TampaYankee

Jobs: technology giant/marketing muddler Gates: marketing giant/technology muddler Pretty much says it all. Both men left their marks. Too bad Jobs wasn't a marketer too.

Their primary purpose is leveraged marketing. They hold emails hostage on expired accounts and email the escort that they have contact emails waiting when they renew their account. They also provide more eyecandy for voyeurs. Fortunately, the active accounts are listed first.

The fight is not for the right. It never has been. It is for the middle. Neither end of the spectrum can govern by itself -- certainly not for long. It needs the middle. A willingness to talk to the other side to seek common ground stands the administration in good stead whether or not compromise can be achieved in the end. It does no harm to talk and can do some good on occasion. In the end it doesn't matter if the right is swayed as long as the middle is.

Some more...

Time marches on for all of us... at different paces to be sure. I haven't reached Ted's milestone yet but I'm well beyond Conway. Compromised performance is the basic reason I cannot justify $300/hr for anything...lol. Now if I was still the randy 18 yo I was once I could put up a pretty good run for that money -- definitely worthwhile experience then, but that is history. Got to live in the here and now unfortunately.

What calculated risk? I cannot see why everyone has their panties in a bunch and their sensitivies bruised. One would think that at least he would be allowed to assume office and actually commit real screw--ups put in cement with lasting effect. I don't like Warren. Some of his views are outrageous. So what? He has not been appointed Minister of Culture!! He gives an invocation. Big Deal. Ten minutes, one night. That is small potatoes in the scheme of things. If it give pause to some of the opposition getting their back up from the get-go then I can live with that. Obama has got a shitload of problems to deal with domestic and foreign -- a real shitload. It will be helpful if he can sooth the opposition with minor gestures and demonstrate in small deeds a willingness to work with as many as he can on whatever agreements can be achieved. He is not going to put Warren in charge of the Military Code of Conduct. Gates is not going to covertly carry out the Bush/Cheny war agenda. The Republican Transporation Secretary is not going to mandate gas-guzzling SUVs. If they do I'm confident he will reign them in or remove them. I haven't seen him pour any actual concrete that I find disturbing. Concrete deliveres don't start until Jan 20. Eventually Obama will screw up in a way that has consequence. Maybe an unwise compromise that has real effect. If and when, then he will deserve serious criticism for something he actually has done as President. I'm prepared to wait for that and take my shots then rather than add to unnecessary distractions now as he tries to put a government together that hits the ground running at near full speed on day one. We no longer have the luxury of a new administration figuing out what needs to be done and where and who should do it during the first six months in office. We dont have the luxury of sweating bullets over trappings rather than substance. We don't have the luxury of pushing idological legislation that causes a loss in confidence by the electorate that gets reflected in loss of legislative support and the next biennial elections. It is a dangerous world and we are going down the crapper economically in a very bad way. We need overall consensus not division. That doesnt mean there wont be differences but let's save the fights for big issues not who gives a ten minute invocation. We will all be loosers if we pursue symbols over substance. As for Warren, I'll get my back up when he is appointed Minister of Culture.

Not outrageous at at all as it first sounded. Pretty good deal for a party of five. Wish I could be there and take advantage of the offer.

No it isn't. Does anybody really care? We don't take profiles from regular members. They don't seem to volunteer them in the Forum. Escorts that post are usually registered thus have full profiles listed. Those that don't should register.

I was watching ABC news last night about the closing of so many shows on Broadway. I have attended several in the last fifteen or twenty years. Alway enjoyed them even though I thought $85 for the good seats was a bit stiff on my last visit. I heard last night the now empty seats have been going for $285 per... wow!! No wonder they are empty. Apparently now that the Pound Sterling has fallen, the Brits are less willing to come over and buy up the Broadway seats and hotels. Also seems there has been a backlash among Americans because of the pricing of Broadway for the tourists. NO WONDER!!! Businesses have to get their heads on straight if they are going to survive in the current conditions. This goes for Broadway, hotels, and even escorts. When will sanity return. The High Times are over. Mindsets better adapt or prepare for a brutally awakening change?

At least you had the advantage of knowing up front that you were on your own. Being blind-sided on an inviolable commitment when one is too old to scramble for any recovery is a cruel life lesson. That is why at the least they deserve some preferred stock option that allows them to participate in the recovery should the company ever recover. As I mentioned elsewhere, this will change US Labor Relations forever, some for the good some not so much. Management/Labor agreements will never mean anything again beyond the here and now. If unions do survive they had better change the game to 'get it now, not later' with five year vesting at most -- a week's benefit earned is a week's benefit banked. Wise for nonunion shops too.

