National Forum on Disability Issue in Columbus, 7.26.08

Today, as a representative for the Ohio Association of the Deaf, I’ll be attending the National Forum on Disabilitty Issue at the First Church of God’s Conference and Technolog Center just about south of Columbus. Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) will appear live via satellite link from his home in Arizona and Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), standing in for Senator Barack Obama, still out of the country, will participate in the debate.

Keep your eyes to this blog later in the day or evening as I’ll be posting some pictures of the today’s event.

UPDATE 7:00 pm, 7.26.2008

It was a very interesting but pretty much low-key event today. There was approximately 700 people who’d attended, some from several non-profit organizations and community groups but most of the people came on their owns or by buses designated for those on wheelchairs or motorized chairs. A friend of mine, Jesse, showed up as I was lining up at the booth and I was pleased that she came for the event, since she’s interesting in studying law relating to people with disabilities and the deaf, she’s very curious about it and hoped to see Senator Obama and Senator McCain in person (after telling her, she was let down a little). There weren’t any recognizable face I know from the deaf community in Ohio but four ASL interpreters and closed captioning were provided on the big screens for whoever deaf/HOH attending.

A great highlight of the event started off with a pleasant and humorous speech by Robert David Hall, the disabled actor who played the coroner from the popular CBS TV show, CSI. He walks with two prosthetic limbs after having his legs amputated from a horrible accident in 1978.

Today was the 18th anniversary of the signing Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 into law by President George H. W. Bush and the man who made it possible came to the event, speaking as the Disability advisor to the Obama campaign: Senator Tom Harkin, who showed up about half-way through the event, just after the completion of a very good panel discussion moderated by Judy Woodruff from PBS’ NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. The only disappointment, as Jesse pointed out, was the lack of a deaf or a deaf-blind person on the panel discussion, telling what life is like for a deaf or deaf-blind person and how to overcome the problems with discrimination and so forth. One panelist made an apt point about the society (consisting of people who are not disabled) needed to stop treating people with disabilities like second-class citizens. The panelists were from organizations such as Institute for Educational Leadership, United Spinal Association, Self-Advocates Becoming Empowered and Oregon Developmental Disabilities Council.

Then Tom Harkin made a long, passionate speech about how the past Supreme Court decisions are hurting people with disabilities when it comes to jobs, business or public accommodation, discrimination and so forth, boiling down to the Supreme Court’s specific interpretations on the definition of one’s disability. He had a big sign brought out to emphasize that all the disabilities are covered under ADA, as seen below.

Senator Harkin was asked with few questions from Woodruff, touching upon issues on the future of people’s disabilities under an Obama administration, the threat of Social Security solvency, the needs of community outreach services to help people with disabilities, helping wounded or disabled soldiers and veterans and so on. He spoke about his deaf brother briefly and the discrimination and lack of accommodation his brother had endured.

After Harkin, there was a live music performance by Jeff Moyer, who is progressively blind and late deafened, and a well-known activist for the disabled. He did performed 18 years ago after the signing of ADA at the U.S. Senate. During the performance, I had the chance of getting to Senator Harkin in the hallway, as seen below (or click on the pictures):

I am aware that the Senator know sign language, having been taught by his brother. We’d communicated for a bit about getting the ADA Restoration Act of 2007 to pass. He is a very likeable and pleasant fellow (even though, I don’t agree with him on some domestic and foreign issues, not relating to disability issues). Then it’s back to the conference room for the live satellite appearance of Senator John McCain from his home in Arizona.

McCain kept his speech short and to the point, touching on the importance of Americans with disabilities of being participants, not as bystanders, in the American politics and community activities when it comes to disability issues, stopping discrimination and jobs. He stressed that he’d worked with Senator Harkin on the ADA Restoration Act and getting the Republicans in Congress involved in supporting it, in spite of his defense of the Supreme Court decisions on ADA cases. He’d explained that the job of the Supreme Court is to interpret the laws, not legislate them from the bench, given his repeated emphasis of the dangers of one branch of government doing the work of another branch of government or vice versa, thus undermining what the Founding Fathers had intended under the U.S. Constitution. McCain also warned of the solvency of the Social Security for the disabled Americans in the future, creating a greater risk that would put most of them into near-poverty or poverty levels.

