Tidbits on October 2, 2006
Bob Jensen

Foliate Network --- http://www.foliagenetwork.com/default.php
Foliage in New Hampshire's White Mountains --- http://www.nhliving.com/foliage/index.shtml
Fall Foliage --- http://gonewengland.about.com/cs/fallfoliage/l/blfoliagecentrl.htm
Foliage Pictures --- http://photo.net/travel/us/ne/foliage

For earlier editions of Tidbits go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
For earlier editions of New Bookmarks go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm 

Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter --- Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron" enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and other universities is at http://www.searchedu.com/.

Bob Jensen's past presentations and lectures --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/resume.htm#Presentations   
 

Click here to search this Website if you have key words to enter --- Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron" enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and other universities is at http://www.searchedu.com/.

Bob Jensen's Home Page is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/

Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio
In the past I've provided links to various types of music and video available free on the Web. 
I created a page that summarizes those various links --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm

Video on How Jiffy Lube Cheats on Car Repairs --- http://mfile.akamai.com/12924/wmv/vod.ibsys.com/2006/0503/9152183.200k.asx

Hoe Down of Hillary and Condi running for president --- http://i.euniverse.com/funpages/cms_content/13180/HillaryCondi_HoDown.swf 

Digital Archives --- http://www.dapcentral.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=MasterList2&file=more

Free music downloads --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm

In the past I've provided links to various types of music and video available free on the Web. 
I created a page that summarizes those various links --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm

Hearing History in Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6129917

Symphony No. 5:  Hear samples of the music:
* The First Movement * The Second Movement

Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother --- http://www.jessiesweb.com/muther.htm
If the sound does not commence after 30 seconds, scroll to the bottom of the page and turn it on.

Hubbard's Path: 'Redneck Mother' to 'Wylie Lama' --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6082018
* 'Snake Farm' * 'Old Guitar' * 'Kilowatts'

Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother --- http://www.jessiesweb.com/muther.htm
If the sound does not commence after 30 seconds, scroll to the bottom of the page and turn it on.

Tommy Emmanuel, Finger-Picking Good --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6124857

Joe Lovano, Returning to 'The Birth of the Cool' (Jazz) --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6161569

Audiotorium (large number of free downloads) --- http://bornpinoy.com/audiotorium.htm

'Rockin' Bones' Celebrates Rockabilly's Rebels --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6099780

Chris Smither, Keeping the Blues Light On --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6083209

A Poppy Rock Band Discovers Hints of Metal --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5783211

New Music Video From David "The Hoff" Hasselhoff - "Jump In My Car" ---
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3382491587979249836&hl=en

2BlogMusic.com --- http://www.2blogmusic.com/?p=47

Photographs and Art

Online Books, Poems, References, and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature available free on the Web. 
I created a page that summarizes those various links --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm

It's the soul that stands the body up and gets it moving forward. Every body's soul is on a journey.
We Never Go Away, Listen to this poem by Dennis Downey ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6068489

Robert Frost Poem Discovered Tucked Away in Book --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6174131

Famous peoples last words --- http://www.digital-karma.org/culture/quotes/famous-peoples-last-words
Last Words of Real People --- http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/6537/realidx.htm
Last Words of Fictional Characters --- http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/6537/fictidx.htm
Famous Epitaphs --- http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/6537/epitaphs.htm
Other Last Words --- http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/6537/

BBC's World History --- http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/

Macro History --- http://www.fsmitha.com/

The Golden Bowl by Henry James (1843-1916) --- Click Here

Oskar Schindler --- http://www.oskarschindler.com/

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie (1860-1937) --- Click Here

PoetryMagic --- http://www.poetrymagic.co.uk/siteplan.html

Interactive Novel
Introduction to the Quicksilver Wiki by Neal Stephenson --- http://www.metaweb.com/wiki/wiki.phtml

LitWeb --- http://litweb.net/
Find over 500 biographies of the most important writers with our Authors Index, selected bibliographies, and the winners, past and present, of the top literary prizes since they began.

It's a good thing I had a bag of Marijuana instead of a bag of spinach. I'd be dead by now.
Willie Nelson being caught with a bag of Marijuana earlier this week (forwarded by Debbie)

The manner with which we walk through life is each man's most important responsibility, and we should remember this with every new sunrise.
Thomas Yellowtail, CROW as quoted in a recent message from Jeff Hostetler

Friends applaud, the comedy is over.
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827). Purported to be his last words --- Click Here  

Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.
Leo Tolstoy, (Nikolaevich), Count (1828-1910). Purported to be his last words --- Click Here 

Drink to me!
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). Purported to be his last words --- Click Here

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull. This is not always easy to achieve.
Dean Acheson (1893-1971) --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acheson 

“I believe that most professors aren’t trained to design effective writing assignments or know what it means to evaluate their students’ writing fairly. In other words, most student writing problems identified by faculty are caused by faculty. Sloppy assignments and grading policies lead to sloppy student writing.” “So I would say the long and short of it is that the most effective way to improve student writing is to improve faculty performance.”
Laurence Musgrove, "Just Ask the Students," Inside Higher Ed, October 2, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/10/02/musgrove
Laurence Musgrove is an associate professor of English and foreign languages at Saint Xavier University, in Chicago.

Look what President [Hugo] Chavez just said about President Bush. You know, we--and we try to teach our children to get over it. I mean, you've got kids. You know, one of the most important things you can teach a child is that not everything that happens to you will be nice. But you are in control of how you respond to everything that happens to you. You do not have to respond with violence or anger or hatred or bitterness or demeaning conduct, and you cannot be diminished by what someone else says about you.
Bill Clinton --- http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0609/20/lkl.01.html 

Cablevision awarded options to a vice chairman after his 1999 death but backdated them to make it appear they were awarded when he was still alive. Cablevision restated its results as an options probe escalated.
Peter Grant, James Bandler, and Charles Forelle, The Wall Street Journal, September 22, 2006; Page A1 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115884346082669986.html?mod=todays_us_page_one

More than 1,500 people have died in narcotics-related killings in Mexico this year. Dozens of people have been beheaded and tortured as cartels across Mexico fight for the lucrative drug trafficking routes into the U.S.
"Mexico's Drug Wars Leave Rising Death Toll," NPR, September 21, 2006 ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6113878

Those obnoxious hedge fund managers and their super-rich investors think they’ve been trapped in a nightmare this month. They haven’t. They’ve been trapped in a movie. Namely: a 2006 remake of the old Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd classic, “Trading Places.” In the film, two tycoons expect an orange juice shortage and try to corner the market. When it turns out there is no shortage, the price collapses in panic selling and they lose their shirts. This time it’s oil, not OJ. But it works the same way.
Brett Arends, "Hedge fund managers getting burned on oil," Boston Herald, September 26, 2006 --- Click Here

'This woman may have had the voice of an angel in the past but now she has the foul mouth of a sewer rat.' Channel 4's confidential complaints log, seen by this newspaper, shows that the bulk of the protests have been about 20-year-old Miss Church's language.
Martin Beckford and James Tapper, "Viewers' fury at Charlotte's 'sewer rat' mouth," London's Daily Mail, September 23, 2006 --- Click Here

According to the report from Ted Baehr, publisher of MovieGuide, Hollywood movies with strong Christian worldviews make two to seven times as much money as those flicks with explicit sex and nudity. The assessment looked at nearly 2,700 of the top movies at the box office from 1996 through 2005, and said while pundits and advertisers like to believe that sex and nudity sells, nothing could be further from the truth.
"Surprise! Moral movies draw 7 times the fans," WorldNetDaily, September 30, 2006 --- http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52221

At least 60 million people regularly consult online maps, and last year 1.2 million cars were sold with built-in navigation systems, a number that has quadrupled over the past three years. Cell phone manufacturers are starting to install GPS, too.
Wilson Rothman, "Map Quest It's geeky data miners vs. old-school drivers in the pitched battle to provide digital driving directions to the likes of Google and Garmin. May the best map win," Wired Magazine, October 2006 --- http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.10/mapquest.html

The world of computer gaming is often associated with "gamers" -- mostly men who invest in special controllers, giant monitors and subwoofers for use with violent action games. But a different type of gaming, "casual gaming," is becoming popular with a different type of user, mainly middle-age women. Casual games include puzzles, card and arcade games and don't require hours of play in order to understand how they work or which computer buttons will do what. The game industry sees the casual gamer as a growing market and believes it mainly consists of women over 35.
Walter S. Mossberg and Katherine Boehret, Online Games Appeal to 'Casual' Players Violence-Free Web Service Offers Free Trials, Rewards; Log-Ins Can Get Confusing," The Wall Street Journal, September 13, 2006; Page D4 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/the_mossberg_solution.html

The next president should appoint George W. Bush to be a special envoy to Iraq and charge him with the responsibility to oversee all American interests there, advise the new Iraqi government, and maintain the morale of American troops who are carrying out the war effort.
Bill Ferguson,  Salt Lake Tribune, June 16, 2006

The Gong Show's Game of Gotcha
I was surprised at the media source (The Washington Post) of this admission
Many Democrats act as if that's the end of the discussion: A mismanaged occupation has created a breeding ground for terrorists, so we should withdraw and let the Iraqis sort out the mess. Some extreme war critics are so angry at Bush they seem almost eager for America to lose, to prove a political point. Even among mainstream Democrats, the focus is "gotcha!" rather than "what next?" That is understandable, given the partisanship of Republican attacks, but it isn't right.
"The Big Question Democrats Are Ducking," by David Ignatius, The Washington Post, September 27, 2006 --- Click Here

The issue raised by the National Intelligence Estimate is much grimmer than the domestic political game. Iraq has fostered a new generation of terrorists. The question is what to do about that threat. How can America prevent Iraq from becoming a safe haven where the newly hatched terrorists will plan Sept. 11-scale attacks that could kill thousands of Americans? How do we restabilize a Middle East that today is dangerously unbalanced because of America's blunders in Iraq?