I don't disagree that we are peering into an economic abyss but... I guarantee you that if people don't have confidence that they will have a job to pay for discretionary purchases or homes and investors don't have confidence that they can buy a secure investment of known value and integrity then this economy is going nowhere. This whether or not the auto companies survive. They are a higher order issue -- a very important one for sure. But we were seriously in the tank and spiraling downward before the auto barons reached out for a lifeline -- their need prompted most immediately by the credit meltdown. Their failure would be a snowball effect worsening an already bad situation. I don't know how to quantify 'in the toilet'. Confidence has been shaken but I think most people are taking a cautious wait and see attitude to give Obama a chance to work some magic. To date Christmas shopping stats haven't been nearly as dismal as I had anticipated. People are not feeling good nor ready to ante up for life as before. Neither have they decided that universal armageddon is a forgone conclusion just yet. Things are tough and will get worse before they get better. In the end it all comes back to confidence but that requires tangible signs of economic stability such as the real floor of the decline being found. Obvious and granted. The issue is to decide on what alternate paradigm is desirable and how to transition to it. To adopt a business paradigm rooted in another culture without understanding how that culture supports the paradigm in society may have unintended consequences. Put simply, if we discontinue the paradigm of business providing health care and pension benefits then it seems that one of the three must result: 1. employee pay is increased to cover the cost of their own contributions to these needs, 2) the government picks up the tab to free business from the burden, or 3. we decide that as a society we are not obligated to have health care and liveable pension benefits for anyone. 1. still places a burden on business labor cost and adds to the burden of individuals as they dont have buying power to obtain group discounts etc. 2. causes higher taxes across the board, including business, spreading the cost over the widest possible base, and 3. Social security was never intended to provide a livable pension, only partial support in retirement age. For most, SS benefits fall far short of a liveable pension. For active workers, 3. returns healthcare to 'everyone for themselves '-- pretty much the third world paradigm. So you are confident to a certainty that auto companies in bankruptcy can maintain appeal to buyers that will sustain sales that make survival likely? These companies sprang up in the US paradigm established historically by Management and Labor that business provided employee benefits as part of doing business. Without that paradigm it is uncertain that they would have created it. Along the way both US Management and Labor created problems for themselves that needs to be corrected. The Japanese companies had the benefit of seeing those problems before getting on the playing field. Good for them and good for us. The question is not that changes are necessary but how we transition the American companies without figuratively lining up against a wall the retired employees and efficiently dispatching simply as abstract loosers in the game. Also, the future of the American paradigm Japanese style or otherwise is in doubt. Ten years ago my employer deicded to draw a line in the sand on health benefits. To cap ever increasing costs they decided to cap their future contributions for health care payments to what they paid that year. It is not to hard to see where this eventually leads if general health care cost growth is not capped. It is a premier R&D noprofit that needed to cut the cost of overhead. I doubt that Japanese American auto companies or other companies are going to be better in the long run.

Wrong analogy IMO. Would you seriously spend $20,000 -- $40,000 to buy a car from a company with no guarantee of your 5 year/50,000 mile warranty being honored or of replacement parts being on hand for repairs? I wouldn't. That's half the battle and that was a good part of the reason they acted as fast as they did. The plunge of Wall Street and failure of banks could have been much worse if bank runs and wholesale stock selling continued unabated in runaway panic. Lack of confidence causes the economy to sieze up. Nobody knows the fair value of Wall St. or how stable the big banks. Insurance companies and financial institutons got in bed with the banks in passing around toxic securities. Loss of the big players in any sector would bring the other sectors down. That would kill the ability of consumers to buy on anything but a cash basis or companies to have short term cash on hand to pay employees and buy materials, supplies, parts, etc to conduct their business. The Fed moved to maintain confidence in the banks buy publicly throwing money at them. The equivalent of pouring water on a fire. It didn't result in everything desired to improve things but it very probably kept things from getting a lot worse. Some might consider that a success of a sort. Consumer buying is the biggest engine in our economy. If people dont buy because they fear loss of jobs, or bank failures or Wall St crash or because they dont have access to credit then companies cannot make the store rent, product buys, and employee payroll. Broad consumer confidence is a key lynchpin to restoring the economy -- maybe the key lynchpin. Anything that improves confidence is very good medicine. That includes feel-good money if it really makes people feel good. The perception problem is that events are easy to evaluate but nonevents are impossible to evaluate with any certainty. Who knows how bad circumstances would have gotten without action? Who really wanted to find out, with what history and economic analysis has taught us?