He touched on the importance of supporting wounded or disabled soldiers and veterans, since they do make up half of the majority of Americans with disabilities across the country. After few “softball” questions from Woodruff, he ended it by emphasizing the needs of advocates, activists and organizations for the disabled Americans to work with him once he became elected President in the fall and work out the details in getting the ADA Restoration Act to pass.

After the end of McCain’s live satellite appearance and upon the closing of the event, thanking Judy Woodruff for moderating the “debate”, I had the chance to catch Judy Woodruff in the hallway, since my mother is a big fan of PBS’ NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and like Woodruff, so I had taken a picture of her for my mother, this is her below:

Pleasant lady, she is.

I also had the chance to take a picture with Robert David Hall of CSI fame as well:

Of course, I did not bother to ask him if he cuts up real dead bodies or fake ones while playing his character on the TV show. Just leave it to the imagination.

In conclusion, my two disappointments are – firstly – for the panel discussion, there was the lack of an experienced deaf/Deaf representative/activist (someone with years of organizational representation and activism in the deaf/Deaf community, I do not qualify for that, to be perfectly frank) or an actual deaf-blind activist (I know there are few up in Cleveland but they were not in for this event). Secondly, for the event involving two Presidential candidates to debate about the disability issues, it was not a real debate between two candidates live in person and in front of the audience. If it is, it would have been a snoozer for the majority of non-disabled Americans, probably cause them to switch channels if it is live on CNN or NBC. Earlier, one panelist said, with a warning, that those who are not disabled now may become disabled unexpectedly in the future and find out the very hard ways themselves. Many in the audience applauded hard on that.

All in all, it is an educational, informative, and fun event for me. The majority of the attendees are people with disabilities, as well as those who are not disabled but only a very sparse number of deaf/HOH attendees. Something tells me about that, however, that’s for another day, another blog.

Sorry if the few of the pictures aren’t great. My camera is a Nikon CoolPix model, only less than 3 years old and it’s really good for quick snaps or outdoor snaps but is really lousy for indoor photographic snaps (as you can see, for example, with the first picture of Harkin and his sign above). I tried a variety of exposure or white balance settings and it has no stabilizer. Oh, well. You can see few more below:

The Parallel: Deaf Protest 2006 & Presidential Election 2008

Back in May of 2006, as the students, the faculty, staff and the deaf community were protesting the choice of Jane K. Fernandez as the next president of Gallaudet, I began to observe, research and understand what had transpired in the events prior to the protest, with a wide range of substantiated and unsubstantiated information flowing from academic or staff insiders, the protest leaders, the community activists, the students and deaf bloggers like Ridor. I’d tried to keep most of these informations to myself, because I was several hundreds miles away from the actual protest event, and had to rely on first-hand and second-hand information passed up from friends, their friends and bloggers alike. Fortunately, I have few good friends who have maintained very close connection to the deaf community activists, NAD, and other deaf organizations and informed me of what was really going on, so I wouldn’t jump to any unnecessary conclusion. Things were getting crazy at the time, then by October of 2006, it was getting more crazier and intensive for all involved.

At that beginning of the protest, I felt there was something about the whole thing, an unusual gut feeling kicking me mentally but I dismissed it. As the protest and the flow of information transpired, the same gut feeling didn’t go away, nagging me. Once again, I dismissed it. Though, my intuition about something is usually, but not always, right on the mark, but the problem, which I’d acknowledged a long time ago, is predicting something solid based on my own intuition is very murky and difficult to ensure the probability of such a thing or event to occur as it is. Take the events of 9/11/2001, for example, I didn’t predict anything of that sort but my intuition at the time leading up to it was unusually low-key and muted, as if it was like a long lull before a coming storm going on an unpredictable path, you never know which way it was going to and you may pretend that it is not coming your way.