This should be the Democrats' moment, if they can translate the national anger over Iraq into a coherent strategy for that country. But with a few notable exceptions, the Democrats are mostly ducking the hard question of what to do next. They act as if all those America-hating terrorists will evaporate back into the sands of Anbar province if the United States pulls out its troops. Alas, that is not the case. That is the problem with Iraq -- it is not an easy mistake to fix.

An example of the Democrats' fudge on Iraq was highlighted yesterday by Post columnist Dana Milbank in his description of retired Maj. Gen. John Batiste's appearance before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee. Senators cheered Batiste's evisceration of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld but tuned out Batiste's call for more troops and more patience in Iraq, and his admonition: "We must mobilize our country for a protracted challenge."

Here's a reality check for the Democrats: There is not a single government in the Middle East, with the possible exceptions of Iran and Syria, that favors a rapid U.S. pullout from Iraq. Why? The consensus in the region is that a retreat now would have disastrous consequences for America and its allies. Yet withdrawal is the Iraq strategy you hear from most congressional Democrats, whether they call it "strategic redeployment" or something else.

I wish Democrats (and Republicans, for that matter) were asking this question: How do we prevent Iraq from becoming a failed state? Many critics of the war would argue that the worst has already happened -- Iraq has unraveled. Unfortunately, as bad as things are, they could get considerably worse. Following a rapid American pullout, Iraq could descend into a full-blown civil war, with Sunni-Shiite violence spreading throughout the region. In this chaos, oil supplies could be threatened, sending prices well above $100 a barrel. Turkey, Iran and Jordan would intervene to protect their interests. James Fallows titled his collection of prescient essays warning about the Iraq war "Blind Into Baghdad." We shouldn't compound the error by being "blind out of Baghdad," too.

The Democrat who has tried hardest to think through these problems is Sen. Joseph Biden. He argues that the current government of national unity isn't succeeding in holding Iraq together and that America should instead embrace a policy of "federalism plus" that will devolve power to the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish regions. Iraqis are already voting for sectarian solutions, Biden argues, and America won't stabilize Iraq unless it aligns its policy with this reality. I disagree with some of the senator's conclusions, but he's asking the right question: How do we fix Iraq?

America needs to reckon with the message of the National Intelligence Estimate. Iraq has compounded Muslim rage and created a dangerous crisis for the United States. The Democrats understandably want to treat Iraq as George Bush's war and wash their hands of it. But the damage of Iraq can be mitigated only if it again becomes the nation's war -- with the whole country invested in finding a way out of the morass that doesn't leave us permanently in greater peril. If the Democrats could lead that kind of debate about security, they would become the nation's governing party. But what you hear from most Democrats these days is: Gotcha.

Europe Slamming the Door on Efforts to Follow Terrorism's Money Trail
A secret U.S. program to monitor millions of international financial transactions for terrorist links violated Belgian and European law and will have to be changed, the Belgian government said Thursday. Leonard H. Schrank, SWIFT's chief executive, said in a telephone interview that the cooperative "believes we complied with everything and respected to the fullest extent possible the privacy law in Belgium. But the trouble is data privacy laws in Europe are quite difficult to follow. They're not drafted for national security issues."
John Ward Anderson, "Belgium Rules Sifting of Bank Data Illegal Prime Minister Says SWIFT Group Wrongly Cooperated With U.S. Anti-Terrorism Effort," The Washington Post, September 29, 2006 --- Click Here

Merkel Slammed the Deutsche Opera
German Chancellor Angela Merkel blasted the Deutsch Oper Berlin for cancelling the performances of Mozart’s "Idomeneo," fearing that some scenes could enrage Muslims and trigger reprisals. "We must take care that we do not retreat out of a fear of potentially violent radicals. Self-censorship out of fear is not tolerable," Merkel was quoted as saying in Hanover’s Neue Presse newspaper. Defending her decision to exclude Mozart’s opera from the opera’s programme, the company’s director, Kirsten Harms, explained that the opera in question could pose an "incalculable" security risk. In one of the disputed scenes, the king of Crete, Idomeneo, carries the severed heads of Prophet Muhammad, Jesus, Buddha and Poseidon on to the stage, placing each on a stool. Politicians in Germany also lambasted the decision taken by the director of the Deutsche Oper, one of Berlins’ three opera houses.
Athina Saloustrou, "Merkel Slammed the Deutsche Oper,"  News.ert, September 27, 2006 --- http://news.ert.gr/en/9/21030.asp 

Also see "Fury as opera cancelled for fear of offending Muslims," by Melissa Eddy, Scotsman, September 27, 2006 --- http://news.scotsman.com/entertainment.cfm?id=1427072006

In all the flap about Bin Laden, the media tends to ignore Clinton's worst deeds --- The Scandalous Pardons

"Clinton Freed Terrorists Who Killed My Father," by Thomas Connor, The Wall Street Journal, September 30, 2006; Page A9 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115957111562178660.html?mod=todays_us_opinion

Granted, considering Mr. Clinton's pardons of scores of drug dealers, tax cheats and the like in the final night of his presidency, many Americans lost track that one year earlier that he provided clemency to members of the FALN, a Puerto Rican separatist group that waged a terrorist war against the U.S. in the 1970's and 1980's. During that time the FALN carried out more than 130 bombings, including the January 1975 attack on Fraunces Tavern in Lower Manhattan that killed four people, including my father, Frank, who was 33 years old.

On Sept. 21, 1999, only weeks after 14 of the terrorists walked out of prison courtesy of Mr. Clinton (two rejected the deal), I warned the House Oversight Committee of the impact of being soft on terrorism, saying that "on the eve of the next century, the threat of global terrorism is greater than it has ever been" and "when the next indiscriminate bombing happens, I, unlike Clinton, will feel the pain of the victims and he will be in part responsible for it." Sadly, I was proven right less than two years later.

Continued in article

"To Kill Alan Dershowitz," by Alan Dershowitz, FrontPageMagazine, September 27, 2006 --- http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=24616

Last month I wrote an article called “Norman Finkelstein’s Obscenities,” a response to Finkelstein’s latest screed, “Should Alan Dershowitz Target Himself for Assassination?”  As the title of the article suggests, Finkelstein puts forward in his article what he believes to be a justification for my assassination as a war criminal, based on my support for Israel. 

Nor was this the only obscenity in the article.  Not by a long shot.  As I wrote in my article, Finkelstein piece was accompanied by a: 

cartoon drawn by “Latuff”, a frequent accomplice of Finkelstein.  The cartoon portrayed me as masturbating in rapturous joy while viewing images of dead Lebanese civilians on a TV set labeled “Israel peep show,” with a Jewish Star of David prominently featured. 

Continued in article

Imagine an American president addressing the United Nations and concluding his remarks by praying that God would hasten Christ’s return and unleash the apocalypse. What do you suppose public opinion would be?
Chuck Colson, "It's a mad, mad world," Townhall, September 29, 2006 --- http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ChuckColson/2006/09/29/its_a_mad,_mad_world
Jensen Comment
Certainly a standing ovation would not be anticipated in the U.N.

That “perfect human being” Ahmadinejad prayed for was the Mahdi, a Shiite messianic figure. What made the prayer so scary was that, in Shiite eschatology, the Mahdi’s return will be preceded by an apocalypse that leaves much of the world dead.
Chuck Colson, "It's a mad, mad world," Townhall, September 29, 2006 --- http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ChuckColson/2006/09/29/its_a_mad,_mad_world
Jensen Comment
Ahmadinejad was wildly applauded in the U.S.

The New York Times, has a right, indeed a duty, to print whatever they want about the administration—even if the information compromises national security?
Mark Holtzer, "Indict the New York Times ("The Newspaper Of Record[ed] Treasonous Acts")," Front Page Magazine, September 29, 2006 --- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1710510/posts
Jensen Comment
Actually the NYT does not have a legal right to print classified information, but it has adopted a policy that it has the right to choose what classified information it will disclose to the public. This gives an unelected body great power to decide our fate.

