... without alienating your customers:

From the L.A.Times (11/9/08):





iTunes is currently playing: Slippery People from the album Stop Making Sense: Special New Edition (1984 Film) by Talking Heads.

From the WashingtonTimes.com web site:

Over the weekend President-elect Barack Obama scrubbed Change.gov, his transition Web site, deleting most of what had been a massive agenda copied directly from his campaign Web site.

Gone are the promises on how an Obama administration would handle 25 different agenda items - everything from Iraq and immigration to taxes and urban policy - all items laid out on his campaign Web site, www.BarackObama.com.

Instead, the official agenda on Change.gov has been boiled down to one vague paragraph proclaiming a plan “to revive the economy, to fix our health care, education, and social security systems, to define a clear path to energy independence, to end the war in Iraq responsibly and finish our mission in Afghanistan, and to work with our allies to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, among many other domestic and foreign policy objectives.”

“We are currently retooling the Web site,” said Obama spokesman Nick Shapiro.

The Kool-Aid should start to wear off soon.


iTunes is currently playing: I Was Only Telling A Lie from the album Dad Loves His Work by James Taylor.

BUT I WANT THIS CAR!!

iTunes is currently playing: What is This Thing Called Love from the album Portrait: Past Perfect - Disc 10 by Billie Holiday.

A columnist with the Washington Post has admitted and detailed the lack of balance in her paper's coverage of the recent election!

The Post provided a lot of good campaign coverage, but readers have been consistently critical of the lack of probing issues coverage and what they saw as a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama. My surveys, which ended on Election Day, show that they are right on both counts.

The count was lopsided, with 1,295 horse-race stories and 594 issues stories. The Post was deficient in stories that reported more than the two candidates trading jabs; readers needed articles, going back to the primaries, comparing their positions with outside experts' views. There were no broad stories on energy or science policy, and there were few on religion issues.

The op-ed page ran far more laudatory opinion pieces on Obama, 32, than on Sen. John McCain, 13. There were far more negative pieces (58) about McCain than there were about Obama (32), and Obama got the editorial board's endorsement.

Stories and photos about Obama in the news pages outnumbered those devoted to McCain. Post reporters, photographers and editors -- like most of the national news media -- found the candidacy of Obama, the first African American major-party nominee, more newsworthy and historic. Journalists love the new; McCain, 25 years older than Obama, was already well known and had more scars from his longer career in politics.

The number of Obama stories since Nov. 11 was 946, compared with McCain's 786.

Obama deserved tougher scrutiny than he got, especially of his undergraduate years, his start in Chicago and his relationship with Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who was convicted this year of influence-peddling in Chicago. The Post did nothing on Obama's acknowledged drug use as a teenager.

One gaping hole in coverage involved Joe Biden, Obama's running mate. When Gov. Sarah Palin was nominated for vice president, reporters were booking the next flight to Alaska. Some readers thought The Post went over Palin with a fine-tooth comb and neglected Biden. They are right; it was a serious omission.

Will any other papers follow suit??

iTunes is currently playing: It's Not Abnormal At All from the album BBC1 John Peel Session by Yazoo.

ROSE: I don't know what Barack Obama's worldview is.

BROKAW: No, I don't, either.

ROSE: I don't know how he really sees where China is.

BROKAW: We don't know a lot about Barack Obama and the universe of his thinking about foreign policy.

ROSE: I don't really know. And do we know anything about the people who are advising him?

BROKAW: Yeah, it's an interesting question.

ROSE: He is principally known through his autobiography and through very aspirational (sic) speeches.

BROKAW: Two of them! I don't know what books he's read.

ROSE: What do we know about the heroes of Barack Obama?

BROKAW: There's a lot about him we don't know.

[Transcript from RushLimbaugh.com.]

iTunes is currently playing: Who Am I from the album Ultimate Petula Clark by Petula Clark.

Newsweek has a lengthy (7 chapter) piece on the recent presidential election called Secrets of the 2008 Campaign. The article includes the following paragraph that totally sums up the phenomenon of Obamamania:

Obama understood that he had become a giant screen upon which Americans projected their hopes and fears, dreams and frustrations. Maybe such a person never really existed, couldn't exist, but people wanted a savior nonetheless. As a bestselling memoirist he had created a mythic figure [emphasis mine], a man named Barack Obama who had searched and quested and overcome travails, who had found an identity and a calling in public service. Obama recalled that he often joked with his team, "This Barack Obama sounds like a great guy. Now I'm not sure that I am Barack Obama, right?" He added, pointedly, "It wasn't entirely a joke."

If this information had been released prior to the election, do you think the headlines would have read "OBAMA ADMITS TO BEING A FRAUD"? Nah, I don't think so, either.



iTunes is currently playing: BEHIND THE MASK from the album Faker Holic - YMO World Tour Live by Yellow Magic Orchestra.

... who is in for a rude awakening when she has to pay her own mortgage in January.

iTunes is currently playing: Outta Mind from the album Angels In The Crowd by Wendy Woo.

iTunes is currently playing: Go Where You Wanna Go from the album Up-Up And Away by The 5th Dimension.

... and if the trailer is any indication, it was worth the wait!

iTunes is currently playing: Stand And Fight from the album Dad Loves His Work by James Taylor.

Political satirist Paul Shanklin explains "redistribution of wealth" on The Rush Limbaugh Show:

[audio:ObamaHalloween.mp3]

iTunes is currently playing: They Can't Take That Away From Me from the album Portrait: Past Perfect (Disc 3) by Billie Holiday.