Anyway, by the time the protest intensified toward the end of October, the same gut feeling popped up as I was observing the entire affair unfolded before my eyes, and just as rumors began to circulate that Fernandez would be withdrawing her nomination as the next president of Gallaudet (eventually, the BoT withdrew her nomination), my mind began to ruminate about my intuitive possibility about the whole Deaf Protest 2006 affair being a preview of the US Presidential Election 2008! Click on the graphic below to see the whole thing for yourself.

From the beginning, I had to compartmentalize the whole notion to myself, knowing that such a similarity between the Deaf Protest 2006 and the US Presidential Election 2008 could never transpire in this degree. I’m talking about different peoples, different personalities and different situations. The 2007 pre-election campaigns of Clinton, Obama and McCain were ratching up big time and there were just too many speculations going on. No one could really predict, for sure, who would get the Presidency on Nov. 4th, 2008 but the stakes are, indeed, very high.

As for me, the weird thing about Dr. Robert Davila is that he came out of the left field, almost unexpectedly, since rumors and gossip were intensifying in November on who would the BoT ask to become Gallaudet’s interim president (especially the fear that Jordan himself could continue to remain as president until the new search process is complete and the person has been selected with satisfaction by all parties involved). The selection of Dr. Davila as the interim president surprised several people. Some had the initial concern about his age, despite his wealth of experience and skills as an able administrator. Senator John McCain, he ain’t but you cannot ignore this unusual similarity between Davila and McCain, as I’ve termed the “old guardian leader” figure. Sen. McCain used to serve on the Gallaudet BoT as a honorary member but had to leave the seat to concentrate full time on his Presidential campaign, in addition to his duty as a U.S. Senator.

Some people behind the deaf protest have told me that Dr. Glenn Anderson should have been the preferred choice to be Gallaudet’s 9th President, due to his experiences and popularity with the student body. I’d remembered the furor from the members of the Deaf Black Student Union at Gallaudet prior to the protest about Dr. Anderson not being really considered fully, in regard to the BoT selection process and did not made the final list. Some charged the Gallaudet BoT of rank racism. You can see the PDF article from the National Deaf Black Advocates Position paper about that. In a certain way, Dr. Anderson can be comparable to Barack Obama – the “promising black leader” of hope and change for Gallaudet. Interestingly, both are from Chicago.

The funny thing about Jane K. Fernandez is that she’s no Hillary R. Clinton herself and yet she came off as a woman eager and willing to do whatever she would take to win the mantle of leadership at all costs, by being stubborn, relentless, and ambitious all the way. Seem like Hillary Clinton as you’d seen her in her aggressive, stay-the-course campaign the last few months? Yep. Both were educated in elite colleges in the eastern establishment (Hillary’s alma mater were Wellesley and Yale, while JKF’s alma mater was Trinity College). Women like Hillary Clinton and JKF played some important parts in the corridors of power but their deeds and ambitions did not goes unpunished in the court of public opinion.

I. King Jordan and George W. Bush. Both widely disliked leaders. You see the similarity there? Enough said!

In conclusion, the similarity of the key figures of the Deaf Protest 2006 and the US Presidential Election 2008 is all that came from my deepest intuition based on what informations and observations I’d have and seen so far. I didn’t fully anticipate that but, apparently, it took a life of its own and I had to put up with that. When the Deaf President Now happened in 1988, effecting and resulting a real change of regime within an established institution and hope sprung forth, something really did transpired gradually and inevitably across the world a year later, especially in eastern Europe. I guess you know the rest of history?

Ban Bottled Water?