Things Go Better With Rights
Since Hamas assumed government authority after democratic elections this year, Israel has begun to deny Palestinian Americans the right to enter. We are left to wonder why. This new policy could be another turn of the screw to pressure Hamas. It could be manufactured as a painless concession for future negotiations. It could be one more tactic in Israel's drive -- which began in 1948 with the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians -- to empty as much land of as many Palestinians as possible. We do not know the reason for denying entry to Palestinian Americans. But we do know the result. In addition to breaking families apart -- for example one spouse with children in the West Bank, and the other unable to return from visits to the U.S. -- it is discouraging investors. It is driving out the very people the U.S. State Department, the World Bank and other international organizations encouraged to return. We are the ones building businesses, creating jobs and inspiring hope for a better future.
"Things Go Better With Rights," by Zahi Khouri, The Wall Street Journal, September 30, 2006; Page A8 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115957283766178726.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep

The 109th Congress has gone home to fight for re-election, and the best testament to its accomplishments is that very few Republicans are running on them. They're running instead against the peril to the country if the Nancy Pelosi Democrats take power.
"The GOP Record:  The roots of Republican failures in Congress," The Wall Street Journal, October 2, 2006 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009026

"Secretary of Turbulence Condoleezza Rice takes the long view--maybe too long," by Bret Stephens, The Wall Street Journal, September 30, 2006 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009020

Condoleezza Rice arrives 10 minutes early for her interview with The Wall Street Journal, dressed in a red suit and a single strand of white pearls. She says "Hi, Condi Rice"--I can't decide if this is good manners or fake modesty--and sits for a breakfast, which she doesn't touch. No coffee or tea, either. She speaks for five minutes and takes questions for the rest of the hour.

The conversation ranges from Bolivian coca to Iranian IEDs to administration leaks. Some of what she says is bland, some of it bunk, some of it smart and some of it revealing. It all takes shape in sentences that flow one from the other, paragraphs that maintain their discipline and logic, arguments that never lose sight of their destination, even when they digress. Ms. Rice is nothing if not a pleasure to listen to, which may explain why even critics who say she's become too much a creature of the State Department would love to see her name on the Republican ticket in 2008.

Which, by the way, isn't going to happen, at least if by "no, no, no" she truly and unambiguously means no. But her refusal is less interesting than her reasoning for the light it sheds on how she sees herself as Secretary of State. The conversation begins with her describing herself as an academic and ends by saying how glad she'll be to return to Stanford "and do something else." She observes that her stint in the administration of George H.W. Bush took place at the end of one "great historic transformation," and that her current stint takes place at the beginning of another. Her goal for the next two years is to put "some fundamentals in place": "I don't think that this is a battle, if you will, or a struggle that's going to be won on George W. Bush's watch," she says of the war on terror. Maybe this accounts for her sang-froid--at times seeming to border on emotional detachment--in the face of all the reversals in Baghdad, Beirut, Cairo and Ramallah: She chooses to read the present as if it were already the past.

There's something to be said for thinking about the world this way, and Ms. Rice is nothing if not clear about the nature of the enemy, the shape of the conflict, the need to rally "moderate democratizing forces" throughout the Middle East as the great antidote to Arab and Islamic radicalism. On the terrorists: "They're not going back into the woodwork. They have to be defeated." On Iraq: "We just have to fight tooth and nail for the victory of the Iraqis who do not want Iranian influence in their daily lives." On Iran: "We've got a chance to resist the Iranian push into the region, but we better get about it. I mean, it's not the sort of thing that you can just let continue in its current form." On Lebanon: "You have to resist Hezbollah . . . [and] try to strengthen the moderate Lebanese forces, which is not an easy matter." On the Palestinians: "You have to resist the Damascus Hamas, creating a situation in the Palestinian territories where moderates can emerge."

On the other hand, there is also a danger in acting as if the conflict we're in is of the long, twilight struggle kind when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Osama bin Laden seem to believe it's Apocalypse Nigh. And there is an even greater danger in acting as if the problems the U.S. has encountered, particularly in the last year, are evidence of "turbulence" (a word she uses repeatedly) and not, say, of loss of altitude or even critical engine failure.

Thus, implicit in much of what Ms. Rice says is the idea that the U.S. has the luxury of time. I ask about the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad, which a year ago appeared to be on the point of collapse yet today has reasserted itself in a big way in Lebanon, particularly thanks to Hezbollah's perceived victory in the summer's war against Israel. "This is one of those twists and turns. . . . I started speaking to at the beginning. I don't think you can kind of know today the effect of Syria's isolation from the Arab world." (Pressed on the subject later on, she concedes that "we're going to have to start looking at further sanctions on Syria.")

I also ask about Egypt, where last year she gave a speech demanding that the regime open the door to democracy but has since watched in virtual silence as Hosni Mubarak cancelled elections and cracked down on dissent: "These things also . . . go in waves. I don't think that Egypt is ever going to be the same place again after the competitive presidential elections"--elections which, she neglects to add, were rigged against the primary challenger Ayman Nour, who now sits in a prison cell, serving a five-year sentence (on trumped-up charges of election-related fraud, no less!).

And of course there is Iran. Ms. Rice notes that, until recently, the State Department didn't actually have an Iran desk, which she reads (in an implicit rebuke of her predecessors) as evidence of a blinkered, bureaucratic mindset that thinks of foreign relations as "those with whom you do relations rather than . . . policy." She also says the U.S. will set up an Iran section in Dubai, modeled on the famous "Riga Station" the U.S. maintained in Latvia to monitor the Soviet Union before diplomatic relations were established in the 1930s. "We have to increase our capability to mine resources and intelligence about Iran. And one of the challenges is that we haven't been in the country for 26 years. And you would be surprised what it does to both your diplomatic and intelligence capability to not be in the country."

During another point in the conversation, she observes that the Soviet Union tested an atomic bomb five years before the West thought they would have one. This raises the question of whether the West can afford to take its time with Iran. "Well, the problem is of course that you never know what you don't know," she says.

But that sits somewhat incongruously with her broader approach to the Iranian challenge. "The international system will agree on a level of pressure. I think it will evolve over time." She opposes measures such as barring Iranians from international sports events or a gasoline embargo (to which Iran is particularly vulnerable, since it imports 40% of its refined gas), because of their "bad effect on the Iranian people." Instead, she stresses the benefits of a consensual, U.N.-centered approach, says the Europeans have been "very strong on this," and adds that she's had "very good discussions" with the Chinese and the Russians about what a sanctions resolution would look like if the Iranians don't suspend enrichment. She thinks even a comparatively weak resolution would have "collateral effects on the willingness of private companies, private banks, to do business with Iran." She hopes it will have an effect on Iranian officials who "do not want to endure the kind of isolation that they're headed toward." Do these people even exist? "I do not believe we're going to find Iranian moderates," she says. "The question is, are we going to find Iranian reasonables?"

That's an interesting way of framing the matter, although perhaps not quite in the way Ms. Rice intends. There are, in fact, Iranian moderates: They are the 80% of the people who oppose the regime. The House has just approved the Iran Freedom Act, which says the U.S. should "support peaceful pro-democracy forces in Iran," and mirrors the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act that became a precursor to regime change there. President Bush used the occasion of his speech to the U.N. General Assembly to speak directly to the Iranian people, telling them "the greatest obstacle to [your] future is that your rulers have chosen to deny you liberty and to use your nation's resources to fund terrorism, and fuel extremism and pursue nuclear weapons." The State Department itself has increased its budget for supporting Voice of America radio and TV broadcasts in Farsi. What's telling is that Ms. Rice mentions none of this: Her primary method for dealing with the Iranian regime, it seems, is to deal with the regime, not to seek to change it.

Ms. Rice is even less persuasive when the subject turns to the Koreas, North and South. The point is made that South Korea has not been especially helpful to the Bush administration in dealing with the North. She demurs. "Go read what [South Korean President] Roh Moo-hyun said" during his recent press conference with President Bush, she says. "It was pretty remarkable."

And what exactly did Mr. Roh do that was so remarkable? "Well, for instance, they have cut fertilizer supply to the North. They have cut, actually, food assistance. They've pulled back some of their basic assistance to the North. They continue their economic relations, but I think the implication is pretty clear that if the North were to go further, maybe even that's at risk."

Tough stuff--or not. South Korea still throws Pyongyang a lifeline through the Kaesong industrial park--where South Korean companies benefit nicely from what amounts to North Korean slave labor. Just a few weeks ago, Mr. Roh even demanded that a church group not send religious leaflets northward on balloons. It's hard to tell here whether Ms. Rice is putting a best face on relations or simply deceiving herself as to what a lackluster ally South Korea has been to the Bush administration.

Something else is disconcerting, albeit so subtle that I only noticed it in the transcript of the interview. Rewind the tape and linger over the words "the Damascus Hamas." What's with the definite article? Ms. Rice circles back to the subject later in the discussion, when the subject of Islamist gains in democratic elections comes up. "Hamas," she says, "has learned a pretty tough lesson. They have not been able to govern. . . . You know, all of the talk about . . . all this Iranian money coming in and they . . . were going to be supported, it hasn't happened. People are on strike, they can't make their peace with the international community, and it's been really tough. And, in fact, it's been especially tough if you are [Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail] Haniyeh in the territories, as opposed to [overall Hamas leader] Khaled Mashal in Damascus."

