The team from ABC’s heartwarming and popular reality series “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” may give worthy families a whole new house. But yet another family who appeared on the show learned that they don’t guarantee you’ll keep that house forever.

The Wofford family of Encinitas, California, got their house from the show five years ago, but now claim that after struggling for two years to pay their bills, they’re facing foreclosure . Dr. Brian Wofford, a widower and father of eight, explained the crisis, telling 10News: “A lot of people think when you get the house, you get the mortgage. Well, you don’t.”

The Woffords aren’t the first family featured on the show to face serious financial problems after their home makeover. The Harper family of Atlanta, who received the show’s biggest house to date, along with the money to pay taxes on it for 25 years, famously faced foreclosure last year after taking out an ill-advised $450,000 loan using the house as equity. And at least four other “Extreme Makeover” recipient families have had to sell or lose the homes they won on the show. ABC is probably considering changing the show’s rules (maybe the houses don’t need to be quite so lavish, for example) to help avoid such disasters in the future.

 However, there’s still hope for the Woffords. Loan modification papers are being promised by their bank, OneWest, next week. If they don’t go through, the house will be auctioned by the bank in two weeks, but Dr. Wofford is optimistic about his family’s future: “If I have my family and I live in a tent, I’m in good shape. Better be a big tent though.”

“I can tell you we did not party-crash the White House,” Tareq Salahi said on Tuesday’s Today show, where he appeared with wife Michaele.

The Salahis — who maintained they were not being paid for the interview contrary to previous reports — said they have e-mail proof that they were invited to the dinner. “I am certain we’ll be completely exonerated,” Tareq Salahi said.

Secret Service apologizes for breach by White House party crashers

Because of the continuing internal review by the Secret Service, the Salahis declined to offer more details, including who invited them, but said they are “working closely” with the Secret Service and have turned documentation over to the agency.

“We were invited. Not crashers. There isn’t anyone that would have the audacity or the poor behavior to do that,” Michaele Salahi said.

However, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs and Michelle Jones, a senior Pentagon official, both issued statements to Today saying that the Salahis were never invited to the party.

“I specifically stated that they did not have tickets and in fact that I did not have the authority to authorize attendance, admittance or access to any part of the evening’s activities,” Jones said. “Even though I informed them of this, they still decided to come.”

White House party crashers shopping story to networks

“In our view, it’s clear to us [that we were invited] and based on the timeline, I think the American public is going to be extremely surprised with all the details that went from beginning to end into what was supposed to be a beautiful evening,” Tareq Salahi said.

Tareq Salahi also denied a Fox report that said the couple — aspiring Real Housewives of D.C. cast members — crashed the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Awards dinner in September and were escorted out.

He said he and his wife were invited by a large law firm. “We were a proud guest of theirs. Were we escorted out? Of course not,” he said.

According to the Fox report, Bravo requested access to film the Salahis at the awards dinner, but was denied. Bravo cameras were also turned away at the door, Fox said.

TVGuide.com’s calls to Bravo were not immediately returned.

The Associated Press
Published: December 1, 2009

BRUSSELS – President Barack Obama announced today he was dispatching 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, accelerating a risky and expensive war buildup, even as he assured the nation that U.S. forces will begin coming home in July 2011. The first new Marines will join the fight by Christmas.

The escalation — to be completed by next summer — is designed to reverse significant Taliban advances since Obama took office 10 months ago and to fast-track the training of Afghan soldiers and police toward the goal of hastening an eventual U.S. pullout. The size and speed of the troop increase will put a heavy strain on the military, which still maintains a force of more than 100,000 in Iraq and already has 68,000 in Afghanistan.

“The 30,000 additional troops that I am announcing tonight will deploy in the first part of 2010 the fastest pace possible so that they can target the insurgency and secure key population centers,” Obama was to say in his prime-time speech tonight. The White House released excerpts in advance.

The increased troops, Obama said, “will increase our ability to train competent Afghan security forces, and to partner with them so that more Afghans can get into the fight. And they will help create the conditions for the United States to transfer responsibility to the Afghans.”

Looking to America’s experience in Iraq, Obama put said a U.S. withdrawal would be executed “responsibly, taking into account conditions on the ground.”

“We will continue to advise and assist Afghanistan’s security forces to ensure that they can succeed over the long haul. But it will be clear to the Afghan government and, more importantly, to the Afghan people that they will ultimately be responsible for their own country,” Obama said.

