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| LIBERALS: BORN TO RUNBy Ann Coulter Wed Jul 19, 8:04 PM ET I knew the events in the Middle East were big when The New York Times devoted nearly as much space to them as it did to a New York court ruling last week rejecting gay marriage. Some have argued that Israel's response is disproportionate, which is actually correct: It wasn't nearly strong enough. I know this because there are parts of South Lebanon still standing. Most Americans have been glued to their TV sets, transfixed by Israel's show of power, wondering, "Gee, why can't we do that?" Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean says that "what's going on in the Middle East today" wouldn't be happening if the Democrats were in power. Yes, if the Democrats were running things, our cities would be ash heaps and the state of Israel would have been wiped off the map by now.But according to Dean, the Democrats would have the "moral authority that Bill Clinton had" -- no wait! keep reading -- "when he brought together the Israelis and Palestinians." Clinton really brokered a Peace in Our Time with that deal -- "our time" being a reference to that five-minute span during which he announced it. Yasser Arafat immediately backed out on all his promises and launched the second intifada.The fact that Israel is able to launch an attack on Hezbollah today without instantly inciting a multination conflagration in the Middle East is proof of what Bush has accomplished. He has begun to create a moderate block of Arab leaders who are apparently not interested in becoming the next Saddam Hussein. There's been no stock market crash, showing that the markets have confidence that Israel will deal appropriately with the problem and that it won't expand into World War III. But liberals can never abandon the idea that we must soothe savage beasts with appeasement -- whether they're dealing with murderers like Willie Horton or Islamic terrorists. Then the beast eats you. There are only two choices with savages: Fight or run. Democrats always want to run, but they dress it up in meaningless catchphrases like "diplomacy," "detente," "engagement," "multilateral engagement," "multilateral diplomacy," "containment" and "going to the U.N." I guess they figure, "Hey, appeasement worked pretty well with ... uh ... wait, I know this one ... ummm ... tip of my tongue ..." Democrats like to talk tough, but you can never trap them into fighting. There is always an obscure objection to be raised in this particular instance -- but in some future war they would be intrepid! One simply can't imagine what that war would be. Democrats have never found a fight they couldn't run from. On "Meet the Press" last month, Sen. Joe Biden was asked whether he would support military action against Iran if the Iranians were to go "full-speed-ahead with their program to build a nuclear bomb." No, of course not. There is, Biden said, "no imminent threat at this point." According to the Democrats, we can't attack Iran until we have signed affidavits establishing that it has nuclear weapons, but we also can't attack North Korea because it may already have nuclear weapons. The pattern that seems to be emerging is: "Don't ever attack anyone, ever, for any reason. Ever." The Democrats are in a snit about North Korea having nukes, with Howard Dean saying Democrats are tougher on defense than the Republicans because since Bush has been president, North Korea has "quadrupled their nuclear weapons stash." It wasn't that difficult. Clinton gave the North Koreans $4 billion to construct nuclear reactors in return for the savages promising not to use the reactors to build bombs. But oddly, despite this masterful triumph of "diplomacy," the savages did not respond with good behavior. Instead, they immediately set to work feverishly building nuclear weapons. But that's another threat the Democrats do not think is yet ripe for action. On "Meet the Press" last Sunday, Sen. Biden lightly dismissed the North Koreans, saying their "government's like an eighth-grader with a small bomb looking for attention" and that we "don't even have the intelligence community saying they're certain they have a nuclear weapon." Is that the test? We need to have absolute certainty that the North Koreans have a nuclear weapon capable of hitting California with Kim Jong Il making a solemn promise to bomb the U.S. (and really giving us his word this time, no funny business) before we -- we what? If they have a nuclear weapon, what do we do then? Is a worldwide thermonuclear war the one war Democrats would finally be willing to fight? Democrats won't acknowledge the existence of "an imminent threat" anyplace in the world until a nuclear missile is 12 minutes from New York. And then we'll never have the satisfaction of saying "I told you so" because we'll all be dead. Don't try to tell Max Paredes, an engineer in Rogers, Ark., that gas prices aren't that high. "I used to pick up my kids from football. Now they need to get rides from other people," he said. But, DO tell Max Paredes that he's a cheapskate, a crybaby and a complete idiot.
