UCLA football team will try to bounce back one more time

Bruins have been wildly inconsistent,Canada goose expedition parka with satisfying wins followed by dispiriting losses, and vice versa. Now they face biggest test yet, playing Oregon in Pac-12 title game after losing 50-0 to USC.
UCLA running back Johnathan Franklin huddled in the back of the small locker room at the Coliseum on Saturday night,Trillium parka with no way to hide his emotions.

Stunned. Shocked. Defeated. All products of USC's 50-0 victory over UCLA.

"We've got to . . . uh . . . swallow it and accept it," Franklin said,Expedition parka then acknowledged, "50-0 is a hard pill to swallow. We did not show up. We did not show up."

Days later, Franklin showed up, smiling and determined.

"You've got to let a game like that go," Franklin said Tuesday. "I still have a chip on my shoulder. I'm still angry. Nothing has changed."

But it had.

This has been an all-too-familiar personality swing for the Bruins this season. Beat down one week,Canada goose jacket making amends the next.

This time, the chore is a little harder. The double haymaker of being pummeled by their rival and losing their coach, Rick Neuheisel, in a matter of days makes rallying for Friday's Pac-12 Conference championship game against Oregon the Bruins' toughest test.

"We don't have much to lose now," quarterback Kevin Prince said. "Coach Neuheisel is definitely gone after this game. No one expects us to win. We come out and play free."

There has been a less-stress feel to practices so far this week.

Monday was full of bluster, with players seemingly determined to support Neuheisel with effort. Tuesday was more businesslike, yet active.

Neuheisel says he has sensed a focus spawned by his firing.

"There is no question it would have been a distraction if we had been asking questions about what I needed to do to keep my job," Neuheisel said. "I'm glad, in that respect, that's behind us. I would have liked the decision to go the other way, but we're all big and can handle the eventualities that happen in this sport."

Neuheisel has seen this pendulum swing too many times this season. An exhilarating victory followed by an embarrassing loss, and vice versa.

"The negative side is we have had too much practice at bouncing back," Neuheisel said. "On the positive side, I think there is a great deal of character."

Stanford methodically disassembled the Bruins, 45-19. They came back to beat Washington State the following week.

Arizona brutally dismantled the Bruins, 48-12, in a game that included an on-field brawl. They came back to beat California the following week, then posted perhaps their most important win of the season, over Arizona State.

Utah wore UCLA down, 31-6, in the snow. The Bruins came back to rout Colorado the following week. Then came the USC debacle.

"That's been the frustrating part; we can't do it on a weekly basis," Prince said.

Netflix, MGM Ink Exclusive Streaming Deal in the U.K., Ireland

Deal includes next year's 'Hobbit' movies and ups the ante in burgeoning subscription VOD land rush in Western Europe between Netflix and Amazon-owned LoveFilm

Netflix and Metro-Goldwyn Mayer Studios have signed a multiyear agreement that will allow Netflix subscribers in the United Kingdom and Ireland in early 2012 to stream exclusive first-run theatrical movies from the vaunted film studio.
Los Gatos, Calif.-based Netflix last month said it Canada Jakker would bow streaming service in the United Kingdom and Ireland early in 2012 — the service’s first foray into Europe following foreign expansion into Canada, Latin America, the Caribbean and Mexico.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The deal ups the ante in a burgeoning subscription-VOD land rush in Western Goose Jakker Europe between Netflix and Amazon-owned LoveFilm. Indeed, it’s noteworthy that the agreement departs from Netflix’s preferred (and less-expensive acquisition) strategy to license content non-exclusively.
Appearing exclusively on Netflix within one year of their theatrical release will be upcoming feature films The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: There and Back Again — the highly anticipated prequels to the Academy Award-winning "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, directed by Peter Jackson. Other titles in the deal include Zookeeper, starring Kevin James,Canada Goose and the upcoming films Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, with Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton, and 21 Jump Street, featuring Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill and Ice Cube.
With the "Hobbit" films co-produced by MGM and New Line — the latter owned by Warner Bros. and projected to be a much-needed franchise replacement for "Harry Potter" — the reality is that Netflix will Canada Goose Jakke have exclusive rights to a Warner franchise it would never get in the United States. Instead, the films' domestic rights would likely fall to Warner Home Video and Time Warner-owned HBO, among other non SVOD channels. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey launches theatrically Dec. 14, 2012.
In addition, MGM catalog titles will also be available, including Capote, Fargo, The Usual Suspects, West Side Story and The Amityville Horror, among others.
“We are excited to be extending our relationship with MGM from the U.S. to these important markets and proud to be the exclusive home for their films in the traditional Pay TV window,” said Netflix CCO Ted Sarandos in a statement.

