By: Doug Farrar, Yahoo Sports

Who knows more about the Super Bowl than Jerry Rice? Not many people on Earth or elsewhere, that's who. The man who holds more NFL records than any other player also has a veritable lock on just about every postseason and Super Bowl record possible at his position. On Thursday, Yahoo! Sports asked Rice what he thought of the matchup between the Giants and the Patriots.

Rice started with Eli Manning and the Giants' receiver corps — with Hakeem Nicks, Victor Cruz and Mario Manningham, this may be more than the best bunch of receivers Manning's ever had — it could be the greatest threesome in the long history of the franchise. Still, as much as those guys make it tough on enemy defenses, Rice says that Manning is finally the fulcrum of this offense.

"Here's the deal — Eli threw for about 5,000 yards and 29 touchdowns [this season]. What he's doing now is pretty incredible with the weapons that he's got. Now, he's got the receivers with Nicks, Cruz and Manningham, and now that Nicks is 100 percent, Cruz goes back to the slot position. Now, he's going to be a hard matchup for that secondary. So, they've got the weapons, they've got the right quarterback who's orchestrating the offense, and that's why they're having so much success on the field right now."

As Rice noted, Cruz presents special problems in the slot, because defenses aren't used to dealing with a slot receiver who can charge 30 yards up the seam at a 4.4 clip. "Exactly. And when you look at what New England's secondary has to prepare for, who are you going to put on Cruz? Are you going to put Julian Edelman on him? There's no way … that's death! That's lethal right there. So, it's going to be interesting to see him work the middle and also go deep. They've got so many great weapons, and this offense is playing so well right now."

Of course, Rice had many good words for the Giants' dominant defense, as well. "Their defense is also playing so well, with Jason Pierre-Paul, Osi Umenyiora, and Justin Tuck. They're going to get pressure on Tom Brady, and what I noticed about Brady is that he doesn't like to have pressure up the middle. Because now, he doesn't have the avenue to move around, and we know he's not going to run the football. So, they're going to apply a lot of pressure. Overall, with the Giants, they should win this football game."

On the other side of the ball, Rice noted that while the Patriots don't really have a deep threat at this point, the injured Rob Gronkowski (you may have heard 14,000 times in the last three days, Gronk has a high ankle sprain), is the primary issue for the Giants' defense if he can go at full speed.  "That offense starts with Wes Welker and Rob Gronkowski. To have almost 1,300 yards and 17 touchdowns -- [Gronkowski] is an animal on that football field. I'm hoping that he can be close to 100 percent, because he can be a big part of that offense. If he can't go, it makes it easier for that secondary to cover Wes Welker and Aaron Hernandez. But you've still got the best quarterback in the league in Tom Brady back there.  Two Super Bowl MVPs, this is his fifth Super Bowl in 11 years, and we know he has won three. So, I'm sure he's licking his chops, trying to get that fourth football game."

And that led to a comparison Rice would be uniquely qualified to talk on — the constant comps between Tom Brady and Joe Montana. The man who caught a few balls from Joe Cool said that Tom Terrific is very much in that same mold.

"You can tell. With his demeanor and the way he stands in the pocket, delivers the football, accuracy is good, the ball is always going to be out, nice tight spiral … when you look at him, you just see Joe Montana all over again. Just his calm under pressure and the way he looks through his primary, secondary and third receivers. He just knows exactly where those guys are going to be."

Jerry was also in Indianapolis to promote the new NFL Films DVD though Vivendi Entertainment, Greatest Super Bowl Moments.

By: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Guest Contributor to The Huffington Post

After deliberating for only 15 hours, the jury in the Canadian Shafia "honour killing" trial returned a verdict:  all three defendants guilty of first-degree murder.  For the premeditated murder of teenage daughters Zainab, Sahar, and Geeti, and first wife Rona, Mohammad, Tooba Yahya, and Hamed Shafia will now begin serving life sentences.