Obama also leaned heavily on NATO allies and other countries to join in escalating the fight.

“We must come together to end this war successfully,” the president said. “For what’s at stake is not simply a test of NATO’s credibility. What’s at stake is the security of our allies, and the common security of the world.”

Obama’s speech to cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., to be broadcast nationally, ends three months of exacting deliberations that won praise from supporters and criticism from opponents. Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Obama was “dithering,” too inexperienced to make a decision on the troop buildup requested in September by commanding Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

Senior officials said Obama also would underscore his commitment to stabilizing Afghanistan and scouring corruption out of the government of President Hamid Karzai. Obama has vowed to prevent Afghanistan from again becoming a safe haven for al-Qaida boss Osama bin Laden and his terrorist organization.

Most of the new forces will be combat troops. Military officials said the Army brigades most likely to be sent will come from Fort Drum in New York and Fort Campbell in Kentucky. Marines, who will be the vanguard, will most likely come primarily from Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

There will be about 5,000 dedicated trainers in the 30,000, showing the emphasis on preparing Afghans to take over their own security. And the president is making clear to his generals that all troops, even if designated as combat, must consider themselves trainers.

Announcing a start to a U.S. withdrawal by July 2011 does not tie the United States to an “end date” for the war, officials said. They all spoke on condition of anonymity because the speech had not been delivered.

The address could become a defining moment of the Obama presidency, a political gamble that may weigh heavily on his chances for a second White House term. It represents the beginning of a sales job to restore support for the war effort among an American public grown increasingly pessimistic about success — and among some fellow Democrats in Congress wary of or even opposed to spending billions more dollars and putting tens of thousands more U.S. soldiers and Marines in harm’s way.

A new survey by the Gallup organization, released Tuesday, showed only 35 percent of Americans now approve of Obama’s handling of the war; 55 percent disapprove.

Even before the president spoke, his plan was met with skepticism in Congress, where Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and liberal House Democrats threatened to try to block funding for the troop increase.

Sen. Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who chairs a military oversight panel, said he didn’t think Democrats would yank funding for the troops or try to force Obama’s hand to pull them out faster. But Democrats will be looking for ways to pay for the additional troops, he said, including a tax increase on the wealthy although that hike is already being eyed to pay for health care costs. Another possibility is imposing a small gasoline tax that would be phased out if gas prices go up, he said.

Meanwhile, Republicans said that setting a timetable for withdrawal would demonstrate weakness.

“The way that you win wars is to break the enemy’s will, not to announce dates that you are leaving,” said Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee and Obama’s campaign rival in last year’s presidential race.

If the timeline for the troop increase holds, it will require a costly logistical scramble to send in so many people and so much equipment almost entirely by air. It will also probably require breaking at least an implicit promise to some soldiers who had thought they would have more than 12 months at home before their next deployment.

At the same time, NATO diplomats said Obama was asking alliance partners in Europe to add 5,000 to 10,000 troops to the separate international force in Afghanistan. Indications were the allies would agree to a number somewhere in that range. The war has even less support in Europe than in the United States, and the NATO allies and other countries currently have about 40,000 troops on the ground.

The main mission of the new troops will be to reverse Taliban gains and secure population centers in the country’s volatile south and east. The addition of some Marines before year’s end would provide badly needed reinforcements to those fighting against Taliban gains in southern Helmand province.

Obama briefed dozens of key lawmakers Tuesday afternoon, before setting off for West Point.

Late Monday, the president spent an hour on a video conference call with Karzai. The White House said Obama told the Afghan leader “that U.S. and international efforts in Afghanistan are not open-ended and must be evaluated toward measurable and achievable goals within the next 18 to 24 months.”

Today Obama contacted Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari to tell him the United States wanted to open a long-term commercial and security relationship. Obama also had planned to speak of a need to help Pakistan stabilize itself from the threats it faces not only from al-Qaida but Taliban forces that are increasingly behind terrorist bombings in that country, officials said.

The United States went to war in Afghanistan shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida terrorist attacks on the United States.

Bin Laden and key members of the terrorist organization were headquartered in Afghanistan at the time, taking advantage of sanctuary afforded by the Taliban government that ran the mountainous and isolated country.

Taliban forces were quickly driven from power, while bin Laden and his top deputies were believed to have fled through towering mountains into neighboring Pakistan. While the al-Qaida leadership appears to be bottled up in Pakistan’s largely ungoverned tribal regions, the U.S. military strategy of targeted missile attacks from unmanned drone aircraft has yet to flush bin Laden and his cohorts from hiding.