The lesson here would seem to be that by putting a diplomatic and economic quarantine on Hamas after its victory in January's election, Palestinians have been made to recognize that there is a price to be paid for electing the Martyrs' Party. But the suggestion--which is gaining increasing currency in the foreign-policy establishment--is that Hamas is, or may with encouragement become, two parties: A radical, IRA-type wing led by Mashal in Damascus and a "moderate," Sinn Fein-like one led by Haniyeh in Ramallah. Does Ms. Rice really believe this? I kick myself for not asking, but someone should.

Finally, inevitably, there is Iraq: "The strategic direction is set," she insists. She points to successes, such as the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and military operations in the Euphrates Valley to stop infiltration from Syria, as well as the need to "get some of the militias under control." She acknowledges the possibility of error: "If there are adjustments that you can make, if there are things that are not being pressed hard enough, if there are some alternative ideas, by all means, I think we'd be delighted to have them," she says in reference to former Secretary of State James Baker's Team B-style exercise on Iraq strategy.

What she doesn't repeat, however, is a story I heard her tell at a previous meeting with Journal editors last year, when she said that she had telephoned George W. Bush as she flew out of Baghdad on her (then) most recent visit: "Mr. President," she said (and I quote from memory) "this is going to be a great country."

Perhaps she feels that way still: It would be distressing indeed if she did not.

Mr. Stephens, a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, writes the Global View column every Tuesday.

Fox still routinely trounces CNN
With Fox, for many viewers, what you believe is what you get. And many people, it's clear, believe in Fox completely. The network, which celebrates its 10th anniversary Saturday , has risen past the skeptics to dominate cable news ratings. Though its prime-time ratings have slipped of late, Fox still routinely trounces CNN. ``Fox & Friends," the morning show, has ratings so strong that it has set a new goal: to beat the ``Early Show" on CBS . . . ``Sometimes," says Bill Shine, Fox's senior vice president of programming, ``we do that just to annoy the other anchors."
Joanna Weiss, "Fox news at 10: Love it, hate it, but can't ignore it," Boston Globe, October 1, 2006 --- Click Here

"Media Anarchy Has Its Downside," by Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal, September 30, 2006; Page P14 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115956113004678291.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep

We are talking past each other, the left and right in America. I suppose we always did, but I'm noticing it more. We have different intellectual styles (rather too emotive, arguably too linear), start with different assumptions, and recognize different data. We could be speaking different languages. Which is odd, since all half the country does is talk. (The other half puts roofs on houses.) You'd think they'd find a way to break through.

And so I come to Bill Clinton and Fox News Channel. A week after it aired, the interview still dominates the dinner party. Did he rouse his base? I think so. Did he remind everyone else of what they find objectionable in him? I know so.

But in Manhattan this week at gatherings of hungry liberals -- they are feeling frisky, they can smell victory coming, though this is not necessarily indicative of anything, as Manhattan liberals are traditionally the last to know, and occasionally and endearingly concede they are the last -- the conversation wasn't really about Clinton, but Fox News.

One can't exaggerate how large Fox looms in the liberal imagination. They see it as huge and mighty and credit it with almost mythical power. It is a propaganda channel whose mission it is to destroy the Democratic Party. That's part of why Mr. Clinton's performance had such salience. Finally he was standing up to an evil empire.

It is odd that they are so spooked. In October America is set to become a nation of 300 million. What a big country. Fox News's average evening prime-time viewership is less than two million. Its average daytime is less than a million. And if my mail is an indication, they're already Republicans. Fox's power is that it is an alternative to the mainstream media. It did not take its shape by deeply inhaling liberalism and slowly breathing it out.

The left sees Fox as a symptom and promoter of anarchy. The old unity, the old essential unity one used to experience when one turned on the TV in 1950 or 1980, has been fractured, broken up. We are becoming balkanized. Fox, blogs, talk radio, the Internet, citizen reporters -- it's all producing cacophony, and heralds a future of No Compromise. No one trusts the information they're given anymore, as they trusted Uncle Walter. This is bad for the country.

It is an odd thing about modern liberals that they're made anxious by the unsanctioned. A conservative is more likely to see what's happening as freedom. It isn't that honest and impartial news lost its place of respect, it's that establishment liberalism lost its journalistic monopoly. And it was a monopoly.

Not everyone believed Uncle Walter. Uncle Walter, and Chet and David, were all there was. But while they reigned, Americans were buying "Conscience of a Conservative" by Barry Goldwater, and Reagan was quietly rising way out in California, and Spiro Agnew and Bill Safire were issuing mainstream hits like "effete snobs" and "nattering nabobs." In the time liberals think of as the last great unified era, Americans were rising up.

The new media did not divide us. The new media gave voice to our divisions. The result: more points of view, more subjects discussed, more data presented. This, in a great republic, a great democracy, a leader of the world in a dangerous time, is not bad but good.

But nothing comes free. All big changes have unexpected benefits and unanticipated drawbacks. Here is a loss: the man on the train.

Forty and 50 years ago, mainstream liberal media executives -- middle-aged men who fought in Tarawa or Chosin, went to Cornell, and sat next to the man in the gray flannel suit on the train to the city, who hoisted a few in the bar car, and got off at Greenwich or Cos Cob, Conn. -- those great old liberals had some great things in them.

One was a high-minded interest in imposing certain standards of culture on the American people. They actually took it as part of their mission to elevate the country. And from this came..."Omnibus."

When I was a child of 8 or so I looked up at the TV one day and saw a man cry, "My horse, my horse, my kingdom for a horse!" He was on a field of battle, surrounded by mud and loss. I was riveted. Later a man came on the screen and said, "Thank you for watching Shakespeare's 'Richard III.'" And I thought, as a little American child: That was something, I gotta find out what a Shakespeare is.

I got that from "Omnibus."

Those old men on the train -- they were strangers, but in the age of media a stranger can change your life.

And because the men on the train had one boss, who shared their vision -- he didn't want to be embarrassed that his legacy was "My Mother the Car" -- and because the networks had limited competition, the pressure to live or die by ratings was not so intense as today. The competition for ad dollars wasn't so killer. They could afford an indulgence. The result was a real public service.

Now the man on the train is a relic, and no one is saying, "As the lucky holders of a broadcast license we have a responsibility to pass on the jewels of our culture to the young." In a competitive environment that would be a ticket to corporate oblivion at every network, including Fox.

TV is still great, in some ways better than ever. Freedom works.

And yet. When we deposed the old guy on the train, it wasn't all gain. No longer would the old liberals get to impose their vision. But what took its place was programming for the lowest common denominator. Things that don't make you reach. Things you don't want to teach. Eating worms on air-crash island with "Jackass."

I spoke with a network producer a few weeks ago, an old warhorse who was trying to explain his frustration at the current ratings race. He wrestled around the subject, and I cut with rude words to what I thought he was saying. "You mean it's gone from the dictatorship of a liberal elite to the dictatorship of the retarded."

Yes, he said. And it's not progress.

When liberals miss something in the media, that's what they should be missing. Not a unity that never existed but standards that were high. When conservatives say there's nothing to miss, they're wrong. We lost some bias, but we lost some standards, too.

The FCC Scandal
Media policy-making, with its overwhelming bias toward corporate consolidation, dumbed-down content and bottom-line decision-making, has been properly described for some time as "scandalous." Now the quotation marks can be removed; the scandal is official. In September came revelations that Federal Communications Commission officials had, since 2003, blocked the release of major reports that showed the danger of allowing a handful of media conglomerates to control communications. The suppression of the reports dramatically illustrates how an agency charged with protecting the public interest instead does the bidding of the telecommunications corporations it should regulate. One report found that locally owned television stations provide 20 percent more local news than stations owned by the broadcast behemoths. Another detailed a 35 percent drop in the number of independently owned radio stations following the removal of most ownership caps by the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Taken together, the reports make a powerful argument against moves by the Bush Administration and the FCC's Republican majority to further undermine ownership limits.
John Nichols, "The FCC Scandal," The Nation, September 28, 2006 ---
http://www.thenation.com/docprem.mhtml?i=20061016&s=nichols

Have you heard about Michael Bérubé’s What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts?

"A Liberal Dose of Reason," by Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed, September 27, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/09/27/mclemee

If you have not yet heard about Michael Bérubé’s What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts? Classroom Politics and “Bias” in Higher Education, recently published by W.W. Norton, then chances are you also haven’t seen the author’s blog, which has been advertising the book heavily for weeks now, albeit with tongue sometimes in cheek. Over the past two or three years, Bérubé’s Web site has turned into a rallying point for those fighting off David Horowitz’s so-called Academic Bill of Rights (perhaps the finest bit of political word-magic since Stalin created the “peoples democratic republics” of Eastern Europe). The blog itself is part of what is now sometimes called the “netroots” of the Democratic Party, although Bérubé himself is slightly more disposed to working out a position on the multivalence of the signifier than on, say, ethanol subsidies.

