As restaurant brand executives cut jobs and announced their intentions to raise prices in the wake of President Obama's re-election, no one can say they weren't forewarned.

Chains such as Papa John's are explicitly tying their actions to the costs of Obamacare, while other brands — including GE Healthcare and Virgin Airlines — also are announcing job cuts as a result of their expectations for a continuation of U.S. economic sluggishness in the wake of the voting results.

Papa John's CEO John Schnatter has been the most outspoken. The Mitt Romney backer has said that he'll raise the price of a pizza pie by 10 to 14 cents as well as slash employee hours — but it's not, he says, because of the two million pizzas he's giving away, but due to the cotss of Obamacare. He's not alone. A Denny's franchisee in Florida, John Metz, said that he plans to add a five-percent surcharge to his customers' bills and also to reduce his employees' hours.Continue reading...

It’s almost redundant to mention that social media is now de rigueur for anything of import in the world today, from sports (Olympics, Super Bowl), to entertainment (Oscars, Emmy’s) and certainly, irrevocably, for politics.

As thousands gathered in person in Tampa, Florida for the Republican National Convention, overshadowed by news of Isaac in the twitterverse and blogs, President Obama made a surprise appearance on social news site Reddit, answering questions from members on their Ask Me Anything (AMA) platform.

The White House announced the President’s social media appearance around 4:15 Wednesday afternoon. Site overload issues interfered with access and performance after Obama tweeted, "Hey, everyone: I'll be taking your questions online today," with a link to the Reddit thread just before the session started. Reddit, which claims about 40 million users, almost broke: two million people tried to access it during the next 45 minutes, with more than 200,000 visits at one point -- and that number may be low because of the strain on the site. This beat the prior record of 130,000. Continue reading...

The auto industry continues to move in fits and starts — some huge, some tiny — toward the future of the electrified automobile. It hasn't been pretty getting this far, and there will be many ups and downs for electric vehicles before U.S. and global consumers presumably someday embrace them.

One of the inevitable shifts along that path came today when a Chinese auto-parts company rescued cash-strapped A123 Systems, an American lithium-ion battery maker for the U.S. electrified-car market that has been in lots of financial trouble in part because of how slowly the market has developed. Wanxiang can acquire up to 80 percent of A123 Systems in return for an investment of up to $450 million.

Quickly, a very public critic of the deal emerged: Bob Lutz, former GM vice chairman, in a column on Forbes.com. The father of the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid is opposed to the "green-technology" mandate on the U.S. auto industry by the Obama administration, which had made a $249-million loan to A123 Systems.

Lutz characterized the acquisition of the high-tech company by the Chinese concern as a downfall of trying to "mandate" an EV-car market to an American public that isn't ready for it yet.Continue reading...

The web world is a fickle mistress, even for high-rollers like Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, whose venture Jumo (which he discusses above with Stephen Colbert) was just acquired by GOOD, magazine-publisher-turned-digital-media-platform. The financial terms are: $0, an “advisory” role for Hughes, and the chance for Jumo’s 16 employees to reapply for their jobs with GOOD, according to Betabeat.

The guru behind Barack Obama’s acclaimed 2008 digital strategy (Fast Company called him, perhaps excessively, “The Kid Who Made Obama President”), Hughes proved less successful with a social network for philanthropy and activism.Continue reading...

Our most-read blog posts of the past week range from McDonald's makeover to Lady Gaga's Judas video:

#1 McDonald's Launches Billion Dollar McMakeover

#2 Chobani Conquers Yogurt Market, Faces New Problem

#3 Is Sprint Really Asking Us to Spam an (Almost) 100-Year-Old Woman?

#4 The Lady Gaga Judas Video Product Placement Surprise

#5 Trump Golf Biz First To Suffer Trump Prez Biz

#6 Missed Opp: The Mystery Jacket Obama Wore To Take Out Bin Laden

#7 Coca-Cola Turns 125

#8 A New Queen for McQueen: Sarah Burton Steps Up

#9 GagaVille: Zynga Helps Lady Gaga Launch 'Born This Way' Album

#10 Branson Rebrands, Defends Virgin Australia Debut

Bank of America reportedly exposes customer accounts online.

Chevron fined $8bn over Amazon 'contamination.'

Facebook sees small stake go to Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

FedEx lowers guidance.

Foster's announces it will spin off troubled wine unit.

Sony exec hints that company may pull out of Apple's iTunes.

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway increases Wells Fargo stake and liquidates positions in Bank of America, Nike,Comcast, NALCO, Nestle, Fiserv, and Loews.Continue reading...

AP settles copyright suit against Obama "Hope" poster artist Shepard Fairey.

Apple shares hit all-time high.

Burger King tests first stuffed hamburger.

Chrysler reports global sales increase.

Conan O'Brien says he's happy with life, ratings post-NBC.

Discovery Communications CEO David Zaslav shakes up US network execs, promoting Eileen O'Neill to run TLC and Discovery Channel.Continue reading...

BP oil spill fund offers fast-track payments.

eBay and BBH part company after marketing changes.

ESPN buys PVI intellectual property from Cablevision.

Gawker Media resumes publishing, serves as object lesson in password security.

Google launches site for teaching tech to parents; Google Mobile searches grew 130% in Q3.

Lions Gate loses Carl Icahn as a bidder.

Microsoft joins Expedia, Kayak to block Google acquisition; fends off Twitter rumors.Continue reading...