By MIKE SCHNEIDER
Associated Press Writer

     ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Tiger Woods did not appear to be driving under the influence and showed no signs of having been in a fight in the minutes after his car crash outside his mansion, an attorney for the neighbors who dialed 911 said Tuesday.

     Woods’ injuries were “consistent with a car wreck and inconsistent with him being beat up,” attorney Bill Sharpe said. “The scratches on his face were consistent with someone who maybe was in a minor car accident and hit his head on the windshield. … None of his injuries looked like he was beat up by his wife.”

 In its initial accident report, the Florida Highway Patrol said alcohol was not involved.

 Sharpe said neighbor Linda Adams and her two adult sons went outside their home in the exclusive gated community of Isleworth after hearing the crash and Woods’ wife, Elin Nordegren, asked them to call 911.

 He said the neighbors found Nordegren kneeling beside her husband, upset about his injuries. Sharpe said Woods appeared woozy and had scratches on his face and that his wife was trying to console him. The Adams wrapped Woods in a blanket and made sure he didn’t move.

 According to the Florida Highway Patrol accident report, Woods crashed his SUV into a fire hydrant and a tree at 2:25 a.m. Friday. The airbags did not deploy in the crash, and Woods’ wife told Windermere police she used a golf club to smash the back windows to help him out.

 Tabloid speculation has focused on whether Woods and his wife were fighting before the accident. The crash came two days after The National Enquirer published a story alleging that Woods had been seeing a New York nightclub hostess, and that they recently were together in Melbourne, where Woods competed in the Australian Masters.

 The woman, Rachel Uchitel, denied having an affair with Woods when contacted by The Associated Press.

 Sharpe said the Adams family did not see the crash and did not see Woods’ wife with a golf club.

 ”One thing we want to make clear is that Mrs. Woods’ attitude was consistent with her being concerned about her injured husband,” Sharpe said. “Mrs. Woods was trying to help him. Mrs. Woods was worried about her husband. She was concerned.”

 Woods withdrew Monday from his own golf tournament, citing injuries from the crash.

 Sharpe says the Adams family hired him to get out the message that they’ve told investigators everything they know about the crash and aren’t hiding anything.

 © 2009 The Associated Press.

WASHINGTON – A Republican senator contended today during rancorous floor debate that President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul will shorten the lives of America’s seniors by cutting Medicare.

“I have a message for you: You’re going to die sooner,” said Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., an obstetrician-turned-lawmaker.

A senior Democrat decried such comments by Republicans as scare tactics designed to kill legislation that he said would improve some benefits for the elderly. As the Senate pushed toward the first votes on the sweeping legislation, the debate recalled the raw charges and countercharges of the summer’s town hall meetings.

Going to the floor after Coburn had spoken, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said the cuts would make Medicare a smarter buyer and would improve prescription coverage.

“I hate to say it … these are scare tactics,” Baucus said. “Sometimes you’ve got to call a spade a spade.”

The Senate was debating an amendment by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that would strip from the bill more than $400 billion in Medicare cuts to home health providers, hospitals, hospices and others.

Polls show that seniors are concerned that expanding coverage for the uninsured will come at their expense. But Medicare spending actually would keep growing under the Democrats’ legislation, albeit at a somewhat slower rate.

Despite the partisan tone, the first amendment offered was bipartisan, a measure to increase preventive care for women co-sponsored by Sens. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. Snowe was the only Senate Republican to vote in favor of Democrats’ health care legislation in committee.

Their amendment would give the Health and Human Services secretary authority to require health plans to cover additional preventive services for women and was inspired in part by controversial recommendations last month that women undergo fewer mammograms and Pap smears to test for cancer. Republicans seized on those recommendations as early signs of rationing of care they say would happen under the Democrats’ 10-year, nearly $1 trillion health bill.

“The Sen. Mikulski amendment also makes clear, no matter what the Republicans claim, that the decision whether or when to get a mammogram should be left up to the patient and the doctor,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. “That decision should not be made by some bureaucrat, a member of Congress or someone they’ve never met.”

However the amendment doesn’t specifically address mammograms or spell out what additional services would be covered, leaving that to the discretion of the HHS secretary. The Congressional Budget Office said the amendment would cost $940 million over a decade.

