Here is something good that has come out of the pandemic. Because people have had fewer buying opportunities, the countrys personal savings rate is the highest it’s been in 30 years. Retail sales have continued to grow and consumer confidence is at a six-month high.

But the biggest impact on the sales of smaller retailers has been online. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, online sales have increased more than 44% compared with the previous year and, as more shutdowns, quarantines and other disruptions potentially loom, many expect this trend to continue. Small retailers in this area know this, and many have been investing heavily in e-commerce to succeed this holiday season.

Entrepreneurs have seized the opportunity to start new companies in a wide variety of industries during the Covid-19 pandemic. While not all of these ventures will be successful, businesses that help alleviate some of the new challenges created by the pandemic are poised for long-term growth. Here are three industries that hold promising opportunities for entrepreneurs looking to start new businesses.

1. Contactless Tech
2. Telehealth
3. Education Tech

Recovery is slow: In fact, more than half (56%) have experienced a slower recovery than expected after shelter-in-place orders began to expire, with nearly half of small business owners fearing they may need to shutter their business within six months if pandemic restrictions are not lifted or if shelter-in-place orders resume in the near-term.
    
Survival requires adaptability: Yet despite fear of survival, owners are demonstrating resiliency and adaptability, with about a third (30%) creating products/services to meet new needs and half (50%) of those with an online presence increasing their digital footprint to meet the moment. And, they’re looking for help in making those changes – nearly 70 percent of female and 60 percent of male small business owners say they need one-to-one small business advice.

They depend on their community: While small businesses continue to be important facets of communities, many small business owners have noted changes in their customers and worry that people will not be able to afford doing business with them. However, half of small business owners believe that there seems to be a renewed interest in shopping locally in their area.

1. Focus on the positive
2. Hit the reset button
3. Never give up
4. Network

The end of the year is a critical time for businesses especially for small businesses that are looking to make the most out of holiday shopping. 23ABC spoke with two business consultants on how small businesses can adapt to make the most out of this final stretch of 2020.

Starting with investing in your community.
Their second piece of advice is to build an honest and transparent relationship with your customers and business neighbors.
As times have slowed down, they are encouraging business owners to take a good look at who their ideal client is and reshape their marketing for them.
Lastly, being collaborative and creative.

Kudos matter now more than ever. On average, social media endorsements of small businesses generate 23% of revenues, according to data from Amex.

Few things put more smiles on the faces of small-business owners than social media recommendations about their products or services, but now, new research proves that those online shoutouts also put cash in their bank accounts.

On average, social media endorsements of small businesses generate 23% of revenues—or approximately $197 billion—new data from American Express finds.

Google has beta-launched a program for small businesses (SMBs) to help them become better marketers on Google. Called Small Business Advisors (SBA), the program offers 50-minute individualized consulting sessions on a range of products from Google My Business to Ads and Analytics to YouTube.

No enterprises or agencies. Google told me in an email that the program is is open to small businesses in the United States with an active Google account.  Large businesses, marketing and SEO agencies are not eligible to participate. The cost is $39.99 per session. There’s no fee through the end of 2020.

Small business does not appear to be defined, so theoretically companies with up to 100 employees or even 499 employees (the U.S. Small Business Administration definition). As a practical matter, the program will likely be utilized by very small businesses with relatively few employees. Suspended accounts are not eligible to book an appointment and must get reinstated before gaining access to the program.

This week the Wall Street Journal reported that nearly 300 companies that had received loans through the Paycheck Protection Program had filed for bankruptcy. The very next day, the Journal highlighted Americans using the Covid-19 pandemic to take their first steps on the entrepreneurial journey.

Existing small businesses continue to struggle. New entrepreneurs are seeking opportunities. That is what the data appears to be saying about the state of small business and entrepreneurship amidst the third Covid-19 wave.

Small Businesses Suffering, See Rough Road Ahead

In early November, Goldman Sachs surveyed nearly 900 small businesses. They found that four in 10 had laid off employees or cut compensation. If further government relief were not forthcoming, another 38% said they would need to do the same. Half of small business owners had stopped paying themselves.