The details of this quadruple homicide have been well documented.  But Justice Robert Maranger, who presided over the 12-week trial, gave perhaps the best summary of the case as he imposed the sentence on the defendants:

"It's difficult to conceive of a more heinous, more despicable, more honourless crime.  The apparent reason behind these cold-blooded, shameful murders was that the four completely innocent victims offended your twisted notion of honour, a notion of honour founded upon the domination and control of women, a sick notion of honour that has no place in any civilized society."

The verdict in the Shafia case exemplifies the ability of Western legal systems to provide justice to victims of honour violence.  In other parts of the world, killing in the name of honour serves as a defense to murder charges.  I applaud the Crown attorney in Ontario for having the courage to pursue an honour violence motive in this case.  They are among a small group of prosecutors in North America willing to recognize honour killings for what they are: a shameful form of violence against women supported by insidious notions of honour.

I also commend the judge and  jury for thoughtfully reviewing the evidence and coming to the only logical conclusion:  that the defendants committed premeditated murder because of a deranged notion of familial honour.  Other prosecutors presenting cases with similar motives to Western juries have not fared as well.  Last year, the judge presiding over the trial of Faleh Almaleki in Phoenix, Arizona for the murder of his daughter, Noor, rejected the prosecutor's theory that the father was motivated by the same deranged notion of family honour despite ample evidence that Almaleki murdered his daughter because of his displeasure with her increasingly Western lifestyle.  The jury in that case also missed the mark by failing to convict Almaleki of first-degree murder and instead finding him guilty of murder in the second degree.  To be sure, this verdict ensures that Almaleki will spend the remainder of his life in prison; however, it falls short of recognizing the hateful, premeditated nature of his crime and the full extent of Noor's suffering.

There are undoubtedly other cases of honour violence and honor killings in the West that do not receive international media attention and, indeed, do not even receive adequate attention from local law enforcement and service providers.  If anything positive can come from the Shafia verdict, let it be that law enforcement throughout North America takes the time to educate themselves about honour violence.  Violence and murder justified by perverted notions of family honour are happening here and the victims are most often the young women who embrace Western culture with their entire hearts and souls.  It seems little to ask in return that we protect them from suffering unspeakable harm, and even death, for doing so.

By: Sheila Bair, Contributor, FORTUNE

America is downsizing. Whether it's the food we eat, the cars we drive, or the houses we live in, Americans are concluding that smaller is better. Even U.S. corporations are starting to see the benefit of more Lilliputian institutions; the impending -- and widely hailed -- breakups of McGraw-Hill (MHP) and Kraft (KFT) are two examples.

So what about banks? It would surely be in the government's interest to downsize megabanks. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) continues to push his bill to split apart the largest institutions. Regulators have new authority to order divestitures under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. From a shareholder standpoint, government breakups have a pretty good outcome. It worked out well for John D. Rockefeller, whose shares in Standard Oil doubled after it was ordered to break up. Ditto for those who owned stock in AT&T (T).

Yet with gridlock in Washington, don't count on politicians for a solution. Shareholders, however, have an interest in demanding that big banks split apart. Comparing the valuation for the supersize banks (Citigroup (C), Bank of America (BAC), and J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM)) with their simpler, leaner competitors isn't pretty. Price/earnings per share for the supersizers averages 5.8, compared with 8.1 for smaller, more focused Wells Fargo (WFC) and 8.1 for the bigger regional banks like U.S. Bancorp (USB) and PNC (PNC).

More telling is the ratio of share price to tangible book value. For the supersizers, the average is 72% of book, compared with 165% for Wells and 142% for the big regionals. Chase's strong performance holds up the average for the supersizers, but even its price to book is only 110%. Wells' superior performance suggests that complexity is a bigger drag on returns than size is. Even though Wells' assets exceed $1 trillion, it has pretty much stuck to its basic business of taking deposits and making loans, and in the process has consistently delivered solid returns.