Last month, a government-appointed but independent panel of doctors and scientists said women generally should begin routine mammograms in their 50s, rather than their 40s. Then, in an apparent coincidence, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said most women in their 20s can have a Pap test every two years — instead of annually — to catch slow-growing cervical cancer.

Neither the task force, which provides advice to government officials who may or may not act on it, nor the doctor’s group sets federal policy.

But the recommendations could not have come at a worse time for majority Democrats, especially Senate leaders trying to hold together the 60 votes required to advance the health care overhaul.

“We know that some in Washington have wanted government-run health care for years. And it’s hard to escape the conclusion that these same people saw the current economic crisis as their moment,” said Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. “Earlier this year, some in the administration said that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Americans are hoping this bill isn’t what they meant. But they’re concerned it is.”

The legislative struggle is expected to last for weeks in a test that pits GOP senators determined not to give ground against Senate Democrats intent on delivering on Obama’s signature issue.

Dozens of amendments are likely to be offered, with the measures seemingly designed as much to court a skeptical public as to reshape Reid’s 2,074-page bill.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that 31 million uninsured individuals would receive insurance if the bill were enacted, many of them assisted by federal subsidies. The legislation would be paid for through a combination of cuts in projected Medicare payments, a payroll tax on the wealthy and taxes on drug makers, medical device manufacturers, owners of high-cost insurance and others.

By MARY SHEDDEN | The Tampa Tribune
Published: November 30, 2009

Ignorance is anything but bliss when it comes to food safety.

None of us wants to think about the invisible organisms lurking in our lunch, but bacterial and parasitic pathogens sicken more than 76 million Americans a year, including 325,000 who head to the hospital. And foodborne illness kills 5,000 people a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Consumers have no control over some of the contamination, something we learned from high-profile recalls of peanut butter, ground beef and fresh spinach. But a lot can be done to control contamination.

For example, people don’t realize as much as half of all the chicken they buy contains some kind of bacterial or parasitic pathogen, says Glenn Morris, director of the Emerging Pathogens Institute at the University of Florida.

That isn’t so scary if you recall proper cleaning and cooking practices learned from Grandma or in home economics class, he says. “Good food handling in the kitchen can take care of 95 percent of the problem.”

Those practices — washing cutting boards, plates and utensils with hot water — are the first line of defense in dealing with raw meats. The Food and Drug Administration suggests cleaning cutting surfaces with a solution of one teaspoon of chlorine bleach to one quart of water. Produce also should be thoroughly scrubbed and washed with water, and dried with a clean cloth or paper towel before eating.

“It’s simple stuff,” Morris says.

So simple, people may have grown complacent. But as concern about the government’s role in food safety increases, the public may be taking those food safety tips more seriously. A recent consumer survey found that 73 percent of adults polled were as concerned about food safety as the war on terror.

According to the American Society for Quality survey of nearly 2,100 Americans, 61 percent felt the current U.S. food recall process was fair or poor. That response likely reflects the increased use of corporate farms or processing plants in American food production. For example, if one chicken at a farm of 20,000 is contaminated, the risk for spreading illness, and a subsequent recall, is higher than it would be at a small, local farm.

“We’ve moved into a factory farming age,” says Morris, whose institute looks at how pathogens and infectious disease affect humans, plants and animals. “We’ve created new opportunities for food-borne illness to get into the food supply.”

Morris is most concerned about E. coli O157:H7, which emerged in humans in just the past 30 years. It has been responsible for multiple high-profile recalls in recent years, from ground beef to fresh spinach. Recalls related to that illness have been responsible in part for changes to federal legislation, including the Food Safety Enhancement Act, which is undergoing review in the U.S. Senate.

Currently, the U.S. Department of Agriculture oversees meat and poultry, and the FDA is responsible for inspecting all other foods and drugs.

Morris says regardless of politics, many Americans understand the need for government food inspectors. The consumer survey went a step further: 82 percent of respondents said the food industry should be required to follow international food safety standards.

Morris says the final solution involves a balance of oversight and commonsense.

“Be aware there’s a risk and the government is working to reduce the risk,” Morris says. “But also know that humans have dealt with foodborne illness for millennia.”

By NEIL JOHNSON | The Tampa Tribune
Published: December 1, 2009

TAMPA – West Central Florida could be in for a soggy couple of days Wednesday through Friday and faces the threat of strong storms and possible tornadoes as a cold front sweeps into the region.

An area of low pressure developing today in the Gulf of Mexico is forecast to drag the cold front over the peninsula Wednesday, along with the stormy weather ahead of it.

