Even Warren Buffett Puts Stock in Household Names

By Tomoeh Murakami Tse and Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, June 1, 2008; F01

From his growing list of acquisitions, Warren E. Buffett seems to be investing like the world's richest 10-year-old boy, if that boy lived in 1955 America.

He is Coca-Cola's largest shareholder. He owns Dairy Queen. Last year, Buffett got a train set, buying into Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway. And in late April, he bought a piece of the world's largest candy store, sinking $6.5 billion into the Mars-Wrigley chocolate-and-bubble gum merger.

What's next for the Nebraska billionaire investor? DC Comics? Daisy BB guns?

It is true that the 77-year-old Buffett frequently touts his childlike-love of cheeseburgers and Cokes. But his investment strategy turns out to be more sophisticated than that of a schoolboy with change in his pocket, drooling over a candy counter.

In the eyes of many, the Oracle of Omaha -- whose Berkshire Hathaway holding company owns or has major stakes in many iconic brands, including Fruit of the Loom, Kraft Foods and Johnson & Johnson -- looks like a brand investor.

Brand investors buy companies with well-known or well-regarded names -- Apple, Tiffany, Disney and McDonald's, to name a few. The belief is that even though a brand company may produce many unlike products, their qualities -- supported by strong management and a broad marketing and distribution system -- will translate into consistent, above-average returns over a long period.

"Really, nothing can go wrong with the Wrigley and Mars brands," Buffett said on CNBC after announcing that he would finance part of McLean-based Mars's buyout of Wrigley. "They have faced the test of time over decades and decades, and people use more and more of their products every day."

Brand name companies, said professional money managers who consider themselves brand investors, can often charge more for their products than their less-established competitors and weather tough times more smoothly because of their loyal customer bases. They also have the ability to leverage their name recognition to increase business -- whether it's expanding operations by attracting more Marriott hotel franchisees, launching a new flavor of Crest toothpaste or extending the Clorox brand from bleach to moist towelettes. In addition, brand companies tend to have dominance in their fields, making it difficult for new entrants to chip away at market share.

Such qualities, analysts said, are hard to measure but are certainly a force driving profits at companies whose products are consumed by millions of Americans every day.

"Brands themselves are what one might call soft assets -- they don't actually show up in the balance sheet of a company's financial statements," said Robert Millen, chairman and portfolio manager of Jensen Investment Management, which has shares in Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Johnson & Johnson. "But the value of that brand is clearly in the business -- and it takes years and years to build. Once you've built that strength and you continue to feed it and support it over time, then you get . . . pricing power that allows the business to maintain margins throughout varying economic periods. Secondly, you get repeat business. And those two things lead to consistent earnings."

Branded products companies have a higher propensity to pass along price increases when they have increasing costs themselves, said Larry Coats of the Oak Value Fund. This can prove critical in a time of rising food and energy prices.

"The consumer is buying more than just the raw material," said Coats, whose top holdings include 3M, American Express, Oracle, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, Berkshire Hathaway. "They're buying something else, whether it's a trusted relationship, or confidence in the product, an acknowledgement of a higher quality."

To that end, one brand company that Coats, a value investor, has been buying in recent months is Tiffany, whose shares had been beaten down on concern that consumers squeezed by the economic downturn would curtail spending on luxury goods. In Tiffany, Coats has found a company that consistently produces gross margins of 55 to 57 percent, above the 50 percent of typical jewelry retailers.

"Jewelry is a business where the consumer doesn't really know the cost of goods sold are," he said. "They know that they want to buy a high-quality product from a retailer that they can have confidence in. In the consumer's mind, it's always delivered in the blue box. And the blue box is the symbol of that trusted relationship."

One of the key qualities Gary Bradshaw of Hodges Capital Management looks for in brand companies is the ability to expand products overseas. The thinking is that though mature brands may have little room to grow domestically, especially during an economic slowdown, they could use their overseas plants and vast marketing power to tailor their products in a way that would help them gain market share in emerging economies.

"The world is industrializing right now," said Bradshaw, who owns shares of Starbucks, McDonald's and Wal-Mart. "There are 2 billion people who are going to become middle-class citizens around the world. I believe those folks will live like we do in America."

While he is also betting on Coca-Cola, which derives more than 70 percent of its revenue from overseas, Bradshaw said he passed on Dr Pepper Snapple Group when it spun off from Cadbury to debut on the New York Stock Exchange last month, in part because 90 percent of its business is in the United States. "If it was 50 percent oversees, I'd probably be buying it left and right," he said.

Brand investing, perhaps more than any other investing style, is easy to understand and can be followed by patient individual investors who are in it for the long haul and are willing to their homework. But it's not without pitfalls.

Coats quickly realized his mistake when he bought a small stake of Eastman Kodak in 2000, back when it was the leader in the film and developing business. He and his team thought the brand was strong enough to extend its dominant position into the digital age. But ultimately, they concluded that the challenges posed from the proliferation of digital cameras, home printers and electronic imaging was too daunting.

His fund, which had bought the Kodak shares for an average of about $50, sold them off three months later at $39. On Friday, the stock closed at $15.32.

A product with top market share, however, can suddenly be challenged as a result of competitors' mergers and acquisitions.

In the mid-1990s, Matt Kaufler, a portfolio manager of the Touchstone Value Opportunities Fund, took a position in Pet, a food company with several key brands including the Old El Paso line of Mexican products. But then, competitor Pace Foods was acquired by Campbell Soup. And Pepsi began rolling out salsa sauces under the Frito Lay and Doritos labels.

"Picture a vise, and picture Old El Paso in the middle of the vise and on either side is Pepsi and Campbell's squeezing," Kaufler said. "Overnight . . . their competitive posture changed substantially. Their margins began to show the stress of that. They started to miss their earnings numbers because they had to spend more to promote their products."

It was an unsustainable situation that led to the buyout of Pet by a larger British company, which in turn ended up in the hands of General Mills.

Even Buffett has had his share of stumbles despite his long-term record. A 2007 study by researchers at Texas A&M and Ohio universities showed that from 1980 to 2003, Berkshire Hathaway beat the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index in 20 of 24 years. Its annual return beat the index by more than 12 percent over the same period.

But in 1989, Berkshire Hathaway invested $358 million in US Air for 9.25 percent of the airline's preferred stock. In his 1996 letter to shareholders, Buffett wrote that he was "beguiled by the company's long history of profitable operations, and by the protection that ownership of a senior security seemingly offered me."

But, Buffett said, he overlooked a crucial fact: The airline industry was rapidly deregulating. This created cutthroat competition that ate into US Air's earnings even as it had to maintain a cost structure held over from a time when federal regulation protected the carrier's profit. Buffett managed to unload his US Air shares at a gain in 1998, avoiding two bankruptcies by the airline in following years, but he characterized his analysis of the airline as "superficial and wrong."

Buffett also bought into retailer Pier 1 in 2004, just after its stock peaked at more than $25 per share. He sold his stake in 2007, when the stock was trading in the single digits.

Buffett, a director of The Washington Post Co., was unavailable for comment.

As a rule, money managers say, individuals would do well to stick with brand companies that are diversified around the world, have a long record of consistent earnings and sales growth, and a history of supporting their brands. Investors should also try to stick with companies whose brands are No. 1 or 2 in most of their markets, Millen said.

The trick for investors is to buy the companies when they are out of favor because they often trade at a premium, Kaufler said. "Strong brands are rare. And it's even rarer when you can pick them up at an inexpensive price," he said.

Patience, analysts said, is important.

"Warren Buffett would say that when he goes and buys a business, he buys it with the idea that he's going to own it forever," Kaufler said.

By Ylan Q. Mui
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 31, 2008; D01

Dearest Dad,

You know I love you. I really do. But don't expect much from me this Father's Day.

I'm broke. Not so broke that I'm eating ramen and putting my Fender guitar on eBay (Never!), but I'm definitely feeling the economic squeeze. So this June 15, I'm trimming $3.80 from your gift.

Please, don't be hurt. That's the average amount by which the National Retail Federation, a trade group, expects consumers to reduce Father's Day spending, to $94.54 this year from $98.34 last year.

See, Dad? Everybody's doing it.

The problem is that I need to eat. In my grocery store, the price of bread jumped 14 percent last month vs. the previous year. Eggs are up 28 percent. I can't even buy more than four 20-pound bags of imported jasmine rice at Sam's Club anymore. It's an issue.

And I need to drive. One little gallon of fuel now costs $3.94 on average. That's 4 percent more than I paid a week ago and 23 percent more than last year. Of course, the Commerce Department yesterday announced that my personal income has risen only 3.8 percent -- I promise I'm working hard, Dad! -- and I'm not driving much less. The census has put the average Washington-area commute at 33 minutes one way, with two-thirds of us driving solo all the while.

Even my economic stimulus check won't be much help. Like just more than half of American consumers surveyed by the International Council of Shopping Centers this month, I plan to use the money mostly to pay down debt. (You were right about that adjustable-rate mortgage -- it's killing me!)

Okay, okay, I'll stop whining. But facts are facts. The flat-panel TV and Nintendo Wii are just outside my $94.54 budget.

So here's the plan: The National Retail Federation says that "a simple greeting card and family dinner really goes a long way." So I'll splurge on the card, spending $7.49, the average according to the survey. Hallmark recommends that I appeal to your sensitive side, which may actually help blind you to the fact that I'm cheaping out.

"Men like to be affirmed," according to the tipsheet on Hallmark's Web site. "Many men expect, and are tired of, the 'put-down' cards and would like to feel more appreciated. Cards that offer genuine compliments (humor or nonhumor) resonate with these men."

The federation said I'd spend an additional $20.19 on a "special outing." How about a rousing game of putt-putt or perhaps bowling? The rest will go toward your big gift, most likely clothing. I know you love a nice V-neck sweater!

Instead of going to a specialty retailer, I'll just get it at a department store or discounter like the other 64 percent of shoppers. Will you really know the difference?

I hope you understand. This isn't personal; it's just economics. I promise that spending on your big holiday will rebound just as soon as the housing market does.

But don't hold your breath.

Love always,

Me

May 31, 2008

Your Money

By RON LIEBER

A few years ago, when multiple bidders would show up at a real estate open house, the truly desperate resorted to writing love letters to the sellers.

Their plaintive scribblings painted a picture of first-time buyers chasing the American dream or growing families hungry for more space. The letters dripped with compliments for the property and ended with a plea for mercy (and a signed contract).

Today’s real estate market, however, calls for a different kind of letter, less a fuzzy valentine and more like a cold splash of water. It’s what you write to accompany a bid that is so far below the listing price that it cries out for explanation.

Inspired by the success of a friend who used this tactic, I drafted a sample letter that buyers who fear overpaying might send to homeowners. Then, I crafted a reply that confident sellers could fire back.

No seller would be happy to get a letter like this. The most powerful missives stoke doubt and create fear. Sellers who get them may be tempted to write off the bidders as lowballers. But it makes little sense not to at least reply, given the number of competing properties in most places and the difficulty lately in getting mortgages.

The sample letters on Page B6, which I wrote after conversations with representatives of the National Association of Realtors and the National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents, don’t mention local economic conditions, comparable sales or other such data. You’ll want to fill in those details yourself. But the templates below should work as a starting point.

One caveat is that you’ll generally be relying on real estate agents to deliver your letter. Ask them point blank whether they intend to do so.

Dear Seller:

I’m writing to let you know that I would like to make a bid on your property. I love the area and am committed to buying a house nearby. And your home fits my needs.

But given that my offer is well below your asking price, I also feel I owe you an explanation.

First, consider the big picture. Nationwide, home prices in the first quarter of 2008 fell 14.1 percent compared with the same period a year earlier, according to the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index.

That’s the biggest decline in the 20-year history of the data. And just in case you’re wondering, during the housing downturn of the early 1990s, the decline was never worse than 2.8 percent.

Not only that, earlier this month, the National Association of Realtors pointed to the huge number of existing homes on the market. As of the end of April, the total number was 4.55 million. At the rate people are buying right now, that represents an 11.2-month supply.

So buyers have options right now. A lot of them. I’m no different. Your home is great, but it isn’t unique. Few homes are. I know this may be hard to hear, since you’ve spent years creating memories here. But you may be waiting a long time if you hope to find a buyer with the same emotional connection that you have.

My mindset is hardly unique. We’ve all been reading the headlines. The accompanying articles appear prominently in major newspapers and sit on the Web pages where people check their e-mail every day. Everyone sees them, and the psychological impact is real.

Has your real estate agent laid any of this out for you? Maybe so, and you didn’t want to believe it. But it’s also possible that your agent, afraid of offending you and losing the listing, simply doesn’t want to initiate that sort of discussion. It may be worth sitting down for a candid reassessment.