Before the financial crisis, the supersizers benefited from high levels of leverage and cheap debt funding costs from their "too big to fail" status. All that has changed. Capital requirements are going up significantly for mega-institutions. The cost of borrowing will rise, too, as bondholders come to realize that Dodd-Frank means what it says: no more bailouts. New rules on liquidity, proprietary trading, and derivatives will also eat into earnings. So it is hard to see how the megabanks' numbers can improve.

Supersizers argue that their scale is necessary to meet the financial needs of multinational corporations. But it's not clear that multinationals find it advantageous to do business with a handful of financial titans. Dealing with smaller, more focused institutions provides specialized expertise and less risk of conflicts. If there were really that much value in supersizer services, presumably it would show up in shareholder returns. But it doesn't.

Supersizers also argue that their economies of scale can lower costs for customers. Studies show that some economies of scale do exist, but they are limited by management difficulties in overseeing many different business lines. So while average overhead costs go down, average revenues go down even more. This effect can be mitigated by strong management, as Chase's exceptional performance demonstrates. But how many Jamie Dimons are out there?

At the beginning of the year, Citi's share price was trading at 58% of tangible book value, while BofA was trading at 48%. If Citi and BofA were broken up into smaller institutions that traded at price to tangible book ratios on par with the average of the big regionals, their shareholders would see $270 billion in appreciation. JPM shareholders would see $52 billion in appreciation.

So, shareholders, get ye to the boards that represent you and ask them loudly about whether your company would be worth more in easier-to-understand pieces. The public-policy benefits of smaller, simpler banks are clear. It may be in the enlightened self-interest of shareholders as well.

Rush Communications CEO Russell Simmons tells Keith Olbermann how Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy inspired him to help organize Occupy the Dream, a new offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Dr. King started the Poor People’s Campaign in November 1967 with the goal of confronting Congress about what he saw as its “hostility to the poor” while lobbying for an Economic Bill of Rights. Simmons decries a prison-industrial complex and states, “All of what promotes inequality — economic inequality — is the money in Washington.” Simmons argues for a constitutional amendment to stop the flow of money in politics, saying, “We want the politicians to work for us, not [the lobbyists].”

Here is a transcript from their recent discussion:

KEITH OLBERMANN: "This is America's opportunity to help bridge the gulf between the haves and the have-nots. The question is whether America will do it. There is nothing new about poverty. What is new is that we now have the techniques and the resources to get rid of poverty. The real question is whether we have the will."

In our third story — those are — those words are not from an Occupy rally, although they very well could be. Those are the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., four days before his assassination.

In what he called the "second phase" of the civil rights movement, Dr. King started the "Poor People's Campaign" in November of 1967. His goal was to confront Congress about what he saw as its "hostility to the poor," while at the same time lobbying for an "Economic Bill of Rights," a way for the federal government to help fix the growing problems of poverty and income inequality in this country. Seemingly an identical goal to that of the Occupy Movement.

Today, as Dr. King's birthday was commemorated, the Occupy movement took the time to honor him. Camps all over the country taking part in today's observations, marching as part of annual parades, or staging their own. Last night, Occupy Wall Street held a candlelight march to Riverside Church, where Dr. King himself spoke at in 1967. Inside, several hundred Occupiers held a vigil, which included speeches and performances by supporters of Occupy, culminating with powerful words from the great Patti Smith.

(Excerpt from video clip) PATTI SMITH: That the people have the power, to redeem the work of fools. Upon the meek the grace is showered, it's decreed, "The people rule."

OLBERMANN: Joining us now is the founder of Globalgrind.com, speaker at the aforementioned vigil at Riverside Church, Russell Simmons. Good to see you, sir. Thanks for coming in.

RUSSELL SIMMONS: Nice to see you.

OLBERMANN: Do you — is it an overstating it to say that, to some degree, Occupy is an extension of what Dr. King was standing for?

SIMMONS: Well, we founded Occupy the Dream just on that premise — that it was Dr. King's dream that the unions and civil rights leaders, which is the black clergy, and is still the black clergy — so we have, unifying the black clergy and the unions and the young creative spirit of Occupy, and we're going to occupy the dream, right? Most likely, we'll end up in Washington on his death day. We announced it on his birthday, today.