As the low develops, strong winds will switch to come from the south, kicking up heavy surf and driving storm tides that could produce some coastal flooding.

The National Weather Service issued a coastal flood watch from Wednesday morning through Thursday from Hillsborough County north to Levy County.

Water levels could be as much as 3½ feet above normal for the Tampa Bay area at high tide Wednesday and Thursday. That could increase to around 4 feet from Hernando County north.

The severe weather is expected to peak from Wednesday afternoon to midnight Thursday.

The storm will cause hazardous conditions for fishermen and mariners and boating enthusiasts are encouraged to postpone trips into the gulf until conditions improve later this week, Hernando County spokeswoman Brenda Frazier said.

In addition, high waves could wash water farther on shore for coastal areas.

Twenty miles off shore, waves could reach 9 to 11 feet.

Residents of Hernando Beach and other coastal areas should review evacuation plans and be ready to move should heavy floods occur, Frazier said.

The weather service issues a coastal flood watch when there is a chance for coastal flooding.

Squalls ahead of the cold front should start hitting Hernando and Citrus counties late Wednesday and reach the Tampa Bay area that night.

There is the possibility for strong winds, heavy rain and even tornadoes from the squalls as the front moves over the peninsula, with the worst threat of severe weather from Tampa Bay north, the weather service says.

Severe weather is less of a threat for areas south of Tampa Bay.

The cold front won’t bring much in the way of cold, though.

Forecast models predict another low pressure area forming quickly and blocking the flow of dry cool air the weather service originally expected to follow the front.

On Monday, the models called for a significant drop in temperatures with lows Saturday morning hitting the upper 30s through inland parts of Hillsborough and counties to the north.

Forecasts even mentioned the possibility of frost.

Now, the low pressure area should bring another round of rain for the region Friday stretching into Saturday, though forecasters don’t expect as high a threat of severe weather.

Some places might see some heavy rain Friday, though.

The low pressure area could develop into a significant storm system later as it moves up the nation’s east coast.

Daytime temperatures during the weekend and into early next week should be in the low 70s, and morning lows Sunday could dip into the 40s.

Aggressive, early discounts by e-tailers prompted heavy buying through “Cyber Monday,” but consumer holiday spending could falter overall.

What began as a strong shopping season for online retailers may fizzle as cash-strapped consumers quickly exhaust tight holiday budgets.

Lured by steep discounts, consumers showed a propensity to spend as yearend shopping got under way after Thanksgiving. By late afternoon on Nov. 30, the day’s online sales were up 11% from a year earlier, according to online marketing firm Coremetrics. That matched the percentage increase registered on Nov. 27, the day after Thanksgiving, when Web sales climbed 11%, to $595 million, according to researcher comScore (SCOR).

With unemployment high and expected to keep rising, households are setting aside less money for yearend holiday shopping. That means the late-November shopping surge may not last, retailing experts say. “People could be spending a lot of their budget up front,” says Jeffrey Grau, senior analyst at online marketing research firm eMarketer. “Things are going to slow down as people have less money to spend, and they are going to exhaust their money earlier.” The average consumer plans to spend $682.74 on goods purchased online and offline during the holidays. That’s 3.3% less than last year, according to a National Retail Federation (NRF) survey of 8,431 consumers conducted in September and October. Despite the recent brisk traffic, online sales for all of November and December may still rise by only 5.4%, to $30 billion this year, according to eMarketer.

Deeper, Wider Discounts This Year

To encourage further spending, retailers may have to resort to even deeper discounts, which can crimp margins and reduce revenues. More than 70% of holiday shoppers will purchase from discounters this year, according to the NRF. The home page for JCPenney.com (JCP) boasted “30,000 deals” and said that Nov. 30 would be the last day shoppers could receive free shipping on purchases of at least $25. During the week that included Nov. 27, dubbed Black Friday, retailers cut prices on LCD TVs by an average of 22% from earlier in November. As a result, sales of those sets rose 6% from a year earlier, according to consultant iSuppli.

Early discounting was rampant. At retailers including Amazon.com (AMZN), Best Buy (BBY), WalMart (WMT), and Target (TGT), price cuts on Apple (AAPL) products “were more aggressive than usual, with discounts as much as 20% vs. previous years’ [cuts] of 11% to 13%,” wrote Shaw Wu, an analyst at Kaufman Brothers, in a Nov. 30 report. Compared with last year, when the U.S. economy was still in recession, “more items will be on sale” this holiday season, says Scott Silverman, executive director of Shop.org, a division of NRF. “Across the board, we’ll see a higher percentage off.”