It will be tempting to view my low bid as an insult. Please don’t make that mistake. Your home is genuinely appealing, and I wouldn’t have written this note unless I was serious about buying it. Getting a firm offer in this market is an accomplishment. So congratulations!

Oh, and one more thing. You presumably need someplace to move. My guess is that you’ll find these same points compelling when it’s your turn to buy. You just might succeed in buying for a better price, too.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Yours Truly,

The Realist

Dear Bidder:

Thanks so much for your note. I’m truly glad that you like our home as much as we do. You’re right that my family and I have many great memories of this place, and we hope someday you will, too.

And I just want you to know that I’m not insulted in any way by your offer. The fact is, none of us are very good at buying and selling homes. We don’t do it often, and as much as we know we’re not supposed to let emotions get in the way, it’s hard not to. After all, few people buy or sell anything else as expensive as a home in their lifetimes.

That said, your offer disappointed me. You seem to believe that I’m not aware of how bad things are out there or that I’m in denial. But I do read the headlines, and I priced the house accordingly. I knew I might have to wait awhile to sell it.

I should point out that your data draws on what has already happened in the housing market. Instead, I’d ask you to consider what’s about to happen.

One big reason for the falling prices is that it’s harder to get mortgages. Lenders went from giving money to anyone with a pulse to demanding higher credit scores and larger down payments. All sorts of buyers simply couldn’t make the numbers work anymore.

That may now change. Starting June 1, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which buy mortgages from lenders and help make it possible for them to lend more money, are loosening restrictions on the sorts of loans they’ll buy in many markets. That is supposed to make it easier for people to buy a home with a down payment of 5 percent, or even less. Many more qualified buyers should mean more bids, and I’m willing to wait to see if it turns out that way.

I know you talked about having choices, but presumably we wouldn’t be engaging in this correspondence unless you liked my home best. Given that, I’d ask you to think about something: How often do you find a place that you can actually imagine living in? Sure, there are a lot of other properties out there. But an increasing number are in foreclosure and probably have problems lurking within the walls. So don’t let fear of a falling market keep you out of a home that you truly want.

It’s probably obvious by now that I’m not going to counter with a particular number. This doesn’t mean that I do not want to negotiate. I’d just like you to consider what I’ve said and see if you find it convincing. In the meantime, other shoppers who are interested in my home now have a price to beat. So thanks for helping me out with that.

Just one more thing. Please take another look at whatever mortgage calculator you’re using and see how your monthly payment will change if you brought your price up a bit. It almost certainly is not going to be enough to break you. But it may be enough to get us to a deal.

I look forward to your reply.

Yours,

The Undaunted

Send your versions of the letters to rlieber@nytimes.com.

May 31, 2008

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE and JEFF ZELENY

WASHINGTON — A Democratic Party committee tried Saturday to resolve the disputes over primary votes in Florida and Michigan, with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign calling for the delegations to be seated essentially as if there had been no questions about the validity of the contests and Senator Barack Obama’s campaign for the first time laying out its proposal for a portion of the delegates to be seated.

Supporters of Mr. Obama proposed formulas for resolving the delegate problems in Florida that would give Senator Clinton a net gain of 19 delegates and a split in Michigan that would divide the delegates evenly.

Obama supporters declared the Florida proposal a generous “concession.” But Clinton backers said that it reflected only half of what she actually won in Florida, which would give her 38 delegates.

Obama supporters also called the Michigan proposal the only fair one. But the arguments over this state were much more contentious, in part because Mr. Obama’s name did not even appear on the ballot in that state, while Mrs. Clinton’s did. She won 55 percent of the vote there, while 40 percent was uncommitted. The proposals were debated for several hours by the Democratic Party’s rules committee, which is meeting to try to resolve the disputed primaries. The committee broke around 3 p.m. for lunch, but it is expected to return to discuss the proposals and perhaps come to some resolution on them later this afternoon.

David E. Bonior, a former Michigan congressman and top aide to John Edwards, and now a top adviser to Mr. Obama, proposed splitting the Michigan delegates evenly.

The Clinton campaign had its own proposal for splitting the delegates, based on her having won 55 percent of the vote. That plan would give her 73 delegates compared with 55 for Mr. Obama. Her case was made by former Gov. James J. Blanchard of Michigan.

There was a third Michigan proposal, offered by Mark Brewer, the chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party. He asked the committee to award Mrs. Clinton 69 delegates and Mr. Obama 59 — a rough estimate of the results, assigning the “uncommitted” tally to Mr. Obama.

All these presentations made for unusual political theater, with so many Democrats from these two states expressing opposition to each other across an array of vexing issues.

The proposals came as the rules committee, which has gathered at a hotel ballroom here, tried to resolve a bitter impasse that has complicated the primary fight between Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton.

Saturday’s meeting was held as the marathon string of nominating contests was winding down. Voters in Puerto Rico go to the polls on Sunday, and the last primaries will be held on Tuesday, in Montana and South Dakota.

As hundreds of protesters gathered outside, the hotel ballroom was packed with scores of supporters of both candidates and scores of news media.

Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, opened the meeting by saying, “We are strong enough to struggle and disagree and to even be angry and disappointed and still come together at the end of the day and be united.”

Whether they would come together remained to be seen; if a five-and-a-half hour dinner meeting on Friday that went until nearly 2 a.m. Saturday was any guide, the two sides, bleary-eyed and bedraggled, had a long way to go.

“There are some really, really tough issues across the board,” Martha Fuller Clark, a committee member who is a state senator from New Hampshire and backs Mr. Obama, said in the wee hours Saturday.

“There was no clear pathway at the end of this evening,” Ms. Clark said.

One of the biggest points of dispute, as it was in the afternoon meeting, was over how to apportion the delegates from Michigan. The committee is also wrestling with how to bring voters from these two battleground states into the party fold while still upholding party rules and signaling to other states that they will be punished if they failed to abide by the party’s calendar.

Both of the Democratic candidates agreed to the party’s sanctions when Florida and Michigan decided to move up their primaries, in violation of party rules, and neither campaigned in the states ahead of the disputed votes. But the disagreement over how to seat the delegates has taken on critical importance because of the narrow duel between Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton.

The party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, a panel of 30 officials from across the country, began Saturday morning wading through a series of challenges that would allow the two states’ delegations to be seated, in some permutation, at the party’s nominating convention on Aug. 25.

The proposals from the Obama camp marked the first time in the months-long wrangling over the disputed primaries that the campaign showed its hand and made public its specific ideas for apportioning delegates in both states.

Florida officials, including Representative Robert Wexler, proposed seating half of the state’s delegates and all of its superdelegates, but only with half a vote.

“Senator Obama should be commended be agreeing to offer this extraordinary concession,” Mr. Wexler said to a combination of cheers and boos from the audience, reflecting the partisan divide.

Asked by the panel if he would oppose the seating of Florida’s full delegation, with full votes, he did not answer directly.

Full seating and voting is the Clinton position, and that case was made at the witness table by state Senator Arthena Joyner of Florida. Outside the meeting room, several Florida officials appeared divided over the proposal. Patrolling the scene was Lanny Davis, a former Clinton administration counsel, working as a one-man spin operation to counter the Obama forces.

Several people inside the room arrived with tape over their mouths, a sign of their contention that they were being silenced in the current Democratic presidential primary. No signs or banners were allowed. The meeting, while orderly, was interrupted repeatedly by applause, which Democratic officials did not attempt to stifle.

Outside, hundreds of supporters of Mrs. Clinton stood on street corners around the hotel, arriving by bus, car and bicycle. A woman paced back and forth along the sidewalk, holding a sign that declared, “Count our votes or don’t count on us in November!”

Patricia Nyce, 59, traveled on an overnight bus from her home in Altamonte Springs, Fla., to tell the D.N.C. that anything less than seating the entire delegation from her state would be “unacceptable.” She said she should not be blamed for the state’s decision to schedule its primary before party rules allowed.

“As a citizen of Florida, nobody asked me,” Ms. Nyce said. “And now I’m being punished.”

Mr. Obama had a far less visible presence outside, with his campaign asking supporters not to create a scene that would hamper efforts to unify the party. But he clearly had supporters inside the ballroom.

The attendance inside the meeting was limited, with each campaign receiving a small allocation. As Mr. Obama campaigned in South Dakota and Mrs. Clinton campaigned in Puerto Rico on Saturday, several of their top campaign advisers milled around the hotel ballroom in Washington, waiting for their turn to present their case.

During the private meeting Friday night and into the wee hours of Saturday, Harold Ickes, who is Mrs. Clinton’s chief delegate counter, repeatedly pressed the Clinton view that the full delegations from both states be seated, with full votes. Allan Katz, a lawyer from Florida, emerged as the chief advocate for Mr. Obama, who had said he wanted the delegates seated, but until Saturday had not specified how or in what proportion.

“It was a full discussion, we’ll see what happens,” Mr. Ickes said after the late-night meeting. “And I think there was some agreement on some issues and still some disagreement on others.”

Mr. Katz told reporters: “There’s a strong push from the Clinton campaign to try and make believe that those primaries were real primaries, that everyone competed in them like they did in everything else. And there’s a strong push back from the Obama campaigns that, well, the rules were that this is not how we were going to select the delegates.”

They took a few straw votes, but those votes were “so close as to be meaningless,” one committee member said.

Told later that the meeting lasted for five and a half hours, Thomas Hynes, a lawyer from Illinois who was inside the room and who supports Mr. Obama, said, “It felt like five and a half weeks.”

Michael Falcone contributed reporting.

May 31, 2008

Reading 1
Zep 3:14-18a
Shout for joy, O daughter Zion!
Sing joyfully, O Israel!
Be glad and exult with all your heart,
O daughter Jerusalem!
The LORD has removed the judgment against you,
he has turned away your enemies;
The King of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst,
you have no further misfortune to fear.
On that day, it shall be said to Jerusalem:
Fear not, O Zion, be not discouraged!
The LORD, your God, is in your midst,
a mighty savior;
He will rejoice over you with gladness,
and renew you in his love,
He will sing joyfully because of you,
as one sings at festivals.
or
Rom 12:9-16
Brothers and sisters:
Let love be sincere;
hate what is evil,
hold on to what is good;
love one another with mutual affection;
anticipate one another in showing honor.
Do not grow slack in zeal,
be fervent in spirit,
serve the Lord.
Rejoice in hope,
endure in affliction,
persevere in prayer.
Contribute to the needs of the holy ones,
exercise hospitality.
Bless those who persecute you,
bless and do not curse them.
Rejoice with those who rejoice,
weep with those who weep.
Have the same regard for one another;
do not be haughty but associate with the lowly;
do not be wise in your own estimation.

Responsorial Psalm
Isaiah 12:2-3, 4bcd, 5-6
R. (6) Among you is the great and Holy One of Israel.
God indeed is my savior;
I am confident and unafraid.
My strength and my courage is the LORD,
and he has been my savior.
With joy you will draw water
at the fountain of salvation.
R. Among you is the great and Holy One of Israel.
Give thanks to the LORD, acclaim his name;
among the nations make known his deeds,
proclaim how exalted is his name.
R. Among you is the great and Holy One of Israel.
Sing praise to the LORD for his glorious achievement;
let this be known throughout all the earth.
Shout with exultation, O city of Zion,
for great in your midst
is the Holy One of Israel!
R. Among you is the great and Holy One of Israel.

Gospel
Lk 1:39-56
Mary set out
and traveled to the hill country in haste
to a town of Judah,
where she entered the house of Zechariah
and greeted Elizabeth.
When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting,
the infant leaped in her womb,
and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit,
cried out in a loud voice and said,
“Most blessed are you among women,
and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
And how does this happen to me,
that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears,
the infant in my womb leaped for joy.
Blessed are you who believed
that what was spoken to you by the Lord
would be fulfilled.”
And Mary said:
“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord;
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed:
the Almighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his Name.
He has mercy on those who fear him
in every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm,
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has come to the help of his servant Israel
for he has remembered his promise of mercy,
the promise he made to our fathers,
to Abraham and his children for ever.”
Mary remained with her about three months
and then returned to her home.

Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States, second typical edition, Copyright © 2001, 1998, 1997, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine; Psalm refrain © 1968, 1981, 1997, International Committee on English in the Liturgy, Inc. All rights reserved. Neither this work nor any part of it may be reproduced, distributed, performed or displayed in any medium, including electronic or digital, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

May 30, 2008

By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON — Hoping to bring their party’s presidential nomination fight to an end, the two top Democrats in Congress said they were pressing superdelegates who had yet to declare a preference in the race to make their choice public by the middle of next week.

Party officials said Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, had been contacting uncommitted superdelegates, encouraging them to prepare to go public and resolve any last question about the contest between Senators Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

“By this time next week, it will all be over, give or take a day," Mr. Reid said in a Thursday appearance at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, where he was promoting a new memoir.