1. Be clear in your direction.
2. Know who your customer is.
3. Focus on the channels that matter.
4. Only talk about what matters.
5. Remember what makes you special.
6. Find your niche.
7. Learn something new.
8. Plan well to save time.
9. Engage with your customers more.

Have you heard that 90 percent of new businesses fail? Or that 50 percent of new businesses fail? Stick around in the entrepreneurial community long enough and you’ll likely hear a wide spectrum of claims, mostly falling between these two extremes.

But what is the true failure rate of small businesses? And should it influence your decisions as an entrepreneur?

What we know about the failure rate of small businesses

According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as reported by Fundera, approximately 20 percent of small businesses fail within the first year. By the end of the second year, 30 percent of businesses will have failed. By the end of the fifth year, about half will have failed. And by the end of the decade, only 30 percent of businesses will remain — a 70 percent failure rate.

1. Have an adaptable business model
2. Diversify supply chain operations
3. Create an omnichannel customer experience

1. Organize your business documents
2. Have a scalable technology plan ready
3. Plan to spend money to earn money
4. Prepare to outsource tasks
5. Create a blueprint for business continuity
6. Develop a strategy for balancing work and life
7. Build your team

Arguably the most critical aspect of digital transformation, digital payments ensure that small merchants or kiranas can continue to accept or send money and preserve cash flow in an increasingly contactless world.

For small businesses,traditional marketing can be expensive and difficult to maintain. Inbound marketing can level the playing field and give even the smallest business a chance to stand out and grow.

Why use inbound marketing?

1. It is cost effective
2. It helps build customers trust.
3. It increases brand awareness and boosts your online presence.
4. It can improve your marketing decision making
5. You can craft customer-focused content.
6. Inbound marketing provides two-way communication.
7. It helps bring in organic traffic to your website

The Covid-19 pandemic caused an unprecedented financial ripple effect in nearly every industry but hit the small businesses that define America the hardest. Throughout the first six months of the pandemic, more than 60 million Americans filed for unemployment insurance. That’s 23 million more than the 37 million who filed claims during the 18-month Great Recession.

By now, many small-business owners who made the difficult decision to shrink or temporarily pause are rebuilding. As they have already learned, though, rebuilding your business is not as easy as flipping a switch and watching your business rebound to its pre-Covid-19 state. As a small-business owner, your plan to rebuild should focus on rehiring employees who can fulfill your immediate needs while simultaneously paving the groundwork for growth in the new norm.

Finding and keeping the best talent has never been easy. It became the top concern for HR professionals this past year, with more than two-thirds reporting struggles with their recruitment and retention efforts. While the reasons for those struggles run the gamut, they often relate to attracting qualified candidates (49%), retaining star employees (49%) and issues with the talent-culture fit (42%).

For small and midsize businesses (SMBs), any difficulties with finding talented hires end up wasting precious resources. Worse yet, the cost of a bad hire is equal to 30% of the hires first-year salary – without factoring in the potential losses in revenue and time associated with onboarding the wrong person for a job.

Pivoting has become one of those hot topics in mainstream business media. When an economic crisis arises, countless think pieces are written about how to pivot your business to respond to the external environment. But pivoting is a huge gamble, requiring deep resources and the ability to fail with minimal consequences (hence why the term is often associated with venture-backed startups). And, one must ask oneself if there’s even a solid reason to pivot.

As a small business owner, while you might feel pressure to look anywhere and everywhere to increase your top line, resist the urge to pivot. Instead, focus on your mission.  

Define your mission
In the college admissions space, disruption is something we are used to. While high-profile recruiting scandals and a renewed focus on racial inequities have dominated headlines recently, a larger cultural shift was quietly occurring.

A business owner who spent nearly $46 million over the years on Facebook ads said he got booted from the platform without warning.

Jordan Nabigon, the CEO of the Ottawa, Ontario, content-curation site Shared, said Facebook deleted his companys main Facebook page without warning in October, and without providing an explanation. He shared a Medium post detailing his experience, which has received more than 400 claps from readers.