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The Cain recipe: enthusiasm, stamina and the ‘next thing’

The 40-year-old man who arrived at the Omaha headquarters of Godfather’s Pizza to become its fourth president in as many years had never visited Nebraska and knew little about pizza.

Herman Cain had been a rising star at Pillsbury, a computer scientist and mathematician turned executive who had overseen 450 Burger Kings around Philadelphia, turning the under­performing region into one of the company’s most profitable.
Cain’s performance there caught the eye of top managers at Pillsbury, who tapped him in 1986 to take over their newly purchased Godfather’s Pizza subsidiary.

A quarter-century later, as Cain has clawed his way toward the top of the Republican presidential field, he cites his tenure as head of Godfather’s as the central example of his leadership ability. Just as he turned around that floundering business, he suggests, so too could he reverse the country’s sagging fortunes as its chief executive.

Cain’s approach at Godfather’s was one part business basics, one part theatrics and two parts enthusiasm and stamina. In nearly a decade at the helm of the company, he proved himself a charismatic leader and gifted orator. To some employees, he seemed more focused on broad strategy goals than the workaday details of the business, and yet former colleagues recall the frequent sight of him in a busy pizza parlor — jacket off, sleeves rolled up, making pies or cleaning tables.

Cain focused on boosting morale and pursued a strategy aimed at revitalizing the battered company, partly through laying off hundreds of workers. While he had early successes, he later struggled. And then he moved on.

At its peak in the early 1980s, Godfather’s had more than 900 locations and more than $300 million in annual sales. By the time Cain arrived, the growth had halted. Profit was declining. Morale had plummeted.

Cain has said on multiple occasions that the company he found “had one foot in the grave and another on a banana peel.” It’s unclear whether the situation was quite so dire. Cain told the Omaha World-Herald just after he started in 1986: “Godfather’s is not dead. We’re alive and well.”

Nobody disputes that the company faced serious problems.

“Right before Herman came aboard, it was completely demoralized. Culturally, it was devastated,” recalled Larry Uhl, a marketing manager who had arrived years earlier. “Everybody was a little suspicious of him at first,” he added, noting that several presidents had come and gone, and that Cain seemed at first like just another corporate suit. But Uhl said he differed from his predecessors. “He was committed, and he knew how to get other people committed. There was this sense of urgency he had.”

Dishing up spirit

From his first day, Cain gave regular and rousing speeches — peppered with adages that he has revived on the campaign trail — urging everyone at the company to think big and share in his vision of making Godfather’s the No. 1 pizza chain in the world. “If you truly do dream of being a part of that achievement, your creative energies will be unleashed and unstoppable,” he said in a speech to employees and franchisees the month after he arrived.
Charles Henderson, who worked with Cain at Burger King and followed him to Omaha to head marketing, said Cain had a little preacher in him. “He’s very, very inspiring. The guy can convince you to run through a wall,” Henderson said.

Under pressure to produce quick results, Cain recruited more than half a dozen executives he had known at Pillsbury and Burger King.
He hired an advertising firm that had done work for Burger King to revamp Godfather’s image. The new campaign showed people suffering a “pizza emergency” that only Godfather’s could answer. One 30-second spot, for instance, showed an office secretary overcome with a pizza craving just before her lunch break. Everywhere she looks — a pie chart on her computer, the space between the hands of the clock on the wall — she sees pizza. She dashes to a Godfather’s.

Cain had a 100-day plan for turning the company around and carried it with him in a binder. He held a string of one-on-one meetings with employees and collected suggestions. From the list, he plucked ideas such as the “big value” of two pizzas for $12, as well as the “Hot Slice,” a lunchtime product meant to compete with Pizza Hut’s personal pan pizza. He introduced home delivery in certain markets. He tink­ered with the crust recipe.

Cain closed scores of low-performing stores, eliminating hundreds of jobs. He settled pending lawsuits with franchisees who had alleged that the company hadn’t honored its agreements with them, but he also warned some other franchisees to improve or update their stores, or else get left behind. As part of a career-long penchant for acronyms and easily digestible slogans — most famously his “9-9-9” tax plan offered years later — he encouraged even entry-level employees to “S.I.N.” when customers complained: Solve. It. Now.

He and his new team endured brutal hours. More than once on Sunday afternoons, the hallways of the company’s headquarters off West Dodge Road echoed with Cain’s booming baritone, as he practiced gospel tunes while he worked.