In other words, What’s Liberal looks, at first, like a book written with a definite constituency in mind. So does Rhetorical Occasions: Essays on Humans and the Humanities, out next month from the University of North Carolina Press — a volume of Bérubé’s pieces that originally appeared in academic journals and popular magazines as well as the blog.

So all the familiar worries about the echo-chamber effect of new (or “niche”) media come to mind. You know what to expect from a certain kind of title that has become very familiar over the past few years: the op-ed in a fat suit, the sermon to the choir, the repetitious but morale-boosting statement of why “we’re right, they’re wrong.” There are right-wing and left-wing versions of such books. You see them glaring at one another across the aisles at the bookstores. Sometimes they even mimic one another’s covers – either to heighten the spirit of antagonism, or just from a lack of originality, not that the distinction matters too much.

A reader of Bérubé’s blog quickly learns that satire is one of his default modes. (Upon being listed by Horowitz as one of the academe’s “dangerous professors,” he announced that his field was “dangeral studies.”) Sitting down to read What’s Liberal, I anticipated that there would be sarcasm, and plenty of it.

Parody and irony have their uses; at times, no other tools will do the trick. But as modes of argument, they tend not to be especially generous toward an opponent. They tend to reinforce the mentality common to the “we’re right, they’re wrong”-type books, for which the line between “us” and “them” is bright and clear. Reading Bérubé, I expected fireworks. Or, more accurately, dynamite — an exercise in cultural and political demolition.

But in fact, no. The relationship between the book and the blog is not straightforward. And while each might be an example of a public intellectual at work, the contrast between them is a reminder that perhaps we should keep in mind the expression C. Wright Mills sometimes used: “publics,” for there is more than one kind.

What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts? assumes the existence of a large, smart, but ambivalent (or frankly confused) audience of people who have heard about the arguments over “bias” in higher education, but not taken sides.

The author assumes on the part of the reader both skepticism and an open mind. He is canny enough a rhetorician then implicitly to equate both skepticism and open-mindedness with liberalism itself (properly understood).

There is also a steady effort to dispel fantasies about the university as a place somehow radically different from other scenes of white-collar life. It is true that the ranks of academics includes “our occasional cranks, our poseurs, our bloviators, our pedants, and a couple of those people who are just impossible to work with,” he writes, “but in this respect, we’re very much like any other workplace — except for the pedants, who are relatively more numerous on campus than off.”

And while admitting that, yes, there are more registered Democrats than Republicans in institutions of higher learning, the differences don’t automatically correspond to attitudes toward curriculum. “It is not uncommon,” he writes, “to find that the department’s gay, pony-tailed, hemp-wearing poet insists that today’s students simply must be grounded in a series of required ‘core’ courses in British literary history, whereas the lone suit-and-tie Rockefeller Republican is arguing that the English major should have no requirements whatsoever.”

The book covers quite a lot of ground. It debunks some of the more heavily publicized but fact-free accusations regarding the persecution of conservative students; acknowledges the embarrassments of the “Monty Python left” of Ward Churchill and friends; and describes what it’s like to teach The Rise of Silas Lapham to undergraduates who almost never actually like the book. It also offers a pretty compelling and accessible account of what’s at stake in the Habermas-Lyotard debate over the incommensurability of discourses, with special reference to the debate over foot massages in the opening section of Pulp Fiction.

And there’s more besides. None of it seems random or episodic. All of it serves, rather, to show that higher education is much less homogenous — or for that matter, ideology-minded — than certain propagandists make it look. Any informed account of academe must stress on the “variousness, possibility, complexity, and difficulty” it shares with the rest of life in an affluent society. (I borrow that phrase from Lionel Trilling, who was either a liberal or a neoconservative depending on the angle from which you looked at him.)

“Universities,” writes Bérubé in a passage that sums up an important strand of his argument, “even private universities, are thoroughly and complexly interwoven into what remains of the public sector of the United States, and their relative economic health, together with their extraordinary capacity to generate economic wealth (if you’re interested in that kind of thing), provides powerful testimony to the wisdom and the long-term structural soundness of the mixed free-market/welfare state economy. So America’s cultural conservatives may despise us for the obvious reasons — our cosmopolitanism, our secularism, our corrosive attitude of skepticism about every form of received authority — but the economic conservatives, I think, despise us because we work so well.”

That is not a perspective that gets usually expressed when culture warriors go to battle. But I suspect (and, frankly, hope) it may get a hearing among other sorts of people. Newspaper editors, for example, and state legislators. And smart high school students, not to mention their parents.

For more on What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts? — as well as a little about Rhetorical Occasions, which covers many of the same issues at a postgraduate level — you might want to listen to this podcast of my recent interview with Michael Bérubé.

"The 50 Habits of Highly Effective Revolutionaries:  The third wave of nonviolent revolt," by Jesse Walker, Reason Magazine, September 21, 2006 --- http://www.reason.com/links/links092106.shtml

Nonviolent Struggle is a guide for dissidents in other countries who would like to replicate Otpor's success. The "crucial points" of the subtitle range from the sources of political power to the importance of time management. The volume is illustrated with photos from Serbian street protests, giving its pages a vaguely leftish flavor, but the text sometimes reads like a business book. (I don't think Che's Guerrilla Warfare includes a chapter called "What is Multilevel Marketing?") It was published with a grant from the United States Institute of Peace, an organization created and funded by Congress, but its authors can be harsh critics of American foreign policy, arguing that nonviolent people-power revolts are preferable to wars and embargos.

"You need to look at the repertoire of sanctions," says Popovic, who served three years in Serbia's parliament after Milosevic was ousted. "If the UN decides to freeze the accounts of a country's leadership or ban them from traveling, that's very useful for the movement. But if they decide to put an oil embargo on the country, it's the people they're sanctioning, not the leadership." The embargo against Serbia, he argues, was "a typical example" of a policy that actually helps the targeted dictator. "The regime had an excuse for the poor economic situation, mafia connected with the regime got loaded with money, and the people were poor, they were unhappy, and they had a great reason to hate the international community."

"Sanctions don't just mean less economic activity," notes Milivojevic, who is now studying history at Berkeley. "They have a real impact on young people. If you were born sometime from the early to the late '70s, you were reaching maturity just as the war was starting. That would be a period when you would start exploring more, through education, through travel, through the simple osmosis of people coming to where you live. That generation didn't have nearly as much access to outside ideas and information."

The isolation has had long-term effects, he argues, not just on the ability to overthrow Milosevic, but on the ideas influencing the country now that Slobo is gone.

And the bombing campaign? "Bombing countries and applying violence helps dictators to maintain power," Popovic argues. "When countries perceive a military threat from the outside, the people rally around the leadership. An obvious example of this is 9/11 in the United States of America. Bush's approval ratings were highest on September the 12th."

Milivojevic thinks the effect of the attacks was more mixed. "After the bombing, there was a marked shift in the Milosevic regime's methods. It just became more repressive. But a part of that repression was turned into increasing support for Otpor." In the short term, he adds, the bombing prevented political action. ("Society essentially shut down. You were principally concerned with self survival.") Afterwards, Otpor was able to adjust. "The movement appeared before the bombing. And it started to grow before the bombing. If it was a different movement, it might have been destroyed by this. Happily, it wasn't."

So the bombs were essentially a condition you had to react to? "Yes," says Milivojevici. "Obviously, all things being equal, it's a condition that most people would rather not react to."

On the face of it, it shouldn't seem surprising that the authors of a book called Nonviolent Struggle would speak so skeptically about war. But this trio—like their publisher, the Belgrade-based Center for Applied NonViolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS)—carefully eschews ethical arguments for avoiding coercion, preferring to stress the practical benefits. Nonviolence makes it harder for the government to demonize you, they argue, and it makes it easier to attract popular support. Besides, the government has greater firepower; if you use violence, you're fighting on its turf. And if you do manage to overthrow the state, it's better to approach the inevitable faction fights that follow with skills honed in nonviolent struggle than skills honed in gunplay.

The past century's advocates of nonviolence have come in three waves, each with a particular style. The first was represented by Mohandas Gandhi, the man who freed India from British rule. Gandhi was a canny strategist, but it was his role as a moral leader that captured the public imagination, to the point where many Americans now seem to believe that India was liberated through the sheer force of Ben Kingsley's personality. At their best, the activists who followed Gandhi fused a strong sense of morality with a sharp understanding of politics and public relations, a combination represented by figures like Lech Walesa and Martin Luther King. At their worst, they became more interested in asserting their moral purity than in actually accomplishing their goals, transforming nonviolence from a form of action to a passive, self-righteous lifestyle.