Nabigon spent $45,870,181 on Facebook advertising between 2006 and 2020 for Shared and his other company Freebies, according to expense reports reviewed by Business Insider. Shared employees three people full-time and 12 contract writers, Nabigon said.

Facebook increased its use of artificial intelligence to oversee advertising and other content during the COVID-19 pandemic, and Nabigon is among hundreds of business owners who said they suffered from Facebook's crackdown on ad policies.

The accelerated churn rate of the S&P 500 indicates that at least half of todays top U.S. companies will get replaced by someone new over the next decade. That is a mind-boggling market value of $13.5 trillion up for grabs. And the craziest part is who replaces the old market leaders: It is often companies that, just a few years before, were considered scrappy little startups.

To unseat a champion, a smaller company has to play by a completely different set of rules.

1. Change the basis of competition.
2. Exploit taboos.
3. Optimize for power.
4. Dramatic simplification.

The United States has seen an increase in new businesses formed this year. According to the United State Census Bureau, in week 50, there were over 86,000 new business applications nationwide — representing a 38% increase over filings during the same week in 2019. The challenges small businesses have experienced in 2020 have led to some core lessons that those in the business community need to apply — whether they own an established small business or a newly formed one.

Minimum wage is a complex issue for small businesses, says the Small Business Development Center in Binghamton.

The SBDC adds that, typically, small businesses have a close relationship with their employees and if they could pay them more originally, they would.

They add that they believe some business owners may have to pick up the slack in order to keep costs low.

The pandemic is accelerating existing trends.

Covid-19 has initiated some trends and altered the direction of others, but its most enduring impact will be as an accelerant. Take any trend--social, business, or personal--and fast-forward 10 years. Even if your company isn't living in the year 2030 yet, the pandemic has spurred changes in consumer behavior and markets. This is clear in the rapid increase in online shopping, in the shift toward remote delivery of health care, and in the spectacular increase in valuation among the biggest tech firms.

The more disruptive the crisis, the greater the opportunities--and the risks.

In a world in which e-commerce has become a necessity for nearly every retailer, it can seem they have only two options: list their goods on marketplaces run by giant companies, or sell to consumers directly, hoping they will make more on each transaction despite fewer sales. In other words, either join a dominant marketplace like eBay , Walmart or Amazon —which by itself represents 38% of U.S. online sales, according to Digital Commerce 360—or hope they can find customers through advertising and word of mouth.

For many small- and medium-size sellers, a third option has emerged, embodied by the rising star of e-commerce, Shopify . This approach gives merchants access to cloud-based third-party services such as payments and fulfillment, but lets them maintain more control of their branding and customer relationships than the biggest marketplaces offer. Shoppers might not even know they’re buying something from a Shopify-powered retailer, and that’s the point.

In addition to making goods available on sellers’ own sites, these software companies—which also include BigCommerce and Magento—can perform the laborious task of listing merchandise on the giants marketplaces. By becoming hubs for managing sales through multiple channels, including social-media platforms, they represent real competition for Amazon and its ilk, potentially giving merchants more leverage when dealing with those entrenched giants.

Specific PPP provisions of the new law include:

Appropriates an additional $7.25 billion to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) for the PPP program

Expands PPP eligibility to include:

~ Additional tax-exempt nonprofits, such as 501(c)(5) labor and agricultural organizations and community locations of larger nonprofits, whose lobbying activities do not comprise more than 15 percent of its activities
~ Internet publishing organizations assigned a North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) Code of 519130 and engaged in the collection and distribution of local or regional and national news and information
~ Adds COBRA premium assistance as an allowable payroll cost under the PPP program.

Invoice financing is a type of business funding wherein the business sells its outstanding invoices or account receivables (A/R) to financing companies to get an immediate cash flow boost. The financing company takes over the invoices, and sometimes be in charge of collecting customer payments (as in invoice factoring).

Invoice financing is a popular financing option for businesses that have to wait 30,60, or 90 days to get their clients payments.

