BY BRIAN MITCHELL

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY

Posted 12/21/2006

Former Virginia Gov. James Gilmore added his name to the list of GOP White House hopefuls this week, saying the field lacks a real conservative capable of winning.

Gilmore announced he was mulling a run in several interviews.

“There is no committed conservative in this race who can put together a national campaign. I can do that,” he told the Washington Post.

He brings to seven the number of Republicans who have said they will run or will consider running.

Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback announced earlier this month that he would explore running.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich also said recently he may run if the field does not produce a strong leader by Labor Day.

Moderate Response

Heretofore the field has been dominated by three moderates: Arizona Sen. John McCain, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and outgoing Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

McCain and Giuliani have topped most polls. Both bested all top Democrats in a recent Rasmussen poll.

Giuliani had the best favorability rating 71% vs. McCain’s 59%.

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama led Democrats in favorability with 52% vs. 50% for former Vice President Al Gore, 48% for New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and 47% for former Sen. John Edwards.

Neither McCain nor Giuliani excites GOP conservatives, who also question Romney’s conversion on abortion and gay rights.

Hence the growing ranks of volunteer alternatives, each appealing to a different kind of conservative.

Gilmore touts himself as a tax-cutter. As governor, he opposed Internet taxation and pushed through a repeal of Virginia’s hated auto tax.

As head of the Republican National Committee in President Bush’s first year in office, he fell out with the White House over spending.

But he’s been out of the public eye for years, and his fame as governor has been eclipsed by that of his successor, Democrat Mark Warner.

“Probably 95%-plus of conservative decision makers, the key people in the Republican nominating process, don’t know Gilmore,” said Richard Viguerie, a veteran conservative activist and author of “Conservatives Betrayed.”

Brownback is counting on social conservatives. He won his seat in 1996 vowing to “reduce, reform and return” reduce the size of government, reform Congress and return to traditional values.

Limited-government conservatives say he hasn’t done much to reduce or reform.

“He’s a lot like Bush,” said GOP pollster Michael McKenna. “He sees a problem and his first inclination is to toss money at it.”

Calif. Rep. Duncan Hunter, who headed the House Armed Services Committee, is a defense hawk who has differed with Bush over trade and immigration.

Winning the White House from the House of Representatives is considered a political impossibility. Few congressmen can claim a base big enough to do it.

He’s No Reagan

And even Hunter doesn’t meet what Viguerie calls the Goldwater-Reagan test.

Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan seized the GOP’s conservative wing by speaking out against party leaders. Goldwater accused President Eisenhower of running a “dime-store New Deal.” Reagan took issue with President Ford’s Panama Canal giveaway.

“Where were these Republican candidates who want our support when we needed them to stand up and speak truth to power?” Viguerie asked. “I didn’t see them doing any of that.”

One Republican who could credibly cross the White House on its greatest weakness Iraq is Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel.

But Hagel hasn’t said he’ll run or done much to distinguish himself from the candidates. One leading influential activist described Hagel as “Bush without the war.”

The lack of a conservative champion ups the odds that Southern Republicans will go with the most conservative of the leading moderates.

“They like a conservative, but they don’t necessarily support the most conservative candidate,” said Hastings Wyman, editor of the Southern Political Report.

Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan both lost in South Carolina, Wyman pointed out.

The GOP has several strong governors, but none has yet to offer himself. Two of the best possibilities suffer from guilt by association.

“If Jeb Bush’s name was Joe Smith and he was finishing his second successful term as governor of Florida, having reformed education and welfare and juvenile justice in the state, he would by the nominee by acclamation,” McKenna said.

Jeb Bush this week told Spanish-language reporters, “No tengo futuro (I have no future).”

The same goes for Texas Gov. Rick Perry. He wins higher marks from state conservatives than Bush did as governor, but being from Texas could be a liability in 2008.

That leaves the field open for a moderate maverick like McCain, who has the establishment support he lacked in 2000.

“If he comes into the South Carolina primary having done well in Iowa and New Hampshire, then I think he’ll be OK,” Wyman said. “He’s got some strong support there, but he also has a lot of people who don’t like him.”

A BIG rise in the number of female firefighters has left some stations in the Lothians struggling to provide enough changing rooms for women.

The number of full-time female fire staff working in Lothian and Borders has rocketed by more than a third in three years.

One in three of all female firefighters in Scotland are now based in the area - more than any other area in the country.

But union leaders and staff say the intake has put pressure on some stations that have inadequate female changing rooms.

Lothian and Borders Fire and Rescue Service now employs 39 women on a full-time basis at “ground level”, a 35 per cent increase in only five years.

One firefighter says that most stations in the city have only one shower and one toilet for women - meaning there are often queues for the facilities.

Denise Christie, 34, who is based at Tollcross Fire Station where six other women are based, has worked for the fire service for ten years and was one of the earliest recruits.

