Starbucks Going White Dwarf

If you are out for an evening Starbucks coffee, you’ll be out of luck tonight. That’s because nearly every one of the 7,100 Starbucks locations in the U.S. will be closed from 5:30-9 p.m. local time as baristas learn more about making espresso drinks.

Officials at the Seattle coffee giant (NASDAQ: SBUX) said the training will affect more than 135,000 baristas in the U.S. The training event is “designed to energize partners and transform the customer experience … to provide a renewed focus on espresso standards that will help ensure the exceptional quality of every beverage,” officials said in a statement. Brilliant. A stellar implosion, if you ask me.

Huh? “Espresso standards?” What standards? Best I can figure it, hot water manipulated by a machine can be forced through any type of roasted and ground coffee beans. This is not astrophysics, nor is there really any cultural or historical significance to espresso.

You see, espresso (”fast” in Italian) was invented in 1903 by a guy named Luigi Bezzera, a machinist, bored after work and noodled around to find a faster way make a cup of coffee. Voila, espresso was born, but Luigi was poor with marketing lira, so he sold the rights to patent the machine within two years. Luigi’s machine used steam pressure, but this was changed in the 1940’s to basically what you see today with that spring piston lever thing. Essentially, what you get is a shot of coffee in about 20 seconds - woo hoo!

Responding to high turnover among coffee shop staff and a desire to reduce training costs, most commercial manufacturers are developing or improving lines of fully automatic machines, which allow a minimally-trained employee to create an espresso drink by merely pushing a button. Starbucks has been a notable adopter of these machines. Drop a puck of coffee in, hit the go button, fill the cup, stick out hand and manage a smile.

So, what the heck does this Starbucks corporate “statement” mean, and what’s this closing and training all about? What it is, is a really dumb PR marketing idea, albeit free advertising, thanks to the press, and just one of Starbucks new ideas “freshly brewed” by likewise new CEO Howard Schultz. Somebody should release this badly paraphrased collective statement to Howard; “Wake up and re-price the coffee, it’s the economy, stupid.” People simply are not lining up to sip a $12, triple shot skinny soy latte in the midst of a recession or a home repossession. The “customer” is going through just about all the “transforming experiences” he can stomach right now.

The training session is just one of several ideas implemented by new CEO Howard Schultz. In the seven weeks since Schultz took over again as CEO, he’s dropped breakfast sandwiches from the stores’ menu, announced limited free Wi-Fi in stores, and announced major layoffs. The free use of Wi-Fi is a nice touch to assist in job searches, I suppose, if you can afford to sit a spell, and the uber-pricey flash-frozen egg sandwiches are surely not missed, so there is progress. But, for my money, what there is remaining, Starbucks is the one who needs the transforming realization that they are simply in the “fast food” coffee business, and start acting the part. 7-11, Dunkin’ Donuts, and McDonalds understands this, and prices accordingly.

~ X anemi

YOU TUBE FRIENDS

That does it, heY! Pakistan is def off my YouTube friends list. They knocked out the site all over the world yesterday, and I thought it was my shizzy computer. Guess they cannot take a joke. Too bad, but mebe we should worry about more than them having an atom bomb.

An effort by Pakistan’s government to block its citizens from accessing YouTube yesterday caused an outage in the video-sharing website that affected most of the world.

70 Pakistani internet providers were ordered to block YouTube access because it showed cartoons which were deemed offensive because of their depiction of the Islamic prophet Mohammad, as well as trailers for an upcoming Dutch film portraying Islam as as a religion that is prone to encourage violence against women and homosexuals, the Associated Press reported.

The block was meant to cover Pakistan alone, but Pakistan’s clumsy implementation meant it affected two-thirds of world’s internet population, particularly in Asia, where the Google-owned service was down for about two hours starting at about 8am Monday morning New Zealand time, AP reported.

There were no reports of users in New Zealand being affected.