A survey of small businesses conducted by Appalachian State University in coordination with Selective found that cybersecurity and technology issues were growing concerns for 44% of survey respondents due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, only 20% of survey respondents have cyber insurance coverage.

The findings highlight an awareness gap among small businesses about the risks they face from cybercrime. Twenty-eight percent of data breaches impact small businesses, and phishing attacks account for over 30% of breaches, making them the biggest cyber threat for small organizations.1 Cyber coverage from Selective can help small businesses manage and mitigate risks with comprehensive coverage options and cyber threat education.

Here are five things in technology that happened this past week and how they affect your business. Did you miss them?

1 — Google plans to scrap third-party cookies by 2022.

Google announced this past week that it plans to stop the use of tracking cookies on Chrome by next year and— instead— will replace cookies with a profiling system

2 —Recruiting startup SeekOut raised $65M to take on LinkedIn and other talent acquisition companies.

3 —Small business owners adopted new software in 2020 and increased tech budgets in 2021.

The data on business startups and closing show a mixed bag across the United States. Some states have seen an increase in new business applications over the past year (February to February) and some states have shown a decline. The Mid-Atlantic and Northeast are among the weakest regions, with Virginia showing a 3.5% decline in year-over-year applications.

Business closings are harder to track month to month because small business operators do not always file documents when they shutter their doors, and it is hard to distinguish between permanent and temporary closings. Closings do show up eventually in tax filings and articles of incorporation.

This month almost 135,000 businesses are showing strain, as the impact of a year of Covid-19 restrictions reverberates.Businesses in the services and retail sectors accounted for almost three-fifths of those showing distress, said Mazars. Sectors allowed to reopen were faring better, with construction and manufacturing businesses making up 7.9 per cent and 6.7 per cent of those in distress respectively.

For some of the smallest businesses that applied for forgivable loans through the Paycheck Protection Program, waiting just a few days or weeks would’ve gotten them thousands of dollars more.

But they had no way of knowing what was coming.

The Biden administration in late February announced a slew of changes to the loan program, which offered forgivable loans in return for keeping employees on a company’s payroll, after it reopened in January with $284 billion in funding. Those amendments included an adjusted loan formula that would mean larger amounts for sole proprietors as well as expanded eligibility for small business owners with certain criminal records, were delinquent on student loan debt or were non-citizens.

The Small Business Administration has extended deferment periods for all of l its disaster loans made either in 2020 or 2021, the agency announced on Monday.

The extended deferment includes the SBAs Economic Injury Disaster Loan – or EIDL – program, which many businesses that did not qualify for Paycheck Protection Program loans or other funding used to bridge the losses incurred during the COVID-19 pandemic.

All SBA disaster loans made in 2020 will have the first payment due date extended from 12-months to 24-months from the date of the note, the agency said. Disaster loans made in 2021 will have a first payment due date extended from 12-months to 18-months from the date of the note.

Every business was considered small at some point in its history. Some go big, but some stay small and do quite well. The size of a business in common measurements (revenue, employees, locations) is less relevant than the size of your customer base and the corresponding loyalty of customers.

Millions of businesses across the country are struggling, yet many are not taking the latest version of government aid: a second round of Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. This is not happening because businesses are better off than they were last year; it is because the PPP still contains structural blockers that are stopping businesses from obtaining the aid they urgently need.

A recent survey by the Federal Reserve Bank found that 30% of U.S. small businesses — totaling 9 million — fear they will not make it through 2021 without more government assistance. And yet, many are not applying for aid. The Small Business Administration (SBA) reports that seven weeks after round two of PPP began, nearly half the funds remain, and only 31% of 2020 PPP loans have been forgiven to date.

Title: Psychosis Risk Rises When People Abuse 'Speed'
Category: Health News
Created: 2/15/2022 12:00:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 2/15/2022 12:00:00 AM

(EMAILWIRE.COM, November 04, 2024 ) The Global Apron Bus Market is expanding, supported by the growth in air travel and the need for efficient airport ground operations. Apron buses transport passengers between terminals and aircraft, ensuring smooth and timely boarding. Key manufacturers are innovating...