Until last year, the station had only one shower and toilet for seven women to share. But extensive improvement work was carried out in May and it now has four separate showers and toilets.

Ms Christie wants to see other stations meet the same criteria as Tollcross. She said: “The fire service, especially in Lothian and Borders, has done so well in getting women numbers up. But if they want to retain them they need to improve the facilities.”

Gavin Barrie, the Lothian and Borders branch chairman of the Fire Brigade Union, said:

“The fire stations still need to be modernised and that adds an additional financial pressure.

“More work needs to be done to make sure as many people as possible realise this is a job for both sexes. Facilities like changing rooms are an important part.”

Lothian and Borders Fire and Rescue has applied to the Scottish Executive for a grant of 180,000 to manage issues to do with “dignity and disabilities” at its stations. It is awaits a decision.

Wayne McCollin, an assistant chief fire officer said: “Fire stations were not built with facilities for women and we are always trying to improve the facilities we have. Every station now has facilities for female employees and we are part of the way through a programme of improvements to these. It does take time but we are determined to get the right facilities in.”

He also said that the number of female firefighters now working in the area is a reflection of the amount of work that has gone into attracting more applications from women.

He said: “It is a gradual process because we have a very low turnover of staff and people often tend to work for us for 30 years. You can’t change the selection process, but you can change the number of applicants, and that is what we have been trying to do.”

Ken Harrold, convener of the Lothian and Borders Fire Board, said: “It is a firm policy as a fire board that we should attempt to increase female firefighter numbers.

“But we don’t want it to be tokenism. We want to go out there and speak to women and explain why they can join. But they will only be employed if they meet the intellectual, mental and physical rigours that the job requires.

“We are moving to ensure that every station has good facilities for women and that is an ongoing process. We’ve come a long way in ten years and we want to continue that.”

Related topic

- http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=544
http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=544

SYDNEY (XFN-ASIA) - Retail sales in January rose a seasonally adjusted 0.9 pct from December to 18.621 bln aud, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said.

The increase was above the market consensus forecast for a 0.5 pct rise and followed a 0.2 pct gain in retail sales in December from November, revised down from the earlier estimate of a 0.3 pct increase.

Compared to a year earlier, retail sales were 6.6 pct higher in January.

Household goods had the highest increase in January, up 2.9 pct, while food sales rose 1.1 pct, department store sales increased 0.7 pct, hospitality and services sales gained 0.5 pct and clothing and soft goods sales rose 0.4 pct.

However, recreational goods sales dropped 2.4 pct during the month and other retail sales fell 0.5 pct.

The ABS released the following table:

January December November

(in bln aud)

Adjusted 18.621 18.457 18.414

Trend 18.571 18.496 18.418

Original 18.239 23.636 19.223

(1 usd = 1.28 aud)

paul.daniel@xfn.com

For more information and to contact AFX: www.afxnews.com and www.afxpress.com

Astronomers are watching a galaxy rip to shreds, a finding that could help reveal how galaxies go from stellar riches to rags.

While looking at the galaxy cluster Abell 2667 with the http://www.space.com/hubblespacetelescope/, scientists found a http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/hubble_bar_010302.html which they nicknamed the Comet Galaxy.

The gas and http://www.space.com/stars/ of the Comet Galaxy moving through the cluster at speeds of more than 2 million mph are being stripped away by the tidal forces of the cluster. Also, the pressure of the clusters scorching gas plasma known as ram pressure stripping is adding to the damage.

This unique galaxy, situated 3.2 billion light-years from Earth, has an extended stream of bright blue knots and diffuse wisps of young stars driven away by the tidal forces and the ram pressure stripping of the hot dense gas, said Jean-Paul Kneib, a study collaborator from the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille.

Galaxies come in many shapes and sizes. Elliptical galaxies generally have little gas and dust and mainly consist of old stars. Unlike spiral galaxies, which are generally found in isolation, elliptical galaxies are spotted in the center of crowded galaxy clusters.

Up until now, its been a mystery as to how a gas-rich spiral galaxy evolves into a gas-poor irregular galaxy or a gas-poor elliptical galaxy. Also, when the http://www.space.com/universe/ was half its present age, only one in five galaxies was a gas-poor elliptical galaxy. This has left astronomers wondering where all of the present day elliptical galaxies came from.

Elliptical galaxies, scientists suspect, are transformation products of other types of galaxies, something no one has seen because the process takes billions of years. What they are observing now is some 200 million years into such a process.

By combining Hubble observations with various ground- and space-based http://www.space.com/telescope/, we have been able to shed some light on the evolutionary history of galaxies, said study team leader Luca Cortese of Cardiff University.

The Comet Galaxy with a little more mass than the http://www.space.com/milkyway/ will eventually lose its battle against the tidal forces and pressures of the hot plasma acting on it and end up a gas-poor galaxy with a collection of old stars.

