions he could get back on the overseas-investment tax and the estate tax," both of which Romney has pledged to abolish. Moreover, Adelson's company, Las Vegas Sands Corporation, is currently the focus of two Justice Department investigations. The first is looking into possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, centering on the company's casinos in Macau. The second investigation, a joint probe with the Securities and Exchange Commission, concerns possible violations of anti-bribery laws. The future leadership of the Justice Department and the S.E.C., then, is of enormous material interest to Adelson.
Similarly, Perriello says, "Oil, coal, and chemical companies also have billions at stake." He contends, "They're not giving money just to elect Romney—they're doing so on a platform of bashing clean energy. Why are there no Republican candidates willing to acknowledge climate change now?" The answer, he suggests, is that huge fossil-fuel companies, like the privately owned Koch Industries, are pouring millions of dollars into electing candidates who will further their agenda. A consortium of conservatives led by the Koch brothers has reportedly pledged to raise and spend four hundred million dollars before November.
"What candidate would buck them?" Perriello asks. "We've gone from a couple of billionaires on both sides to a kind of giving that shatters the social contract."
As an incumbent, Obama has intrinsic advantages when it comes to withstanding the tide of money from wealthy individuals. But, looking ahead, many Democrats grow more concerned. Bill Burton, the former White House aide who is now running Priorities USA, says, "My worry is that the numbers will just get even more astronomical. It could easily be doubled, or quadrupled, by 2016. Once big business realizes it can purchase the White House, you have to wonder what the limit is." ♦


text:
Lightheadedness makes a person feel that he or she is about to
faint or pass out. It is caused by a momentary drop in blood pressure and blood
flow to the head.
Nausea or vomiting sometimes accompanies lightheadedness. Symptoms
usually improve or go away after lying down.
It is common to feel lightheaded occasionally. Lightheadedness
often occurs when a person gets up too quickly from a seated or lying position
(orthostatic hypotension).
Unlike vertigo, lightheadedness does not produce a sensation of
movement. Vertigo causes a spinning or whirling sensation that may lead to
nausea or vomiting, loss of balance, trouble walking or standing, and
Last Revised:
January 2, 2013
Healthwise Staff
Medical Review:
William H. Blahd, Jr., MD, FACEP - Emergency Medicine & David Messenger, MD
This information does not replace the advice of a doctor. Healthwise, Incorporated disclaims any warranty or liability for your use of this information. Your use of this information means that you agree to the Terms of Use. How this information was developed to help you make better health decisions.
To learn more visit Healthwise.org
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
Class Notes - 1950s
This edition of Class Notes includes law submissions through October 31, 2011, and undergraduate and graduate submissions through January 12, 2012.
|Arts & Sciences Reunion June 21-24, 2012
Marv Bolstad B.S. looks forward to sharing memories and experiences at his upcoming 60th class reunion. He spent his working career in Portland's maritime shipping business and enjoyed contact with people from across the United States and many different parts of the world.
Jim Hamley B.A. asks, "How many people get an opportunity to attend a 60th college reunion?" Hamley is retired and active in his church as property manager. He is a model railroad enthusiast and has a layout in his basement.
Pat Hibbard B.S. reminds classmates of the June reunion. "Y'all better come. Our main event will be a luncheon. We'll have great food and great fun. Show up and prove to the rest of the college that we're still the most exciting, active, and electric class ever."
Donna Lawrence B.A. and Frank Lawrence B.S. have been looking through Voyageurs from 1949 to 1952. "We are so excited to see you all again! Lucky us to be able to come together for our 60th reunion."


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The British Pakistani Christian Association has posted a report of what they, surely quite rightly, describe as "a new and appalling low in the ongoing abuse of blasphemy laws". It is alleged that a copy of the Koran "was found with some of its pages burned by Muslims in a Christian area of Islamabad – in previous cases the burning has nearly always shown to have been done by Muslims, or by mentally unstable people – and worse, they have had an 11-year-old Christian girl with Down's syndrome called Rimsha Masih arrested and charged with the crime. Rimsha was arrested on August 17 2012.
"Muslim extremists are threatening to burn down every Christian house in the community. Several thousand Christians have fled the suburb and are in hiding, along with the family of the victim. Mobs of over a thousand Muslims have surrounded the community and are burning tyres."
Christian human rights workers have, it is reported, persuaded local mullahs not to authorise the threatened attacks after Friday prayers. But the police are simply assuming the guilt of this 11-year-old. Some Christians went to the local police station and say that the situation on the ground is very bad. It is quite evident, they say, that the police they talked to have already assumed her guilt. They refused to allow the human rights workers to see the FIR (the First Information Report, an important document because it sets the process of criminal justice in motion. It is only after the FIR is registered in the police station that the police take up investigation of the case).
The FIR was placed by a Muslim called Alsyed Muhammad Ummad. The police were aggressive and hostile when approached, and immediately called Muslim youths to the police station to harass the Christian workers. The police said: "She has burned our holy book and you are here to protect her." It is quite clear that the police are hostile to the accused, presume her guilt and have no regard for her status as a minor or as one with Down's syndrome. The Christian rights workers were planning to apply for bail for her immediately after the Muslim Eid celebrations. I suspect that they have little hope of success.
