The Most Disgraceful Episode in Media-Military Relations Since Vietnam {Commentary}

By Carl Levin in The Daily Caller

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Unless the bastards come after me again, this is my last column on a national disgrace.

So let me be absolutely clear about who the bastards are: The New York Times, Senator Carl Levin and their 40 Democratic allies in the House of Representatives. The disgrace in question: The Times’s April 2008 “exposé” alleging conflicts of interest and wrongdoing by the retired military analysts often featured on television newscasts before and during the Iraq War.

I was one of those analysts. In fact, I wrote a first-person history of the Pentagon briefing program in a 2006 book, Warheads. After the Times article was published, I repeatedly argued that the story was perversely unfair, misleading and badly slanted. Among other defects, it omitted the “small detail” that Warheads had even been published, immediately raising fundamental questions of inaccuracy, even plagiarism.

What was far worse: Solely on the basis of The Times’s article, Senator Levin and 40 House Democrats promptly demanded investigations: by the Pentagon inspector general, the Federal Communications Commission and the General Accounting Office. None found any of the wrongdoing alleged by The Times in the article for which it was subsequently awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

This ignominy finally came full circle last week in a Washington Times article by Rowan Scarborough, one of the only journalists courageous enough to follow this story through to its wildly improbable conclusion. Scarborough had watched in 2009 while Senator Levin leveraged his powerful position as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee to press the Pentagon IG for a re-investigation. Surely the IG must have overlooked wrongdoing by the previous administration, the chairman’s reasoning went, but with Barack Obama now in power, go back and look even harder!

Pentagon inspectors general follow orders but don’t compromise their integrity. In September 2011, Scarborough reported that, its two-year re-investigation complete, the DOD IG was about to report that Pentagon officials and retired military analysts had complied with all laws and regulations. Having provided lengthy sworn statements to each of those investigations, I kept asking DOD IG public affairs officers when the final report would be released, receiving increasingly evasive replies.

Scarborough eventually uncovered and reported the shocking truth: Senator Levin directly intervened in the investigation in order to influence the wording of the final IG report. This was the political equivalent of jury-tampering but, for a while, it seemed like Senator Levin’s misconduct would go un-noticed. But then, Congressman Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, announced his intention to examine Senator Levin’s meddling. The DOD IG’s final report was issued last week, reported appropriately enough by Rowan Scarborough.

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Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta has warned that the federal budget cuts could be “devastating” for the Pentagon. (Jonathan Ernst – Reuters)

With deeper budget cuts looming, the Pentagon is starting to cut back by trimming the Defense Department’s civilian workforce.

The Army said Thursday it is moving forward with plans announced in July to cut about 8,700 positions, using a mix of early retirement offers, buyouts and attrition to trim the jobs by the end of the fiscal year in late September.

“Army commands and agencies are continuing to take necessary actions to reduce their civilian on-board strength to meet funded targets established by the secretary of defense and reflected in the President’s budget,” Thomas R. Lamont, assistant secretary of the Army for manpower and reserve affairs, said in a statement. “To the maximum extent possible, the Army will rely on voluntary departures to achieve these manpower reductions.”

The cuts will come in 37 states at 70 different locations across eight commands and agencies with nearly 90 percent of the cuts taking place within the Installation Management Command, Army Materiel Command and the Training and Doctrine Command. Most of the cuts are likely to occur in Virginia and Texas, where most of the DOD’s civilian workers are located.

In addition to eligible workers who retire, commanders will be able to use voluntary early retirement offers and buyouts to cut jobs, the Army said.

The failure of the bipartisan debt supercommittee means the Pentagon budget could be cut by a total of $1 trillion over the next decade — what defense leaders warn is a “huge” cut that would amount to a 23 percent reduction in the defense budget, resulting in furloughs and layoffs of “many” civilians and a reduction in the size of the military. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta has warned that the cuts could be “devastating” for the Pentagon, creating a “substantial risk” that the country’s defense needs might not be met.