Analysts blamed the outage on Pakistan Telecom, which sent domestic requests for YouTube data into oblivion, then published these routes to its international carrier, PCCW, one of the world’s 20 largest data carriers. PCCW passed the route to other international carriers, who began directing their international YouTube requests to oblivion as well, AP reported.

The problem has raised fears about the security and reliability of the global internet.

YIKES, heY!

~ X anemi

SHAME ON YOU

wOw, heY! Just when I thought I was seeing the softer side of Hillary Clinton at the end of the Texas debate Kumbaya with Barry Obama, comes this shrill, vixen sounding, straight razor totin’ woman, screaming,

“SHAME ON YOU, BARACK OBAMA!”

Did you see this? Hillary stabbed the air with her hands as she told a crowd in Cincinnati, Ohio, that two Obama mailings spread lies about her positions on universal health care and the North American Free Trade Agreement.

All I can think, is…She may be weary. Young girls they do get weary. Wearing that same old shaggy dress. I know she’s waiting. Anticipating. For things she’ll never possess. But…

Enjoy some Otis Redding. This is a great song…

TRY A LITTLE TENDERNESS

~ X anemi

HOPE IN HAVANNA

Raul Castro, now 76, and now el Presidente, demonstrates his new policy for Guantanomo Bay; “Catch and Release.”

Capturing the planet in mid yawn, Cuban lawmakers named Fidel Castro’s baby bro as president, kinda sorta ending the almost half-century rule of really ancient brother Fidel.

Cuba’s 614-member national assembly, made up of, catch this: Communist Party members, ha, chose Raul Castro, now 76, to rule the island nation for the next, God willing and the creek don’t rise, five years, it announced today on TV. Raul perhaps, or not, recalls he was nine years old when American farm boy Philo Farnsworth’s patented dream of television was introduced to the world in color by RCA.

Speaking repetitively, but all by himself, Raul Castro had this to say today; “I assume the responsibility that has been given to me, with the conviction that I affirmed many times, that there is only one commander and chief of the Cuban revolution: Fidel is Fidel.” For those of you who’s Spanglish, shees non so good, the translation; “It is what it is.”

Viva Raul, heY!

~ X anemi

The Next President

AND THE WINNER IS…

Who will be the next President of the United States? Anything is possible, and there is a lot of time before the general election in November, but aside from all the back-stabbing, mud-slinging, and muck-raking which has really just started between the Democrats and Republicans, let’s assume Republican John McCain will face either Democrat Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Now, take a look at this little chart, and I will clarify my conclusions.

There are 315 million people in the United States. Of this number, there are 193 million registered voters. Based on historical data, and optimistically skewed forward,  56% of the people who can  vote, or 109 million people will go to the polls and vote for either John McCain or the Democrat. The winner is going to need just over 54.5 million votes. If the trends exhibited by both the Republican and Democratic Primaries/Caucuses hold true, the general election will be close in numbers as to percentages.

There are a bunch of different ways to “play” with these numbers, and voter turn-outs will play a big role, but what is interesting to me, is that race will prove a decisive factor, and in this case, it is going to be Whites that make the difference. I’ll explain.

Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are spending enormous amounts of time and money attempting to capture the Black and Hispanic vote. Given the numbers in the chart, if the Democrat were to receive 100% of the Black, Hispanic, and Asian vote, they would need just over 40% of all white voters to win the election, hardly a mandate.

Certainly, race is an issue in America, just as it is all over the world, but races are no more monolithic voting blocks, as say, men versus women. It is just as naive to believe, for example, that all Blacks would vote for Obama as it is that all Hispanics would vote for Clinton. Some of these votes will be cast for John McCain.

So, who will be the next President? With certainty, either John McCain or the Democrat could win by capturing just under 60% of the White vote, a very doable scenario for either candidate, all other races notwithstanding. What is the key to victory? To me, James Carville said it best years ago when pushing Bill Clinton for President; “It’s the economy, stupid.”

~ X anemi