It was frustration with the latter group that fueled the second wave. The key figure here is Gene Sharp, author of 1973's three-volume study The Politics of Nonviolent Action. Interviewed by Peace magazine in 2003, Sharp complained that "there are many people in peace organizations who don't like conflict. A few years ago, I gave a talk about national defense by prepared nonviolent resistance. Someone in the audience was very shocked, and accused me: 'All you are doing is taking the violence out of war!'" Sharp himself had been a conscientious objector in the Korean War and an associate of the Christian pacifist A.J. Muste, but he was happy to adorn the backs of his books with endorsements by military figures and to draw former soldiers into his circle. When he collected examples of nonviolent tactics that had been used in the struggles of the past, he didn't have trouble, say, interposing examples drawn from the civil rights movement with examples drawn from the movement's segregationist foes. There's no doubt his own sympathies were with the black protesters, but he was happy to borrow tactical insights from forces he disagreed with, too.

Unlike Gandhi, Sharp has never led a revolution of his own—though he has advised dissidents in hotspots ranging from Burma to the West Bank to the Baltic states. But his work attracted attention just as the world saw a series of nonviolent revolutions whose leaders were rarely Gandhian: uprisings against the Shah in Iran, Baby Doc Duvalier in Haiti, Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, the Soviet puppet states in Eastern Europe. Sharp's more hard-nosed style was ascendant.

Continued in article

Vanderbilt University: 9/11 America's fault...because America is trash... (see the video here) --- http://kevinmccullough.townhall.com/g/17b4daf9-d396-4399-97e1-c18321c68a3a

"America-haters' 9/11 snow job," by Kevin McCollough, WorldNetDaily, September 29, 2006 --- http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52204

Evidently, Vanderbilt University's idea of a fair and balanced remembrance of Sept. 11 is to invite nine liberal socialists to bash America for two hours and send everybody home holding their head in shame at being in fact … Americans.

That's how VU marked the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001 – seducing students to a meeting titled "After 9/11: A Time for Reflection."

Evidently, the idea of even allowing one mildly right-of-center thinker was too intimidating for the slanted, biased, anti-American carnival barkers that lined up for two hours and told the gathered students why 9/11 was America's fault. Everything from global warming to the treatment of Native Americans was thrown into the mix. Slavery and racism were especially big reasons as stated by one of the weak leftist thinkers.

Summaries of the speakers' messages are provided at 
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52204

Wanted:  Bay Area Police Officers Willing to Tolerate the System
Three Bay Area police departments confronting a spike in violence -- San Francisco, Oakland and Richmond -- are struggling with another vexing problem: finding and training enough officers to do something about it. To recruit officers, departments are going on the road, offering thousands of dollars in incentives, paying for billboard and radio campaigns, and even poaching officers from other departments. San Francisco has the most daunting task -- the city is trying to hire 750 officers over three years. Oakland is hoping to find 100 officers by January. Richmond is trying to fill 48 vacancies, representing nearly a quarter of the Police Department's authorized strength.
Jaxon Van Derbeken and Christopher Heredia, "Region's most wanted: police officers Recruitment tactics include incentives, fairs, even poaching," San Francisco Chronicle, October 1, 2006 ---
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/10/01/MNG9HLGA911.DTL
Jensen Comment
According to a video of San Francisco's Chief of Police, the San Francisco Chronicle and City Supervisors are doing their best to discourage applicants and lower the morale of present officers.  San Francisco is known for its lenient Judges and liberal Supervisors. The S.F. Chief of Police accuses the Judges and Supervisors of having no accountability and calls the San Francisco Chronicle a piece of crap ---http://mfile.akamai.com/12948/wmv/vod.ibsys.com/2006/0728/9591734.300k.asx

Bush is sometimes not as stupid as he pretends
As the (U.N.) General Assembly is a hostile forum, Bush used it as a foil, and to good effect, challenging an Iranian regime that is feared and loathed by Americans more than any other on earth. Indeed, for a Republican president to be attacked on one side by an Iranian radical perceived to be a Holocaust denier, who heads up a terrorist state and wants nuclear weapons, and, on the other, by a Latin leftist dictator, is an enviable position to be in, six weeks out from an off-year election. Democrats are grinding their teeth.
Patrick J. Buchanan, "The real issue behind U.N.'s comic relief," WorldNetDaily, September 22, 2006 --- Click Here

What was transpiring, however, was a global version of the Iowa Straw Poll. The three presidents were playing to their base, using the U.N. forum to solidify their domestic constituencies and appeal to global ones.

Chavez, however, reduced himself to a comic figure. Other than those who already love him and hate America, the devil talk appeals to no one. Even in Latin America, they are tiring of him. Felipe Calderon, the PAN party candidate in Mexico, was running well behind the leftist Lopez Obrador, until his campaign began linking Obrador to Chavez. Obrador's lead vanished, and he lost, dragged down by Hugo.

Ahmadinejad used the forum to burnish his credentials as a devout Shiite, an Iranian nationalist, an implacable foe of Israel and the most defiant of all anti-American Muslims, standing up for Iran's right, under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to enrich uranium for peaceful nuclear power.

As the General Assembly is a hostile forum, Bush used it as a foil, and to good effect, challenging an Iranian regime that is feared and loathed by Americans more than any other on earth.

Indeed, for a Republican president to be attacked on one side by an Iranian radical perceived to be a Holocaust denier, who heads up a terrorist state and wants nuclear weapons, and, on the other, by a Latin leftist dictator, is an enviable position to be in, six weeks out from an off-year election. Democrats are grinding their teeth.

But comic relief aside, a serious play is under way.

In a startling comment, Bush, after declaring that "Iran must abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions," added, in comments directed to the Iranian people, "Despite what the regime tells you, we have no objection to Iran's pursuit of a truly peaceful nuclear power program."

Hours later, Ahmadinejad declared that Iran's nuclear program is "transparent, peaceful and under the watchful eye" of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog. He further pledged to observe the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Tehran has signed that prohibits any acquisition of nuclear weapons, but entitles Iran to peaceful nuclear power and the working knowledge of the technology of how it is produced.

Between Bush's position – America has no objection to Iran's pursuit of nuclear power – and Ahmadinejad's – Iran's program is for peaceful nuclear power and fully under IAEA inspection – there seems to be common ground on which to stand to avoid a conflict.

If both men are serious, the questions that remain are clear.

Continued in article

Prof. Chomsky is an intelligent man. Not everything he says by way of criticizing his country is wrong. However, he is not valued for his truths but for his rage, which stokes the rage of his admirers. He feeds the self-righteousness of America's enemies, who feed the self-righteousness of Prof. Chomsky. And in the ensuing blaze everything is sacrificed, including the constructive criticism that America so much needs, and that America--unlike its enemies, Prof. Chomsky included--is prepared to listen to.
Roger Scruton, "Who Is Noam Chomsky? Someone who should have stuck to syntax," The Wall Street Journal, September 26, 2006 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110008997 
Mr. Scruton, a British writer and philosopher, is the author of Gentle Regrets

"Good fences make bad legislation," by Ellen Ratner, WorldNetDaily, October 2, 2006 --- http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52238

This week the Senate approved a fence; a seven hundred mile double wall along the border with Mexico. The bill passed easily 80-19 in this election climate and it is identical to the bill that passed the House of Representatives. The Senate and House members who voted for the bill can go home now and proclaim that they have done something to stem the tide of illegal immigration. But will it work?

. . .

The Pew Hispanic Center’s study found that 40 to 50 percent of illegal immigrants entered the United States legally. Sen. Kennedy cited the fact that smugglers would just move their operation to Canada, transporting future illegals via boat or plane and then have them cross the 4,100-mile border with Canada.

. . .

There is only one real and viable solution to the issue of illegal immigration. We need to help our Mexican neighbors create an economy that employs them in non-sweat shop environments. In addition, we must press the Mexican government to allow Americans access to everyday mom and pop businesses that create a viable trade economy. It is very difficult for the average American to own property in Mexico without mounds of paperwork. If we create conditions where Mexicans can come to work in the United States and go back home to Mexico, as well as creating conditions where Americans can work and own property in Mexico, the illegal immigration problem will dissipate. It will not need the billions of dollars for fencing; it will only need some honest politicians to stop posturing and start telling the American people the truth about illegal immigration and what will really work.

Jensen Comment
Given the business reluctance to support the fence bill that restricts a seasonal and lower-paid labor influx, I was surprised at the strength of the Republican senators' support. Democratic support was more predictable due labor union lobbying for this fence.  Although I agree with Ratner's conclusion about the only possible long-term solution to illegal immigration from Mexico, she  fails to address the overwhelming and seemingly paradoxical obstacles for creating a viable economy in Mexico. The biggest  obstacle is corruption in government and the military that stand in the way of significant reforms in Mexico. Attempts by the U.S. to reduce internal corruption in Mexico and to increase investments in Mexican business will be viewed by the world as another dreaded example of U.S. imperialism. At the moment nobody has a practical solution to Mexico's economic, social, and crime problems without U.S. imperialism.