Aggressive discounting and marketing may do less harm to online retailers than to brick-and-mortar stores. “It potentially lowers margins for the offline players,” says Aaron Kessler, an analyst with Kaufman Brothers. Online retailers are expected to make up at least part of the margin shortfall with higher volume and sales of a greater variety of goods. Amazon, for instance, could benefit from sales of such high-margin items as clothing.

For Amazon, a “Perfect Storm”

Forrester Research (FORR) expects Web shopping to rise 8% in November and December, year over year, while overall retail may stay flat or even decline from 2008, according to various estimates. The Web’s share of holiday spending may rise to 6.7% of the total, from 6.3% last year, according to Susquehanna Financial.

Electronic retailing giants Amazon and eBay (EBAY) may have the most to gain from heavy discounting, analysts say. “Amazon literally has unbeatable prices,” says Charlie Wolf, senior analyst at Needham & Co. “Their share of the wallet is going to continue going up. Amazon could experience the perfect storm this Christmas.”

Amazon, which said sales of its Kindle electronic book reader reached a record in November, is luring traffic while some online and offline rivals see declines. On Thanksgiving Day, traffic to Amazon.com rose 30% from a year earlier, according to consultant Hitwise, while traffic fell by 3% to Sears.com (SHLD) and by 7% to Kmart.com. Some smaller e-tailers lost share as well, with traffic to Overstock.com (OSTK) falling 17% from last year. Amazon has forecast fourth-quarter sales growth of 21% to 36%. That may be too modest, says Lindsay, who says Amazon may gain more than 40%. 

Kharif is a senior writer for BusinessWeek.com in Portland, Ore.

Owners of retail shops and service businesses can borrow Disney’s “secondary-guest” strategy to convince customers to keep returning 

At Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., a 1% increase in repeat business translates into millions of dollars in revenue. How Disney (DIS) communicates its values to customers is critical to its success. To make sure each customer receives a positive experience, Disney has a strategy in place intended to woo “secondary guests;”—those who exert influence on the purchasing decision, but aren’t considered the core customer. The secondary guest can stand in the way of repeat business.

“If a mother comes to your retail store and an employee is rude to her children, she may not return. If a parent is test-driving a new car and the kids are bored and unhappy, the parent may become distracted and more likely to leave without making a purchase,” says Bruce Jones, programming director for the Disney Institute, the entertainment giant’s professional development and external training arm. Jones says the secondary customer experience is critical to differentiate your business from others that may offer the same or a similar product or service. It applies to businesses large and small.

Here are five ways you can implement Disney’s secondary-guest strategy to win fans and draw repeat customers this holiday season.

Train employees to be respectful of all customers, including children. If employees are kind and engage a child, a parent may be more likely to stay in the store, says Jones. For example, a small business in Valparaiso, Ind.—Flanagin’s Bulk Mail—uses coloring sheets to keep clients’ children and grandchildren occupied while in the store. Each time a child comes in to her store, the owner, Donna Flanagin, asks the child to color a sheet so it can be displayed on the front door. When the child’s birthday arrives, Flanagin sends the coloring sheet and a birthday card to the child. “It costs virtually nothing, yet reminds the parents and grandparents about her business and helps her makes a connection with her customers,” says Jones.

Make waiting in line an entertaining experience. Nobody likes to wait in line, even for a Disney attraction. But it’s a fact of life. At Disney, employees are trained to strike up conversations with guests and to offer useful information about new attractions, fun facts, and upcoming show times. A small grain company in Kansas that learned this concept at the Disney Institute applied the idea to its plain waiting room. Since customers often brought children or grandchildren along, the grain company added magazines and toys and books for kids to its waiting room. The company also trained front-desk employees to let customers know the approximate waiting time and offer tips on less busy stretches of the day, in case customers preferred to return later.

Be “show-ready.” Your “stage” communicates a lot about who you are. Disney will not tolerate trash and trains all employees to pick it up so that the resorts remain “clean, friendly, and fun.” If a leader were to walk by trash without picking it up, it would send the wrong message to staff. For a small business that might not even have a physical location, this concept can be as simple as making sure your Web site is professional and easy to navigate. According to Jones: “your Web site is your front door. If it’s not show-ready, it can make or break your business.”

