What Is The Los Angeles Times Hiding?

America will be electing a President in less than a week.

Polls are tightening by the day. McCain is feeling a second wind. Obama wants us to take a day off to help him in the 11th hour.

And the Los Angeles Times is sitting on a potentially damaging videotape of Obama and refusing to release it.
Why? Because they want to protect their source. Or so says the Times.

But why didn’t the Times have a problem reporting on an embarrassing audiotape of Governor Schwarzenegger in 2006? They ran THAT on the front page!

There is no doubt in my mind that the Times wants Obama elected next week. They recently endorsed him as their candidate (what a SHOCK!). And they don’t want to see the tightening race tip in McCain’s favor.

The tape in question includes Obama praising Rashid Khalidi, an activist with ties to the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Who else was at the 2003 farewell dinner? William Ayers.

We know that Obama has had dubious relationships with questionable figures. What has always been in question is the extent of these relationships.

This videotape could reveal what the American people deserve—the TRUTH.

The Free Press has ceased to exist when a major newspaper refuses to release a tape that could shed light on critical aspects of a candidate’s character. And all within a week of the election. How convenient.

Your grandfather’s generation would be DEMANDING that the Times release this tape before the election. Your grandfather’s generation would be MAD AS HELL that this was being kept from them for arguably partisan reasons.

Is the Los Angeles Times in the business of truthful reporting? Or electing their candidates in elections?

The fact that we even have to ask that question says all we need to know.

Motivational Monday: A Lesson In Going The Extra Mile

Motivational Monday: A Lesson In Going The Extra Mile

By Spencer Hughes


One of the surest ways to speed up and guarantee success in whatever tasks and dreams you follow is to go the extra mile.

Read that again...take your time...

GO THE EXTRA MILE.

How many people you know do that? How many people won't even fathom the thought of giving one more dime or second or inch than is absolutely necessary?

Too many of us fall into the rut of stopping where we are supposed to, instead of venturing a little--or gasp, a LOT--further than we are expected to.

But going the extra mile is exactly what true and lasting success requires of us. It's those extra dollars and minutes and inches that will make the difference between meeting our goals and giving up just shy of them.

Here are two examples of going the extra mile that I have encountered just in the last week.

I have been having cell phone problems beyond anything you can imagine. Missed calls. Phantom calls. No texts. Late texts. Texts bottle necking and coming at me all at once--up to several days worth all in one shot. Missing important calls, both business and personal.

Hours of my life have been wasted in the past month, lost to one technical support phone call after another. And one after the other, technicians were unable or unwilling to solve the problem.

Weren't they all trained to help people like me? Wasn't that their job? And yet one after the other seemed rushed and put out that I needed their assistance.

Until last week. A spoke with a technician that stood apart from the rest. She sounded interested in my problem, empathized with my frustration, and was determined to resolve the problem. And you know what?

She did. She accomplished in one phone call what an army of other technicians couldn't.

It took a lot of time, but not nearly the amount of time I have squandered fruitlessly over the past month, talking to a dozen or so of her co-workers.

She told me she would stay on the line as long as needed. And that if we ran out of time, that she would call me later in the day when it was convenient for me to continue and conclude the call.

What service! What if everyone did this? Imagine if everyone took a few extra minutes to get a job done right?

One more example for you.

I was at a home improvement store over the weekend and needed assistance before making my purchases.

One employee stood out to me. He was one of the more senior in age employees I encountered. But you wouldn’t know that from the bounce in his step and the boundless enthusiasm he demonstrated with me.

He did what employees half his age weren’t doing—actually WALKING me to a product. This is something I admire, since when I worked in retail years ago, I felt I was the only one who did this with customers. All my co-workers took the lazy approach which sounded like this: “Big screen TVs? Oh…they’re way in the back…um…aisle 12. I think. If not, they are on 13 or 14.”

Nice. I can’t tell you how many times I would cringe at my co-workers pointing an outstretched arm vaguely in some miscellaneous corner of the store, not caring if the customer was sent astray or not.

This gentleman went the extra mile…literally and figuratively, as he walked me literally from one end of the warehouse to the other…several times.

No complaints. No huffing and puffing. He did it all with a gentle smile and polite demeanor.

Why couldn’t the young kids on the staff have done that? Laziness. Pure, unadulterated laziness.

He went the extra mile. The woman at the phone company did as well.

The warehouse employee said something I thought was very telling after I apologized to him for walking him all over the place.

He said, “That’s ok. I want to. Plus I will learn where other items are as well that aren’t in my department. Chances are someone else will ask me similar questions and I want to make sure I can answer them.”