So what's the deal with only 2 VIP tix? How very odd -- both the limited number and the price? For that price I expected lots of human generated heat and steam in my private cabana. The whole thing sounds like fun though.

I really didn't miss the point. I just disagreed with your framing of the diagnosis of the problem that basicly laid it at the foot of active workers. Maybe we are ready to become a third world labor force. Don't expect the largess of corporations to watch out for employees if there is no alterantive labor standard to compete with. Don't expect government to do it either as I pointed out above the track record of the last eight years. Rather than nonunion corps making arguments why their benefits need not be as good as union shops they will be arguing that they cannot be substantially better than Chinese or Indian shops because of competitiveness. Maybe we are ready to become a third world labor force. I doubt what we know as bankruptcy is a solution because of the effect on public confidence. Any regoranization and restructuring would have to have full government commitment to stand behind the companies. Else nobody will buy their cars. If such a reogranization should come to pass and commitments to retirees broken unilaterally then I would advocate that the oldest retirees continue with benefits at some adequate level and younger retirees get preferred stock in exchange for earned retirement benefits lost. There is no way they should become designated as total losers to save the companies. If the companies cannot meet their promises then they owe the retirees the opportunity to share in whatever benefit accrues from them being sacrificed for better corporate health. The health benefit costs ought to be mitigated by a national health care reform program that makes health care more affordable to all. There is no way we will ever have a level playing field while foreign government subsidies support foreign competitors while we do not provide similar subsidies. That is not my choice for a business model but it is the business model if we intend to compete. We have been inept at achieving a level playing field for trade hoping that the other side would see the light. They seem quite satisfied eating our lunch with a flashlight.

Simply an exercise in how to lie with statistics. Put more gently, one can gin stats to say pretty much anything one wants. Even the refererence cited as 'confirming' the hourly wage difference points out: GM says its total hourly labor costs are now $69 including wages, pensions and health care for active workers, plus the pension and health care costs of more than 432,000 retirees and spouses. Toyota says its total costs are around $48. The Japanese automaker has far fewer retirees and its pension and health care benefits are not as rich as those paid to UAW workers. One could just as easily construct an 'hourly wage statistic' that divides the total wage/benefits payout by the sum of the active and retired employes instead of just the active employees and get quite a different stat that would make GM look better than Toyota in all probability. So what? Neither of these advances a solution. No one is seriously arguing that corporate benefits promised to retired employees should come out of the pocket of active employees, are they? It is true that GM has higher legacy costs. It is also true that the union bargained for some unrealistic work rules and maybe excessively plush benefits that add burdensome costs to production. Adjustments need to be made, but don't put the onus all on one side as 'constructed stats' would imply.

I stand corrected. It's good to see that everyone is willing to share the burden to get the ship wrighted. However, in balance, I suspect that in terms of basic needs and security, that this hurts corporate executives somewhat less than workers facing loss of pensions and or health care. I grant that this is not painless for all executives as some are caught in difficult circumstances of their own.

What are perks? Health Care? Retirement Plans? I call them benefits. That is what my former company, an R&D firm, called them too. I didn't notice a willingness of the Finance and Bank Kings to give up their excessive salaries and outrageous bonuses for their bail out. If they eventually do then it is only because they will somehow be forced to retroactively. I'll see it when I believe it. No one has asked them to give up their health care or other 'benefits'. They wouldnt even forgo their lavish junkets in desert resorts on bailout money. Unions have made too many demands like work rules that demanded workers get paid for not working in certain circumstances. Bad decisions by them and by Management that resulting from a free bargaining process that was abused. The bad decisions need to be undone and both sides must ante up on that. But simple wholesale gutting of workers contracts goes too far IMO unless we want to end up laborwise little different than a third world country. To totally flush their contracts and wave off commitments to past workers without a broader solution seems unjust to me and undermines validty of any future Labor/Management agreements. Union pensions may need to be renegociated more realistically but not wiped clean. Health care for active and or possbily just for retired workers may need to be off-loaded as part of a broader national health care initiative. That would help all of our businesses be more competivtive in the world. The point is that this can't be done all on the shoulders of the workers and share holders. They are big players but the system has to change too else we WILL become a third word labor force. That is if we actually retain any manufacturing that requires a labor force which is a national security issue IMO. That all of this happened hasn't been suprising. Anyone could forsee that free trade between countries with organized labor would never be competivtive with countries without orgaized labor when those latter countries became efficient in manufacturing. Sure enough, China and India eventually began eating our lunch -- and we gave them the money and blue prints to do it and a pat on the shoulder. All in the name of greed, IMO This may eventually lead us to the demise of our trained labor force. But even worse it will lead to the demise of our manufacturing base. We are more than half way there now and standing at the cross roads. Maybe we have arrived at the Age of the Demise of Organized Labor. Maybe Organized Labor cannot exist in a World Trade Environment where cheap unorganized labor is the rule. But who will look out for the rights of workers? Given what I have seen of the Bush Admin and Congressional Republicans in the last eight years and more recently, and the fact that GDP and business profits went up for seven straight years while worker pay declined and minimun wage remained static, I don't think we can count on them in the future.