Today, the Occupy the Dream movement — which is a splinter group, right — occupied all of the Federal Reserve banks, and the purpose, again, is simple — to go get the money out of Washington. As you know, I've always said that was the main goal. I believe they occupied Wall Street because Wall Street controlled their future, and so that's the one thing, I think, would be first, if I had to figure out how can I attack economic inequality.

Today, I wrote a blog about the prison-industrial complex, and, you know, the fact that nine out of ten people in prison for drugs are African Americans and three out of four of those are non-violent users and not pushers or anything like that. And that's part of the funding of politicians — to keep those books on law.

We know for sure that war on drugs is a failure. But, if there's too much money funding it, and the politicians can't afford to get the money they are addicted to then, of course, that law will continue and will continue to poison communities by feeding them back to them as criminals.

But there are many things — the jobs overseas, the health-care issue — these are things that will never happen so long as politicians are being paid for. So Occupy the Dream is founded on King's memory and legacy. But the number-one goal is to get the money out of politics and promote a Constitutional amendment.

OLBERMANN: One thing that you wrote on the piece for the Huffington Post today, let me read it exactly, "Today, the march for civil rights isn't about convincing Americans that racism is wrong. It is about getting the money out of politics, so that the profit from institutional racism is eliminated." Is that, indeed, what Dr. King was moving towards, if not had already reached, in the last months of his life?

SIMMONS: Well, the Poor People's Movement that he founded was meant to be integrated, in a way that people who had the same economic issues could come together and fight for what is right.

In fact, this Occupy the Dream movement, although it is founded by myself and black clergy, and some of the Occupy members and the unions — and really, the black clergy and myself, that was input — but we don't want it to be about black clergy.

Someone said, "Oh, it's the Obama people." I want the tea party members who, I know, believe it would be nice if they elected a politician who worked for them. And I want the Republicans who believe the same, and I want — this is a 90-10 issue. Nine out of ten Americans believe that corporations and special interest have too much control over our government.

This public-funding idea, which is what the Constitutional amendment proposes, this public-funding idea would give us a true democracy. It's an American revolution, it's not an easy thing. If you tell any politician, they will say ," Oh, it's a good idea, but it will never happen." Because they are seated politicians and 96 percent of the people who have the money get re-elected. So that's, obviously, their spot, the most money, right?

So, it needs — we have to watch our politicians make this change, watch our Supreme Court make the change. All of America wants it. And now the time has come. It's because of Occupy Wall Street that we have this opportunity.

OLBERMANN: It is good, is it important to invoke — not just Martin Luther King — but the man whose name he carried, Martin Luther, who, after all, when he nailed those 95 thesis to the wall of the church in Germany — that was all about income inequality and the corruption of an organization, in that case, the church — by money. What he wrote about could also — I mean if you looked at it and took a few details out, that looks like something that was written at Occupy Wall Street.

SIMMONS: I never thought about that, but absolutely. You could invoke his name as well.

OLBERMANN: I mean, bring everybody into it, because you don't want to make it seem stratified.

SIMMONS: Everybody — it is not limited to race inequity. The article was about the institutional racism that occurs when — imagine, you took all of these diseased people out of the war on drugs. You took them out of the community and put them in jail for ten years for little bits of drugs, or eight years, whatever.

They went back home hardened criminals and they created what was kind of a jail culture in some of the streets in our communities. That was a terrible thing, and we have to stop that. We are spending a fortune, we're educating people in criminal behavior and we're destroying not only the black community, but everywhere.

Although it is — nine out of ten people, and the whites and blacks use and sell drugs at the same rate, but nine out of ten people incarcerated today for drugs are African-Americans, and that is — so the issue is the mathematics of modern-day racism.

But the — it's a much bigger issue, that all of what promotes equality — economic inequality — is the money in Washington. And it's criminal. It's legal bribery. Congressman goes to work, he has two years to start ho'ing, I mean borrowing — to start selling influence — did I say 'ho'ing?'