Sky Prime Aviation Services Saudi Arabia Aeromedical Services, Aircraft Management, Aircraft Sales/Acquisition, AOG Services, Certification Services, Charter Brokers, Completions Management, Continuing Airworthiness Management

Defence. In today’s increasingly complex threat environment, Airbus brings interoperable and collaborative solutions to ensure superiority for combat systems across the five operational domains: land, air, sea, space and cyber. Airbus combines more than 50 years of field-proven technology with next-generation systems-of-systems architecture ...

Good work van; terrible main dealer, prices and staff...

What are 'quackbusters', you might ask. Well, Tim Bolen has the answer to that question. On his site (quackpotwatch.org) he explains: The "quackbuster" operation is a conspiracy. It is a propaganda enterprise, one part crackpot, two parts evil. It's sole purpose is to discredit, and suppress, in an "anything goes" attack mode, what is wrongfully named "Alternative Medicine." It has declared war on reality. The conspirators are acting in the interests of, and are being paid, directly and indirectly, by the "conventional" medical-industrial complex. These so-called quackbusters seem to be a branch of a larger movement, the "skeptics". Their website at www.skeptic.com/ shows who they are. Skeptics think of themselves as having opinions based on scientific 'truth'. They are very outspoken and very much "out there" to disabuse the rest of us of any idea that does not fit into their version of the scientific world view. While real scientific procedure requires there to be observation and experiment, formation and testing of hypotheses, and open discussion of both experiment and theories, the skeptics have firmly made up their mind on a number of issues. And they don't hesitate to tell us where we are going wrong... Mercury and fluoride for instance are not poisons for skeptics, and anyone who thinks they are must clearly be a conspiracy nut. Vaccination is good for you, as are chemotherapy and radiation cancer treatments offered by conventional medicine. If you oppose either of them you are simply a 'quack' or at the least you are an easy target for those who take advantage of your stupidity. The practices of alternative medicine, including "chiropractic, the placebo effect, homeopathy, acupuncture, and the questionable benefits of organic food, detoxification, and ‘natural’ remedies" are a favorite subject of the skeptics. They know that only mainstream medicine should be relied on and everyone who is into those practices really needs to have their head examined....

“Perhaps you’re familiar with “the tragedy of the commons,” a social dilemma outlined by the late biologist Garrett Hardin in a famous 1968 essay of the same name. The dilemma is that when individuals pursue personal gain, the net result for society as a whole may be impoverishment. (Pollution is the most familiar example.) Such thinking has fallen out of fashion amid President Bush’s talk of an “ownership society,” but its logic is unassailable.”

That response seems like a pretty damn obtuse interpretation of the essay, simply because the essay is nothing if not a plea for the creation of property rights. Furthermore, while it is true that Hardin claims that pursuing individual gain leads to group catastrophe, the word “when” in the paragraph above implies that there are times when the individual doesn’t, whereas Hardin claims that individuals basically always pursue their own interest, which is the problem in high-density situations where some amout of coordination is necessary. However, upon re-reading it, I realize that for Hardin property rights only forms a part of a wished-for imposition of coercive measures which will prevent individuals from pursuing personal gain at the expense of their environment. Which makes sense, because property rights, for all this may get lost in the ceaseless ideological wrangling today, are themselves forms of state-imposed coercion. Dismiss the semi-metaphysical nonsense in Locke and Kant about gaining “just propriety” over an object by making a visible mark on it. Think about it: animals control exactly as much “property” as they can defend; cheetahs peeing on trees only works because they will fight to defend what they have claimed. By contrast, think about who adjudicates the (in theory) incontestable property rights: the authorities, i.e. in our society, the State. The corollary of this, of course, is that nationalized or federal property is not “public property,” in the sense of property owned by the public—quite the contrary. The dichotomy between it and “private property” is spurious. “Public property” is simply property owned by the government. This no doubt seems obvious and intuitive, but based on the foolishness I cited above, it bears repeating that property rights, whether granted to others by the government or to itself, are not opposed to coercive state power but are in fact the very essence of it. That fact is perhaps more apparent in regards to so-called “intellectual property.”