This case reminded me of a report last year of remarks by the Archbishop Lawrence Saldanha, formerly of Lahore, who has retired to Toronto (a fact which tells its own story). According to Archbishop Saldanha, in the more than 50 years since his priestly ordination, his country had slid from corrupt oligarchy to military rule to mob rule.
Fear, he says, has silenced the voice of Pakistani Christians since the political murder of Shahbaz Bhatti. "People," he says, "are very sad, very bitter. They say: 'If that happens to him what happens to us?' " Bhatti's killers remain at large. The convicted murderer of Salman Taseer, the former governor of Punjab, however (his own security guard, who disagreed with Taseer's opposition to Pakistan's outrageous blasphemy laws), was greeted in court with rose petals and garlands.
In this atmosphere of impunity for anyone who kills a Christian, says Archbishop Saldanha, many educated Pakistani Christians are leaving the country, and those who remain are keeping their heads down and their mouths shut. "In such a situation," he says, "minorities don't have much place. There's no tolerance for other religions. Either you convert or you leave. This is the choice." So he left. Archbishop Saldanha made his comments to the Catholic Register, a Canadian Catholic weekly.
But what about those Pakistani Christians who can't leave? Their situation is very serious. Among the cases reported by Aid to the Church in Need since the death of Shahbaz Bhatti are these (go to this link for more detail and many more cases, and also for details about how you can support Aid to the Church in Need's vital work):
March 2011: Three churches near Islamabad and Hyderabad were attacked by armed men, with two killed. The violence came after US Pastor Wayne Sapp burned a copy of the Qur'an.
April 2011: Islamist group Tahreek-e-Ghazi Bin Shaheed ambushed a Protestant clergyman and his family, opening fire on his car and seriously wounding the minister's 24-year-old son. The Rev Ashraf Paul had earlier received threats and demands for money but he refused to pay.
April 2011: Sehar Naz, a 24-year-old Christian woman, was abducted and raped by a man claiming to be a police officer.
May-July 2011: Farah Hatim, a Christian woman aged 24, from southern Punjab, was abducted by Zeehan Ilyas and his brothers Umran and Gulfam and was forced to convert and marry one of her kidnappers. The incident sparked international outrage but when the Catholic Church's Justice and Peace Commission brought a case against her abductors, the Supreme Court ruled she should stay with her new family.
May 2011: Bookshop owners Gulzar Masih and his son Suleman fled Sialkot they after they were accused of burning a copy of the Qur'an. Fr Naeem Taj suggested that the burnt pages were planted to frame the Christian businessman. "The blasphemy law is being used once more as a pretext to settle a personal score," said the priest.
June 2011: Islamist extremists called for a ban on the Bible, claiming some passages were "blasphemous" and "pornographic".
October 2011: Saqib Masih, a 22-year-old Christian man, was killed and 37 others were injured when a mob of around 60 extremists descended on the village of Mian Chiannu, Punjab, to claim a plot of land "sold" to two Muslims by a workman.
March 2012: Research by the Catholic bishops' National Council for Justice and Peace showed that up to 30 per cent of Christian and Hindu women in employment have faced sexual harassment. The report also showed that 43 per cent faced religious discrimination in the workplace, schools and other educational establishments and in their local neighbourhoods.
In July, 2011 a petition with more than 6,000 signatures was presented at 10 Downing Street, calling for action to reform Pakistan's notorious blasphemy laws. I wonder what Mr Cameron did about that? A year before that, in August 2010, almost exactly two years ago, President Asif Ali Zardari visited Mr Cameron. I find that on that occasion I commented in this column that "there is … one thing a British Prime Minister would at one time have said which I rather doubt that Mr Cameron even mentioned. I cannot imagine Mr Gladstone … failing to protest vigorously at the rampant persecution of Christianity in Pakistan.
"He would have gone into some detail. He would undoubtedly have mentioned the failure of the public authorities (a failure amounting to complicity) to protect the burning alive of eight people, including two children, in what Aid to the Church in Need describe as "one of the bloodiest attacks against Christians in the country's history". They died in August last year, when nearly 3,000 people rampaged through the Christian quarter of Gojra city in the Punjab province …. The blasphemy laws, in particular, are used to make it almost impossible for Christians to express themselves in public without appearing un-Islamic, a legal offence with the most deadly consequences. Did Mr Cameron, as Prime Minister of a Christian country, say anything (as Mr Gladstone would certainly have done) about the blasphemy laws?"
We never got an answer of course, nor, I suspect, did the petition presented last year. But there is surely one thing he ought actually to do rather than to say, which perhaps we ought to be urging on him: he should suspend all aid to Pakistan until that benighted country repeals its blasphemy laws, which have nothing at all to do with blasphemy, and everything to do with the legalised oppression of non-Muslims. Go to the link for the British Pakistani Christian Association (above), which is running a campaign to achieve this. It will be an uphill struggle, but at least it's doing something – though it is increasingly clear that persuading Cameron to support any remotely Christian objective is probably a lost cause: something we ought perhaps to remember at the next general election.


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17 Most Popular Training Articles of the Year
A crowd-sourced list of the articles YOU read most this year.
We know you don't have time to sift through all the training and nutrition information out there. That's why we put together this list of the 17 most popular training and lifestyle articles, chosen by our favorite people: the IRONMAN community.
