The USPS in T-R-O-U-B-L-E, Oprah's colossal mistake and Jessica Simpson bids farwell to being hot

- Ruh-roh. It’s never a good sign when any entity, government or otherwise, reports a $3.5 billion loss in its most recent quarter. When that entity is the U.S. Postal Service, you can see why I’m pulling out Scooby Doo’s quote of woe to assess the situation. With mail volume declining rapidly and retiree health car costs skyrocketing, the USPS is struggling financially. As a self-supporting government agency that receives no tax dollars, you can see where a 1.8-percent decline in overall operating revenue during the fiscal 2010 third quarter compared to a year earlier would be an issue. While revenues of $16 billion would seem to be a decent chunk of change, those dollars are offset by a 4.2-percent increase in operating expenses, up to $19.5 billion. Making matters worse, the quarterly loss was the fourteenth in the last sixteen quarters, the postal service said. "A significant portion of USPS losses in the past few years has been due to an unprecedented decline in mail volume -- down more than 20% since 2007," the USPS said in a statement. "The replacement of letter mail and business-transaction mail by electronic alternatives continues to cause downward pressure on mail volume." In other words, blame e-mail for the fact that during the third quarter alone, mail volume slipped 1.7% to 40.9 billion pieces. The USPS relies entirely on the sale of postage-related products and services to generate revenue, which means that any decline in mail volume is a huge hit. If, as the USPS predicts, total mail volume falls more than 5 percent on an annual basis for the 2010 fiscal year, that would be a total disaster. Compounding the service’s woes is a federal law passed in 2006 that requires the Post Office to pay between $5.4 and $5.8 billion into its prepaid retiree health benefits each year. USPS chief financial officer Joseph Corbett said making the $5.5 billion payment that will come due to the retiree fund at the end of the current fiscal year (Sept. 30) will threaten the agency's cash flow for the next fiscal year. "Given current trends, we will not be able to pay all 2011 obligations," Corbett said. "Despite ongoing aggressive cost reductions totaling over $10 billion in the last three years, it is clear that a liquidity problem is looming and must be addressed through fundamental changes requiring legislation and changes to contracts." So what ideas are out there to help reduce costs and keep the USPS afloat? Well, already the organization has reduced total work hours by 63 million -- equivalent to 36,000 full-time employees -- this year to match lower mail volume. Even that hasn’t been enough to prevent a total loss of $5.4 billion so far in 2010, 13 percent more than what the agency lost during the first three quarter of fiscal 2009. The forecast for the next decade is even bleaker, as earlier this year, the USPS estimated that it will incur about $238 billion in losses in the next 10 years if Congress doesn't allow it to revise its antiquated business model. "Securing the fiscal stability of the Postal Service will require continued efforts in all of these areas, as well as further review of retiree health benefit prefunding," said postmaster general John Potter. "It also will require that the Postal Service gain flexibility within the law to move toward five-day delivery, to adjust our network as needed, to develop new products the market demands, and to work with our unions to meet the challenges ahead.” Sounds like a dire situation and one with no easy fix, ruh-roh………