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BREAKING: Va. Tech: Police officer has been shot; potential 2nd victim reported at parking lot -ldh

Virginia Tech says gunshots have been reported on campus, and authorities are seeking a suspect.

The campus-wide alert at 12:36 p.m. said: “Gun shots reported- Coliseum Parking lot. Stay Inside. Secure doors. Emergency personnel responding. Call 911 for help.”

The suspect is described as white male wearing gray sweat pants, gray hat with neon green brim, maroon hoodie and backpack.

A message left with the university wasn’t immediately returned. Campus police referred all questions to the university.

A student gunman killed 32 students and faculty and then shot himself on the campus in 2007.

SOURCE: AP

Hackers are bombarding the world’s computer controlled energy sector, conducting industrial espionage and threatening potential global havoc through oil supply disruption.

Oil company executives warned that attacks were becoming more frequent and more carefully planned.

“If anybody gets into the area where you can control opening and closing of valves, or release valves, you can imagine what happens,” said Ludolf Luehmann, an IT manager at Shell Europe’s biggest company .

“It will cost lives and it will cost production, it will cost money, cause fires and cause loss of containment, environmental damage – huge, huge damage,” he told the World Petroleum Congress in Doha.

Computers control nearly all the world’s energy production and distribution in systems that are increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks that could put cutting-edge fuel production technology in rival company hands.

“We see an increasing number of attacks on our IT systems and information and there are various motivations behind it – criminal and commercial,” said Luehmann. “We see an increasing number of attacks with clear commercial interests, focusing on research and development, to gain the competitive advantage.”

He said the Stuxnet computer worm discovered in 2010, the first found that was specifically designed to subvert industrial systems, changed the world of international oil companies because it was the first visible attack to have a significant impact on process control.

But the determination and stamina shown by hackers when they attack industrial systems and companies has now stepped up a gear, and there has been a surge in multi-pronged attacks to break into specific operation systems within producers, he said.

“Cyber crime is a huge issue. It’s not restricted to one company or another it’s really broad and it is ongoing,” said Dennis Painchaud, director of International Government Relations at Canada’s Nexen Inc. “It is a very significant risk to our business.”

“It’s something that we have to stay on top of every day. It is a risk that is only going to grow and is probably one of the preeminent risks that we face today and will continue to face for some time.”

Luehmann said hackers were increasingly staging attack over long periods, silently collecting information over weeks or months before attacking specific targets within company operations with the information they have collected over a long period.

“It’s a new dimension of attacks that we see in Shell,” he said.

NOT IN CONTROL

In October, security software maker Symantec Corp said it had found a mysterious virus that contained code similar to Stuxnet, called Duqu, which experts say appears designed to gather data to make it easier to launch future cyber attacks.

Other businesses can shut down their information technology (IT) systems to regularly install rapidly breached software security patches and update vulnerable operating systems.

But energy companies cannot keep taking down plants to patch up security holes.

“Oil needs to keep on flowing,” said Riemer Brouwer, head of IT security at Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Oil Operations (ADCO).

“We have a very strategic position in the global oil and gas market,” he added. “If they could bring down one of the big players in the oil and gas market you can imagine what this will do for the oil price – it would blow the market.”

Hackers could finance their operations by using options markets to bet on the price movements caused by disruptions, Brouwer said.

“So far we haven’t had any major incidents,” he said. “But are we really in control? The answer has to be ‘no’.”

Oil prices usually rise whenever tensions escalate over Iran’s disputed nuclear program – itself thought to be the principal target of the Stuxnet worm and which has already identified Duqu infections – due to concern that oil production or exports from the Middle East could be affected by any conflict.

But the threat of a coordinated attack on energy installations across the world is also real, experts say, and unlike a blockade of the Gulf can be launched from anywhere, with no U.S. military might in sight and little chance of finding the perpetrator.

“We know that the Straits of Hormuz are of strategic importance to the world,” said Stephan Klein of business application software developer SAP.

“What about the approximately 80 million barrels that are processed through IT systems?,” said Klein, SAP vice president of oil and gas operations in the Middle East and North Africa.