So pour yourself a glass of sparkling water, whip up a detoxifying salad, and check out what you might've missed from us this year.
1. The 10-Hour Triathlete, Part I — Achieve more with less with this series.
2. The 10-Hour Triathlete, Part II — Apparently we all like to train less!
3. 5 Core Eating Habits for Endurance Athletes — Maximizing your body composition and hitting your racing goals doesn't have to be complicated.
4. When Should You Hit Race Weight? — A guide to making peace with your weight all season long, building your fitness, and creating healthy eating habits.
5. How to Make Time for Triathlon Training — Our athletes share their best tips for fitting IRONMAN training into a fun and fulfilled life.
6. The 20 Best Things I've Heard in an IRONMAN — From "You look great," to "You've only just begun," 20 of the silliest and most salient phrases some of our athletes have heard on course.
7. 3 Ways You're Sabotaging Your Fitness — Don't let one of these common mistakes derail your training plans.
8. A Salute to our 10 Favorite Types of Triathletes — A list to celebrate our weird and wonderful tribe.
9. The 10-Hour Triathlete, Part III — Theory becomes action as Matt Dixon sets up the weekly training plan.
10. FTW: Dissecting Matt Hanson's IRONMAN Texas Victory — Learn how tactically smart riding and understanding his strengths and weaknesses led the American to victory.
11. Fight Club: 10 Ways Obstacle Racing is Killer Prep for IRONMAN — Core qualities and habits that make Spartans and mud runners perfect candidates for the mother of all endurance races.
12. Short-Course to IRONMAN 70.3: Step Up Smart — Five pro tips for making a seamless transition from your local Olympic to the heralded half distance.
13. How to Fuel on the Bike — A simple guide to fueling and hydrating on every type of ride.
14. Blood, Hills, and Body Weight: 8 Ways to Get Faster on the Bike — If you think fancy gear is the only thing that's going to help you score that PR on the bike, think again.
15. Are You Ready for Triathlon Season? — Check these 8 important boxes before you start chasing your goals.
16. 50 Ways to Be a Better Athlete — A refreshing list of reminders on how to stay present, committed, and awesome every day.
17. Has Your New Year's Diet Failed You? — The pitfalls of dieting every athlete should know.


text:
Sign in to retrieve a saved shortlist.
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Troubleshooting Problems with Turning Mac OS X Snow Leopard On and Off
These days, most Macs have a power-on button near the keyboard (notebooks) or the back side (iMacs). You use it to turn on your Mac, but there is a procedure for shutting down Snow Leopard properly.
When you do turn on your Macintosh, the operating system loads and OS X tests all your hardware — slots, ports, disks, random-access memory (RAM), and so on. If everything passes, you hear a pleasing musical tone and see the tasteful gray Apple logo in the middle of your screen, along with a small spinning-pinwheel cursor somewhere on the screen.
Here are the things that might happen when you power up your Mac:
Everything is fine and dandy: Next, you might or might not see the Mac OS X snow Leopard login screen, where you enter your name and password. If you do, press Return or Enter (after you type your name and password, of course), and away you go.
The Desktop soon materializes before your eyes.The Mac OS X Desktop after a brand-spanking-new installation of OS X.
Blue/black/gray screen of death: If any of your hardware fails when it's tested, you might see a blue, black, or gray screen.
If your computer is under warranty, dial 1-800-SOS-APPL, and a customer-service person can tell you what to do.
Prohibitory sign (formerly known as the flashing-question-mark disk): Most users eventually encounter the prohibitory sign shown below (which replaced the flashing question-mark-on-a-disk icon and flashing folder icon back in Mac OS X Jaguar). This icon means your Mac can't find a startup disk, hard drive, network server, or DVD-ROM containing a valid Macintosh operating system.
Kernel panic: You shouldn't see this very often, but you might occasionally see a block of text in four languages, including English. This means that your Mac has experienced a kernel panic, the most severe type of system crash.
Turning off the power without shutting down your Mac properly is one of the worst things you can do to your poor Mac. Shutting down your Mac improperly can really mess up your hard drive, scramble the contents of your most important files, or both.
If a thunderstorm is rumbling nearby or you're unfortunate enough to have rolling blackouts where you live, you might want to shut down your Mac.
To turn off your Mac, always use the Shut Down command on the Application menu or shut down in one of these kind-and-gentle ways:
Press the Power key once and then click the Shut Down button.
On keyboards that don't have a Power key, press Control+Eject instead and then click the Shut Down button that appears (or press the Return key, which does the same thing).
Of course, most Mac users have broken this rule several times without anything horrible happening, but don't be lulled into a false sense of security. Break the rules one time too many (or under the wrong circumstances), and your most important file will be toast. The only time you should turn off your Mac without shutting down properly is when your screen is frozen or when your system crashed and you've already tried everything else.


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Explore Our Hotel
Welcome to the Holiday Inn Express and Suites Columbus/Edinburgh, Indiana.
The hotel is conveniently located off I-65, minutes from downtown Columbus, Indiana, within 45 miles from the Indianapolis International Airport (IND) and in walking distance to major restaurants and the Indiana Premium Outlets.