“We actually came dressed kind of like Army commandos — green shirts, green baseball caps with a target on it,” recalled Larry Gadola, a vice president of development recruited by Cain. The word “focus” was printed in the center of the target. “We were on a mission.”

Although Cain got rid of some managers at Godfather’s, he came to rely heavily on longtime executive Ronald Gartlan, who had a background in accounting and finance and knew the company inside and out. While Cain became the public face of the company, often traveling to stores around the country and maintaining a high profile, Gartlan watched over day-to-day operations. He focused on the sales numbers and kept tabs on the company’s hundreds of franchisees. He knew their likes and dislikes, their quirks and their complaints.

“Herman had the vision of what the company needed to do to go forward,” said Spencer Wiggins, who headed human resources under Cain. “Ron Gartlan, he was a nuts-and-bolts guy.”

Tim McMahon, now a business professor at Creighton University, was the original marketing director for Godfather’s. He later worked for some of its major franchisees. McMahon said Gartlan “kept the place stable financially, kept the rigor in place, while Herman kept the spirit high.”

Branson Dedicates Space Terminal

UPHAM, New Mexico—With his usual flair, British billionaire Richard Branson rappelled from a balcony, shook up a big bottle of sparkling wine and took a swig while christening the world's first built-from-scratch commercial spaceport on Monday.

Mr. Branson's Virgin Galactic will stage its commercial space-tourism venture from Spaceport America in a remote patch of desert in southern New Mexico.
He was joined by Gov. Susana Martinez, astronaut Buzz Aldrin and scores of would-be space travelers at the terminal-hangar for the dedication. It had been nearly a year since Mr. Branson was in New Mexico to celebrate the completion of the runway.

"The building is absolutely magnificent," he said. "It is literally out of this world, and that's what we were aiming at creating."

With the spaceport and mothership completed, the company is now finalizing its rocket tests.


WhiteKnightTwo, carrying SpaceShipTwo, outside the Spaceport America Terminal Hangar Facility Monday

"We're ticking the final boxes on the way to space," Mr. Branson said.

He hopes enough powered test flights of Virgin Galactic's sleek spacecraft can be completed by the end of 2012 to start commercial suborbital flights from the spaceport soon after. More than 450 people have purchased tickets to fly with Virgin Galactic. About 150 of them attended the ceremony.

Before getting to enter the hangar, the crowd was treated to a flyover by WhiteKnightTwo, the mothership that one day will help take space tourists on suborbital flights.

The $209 million taxpayer-financed spaceport will be a launch station for people and payloads on the rocket ships being developed for Virgin Galactic.

With custom metal paneling and massive panes of glass, the state-of-the-art terminal rises from the desert floor to face the nearly concrete runway nearly two miles (3.2 kilometers) long. The building will house Virgin Galactic's spacecraft, mission control and a preparation area for travelers.

It was six years ago that Virgin Galactic and New Mexico officials reached an agreement to build the spaceport. Officials said the completion of the terminal and hangar marks another major milestone that brings the dream of rocketing tourists into space closer to reality.

Still, the question many are asking is when the first ships will launch from Spaceport America. It was Mr. Branson who once predicted the maiden passenger flight would take off in 2007.

Mr. Branson acknowledged the wait in an interview Monday. He and his two children will be among the first to fly, and he said he wants to ensure he can bring them home safely.

"We want to be sure we've really tested the craft through and through before turning it over to the astronauts who bought tickets to go up," he said. "If it takes a bit longer, we'll take a little bit longer."


Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, presenting Richard Branson with a plaque from Virgin Galactic's London offices during a ceremony at Spaceport America Monday.

Commercial service will start up after the company gets a license from the Federal Aviation Administration. NASA has already signed a $4.5 million contract with the company for up to three chartered research flights.

Tickets for rides aboard WhiteKnightTwo cost $200,000. The 2 1/2-hour flights will include about five minutes of weightlessness and views of Earth that until now only astronauts have been able to experience.

Like development of the spacecraft, construction of the 110,152-square-foot (10,233-square-meter) terminal and hangar facility has been complicated. There were delays, building-code problems, contractor disputes and costly change orders.

State officials blamed the unprecedented nature of the project as well as its remote location, the lack of infrastructure and the weather.

New Mexico Spaceport Authority executive director Christine Anderson arrived at the spaceport a day early to find WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo stowed in the hangar.

"This was quite a feat," she said of the construction, joking with the crowd that she was glad the spacecraft fit in the cavernous hangar.