Guest TEDitorial TUITION SOARS DUE TO KNOWLEDGE SHORTFALL TODAY'S YARDI LESSON The term for the little dot-in-circle selector is Brought to you by The Left Blamed Bush For Job Losses. The Labor Department reported Thursday that applications for unemployment benefits dropped by 35,000 to 291,000, the smallest number since Sept. 23, 2000, when the economy was in the concluding months of the longest economic expansion in history. How Many Guesses Do You Need? "The REAL Tragedy" NO - THE REAL TRAGEDY IS THAT THEY DID NOT! from urbandictionary.com expresshole Expresshole: a shopper at a supermarket/ store that checks out at the express line when they clearly have more items than the maximum. this makes everyone behind them wait. "Look at this expresshole! He has 20 items when you can only have 5 on this line!" Bad News is Bad News I can understand the market's reaction to a drops in consumer confidence, new home sales and durable goods orders but, when it's all good, traders still seem to find a way to look at the hay in a gift horse's mouth and only see manure! A trifecta of better than expected economic data bolstered early buying efforts; however, such strong growth also raised concern about further Fed rate hikes, closing the indices near session lows. Consumer confidence climbed to 98.9, the most in more than two years, from 85.2, the lowest level since Oct. 2003. Such upbeat sentiment was also echoed after Oct. new home sales unexpectedly rose 13% to a record 1.42 million units (consensus 1.20 million). Further, Oct. durable goods orders rebounded, rising 3.4% after falling 2.0% a month earlier, reflecting strong business investment -- a major factor that has kept GDP growth above long-term trends for two years. Nevertheless, while such data boosted stocks at the open, helping investors reclaim some of yesterday's broad-based consolidation following seven consecutive up-ticks for the S&P 500, bond traders thought the data was perhaps a little too strong. DOW -$2.56 and NASDAQ -$6.66 My FLYING DAY$ Are Numbered
Continental: is there an extra charge for the long brown hair I found on my pillow last flight? Florida "Fixes" Voting This Just In: Customers Hate Their Software VendorsBy Joshua Greenbaum Sat Oct 1, 5:00 AM ET Being the pack rat that I am, my digital archive is replete with the old, the outdated and the obsolete. But every once in a while there's something truly worth a second look, as in the old survey of Oracle applications customers I unearthed recently. The report, dated January 2002, was written by none other than Charles Philips, once the dean of enterprise software analysts and now the Duke of Oracle. In it, Charles offers the following observation on behalf of Oracle's customers: "Customers need to see the love—now." The more things change, the more they stay the same. To be fair, Oracle customers aren't the only ones who need to see the love. You can find the disgruntled, the annoyed, the furious and the beleaguered in every vendors' customer base. In fact, love is one hell of a scarce commodity in the world of enterprise software. It's hard to survey a customer base and find anything even remotely approaching universal love. In fact, customers often hate their software vendors more than they love them. Surprised? Then you just haven't been listening hard enough. How do customers hate thee, o software vendor? Let me count the ways: The software is too expensive. This isn't just about being cheap, it's also about perceived value. Vendors and customers are both guilty of not working hard enough on understanding the value of software, and in designing and implementing toward that goal. And many customers feel trapped by the do-or-die aspect to owning expensive enterprise software: damned to expensive maintenance and upgrades if you do, noncompetitive (and out of business) if you don't. The result is the same loathing reserved for oil companies, mass transit providers and other monopolists. Hate and desperate need often go hand in hand. Of course, to be fair to vendors, all customers secretly wish their enterprise software were free. Greed is all too often a two-way street. The last implementation was a total disaster. Of course, it was the implementer's fault, but let's not cloud the issue with facts. Anyway, it really is the vendor's responsibility to make sure that its partners are doing a good job. Being an enterprise software vendor means having to sell against the sins of the past every day. And the past was pretty sinful—software was expensive and hard to implement. And often still is. Service and support suck. That's putting it mildly. I spent a couple of weeks talking to customers about their ERP vendors' service and support, and there weren't a lot of kind words. Of course, the corollary to "the customer wants the software for free" is that the service should be intuitive, proactive, instantaneous and, by the way, free. And never necessary. I guess it doesn't hurt to dream. Upgrades are expensive and too frequent. Another legitimate beef: Keeping up with vendor upgrade cycles can be like breeding mice. Before you've even begun to wean the latest litter, mommy is in the family way again. Sound familiar? Maybe in this case a little less frequency might be a good thing. TCO and ROI numbers are misleading. You know what the number-one gripe of Hummer owners was in a recent J.D. Powers survey? Gas mileage. Even the king of the gas guzzlers posts misleading miles-per-gallon figures. Same thing with software: Even the best-intentioned vendors have trouble providing real TCO and ROI numbers. So what's the vendor and the customer to do about all this dysfunction? If this were a marriage, we would all be in therapy or divorce court. If this were the United Nations, all of us would be at war. It's sad that two groups—users and vendors—can be so intertwined and yet so far apart. A lot of this problem starts with the adversarial nature of the