The Holiday Inn Express and Suites Columbus Edinburgh is a short drive to Camp Atterbury, Hoosier Horse Park, the quaint village of Nashville and Brown County State Park. Many businesses nearby include Cummins, Columbus Regional Hospital, Hisada, Faurecia, Grammer Industries, David R. Webb, SGS and Toyota.
Perfect for business or leisure travel, the hotel offers spacious guest rooms, free wired and wireless Internet, hot breakfast featuring our signature items, Business Center, indoor pool, hot tub, Fitness Center, evening managers reception, guest laundry and elegant meeting space.
The Holiday Inn Express and Suites is ideal for your trip to the Columbus Edinburgh areas. While in town visit attractions like the Exit 76 Antique Mall, Miller House, the Columbus Architectural Tour, Otter Creek Golf Course and Timbergate Golf Course.The hotel is 45 minutes South of downtown Indianapolis, Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis Zoo and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway home of the Indy 500!
Enjoy our hospitality. Welcome to the Holiday Inn Express and Suites Columbus Edinburgh!
- Black-out Shades
- Rollaway Bed/Cot Available
- Crib Available
- Iron/Ironing Board
- Separate Hanging Closet
- In-Room Heating and A/C Controls
- Extra Bedding Available
Bathroom/Personal Care
- Private Bathroom
- Bathroom Amenities Available
- Hair Dryer
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In-Room Features
- Mini Refrigerator
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- Desk-level Electrical Outlet
- Cable/Satellite
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- Direct-dial Phone
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- Complimentary Morning Newspaper
Added Value
- Connecting Rooms Available
- Complimentary Coffee/Tea Supplies
- Full Breakfast Included
- Breakfast Buffet Included
- Continental Breakfast Included
- Complimentary Coffee in Lobby
Business Services
- 2 Meeting Room(s) Available
- On-Site Business Center
- Printer
- Copier
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Internet Access
- Free High-Speed Internet in all Rooms
- Wireless Internet service is free for all IHG® Rewards Club members
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- Indoor Pool
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- Indoor Pool Hours of Operation: 6:00 AM - 10:00 PM
Health & Fitness
Complimentary Fitness Center
State of the art fitness equipment and free weights. Our fitness center equipment includes an elliptical, treadmill and stationary bike. All three cardio machines have personal televisions for a more interactive workout.
Hours of Operation: 6:00 AM to 11:00 PM
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- Stair Stepper
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- Hours of Operation: 6:00 AM - 11:00 PM
Added Value
- Wake Up Calls
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Hotel Details
12225 North Executive Drive
Edinburgh, Indiana 46124
United States
Check In: 3:00 PM
Check Out: 11:00 AM
Check-in Age: 21
Parking + -
- Complimentary Self Parking Available
Accessibility + -
- Public Entrance
- Guest Rooms
- Elevators
- Public Restrooms
- Registration Desk
- Exercise Facility
- Business Center
- Pool
- Number of Accessible Meeting Rooms: 1
Accessible Hotel Areas
- Registration Area
- Accessible Guest Rooms
- Business Center
- Meeting Room
- Exercise Facility
- Pool
Hotel Areas with Accessible Routes from Accessible Public Entrance
- Accessible Self Parking
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Provided by Hotel
Pet Policy + -
- Service Animals Allowed
- Hotel complies with all ADA laws when it comes to accepting service animals. Non service animals are not permitted. Service Animals must be with their person at all times and cannot be left unattended in hotel rooms.
Facility + -
- Smoke-Free Facility
- Number of Floors: 4
- Total Number of Rooms: 93
- Number of Suites: 28
- Number of Non-Smoking Rooms: 93
- Number of Accessible Rooms: 5
- Connecting Rooms Available
Credit Cards + -
- American Express
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Narrowboat Calendars – Canal Calendars. Who says fine art can't be functional? Keep an eye on your appointments and events with these fun and practical calendars.
A wonderful display of artwork as well as a practical way to remember occasions, the eye-catching calendars are beautifully dual purpose. These types of wall calendars are actually an excellent gift idea or perhaps a promotional tool. Pick up one of these 12 page fine art calendars.
Technical Specifications:
Robust wire binding and hanger.
Strikingly well-defined digital printing.
Begin the year with the month of your choice.
200gsm satin art paper with a tougher cover.
Calendar Dimensions
297mm x 420mm – 11.7in x 16.5in.
"Narrowboat Calendars – Canal Calendars" are available to buy here.


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Thank You to All Those Who Contacted Their Legislators!
Governor Jon Corzine (D-NJ) has signed Senate Bill 802, which will permit bow hunting on Sundays during the respective deer season dates on state wildlife management areas and private property.
S802 was sponsored by State Senator Stephen Sweeney (D-3) and received strong bi-partisan support in both the Senate and Assembly.
Please contact Senator Sweeney at (856) 251-9801 or email@example.com and thank him for supporting


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SULLIVAN'S ISLAND, S.C. - Civil War re-enactors gathered on a wind-swept beach and marked the 150th anniversary Thursday of the famed attack by the black 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry - a battle that showed the world black soldiers could fight and later was chronicled in the movie "Glory."