Given Mr. Obama’s lead in the delegate race and potential support among the approximately 200 members of Congress and Democratic insiders who have yet to declare, the push to wind up the race works to his benefit. While Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Reid have remained publicly neutral in the nominating clash while emphasizing its potential benefits to the party, they now appear to have concluded that prolonging it much further could be detrimental.

In an interview on the San Francisco talk radio station KGO, Mr. Reid said that he had spoken with Ms. Pelosi on Thursday and that they had agreed to take steps to avoid a contest that would extend into the convention in August. “We all are going to urge our folks next week to make a decision very quickly,” said Mr. Reid, who added that “simple math” indicated that by next Tuesday Mr. Obama would have the necessary number of delegates to prevail.

Mr. Reid’s comments came after Ms. Pelosi told the editorial board of The San Francisco Chronicle on Wednesday that she would intercede if necessary, if the contest were not concluded by the end of June.

The Congressional leaders lack formal authority over the superdelegates, but can use strong relationships and powers of persuasion to persuade some colleagues to make a public choice.

Representatives of Mr. Reid and Ms. Pelosi will be on hand Saturday for the rules committee of the Democratic National Committee, when members meet to decide how the disputed delegates from the Florida and Michigan primaries should awarded.

The argument on behalf of Mr. Obama will be made by Representative Robert Wexler, Democrat of Florida, and former Representative David Bonior, Democrat of Michigan. While party officials have suggested halving the delegates allowed from each state, aides to Mr. Obama said Thursday that they would also allow Mrs. Clinton to have a greater share of those delegates than they believe she deserves, hoping to resolve the dispute.

Mr. Obama said he considered the general election campaign to begin formally after the last primaries, on Tuesday. Asked whether he thought he would become the presumptive nominee then, he said, “I believe so.”

“If we’ve gotten the number of delegates needed to secure the nomination, then I’m the nominee,” Mr. Obama told reporters late Wednesday. “If we’re short of that, we’ll have more work to do, but once we achieve it, I think we’ll be the nominee.”

Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting.

By JOSEPH WHITE
The Associated Press
Friday, May 30, 2008; 12:19 AM

WASHINGTON -- No one has mastered the look of spelling bee despair better than 10-year-old Veronica Penny.

The Canadian with the long blond hair buried her head deep in her hands each time she was presented with a word Thursday at the Scripps National Spelling Bee. She did it not once, not twice, but three times _ the third time for a full 20 seconds _ while contemplating the word "paleethnology" in the quarterfinals.

"It looks like she's going to cry," said her mother, Pam Penny. "But she's not. She's just thinking."

So, yes, the moment of drama had a positive outcome. Veronica flawlessly spelled the word _ it has to do with the study of early humans _ putting the first-time participant from Ancaster, Ontario, among 45 spellers who advanced into Friday's semifinals, thus earning a spot on national television.

"I'm thinking," said Veronica, explaining her unconventional on-stage style. "I was in another spelling bee, and that's what I used when the words got harder."

The 81st edition of the bee began early in the day with a record 288 spellers in a competition that has truly hit the big time, inspiring movies, books and a Broadway musical. ESPN will again broadcast the semifinals, and Friday's two-hour finals will be aired live in prime time on ABC for the third consecutive year.

Also in the semifinals are favorites Tia Thomas and Matthew Evans, a pair of home-schooled 13-year-olds who renewed a friendly but competitive rivalry that began in 2004. The only five-time repeaters at this year's bee, they've been quizzing each other via computer for months and spent this week trying to stump each other with words from their thick study books.

Tia, from Coarsegold, Calif., pumped her arms and let out of big smile after spelling each of her quarterfinal words: "emollience" and "scission." "Emollience" falls into a tricky class of words because it has a homonym.

"Everything went according to plan _ except me getting a homonym," Tia said. "I hate homonyms. Those are worst things ever."

Matthew, from Albuquerque, N.M., buckled at the knees after spelling both "philiater" and the unusual sports term "yannigan," a word pertaining to an individualized form of baseball in which players constantly rotate positions.

"It seems not to follow any rules," Matthew said. "It would have been difficult to guess on that one, but I happened to know it."

Matthew and Tia were finalists last year, but another returning finalist, Cody Wang, was eliminated in the quarterfinals. Cody, 14, of Calgary, Alberta, put both hands to his head and gasped in frustration when he misspelled "hierurgical."

The two other returning finalists from last year advanced to the semifinals: Kavya Shivashankar, 12, of Olathe, Kansas, and Anqi Dong, 13, of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. No Canadian has ever won the bee, but Nate Gartke of Alberta was last year's runner-up.

Thursday began with the preliminary round, when all the spellers who made it to Washington received their one guaranteed moment in the spotlight. There was the familiar mix of moments comical and nerve-racking as boys and girls aged 8 to 15 tackled words such as "ambuscade" and "Manhattanese."

"Can you use it in a song?" queried 12-year-old Marie Mach of Dumfries, Va., when presented with the word "espousal."

"You really don't want me to," replied pronouncer Jacques Bailly with a chuckle. "I can't sing."

Marie misspelled the word, guessing "e-s-p-o-w-s-e-l."

A correct spelling counted as extra credit to a written test all the spellers had taken earlier in the week. The top 90 scorers advanced to the quarterfinals.

Two countries were represented for the first time. Maria Isabel Kubabom, a 13-year-old from Ghana, misspelled "seder." Jiwon Seo, 11, from South Korea, used her finger to write "innumerable" on the back of her placard before spelling it correctly.

Sriram Hathwar became the youngest competitor in bee history when he folded his arms and spelled "elicitation." Sriram, from Painted Post, N.Y., turned 8 last month and appeared about half the size of the speller seated next to him.

However, neither Maria Isabel nor Jiwon nor Sriram advanced past the preliminaries, all having failed to score well enough on the written test that included words such as "pinyin," "eidetic" and "mustard."

While the spellers who survived Thursday's rounds were happy to remain in the running for the title, many expressed an increasingly common sentiment that reflects the bee's popularity.

"I'm glad," Matthew said, "to have made it to ESPN."

Aide-Turned-Critic Tells of Growing Disillusionment With Bush Administration

By Dan Eggen and Linton Weeks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, May 30, 2008; A01

Scott McClellan says he did not set out to write a memoir that was sharply critical of the White House. Indeed, one publishing industry insider described his early concept as "a not-very-interesting, typical press secretary book."

But somewhere between proposal and publication, as McClellan told it yesterday, the scales dropped from his eyes, leading him to write a book that accuses his former boss, President Bush, and his senior aides of abandoning "candor and honesty" to wage a "political propaganda campaign" that led the nation into an "unnecessary war."

"Over time, as you leave the White House and leave the bubble, you're able to take off your partisan hat and take a clear-eyed look at things," McClellan, a former White House press secretary, said in an interview yesterday. ". . . From the beginning, the focus was what had happened to take things so badly off course. I don't know that I can say when I started the book that it would end up where it was, but I felt at the end it had to be as honest and forthright as possible."

The book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," is a scathing critique of the Bush presidency that vaulted this week to the top of the bestseller lists. It has also prompted many of McClellan's oldest friends and colleagues to brand him, among other things, a turncoat and a fraud.

During his first round of media interviews yesterday in support of the book, McClellan, 40, portrayed himself as "increasingly dismayed and disillusioned" during the end of his three-year tenure as Bush's press secretary. He also strongly defended some of the most incendiary allegations in the book, including that Bush was intent on confronting Saddam Hussein from the beginning of the debate on Iraq and that the White House's "permanent campaign" mode crippled its ability to cope with Hurricane Katrina and other crises.

There is a grand American tradition of former press secretaries writing tell-all, or at least tell-some, books. Larry Speakes, who worked for President Ronald Reagan; Marlin Fitzwater, who worked for Reagan and President George H.W. Bush; and others have penned memoirs.

McClellan and Peter Osnos, the founder of PublicAffairs, the small company that published "What Happened," rebutted suggestions from some Bush defenders, including former press secretary Ari Fleischer, that McClellan may have had a ghostwriter or undergone heavy-handed editing. Fleischer and others have repeatedly said that the book does not "sound like" McClellan, who is known as genial and soft-spoken.

McClellan said that he started focusing on writing the book about a year ago and that the work was especially intense over the past several months as the publishing date approached.

Osnos said McClellan just needed editorial guidance to tell the story he wanted to tell all along.

"First we had to ascertain what kind of book he wanted to write," said Osnos, a former Washington Post reporter and editor. "We are journalists, independent-minded publishers. We weren't interested in a book that was just a defense of the Bush administration. It had to pass our test of independence, integrity and candor."

In his interviews yesterday, McClellan repeatedly highlighted two incidents that he said helped sharpen his criticism of the administration: when White House officials Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby inaccurately told him they were not involved in the leaking of a CIA officer's name, and a conversation in 2006 when Bush admitted that he had authorized the selective release of classified information about Iran.

There are a number of signs that McClellan's focus hardened over time. A book cover still depicted yesterday on Amazon.com, for example, had the subtitle ending with "What's Wrong with Washington" rather than "Washington's Culture of Deception." Osnos said the subtitle evolved.

Osnos called the book "a really sophisticated, thoughtful, reasoned and, in many ways, pained portrait of a president" and said, "The Bush he came to serve went off the rails."

He also dismissed suggestions that McClellan is merely hoping to cash in. Unlike some larger publishing houses, he said, PublicAffairs almost never pays more than a five-figure advance. "No one has ever done a book for PublicAffairs for the money," he said.

Book editors working on political memoirs often seek to "draw out the story and make sure the story is complete," said Paul Bogaards, the publicity director at the Alfred A. Knopf publishing house.

If McClellan had not been pushed by PublicAffairs to be candid, Bogaards said, he could have been accused of holding back. "If publishers balk at the proposal, it's usually because they get a sense that the writer is going to give an incomplete accounting of what happened. And no one is interested in publishing those kinds of books," he said.

Former colleagues continued their sharp criticism of McClellan yesterday.

Dana Perino, the current White House press secretary, questioned his depiction of a pro-war propaganda campaign, saying it did not appear to be substantiated in the book. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking to reporters in Sweden, said that there was no intent to mislead Americans about Iraq and that Bush "was very clear about the reasons for going to war."

And former presidential counselor Dan Bartlett, appearing after McClellan on NBC's "Today" show, called the book "beyond the pale."

"I would not personally participate in a process in which we are misleading the American people, and that's the part that I think is hurting so many of his former colleagues," Bartlett said.

McClellan said many of the early reactions are based on excerpts rather than the whole book, which has just begun to appear on store shelves.

"They're trying to look at the book in these 'gotcha' terms," he said. "It's exactly what I talk about in the book -- it's playing the Washington 'gotcha' game."

McClellan acknowledged his own role in what he called the "spin and political manipulation" during his time as press secretary, from 2003 to 2006, including attacks on other former Bush administration officials who penned critical books or articles.

"I was caught up in the Washington game, just like everybody else," he said.

May 30, 2008

By SUSAN SAULNY

The bandit pulled his truck to the back of a Burger King in Northern California one afternoon last month armed with a hose and a tank. After rummaging around assorted restaurant rubbish, he dunked a tube into a smelly storage bin and, the police said, vacuumed out about 300 gallons of grease.

The man was caught before he could slip away. In his truck, the police found 2,500 gallons of used fryer grease, indicating that the Burger King had not been his first fast-food craving of the day.

Outside Seattle, cooking oil rustling has become such a problem that the owners of the Olympia Pizza and Pasta Restaurant in Arlington, Wash., are considering using a surveillance camera to keep watch on its 50-gallon grease barrel. Nick Damianidis, an owner, said the barrel had been hit seven or eight times since last summer by siphoners who strike in the night.

“Fryer grease has become gold,” Mr. Damianidis said. “And just over a year ago, I had to pay someone to take it away.”

Much to the surprise of Mr. Damianidis and many other people, processed fryer oil, which is called yellow grease, is actually not trash. The grease is traded on the booming commodities market. Its value has increased in recent months to historic highs, driven by the even higher prices of gas and ethanol, making it an ever more popular form of biodiesel to fuel cars and trucks.

In 2000, yellow grease was trading for 7.6 cents per pound. On Thursday, its price was about 33 cents a pound, or almost $2.50 a gallon. (That would make the 2,500-gallon haul in the Burger King case worth more than $6,000.)

Biodiesel is derived by processing vegetable oil or animal fat with alcohol. It is increasingly available around the country, but it is expensive. With the right kind of conversion kit (easily found on the Internet) anyone can turn discarded cooking oil into a usable engine fuel that can burn on its own, or as a cheap additive to regular diesel.

“The last time kids broke in here they went for the alcohol,” said Mr. Damianidis, who fries chicken wings and cheese sticks. “Obviously they’re stealing oil because it’s worth something.”