OLBERMANN: No, you were right the first time.

SIMMONS: He immediately goes to work to do that, to figure out how he can shore up his money and who he can do favors for. I fought with the drug lords, I had the big issue with the Rockefeller drug lords, we won something. We didn't win what we deserved, but we won something, there were a hundred thousand people downtown protesting. And the governor made a change and the following governor made another change.

But the number-one impediment to making the change were not the people talking about "soft on crime," not all of these conservatives who may not understand the drug law — the drug war and its effect on communities, it was the lobbyists. The people that kept us from getting the deal done were the lobbyists, that paid the politicians and were obvious everywhere. And their influence was everywhere and people worked for them. And we want the politicians to work for us, not them.

OLBERMANN: Russell Simmons, it's always a pleasure to see you. I always learn something else.

SIMMONS: I didn't let you talk too much. But I liked what you said about Martin Luther.

OLBERMANN: Bring him into it, too. Bring everybody in that stood for some sort of justice in the world. Thank you, sir.

Collins has acquired The Tiger and The Snake: Twelve Steps to Making Smarter Decisions from Noreena Hertz, one of the most influential and visionary thinkers on the international stage. UK and Commonwealth rights were acquired by Hannah MacDonald, Collins Publisher, and Helena Nicholls, Senior Commissioning Editor from Ed Victor at Ed Victor Ltd.

For more than two decades Noreena Hertz’s economic and societal predictions have been accurate and ahead of the curve. In her bestselling book The Silent Takeover, Hertz predicted that under-regulated markets and massive financial institutions would destabilise and devastate the West with serious political and economic ramifications.  Whilst her 2005 bestseller, IOU: The Debt Threat, predicted the 2008 financial crisis.

In The Tiger and the Snake Noreena turns her mind to the individual – and how each of us make our decisions whether at work or in our personal lives. In a fractured world of virtual communication and information overload we have become “info-misers”, “narrow-casters”, “copy cats” and “slavish followers of so-called experts”.

Hertz reveals the extent to which life-altering, business-affecting, policy-determining, and also health-defining decisions are being made based on partial information, conventional (but often ill judged) wisdoms, corrupted data and insufficient scrutiny. From Alan Greenspan’s claims that subprime derivatives were safe to Akia Toyoda’s reluctance to recall those malfunctioning Toyotas to stories of radiologists misdiagnosing tumours – Hertz takes us on a journey that reveals the extent to which we cede our intellectual power at our peril.

Hertz’s call for a revolution in the way we think brings insight into what we can do to reverse these dominant trends. In twelve clear stages Hertz constructs a path to more astute decision making. By embracing chaos, browsing not searching, co-creating knowledge, engineering discord, taking on experts, and distrusting our senses we can make better choices and more accurate predictions in order to become smarter decision makers and better problem solvers – whether we’re a President, an investor a mother or a daughter.

Hannah MacDonald says: “Helena and I are thrilled to be working with Noreena on The Tiger and The Snake. Noreena Hertz’s joining Collins represents a major coup for us in our campaign to publish the finest thinkers and deliver game-changing ideas. The world has changed seismically over the last decade of technological development and we need to adapt the way we make decisions in this modern world. Noreena will deliver a groundbreaking book to change the way we think.”

Noreena Hertz says: “This book is the culmination of five years of research. In an age in which it is more essential than ever before to be accurately informed and in which it is increasingly hard to determine who to trust, and what to believe, I hope to empower my readers so as to enable then to make smarter and better decisions whether at home or in the workplace.”

“I am delighted that I will be working with Collins on this endeavour. Collins’s track record and reputation in the realm of information and knowledge is second to none and is a fantastic home for this book”.

The book will be published in spring 2013.

By: Christina Wilkie, Huffington Post

WASHINGTON -- When Carly Fiorina first considered running for a Senate seat in California in 2009, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) offered her a piece of advice.