More than 50 re-enactors, including a handful in Confederate butternut uniforms, left wreaths on South Carolina's Morris Island honoring those who died there in the 1863 Union attack on Confederate Battery Wagner. The island bordering Charleston Harbor is uninhabited and the battery itself has washed away since the Civil War.
Those observing the anniversary prayed and sang "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." As part of the commemoration, they also fired a three-gun rifle volley to salute the dead.
The 54th was raised in Boston and of the 600 black Union troops who bravely charged Confederate defenses at Battery Wagner, 218 were killed, wounded or captured in fierce fighting. The 54th later served in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida before returning to Massachusetts at war's end.
Re-enactor Mel Reid told a gathering of about 50 people gathered on the beach that many members of the 54th never made it back home and those who did were not cheered when they came home.
"So here we are 150 years later saying `thank you,'" he said. "Keep in mind, these were free black men" who risked being enslaved if captured, he told the gathering.
Thursday evening there was period music, speeches, and rifle and cannon firing at Fort Moultrie on nearby Sullivan's Island. The event corresponded with the time of the evening attack 150 years ago.
Following the program, the audience of about 200 put battery-powered candles in luminaries on a field beside the fort. There were 294 in all - one for each fallen soldier both North and South.
"The story of both the Confederates and the federals who fought that day is the story of the American people in their travel through time," said South Carolina Lt. Governor Glenn McConnell, himself a Civil War re-enactor, in his keynote address. "Our march through history ... is the story of a people who, in the pursuit or defense of freedom, as they perceived or understood it, were always willing to put aside the element of fear and answer the call of duty."
"This is probably the most significant anniversary of the 150th anniversaries of the Civil War," Walter Sanderson, a re-enactor from Upper Marlboro, Md., said earlier. "It was a primary test for African-American troops in a very difficult assault. They proved themselves to be a quality regiment under the most severe duress."
Usually, there are about a dozen black re-enactors who make the trip to Morris Island each year. The black re-enactors gathered Thursday came from as far away as California.
"Going out on that island has special meaning today," said Joe McGill, a black Charleston re-enactor who makes the journey every July 18.
The attack was part of an unsuccessful campaign by federal forces to capture Charleston, the city where the Civil War began in 1861 with the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter in the harbor. The Confederates would hold Charleston until late in the war, when they abandoned it as Union troops moved across South Carolina further to the west.
While the Battery Wagner attack was unsuccessful, the valor of the black troops dispelled the thought - common in both the North and the South early in the war - that blacks could not fight. It also encouraged the enlistment of another 200,000 black troops in the Union army.
"It's just an honor to be here. The 54th proved that black troops could fight in a battle," said Louis Carter of Richmond, Va. He said Battery Wagner and several earlier smaller fights involving black troops "disproved that stereotype that we would run."
Leon Watkins of San Francisco carried the flag in the movie "Glory."
A former Marine, he said "if this hadn't happened here 150 years ago, I wouldn't have been able to help provide the blanket of security we all sleep under."
"Glory" will be shown Friday on an outdoor screen in Marion Square in Charleston. The 1989 film starring Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman helped bring the story of the 54th Massachusetts to a wider audience.
Scholars and authors gather at the historic Dock Street Theatre on Saturday to discuss the 1863 Charleston campaign. On Sunday, Charleston officials plan to unveil a rendering of a planned monument to the 54th Massachusetts to be erected on Charleston's Battery.


text:
The best way to install Haskell is via The Haskell Platform which you can download for various operating systems here. The Haskell Platform is a standard Haskell distribution for every system. You can find instructions for installing it on your system at the web page I linked. I'm not going to reiterate those instructions.
There are plenty of ways to edit Haskell code. There is a great Vim plugin that you can find information about here.
There is also an Emacs major mode, which is what I use, and it works phenomenally, and I recommend it over everything else I'll mention here. You can find haskell-mode here.
There is an Eclipse plugin that is currently in development that you can find here. It will not be very useful unless you know Eclipse-foo and know how to build plugins and such.
There is a Haskell IDE written in Haskell that I can't vouch for, because I can't get the damn thing to compile on my system. I hear good things about it though, and there is a Windows installer available for it, so the Windows people should enjoy this. You can find Leksah here.
There is also the less common editors like Yi and such around, but this pretty much covers the most used editors. As I said before, I recommend Emacs over all of them, but I'm biased - I'm a Lisper.
A complete list of Haskell editors can be found here.
Books and Tutorials:
The best book available for Haskell right now is real-world oriented, and is recommended for people who already know a language, and want to learn Haskell for real-world projects.[1] It's called Real World Haskell and you can read it online here. Of course, you can purchase it in Ebook and dead-tree form, but I just read it online because I'm poor.
There is a tutorial for less experienced users, and this tutorial might be a good thing to read before you read Real World Haskell, as it's extremely gentle and even kind of funny. It's called Learn You A Haskell or LYAH for short, and you can read it here. There is also a PDF here[2]. Note that it is incomplete, and doesn't yet go into advanced concepts. I recommend you get all you can from this tutorial and then read Real World Haskell.
There is a complete list of tutorials here, along with a complete list of books here.
GUI toolkits:
I would not be surprised if people thought that you couldn't code GUIs in Haskell. That is incorrect. There are several mature and useful Haskell GUI libraries, including bindings to GTK here, and WxWidgets that you can find information about here. WxHaskell is a series of packages on Hackage. While Gtk2hs isn't a hackage package, they do offer a Windows installer, binaries for several *nix flavors and a source package.