While there have been reports of thefts in multiple states, law enforcement officials do not compile national statistics and it remains unclear whether this is part of a passing trend or something more serious.

The suspects in a growing number of grease infractions fall into a range of categories, people interviewed on the matter said, as grease theft is a crime of opportunity. They include do-it-yourself environmentalists worried about their carbon footprints, warring waste management firms trying to beat each other on the sly, and petty thieves who are profiting from the oil’s rising value on the black market.

“It’s a new oddity,” said Officer Seth Hanson of the Federal Way Police Department, near Tacoma, Wash. He said thefts occur outside at least a couple of restaurants there each week. “We’re trying to get an eyeball on how well-organized it is, if at all. To date, we haven’t been very successful in finding anybody.”

Thefts have been reported in at least 20 states, said Christopher A. Griffin, whose family owns Griffin Industries, one of the largest grease collection and rendering companies in the country. The problem has gotten so bad, Mr. Griffin has hired two detectives to investigate thefts around the country.

“Theft is theft,” said Mr. Griffin, who is based in Cold Spring, Ky. “I don’t care if you’re stealing grease or if you’re stealing diamonds.”

Fryer oil from a restaurant that does a high volume of frying one kind of food — for example, a fried-chicken chain — is at a premium because of its relative purity. The large-scale producers of grease, restaurants mostly, own their old oil and in recent months have even made a small profit by selling it to collectors.

Because of the grease’s rancid odor, most restaurants usually store it out back with the trash.

“Once you put something in the trash, it’s abandoned property,” said Jon A. Jaworski, a lawyer in Houston who represents accused grease thieves. “A lot of times, it’s not theft.”

Even so, most restaurant owners and grease collectors say that grease is not free for the taking.

“There’s a new fight for the product, definitely a whole new demand sector,” said Bill Smith, a market reporter for Urner Barry’s Yellow Sheet, an industry newsletter that tracks yellow grease. “Grease theft is becoming a bigger and bigger issue.”

In the case of the Burger King theft, in Morgan Hill, Calif., the police were alerted to suspicious activity by a neighbor who runs his own grease collection and recycling business and is on the lookout for rustlers.

Driving through town, the neighbor, Mark Rosenzweig, said he spotted the suspect’s truck because “it stuck out.” He said he followed it for blocks before it pulled into the Burger King. Mr. Rosenzweig said he knew the man who holds the Burger King grease account, so he called him.

“I had to give everybody a roadside tutorial on grease theft,” Mr. Rosenzweig said of his next call — to the police. “Ten years ago we couldn’t give this stuff away. Now everybody’s fighting over it.”

The suspect in the case, a 49-year-old man who said he was from Las Vegas, has yet to enter a plea, and is due in court next in July.

A typical fast-food restaurant produces 150 to 250 pounds of grease a week. Many do not even know when a theft occurs because it usually happens overnight. Most security cameras and night watchmen are focused on cash registers, not the trash.

“Who do you go after?” said Jason Christensen, a trader of fats and oils for the AgriTrading Corporation, in Minnesota. “I sense you’ll start seeing more surveillance equipment put in to monitor these storage facilities at the restaurant. As the price goes up, you can afford to spend a little more to protect your interest.”

And there is so much interest in grease these days.

The City of San Francisco has its own grease recycling program run through the Public Utilities Commission called SFGreasecycle, which collects discarded vegetable oil from city restaurants at no charge and recycles it into biodiesel for use in the city fleet.

Healy Biodiesel, a company in Sedgwick, Kan., says it offers a top-quality fuel made from local cooking oils.

Ben Healy, the owner, has contracts to collect the raw grease from several franchises around town.

“One particular night not too long ago, 9 out of 15 were stolen,” he said of the grease bins. “That’s a majority of the oil and it was a big kick in the stomach.”

At Olympia Pizza and Pasta, Mr. Damianidis, who now sells his grease for a small monthly fee, finds the problem of stolen fryer oil quite annoying and distracting. And he wants to stop the thefts. He is leaning toward a security camera and hoping for the best.

“I cook food,” Mr. Damianidis said. “I’m not going to stay up until 2 in the morning trying to catch someone stealing a barrel of grease.”

May 30, 2008

Reading 1
Dt 7:6-11
Moses said to the people:
"You are a people sacred to the LORD, your God;
he has chosen you from all the nations on the face of the earth
to be a people peculiarly his own.
It was not because you are the largest of all nations
that the LORD set his heart on you and chose you,
for you are really the smallest of all nations.
It was because the LORD loved you
and because of his fidelity to the oath he had sworn your fathers,
that he brought you out with his strong hand
from the place of slavery,
and ransomed you from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.
Understand, then, that the LORD, your God, is God indeed,
the faithful God who keeps his merciful covenant
down to the thousandth generation
toward those who love him and keep his commandments,
but who repays with destruction a person who hates him;
he does not dally with such a one,
but makes them personally pay for it.
You shall therefore carefully observe the commandments,
the statutes and the decrees that I enjoin on you today."

Responsorial Psalm
Ps 103:1-2, 3-4, 6-7, 8, 10.
R. (cf. 17) The Lord's kindness is everlasting to those who fear him.
Bless the LORD, O my soul;
all my being, bless his holy name.
Bless the LORD, O my soul;
and forget not all his benefits.
R. The Lord's kindness is everlasting to those who fear him.
He pardons all your iniquities,
heals all your ills.
He redeems your life from destruction,
crowns you with kindness and compassion.
R. The Lord's kindness is everlasting to those who fear him.
Merciful and gracious is the LORD,
slow to anger and abounding in kindness.
Not according to our sins does he deal with us,
nor does he requite us according to our crimes.
R. The Lord's kindness is everlasting to those who fear him.

Reading II
1 Jn 4:7-16
Beloved, let us love one another,
because love is of God;
everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.
Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.
In this way the love of God was revealed to us:
God sent his only Son into the world
so that we might have life through him.
In this is love:
not that we have loved God, but that he loved us
and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.
Beloved, if God so loved us,
we also must love one another.
No one has ever seen God.
Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us,
and his love is brought to perfection in us.
This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us,
that he has given us of his Spirit.
Moreover, we have seen and testify
that the Father sent his Son as savior of the world.
Whoever acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God,
God remains in him and he in God.
We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us.
God is love, and whoever remains in love
remains in God and God in him.

Gospel
Mt 11:25-30
At that time Jesus exclaimed:
"I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
for although you have hidden these things
from the wise and the learned
you have revealed them to little ones.
Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will.
All things have been handed over to me by my Father.
No one knows the Son except the Father,
and no one knows the Father except the Son
and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.
"Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am meek and humble of heart;
and you will find rest for yourselves.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden light."

Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States, second typical edition, Copyright © 2001, 1998, 1997, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine; Psalm refrain © 1968, 1981, 1997, International Committee on English in the Liturgy, Inc. All rights reserved. Neither this work nor any part of it may be reproduced, distributed, performed or displayed in any medium, including electronic or digital, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

May 29, 2008

Flexing Your Buying Power

By ERIC WILSON

SINCE 1998, the price of a “Speedy” handbag — the entry-level style at Louis Vuitton — has more than doubled, to $685, indicative of a precipitous price increase throughout the luxury goods market. The price of Joe Boxer’s “licky face” underwear, meanwhile, has dropped by nearly half, to $8.99, representing just as seismic a shift at the other end of the fashion continuum, where the majority of American consumers do their shopping.

As luxury fashion has become more expensive, mainstream apparel has become markedly less so. Today, shoppers pay the same price for a basic Brooks Brothers men’s suit, $598, as they did in 1998. The suggested retail price of a pair of Levi’s 501 jeans, $46, is about $4 less than it was a decade ago. A three-pack of Calvin Klein men’s briefs costs $21.50, only $3.50 more than in 1998. Which is the better buy?

Factoring for inflation, each of these examples is actually less expensive today. In current dollars, the 1998 suit would cost $788, the jeans would be $66 and the underwear would be nearly $24. As consumers adjust to soaring prices for gasoline, food, education and medical care, just about the only thing that seems a bargain today is clothes — mainstream clothes, anyway.

Clothing is one of the few categories in the federal Consumer Price Index in which overall prices have declined — about 10 percent — since 1998 (the cost of communication is another). That news may be of solace to anyone whose budget has been stretched just to drive to work or to stop at the supermarket; in fashion, at least, there are still deals to be had.

An anecdotal price comparison by Thursday Styles for 31 name-brand clothing items — such as Calvin Klein underwear, a Chanel tweed cardigan, a pair of L’eggs pantyhose, Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses and a wool crepe jacket from Anne Klein — would seem to demonstrate that while luxury prices have outpaced inflation, lower-priced clothes have generally experienced deflation. Even some items that may seem more expensive today, like a $75 Ralph Lauren polo shirt (which cost $62.50 in 1998), are really not, because their prices have risen more slowly than inflation.

Anyone who has spent time walking along 34th Street in Manhattan recently, from Kmart to Macy’s to Forever 21 and H&M, would think that the economic outlook is rosy. Shoppers there are still laden with bags from Payless and Victoria’s Secret, and several said they perceived fashion to be a better buy, with more variety and style at lower prices, than a decade ago.

“You can buy a lot more with your money today than before,” said Joanna Eliza, a recent graduate from the Fashion Institute of Technology, shopping on 34th Street on Tuesday. “Stores like H&M and Forever 21 make it more affordable for people who want to be fashionable, and that makes me feel really good.”

Over all, apparel prices have gone down primarily because of two factors: the overwhelming movement of manufacturing to countries with cheaper labor, where the clothes are made, and increased competition between traditional retailers and discounters, where the clothes are sold.

In some cases, the low prices today seem almost ridiculous. Steve & Barry’s sells celebrity-branded shoes and dresses for $8.98 or less. Target offers a silk faille ball gown from Isaac Mizrahi on sale for $129.99. Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, promotes an Op T-shirt for 97 cents.

But how low can prices go? While fashion deflation may be good news for consumers, it is not necessarily so for stores. Such prices at the low end and, conversely, such high prices at the luxury end, where $1,300 handbags are piled up like tomatoes at Saks Fifth Avenue, are beginning to cause concern among retailers and analysts, because they are having a profound impact on the way people shop.

“Everything we pick up today has to pass a test,” said Candace Corlett, the president of WSL Strategic Retail, a consulting group. During a survey of shoppers in November, 60 percent of the respondents said they had recently begun to stop and reconsider clothing purchases before buying. “To me, that is the scariest thing for retail going forward, because that is a new habit,” Ms. Corlett said. “It’s not like in 2000, when we were just buying so much stuff. We are learning now what we call the cautious pause.”

The fashion and retail industry fear that the appeal of price, for consumers of both mass and luxury goods, is becoming a more important factor in decisions about what to buy than desire, which has been the driving mechanism behind the growth of fashion and luxury for decades.

“We as a business cannot afford to have a customer take a second look and ask, ‘Do I need this?’ ” said Bud Konheim, the chief executive of Nicole Miller. “That is the kiss of death. We’re finished, because nobody really needs anything we make as a total industry.”

The divergence of price extremes has become so striking that some fashion executives, including Mr. Konheim, are openly asking whether prices have reached both their nadir and apex at the same moment. “As far as bottom costs go, we’re there,” Mr. Konheim said. “I think we’ve exploited all the countries on earth for people who really want to work for nothing.”

But at fashion’s high end, it may be consumers who think they are being exploited. Of the name-brand items that Thursday Styles ran a 10-year comparative price check for, the highest gain, 104 percent, was for the Speedy bag, followed by a $1,900 Lady Dior bag (73 percent higher) and a $325 Diane Von Furstenberg wrap dress (71 percent higher). These prices were not adjusted for inflation, which has run 32 percent cumulatively since 1998.

Of nine items that declined in price, those that dropped the most were basics like underwear and T-shirts, by as much as 60 percent for Joe Boxer’s three-pack of basic briefs, 32 percent for capri pants from Liz & Company, and 21 percent for a Lacoste polo shirt. Prices for the remaining five items stayed the same or changed within 1 percent of their 1998 prices, including styles sold by L.L. Bean and Lands’ End, which are frequently touted in catalogs for maintaining their original prices.

Price differences for products that have remained consistent in image and design can also be affected by sales and competition among stores. The suggested retail price of a pair of Levi’s 501 jeans, for example, has declined $4 since 1998, to $46, but stores like J. C. Penney and Kmart have often sold them for much less.

The cost of materials — all the denim is produced in the United States — has remained constant. But the cost of production has fluctuated as production has moved overseas, a factor that could now lead to price increases.

“As we see gas prices going up, and the shipping going up with that, that will certainly affect what the end price will be,” said Erica Archambault, a Levi’s spokeswoman.