Within up to 50 years from now, there are going to be conflicts after conflicts, small to large, all over the world for the most important and precious survival resource: water. The population of the world will jump up to 2 to 4 billions more, many of them in the developing countries, but the developed countries will bear the brunt of immigration and congestion of these peoples crowded out from the developing countries due to lack of essential materials and the risk of drawn-out conflicts over crucial resources.

I’d recently shopped at Whole Foods Market store in Columbus, buying few things – nothing expensive or indulgent. The store has a long section of different bottled waters from various water-bottlers, with some fancy names or fancy designs to impress sophisticated, hip or health-obsessed buyers, operating under the assumption that some bottled waters are produced of highest quality and freshest taste from some faraway mountain springs or melted from glacial ice or procured from public toilets, whatever that is, if you will.

Water is water and I don’t buy none of these bottled water stuff from WFM, or Trader Joe’s or Kroger. It’s ridiculous, excessive and wholly unnecessary. You can get water by filtering your tap water from home, like Brita or DuPont filtered water system, or just drink straight from tap.

However, buying jugs of bottled water can be useful for saving in case of an emergency – like a water main break in your neighborhood or in the vicinity OR a regional or national crisis that could disrupt the water supply system. But buying these bottled waters for the sake of drinking daily until empty and keep buying new ones to quench your thirst daily, to me, make no sense.

As long as the world’s poor are struggling hard to get even one gallon of clean water to last a couple days, we are continually buying and consuming bigger quantities of bottled water daily, thanks to persuasive (and aggressive) marketing gimmicks and fancy designs, giving off false impression of freshest quality and taste. It is pointless and stupid. All these different bottled waters in the long sections of American grocery stores, convenience stores, vending machines, and other merchandisers should be collected and send off to countries hit hard by lack of access to clean water.

Maybe it’s time to ban the marketing and selling of bottled waters in America and re-direct water-bottlers to send their products to countries with little or no access to clean water for very low costs. Even those ridiculous vitamin waters or energy waters we are seeing every day at the stores. I don’t buy those stuff since most of them are water filled with diluted amount of vitamins, though, it doesn’t give you a good kick but make you feel you have to drink it for the health benefit (which isn’t). Water in itself is filled with natural nutrients of its own, so why overwhelm it with more vitamin or energy stuff? Just throw in a capsule of multivitamins or eat foods loaded with vitamins.

It would also help lower the costs of gas in America in some ways. It is expensive to distribute and ship different bottled waters in freights by common carriers – riding on diesel fuel – to various retailers and sellers locally, regionally or all over the country. The high price of bottled water is passed onto the customers through marketing, selling, distributing/shipping and placing efforts of bottled waters. That big, shapely bottled water with a fancy name for the sophisticated, discriminating mind (like you) must be really worth the price of drinking it, with higher *cough-cough* quality and fresh *cough-cough* taste!

Seriously, we just needed to do away those bottled waters for daily casual consumption and save only the jugs of water in case of emergency or for TSHTF event. The world’s poor deserve these bottled* waters more than we do.

Take these words of a former Army general to heart, he knows what he’s really talking about:

“One of the biggest likely areas of conflict is going to be over water,” said [retired General Charles] Wald, former deputy commander of U.S. European Command. He pointed to the Middle East and Africa.

Read up the 63-page military report about water wars in the future. It’s grim and a realistic possibility.

* – These bottles after first usage should be either usable or recycleable, not dumped to trash.

Just Google (or Yahoo) “ban bottled water” for more informations.

Special Robrief: InBev To Acquire Busch for $50B!