A complete list of toolkits can be found here.
Besides Google, there are some resources you should know about when using Haskell.
The first, and most important, is Hoogle. It's a standard library search engine. You can put in a type signature, or a name, and it will find what you're looking for in the standard library. You can also use this from the command-line by cabal installing hoogle, and there is a command that you can use in the Emacs haskell-mode to use it there as well.
The second is the similar Hayoo. I believe this one also searches the packages on Hackage.
Speaking of Hackage, that's another amazingly useful resource. It's a place where most Haskell libraries are stored. There are Haskell libraries for virtually everything on Hackage. It's located here. The packages are indexed by category.
You can find a list of mailing lists here.
A good place to ask questions about Haskell is of course, right here on DiC. I'd use Haskell-Cafe or Stackoverflow.com for questions that nobody else can answer. Haskell-Cafe is a last-resort kind of thing for me.
And last but not least, there is a very nice Haskell cheatsheet that you can download after installing Haskell via the Haskell platform by typing 'cabal install cheatsheet' on a terminal.
For as long as I'm allowed to edit this topic, I'll include more stuff as I think of it. If you find any errors or think I should include something I haven't mentioned, please PM me.
2. Thanks to EdwinNameless for bringing that to my attention.
This post has been edited by Raynes: 10 December 2009 - 10:16 AM


text:
Christmas..Naturally Beautiful~
Yes...it's gone to the birds! Why do tress always look better at night? Guess you get the entire feel of the lights. I wanted to show you in the daylight so you could get a good look. I will show the nighttime look next...much better~
Lot's of these...
handful's of these..1.00 from Walmart
a mess of these...on sale at Hobby Lobby
Gold fern...from last year
All together now~
Some feathers
Fluer's galore..last year's stash
Never enough...
Top it off with a large nest from spring decor and more feathers..
Natures best...
It's full now. Im working on a matching garland. Just waiting for my eggs to dry.
Wanna peek at somemore?
Come back... there's plenty~
54 comments:
Oh goodness! It's just gorgeous! I love it!ReplyDelete
Simply beautiful! I love it!ReplyDelete
Oh it looks so BEAUTIFUL....just like I knew it would!!!!!!ReplyDelete
Beautiful! Gonna make my tree look pitiful! JackieReplyDelete
That tree is magazine worthy!ReplyDelete
Good Morning Miz Susie,ReplyDelete
Gorgeous tree...I'm so wanting to do feathers and nests on mine this year, been on the look out for some but haven't seen any that I love yet. Can't wait to see the rest!
Simply gorgeous!ReplyDelete
Absolutely gorgeous!! I don't think you can ever have enough ornaments. My husband tells me to stop just when you can't see the branches anymore, but I love a loaded Christmas tree :) Walmart has some beautiful ornaments this year. I picked up several to tie to presents...$1.00!!! Can't wait to see the garland, and the white tree peeking out behind the tassel.ReplyDelete
Oh, how beautiful.ReplyDelete
I'm so ready to get my Christmas stuff out. I'm lovin' those fleur di lis, feathers, nests,....everything.
Wow!! that is gorgeous! I want to see more! please I love it.ReplyDelete
It's beautiful! Too early to have ours up, never till after Thanksgiving (sometime that weekend).ReplyDelete
The feathers, nests, etc. are a neat idea. I have so many collected ornaments - that is what we use. I think I will add in a bird's nest or two!
oh man! I love this!!!ReplyDelete
I really want to do a different tree in every room, I think that would be so cool. This would most definatly be in the VERY front of my house! hehe
You are too funny, and definitely not a dodo! Thanks for your sweet words for Scott and Kelly!!!ReplyDelete
That is one gorgeous tree! Stunning!ReplyDelete
Absolutely fabulous! There won't be any Christmas tree pics from my nest until December!! :)ReplyDelete
That tree is amazing. Will you come decorate mine? hahaReplyDelete
This a gorgeous tree.ReplyDelete
It has some of the same elements our living room tree has, this year. We won't put it up until after Thanksgiving. In the meantime, I am finding plenty, around the house, to keep my Christmas "spirit" alive and well!
I'm looking forward to seeing more and more, here! I know it will be beautiful.
