aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Nunn hits Hillary where it hurts
Sam Nunn’s national security credentials bring to Barack a lot of what Hillary claimed she’s got. Nunn was born in Macon and raised in Perry, GA to boot!
Based on my conversations with Senator Obama, reading his book and his speeches and seeing the kind of campaign he has run, I believe that he is our best choice to lead our nation. Senator Obama, as evidenced by his words and his deeds, recognizes that:
— We have developed a habit of avoiding the tough decisions and seemingly lost our ability to build consensus to tackle head-on our biggest challenges.
- Demonizing the opposition, oversimplifying the issues, and dumbing down the political debate prevent our country from coming together to make tough decisions and tackle our biggest challenges.
- Solving America’s problems will require difficult choices and sacrifices and leaders capable of considering new ideas from both political parties.
- On foreign policy and security policy, we must recognize that we are not limited to a choice between belligerency and isolation and that we must listen to lead successfully on the key issues facing America and the world.
— Our next president must also recognize that the battle against violent terrorists, while requiring a prudent use of military power, is also a long-term contest of psychology and ideas.
Of course Nunn was only one of the day’s Obama endorsers. David Boren, the longest-serving chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee in history, and Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich round out the list.
Business Week’s Most Innovative Companies
The top five stay the same from last year—Apple, Google, Toyota, GE, & Microsoft—the bigger news is in the losers: 3m went from 7 to 22, Wal-Mart from 11 to 23, Target from 15 to 24. Starbucks and Dell dropped from the list.
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is their cover star:
Q: Few CEOs have taken as much flak as you have for spending on innovation, in both good times and bad. What’s your philosophy?
A: My view is there’s no bad time to innovate. You should be doing it when times are good and when times are tough-and you want to be doing it around things that your customers care about. For us, it’s such a deep-seated belief, I’m not sure we have a choice.
Q: The company has a reputation for frugality. Does that apply to the way you innovate?
A: I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out. When we were [first] trying to acquire customers, we didn’t have money to spend on ad budgets. So we created the associates program, [which lets] any Web site link to us, and we give them a revenue share. We invented one-click shopping so we could make check-out faster. Those things didn’t require big budgets. They required thoughtfulness and focus on the customer.