Previously, I’d opposed InBev’s attempt to buy Anheuser-Busch until I’d learned a bit more about InBev’s global operations. I admit I’m impressed with it. It’s a really the largest European brewery company run by a Brazilian management team and do brewed Budweisers in Canada for years. They know the Bud brand very well and have every intention to make the American Budweiser the best-selling beer worldwide (or so InBev declared). So, from this news, Anheuser-Busch have agreed to be merged with InBev for $50 billions, combining into the world’s largest brewery ever. I would bet there are some unhappy grumblings from the Busch family, at least I hope they get few solid seats within InBev’s board of directors and help direct the Anheuser-Busch future. InBev claimed that the merged companies’ headquarter will remain in St. Louis for the foreseenable future.

Robriefs 7.13.2008

Robrief no. 1: Jerry Springers Hosting Miss Universe Tonight?
Jerry Springer, famous for his wild’n'crazy Jerry Springer show, is co-hosting with Melanie Brown (of the Spice Girls fame) for the Miss Universe pageant tonight, broadcasted on NBC from Vietnam. That’s a first, since Springer isn’t exactly a wholesome celebrity figure. What the heck the Miss Universe producers were thinking?! Tonight, it would be the first time a Miss Kosovo will represent her country – Kosovo, alongside with Miss Serbia and they’re friends. However, don’t count on the security staff, including the security midgets, from the Jerry Springer Show to be on-hand for the tonight’s pageant to stop the brawling, hair-pulling, hissing fits or flying/throwing chairs between Miss Universe contestants. Heh.

Robrief no. 2: North America’s Top Bike-Friendly Cities
Darn, Columbus, Ohio didn’t make the list, in spite of having several bike paths in many different parts of Central Ohio. The city’s more “friendly” with peoples driving on the roads than riding on the bikes, even with high gas prices. Enjoy the slideshow. 

The problem lies with the state, city, various municipal and county officials not coming to a real agreement as to make all of Columbus truly bike-friendly. Another problem is that some Columbus drivers do not think bike-riders should share the roads with the cars and trucks, sometimes going too far by disrespecting or intending to scare off the bike-riders. When the gas prices are going higher and higher, perhaps, the anti-bike attitude of the drivers might be reduced.

Robrief no. 3: Cats’ ancestry traced to the Middle East 10,000 years ago
The most interesting thing about cats is that they domesticated themselves to Man, rather than Man tamed and domesticated the cats like they did with the dogs. According to this NYTimes article, the DNA of the wildcats and house cats in most parts of the world can be traced to the wildcats founded in the deserts of Israel, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, that which they settled into agricultural communities, helping peoples ridding of rodent infestation and, inevitably, became tolerated and accepted into households. There are approximately 600 millions of house cats, fancy cats and wildcats around the world, especially some wildcat species are endangered with extinction.

Robriefs 7.11.2008

Robrief no. 1: iPhone3G – Apple woes
Hey, Apple, next time… don’t try to launch and activate a popular product for customers worldwide. One country at a time, please. Trust me, it would be A LOT easier!

Robrief no. 2: All your fakes are belong to us!
Enjoy the Attack of the Photoshopped Missiles! Heh.

If you’re wondering what the title, “All your fakes are belong to us” is about? Look here and enjoy.

Robriefs 7.7.2008

Robrief no. 1: Men’s Fertility in late 30s/early 40s Plummets?
Saw two news today, one from Reuters UK news and one from ABCNews, as well as numerous other articles on the same subject. Reading the articles very carefully, I have one conclusion for it: Bullshit.

Rather, these reports about a study on men’s fertility in their late 30s or early 40s are pretty much misleading. Two things stood out for me: one – the study was done only in France, specifically in one French fertility clinic. Two – the study did not actually reveal the ethnic and physical characteristics of the 12,200 couples who have participated in the study. Especially if all the couples are only French and/or European people who just happened to live in Paris and goes to this one fertility clinic between 2002 and 2006?

Several questions come to mind: did some, if not most, couples smoked a lot? Did they drink a wide variety of alcoholic drinks during their times at the clinic between 2002 and 2006? Did they exercise regularly or not at all? What kind of foods they really ate daily? What are their races? Where are they from regionally? Did they used drugs in the past? Maybe American men are better with fertility than French men?