It is becoming harder to compete with price alone, said Stephen Donnelly, the general merchandise manager for women’s apparel at Kmart, where shoppers, he said, are increasingly value minded. They are often more informed and more interested in fashion that is affordable, rather than basics that are cheap, and increasingly, less profitable.

“Just like everyone else,” Mr. Donnelly said, “we’ve definitely had some cost increases and a lot of that has to do with transportation, for getting the goods from the manufacturers to our warehouses and off to the stores, as well as increases in the price of raw materials. But we are trying to minimize increasing the costs to our customers.”

HOW the potential for higher prices will sit with consumers may depend on the how many companies find themselves in the same boat, unable to withstand further cuts without sinking.

“Clothing has been incredibly cheap,” said Sarah Maxwell, a professor of marketing at Fordham University and the author of “The Price is Wrong” (Wiley, 2008), which looks at how price affects consumer behavior. In the book, she describes buying the same pair of sneakers for 15 years, during which time the price ranged from $19.95 to $29.95. When she recently went to buy a new pair, they cost $34.95, so she rejected them.

May 28, 2008

Economic Scene

By DAVID LEONHARDT

For the last few years, I have been an evangelist for renting.

I’ve told my sister-in-law and her husband that they would be crazy to abandon their reasonably priced one-bedroom rental in Brooklyn. When two of my colleagues were moving to Los Angeles, I e-mailed them a spreadsheet that helped persuade them not to buy a house there. That same spreadsheet was the basis for an article in 2005, when I argued that “renting has become a surprisingly smart option.” Last spring — like any good evangelist, comfortable with repetition — I wrote a similar article.

The case for renting has been simple enough. House prices rose so high in the first half of this decade that you could often get more for your money by renting. You could also avoid having a large part of your net worth tied up in a speculative bubble.

All this time, I have been a renter myself, first in the New York suburbs and then in Manhattan. But my wife and I will be moving to Washington this summer. And the housing market has, obviously, changed quite a bit since our last move, in 2005. Nationwide, prices fell 14.1 percent from early 2007 to early this year, as Standard & Poor’s reported Tuesday. Home prices almost certainly still have a way to fall, but they’re now well below their peak.

So my wife and I began our search with open minds, willing to consider renting or buying. We ended our search by signing a contract to buy a house.

This is the story of my conversion.

•

One of the big lies of the real estate business is the idea that renting a home is tantamount to throwing money away. It’s a useful fiction for real estate agents, because they make vastly bigger commissions on house sales than rentals. But the comparison isn’t nearly so straightforward for the rest of us.

Renting involves one obvious, recurring cost that can never be recouped: the monthly rent check. Buying, on the other hand, involves multiple expenses, some of which aren’t so obvious. On top of closing costs, there are repairs, property taxes, mortgage principal and mortgage interest. (The mortgage-interest tax deduction reduces this last cost but doesn’t eliminate it.) When you own, you also lose the ability to invest your down payment elsewhere, like the stock market.

Of course, owning also brings benefits that have nothing to do with money. You can settle into your home, confident that no landlord will kick you out. You can repaint the walls and redo the kitchen. All else being equal, owning seems far preferable to renting.

Knowing all this, my wife and I were willing to buy a house even if it was ultimately going to cost us a bit more than renting. We just weren’t willing to have it cost a lot more than renting.

Over the last several years, I’ve come to like a simple, back-of-the-envelope way to compare the costs of renting and owning. You find two similar houses, one for sale and the other for rent, and divide the sale price by the annual rent. You can call the result the rent ratio.

The concept will probably sound familiar to stock market investors. It’s the real estate market’s version of a price-earnings ratio — a measure of how expensive an asset is, relative to the underlying economic fundamentals. Like a P/E ratio, the rent ratio provides something of a reality check.

Throughout the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, the average rent ratio nationwide hovered between 10 and 14. In the last few years, though, it broke through that historical range and hit almost 19 by the time the housing market peaked, in 2006.

And while home prices — and rent ratios — have always been higher on the coasts, they reached whole new levels recently. In the Washington area, the ratio went above 20. In Boston, New York, Los Angeles and south Florida, it topped 25. In Northern California, it approached 35, higher than it had been in any city, at any point on record.

In concrete terms, a rent ratio above 20 means that the monthly costs of ownership well exceed the cost of renting. At current mortgage rates, for example, a $500,000 house would typically bring monthly expenses of about $3,000 (taking into account taxes, repairs, a typical down payment and, yes, the mortgage deduction). When the rent ratio is 20, that same house could be rented for only about $2,000 a month.

There are two problems with buying a house in this situation. The first, plainly, is the extra $1,000 you’re paying each month for the privilege of owning, on top of the thousands of dollars you spent on closing costs. The second problem is that a rent ratio above 20 is a good indication of a bubble. When the prices of houses get out of line with the competition’s prices — that is, those in the rental market — a correction is coming.

The question facing my wife and me was whether we were entering the market before the correction had gone far enough. I really didn’t know what the answer would be. So as we looked at houses, I started calculating rent ratios.

In the neighborhoods where we were looking, two-bedroom condominiums were selling for $400,000 and being rented for about $2,100 a month, which makes for a rent ratio of 16. Four-bedroom houses were selling for $700,000 and being rented for almost $4,000, which makes for a rent ratio of 15. No matter the price range, pretty much every apples-to-apples comparison produced a similar ratio.

Historically, this is still a bit high. But it’s very different from where the market was just a couple of years ago. With house prices having fallen over the last two years and rents continuing to rise, the decision became a much closer call. We would now have to spend only a little more each month for the privilege of owning.

This month, we found a house that we really liked, and we made an offer. It was accepted.

I’m still not sure how good our timing was. Based on the backlog of houses on the market, I fully expect that our new house will be worth less in six months than it is today. I’m also not sure that we would have been willing to buy in Boston, New York or much of California, where the rent ratios remain above 20, according to data from Moody’s Economy.com.

In fact, if you’re now renting — almost anywhere — and do not need to move, I’d probably recommend that you wait to buy. The market is still coming your way.

But it’s O.K. with me if our timing wasn’t perfect. After several years of reporting on the housing market, I’m convinced that the most common real estate mistake is viewing a house first as a financial investment and only second as a home. That’s one big reason we ended up in this bubble-induced mess.

Most of the time, the decision whether to rent or buy should be based above all on life circumstances. Do you expect to move again in a couple years? Or is there a good chance that you’re ready to settle in — and stop worrying about real estate for a while?

The housing bubble, unfortunately, forced a reconsideration of this standard, because houses became so overvalued. But they’re slowly coming back to reality, which means that buying has again started to make sense for more people. Apparently, I’m one of them.

E-mail: leonhardt@nytimes.com

By Dan Eggen and Debbi Wilgoren
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, May 29, 2008; 11:55 AM

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan today strongly defended his critical new book on the Bush administration, saying he became "disillusioned" as he realized he was a pawn in a larger political game.

McClellan, who has been harshly condemned as a turncoat by some of his closest friends and former colleagues, said in an interview on NBC's "Today" show that the book was intended to illustrate how a presidential candidate who vowed to change the culture of Washington failed to do so once he was elected.

Instead, McClellan says, President Bush stayed in a "permanent campaign culture" and allowed his staff to use misleading and incomplete information to "sell" the Iraq war to the American people. While the president focused his public arguments on the possibility that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, McClellan said, his true goal in toppling Saddam Hussein was to boost democracy in the Middle East.

McClellan told "Today" he hoped his message would resonate during the current presidential campaign season, when the major candidates are again emphasizing their desire to change the way Washington operates.

"The White House would prefer I not speak out openly and honestly about my experiences, but I believe there is a larger purpose," McClellan said in his first interview since the book's contents were reported earlier this week. "I had all this great hope that we were going to come to Washington and change it. Then we got to Washington, and I think we got caught up in playing the Washington game the way it is being played today."

McClellan, 40, was the ultimate Bush loyalist. He first went to work for George W. Bush when he was Texas governor in 1999, helped Bush gain the White House in 2000, and then came to Washington to defend the president for the next six years on such issues as the war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina.

But the explosive book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," alleges that the Bush administration waged a "political propaganda campaign" in favor of the Iraq war and bungled the response to the storm that devastated the Gulf Coast. The accusations are prompting a counterattack from some of his oldest political colleagues, who accused him of disloyalty and questioned his credibility.

Dan Bartlett, former counselor to the president, appeared on the "Today" show as well, and said many of McClellan's allegations don't ring true. "He talks about wanting to change the tone in Washington, and yet uses inflammatory terms like 'propaganda machine' and 'shading the truth,' " Bartlett said.

He said McClellan was only a deputy press secretary during the buildup to the Iraq war and did not have access to all the high-level discussions at that time. Bartlett also said McClellan offers little proof in his book to back up some of his charges and asked why McClellan did not question the actions of Bush and his top aides while he was still employed by the White House.

McClellan, in turn, said it took him some time after leaving the White House to come to terms with his experience there. When the Iraq war started, "my beliefs were different," he told "Today." "I trusted the president's foreign policy team and I believed the president when he talked about the great and gathering danger from Iraq. I believe the president believed it too. He had convinced himself.

"I don't think this is a book that I could have written two years ago," McClellan added. "[I] struggled as I went through this book process. I struggled to come to grips with how things went so badly off course."

In the interview, McClellan described Bush as "a gut player . . . he goes on gut instinct when he makes decisions." He said the president "cares very passionately about what he calls the freedom agenda, spreading democracy throughout the Middle East. That's really what motivated him in Iraq."

Dana Perino, the current White House press secretary, said the president was "surprised" by McClellan's assertions. "He is puzzled, and he doesn't recognize this as the Scott McClellan that he hired and confided in and worked with for so many years," Perino said yesterday, adding that Bush was "disappointed that if he had these concerns and these thoughts, he never came to him or anyone else on the staff."

Former Bush political adviser Karl Rove compared McClellan to a "left-wing blogger." Several former Bush administration officials have written tell-all accounts. In one book published this month, retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez accuses Bush and his top advisers of "gross incompetence and dereliction of duty" for their handling of the Iraq war.

But none was as close to Bush or his inner circle as McClellan, an amiable Texas native who was widely known for his cautious demeanor. He started out in politics by managing several state election campaigns in the 1990s for his mother, who became Texas comptroller, and was recruited to the governor's mansion by Bush confidante Karen Hughes.

Ari Fleischer, who served as White House press secretary before McClellan took over in 2003, said he first met McClellan in Austin in 1999 when the two worked on the Bush presidential campaign.

"That's one of the reasons this book comes as such a shock," Fleischer said. "It comes from the last person that anyone would have thought would have said these things or written these things. . . . All you can do is scratch your head when you see how far he's turned."

Trent Duffy, who worked as McClellan's deputy for more than two years, said of the avid University of Texas sports fan: "Tomorrow maybe we're going to learn he's rooting for the Oklahoma Sooners."

"Here's a man who owes his whole career to George W. Bush, and here he's stabbing him in the back and no one knows why," Duffy said. "He appears to be dancing on his political grave for cash."

McClellan suggests in his preface that he expected a negative reaction. "My friends and former colleagues who lived and worked or are still living and working inside that bubble may not be happy with the perspective I present here," he wrote.

In the book, McClellan says he retains great admiration for Bush but portrays the president as stubborn and isolated. Calling the Iraq war "unnecessary" and a "strategic blunder," McClellan alleges that senior administration officials began a campaign in 2002 to "aggressively sell the war," even as he and other officials insisted that all options were on the table.

He also accuses Rove of misleading him about the leak of a CIA officer's name, and he suggests that Rove and former vice presidential adviser I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby may have improperly met to discuss the case. Perino and other officials sharply criticized that assertion yesterday.

When he was press secretary, McClellan made some of the same arguments against other ex-officials that he now faces. In 2004, for example, former counterterrorism adviser Richard A. Clarke published a book sharply critical of Bush's anti-terrorism policies.

"Why, all of a sudden, if he had all these grave concerns, did he not raise these sooner?" McClellan said. "This is 1 1/2 years after he left the administration. . . . He is bringing this up in the heat of a presidential campaign. He has written a book, and he certainly wants to go out there and promote that book."

When McClellan left the White House, the affection between him and Bush was obvious. During an emotional farewell ceremony, Bush said he looked forward to the day when he could return to Texas and sit on a porch somewhere with McClellan, reminiscing about their Washington days.

Asked this morning whether he thought such a scenario was still possible, McClellan said he didn't know when or whether he and his old mentor were likely to speak.

"I certainly don't expect to any time soon," he said on "Today." "I know this has been a tough book for some people to read."

Staff writers Michael Abramowitz in Colorado Springs and Thomas E. Ricks in Washington and staff researcher Madonna Lebling in Washington contributed to this report.