Attacks like Stuxnet are so complex that very few organizations in the world are able to set them up, said Gordon Muehl, chief security officer at Germany’s SAP said, but it was still too simple to attack industries over the internet.

Only a few years ago hacking was confined to skilled computer programmers, but thanks to online video tutorials, breaking into corporate operating systems is now a free for all.

“Everyone can hack today,” Shell’s Luehmann said. “The number of potential hackers is not a few very skilled people — it’s everyone.”

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In one of the gloomiest predictions about the fallout from a breakup of the euro, Citigroup’s chief economist on Thursday warned a collapse of the currency will result in years of a global depression that could send unemployment spiking above 20% in the West.

The comments, from Citigroup chief economist Willem Buiter, underscore the growing concern that policymakers won’t be able to forge a credible solution that will keep the currency union intact.

Buiter, previously a professor at the London School of Economics, said the ensuing chaos caused by the unlikely event of a disorderly sovereign default and exit by all five periphery nations would trigger a financial catastrophe and global depression. The disaster, he said, would send GDP plummeting more than 10% and unemployment in the West surging to 20% or more.

“If Spain and Italy were to exit, there would be a collapse of systemically important financial institutions throughout the European Union and North America and years of global depression,” Buiter wrote.

Thankfully, Buiter sees little chance of these worst-case scenarios actually coming to fruition. He forecasts a 5% or lower chance of a disorderly default and exit by all five periphery states.

Likewise, Buiter believes the likelihood of an exit by Germany and other fiscally strong countries is even less likely, attributing a less than 3% probability of such an event. That’s a good thing because he believes this outcome would perhaps be even more disastrous and extremely messy from a legal standpoint.

Still, the financial markets appear to be bracing for at least the possibility that the eurozone will no longer have 17 nations.

Hurt by comments from the ECB, the euro slumped nearly 1% against the dollar and fell below $1.33 on Thursday. Individual European bank stocks like Deutsche Bank (DB: 28.25, -1.28, -4.32%) and Barclays (BCS: 11.36, -0.67, -5.57%) suffered steep selloffs as well.

According to The Wall Street Journal even some central banks are take precautionary steps to prepare for life without the euro, including central banks in Ireland, Greece, England and Switzerland.

If the only nation to leave the currency and suffer a disorderly sovereign default was Greece, Buiter said it would be “manageable” because it accounts for just 2.2% of euro-area GDP.

Ultimately, Buiter said the potential for economic ruin should present a compelling argument for keeping the eurozone intact as much as possible.

“The case for keeping the Euro Area show on the road would seem to be a strong one: financially, economically, and politically, including geopolitically,” he wrote.
Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/2011/12/08/citi-euro-collapse-would-cause-global-depression-send-unemployment-above-20/#ixzz1fy0fqlhN

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Apple could face disruption to its iPad sales in China after a court rejected its claim to own the iPad trademark in the country and a rival sought to halt sales of the tablet device in two Chinese cities.

The developments are the latest in a long-running dispute between Apple and Proview Technology (Shenzhen), a struggling Taiwanese-owned company that registered trademarks for the name IPAD in many countries long before Apple conceived its smash hit tablet computer.
Normally, Apple is on the receiving end of intellectual property rights infringements in China, with counterfeits extending even to copies of its flagship stores. The US company has nonetheless reported soaring sales over the past three quarters, following a push started last year under which it has so far built four Apple stores in Beijing and Shanghai and 1,000 resellers across the country.

“Apple is such a Goliath and has a good image, so people wouldn’t imagine that Apple could possibly infringe on our intellectual property rights,” said Xiao Caiyuan, a lawyer for Proview at Guangdong Guanghe law firm. “People always think it’s small companies infringing upon large companies’ IPR.”

“We hope that this decision will make our negotiations with Apple a bit easier,” said Li Su, a representative of Proview.

Proview, a flatscreen contract manufacturer, made an unsuccessful attempt to sell a tablet computer in 2000, and registered trademarks for the IPAD name in the EU, China, Mexico, South Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam between 2000 and 2004, according to trademark databases.