"He said to me, 'Carly, you're going to have to learn to shamelessly ask for money,'" Fiorina recalled in an interview with The Huffington Post. "And I still remember that first phone call I made." She smiled, but didn't elaborate. "Suffice to say when you're running for office, you learn to ask for money pretty darn quick. It probably helped that I'm a business person, too, and I'm direct."

Today, the former CEO of Hewlett Packard brings her experience as a candidate and a CEO to the Republican effort to win back the Senate majority, as vice chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). The NRSC's chairman, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), pointed out that Fiorina is the first person to hold the position who is not a sitting senator. In the coming year, he told HuffPost, her top priority will be "to expand our base of support, especially in the business community."

For Fiorina and the GOP, the stakes could hardly be higher. Republicans need to win only four seats to regain control of the  Senate, and with 23 Democrats either up for re-election or retiring next year, political analysts acknowledge that odds favor the GOP.

"Republicans are really well-positioned this cycle, and Democrats are playing defense all over the map," said Ron Bonjean, a GOP strategist. "More importantly, though, it's not a Rubik's cube, where there's only one way to solve it -- there are a lot of roads [Republicans] could take to get to a majority," he said.

Democrats, for their part are relying on a combination of tactics and luck to maintain their narrow majority, and Shripal Shah, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), told HuffPost the party is "strongly positioned to retain [the majority] come November." Among the Democrats' advantages, Shah listed "bloody Republican primaries, great [Democratic] recruits in key states, a strong fundraising advantage, incumbents and the DSCC."

But Senate races are notoriously expensive for both parties, and there are 33 of them in 2012 -- one third of the Upper Chamber. For Republicans, this is where Fiorina factors in.

"I never imagined myself at the NRSC," she said, "but John [Cornyn] came to visit me in California last spring, and he said, 'we really need you out there.'"

A month later, Cornyn visited Fiorina again, this time with a detailed proposal for her role at the NRSC. "I read it over and I thought, ok, I'm in," she said.

"Carly was a fantastic candidate last year," Cornyn told HuffPost. "She's so well-respected and has such a high profile ... I knew she would be a great asset [to the GOP]."

Not surprisingly, Democrats view Fiorina a little differently. Asked how her experience might play out in the 2012 Senate race, the DSCC's Shah referenced her tenure at Hewlett Packard and said, "Carly Fiorina got rich laying off American workers and outsourcing jobs." "Considering her record, it's not surprising that Republicans made her a poster child for their agenda."

But love her or loathe her, it appears Fiorina is in Washington to stay. This fall, she and her husband, retired AT&T executive Frank Fiorina, bought a $6.1 million brick house overlooking the Potomac in Lorton, Va., about an hour's drive from Washington.

"A lot of people don't know this, but Frank and I met and married in Virginia," Fiorina said. "We bought our first home here, and we have a daughter who lives here." Even after she moved to California to run Hewlett Packard in 1999, Fiorina and her husband kept a small apartment in Washington to stay in when they visited family. This fall, "with two grandkids here, we decided it was time that the big house be in Virginia, and the little house in California," she said.

But don't expect to see Fiorina setting up shop at the NRSC's headquarters on Capitol Hill. "A lot of what I'll be doing is traveling to meet with members of the business community and holding roundtable discussions," she explained. Thus far, she's already made several trips to New York and California.

At these events, she said, "the first question people ask me is often about the committee itself -- 'what is the NRSC?'"

"There's a lot of confusion about how these committees work," explained Cornyn, "and about how we spend money. Carly's been a candidate before so she can answer people's questions and relieve any anxiety donors might have about giving to a national committee. I also think she feels she had great support [from the NRSC] during her race."

"Support" in politics means cash, and Fiorina's Senate campaign received more than $7 million of "support" from the NRSC.