sales and contracting process, and it goes downhill from there. At a minimum, that problem needs to be fixed—now. How about making the contract free of gotchas and tricky language, basing the salesperson's compensation more on satisfaction than total license cost and keeping marketing hyperbole from getting in the way of the truth? Maybe love is too strong a term, but how about some respect, a little honesty and an understanding of the power of mutual self-interest? Why can't vendors and customers just get along? Joshua Greenbaum is a principal at Enterprise Applications Consulting and has been covering the software industry for more than 20 years. Write to him at hrrjosh@eaconsult.com. I HAD TO RESPOND TO FOOL is right! And, I quote: "Finally, one little approach I'm taking is to buy gas frequently. Since the price seems to be going nowhere but up for the foreseeable future (though I hope I'm wrong, of course), when my tank is down a quarter, I fill it up. I figure I'm probably saving a little money, because if it costs me $2.65 per gallon to buy four gallons today, it might cost me $2.80 to buy those same four gallons in a week or two." ALSO, PLEASE TAKE NOTE THAT PRESIDENT BUSH HAS ASKED US NOT TO BUY GASOLINE UNLESS WE ACTUALLY NEED IT. IF, AS IN THE FOOL'S EXAMPLE, YOU BURN 4 GALLONS OF A 16 GALLON TANK EVERY WEEK OR TWO, YOU SHOULD FILL-UP ONCE EVERY 4 TO 8 WEEKS! The Best of Demotivators JANUARY - MOTIVATION FEBRUARY - DESPAIR MARCH - PROCRASTINATION APRIL - CLUELESSNESS MAY - AMBITION JUNE - CONSULTING JULY - IDIOCY AUGUST - MISTAKES SEPTEMBER - PRETENSION OCTOBER - ACHIEVEMENT I HATE MEETINGS! DECEMBER - DEMOTIVATION From Wisconsin State Journal: Not just for the rich and famous Mr. Beiswanger of Madison opined last week that, “Only people making well above average income have the money available to put in a health savings account.” Sir, that’s a Hyundai, not a Hummer, sitting in my driveway. When my UW-PP HMO monthly premium went from $238 to $285 on January 1, 2004, I reluctantly accepted the ridiculous, but predictable, 20% annual increase. But when it was scheduled to rise to $450 on May 1, 2004 – the first month following my 50th birthday – I knew there had to be a better way. That better way is a high-deductible health insurance policy piggy-backed with a Health Savings Account. Instead of use-it-or-lose-it HMO premiums totaling $5,400 per year, I now pay less than $2,000 per year for a $2,600 deductible policy AND $2,600 INTO A 4% INTEREST-BEARING HSA! Let’s check the math: $800 less out of pocket and up to $2,600 (plus compounded interest) left in MY account. I can see that this is going to require a second mortgage on my condo. I figure that once I get past my first year without tapping the account, I’ll be perpetually “deductible-proof.” And what I never need to spend on deductible medical expenses will available for retirement, burial expenses and to pass on to heirs. In a Bush-coined “ownership society,” the citizen-consumer has choices. And choices have outcomes, both for the individual and the society as a whole. When an individual has an unambiguous stake in outcomes, the individual may make far different (hopefully wiser) choices than if there was no personal cost/benefit relationship. Choosing to take better care of oneself and choosing NOT to see a physician every time one sneezes, might be “selfish” choices to avoid paying deductibles. However, in the long run, these choices may result in a greater good for society in reducing the burden of trivial (nuisance) cases for heath care providers, health insurance carriers and, with any luck, the courts. And maybe, just maybe, such selfishness on a global scale may start a snowball effect to lower healthcare costs and health insurance premiums. Maintaining our $10 co-pay, $0 deductible, cradle-to-grave mentality, on the other hand, won’t give that possibility even a snowball’s chance. Ted Zeck, CPA So, what DOES consulting COST (anywhere else)?
You have to buy the $10,000 package to get beyond the planning stage!!! DO I SUPPORT THE WRONG SOFTWARE? Quote of the Moment When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading. DEDUCT THIS!!! I was having lunch with one of my favorite clients last week and the conversation turned to the government's recent round of tax cuts. "I'm opposed to those tax cuts," the public housing property manager declared, "because they benefit the rich. The rich get much more money back than ordinary taxpayers like you and me and that's not fair." TODAY'S YARDI LESSON: Don't ask for help if that help is to figure And then, don't bite my head off because you think I'm forcing you to do something MY way. I was already doing multi-state consolidated financial statements and income tax returns Brought to you by OWNER 1099s? Not from my YARDI! I know it's offered in YARDI in But, will someone please tell me... For rent? For the "bottom line?" For owner draws? What would I give owners? What should be done with these? A COMPETENT accounting/tax professional should tie out every Balance Sheet balance in order to prove the Income Statement. This includes, but is not limited to, cash, prepaid expenses, accounts receivable, accounts payable and prepayments (these four on accrual basis only), fixed (land, buildings, equipment, etc.) and intangible assets, related accumulated depreciation and amortization, mortgage and other loan balances, owner contributions and draws and any other Balance Sheet items that can be quantified. After any necessary adjustments to the Balance Sheet and/or through the Income Statement, income and expenses are input on the appropriate tax return: Individual - Form 1040 For most entities other than Individual, a Schedule K-1 is provided to the partner, shareholder or member who in turn uses the K-1 figures on their own Individual Income Tax Return, Form 1040. Note: this generalization is not offered as tax advice.
GOD BLESS AMERICA |