Imagine that! Not only was he an expert in HIS department, he was willing to extend beyond his comfort zone and what was expected of him and learn about OTHER departments as well.

Now THAT’S going the extra mile.

Try doing the same today. In everything you do. Give a little more than is asked of you, a little more than you think you have in you.

You will gain the respect of others. And ultimately, you will gain more respect for yourself, too.

And success will be closer than you ever imagined.

Bowing My Head for Mother's Cookies

Some things you just ASSUME will be around forever. Like death, taxes, and McDonald’s.

Right?

As chaotically as life changes around us, SOME things HAVE to stay the same.

I just read an article about the abrupt closure of Mother’s Cookies.

Never heard of them?

I am sure you have, even if you think you haven’t.

Circus Animal cookies. Taffy Sandwich cookies (don’t worry, it was vanilla icing, not taffy). And my father-in-law’s favorites—the Oatmeal cookies.

I cringe at having to tell him the bad news today. That he will have to make a run of what’s left on store shelves to help stave off the ultimate demise of his favorite snack cookies.

Mother’s Cookies began as a one-man shop in 1914 and went on to become an Oakland, California tradition for 94 years.

I remember eating these as a child and as recently as a couple of weeks ago. They are delicious cookies and the nostalgia that they were wrapped in was worth the price itself.

I even have memories of my father taking me out to Candlestick Park on Mother’s Cookies Day each season to watch the Giants play while I chomped on my sweet delights.

Hopefully someone will buy the company, and if they do, hopefully they will keep the taste and quality and memory alive for my almost 1-year-old daughter to enjoy someday.

At least a bag of Wonder Bread still smells the same as it did when I was growing up in the 1970s. But back then they used to put baseball cards in the bag. I still remember how those cards would smell so heavenly and that smell still makes me happy.

Thank God our collective memories can’t go out of business. At least not as long as we nurture them and keep them alive.

Economic Woes Are No Excuse for Mayhem

Not again.

Another story in the news about how our tough economic times have been met with desperate actions.

An unemployed father in Los Angeles, despondent over his family’s financial hardships, decided that it was better to kill his entire family and then himself than to face the adversities we all face at some point in our lives.

He shot and killed his 3 sons, ranging in age from 7 to 19, his wife, and his mother-in-law. Then he turned the gun on himself.

What a terrible, terrible waste of life.

It may sound crazy to reference a line from a children’s movie, but I LOVE the line in the Willie Wonka remake, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” in which one of the old timers tells young Charlie not to worry about money. Why worry over something that there is so much of out there? You can always get more, he said.

True. There is no shortage of money. Nor, contrary to popular belief, is there a shortage of opportunity.

Money and opportunity are abundant and have no end to them.

What there IS a shortage is faith and the nose we USED to have for opportunity.

Our parents and grandparents found opportunity in the dirtiest and most inconvenient of places. And they knew to take it when it was before them. That’s what motivated your grandfather to take a paper route at 4 in the morning when he was 8-years-old.

Granted some of us still know how to find it as well, but it seems that true opportunity seekers are becoming a dying breed. Or at least a threatened species.

This unemployed businessman could have seen that with every adversity there is an equal or greater opportunity.

But he failed to, and now he and his entire, immediate family are dead. GONE. They have ceased to exist in this world because one man failed to see the hope and opportunity right before his eyes, every day, everywhere he went.

A friend and colleague of mine took his life many years ago because of business failings.
My Godmother’s husband took his life over a failed business as well.

We all struggle at some point. Some of us outright suffer. But if you realize there IS a forest for the trees, you will always keep yourself grounded in the bigger picture.

And the bigger picture is that the sun WILL rise tomorrow, as it always has.

Wouldn’t it be a shame to not be there to see it?

What Is WRONG With People?

Just when I think I can’t be surprised and shocked by the ugly underbelly of human behavior, I am.

I just finished watching a video of an altercation at a McDonald’s in Los Angeles. Was it a political fight? Self defense?

Nope.

It was over who was in line first to get their food. Girl vs. man.

When the teenage girl decided to start swearing at him, the man decided the only way to react was to strike her repeatedly in the face.

Certainly the teenager should have shown respect and restraint. But certainly a grown man (who was there with two young children) knows better than to deal with a situation like THIS.

What is WRONG with people? What makes people treat each other like this? And all over who gets to shove JUNK FOOD into their mouths before the other! Now THAT’S life or death!

Here we have a teenager who was never taught to respect their elders, and an adult who was never taught that it’s not ok to hit someone (certainly not a young girl!).

While police try to find this man, why don’t the rest of us try to find civility.

Believe it or not, we could use civility even more than that Quarter Pounder combo.