Keep the show on stage. Disney employees must always follow company guidelines for dress and customer service in guest areas. They can take a break and relax in areas unavailable to guests. As a small business owner, try walking the floor as a customer. Do you see or hear conversations that are best held amid the privacy of employee areas? Can your team members be easily seen by customers as they take a smoke break or talk on cell phones? If so, explain the difference between on-stage and off-stage.

Encourage your team to be “assertively friendly.” Disney encourages its employees to actively seek contact with guests. For example, they will approach a family that appears confused about its park map or has misplaced its car in one of the vast Disney parking lots. They will proactively offer assistance instead of waiting for people to ask.

All these tips require leaders who understand the importance of communications and how to extend the conversation to secondary guests. The effort will pay off. Disney has discovered that if a customer appreciates your store or service and speaks highly of her experience, then her children and grandchildren are likely to become loyal customers, along with their friends, neighbors, and acquaintances.

Carmine Gallo is a communication skills coach for the world’s most admired brands. He is also a popular speaker and the author of several books, including The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience. More of Gallo’s columns are available in his ongoing series. .

     Perhaps it was a sign when President Barack Obama sat down in January to record his first weekly address and announced: “We begin this year and this administration in the midst of an unprecedented crisis that calls for unprecedented action.”

What has followed is declaration after declaration of “unprecedented” milestones. Some of them are legitimate firsts, like the president’s online town hall at the White House in May.

But others the president wins merely on a technicality, and several clearly already have precedents.

The White House’s announcement of its unprecedented — “a first by an American president visiting China” — town hall meeting with students in Beijing, for instance, drew a collective eye roll in certain circles back home, namely among former aides to President George W. Bush, who had already been grumbling about Obama’s carefree application of “unprecedented.”

“I think I attended a town hall with President Bush in China,” former Bush adviser Karen Hughes quipped with a laugh, recalling a 2002 Bush speech in Beijing at which he took questions from the audience. “I thought: Were they asleep? Or were they dreaming? I remember standing and watching President Bush engage in a town hall that I believe was televised.”

President Bill Clinton also took questions from Chinese students at an event during a trip to the country in 1998, then did a radio call-in show in Shanghai the next day.

The White House’s characterization of Obama’s Beijing town hall mirrored the description staff gave Obama’s address to students on the first day of school, which the Education Department called “historic.” Yet President George H.W. Bush delivered an address to students, as did President Ronald Reagan. Maybe it was the streaming online video of Obama’s speech to students that was unprecedented?

Either way, for a president whose approach to exaggerated critiques of his administration is to “call ‘em out” and who has made an issue of forcing corporate America to expose the fine print, one wonders whether his use of “unprecedented” would pass his own litmus test.

Indeed some of his efforts are unprecedented. Obama noted, for example, that world leaders took “unprecedented steps” on nuclear nonproliferation at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council that he was the first U.S. president ever to chair.

But at times Obama’s use of “unprecedented” is questionable.

Obama has said he “took office amid unprecedented economic turmoil” and that the situation demanded “unprecedented international cooperation” and resulted in his signing of the “unprecedented” Recovery Act. Yet it seems the Great Depression and the New Deal might be considered precedents for the current economic crisis and the $787 billion stimulus plan.

And Obama’s promise of “an unprecedented effort to root out waste and inefficiency” sounded a lot like promises of past presidents.

“I believe the Congress and the American people approve my goals of economy and efficiency,” President Lyndon B. Johnson told Congress in 1965. “I believe they are as opposed to waste as I am. We can and will eliminate it.”

On bipartisanship, Obama raised a few eyebrows when during his first press conference he cited “putting three Republicans in my Cabinet” as “something that is unprecedented.”

“He is right — assuming he’s talking specifically about selecting three Republicans (and not Democrats in a Republican administration) simultaneously and during the first term (not over the course of a presidency),” the National Journal pointed out. The magazine noted that Johnson, Harry S. Truman and Franklin D. Roosevelt had three Republicans serving in their Democratic administrations. Republicans Gerald Ford and Dwight Eisenhower had three Democrats serving in theirs.

The White House stands by its claims.

“During his first year in office, President Obama has taken historic and, in some cases, unprecedented  actions to fulfill his campaign promise to change business as usual in Washington and confront the wide-ranging challenges facing America,” said deputy White House press secretary Josh Earnest.