2008年05月29日13:48

Generic food blogs are the scrambled eggs of culinary blogging. They require little in the way of skill and next to nothing in terms of equipment -- just a digital camera and a broadband connection.
A particular kind of food blog, however, has become the genre's Canard a la Presse Tour d'Argent. These are 'cook-through' blogs, in which someone picks a cookbook and then doesn't stop cooking and blogging until the dishes for every recipe have been washed and put away.
The necessary ingredient: You need to be a little crazy.
Carole Blymire, a Washington, D.C., public-relations consultant, for example, has been writing 'French Laundry at Home' since last year. With no real cooking experience beyond Thanksgiving dinner, she is tackling the 130 or so recipes in Thomas Keller's 'French Laundry Cookbook,' which may be the most technically challenging American cookbook ever written.
No matter, says Ms. Blymire, 'I just opened it up and said to myself, 'Let's see what happens.' '
The site has become a huge hit in the food blogosphere, winning awards and attracting 4,000 to 5,000 visitors a day. It also has become the template for many other such cook-along blogs, with pictures of the dish at various stages of development and a rating of the final result. Personal asides are often folded in as well. (These are, after all, blogs.) Ms. Blymire uses a Miss Smartypants persona and often brags of her two loves: New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and bacon.
Cook-along bloggers say they start projects for any number of reasons: to learn culinary basics, to expand a cooking repertoire or simply to prove to themselves that they can stick with a big project from beginning to end.
Ryan S. Adams, who works in Austin for computer-graphics company Nvidia, says he was inspired by Ms. Blymire's work to start on 'The Whole Beast,' the offal-and-all British coobook that has a cult following in the foodie world. With dishes like 'Cold Lamb's Brains on Toast,' Mr. Adams says finding willing diners can sometimes be as challenging as the cooking. Ditto shopping. 'I don't know where I am going to get a woodcock,' he says. 'I may have to go out and hunt one myself.'
Perhaps the most impressive of all the cookbook blogs are the three devoted to the 2004 edition of Gourmet magazine's 'The Gourmet Cookbook' -- all 5¼ pounds and 1,300-odd recipes of it. Befitting this culinary Everest, all three writers are overachievers in their professional lives.
Teena Gerhardt, the first blogger to tackle the book, got her Ph.D. in mathematics from MIT and now muses about algebraic topology at Indiana University. Kevin Casey is a graduate student in neuroscience at McGill University. Melissa Palladino, of Rockport, Mass., is working on a cookbook of her own, a Western-gourmet take on Ayurvedic food from India.
The three are cooking at different rates, posting one to seven recipes a week. The project is requiring not only time but also an open wallet. The grocery bills for the entire Gourmet collection is expected to run between $30,000 and $40,000.
Cookbook bloggers typically don't print the complete recipes on their blogs in an effort not to undermine sales of the selected cookbook, which is usually treated with deep affection, even reverence.
A typical attitude is that of Laurie Woodward, the Pittsburgh mom who runs 'Tuesdays With Dorie,' devoted to 'Baking,' the latest cookbook by Dorie Greenspan, one of country's most popular baking writers and a master of American and French classics.
'Dorie is like a god to a lot of bakers,' says Ms. Woodward. 'And she is so nice about checking in on our blog. Sometimes, she even posts something on it, and everyone goes nuts when she does.'
Ms. Greenspan said in an interview that she is, indeed, charmed by the blog and considers such sites to be part of the new Web world in which professional food writers like herself are learning to work.
Perhaps the first of this genre was the Julie/Julia Project from 2002, in which Julie Powell, posing as something of a Manhattan underachiever, cooked all of the recipes from Julia Child's 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking.' Those Web musings (it had no pictures) went on to be printed in a best-selling book, and are now being made into a movie starring Meryl Streep.
Few of today's bloggers expect such breakout success, though Ms. Blymire has filmed a pilot for a possible Food Network show and also has had early talks about doing a cookbook.
The fact that the viewership on the blogs is far below what's needed to earn a living is fine with these writers, who say there are ample other rewards for their efforts. Cathy Irish of Maryland, who in November -- after three years, 45 pounds of butter and a pint of vanilla extract -- finished baking everything in 'Maida Heatter's Cookies,' says she came away from the experience with many new friends, including several with whom she has since visited in real life.
That same sense of community has also struck Mr. Casey, one of those cooking 'Gourmet.' After he started his project, he learned that his uncle had done something similar with the 'Larousse Gastronomique' during the 1970s.
'He was this lone little guy doing this and enjoying it, but he didn't have an avenue to share it,' says Mr. Casey. 'Now, we can all share it with the whole world.'
LEE GOMES

2008年05月29日13:48

开

立一个美食烹饪博客就像是摊鸡蛋一样容易，它们对博主的烹饪技术几乎没什么要求，而且除了一台数码相机和宽带连接之外，几乎什么都不需要。
不过有一类美食烹饪博客却是与众不同。在这种被称做“菜谱烹饪全记录”(cook-through)的博客中，博主们会挑选一些菜谱书籍，把里面所有的菜谱都尝试做一遍，并具体记录下来放到博客上。
这其中有一味“配料”是必需的：一点点疯狂精神。
凯瑞尔•布里麦尔(Carole Blymire)是华盛顿特区的一名公关咨询人员，她从去年开始就一直在写名为“家里的法国洗衣坊餐厅”(French Laundry at Home)的博客。虽然除了感恩节晚餐外，布里麦尔没有别的“实战”经验，但她仍然在努力攻克托马斯•凯勒(Thomas Keller)所着《法国洗衣坊餐厅食谱》(French Laundry Cookbook)里的约130份菜谱。凯勒的这本书也许是迄今为止烹饪难度最高的美式食谱。
没关系，布里麦尔说，我打开这书告诉自己，“咱们走着瞧。”
如今这个网站已经成为美食博客领域响当当的名字，不仅连连获奖，每天的访客人数也达到了四五千。它还成为其他菜谱烹饪全记录博客竞相效仿的对象，像贴出菜品在烹饪不同阶段的照片、并且最后还会对菜的味道做出一番评价。博客中也融入了一些个人情绪（毕竟，这是个人博客）。布里麦尔时常吹嘘自己的两个最爱：纽约市市长迈克•布隆博格(Mike Bloomberg)和熏肉。
烹饪全记录的博主们说，他们开博的目的各不相同：学习烹饪基本技巧、多掌握几道菜品的制作方法，或者只是想证明自己能够由始至终地完成一项伟大工程。

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视觉计算技术企业英伟达公司(Nvidia)的瑞恩•亚当斯(Ryan S. Adams)说，他被布里麦尔从英式菜谱《完全野兽》(The Whole Beast)起步的行为所打动，此书在烹饪界有大量拥趸。以烤冷羊脑这道菜为例，亚当斯说，要想找到愿意品尝的人，其难度有时也不会低于烹饪过程，而且采购起原料来也不那么容易。他说，我不知道到哪儿才能买到山鹬，也许我得亲自去狩猎。
在所有菜谱烹饪类博客中，最引人注目的可能要数三个选择《美食家》(Gourmet)杂志2004版《美食家菜谱》(The Gourmet Cookbook)作为攻克对象的博客。这本菜谱共有1,300多个菜品。它们的博主不仅在攀登这座饮食界“珠穆朗玛峰”很有一套，在各自的职业领域也是佼佼者。
第一位瞄准《美食家菜谱》的博客作者蒂娜•杰哈德(Teena Gerhardt)毕业于麻省理工学院(MIT)，这位数学博士如今在印第安纳大学(Indiana University)从事代数方面的研究。另外两位，凯文•凯西(Kevin Casey)是麦吉尔大学(McGill University)神经学专业的研究生，梅丽莎•帕拉迪诺(Melissa Palladino)正编写自己的食谱，这位西方美食家希望将印度药用食品引入现代食谱。
三位博主做菜速度各有不同，他们每周登出一至七份菜谱。完成这项庞大的工程不仅费时、还费钱。据估算，《美食家菜谱》所要求的全部食材开销介于3万至4万美元之间。
美食博客作者们通常不会在博客上贴出完整的菜谱配方，为的是不影响所选菜谱书籍的销量。爱好者们对这些菜谱书籍往往有很深的感情、有时甚至是景仰之情。
典型的例子就是劳瑞•伍德沃德(Laurie Woodward)。这位来自匹兹堡的母亲开通了名为“周二和多丽在一起”(Tuesdays With Dorie)的博客，主攻美国最受欢迎烘烤美食作家、美国和法国古典文学硕士多丽•格林斯潘(Dorie Greenspan)的最新烹饪力作《烘烤》(Baking)。
伍德沃德说，对于许多焙烤爱好者来说，多丽就像神一样；她这人非常好，会亲自阅读我们的博客，甚至还会在上面留言，让人欣喜若狂。
格林斯潘接受采访时说，她真的被这个博客吸引了，她将这类网站当作自己在网络世界里的又一个学习“课堂”，让像她这样的专职美食作家从中不断吸取养分。
这类网站的始祖或许要数创办于2002年的朱莉/朱莉娅项目(Julie/Julia Project)。学业失意的曼哈顿人朱莉•鲍威尔(Julie Powell)按照朱莉娅•恰尔德(Julia Child)的《掌握法式烹饪的艺术》(Mastering the Art of French Cooking)一书，把里面提到的所有菜谱从头到尾全部做了一遍。鲍威尔的博客（只有文字，没有照片）故事被写成了畅销书，并被改编成一部电影，由梅丽尔•斯特里普(Meryl Streep)主演。
今天的博主很少能获得如此巨大的成功。不过布里麦尔已经为一个酝酿中的网络美食秀节目制作了的预告短片，而且也已就出版一本菜谱进行了初步的商谈。
虽然美食博客的访客人数远不够博主们以此谋生，但博主们并不在意，他们说自己的努力在其他许多方面都取得了丰富回报。马里兰州的凯茜•艾利希(Cathy Irish)在历经三年、耗费45磅黄油和一品脱香草精后，去年11月份完成了《麦达•希特尔的甜点》(Maida Heatter's Cookies)中的所有食谱的烹饪。艾利希说，通过烹饪这个平台她结交了很多新朋友，还和其中的几个见了面。
上面提到的凯文•凯西对此也深有同感。在开始自己浩大的烹饪工程后，他听说自己的叔叔在70年代就曾用《拉鲁斯食谱》(Larousse Gastronomique)做过同样的事情。
凯西说，那时叔叔一个人默默地做，自得其乐，却没有途径与人分享，现在我们能和全世界一同分享了。
LEE GOMES
（编者按：本文作者Lee Gomes是《华尔街日报》专栏“Portals”的专栏作家，栏目内容以科技、商业及相关的主题为主。）

Former Bush Aide Stuns Many With Critical New Book

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 29, 2008; A02

Scott McClellan was the ultimate Bush loyalist. He went to work for George W. Bush when he was Texas governor in 1999, helped Bush gain the White House in 2000, and then came to Washington to defend the president for the next six years on such issues as the war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina.

But McClellan's explosive new book, which alleges that the Bush administration waged a "political propaganda campaign" in favor of the Iraq war and bungled the response to the storm that devastated the Gulf Coast, prompted a counterattack yesterday from some of his oldest political colleagues, who accused him of disloyalty and questioned his credibility.

Dana Perino, the current White House press secretary, said the president was "surprised" by McClellan's assertions. "He is puzzled, and he doesn't recognize this as the Scott McClellan that he hired and confided in and worked with for so many years," Perino said, adding that Bush was "disappointed that if he had these concerns and these thoughts, he never came to him or anyone else on the staff."

Former Bush political adviser Karl Rove compared McClellan to a "left-wing blogger," and former White House counselor Dan Bartlett told CNN it was "misguided for him to make these kind of broad accusations and draw these big conclusions about the president."

Several former Bush administration officials have written tell-all accounts. In one book published this month, retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez accuses Bush and his top advisers of "gross incompetence and dereliction of duty" for their handling of the Iraq war.

But none was as close to Bush or his inner circle as McClellan, 40, an amiable Texas native who was widely known for his cautious demeanor. He started out in politics by managing several state election campaigns in the 1990s for his mother, who became Texas comptroller, and was recruited to the governor's mansion by Bush confidante Karen Hughes.

Ari Fleischer, who served as White House press secretary before McClellan took over in 2003, said he first met McClellan in Austin in 1999 when the two worked on the Bush presidential campaign.

"That's one of the reasons this book comes as such a shock," Fleischer said. "It comes from the last person that anyone would have thought would have said these things or written these things. . . . All you can do is scratch your head when you see how far he's turned."

Trent Duffy, who worked as McClellan's deputy for more than two years, said of the avid University of Texas sports fan: "Tomorrow maybe we're going to learn he's rooting for the Oklahoma Sooners."