- America, we have a race. A day after Oprah Winfrey announced a colossal mistake in her decision to hire twice-failed TV personality, failed magazine publisher and overall crass, classless and detestable human being Rosie O’Donnell to host a show on Oprah’s new OWN network starting next spring, the New York Knicks have sought to one-up (or one-down) that hiring by bringing back failed, disgraced general manager Isaiah Thomas as a consultant. Lest you forget, Thomas had a disastrous run as team president from December 2003-April 2008, with the Knicks missing the playoffs every year despite often having the league's highest payroll. He came down from the front office to also coach the team in his final season and that too was a disaster. He signed mediocre players to bloated contracts, brought in guys that no other team had any interest in, stockpiled almost an entire roster of overpaid small forwards and ran one of the league’s most popular franchises right into the ground. And oh yeah, he also sexually harassed a female employee - Anucha Brown Sanders - who later sued the team and Thomas and won a sizeable judgment in the process. So you’d think that when the Knicks fired Thomas, they would have the good sense to never, ever associate with him again, not even to hire him as a janitor to sweep the floor. But there they are, inking him to be a consultant to the team - while he’s still coaching Florida International. That’s right, the NCAA and all of its rules and troubles with agents and others infringing upon the amateur status of its athltes, has given Thomas the green light to be a paid employee of an NBA team while also coaching a college team. No conflict of interest there! But Thomas confirmed his hiring Friday, reuniting himself with friend and Knicks general manager Donnie Walsh, consulting in any decision he needs assistance, be it draft picks, trades or personnel decisions. "I'll be available to him for that," Thomas said. "I've always said that if there's a GM position that should ever open that I would be interested in going back to the NBA as a GM for the right spot and the right opportunity. In terms of going back as a coach I don't see myself doing that." Honestly, this would be a terrible idea for both parties even if Thomas were a competent basketball mind when it came to working in an NBA front office. But he handed out horrifically bad contracts to FAT post players like Jerome James (ate his way out of the NBA upon signing his Knicks deal) and Eddy Curry (signed even after being diagnosed with both a rare, serious heart condition and a total lack of dedication to staying in shape), built a roster of mismatched players and botched draft pick after draft pick. Again, he was with the team for SIX YEARS and produced ZERO PLAYOFF APPEARANCES. Nor were the Knicks close to the playoffs in any of those years, so don’t think it was a series of near misses. The most productive thing the guy did with the franchise was sexually harass a female employee and all that produced was a lawsuit. Furthermore, Thomas might do well to focus on his job at FIU, which he coached to a terrible 7-25 record (4-14 in the Sun Belt) last year in his first season on the job. Lord help the Knicks if they actually rely on this guy to fill his stated role of "assisting the team's senior management in various capacities, including player recruitment." You’re just now beginning to recover from his last tenure with you and he may have been a huge influence in that pompous traitor LeBron “The Clown Prince” James not signing with the Knicks this summer (Dolan sent Thomas to Cleveland to meet with LeBron James' representatives in a last-ditch effort to convince James' inner circle for him to sign with the Knicks). I’m sure this will end disastrously, but at least it should be a fun train wreck to watch……….

- Remember when Jessica Simpson used to be hot? It seems like a distant memory now that she has continued to a) put out crappy music and b) pack on the pounds like Haagen Daas is her official diet sponsor, but I think she used to be pretty decent-looking. Back before Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo dumped her in the parking lot of an IHOP in the middle of Texas and before Simpson began dabbling in country music, she was nice to look at even if her music sucked just as much back then as it does now. Even after we got to know how truly ditzy and vapid she was when she and then-husband/former man-bander Nick Lachey were the stars of MTV’s reality series The Newlyweds, Simpson still had her hotness to fall back on. However, even that commendable trait is gone and may never come back, not if you believe Simpson herself. While out promoting her VH1 reality show The Price of Beauty, Simpson dropped an F-bomb. That’s right, she says she’s okay with being FAT. She explained that she has come to realize “we all obsess over looking like the perfect Barbie type, and that’s not always what’s beautiful. It’s about making peace with yourself.” Sounds like an excuse flabby, out-of-shape people give themselves for not working out and not trying to look better. Simpson’s frustration is understandable because she’s had such a struggle with her weight over the years, but that’s no reason to give up the fight. I should not be resigned to the fact that (even with her nose job) Ashlee Simpson is going to be the more attractive Simpson sister from here on out. So I will not be reading the cover story about Jessica Simpson’s acceptance of her portly physique in the September issue of Lucky magazine. Learning how to “dress your figure,” as Simpson details in the piece, is just another way to attempt to mask your lack of physical conditioning and effort to exercise. Simpson states, “I’m a huge Jean Paul Gaultier fan. His pieces make my waist look good. Yes, they’re an investment, but I’ll have them when I’m old and gray.” Thanks for nothing, Jess, and I do mean nothing. You have brought nothing of worth to this world so far and from the looks of it, you’re never going to get around to that……..

- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! I’m of the opinion that prison riots are the best of all riots largely because there are no losers, only winners. Those on the outside win for multiple reasons. First, the obvious fact that riots are awesome and that people banding together for a common cause and rising up against The Man makes anyone’s day better is a given. Second, no matter who loses or dies in a prison riot, the involved parties will be individuals who are no great loss to society. Criminals are in prison for a reason and having them off one another merely expedites the judicial process. Considering these facts, I am choosing to have a positive, pleasant attitude about the massive prison riot at detention facility in northeastern Mexico on Friday, resulting in the deaths of at least 14 inmates. This particular prison riot was unusual because it was an early-riser riot and most prison riots aren’t early morning affairs. No one likes rising early, getting their shiv or shank ready and brawling with fellow prisoners on an empty stomach. Getting some good prison grub in your before you riot definitely helps, so I admire these bold brawlers and their efforts. The riot broke out around 5 a.m. in a prison in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of the border state of Tamaulipas. All in all, the only real drawback for this riot is that its cause is so clichéd and predictable: competing inmate groups who want to assert their control over each other inside the prison. That’s a story you could hear at any prison, anywhere in the world. Every prison has members of rival gangs among its inmate population and they are bound to clash sooner or later. Having said that, I’m not going to allow a lack of originality and uniqueness ruin my overall enjoyment of this riot, not when inmates are attacking each other with knives and also beating one another brutally. So riot on, Mexican prisoners, riot on………

- For those of you who take your online privacy seriously, meet the 'Google Alarm' is hard to miss. Web users who install this new browser plug-in will hear a loud, buzzing noise any time they visit a website that relays information to Google. Now, you might argue that users should know that Google tracks the Web activity of users who search for things at Google.com, but the popular search engine isn’t the only such site users should beware of. The alarm was released this week by technology entrepreneur Jamie Wilkinson, who has no ties to the Web giant. "I'm very interested in exploring privacy issues on the internet, and the collection of data through these tracking bugs that are installed all over the Web is normally a very silent experience," he said. "And so my hope is to make it something more visceral, and raise awareness about the issue." Right now, the only two browsers the plug-in works with are Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox. It monitors information that is sent to Google Analytics -- a product that allows Web developers to gather statistics on site traffic and activity. Google Analytics churns out information such as the number of visitors tracked over a duration of time and the amount of time people spend on a site. Google’s counter to complaints about these practices is that while it gathers data on the browsing habits of users who have installed the Analytics tool, it has made these actions clear. "We like to think there are less ear-splitting ways of being transparent with users, and that's why we've created tools like Google Dashboard which shows users what information they share with us, and provides direct links to control their personal settings and an opt-out for Google Analytics," said Brian Richardson, a Google spokesman. As with so many sites and companies that very quietly collect personal data from users, Google has a poorly publicized method for its users to navigate their online privacy, or "opt out" of having their information tracked by Google all together. Additionally, Google insists that information provided to website owners through Google Analytics is completely anonymous and cannot be tied to an individual user. Uh huh, sure. I totally don’t believe you but I’m going to pretend I do so I don’t have to stop and hash out what a total lie that is. In order to opt out, a user must download and install a piece of software can be downloaded and installed on a computer, which would then discontinue sending information directly to Google servers. In spite of Google’s own methods for discontinuing the sending of personal data, 15,000 people have already downloaded the Google Alarm plug-in in its first week on the Web, according to Wilkinson. "In my tests, I found that something like 70 to 85 percent of websites that I visit on a daily basis have some kind of Google tracking bug on them....I use Google analytics on all my websites," said Wilkinson. "Despite the fact that you can install and look at your Google dashboard doesn't meant that people are aware that you can do these things." Looks like you need to step your game up or be passed up, Google………