As a marginal note, Hardin’s essay, despite the pithiness of its central analogy, is rather dispiriting insofar as it takes Hegel’s statement that “Freedom lies in the recognition of necessity” as its motto and guiding spirit. That formulation is, as I believe I have said before, perfectly monstruous. Freedom means nothing if it is not the absence of restriction, and it is perhaps a sign of the evasive confusion of priorities in Western culture that one would pretend to celebrate this value in such a way while in fact describing its opposite. Freedom is not an act or a thought, but rather a set of conditions under which action and thought occur. This is the same idealistic debasement of the language that has turned love into a deed: making love.

Note to Curt:

Just because the state claims the authority to apprehend and punish rapists doesn’t mean that apprehending and punishing rapists is a form of state coercion. Nor is the notion that rape is bad an example of state coercion. Depending on your perspective, this is either a moral truth derived from God/reason/whatever or a widely-accepted social convention. Similarly, the notion that one can own property is (again, depending on your perspective) either morally necessary or a widely-accepted social convention that seems to work pretty well (here I’m dispensing with Communists and other fools who have nothing intelligent to say on the matter). Either way, the fact that the state claims ultimate authority to adjudicate property disputes does not make private property a form of state coercion. (Further reading)

Posted without comment for your consternation:

On Labor Day, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) issued a press release whose title summarizes its contents all too neatly: Bush Declares Eco-Whistleblower Law Void for EPA Employees. Here's some of it:

Washington, DC - The Bush administration has declared itself immune from whistleblower protections for federal workers under the Clean Water Act, according to legal documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). As a result of an opinion issued by a unit within the Office of the Attorney General, federal workers will have little protection from official retaliation for reporting water pollution enforcement breakdowns, manipulations of science or cleanup failures.

The rest of the post on the terrific blog Effect Measure

Depuis une décennie, hiver après hiver, l'histoire bégaye : la France fait mine de découvrir la grave crise du logement à laquelle elle est confrontée. « SDF » qui nous renvoient le miroir de nos propres insuffisances ; « mal-logés » qui se réfugient...

Airbus a pr�vu que la Chine aurait besoin de plus de 9.500 nouveaux avions de transport de passagers et d'avions cargos au cours des deux prochaines d�cennies, en raison de la forte croissance de la demande de transport a�rien et de fret. Selon...

De Buster II Deep Crankbait is 12 cm lang en heeft uiteraard weer de bekende ratels. Het is het perfecte kunstaas met een multifunctionele actie. Door de 3 bevestigingsogen kunt u variëren met dieptes van 2, 4 en 6 meter. U hebt dus controle om met 1 type plug op verschillende dieptes te vissen en de vissen te vangen ongeacht de waterlaag waar ze zich bevinden. De Buster II Deep Crankbait is suspending, wat betekent dat hij langer in de “strike zone” blijft hangen!

Me thinks he won't be invited to the White House anytime soon:

Was it just me or did Colbert sound more mean spirited than funny? I know what you're thinking. Look who's talking, but still... check out the video for yourself.



You can view parts 11 and 111 here.

UPDATE: The Colbert video was pulled but you can still find it here.

Related links: media, in the news, news headlines, headline news, news and politics, politics, political, fun, funny humor, humour, daily fisk, bush, youtube

The daily FISK asks the question: Does Bush need a scapegoat? Or is he THE scapegoat?

FEMA boss Michael Brown isn't being fired. He's just being reallocated. Speculation is strong that this is a precursor to his removal as director, but the die-hards remain in denial.