"Here's a man who owes his whole career to George W. Bush, and here he's stabbing him in the back and no one knows why," Duffy said. "He appears to be dancing on his political grave for cash."

McClellan, who did not respond to a request for comment yesterday, suggests in his preface that he expected a negative reaction. "My friends and former colleagues who lived and worked or are still living and working inside that bubble may not be happy with the perspective I present here," he wrote.

In the book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," McClellan says he retains great admiration for Bush but portrays the president as stubborn and isolated. Calling the Iraq war "unnecessary" and a "strategic blunder," McClellan alleges that senior administration officials began a campaign in 2002 to "aggressively sell the war," even as he and other officials insisted that all options were on the table.

He also accuses Rove of misleading him about the leak of a CIA officer's name, and he suggests that Rove and former vice presidential adviser I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby may have improperly met to discuss the case. Perino and other officials sharply criticized that assertion yesterday.

When he was press secretary, McClellan made some of the same arguments against other ex-officials that he now faces. In 2004, for example, former counterterrorism adviser Richard A. Clarke published a book sharply critical of Bush's anti-terrorism policies.

"Why, all of a sudden, if he had all these grave concerns, did he not raise these sooner?" McClellan said. "This is 1 1/2 years after he left the administration. . . . He is bringing this up in the heat of a presidential campaign. He has written a book, and he certainly wants to go out there and promote that book."

Staff writers Michael Abramowitz in Colorado Springs and Thomas E. Ricks in Washington and staff researcher Madonna Lebling in Washington contributed to this report.

May 29, 2008

Reading 1
1 Pt 2:2-5, 9-12
Beloved:
Like newborn infants, long for pure spiritual milk
so that through it you may grow into salvation,
for you have tasted that the Lord is good.
Come to him, a living stone, rejected by human beings
but chosen and precious in the sight of God,
and, like living stones,
let yourselves be built into a spiritual house
to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices
acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood,
a holy nation, a people of his own,
so that you may announce the praises of him
who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
Once you were no people
but now you are God’s people;
you had not received mercy
but now you have received mercy.
Beloved, I urge you as aliens and sojourners
to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against the soul.
Maintain good conduct among the Gentiles,
so that if they speak of you as evildoers,
they may observe your good works
and glorify God on the day of visitation.

Responsorial Psalm
100:2, 3, 4, 5
R. (2c) Come with joy into the presence of the Lord.
Sing joyfully to the LORD, all you lands;
serve the LORD with gladness;
come before him with joyful song.
R. Come with joy into the presence of the Lord.
Know that the LORD is God;
he made us, his we are;
his people, the flock he tends.
R. Come with joy into the presence of the Lord.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
his courts with praise;
Give thanks to him;
bless his name.
R. Come with joy into the presence of the Lord.
The LORD is good:
his kindness endures forever,
and his faithfulness, to all generations.
R. Come with joy into the presence of the Lord.

Gospel
Mk 10:46-52
As Jesus was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a sizable crowd,
Bartimaeus, a blind man, the son of Timaeus,
sat by the roadside begging.
On hearing that it was Jesus of Nazareth,
he began to cry out and say,
“Jesus, son of David, have pity on me.”
And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent.
But he kept calling out all the more, “Son of David, have pity on me.”
Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.”
So they called the blind man, saying to him,
“Take courage; get up, Jesus is calling you.”
He threw aside his cloak, sprang up, and came to Jesus.
Jesus said to him in reply, “What do you want me to do for you?”
The blind man replied to him, “Master, I want to see.”
Jesus told him, “Go your way; your faith has saved you.”
Immediately he received his sight
and followed him on the way.

Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States, second typical edition, Copyright © 2001, 1998, 1997, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine; Psalm refrain © 1968, 1981, 1997, International Committee on English in the Liturgy, Inc. All rights reserved. Neither this work nor any part of it may be reproduced, distributed, performed or displayed in any medium, including electronic or digital, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

By Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 28, 2008; A01

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan writes in a new memoir that the Iraq war was sold to the American people with a sophisticated "political propaganda campaign" led by President Bush and aimed at "manipulating sources of public opinion" and "downplaying the major reason for going to war."

McClellan includes the charges in a 341-page book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," that delivers a harsh look at the White House and the man he served for close to a decade. He describes Bush as demonstrating a "lack of inquisitiveness," says the White House operated in "permanent campaign" mode, and admits to having been deceived by some in the president's inner circle about the leak of a CIA operative's name.

The book, coming from a man who was a tight-lipped defender of administration aides and policy, is certain to give fuel to critics of the administration, and McClellan has harsh words for many of his past colleagues. He accuses former White House adviser Karl Rove of misleading him about his role in the CIA case. He describes Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as being deft at deflecting blame, and he calls Vice President Cheney "the magic man" who steered policy behind the scenes while leaving no fingerprints.

McClellan stops short of saying that Bush purposely lied about his reasons for invading Iraq, writing that he and his subordinates were not "employing out-and-out deception" to make their case for war in 2002.

But in a chapter titled "Selling the War," he alleges that the administration repeatedly shaded the truth and that Bush "managed the crisis in a way that almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option."

"Over that summer of 2002," he writes, "top Bush aides had outlined a strategy for carefully orchestrating the coming campaign to aggressively sell the war. . . . In the permanent campaign era, it was all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president's advantage."

McClellan, once a staunch defender of the war from the podium, comes to a stark conclusion, writing, "What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary."

McClellan resigned from the White House on April 19, 2006, after nearly three years as Bush's press secretary. The departure was part of a shake-up engineered by new Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten that also resulted in Rove surrendering his policy-management duties.

A White House spokeswoman declined to comment on the book, some contents of which were first disclosed by Politico.com. The Washington Post acquired a copy of the book yesterday, in advance of its official release Monday.

Responding to a request for comment, McClellan wrote in an e-mail: "Like many Americans, I am concerned about the poisonous atmosphere in Washington. I wanted to take readers inside the White House and provide them an open and honest look at how things went off course and what can be learned from it. Hopefully in some small way it will contribute to changing Washington for the better and move us beyond the hyper-partisan environment that has permeated Washington over the past 15 years."

The criticism of Bush in the book is striking, given that it comes from a man who followed him to Washington from Texas.

Bush is depicted as an out-of-touch leader, operating in a political bubble, who has stubbornly refused to admit mistakes. McClellan defends the president's intellect -- "Bush is plenty smart enough to be president," he writes -- but casts him as unwilling or unable to be reflective about his job.

"A more self-confident executive would be willing to acknowledge failure, to trust people's ability to forgive those who seek redemption for mistakes and show a readiness to change," he writes.

In another section, McClellan describes Bush as able to convince himself of his own spin and relates a phone call he overheard Bush having during the 2000 campaign, in which he said he could not remember whether he had used cocaine. "I remember thinking to myself, 'How can that be?' " he writes.

The former aide describes Bush as a willing participant in treating his presidency as a permanent political campaign, run in large part by his top political adviser, Rove.

"The president had promised himself that he would accomplish what his father had failed to do by winning a second term in office," he writes. "And that meant operating continually in campaign mode: never explaining, never apologizing, never retreating. Unfortunately, that strategy also had less justifiable repercussions: never reflecting, never reconsidering, never compromising. Especially not where Iraq was concerned."

McClellan has some kind words for Bush, calling him "a man of personal charm, wit and enormous political skill." He writes that the president "did not consciously set out to engage in these destructive practices. But like others before him, he chose to play the Washington game the way he found it, rather than changing the culture as he vowed to do at the outset of his campaign for the presidency."

McClellan charges that the campaign-style focus affected Bush's entire presidency. The ill-fated Air Force One flyover of New Orleans, after Hurricane Katrina struck the city, was conceived of by Rove, who was "thinking about the political perceptions" but ended up making Bush look "out of touch," he writes.

He says the White House's reaction to Katrina was more than just a public relations disaster, calling it "a failure of imagination and initiative" and the result of an administration that "let events control us." He adds: "It was a costly blunder."

McClellan admits to letting himself be deceived about the unmasking of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, which resulted in his relentless pounding by the White House press corps over the activities of Rove and of Cheney aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby in the matter.

"I could feel something fall out of me into the abyss as each reporter took a turn whacking me," he writes of the withering criticism he received as the story played out. "It was my reputation crumbling away, bit by bit." He also suggests that Rove and Libby may have worked behind closed doors to coordinate their stories about the Plame leak. Late last year, McClellan's publisher released an excerpt of the book that suggested Bush had knowledge of the leak, something that won McClellan no friends in the administration.

As McClellan departed the White House, he said: "Change can be helpful, and this is a good time and good position to help bring about change. I am ready to move on."

He choked up as he told Bush on the South Lawn, "I have given it my all, sir, and I have given you my all."

Bush responded at the time: "He handled his assignments with class, integrity. He really represents the best of his family, our state and our country. It's going to be hard to replace Scott."

Staff writer Michael Abramowitz contributed to this report.

May 28, 2008

Reading 1
1 Pt 1:18-25
Beloved:
Realize that you were ransomed from your futile conduct,
handed on by your ancestors,
not with perishable things like silver or gold
but with the precious Blood of Christ
as of a spotless unblemished Lamb.
He was known before the foundation of the world
but revealed in the final time for you,
who through him believe in God
who raised him from the dead and gave him glory,
so that your faith and hope are in God.
Since you have purified yourselves
by obedience to the truth for sincere brotherly love,
love one another intensely from a pure heart.
You have been born anew,
not from perishable but from imperishable seed,
through the living and abiding word of God, for:
“All flesh is like grass,
and all its glory like the flower of the field;
the grass withers,
and the flower wilts;
but the word of the Lord remains forever.”
This is the word that has been proclaimed to you.

Responsorial Psalm
147:12-13, 14-15, 19-20
R. (12a) Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Glorify the LORD, O Jerusalem;
praise your God, O Zion.
For he has strengthened the bars of your gates;
he has blessed your children within you.
R. Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.
or:
R. Alleluia.
He has granted peace in your borders;
with the best of wheat he fills you.
He sends forth his command to the earth;
swiftly runs his word!
R. Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.
or:
R. Alleluia.
He has proclaimed his word to Jacob,
his statutes and his ordinances to Israel.
He has not done thus for any other nation;
his ordinances he has not made known to them. Alleluia.
R. Praise the Lord, Jerusalem. or:
R. Alleluia.

Gospel
Mk 10:32-45
The disciples were on the way, going up to Jerusalem,
and Jesus went ahead of them.
They were amazed, and those who followed were afraid.
Taking the Twelve aside again, he began to tell them
what was going to happen to him.
“Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man
will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes,
and they will condemn him to death
and hand him over to the Gentiles who will mock him,
spit upon him, scourge him, and put him to death,
but after three days he will rise.”
Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee,
came to Jesus and said to him,
“Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.”
He replied, “What do you wish me to do for you?”
They answered him,
“Grant that in your glory
we may sit one at your right and the other at your left.”
Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking.
Can you drink the chalice that I drink
or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?”
They said to him, “We can.”
Jesus said to them, “The chalice that I drink, you will drink,
and with the baptism with which I am
baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right or at my left is not mine to give
but is for those for whom it has been prepared.”
When the ten heard this, they became indignant at James and John.
Jesus summoned them and said to them,
“You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles
lord it over them,
and their great ones make their authority over them felt.
But it shall not be so among you.
Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant;
whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.
For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve
and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States, second typical edition, Copyright © 2001, 1998, 1997, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine; Psalm refrain © 1968, 1981, 1997, International Committee on English in the Liturgy, Inc. All rights reserved. Neither this work nor any part of it may be reproduced, distributed, performed or displayed in any medium, including electronic or digital, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

May 27, 2008

By ERIC DASH

The auto industry is getting sideswiped by the housing crisis.

Auto lenders and banks, closing their wallets, have prevented hundreds of thousands of consumers from obtaining the financing for a car. Home equity loans, which had been used in at least one of every nine deals, when lenders were more generous, are no longer a source of easy money for many prospective buyers. And used-car prices have fallen nearly 6 percent as repossessed cars and gas-guzzling trucks and S.U.V.’s flood auction lots.

Those forces, on top of the softening economy, are putting enormous pressure on the American auto industry as it faces what may be its worst year in more than a decade. About 15 million vehicles are expected to be sold in 2008, down from 16.2 million last year, as sales reach the lowest levels since 1995, according to the marketing firm J. D. Power & Associates.

The impact on the broader American economy could be profound. Not only is the car a consumer’s biggest purchase after the home, but the auto industry remains one of nation’s most important economic engines. With less money available to bolster the industry’s growth, the businesses that support it are also facing the prospect of a sharp slowdown.

“It is a bleak picture, and it all hinges on the availability of financing,” said William Ryan, a financial analyst at Portales Partners who has followed the auto business for years. “The whole universe related to the auto industry is touched in some way — parts suppliers, manufacturers, salespeople, trucking people, the paint and metals industries. Even semiconductors.”