In 2006, Proview Electronics (Taiwan) agreed to sell Apple the “global trademark” for the IPAD name for £35,000, according to Proview, but the two companies have subsequently disagreed about whether that deal included China.

Apple applied to have ownership of the two relevant Chinese trademarks transferred to its name before it began selling the iPad in China early last year. The Chinese trademark office rejected the application because the trademarks are owned by Proview Technology (Shenzhen), another affiliate of Proview International, the group’s Hong Kong-listed holding company, and not the Taiwan unit.

Apple then sued Proview Technology (Shenzhen), asking the court to declare the US company the rightful owner of the IPAD trademarks in China. The Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court rejected that request earlier this week in a ruling that Apple can appeal.

At the same time, Proview Technology (Shenzhen) has sued Apple resellers in the southern Chinese cities of Shenzhen and Huizhou, seeking an immediate block on sales of iPads. The Shenzhen Futian District Court is due to start hearing one case on December 30, and the Huizhou Intermediate People’s Court has scheduled a hearing in the other for January 7.

“We are starting with these two cities, and if we are successful in getting iPad sales stopped, we will consider going after Apple resellers elsewhere in China,” said Xie Xianghui, a lawyer with Grandall, another Chinese law firm working for Proview. Apple declined to comment.

The China trademark lawsuit comes at a time when Apple is engaged in a number of patent battles globally against Samsung Electronics and HTC, two other smartphone makers. Those cases, which span markets including the US, Germany and Australia, have so far mostly been decided in favour of Apple.

Anxious Greeks Emptying Their Bank Accounts

Georgios Provopoulos, the governor of the central bank of Greece, is a man of statistics, and they speak a clear language. “In September and October, savings and time deposits fell by a further 13 to 14 billion euros. In the first 10 days of November the decline continued on a large scale,” he recently told the economic affairs committee of the Greek parliament.

With disarming honesty, the central banker explained to the lawmakers why the Greek economy isn’t managing to recover from a recession that has gone on for three years now: “Our banking system lacks the scope to finance growth.”

He means that the outflow of funds from Greek bank accounts has been accelerating rapidly. At the start of 2010, savings and time deposits held by private households in Greece totalled €237.7 billion — by the end of 2011, they had fallen by €49 billion. Since then, the decline has been gaining momentum. Savings fell by a further €5.4 billion in September and by an estimated €8.5 billion in October — the biggest monthly outflow of funds since the start of the debt crisis in late 2009.

The raid on bank accounts stems from deep uncertainty in Greek households which culminated in early November during the political turmoil that followed the announcement by then-Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou of a referendum on the second Greek bailout package.

Papandreou withdrew the plan and stepped down following an outcry among other European leaders against the referendum, and a new government was formed on Nov. 11 under former central banker Loukas Papademos. That appears to have slowed the drop in bank savings, at least for the time being.

Bank Withdrawals Worsening Crisis

Nevertheless, the Greeks today only have €170 billion in savings — almost 30 percent less than at the start of 2010.

The hemorrhaging of bank savings has had a disastrous impact on the economy. Many companies have had to tap into their reserves during the recession because banks have become more reluctant to lend. More Greek families are now living off their savings because they have lost their jobs or have had their salaries or pensions cut.

In August, unemployment reached 18.4 percent. Many Greeks now hoard their savings in their homes because they are worried the banking system may collapse.

Those who can are trying to shift their funds abroad. The Greek central bank estimates that around a fifth of the deposits withdrawn have been moved out of the country. “There is a lot of uncertainty,” says Panagiotis Nikoloudis, president of the National Agency for Combating Money Laundering.

The banks are exploiting that insecurity. “They are asking their customers whether they wouldn’t rather invest their money in Liechtenstein, Switzerland or Germany.”