Gore:  Cigarettes a Significant Cause of Global Warming
Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore warned hundreds of U.N. diplomats and staff on Thursday evening about the perils of climate change, claiming: Cigarette smoking is a "significant contributor to global warming!" Gore, who was introduced by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said the world faces a "full-scale climate emergency that threatens the future of civilization on earth."
"GORE: CIGARETTE SMOKING 'SIGNIFICANT' CONTRIBUTOR TO GLOBAL WARMING," Drudge Report, September 30, 2006 --- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/browse
Jensen Comment
I think Gore overlooked the fact that a more significant cause of global warming is overpopulation where more and more people are using more gasoline, heating oil, propane, electricity, and food. Increasing numbers of people are also driving more and more vehicles that pollute the air. To the extent that cigarette smoking kills people and slows the population growth, cigarettes may actually, in balance, help to slow global warming. Let's encourage more lighting up to save the planet.

How do we erase the Medieval Warm Period?
The National Academy of Sciences report reaffirmed the existence of the Medieval Warm Period from about 900 AD to 1300 AD and the Little Ice Age from about 1500 to 1850. Both of these periods occurred long before the invention of the SUV or human industrial activity could have possibly impacted the Earth’s climate. In fact, scientists believe the Earth was warmer than today during the Medieval Warm Period, when the Vikings grew crops in Greenland. Climate alarmists have been attempting to erase the inconvenient Medieval Warm Period from the Earth’s climate history for at least a decade. David Deming, an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma’s College of Geosciences, can testify first hand about this effort. Dr. Deming was welcomed into the close-knit group of global warming believers after he published a paper in 1995 that noted some warming in the 20th century. Deming says he was subsequently contacted by a prominent global warming alarmist and told point blank “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.” When the “Hockey Stick” first appeared in 1998, it did just that.
HOT & COLD MEDIA SPIN CYCLE: A CHALLENGE TO JOURNALISTS WHO COVER GLOBAL WARMING SENATOR JAMES INHOFE CHAIRMAN, SENATE ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS COMMITTEE
September 25, 2006 --- http://epw.senate.gov/speechitem.cfm?party=rep&id=263759

Earth Climate Course --- http://icp.giss.nasa.gov/education/modules/eccm/

Facing Global Warming --- http://www.technologyreview.com/special/oil/index.aspx

"Times Are Booming for CPA Firms," SmartPros, October 2, 2006 --- http://accounting.smartpros.com/x54979.xml

Firms posted a net fee revenue increase of 9.7 percent in 2005, up from 7.0 percent in 2004 and the best since an 11.8 percent increase in 2000. According to the report:

• Revenues of firms with over $10 million in net fees grew 15.8 percent.
• Revenues of firms with net fees of $2 million to 10 million grew 8.3 percent.
• Revenues of firms with net fees under $2 million grew only 4.4 percent

"Business is booming for firms and would be even better if the severe shortage of professional staff wasn't throttling the CPA industry's ability to get the work out," said Marc Rosenberg, CPA, founder and creator of the survey. "Smaller firms throughout the country tell us that they could have obtained more business but that they didn't dare go after it because they wouldn't have anyone to get the work done."

Evidence of this was the fact that only 3 percent of the "over $10 million" firms had fee increases of less than 4 percent.  By contrast, 28 percent of the "$2 million to $10 million" firms had fee increases of less than 4 percent, and a stunning 48 percent of the "under $2 million" firms experienced growth of less than 4 percent; some of these smaller firms actually experienced revenue declines.

Not surprisingly, the biggest factor fueling the boom in demand for CPA services is Sarbanes-Oxley work. All firms, big and small, are benefiting from what the industry has termed the "trickle-down" effect of Sarbanes-Oxley: The largest firms are enjoying the most benefit from Sarbanes-Oxley, but it limits their ability and desire to go after smaller clients, who trickle down to the next size level below them, and so on down to small firms. Twenty-three percent of the firms in the "over $10 million" group reported that their revenues were significantly impacted by SOX.

A major factor fueling the growth of the largest firms has been some mild success at increasing their staffing levels. No size of firm in the country, from the Big Four on down, has been able to hire the number of staff they need. But the larger firms are able to recruit more effectively because they are more attractive to staff than smaller firms, and their firms are investing substantial amounts of time and money into making the work environment at their firms more enjoyable. The "over $10 million" group experienced a 5 percent to 10 percent increase in their professional staff headcount in 2005.  The "$2 million to 10 million" group was barely able to maintain their overall professional staff level from 2004 to 2005. Firms under $2 million actually suffered a net decline in staff.

The firms in our survey posted excellent increases in profitability, as measured by income per partner:

• The "over $10 million" group posted income per partner of $456,000, up 21.5 percent from last year.
• The "$2 million to $10 million" group posted income per partner of $277,000, up 9.4 percent from last year.
• The "under $2 million" group posted income per partner of $191,000, up 6.7 percent from last year.

The above shows how the disparate growth rates of the three firm groupings also produced profitability increases that were quite different.

Other survey findings:

• Industry-wide average annual billable hours for staff increased to 1,539, up from 1,528 last year and the highest this figure has been since 1,576 in 2000.
• Outsourcing of tax returns continues to be an activity that is simply not catching on with CPA firms. Only 8 percent of firms report that they plan to outsource a significant amount of their returns next year, about the same percentage as last year.
• The average valuation of goodwill for internal buy-out purposes remained unchanged at roughly 80 percent.
• 4.51 percent of the partners at firms are over the age of 50.

Finally, there seems to be a small movement for firms to change their partner compensation systems from formulas to the compensation committee approach. Though formulas are still the most popular system across the board, for larger firms the compensation committee approach is the system of choice. 

"This trend reflects a growing understanding that in addition to traditional production measures such as business origination and billable hours, intangible contributions such as firm management, mentoring of staff and teamwork also need to be recognized in the compensation system," said Rosenberg.

The survey includes the results of 281 firms, most of which range from $2-15 million in annual fees, and measured nearly 100 MAP statistics. It can be purchased for $300. To order, go to www.rosenbergassoc.com or call (847) 251-7100.

"E&Y, PwC Top Employers for Working Mothers," SmartPros, September 27, 2006 --- http://accounting.smartpros.com/x54886.xml

Big Four accounting firms Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers are recognized as two of the best companies in the U.S. for working mothers, according to an annual survey by Working Mother magazine.

Both firms make an appearance in the magazine's top 10 of "100 Best Companies" list, which celebrates employers who are "head and shoulder above the mainstream" with flextime plans, telecommuting, fitness centers, health insurance for part-timers, and more.

Using five criteria -- flexibility, maternity and paternity leave, elder care, child care and the number of women occupying top jobs -- the top 10 are: Abbott Laboratories; Bon Secours Richmond Health System; Ernst & Young LLP; HSBC USA Inc.; IBM Corp.; JPMorgan Chase & Co.; Patagonia Inc.; PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP; Principal Financial Group, and S.C. Johnson & Son Inc.

Continued in article

Women now make up more than 60 percent of all accountants and auditors in the United States, according to the Clarion-Ledger. That is an estimated 843,000 women in the accounting and auditing work force.
AccountingWeb, "Number of Female Accountants Increasing," June 2, 2006 ---
http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=102218

Bob Jensen's threads on women in accountancy are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers

"Accounting Firms Among BusinessWeek’s 'Best Places to Launch a Career'," AccountingWeb, September 22, 2006 --- http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=102606

When it comes to launching a career, four accounting firms have made BusinessWeek’s list of best places to start. Only three of the “Big Four” firms, Deloitte & Touche USA LLP, Ernst & Young and KPMG LLP, are among the top 55 places to launch a career. Grant Thornton LLP is the only non-Big Four firm appearing on the list.

BusinessWeek’s analysis of top employers for recent college graduates is the most comprehensive of its kind, examining feedback from students, college career counselors, and employers themselves, to reveal which companies offer the biggest advantages for entry-level employees, such as the highest pay, the quickest advancement and the best training programs.

Deloitte & Touche, where one-quarter of all partners have been with the firm for more than 20 years, held the highest ranking among accounting firms at number 3. In addition, one-third of experienced hires are “boomerangs” who have left and returned.

The permanent four-day weekends for Labor Day, July 4th and Memorial Day, instituted in 2005, helped Ernst & Young land in the number 12 spot on the BusinessWeek list. The firm is the only one of the ranked accounting firms not offering a management training program.

KPMG’s allotment of 25 paid days off for entry level professionals is among the most generous offerings on the list and good enough to earn the firm a number 15 ranking.

“I am very proud of the fact that so many students, counselors and employees see our firm as one where they can make a professional home – and make a difference,” Ed Nusbaum, Grant Thornton’s chief executive officer (CEO), said in a prepared statement. “Great people are our brand, so I am pleased that we are a coveted place to work.”

In ranking Grant Thornton as number 34, BusinessWeek highlighted the fact that more than four out of five interns become full-time associates. The firm’s most valuable trait is identified as its leadership skills, and LEADS, the leadership development program, was specifically noted.

With four ranked firms, the accounting industry makes a very respectable showing on this year's list. The industry with the most ranked firms was the financial services industry, having nine ranked firms. In second place, with seven ranked firms, is the consulting industry, followed closely by the the consumer goods and government industries, which both had six ranked firms.