In addition to her status as a former CEO and candidate, Fiorina is also a veteran Republican donor, most recently as National Finance Chair of Sen. John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. Moreover, unlike sitting senators, she isn't tied to the upper chamber's hectic legislative schedule, former Fiorina adviser and GOP strategist Liz Mair noted, "so she'll be able to focus her attention on the campaign in a way that sitting senators might not be able to."

Fiorina's flexible schedule could be especially useful to the NRSC this cycle given that its Democratic counterpart, the DSCC, doesn't have a vice chair, leaving chairwoman Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) with a lot of responsibility on top of her duties in elected office. Shah, the DSCC spokesman, told HuffPost that reelection efforts are spread throughout the entire Democratic caucus, rather than concentrated in one or two chairs. "Senate Democrats are working hard to help the DSCC preserve our majority and already we've seen their efforts pay dividends," he said. "Our fundraising advantage is just one of the reasons why we'll be successful this cycle."

With congressional approval ratings at historic lows, Fiorina's status as a private citizen may mean she can more easily address GOP donors' frustrations over the bitter partisan gridlock in Washington. As Liz Mair said,  "[Fiorina] will likely be able to speak her mind more freely [than a sitting senator would], without the usual horse-race type scrutiny of her each and every move."

"Donors right now are expressing concerns about the entire political process," Fiorina told HuffPost. "We have big problems, and there don't seem to be any solutions." The good news, however, is that "sometimes, this kind of frustration can result in apathy [among supporters], but right now, I see it motivating people," she said.

Some donors, she explained, "just don't realize how close we are to the [Senate] majority until I tell them, and we lay out the numbers, and they really understand what's at stake."

"With or without [a Republican in] the White House, the Senate is the body that approves legislation, and [approves] regulators and executive branch appointees," Fiorina said she reminds donors, "so the potential impact of a Republican majority in the Senate is enormous."

"A Republican House and Senate would set their legislative priorities on the floor and send them all the way to the president's desk, which would force the Obama administration to negotiate directly with Republicans," said Bonjean, the GOP strategist.

"The buffer that exists now between the president and congressional Republicans would be gone," he added, "and if Obama's still in the White House, it would definitely weaken him."

On Capitol Hill, Bonjean said, "there's a sense of inevitability" about a Republican Senate majority, and the result is "a [campaign] war going on inside the Senate chamber."

In this climate, neither party is willing to compromise, he said, because "Democrats want to pass their priorities, or if they don't pass, [they want] to campaign on them. But Republicans need to make the case that Senate Democrats are holding up solutions."

At this early stage in the campaign, Fiorina is more apt to speak about the two parties in terms of differing philosophies, rather than all-out battle, which reinforces her position above the fray of the trench warfare of congressional politics. But it remains to be seen whether she will maintain her thoughtful, informative tone through November of 2012.

As the election cycle heats up, political necessity may require that she strike a harder note, both with donors and potentially even with voters, as a surrogate in especially tough races. "There are a lot of different directions major donors could go in this cycle," said Mair, "and they want to hear specifics about all of these things from everyone."

Perhaps more than anything else, big picture perspective is what Fiorina brings to Republican donors right now. After all, she's been there, and if her message resonates the way she hopes it will within the GOP, there's no telling how far she can go.

By: AmmoLand.com Staff

Colt Defense announces the election of General George W. Casey, Jr., U. S. Army (ret.) to the Governing Board of Colt Defense LLC.

General Casey served as Chief of Staff of the United States Army for four years from April 2007 to April 2011. Previously, he was Commander, Multinational Force – Iraq from July 2004 to February 2007.

During his distinguished 41-year career in the U. S. Army, Gen. Casey received numerous awards and decorations including four Defense Distinguished Service Medals, two Army Distinguished Service Medals and three Legions of Merit.

He holds a Masters Degree in International Relations from Denver University and has served as a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council of the United States.

“We are proud to welcome General George Casey to our board,” said Gerald Dinkel, President and Chief Executive Officer of Colt Defense LLC.

“His experience and success as a military leader in the most challenging and complex environments makes him an ideal person to contribute to our strategic planning, business execution and overall corporate governance.”