Nikoloudis has detected a further trend. At first, it was just a few people trying to withdraw large sums of money. Now it’s large numbers of people moving small sums. Ypatia K., a 55-year-old bank worker from Athens, can confirm that. “The customers, especially small savers, have recently been withdrawing sums of €3,000, €4,000 or €5,000. That was panic,” she said.

Marina S., a 74-year-old widow from Athens, said she has to be extra careful with money these days. “I have no choice but to withdraw money from my savings,” she said.

Bad Loans

The shrinking Greek bank deposits compare with bank loans totalling €253 million. Analysts say the share of bad loans could rise to 20 percent next year, or €50 billion, as a result of the recession. This in turn will worsen the already pressing liquidity problems faced by Greek banks.

Nikos B., a doctor in the Greek military, has had enough of the never-ending crisis his country is going through. While the 31-year-old has a secure job, repeated salary cuts have made it increasingly hard for him to make ends meet.

He needs most of his money to make loan repayments for a small car. “How can I clear my account? There’s hardly anything in it,” he says. He started learning German two months ago and wants to leave Greece. “As soon as possible!”

Nikos pauses and looks down. He quietly utters words that must be painful for a proud Greek. “It would be best to change nationality.”

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Judith Hanna, a 75-year-old grandmother and anthropology professor, spent an afternoon in 2005 on a beach in Jacksonville, Florida, photographing women’s swimsuited backsides.

Hanna, who has spent almost 50 years studying the cultural expression of dance, called the fieldwork “interesting.” Her pictures, meant to demonstrate local enthusiasm for exposed flesh, became evidence in a nightclub’s fight against an ordinance requiring strippers to better cover their derrieres. Since 1995, Hanna, a University ofMaryland researcher, has helped clubs repel efforts to tax, regulate or close them, arguing more than 100 times that striptease is just as much an art as ballet.

Next year, her lap-dances-are-art argument will be part of an appeal before New York’s highest court. A stripper in heels is like a ballerina en pointe, she says, and her communication of feeling is no different than that of the New York City Ballet — and no less protected by the First Amendment.

“Patrons of gentleman’s clubs aren’t just there to look at nude bodies,” Hanna, who lives in Bethesda, said in a telephone interview. “They want to read into it. It’s not just the eroticism, it’s the beauty of the body, and the fantasy they create.”

Hanna says she has observed at least 1,500 ecdysiastic performances in her defense of the $12 billion U.S. exotic-dance industry, which comprises about 4,000 clubs. When a city or state passes a law to kick the clubs out of town, owners turn to Hanna. She sends clients an average bill of about $3,000, and estimated that she has 45 wins to 21 losses.

Voice of the Industry

Hanna “plays a really important role in letting people see our side,” said Eric Langan, chief executive officer of Houston-based Rick’s Cabaret International Inc. (RICK), which operates adult websites and clubs in Texas and Minnesota.

Opponents say her sophistry defends the indefensible.

“You can’t just trump the law by saying a naked dancer’s erotic message is protected by free speech,” said Scott Bergthold, a Chattanooga, Tennessee, attorney who helps municipalities craft and defend adult-business regulations. “We’re dealing with cases where cities are outlawing touching between naked dancers and customers that involve prostitution acts and she’s coming in with these opinions. It’s ridiculous.”

Hanna’s prominence has grown with the spread of stripping, Bergthold said in a telephone interview.

“The industry has exploded, and they’re now in towns and cities that 20 years ago didn’t have strip clubs,” he said.

‘Secondary Effects’

The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed crime rates around clubs to be used as cause for regulation. This year, the Missouri Supreme Court and a federal appeals court in Ohio upheld laws against touching customers. The Texas Supreme Court upheld a $5 per customer tax on nude clubs that serve alcohol. The so-called secondary effects doctrine, which allows laws restricting activities regarded as protected expression so long as they are aimed at deleterious side effects such as crime, was applied in all three.

At trial, Hanna’s testimony is often accompanied by that of sociologists who dispute crime data as the industry recasts itself as classy entertainment.