Really, the reporters should have ask more scrutinizing questions to the people behind the fertility study. Instead, they just took the words of the scientists at face value and published the study’s findings without considering other different factors that might lead to men’s infertility other than just stating men’s DNA goes kaput when they reach 40.

My dad had me when he was 40. He delivered, even he smoked a lot and drank the good, hard stuff (moderately). I turned out to be alright now. My brother-in-law was 46 years old when his first son – my nephew – was born in the last decade and he turns out to be a great, healthy kid. He did it again in 2001 when his daughter was born, she turns out great and healthy. He delivered just fine.

What’s disturbing about these news reports about the fertility of men in question is there a subtle message telling the public that men going 40 is not worth the time and effort for women of child-bearing ages.

Robrief no. 2: UK on look-out for “racist babies” who yucks to foreign foods?
Good Lord. Political correctism and nanny statism gone amok in the United Kingdom: babies who so much say “yuk” to foreign culinary other than the ones they are accustomed to are to be considered as “racist”, according to the National Children’s Bureau’s nutty guideline. Common sense is obviously disappearing for good from U.K.

Robrief no. 3: 500 Million Years Old Stromatolite Discovered in Virginia
What a huge stromatolite! I’m sure it wasn’t infertile in its primal time. Check out the picture.

You can visit a colony of living stromatolites in Shark’s Bay, Australia, the oldest living fossils in the world.

Robrief no. 4: The Dumbest Generation, a new book slamming young people in the age of the Internet
Mark Bauerlein has the right idea to publish his book, “The Dumbest Generation”, based on his surveys and observations that young people’s demand for instant gratification online, more interesting in American Idol than American politics and ignorant of important contexts of information, history and politics, whether off-line or online, are truly risking the United States’ intellectual future. Lee Drutman has an ambivalent article under L.A. Times:

Bauerlein also frets about the nature of the Internet itself, where people “seek out what they already hope to find, and they want it fast and free, with a minimum of effort.” In entering a world where nobody ever has to stick with anything that bores or challenges them, “going online habituates them to juvenile mental habits.”

And all this feeds on itself. Increasingly disconnected from the “adult” world of tradition, culture, history, context and the ability to sit down for more than five minutes with a book, today’s digital generation is becoming insulated in its own stultifying cocoon of bad spelling, civic illiteracy and endless postings that hopelessly confuse triviality with transcendence. Two-thirds of U.S. undergraduates now score above average on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, up 30% since 1982, he reports.

At fault is not just technology but also a newly indulgent attitude among parents, educators and other mentors, who, Bauerlein argues, lack the courage to risk “being labeled a curmudgeon and a reactionary.”

Hey, you’re skipping over the above contexts just because you’re easily bored, unmoved and impatient? Too bad, you’re dumb and impatient.

Just kidding.

Blogging to be punishable by death in Iran

Wow, talk about a giant step backward to dark age medieval standards. From iAfrica.com report, Iran’s parliament is about to debate a draft bill that would criminalize bloggers or webmasters and punish them to death for promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy from Islam in Iran. I cannot imagine there’s a website or blog actually promoting “corruption” but the government of Iran have many excuses to point out all kinds of corruption and decadence in its society – like drinking alcoholic beverages, listening to West rock ‘n’ roll music, wearing ties or blue jeans, applying make-ups, not wearing headscarfs, general Western things and ways of life that we all take for granted nowadays. The issue of prostitution or the apostasy from Islam is very much a personal, although difficult, choice, driven by circumstances, either forced or as result of freedom of expression. However, this bill could be used to silence bloggers in Iran through other unjustifiable means (for example, you blog against governmental corruption, then later, without a warning, you are accused and charged by the government for promoting “corruption”, that way you are effectively silenced – a deranged, unjustifiable and criminal approach). 