Charles Krauthammer notes:

"The head of FEMA. Late, slow and in way over his head. On Thursday, Sept. 2, he said on national television that he didn't even know there were people in the convention center, when anybody watching television could see them there, destitute and desperate. Maybe in his vast bureaucracy he can assign three 20-year-olds to watch cable news and give him updates every hour on what in hell is going on." "The president. Late, slow, and simply out of tune with the urgency and magnitude of the disaster. The second he heard that the levees had been breached in New Orleans, he should have canceled his schedule and addressed the country on national television to mobilize it both emotionally and physically to assist in the disaster. His flyover on the way to Washington was the worst possible symbolism. And his Friday visit was so tone-deaf and politically disastrous that he had to fly back three days later."

Damage Control, Dubya Style:

But will it be enough to restore his credibility? President Bush accepted full responsibility for the federal government's (mis)handling of the Katrina disaster. (It's called 'damage control'). On the other hand he only acknowledged the obvious and his confession could have gone further had he volunteered it sooner.

"Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government and to the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility," Bush said during a joint news conference with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. (Watch Bush's comments).

He repeated his desire to find out exactly what went wrong on every level of government.

"It's in our national interest that we find out exactly what went on ... so we can better respond," Bush said."

A bipartisan joint congressional committee is to review the response at all levels of government to the hurricane and report its findings to Congress no later than February 15.

ROVE TO THE RESCUE:

"Bush already has dispatched his top strategist, Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, and other aides to assemble ideas from agencies, conservative think tanks, GOP lawmakers and state officials to guide the rebuilding of New Orleans and relocation of flood victims. The idea, aides said, is twofold: provide a quick federal response that comports with Bush's governing philosophy, and prevent Katrina from swamping his second-term ambitions on Social Security, taxes and Middle East democracy-building."

TOMORROW, the president is to outline his vision more comprehensively than he has to date. A top aide said he will stress that New Orleans officials will dictate how the city will be rebuilt, but will also make plain the reconstruction should reflect his vision of government -- including reducing regulatory obstacles and emphasizing entrepreneurship over big government. He will also discuss plans to provide health care, education, jobs and housing assistance to flood victims.

ANOTHER CASE OF TOO LITTLE TOO LATE?

IT'S A VARIATION OF the tried and proven bait and switch technique. You screw up, so what do you do? After denial and the passage of time no longer works, first you 'sincerely' apologize.

Then you provide a new and grandiose vision for the future that the people can focus on, and soon (hopefully) all of your past sins will be forgotten. He said what needed to be said, or should I say what the public wanted to hear. It's a strategy that Karl Rove can be proud:

"The main text of President Bush's nationally televised address last night was the rebuilding of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, but the clear subtext was the rebuilding of a presidency that is now at its lowest point ever, confronted by huge and simultaneous challenges at home and abroad -- and facing a country divided along partisan and racial lines. Hurricane Katrina struck at the core of Bush's presidency by undermining the central assertion of his reelection campaign, that he was a strong and decisive leader who could keep the country safe in a crisis. Never again will the White House be able to point to his often-praised performance after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, without skeptics recalling the fumbling and slow-off-the-mark response of his administration after the hurricane and the flooding in New Orleans. His response to these criticisms last night was a speech largely shorn of soaring rhetoric and stirring turns of phrase of the kind that marked his efforts to rally the country after the terrorist attacks. Instead, as if recognizing that his own road back will be one marked by steady but small steps, he spoke with workmanlike focus, spelling out the details of what has been done and will be done to help those displaced by the storm. In again taking responsibility for the federal government's failures, Bush signaled last night that the White House has decided not to contest the widespread perceptions that his administration failed in the early days of the crisis. By embracing those criticisms, they hope to make the issue a sideshow that will play out sometime in the future. Instead, after a halting start, the White House appears intently focused on demonstrating the president's capacity to manage the huge rebuilding effort ahead. Bush's advisers believe that, despite the partisan finger-pointing over what happened, most Americans are not looking back and will judge the president on what happens going forward. But as Iraq has shown over the past two years, the facts on the ground shape public confidence in the president more than words or promises."

THE QUESTION REMAINS, will it be enough to repair the presidency and his ability to govern effectively for the remaining 40 months?

TALK IS CHEAP. For a fiscally conservative government, will they, or can they possibly deliver?