The building was designed by United Kingdom-based Foster + Partners, along with URS Corp. and New Mexico architects SMPC.

Virgin Galactic and officials with the New Mexico Spaceport Authority are touting the design as green. It uses geothermal energy; tubes running through the earthen berm surrounding part of the building help cool the interior; and natural ventilation can be used during mild seasons.

Hollande Wins Runoff to Become Socialist Candidate for French Presidency

PARIS — More than six months before the French presidential election, the main candidates appear to be set, with François Hollande, 57, winning a runoff election on Sunday to become the Socialist Party’s presidential candidate.
With about 2.2 million of 2.7 million votes counted, Mr. Hollande, a lawyer and career politician, was ahead of the party leader, Martine Aubry, by about 56 percent to 44 percent in their second-round contest.

Ms. Aubry conceded defeat in a televised statement, saying she wanted “to warmly salute the victory of François Hollande” and calling for party unity “around our candidate.”

The incumbent, President Nicolas Sarkozy, has yet to announce his candidacy, concentrating on his duties with the long crisis over the euro, budget deficits and the solidity of French and European banks. He is to attend a vital European Union summit meeting this month and to preside over a summit of the Group of 20 economies early next month in the southern city of Cannes. Even if he plans to seek a second five-year term — and his aides are preparing for him to do so — he may not formally announce until early next year. The first round of the presidential election is scheduled for April 22.

Mr. Sarkozy trails Mr. Hollande in opinion polls, but now that he has a specific opponent, the campaigning, overt or otherwise, will start in earnest. Other candidates are expected to run as well, including Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front, and candidates from smaller environmental and centrist parties. But it is thought likely that Mr. Sarkozy and Mr. Hollande will face off in the final round on May 6.

The Socialists are eager for power. Since 1958, they have elected only one president, François Mitterrand, and he left office more than 16 years ago. But with Mr. Sarkozy’s popularity so low, the Socialists can taste victory, and in France the near-royal presidency carries with it many spoils. A loss this time would cause an enormous internal fight.

Mr. Hollande, born in Rouen, the son of a doctor and a social worker, has said the country needs “a normal president,” a backhanded slap at Mr. Sarkozy, who has a driven, relentless personality and who has embroiled the French more in his personal life than many people find comfortable. At 56, he is awaiting the birth of a child with his third wife, the singer Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.

Mr. Hollande is intelligent and witty, educated at France’s most elite schools, but inexperienced in government, as his rivals constantly point out. He was Ms. Aubry’s predecessor as leader of the Socialist Party and was close to Ms. Aubry’s father, Jacques Delors, but he has never been a government minister or run a business. He is a member of Parliament and the president of the regional department of Corrèze, a rural area best known for its connections to former President Jacques Chirac, with whom Mr. Hollande has warm relations.

Mr. Hollande inherited a region steeped in debts, many of them from Chirac-initiated infrastructure projects, and is considered to have managed the budget well. But Corrèze is one of the smallest departments in France and does not really compare with governing a nation that sits on the United Nations Security Council, possesses nuclear weapons and is the only country in the world, besides the United States, to have a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

Foreign affairs barely entered the Socialist Party’s primary and its televised debates, and Mr. Hollande is considered something of a work in progress. But foreign policy, which Mr. Sarkozy considers one of his strengths, is a prime prerogative of the French president.

The Socialist contest was always an odd one, because the putative favorite for the nomination — Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former managing director of the International Monetary Fund — did not run after he was arrested on charges of attempted rape in New York. The charges were dropped, but Mr. Strauss-Kahn retreated from political life.

Ms. Aubry had made a deal with Mr. Strauss-Kahn that she would not run if he did, so in a sense she was an accidental candidate. Mr. Hollande had declared his candidacy from the outset, positioning himself as the main rival to Mr. Strauss-Kahn. A centrist, emollient figure, Mr. Hollande was the natural inheritor of those who supported the center-right Strauss-Kahn, but Ms. Aubry attacked him as “soft” and “vague.”

Mr. Hollande for many years was the partner of Ségolène Royal — his rival for the Socialist candidacy in 2007, which she won — and they have four children together. They separated that year, and Mr. Hollande now lives with a political journalist, Valérie Trierweiler, 46, who is divorced with three children. Ms. Trierweiler is said to not relish the idea of being the partner to a French president. This month the government denied reports that it was investigating her private life.

This primary was a departure for the Socialists, in that voting was open to any French citizen who paid at least one euro ($1.39) and signed a pledge to support “the values of the left and of the republic.”