Bob Jensen's threads on accountancy careers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers

PwC's Website for College and University Faculty --- Click Here

Accounting Professional Site Links 
The CPA Team http://www.cpateam.com/  

An E-ssential Site --- http://www.el.com/
CPAs, financial analysts, small business owners, and tax professionals not only can find links to many Web sites in their fields here, but also can use Essential Link’s home page to access online calculators, clocks, e-mail services, encyclopedias and dictionaries. Users can find links to online news, newspaper and television network Web sites in the Headlines area, as well as links to Internet search engines..

Bob Jensen's bookmarks for accounting educators --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm

After selling its consulting practice division to IBM, PwC still earns over a third of its revenues from advisory services.

"PricewaterhouseCoopers Launches U.S. Valuation Services," AccountingWeb, September 26, 2006 --- http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=102616

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has announced the launch of a U.S. valuation practice that offers a full range of valuation services. The valuation services are organized into two teams, the Transaction Services Accounting and Valuation Advisory practice and the Business Advisory practice. With the U.S. launch, PwC can deliver valuation services through a team of over 1,550 valuation professionals worldwide.

Valuation assessments provide critical input for a variety of corporate initiatives, including evaluating and structuring transactions; managing accounting, financial reporting and tax matters; resolving value-related issues surrounding disputes; and assessing strategic and tactical options supporting business decision making. By finding these issues and embedding applied valuation skills, PricewaterhouseCoopers, a provider of industry-focused assurance, tax and advisory services to build public trust and enhance value for its clients and their stake holders, believes it has created a truly distinctive service for non-audit clients.

Transaction Services Accounting and Valuation Advisory Practice

“As financial reporting moves to a fair value model, companies must deal with fair value issues every day, and nowhere are these issues more complex than when companies do deals,” John Glynn, a New York partner, former Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) professional accounting fellow and PwC’s representative to the Appraisal Issues Task Force who has been chosen to lead the Transaction Services Accounting and Valuation Advisory practice, said in a statement announcing the launch of the services. “By getting involved early and considering a company’s clearly defined business needs and goals, we can help clients get valuation right the first time, and think through the financial reporting and tax consequences of transactions and other initiatives. We can offer this because our practice brings together professionals with technical accounting, tax and valuation expertise.”

The Transaction Services Accounting and Valuation Advisory practice offers services that help companies meet financial reporting and tax valuation requirements, especially those related to merger and acquisition transactions. The Transaction Services group of PwC offers a deal process that helps clients bid smarter, close faster, and realize profits sooner on mergers, acquisitions, sales and financing transactions. Dedicated deal teams operate from 16 U.S. cities, as well as 126 locations in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia.

Business Analytics Practice

The Business Analytics team, led by Mark Haller, a Chicago-based partner and leader of PwC’s Economics and Strategy practice, offers applied valuation analysis and advisory services that help companies make business decisions. Business Analytics is part of PwC Advisory which brings together experienced, credentialed valuation specialists, along with a broader group of quantitatively trained, strategically savvy, and industry focused professionals who help clients execute strategy and make decisions on important issues, supported by hard facts and insightful analysis.

“We apply analytical approaches often dependent on value assessment and relative value modeling to help our clients to make important choices on strategic and tactical matters,” Haller said, noting his team specializes in analyses that help companies make better business decisions. “Our work adds quantitative support that refines and sometimes can even alter a client’s assumptions on issues such as new market entry and competitive threats, dispute resolution, changing and emerging business models, internal investment choices, product pricing, product rationalization and extension, and customer value assessment. Our rigorous analysis produces the detailed information companies need to make important decisions with greater speed.”

Question
What is the new Bridge Program of the AACSB?

The Bridge Program is a five-day intensive seminar to help senior business leaders prepare for faculty positions in business schools. The program was developed for AACSB by the Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine and the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. To be eligible for the AACSB Bridge Program, business professionals must have a master's degree, as well as professional experience of significant duration and responsibility related to the area of teaching assignment. Candidates with a master's degree in a non-business field, but who have significant work experience in a business teaching area, may also be eligible.
"AICPA Grants $25K to Help Accountants Move to University Teaching," SmartPros, September 28, 2006 --- http://accounting.smartpros.com/x54926.xml

The Bridge Program currently awards five $5,000 scholarships for doctoral studies --- http://www.aacsb.edu/bridge/AICPAFoundationBridgeProgramScholarship.pdf

October 2, 2006 message from Gerald Trites [gtrites@ZORBA.CA]

A new Blog for XBRL Canada is available at the following link: http://www.zorba.ca/xbrlblog.html. The blog is intended to provide a timely record of events relating to XBRL, particularly in Canada, and also other events of general interest. It also is a forum to enable  members to bring events to the attention of others. 

-------------------------
Gerald D Trites, FCA, CA*CISA/IT
Ph: 416-602-3931
Web Site: www.zorba.ca
E-Business Blog: www.zorba.ca/blog.html
XBRL Blog: www.zorba.ca/xbrlblog.html
 

Bob Jensen's threads (including video tutorials) on XBRL are linked at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm#TimelineXBRL

Open-Sharing of Video Lectures from Leading Universities Gains Momentum
The University of California at Berkeley announced Tuesday that it would put video of selected courses online — free to all — through a collaboration with Google Video. The move follows a similar move announced a week ago by Yale University.
Inside Higher Ed, September 27, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/09/27/qt

An Earlier Tidbit About Berkeley:  From the Scout Report on May 19, 2006

Webcast.Berkeley [iTunes, Real Player] http://webcast.berkeley.edu/

Over the past few years, a number of colleges and universities have created initiatives to place some of their course materials online for the general public. MIT was one of the first to do so, and Berkeley has also started to offer a number of webcasts and podcasts of select courses on this website.

Drawing on the strengths of the Berkeley Multimedia Research Center, they have begun to place some of these excellent materials on this site. On their well-designed homepage, visitors can either look at an archive of course webcasts and podcasts or take a gander at the archived webcasts that feature prominent speakers who have visited the campus. The events archive dates back to a January 2002 appearance by Bill Clinton, and includes dozens of interesting talks and lectures. Visitors can learn about each event in the information section, and for some, they have the option to download the audio portion of each event. The course section is equally delightful, as visitors can view webcasts here, and also download podcasts. The range of courses here is quite broad, and includes lectures on general chemistry, wildlife ecology, and surprise, surprise: foundations of American cyberculture. Finally, visitors can also subscribe to event and course podcasts.

"The Next Level of Open Source," by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, September 20, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/09/20/yale

"UC Berkeley offers courses and symposia through Google Video," PhysOrg, September 27, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news78585742.html

Bob Jensen's Threads
Shared Open Courseware (OCW) from Around the World: OKI, MIT, Rice, Berkeley, Yale, and Other Sharing Universities --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

Free online textbooks and cases --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks

Eliminating Male Athletes by the Numbers
James Madison University on Friday announced that it would eliminate 10 teams — 7 of them men’s teams — to comply with Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. James Madison’s student body is 61 percent female, but without the cuts only 51 percent of athletes are women. After the plan is enacted, the percentages will match.
Inside Higher Ed, October 2, 2006

Yet to some observers outside James Madison — including a consultant the university hired to advise it — the situation can be seen as part of a recent trend of scapegoating the federal law barring sex discrimination for cutbacks made as much for financial and other reasons as for equity concerns.
Elizabeth Redden, "Gender Equity or Finances?" Inside Higher Ed, October 2, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/10/03/jmu
Jensen Comment
It would seem that if finances were not a problem there would be no need to cut expensive sports programs at all. Of course the problem is financing, especially when football and basketball television revenue is lacking to cover all other sports programs. Aside from the cost of coaching, a huge problem has become the greatly increased cost of traveling meet opposing teams in other cities.

Forwarded by Auntie Bev

BUSINESS MODEL AT STARBUCKS:  JACKIE MASON'S TAKE ON STAR"BUCKS"

 If I said to you, "I have a great idea for a business. I'll open a whole new type of coffee shop. Instead of charging 60 cents for coffee I'll charge $2.50, $3.50, $4.50, and $5.50. Not only that, I'll have no tables, no chairs, no water, no free refills, no waiters, no busboys, serve it in cardboard cups, and have the customer clean it up after they're finished."

Would you say to me, "That's the greatest idea for a business I've ever heard? We can open a chain of these all over the world!"

 No, you would put me right into a sanitarium.

 And it's burnt coffee! It's burnt coffee at Starbuck's, be honest about it.

 If you get burnt coffee in a coffee shop, you'd call a cop. You say, "It's the bottom of the pot. I don't drink from the bottom of the pot. But when it's burnt at Starbuck's, they say, "Oh, it's a special roast. It's a special bean from Argentina....." The bean is in your head!!! I know burnt!

 You want coffee in a coffee shop, that's 60 cents. But at Starbuck's, if it's Cafe Latte: $3.50. Cafe Creamier: $4.50. Caffe Suisse: $9.50. for each!

French word, another four dollars. Why does a little cream in coffee make it worth $3.50? Go into any coffee shop; they'll give you all the cream you want until you're blue in the face. 40 million people are walking around in coffee shops with