Within the auto sector, problems stemming from the continuing tightening of credit have already started to spread. Auto lenders like Chase, Capital One and GMAC are finding it harder and more expensive to obtain money for loans. Profits also look dimmer as the lenders absorb losses from defaults and pull back from making new loans.

Car dealers and manufacturers will probably face months of weaker profits as they offer more incentives to sell new vehicles. Luxury car sales, which provide outsize profits for auto companies, are off 13 percent from last year, according to the Autodata research firm. And consumers, facing potentially higher mortgage payments and $4-a-gallon gas, are delaying purchases of midmarket cars.

“The housing crisis, defined with the credit crisis, has really knocked consumers back on their heels,” said Michael J. Jackson, the chairman of AutoNation, the largest automobile retailer.

But the auto industry may not suffer the same severe downturn as the housing sector. One reason is that auto lenders have long issued loans expecting that vehicles, as collateral for the loans, start to lose value as soon as they are driven off the lot. In contrast, mortgage lenders during the housing boom believed that home prices would keep rising.

Still, the parallels are striking. Easy money and lax underwriting helped extend a boom for automakers from 2005 to early 2007. With Detroit pumping out new cars, consumers were encouraged to buy even though they might not have needed a new vehicle.

Now, just as in the housing sector, the auto industry is suffering, too.

Borrowers are falling behind on their car payments at a rate faster than in other recent downturns. And losses are considerably worse. Auto lenders sustained losses on about 3.4 percent of their loans in the first quarter, a rate about 30 percent higher than in 2002, according to data from Moody’s Economy.com. Even some of the most creditworthy borrowers are stressed.

Recently there have been a few small signs of improvement. But auto lenders have struggled to find investors willing to buy packages of new loans. Just as in the mortgage markets, a sterling credit rating — the bond insurer’s seal of approval — is no longer trusted.

“It’s a challenge, but it’s not a crisis,” said William F. Muir, president of GMAC, the financing arm of General Motors that is now operated as a joint venture.

As the pool of money available to auto lenders has dried up, they have cut back on making new loans. Since late last year, nearly every auto finance company has tightened its lending standards. They are forcing borrowers to put more money down. They are also demanding higher monthly payments and requiring stronger credit records and more stringent documentation.

Subprime auto lenders have been forced to pull back the most. AmeriCredit, a big subprime finance company, said it would issue about $3 billion in new auto loans this year, compared with $9.2 billion in 2007. That translates into around 340,000 fewer vehicles being financed this year. But lenders catering to less risky borrowers are also retrenching.

“Capital One is pulling back, Citi is pulling back, HSBC and Wells Fargo are pulling back,” said Mr. Ryan, the analyst. So are the finance entities that serve the major automakers, like GMAC, Chrysler Financial and Ford Motor Credit. “What you are seeing at AmeriCredit is probably happening everywhere else, but probably to a lesser degree.”

Many dealers say that buyers who would have been shoo-ins for a loan a year ago are now being turned away. Ken Somerville, business manager at Pedigo Chevrolet in Indianapolis, said the tougher standards were having a “significant impact” on his ability to help customers get financing and close a sale.

“Chances are, if we can’t help them, they’ve already been somewhere else that couldn’t either,” he said.

Some of the biggest drops in car sales have been in areas where home prices have fallen most sharply. The housing boom created thousands of jobs, robust consumer confidence and strong demand for pickup trucks. Today, that has all vanished.

As home values have declined, millions of consumers have maxed out on home equity debt. In hot markets like California, nearly 30 percent of all consumers tapped into the value of their homes to help finance their new cars, according to CNW Marketing Research. In Florida, about 20 percent used home equity loans. New car sales in both states are down about 7 percent.

Those areas are also seeing surges in repossessed vehicles. Bill Glover, a veteran repo man in Fort Meyers, Fla., says he has recovered more than 100 cars a week since October, doubling his usual business. “I’m picking up 2008s already,” he said.

In the past, Mr. Glover mostly took back cars from borrowers with sketchy credit who habitually fell behind on their car payments. But that circle has widened. “Lately what we’re picking up is crew-cab pickup trucks,” Mr. Glover said, “and anything having to do with construction.”

The rise in recovered vehicles, along with tighter loan terms and weak demand from buyers, has put pressure on the used-car market too. In April, sale prices dropped 5.9 percent from a year earlier, with S.U.V.’s and pickup trucks plummeting even more, according to the Manheim Used Vehicle Value index, a widely followed measure that was not adjusted for seasonal differences. Prices had been rising for more than four years until last fall.

Analysts say there are few signs that this downward spiral will end soon. At the Midwest Auto Auction lot in the Detroit suburbs, there were plenty of deals one recent Friday morning.

Drivers shuttled more than 180 vehicles across the auction lot in two lines as the auctioneer, Ed Dunn, wearing an ivory cowboy hat from his perch above the floor, bellowed their make, model and year.

The first car up for sale was a 2007 Lincoln MKZ luxury sedan with leather seats, which had been repossessed by a local credit union. But there were no bids. So Mr. Dunn lowered the starting price again and again.

At long last, somebody bid $13,200 for the car. Sold? Sure. But at roughly $10,000 below its Kelley Blue Book value.

Nick Bunkley contributed reporting.

May 27, 2008

By LOUIS UCHITELLE

As his logging business expanded in the pine and hardwood forests of eastern Georgia, Jesse Hendley got into trucking. He scraped together the cash gradually to acquire seven tractor-trailers so that he could not only sell timber to mills in the south, but also charge the mills for delivery.

Today, though, all seven rigs are parked. The soaring price of diesel fuel — over $4.50 a gallon from $2.50 a year ago — has stripped the profit from hauling.

If diesel prices do not decline and make that side of the business viable, Mr. Hendley says, he will have to sell his trucks, or try to sell them. That is just what thousands of other truckers are doing as they shed used rigs in what appears to be the biggest shakeout since trucking was deregulated in 1980.

“Most truckers are one major breakdown — a broken axle or a damaged engine — away from bankruptcy,” said Mr. Hendley, who laid off his last driver this month and turned to independent operators to ship his logs.

The squeeze on truckers’ profits from rising fuel costs is compounded by the slowing economy, which is reducing freight traffic. Truckers say they find it hard to impose fuel surcharges, in part because their industry has suffered for years from over-capacity as deregulation drew thousands of small operators into trucking.

John Seibert, a research analyst at the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, said “that a company seeking to ship something can put a load on a dock and some trucker will come by and pick it up, accepting the offered rate.”

Like the truckers, air freight operators are being hurt by higher fuel costs, although less so. But railroads, the third pillar in the nation’s freight infrastructure, have so far sidestepped losses, the Association of American Railroads reports. That is partly because of rising exports of coal and grain, which travel by rail to port cities, and partly because some trucking companies have turned to rail to move trailers long distances.

“By using railroads, we are achieving some economy on fuel,” said Dan England, chairman of C. R. England, a family-owned company based in Salt Lake City that runs 3,600 tractor-trailers and now regularly loads 350 of the trailers on railroad flat cars to get them from, say, Chicago to Los Angeles.

Still, 70 percent of the nation’s freight tonnage moves over the highways on trucks, much of it in the diesel-powered tractor-trailers of the nation’s 350,000 independent operators, each with a fleet of up to five vehicles, one usually driven by the proprietor. Profit margins, notoriously thin in good times, are minuscule now, and each rise in fuel prices pushes more truckers into the red.

More than 45,000 vehicles, or 3 percent of the tractor fleet, have disappeared from the highways since early last year, according to America’s Commercial Transportation Research in Columbus, Ind. That surpasses the last great shakeout, in the early 1980s, when deregulation, along with a recession, high interest rates and the second Arab oil embargo, took out 33,000 tractors.

While small operators like Mr. Hendley, of Millen, Ga., appear to be bearing the brunt of the damage, carriers with at least five trucks are also going out of business at an accelerating pace. In the first quarter, 935 of these larger operators shut down, the American Trucking Association reports, up from 385 a year earlier and the highest quarterly failure rate since the 2001 recession.

“There are so many used trucks in dealer lots now that some of the larger dealers have stopped buying them,” said James McCormack, whose Web site, www.truckertotrucker.com, markets used trucks. “From what dealers tell me, exports have become their best outlet, particularly to Russia.”

His own site listed 1,250 new ads in April from owner-operators, up from 900 in March and 450 a year earlier. Many of the owners are no longer able to lay out $1,100 to fill a 250-gallon fuel tank, which they often need to do two or three times a week. The increased outlay for fuel more than eats up the earnings of many small operators once they meet their truck loan payments and pay for insurance, maintenance, tires and the like.

“If the prices asked are low enough,” Mr. McCormack said of the advertised trucks, “dealers will pick up single units and resell them.”

Trucks are also going abroad. Nearly 24,000 used, over-the-highway tractors have been exported since early last year, the Commerce Department reports, or nearly three times the number in 2006. The weakness of the dollar makes the prices more attractive to foreigners and less so to potential domestic buyers.

The nation’s air cargo carriers are also paring their operations somewhat. Northwest Airlines, for example, dedicated 13 giant 747-200’s to carrying freight between the United States and the Far East, a business that brought in $840 million, or 7 percent of the airline’s total revenue last year. The price of jet fuel, however, has risen faster than freight rates, and Northwest recently shrank its cargo fleet to 12 planes.

The airline also dropped cargo service to Singapore and Bangkok, the least profitable markets, said Ben Hirst, a senior vice president, and soon will pull out of Taipei and Guangzhou, China.

“We are seeing demand falling while fuel costs have gone up faster than we can raise rates to cover them, despite 20 surcharges,” Mr. Hirst said.

United Parcel Service notes a shift to slower and less expensive ground shipments from air cargo. “People are trading down because of our numerous fuel surcharges,” said Norman Black, a U.P.S. spokesman.

Adding surcharges that keep up with fuel prices is hardest for small truckers. Until the deregulation of interstate trucking, the government kept shipping rates high enough to cover trucking costs, while limiting the number of truckers. After deregulation, thousands of trucks were purchased, largely on credit, by individuals who gambled that freight rates would stay high enough to cover their costs — loan payments, insurance, tires, repairs, food on the road, Social Security taxes, tolls, accountants and fees to brokers who obtain loads.

In time, fleets of fewer than 10 trucks, with the proprietor often driving one, carried much of the nation’s highway cargo.

“It’s the Horatio Alger myth,” said Michael H. Belzer, a professor of industrial relations at Wayne State University and an ex-trucker. “These are people who want to be their own bosses in an occupation that is not always economically rational.”

That marginal viability — rewarding owner-operators and many employed drivers with incomes that, even in good times, are less than $40,000 a year for 80 hours a week on the road — is now disappearing. The lumber mills paid Mr. Hendley $3.25 a mile to bring his logs from the forests. But diesel fuel, which had eaten up 25 percent of this revenue, in the end consumed 59 percent — not enough, he said, to cover other expenses and profit.

The large carriers — J. B. Hunt, Yellow Freight, C. R. England and others — with fleets in the thousands, have efficiencies beyond the reach of the small truckers. They can minimize, for example, the number of miles a truck runs empty en route to a cargo without collecting revenue. In addition, England runs refrigerator trucks, a specialty that commands higher shipping rates.

Even so, the surge in diesel fuel prices is eating steadily into profits. At England, for every dollar of revenue, 96 cents now goes to costs, up from 92.8 cents last year and 90.8 cents in 2006.

“We are going to each customer and asking them individually to agree to pay more,” Mr. England said. “This is new for us.”

Dan Little of Carrollton, Mo., does not have that much bargaining power. At 49, he has been a trucker for 30 years, driving one of the three trucks in his fleet himself and hiring drivers for the others. His rigs go empty to the Southeast, where they pick up underweight cattle and deliver them to Texas and Kansas, to be fattened for slaughter.

The roundtrip, half of it without a load, was bringing Mr. Little $2,100. When fuel costs rose early this year, he sold one rig for $20,000 and gave up the lease on the other. Paying the drivers had eliminated his profit.

Then on April 1, Mr. Little decided to park the truck he drove, falling back on the $1,200 a month that his wife, Barbara, earns helping handicapped children. “I just got fed up with being broke,” he said, “or braking an axle, as I did on one trip to Georgia, and ending up losing $300.”

He got other owner-operators to join him in a trucker protest movement — one in which a parade of drivers in tractor-trailers recently converged on Capitol Hill in Washington, seeking relief through Congress.

Mr. Seibert, whose Independent Drivers Association includes as members many of the protesters, said the drivers “think that government should not permit a situation in which the market does not pay them for their work.” He added, “It would seem that they are demanding a return to some form of regulation.”