About 2.7 million people voted on Oct. 9, when Mr. Hollande won 39 percent of the vote to Ms. Aubry’s 31 percent, forcing a runoff. About the same number, 2.7 million, are thought to have voted in Sunday’s second round. By comparison, more than 36.7 million people voted in the first round of the 2007 presidential contest.

Still, the Socialists called the primary a democratic advance, contrasting it to the backroom deals that resulted in Mr. Sarkozy’s becoming the candidate of his party. While the number of voters in this primary may have been relatively modest, many more watched last Wednesday’s televised Socialist debate.

The Tea Party loses another round

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Dana Milbank

Dana Milbank
    Opinion Writer

The Tea Party loses another round

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By Dana Milbank, Thursday, October 13, 6:23 AM

It was a(nother) great day to be a member of the Washington elite.

On Wednesday afternoon, the House was steamrolling toward passage of a trio of free-trade agreements without a whisper of objection from the Republican side. Finally, hours into the debate, Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) rose to appeal to his fellow Tea Partyers to heed the people who elected them.
“Here we have roughly 9.1 percent unemployment in this country, due in no small part to the Washington elite jamming these job-destroying trade agreements down our throats,” Jones pleaded on the House floor. “It’s time we started listening to the will of the American people, doing what’s in the best interest of the American people, not in the best interest of the foreign nationals who desperately want to take our jobs.”

It was a passionate speech but useless. Lawmakers, including the overwhelming majority of Tea Party Republicans, voted in support of the three trade deals, which had been at the top of corporate America’s wish list.

That was just one of the day’s party favors for corporations. Hours earlier, House Speaker John Boehner made clear he would guard the corporate elite’s interests in avoiding a trade war with China. He refused to take up a bill that would have punished China for its currency ma­nipu­la­tion, saying he had “grave concerns.” (The bill would have passed easily if it had the chance.)

Boehner and his Republican colleagues aren’t necessarily wrong in their desire to expand trade with Colombia, Panama and South Korea, as they did Wednesday, or to prevent a tit-for-tat with China. But the Republican support for the free-trade deals, and the leadership’s refusal to consider the China legislation, show where the power still resides in Washington.

For all the talk of populist foment – the Tea Party on the right and the new Occupy Wall Street movement on the left – business interests remain firmly in control. Forced to choose between their voters and their donors, lawmakers don’t hesitate before choosing the latter.

There is little doubt about where the Tea Party faithful stands on free trade. A year ago, a Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll found that 61 percent of Tea Party supporters thought free-trade agreements had hurt the country, compared to 53 percent of Americans overall who held that view. Shortly after that, a Pew Research Center poll found that only 24 percent of Tea Party supporters thought free-trade agreements were good for America.

Such sentiments supported Sen. Lindsey Graham’s position when the South Carolina Republican argued Wednesday afternoon that House Republican leaders should take up the China-punishing bill, which cleared the Senate with 63 votes on Tuesday. “It is very important that House Republican leadership allow a vote on this legislation,” Graham said at a news conference with fellow Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.) and three Democratic colleagues. Those trying to avoid a House vote are “miscalculating where the country is on this issue,” he said.

Of course, Boehner et al. haven’t miscalculated at all. They aren’t scheduling a vote precisely because they know the anti-China sentiment would prevail. Graham gave a more accurate assessment of the situation when he said: “We’re opposed by a lot of people who have an interest in keeping the status quo.”

Some Tea Party Republicans in the House, such as Rep. Allen West (Fla.), joined the call for a vote on the China bill, but Boehner has no plans for the “dangerous” legislation. “What I don’t believe is appropriate is for the Congress of the United States to take this issue up and to do it within a legislative forum,” he told reporters Wednesday. He warned of a “very severe risk of a trade war.”

A similar division has appeared among Democrats over the free-trade bills. Rep. Michael Michaud (D-Maine) complained on the floor that the trade legislation “won’t do anything to reduce our 9 percent unemployment, but the big companies and the banks want it, so President Obama is going to give in to the Washington elite once again.”

Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur (Ohio) actually praised the Tea Party as she denounced lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. “Is anybody paying attention?” she demanded. “This is just another example of powerful Washington elites being totally out of step with Main Street and the American people.” Beckoning to the Republican side and then to the Democratic side, she said: “I’m proud of the Tea Partyers who are out there organizing, and I’m proud of the Occupy Wall Street people because they’re saying you folks you are out of step up here in Washington.”

They may be out of step with their constituents. But they’re perfectly aligned with the people who fund their campaigns.