Both entertainment megastars in my parent's generation. As a kid I watched many old war movies with Van, Diana Shore or many others. Betty Page along with Bett Grable were the cream of the Pin Up Girls during WWII. Van and Betty left their mark on that generation and posterity. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/movies/13johnson.html http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081212/ap_on_...t_bettie_page_8

Reviews are removed (deactivated) once the escort has retired verifiably. The ratonale is that reviews offer no benefit to escorts or clients once the escort is out of the business. Leaving dead reviews in with active reviews amounts to leaving chaff in with the wheat with respect to searching for an escort to hire, IMO. If it comes to our attention that a retired escort resumes working then the reviews are reactivated and updated if necessary. This is easier from a bookeeping aspect than removing photos and contact information and storing separately, while leaving dead reviews active, then trying to reassemble all data for a review activation. ALso, generally retired escorts prefer complete removal. This has always been the pollicy. Is there a compelling reason to do otherwise?

Thanks for sharing.

Reasonable drinks, half-price appetizers and boys in underwear -- great combination for a nice evening. Wish I was local to support them. I hope the locals and any travelers in the area will come out.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081206/hl_af...ds_081206201447 Nobel medicine laureate sees progress on AIDS vaccine STOCKHOLM (AFP) – Luc Montagnier, co-winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Medicine, Saturday stood by his view that a "therapeutic vaccine" for the AIDS pandemic could be created within four to five years. "It is difficult to say, but it is perhaps a case of four to five years," he told AFP, following a press conference in Stockholm ahead of receiving the prestigious prize next week. In October Montagnier, 76, said an AIDS treatment could be possible in the future with a "therapeutic" rather than preventive vaccine for which results might be published in three or four years if financial backing is forthcoming. Montagnier and fellow French researcher Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, who shared the Nobel prize, discovered the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS by destroying immune cells, one of the scourges of modern times. On Saturday Montagnier insisted the creation of a "therapeutic vaccine" within four to five years was realistic and that there are various ways to reduce the HIV virus until a cure is found. He noted that work on a vaccine has been going on for 10 years and that it was easier to research a therapeutic rather than a preventative vaccine. "Before we get a vaccine there are many ways to reduce the contaminations by improving ways of life standards in developing and poor countries, in giving them more advice," he said. While also addressing journalists in Stockholm, Barre-Sinoussi said it is impossible to say when a preventative AIDS vaccine would be made available and that researchers must keep working on it. Montagnier and Barre-Sinoussi shared one half of the 2008 award, while the other half went to Harald zur Hausen of Germany, who discovered the virus that causes cervical cancer. Zur Hausen also attended Saturday's press conference in which he echoed Barre-Sinoussi's response that winning the Nobel prize had completely changed his life. All three researchers will give their acceptance speech on Sunday and receive their award, with a cheque for 10 million Swedish kronor (930,000 euros), on Wednesday. AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) has claimed more than 25 million lives since it first came to prominence in 1981. Today, around 33 million people are living with AIDS or harbouring HIV, 67 percent of them south of the Sahara.

Yes. Your review was received. However, a follow-up email to you bounced. Not a good sign. A reliable email address is required for posting reviews.

I was confident from the date of the pic that Emanuel was brought in to keep discipline in the Demococratic congress rather than exact war on the Republicans. The old time liberal establishment is the biggest threat to Obama's administration. Shrewd move.

Unfortunately, unchecked power always descends into lunacy and corruption. The Democrats are not immune. The amazing thing about the Republicans is that the so-called Party of Conservative Principles descended so rapidly into abuse and corruption and unabashedly so. Does anyone remember the blatant refusal of the Republican Congress to perform any serious oversight on the Bush Admin? How about the just as blatant refusal to let Dems participate in the government with any voice. Let's not go into partnering with K Street to buy and sell influence to and for those willing to play. Unchecked power always comes to a bad end. Unfortunately, we no longer have a responsible opposition party. I pray they can reform themselves to be a National Party with national interests in place of their usual devisive interests.