“Cynics may say they’ve heard it all before, but the progress we’ve made on health care reform, energy reform and transparent government demonstrates these changes — in the view of the American people — can’t happen soon enough,” he said.

And when it comes to the Chinese town hall, White House officials say the ex-Bush aides have it all wrong — saying it was the first full-blown “town hall” by a U.S. president in China (because Clinton and Bush took questions after a speech). It was also the first U.S. presidential event streamed to an Internet audience in China and the first with questions from the Internet. And it garnered the biggest viewership, with 55 million online hits alone — making its audience unprecedented, oneofficial said.

The desire to be seen as treading on an unbeaten path is a part of the Obama brand. His candidacy was built on the notion that his rise to the presidency followed no footprints. He wasn’t a Clinton or a John McCain. He had a uniqueness that made him an unprecedented, if not unlikely, candidate.

That theme, which is driven by his personal narrative, has carried over into the White House. And in the context of the something-to-prove drive of a young president with scant executive experience, the Obama White House has used “unprecedented” as a rhetorical means through which he has asserted himself.

It’s also a reflection of the president personally.

“It says how very unique he feels he is,” said Stephen Hess, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution  who worked in the Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations. Hess described Obama as “a man who sees himself as unprecedented in every way … given his background — his mother, his father, where he grew up, how he became president of the United States.”

“Of course, biblically, there’s nothing new under the sun, and for most everything he’s done as president there is some precedent for somewhere,” he added. “What he does is variations on a theme.”

Still, Hess said, the word doesn’t have “great political currency.”

“I don’t think he gets special credit for being unprecedented, but he thinks that way,” he said. “I think that tells us more about him than really anything else about how he runs the White House.”

Andrew Jackson was the first president to use the word “unprecedented,” in 1831, according to a search of the archives of The American Presidency Project. For more than 100 years afterward, presidents used the word “unprecedented” in 72 speeches and mostly reserved it for major addresses.

But since FDR talked of meeting “the unprecedented task before us” during his first inaugural address in 1933, presidents have used the word on almost 2,000 occasions to describe everything from the death of Elvis Presley (Carter) to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (Reagan).

Obama has relied on “unprecedented” in more than 90 instances, using the word at least 129 times in everything from major addresses to small speeches, statements, memorandums and proclamations. (Bush, by contrast, used the word 262 times over eight years.)

Obama has used “unprecedented” to describe his efforts on science research, his plan for the auto industry and his administration’s ethics, transparency and accountability guidelines.

He has promised an “unprecedented commitment” to education, to developing clean energy and “to preserving America’s treasured landscapes,” which, Obama has noted, have seen “unprecedented droughts” and “unprecedented wildfires” in the face of climate change.

There has been “unprecedented consensus” on health care reform under Obama’s watch, as well as “the unprecedented intervention of the federal government to stabilize the financial markets” and an “unprecedented” bank review.

His administration has also taken “unprecedented action to stem the spread of foreclosures,” Obama said, including the creation of “an unprecedented fund, in partnership with the Federal Reserve,” to get credit flowing.

“I wonder if they believe that everything is really unprecedented, or is it just their talking point,” said former Bush spokesman Gordon Johndroe, who is among those smarting over Obama’s use of unprecedented. “This rhetoric is more understandable during a campaign, but I’m not sure it’s going to get them far while governing when the facts don’t always agree.”

It arguably started during the campaign, when Obama’s team was clocking one unprecedented milestone after another: his trip to Europe, his Internet connectedness, his fundraising strategy, his rallies, his crowds. Obama’s election was historic. His inauguration broke attendance records that reportedly required “unprecedented” security.

And sure, once in office, the administration faced a massive economic crisis. And, yes, the Obama team brought the White House onto Facebook and Twitter.

But by applying the “unprecedented” label to a so many scenarios in government — from transparency to efforts to reduce the environmental impact of mountaintop coal mining — the Obama administration risks outsize expectations and overhype.

“It comes close to a certain arrogance,” Hughes said, “as if this president has done things that no other president has ever done before — except that they have done them before.”

Obama even treads on unprecedented territory in ways he’s not trying to highlight. At this point in his presidency he’s spent more time on the golf course, for instance, than his immediate predecessor. He’s also attended more fundraisers. And sometimes he surprises people with his characterization of himself as “America’s first Pacific president,” as he did in Tokyo last week.

Obama’s unprecedented use of “unprecedented” will likely continue in his second year in office, when the administration is expected to tackle the unprecedented deficit.