Oh my goodness it is amazing! I love that tree from top to bottom. For some reason, birds - nests - and eggs are something I find especially lovely lately. And that tassel is just perfect. That is my all time favorite color combination!ReplyDelete
This is gorgeous. I am just now getting excited about the holidays. We will be celebrating at my house this year and I can't wait to start decorating. Thanks for the inspiration.ReplyDelete
So pretty! I just love a full-to-the-brim tree! Lovely accents. The bird's nest is a perfect idea!ReplyDelete
It's simply divine - love it!ReplyDelete
Stunningly beautiful!!! I'm so NOT ready for Christmas....after Thanksgiving...I'll be there!ReplyDelete
Oh, BEAUTIFUL!! I adore the Fleur De Lis ~ they are Giant!!ReplyDelete
You've been so busy! We have similar colors on our trees, I just haven't gotten mine out yet. It all looks beautiful, Susie.ReplyDelete
Just love this tree! So beautiful! The pheasant feathers are just like my dining room tree -- full of pheasant feathers from shooting with my dad!! I love the color scheme you chose, also :) Can't wait to see more!!ReplyDelete
It's gorgeous, so this is from this year? It's up already? Wow, I thought I was doing good, all Christmas cards stuffed and stamped, most presents bought and already wrapped. But the tree? Amazing!!ReplyDelete
That looks great!ReplyDelete
Looks WONDERFUL! I love it! It makes me want to get all of mine out. It is in the garage ready to bring in. :)ReplyDelete
Absolutely beautiful!!! I am amazed!! Now I want to start decorating...ReplyDelete
Hands down, one of the most beautiful trees I've ever seen. Stunning!ReplyDelete
Love love love the tree!!!ReplyDelete
OH LA LA! Just fabulous! Can't wait to see more of your decorations! The tree is amazing! :) ~RhondaReplyDelete
Long time stalker here...I just couldn't be silent any longer! You are absolutely inspiring. And p.s., I covet that yummy tree! Feathers and nests and birds...oH mY!ReplyDelete
gorgeous !! I love the nest with the eggs, and the feathers too! all the decorations are stunning!ReplyDelete
Happy Decorating :)
I can't believe you already have your tree up! It is gorgeous! You did such a great job! I use feathers on my tree as well. I found a store locally that had awesome decorated christmas trees..I will be posting photos of them this week. One is an upside down tree!ReplyDelete
Beautiful Susie! Love it!ReplyDelete
It's sooo pretty Susie!ReplyDelete
WOW! I LOVE IT! As always you blew me away. Thanks for the inspiration.ReplyDelete
Susie that is beautiful!! I think you get first prize.ReplyDelete
OH MY GOODNESS! It is absolutely beautiful! I want MY tree to look like that!ReplyDelete
Susie, your tree is gorgeous. Wish I could tear myself away from the child like trees, but as long as my grandchildren are young, it will remain a part of our tradition. My trees never look like that---wish I could find someone to help me with added touches. Can't wait to see more. Love and Hugs, PatReplyDelete
Beautiful...I think with a 2 year old, my tree will be kinda puny this year...ReplyDelete
Susie, it's beautiful! Wow!ReplyDelete
Love it! LOVE IT ALL!ReplyDelete
Your tree is just stunning! Now I am super excited to put up mine next weekend!! Although I'm sure it will pale in comparison!ReplyDelete
This is beautiful, what do you do with your families ornaments though?ReplyDelete
Ooh, Susieness! How gorgeous is this!? You're amazing!ReplyDelete
Be a sweetie,
Shelia :)
Your tree is totally what I want mine to look like this year. After nearly 10 years of the same look, I've decided to go a little more natural and bought a bunch of pheasant feathers, nests and other natural items a couple of weeks ago. Now that you have yours done, it gives me even more vision of how I want mine to look. Thank you!ReplyDelete
You are so talented! Beautiful tree. I can't wait to see more. I am headed to your ETSY store. I need some more tassels :)ReplyDelete
- AnonymousNovember 18, 2008
WOW! That's one tall, fully decorated tree. Mine end up looking more like Charlie Brown trees, but I love them!ReplyDelete
Great creative jobReplyDelete
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Autumn - Seal and Send Invitation
Ecru wedding invitations are the ultimate in elegant wedding stationery. If your sense of style leans more toward refined and sophisticated, ecru is your color. Ecru is often very similar to, if not the same as, ivory wedding invitations. Ivory can sometimes be a slightly lighter shade but both reflect warmth and tradition. You might also like brown wedding invitations as a bolder but still naturally elegant color choice.
With ecru as one of your wedding colors, you will have no trouble finding coordinating stationery pieces like wedding seals and thank you cards. Many ceremony accessories and reception decorations are also available in ecru and ivory or a color that coordinates well. Unity candles are especially beautiful in this neutral tone. Embellishments like ribbon and rhinestones are another eye-catching way to enhance your color scheme.
Ecru is a wonderful color to work with for weddings. Similar to the color black, ecru is an easy match for many other hues so you have your pick of accent colors to fill out your wedding color combination. Plus, ecru and ivory are found everywhere. You will have exceptional luck at thrift stores and flea markets because this color has remained a staple in fashion and retail throughout the years.


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Latest News
With activist's escape, human rights abuses are at center of U.S.-China talks
The daring escape of a legal activist from extrajudicial house arrest apparently to American diplomatic protection is likely to force U.S. and Chinese officials to confront a subject this week that both sides have approached only cautiously in recent years: China's abysmal record on human rights.
Although U.S. officials previously have brought up concerns about China's treatment of dissidents during visits to the country, they've been more a side issue than the centerpiece of the nations' diplomatic relations. During her first visit to China as secretary of state, in 2009, Hillary Clinton said that persistent disagreements on areas such as human rights shouldn't be allowed to derail progress on economics, climate change or security.
Now, however, with Clinton scheduled to begin high-level talks with senior officials in Beijing on Thursday, the dash to the capital city by self-taught lawyer Chen Guangcheng has pushed the issue to the fore. Unless the situation is resolved quickly, it's likely to become a serious irritant in the United States' relationship with China, the second-largest economy in the world and a crucial stakeholder in matters that range from North Korea's nuclear weapons-development program to proposed sanctions on Iran.