“Sex, drugs and heavy drinking have been replaced by good- looking women, $300 chairs and bright lights,” said Langan whose company has a market capitalization of about $77.6 million and whose stock has outperformed the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index by almost 1 percentage point this year.

And there is nothing new under the bustier, Hanna said.

“Exotic dance has nudity and is marginalized and stigmatized for it,” Hanna said. “It’s really old hat. It’s in musicals, operas, and theater.”

Grace and Violence

The New Testament tells of Salome, who “danced and pleased” her stepfather Herod, the ruler of Galilee, and then asked for John the Baptist’s head. Herod sent an executioner.

Vaslav Nijinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” ballet sparked a riot when its depiction of fertility rituals debuted in Paris in 1913.

“Exotic dance shares with virtually all dance genres the fact that it is a purposeful, intentionally rhythmical, culturally patterned, nonverbal, body movement communication in time and space,” Hanna writes in “Naked Truth: Strip Clubs, Democracy and a Christian Right,” to be released next year. It “conveys meaning by the use of space, touch, proximity to an observer, nudity, stillness and specific body movements.”

Preparing Temptation

Stripping can transcend the carnal, said Toni Bentley, an author who danced for choreographerGeorge Balanchine’s New York City Ballet before a hip injury ended her career.

“It’s hard to make the argument that just thrusting your pelvis is art,” Bentley said in a telephone interview. “You have a much better chance at doing something beautiful with work and preparation.”

The key to eroticism is careful planning, said Jennifer McCumber, 28, a retired stripper who runs a website from her Houston home where she teaches business concepts to dancers.

“To make a lap dance work, I had to combine concepts from gymnastics, things I learned from pole dancing, belly dancing I learned in college and even martial arts,” McCumber said in a telephone interview. “You have to have physical and mental agility to perform, while also making it seductive and alluring.”

Choreography is at the heart of the case in New York, where a club in Latham, near Albany, is arguing that most of its sales should be tax-free because of the state’s exemption for entrance fees to “dramatic or musical art performances.”

‘Stunningly Sweeping’

Andrew McCullough, a lawyer for Nite Moves, gave the court videos that dancers use to “adapt new techniques into their choreography.” And he hired Hanna to “get the message across” to the Tax Appeals Tribunal, he said.

It didn’t get there.

“To accept Dr. Hanna’s stunningly sweeping interpretation of what constitutes choreographed performance, all one needs to do is move in an aesthetically pleasing way to music,” tribunal Commissioners Carroll Jenkins and Charles Nesbitt wrote in their April 2010 ruling against the club.

The case is headed to the New York Court of Appeals, which said in October it will hear arguments next year.

In 2002, Bentley, the former ballet dancer, published “Sisters of Salome,” a study on early 20th Century strippers. As research, Bentley did a striptease of her own at a New York City club.

“There’s no definition to art and it’s eternally debated,” Bentley said. “Like the Supreme Court with obscenity, I know it when I see it. And from going to all kinds of strip clubs, some of it is and some of it is not.”

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Developing…

SAP of Germany announced plans on Saturday to buy SuccessFactors, a Web-based enterprise software company, for $40 a share, or $3.4 billion.

The all-cash transaction, which is expected to close early next year, offers SuccessFactors’ shareholders a 52 percent premium above Friday’s closing price.

“The cloud is a core of SAP’s future growth, and the combination of SuccessFactors’ leadership team and technology with SAP will create a cloud powerhouse,” Bill McDermott, the co-chief executive of SAP, said in a statement on Saturday.

Deal activity is heating up in the enterprise software industry, as giants like SAP hunt for smaller companies that provide services through the so-called cloud. In late October, for instance, rival Oracle, agreed to purchase RightNow Technologies, a maker of customer service software, for $1.43 billion. It was Oracle’s largest acquisition, since the takeover of Sun Microsystems last year.

SuccessFactors, a provider of employee management software, helps companies assess the performance of their employees, manage recruitment and fulfill other human resource needs. The San Mateo, Calif.-based company, which reported revenue of $91.2 million in the third quarter, has more than 3,500 customers spread across nearly 170 countries.