Their claim to “prevent the harming of mental security” of the society is really an Orwellian excuse for more totalitarian controls of people’s lives, especially with Iran being a tightly-ingrained Islamic state governed by a powerful clerical council.

Happy 232nd Birthday USA!

Here’s hoping the USA will celebrate its 300th birthday in 2076.

George F. Will has a great article about the real origin of the Declaration of Independence, which all began in Mecklenburg, North Carolina in 1775 by angry Presbyterians incited by England’s marriage law and fines and provided a fit of genuine inspiration for the Framers.

Robriefs 7.02.2008

Robrief no. 1: What ANWR is to you, anyway?
Have you been up there before? Walk around the beautiful, vast area of ANWR to see for yourself? Those poor caribous and bears are going to be horribly affected and polluted by future oil drilling operations up there!

Hate to tell you this: it’s not true. Democratic politicians, econuts, MSM and stupid celiberals have been lying and deceiving you the whole time.

SEE HERE AND BE EDUCATED ABOUT THE REAL ANWR AND THE ACTUAL SITE FOR DRILLING!

Brilliant and informative site! Forward it on to your relatives and friends. No more lies and dishonest BS. It’s time to drill that 2000 acres (out of 19 millions acres) of ANWR for oil already. $4 per gallon now, sheesh.

Robrief no. 2: Kelby Brick’s vlog explaining historic FCC decision for the deaf
Great vlog from Kelby Brick, VP for GoAmerica, about the historic FCC decision to set up a new numbering system for the deaf using VRS to communicate without IP addresses, fake phone numbers or names. Historic decision, indeed.

Robrief no. 3: Starbucks to close 600 stores in 2009
Aw, don’t cry. There are still close to 16,000 Starbucks stores around after the initial closing of 600 underperforming stores, with 200 new stores to be opened next year.

When I worked for Starbucks from 2002 to 2005 as a barista, I recalled a corporate-wide news in my first year about Starbucks plans to build and open few thousand more stores worldwide in the coming years, I thought it was mightily bold but pretty excessive. Then had a hunch that it was going too far and could hurt Starbucks in the future. By the time 2003 went by, just as I’ve learned the potential risk of higher gas prices in the future due to peak oil concerns, I knew, inevitably, that the rising cost of oil is going to pass onto the customers at some point (bringing in cartons of milks, bags of coffee beans, foods, goodies, products, etc. two time at a week by a local LTL carrier running on DIESEL gas costs money). As the years roll by, whenever the gas prices goes up and up, the cost of a cup of coffee or latte goes up as well, while Starbucks was still building and opening new stores. Finally, the CEO of Starbucks, last year, realized it was an ill-conceived, costly plan, lacking foresightedness, and decided to scale back company-wide. Hey, don’t say I didn’t warn them (plenty of highly-paid analysts did so already).

I say the closing of 600 underperforming stores can be a blessing in disguise: it could mean Starbucks may cut 10 to 15 cents off per beverage in the future, if they get all the satisfying quarterly results by mid-2009, barring any future surge in coffee price worldwide. Who knows? Coffee beans are not easily and conveniently grown in certain places, as poor climate/land conditions, foreign competitions and/or governmental problems can complicate the matter of growing and processing the beans.

Robrief no. 4: Singer Sang Black National Anthem, Slammed by City Officials, Angry Attendees in Denver
Reading this news from 9News.com, what the hell this woman, singer Rene Marie, is thinking?! When someone ask you to sing (or sign) the National Anthem in an official state function or large public event, just do it with dignity and respect. Not just “expressing artistically” like she did for herself or every black person in America. What’s the point she’s trying to do? Promoting black America separatism? She can do it in private or public concerts attended by paying customers just to hear her sing her black separatist songs. I would have boo and stop her for singing a song other than the National Anthem she was asked to sing by public officials. Sadly, the public officials have allowed her to sing it to completion, stupidly assuming that her singing the National Anthem is next. Sheesh!