Chinese officials on Monday were still trying to piece together how Chen, who's been blind since childhood, managed to evade multiple rings of security and make it to Beijing and what role, if any, American officials had in the chain of events. The United States hasn't acknowledged that Chen is at its embassy, and China has declined to confirm or deny the reports.
President Barack Obama declined to address the subject Monday at a news conference in Washington, saying only that he was "aware of the press reports" about Chen.
"What I would like to emphasize is that every time we meet with China, the issue of human rights comes up," he said. "It is our belief that not only is that the right thing to do because it comports with our principles and our belief in freedom and human rights, but also because we actually think China will be stronger as it opens up and liberalizes its own system."
One of several of Chen's associates who've been detained in recent days told McClatchy on Monday that his interrogators had asked about a supposed meeting between Chen and U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke. The friend, Hu Jia, was held overnight after being summoned Saturday to speak with police. He said his captors had asked him, "When did Chen Guangcheng meet with Gary Locke and if I was there."
Hu, who was released Sunday, said he told his interrogators that he hadn't accompanied Chen to the embassy.
Hu said the agents seemed particularly interested in tracing Chen's route to Beijing. They asked for details about what time Chen left his home province, the time he arrived in Beijing, who picked him up once he arrived and where he stayed before approaching the embassy last Thursday.
Such details would be crucial to backtracking Chen's route through the nation's extensive surveillance systems. For those queries, Hu said, he answered only with what was already known publicly.
One activist group that's involved with Chen's case said over the weekend that "high-level talks are currently under way between U.S. and Chinese officials regarding Chen's status."
The head of the U.S.-based Christian rights group China Aid Association said in an e-mail exchange that his information was based on a source with access to both governments. "There will likely be a decision soon" by Chinese officials, said Bob Fu, China Aid's president.
Clinton is scheduled to attend the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue on Thursday and Friday, a summit that's meant to promote cooperation from agencies across both governments. Underlining the sensitivity of the situation with Chen, Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, the top American diplomat for East Asia, made an unannounced trip to China's capital over the weekend. His presence was made public only after the Associated Press managed to get his photograph Sunday in a Beijing hotel.
It wasn't clear, though, what the way forward for Chen might be. His wife, daughter and mother are thought to be still in their home village in China's eastern Shandong province. When a high-profile dissident took refuge with U.S. diplomats in Beijing in 1989, after the brutal crackdown on student protests at Tiananmen Square, he and his wife lived at the embassy for more than a year before they were able to leave China.
Chen, however, reportedly has said he doesn't want to leave the country; instead, he's looking for a safety guarantee and punishment of those who've tormented him.
Further complicating things is an ongoing scandal at the top levels of Chinese government that also was triggered by a flight to a U.S. diplomatic post.
Bo Xilai, the former Communist Party secretary of Chongqing, a politburo member and rising star in the Chinese Communist Party, was removed from his seat April 10 after being accused of serious discipline violations. His wife also was alleged to have been involved in the killing of a British businessman. Bo's undoing began when his deputy mayor, Wang Lijun, turned up at the U.S. consulate in the city of Chengdu in February.
According to reports, Wang told American officials of the Bo family's ties to the businessman's death, and he may have sought asylum. The Americans rejected the asylum request, but they allowed Wang to remain on the premises as he contacted officials in Beijing and was picked up the next day. Had Wang been handed over to allies of Bo, the outcome probably would have been much different.
Some observers have cast Bo's downfall as a victory for reform-minded Chinese politicians such as Premier Wen Jiabao over more conservative elements. In a video that Chen released last week, he appealed to Wen directly to intercede.
It's far from clear, though, whether the resolution of Chen's plight will be wrapped into any larger struggles between political factions in Beijing.
State media had long denied that Chen, 40, was subject to rough treatment. But after slipping away last week, Chen appeared in the video describing severe beatings that he and his wife had suffered at the hands of officials and police. China's online censors blocked that recording, as well as mentions of Chen and his story.
Chen had been sentenced to 51 months in prison in 2006 – on trumped-up charges of damaging property and assembling a crowd to block traffic – after he campaigned on behalf of women who'd undergone forced sterilizations and abortions amid a local government campaign to enforce China's one-child population-control policy.
Upon being released from prison in September 2010, he was placed under home detention even though he hadn't been charged with any additional crimes. After 19 months, there'd been no sign of that changing, and Chen made a run for his freedom.
Lesley Clark contributed to this article from Washington.


text:
Louis Vuitton Cabas Piano Authentic Pre Owned
This item is no longer available
Authenticity code: Louis Vuitton VI0051The Louis Vuitton Monogram Canvas Cabas Piano Bag has both style and practicality. The interior is spacious and has one flat pocket, one cell phone pocket and a D-ring tab. It features goldtone hardware. It is ideal for any daily activity from shopping to work. No surprise that celebrities everywhere like Jennifer Aniston and Halle Berry love this tote!
Authentic: Pre Owned
Exterior: Gently used
Interior: Gently used
Measurements: (Approx.) 12" L x 5" W x 9.8" H.
Product Code: 104457
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