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TVNewser has learned Melissa Francis is leaving CNBC and joining Fox Business Network.

Francis was a co-anchor of daytime programs “Power Lunch” and, before that, “The Call.” The Harvard grad has been on TV since she was one year old, staring in a Johnson & Johnson commercial. She would later play the role of Cassandra Cooper Ingalls on “Little House on the Prairie.”

CNBC spokesman Brian Steel confirms the departure telling TVNewser, “We thank Melissa for her years of hard work and wish her well.”

SOURCE 

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It’s officially a reality television Republican primary now.

Donald Trump is pairing up with Newsmax, the conservative magazine and news Web site, to moderate a presidential debate in Des Moines on Dec. 27.

“Our readers and the grass roots really love Trump,” said Christopher Ruddy, chief executive of Newsmax Media. “They may not agree with
him on everything, but they don’t see him as owned by the Washington establishment, the media establishment.”

Mr. Trump’s role in the debate, which will be broadcast on the cable network Ion Television, is sure to be one of the more memorable moments in a primary season that has already delivered its fair share of circus-like spectacle.

Mr. Trump’s own flirtation with running for president this year seems almost quaint (whose birth certificate was he all worked up about?) compared with more recent distractions – like allegations of adultery and sexual harassment, gaffes that seemed scripted from a late-night comedy show, and a six-figure line of credit at Tiffany & Co.

But despite being derided by liberals – President Obama likened Mr. Trump to a “carnival barker” for his repeated assertions that the president was actually foreign-born – the real estate mogul is seriously influential in manyRepublican Party circles. And that sway seems especially deep with the party’s conservative base, which will be a decisive factor in the early primaries that are likely to determine the nominee. The debate, which unlike many recent ones will not be limited to a specific topic like national security or the economy, is set to happen just a week before the Iowa caucuses.

Newsmax sent candidates the invitation on Friday afternoon. It began, “We are pleased to cordially invite you to “The Newsmax Ion Television 2012 Presidential Debate,” moderated by a truly great American, Mr. Donald J. Trump.” Spokesmen for several candidates did not immediately respond to questions from The New York Times about whether they would accept.

Though presidential candidates may initially balk at the idea of appearing in a debate where Mr. Trump – with his bombast and The Hair – is the one posing the questions, they may ultimately see it as an invitation they can’t refuse. In fact many of the candidates have already met with him, some more publicly than others. Representative Michele Bachmann has sat down with Mr. Trump several times this year. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas had dinner with him at Jean Georges, the posh Manhattan restaurant. And Mitt Romney paid a visit but carefully avoided being photographed.

And Newsmax is a powerful player itself. It has a broad reach into the conservative base, with monthly Web traffic second only to Fox News among sites with conservative-leaning audiences.

Mr. Trump has been a popular attraction at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual gathering in Washington. He was such a successful presence in the eyes of Fox News executives that they added a special weekly segment to their morning show “Fox and Friends” for him called “Mondays With Trump.”

Whether his professed presidential ambitions are genuine or merely a publicity stunt seems not to matter in terms of the news media attention Mr. Trump can command. His highly publicized flirtation with running this year coincided with a Trump-branded product that stood to benefit from all the attention – a new season of his highly rated NBC show “Celebrity Apprentice.”

The arc of his noncampaign was similar in 1987 and 1999 – when Mr. Trump also said that he was considering running for president, episodes that are often forgotten.

His book ”Trump: The Art of the Deal” was published in November 1987 and reached The New York Times best-seller list by December. But by the time theRepublican National Convention rolled around in August 1988, he had opted out.

”Everybody wants me to do it,” he declared then. ”But I have no interest in doing it.”

And in late 1999, just before his book ”The America We Deserve” went on sale, he began courting support as a candidate on the Reform Party ticket. He even toured the country with his girlfriend, Melania Knauss, now his wife. The outcome? You guessed it.

SOURCE 

Herman Cain campaign says they will be making a “major announcement” in Georgia tomorrow. #Decision2012

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