Millions of now homeless stars have been snatched away from their mother galaxy, which will lead the galaxy to age prematurely, said study co-investigator Giovanni Covone of Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte.

BY PETE BARLAS

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY

Posted 1/31/2007

A few, but just a few, technology companies plan to play on Super Bowl Sunday.

In keeping with the conservative trend that followed the dot-com crash, only five tech and telecom companies are willing to gamble millions of dollars to join the sponsor roster of this year’s big game almost always the most-watched TV show of the year.

As of Wednesday, only Hewlett-Packard, () Salesgenie.com, CareerBuilder.com, GoDaddy.com and Sprint Nextel () had agreed to suit up for Super Bowl XLI in Miami.

Some tech companies could still grab one of the few remaining time slots. Microsoft () is one, says John Bogusz, executive vice president of sports sales and marketing for CBS, which is broadcasting the game.

“We have been talking to a couple of tech guys, but we’re still talking,” he said.

Among this year’s players, HP and Salesgenie, a unit of InfoUSA, () are rookies. The other three are vets.

Times have changed. For Super Bowl XXXIV, played Jan. 30, 2000, near the peak of the Internet bubble, 17 of the 36 sponsors were tech or Internet-related companies. A few of those companies, including Pets.com and Computer.com, hadn’t yet managed to make any appreciable profits, and they’re long gone.

140 Million Viewers

Companies have to pay big to play in the big bowl. The price of a 30-second ad in the first quarter the most coveted spot costs $2.6 million.

Still, 141.4 million people worldwide tuned in to watch last year’s Super Bowl, up from 133.7 million the previous year. No other single TV broadcast carries the same clout, says Thomas Harpointer, chief executive of AIS Media, a Web marketing and e-commerce development firm.

“The Super Bowl is unique because the advertisers are getting access to an audience they may normally not have access to,” he said. “Even my wife, who is not a football fan, is going to watch the Super Bowl.”

The size of that audience is why HP will run an ad in the fourth quarter touting its computer products, says David Roman, vice president of worldwide communications for the HP personal systems group.

“The Super Bowl is so different because the commercials are almost as important as the game,” he said. “We are trying to position HP in the PC space in a much stronger way than we have done in the past.”

On Sunday, InfoUSA will be making a strong play. The marketing company bought three spots to promote Salesgenie.com, which sells sales leads online to small businesses. Salesgenie is also a co-sponsor of the pregame show. The company won’t say what it’s spending overall, but it would seem to be several million dollars at least.

Vinod Gupta, chief executive of InfoUSA, says most of the nation’s salespeople will tune in either to see the ads, the game or both.

“Our potential market is 30 million salespeople, entrepreneurs, small-business owners and executives and most of them watch the Super Bowl,” he said. “So this is a cost-effective way to reach that entire market.”

The returning tech vets are convinced the Super Bowl ads score. GoDaddy, known for its controversial ads, has paid for three 30-second spots. This is the third year at the big game for the company, which hosts Web sites and is a leading issuer of Web addresses, also called domain names.

Last year, traffic to GoDaddy’s Web site more than doubled to 4 million unique visitors in the month of February, says Nielsen/NetRatings, a research firm.

In the ensuing months, GoDaddy says its domain name market share rose to 32% from 25%.

This year the company hopes for a repeat, says CEO Bob Parsons.

“We don’t know what the impact is going to be I just think we will get a boost,” he said.

Sprint’s Content Focus

CareerBuilder, an online employment service, is also back for a third time.

In 2006, traffic to CareerBuilder’s Web site averaged 14 million visitors a month, far ahead of its nearest rival, Monster Worldwide, () which is hovering near 9 million a month, Nielsen says.

Job postings and sales are also up, says Cynthia McIntyre, CareerBuilder’s senior director of advertising. “You can’t measure it just from the Super Bowl, but we definitely have seen a lift,” she said.

Sprint Nextel is returning for the second year in a row, but at a reduced volume.

The wireless carrier will have one 30-second ad in the second quarter. A year ago, Sprint sponsored the Super Bowl halftime show and ran two ads. But this doesn’t represent a pullback, says Angie Read, a Sprint spokeswoman.

Last year, Sprint used the Super Bowl to promote its recent merger with Nextel. This year, the company is focusing not on ads but on the NFL-related services it’s bringing to its cell phone customers, including statistics and game highlights, Read says.

“The key for us this year (for the Super Bowl) is providing exclusive content about the game (for our mobile customers),” she said.

During the dot-com boom, some Internet companies were known to spend virtually their entire marketing budgets on the bowl. That’s no longer the case. CareerBuilder’s annual ad budget is $250 million. InfoUSA spends $40 million a year on marketing Salesgenie.com and its small-business group.

That’s good, says Web marketer Harpointer, who repeats the adage: If you have to ask how much it is, you can’t afford it.

“You should have enough capital to be able to afford for it to not work and still have a way of recouping that loss,” he said.