Virgina Postrel on the economic costs of the war and how many people forget to take this into account. She also sites the study done by two professors at the U of Chicago business school, whose study shows that the cost of the war will be significantly less than the containment strategy.

Great interview with the Jungle Brothers about why the NATIVE TONGUE family is no mas. De La Soul, Tribe and Jungle were the family in the early 90's, but that all went out around the time people were wearing those clown pants called skidz. Why did the Native Tongue movement pause....CREAM....as always cash rolls everything around me, ended the love movement with these groups.

Jungle is also making their loot in an interesting manor these days. Check it....

"ThaFormula.com - Now lets speak on what you were tellin' me recently about the publishing situation you guys had with the "V.I.P." album?

A.F.R.I.C.A. - The publishing thing is a big, big secret. That's the heart of the business that a lot of the rap artists overlook. They rap about keepin' it and not givin' it away but they don't know what to do with it if they keep it. Our last album "V.I.P.", the whole focus for me was that the guy that produced the music, reflected a genre of music that was being heavily licensed for commercials, TV, films, so we knew we didn't even have to do videos and all that. We ain't even got to spend money on promotion or nothin'. As soon as the record is done, get it out to the TV, and the films. That's where the major money is comin' from. It wasn't from doing shows, it wasn't from makin' videos, it was from publishing. We had songs on a Tom Green film, Boston Public TV show, Pamela Anderson's V.I.P., Malcolm in the Middle. All them joints, every time they rerun, that's more money. That's more checks, that's residuals.

ThaFormula.com - So did that turn out to be the most successful Jungle Brothers album for you guys financially?

A.F.R.I.C.A. - Technically, yeah because it was money that was made that we didn't have to do much work after recording. Once the record was recorded and mastered, it was like immediate money. It wasn't about road doggin' it even though we did do that too, but that's the focus of the next record. This record now has the potential to do better then the last one once you talk about licensing, because we hold the masters. So now we would get paid as the label does when a song is put in movies and we would get paid on the publishing so we would get it from both ends. A lot of times when a movie wants to license something, they pay like 20 to 50 G's or whatever for the master rights, they pay an equal amount for the publishing rights. So you put those 2 together and your talkin' like 40 to 100 thousand dollars for one placement. No video, no nothing. I mean it could sell 2 copies, but the publishing can generate more money than sales in the record stores and right now with so much downloading of the music for free, that's like the safest bet of generating income without being snatched off the Internet for free. Because people ain't gonna download a TV show or download a movie, and even if they do, the production company already paid you your fee to have your song in the TV show or the video, so let them download it for free."

ThaFormula.com - Do you have a web site and how has that been for you guys?

A.F.R.I.C.A. - Recently we did a show for The Poetess' 10 year anniversary and then right before the show she got us on 100.3 The Beat and we like just shouted out the web site. Then today somebody called us for some festival out here in L.A. for like 10 G's and it was just from them going to the web site. That was in less then a 12-hour period. No middlemen, no booking agents, no nothing. Artists are not takin' advantage of the Internet. I mean we cut the deal right there. We pushin' it to the max.

ThaFormula.com - Why do you think a lot of these artists are not utilizing the Internet right?

A.F.R.I.C.A. - Cause it's the mind set. Back when the artists that you're talkin' bout first came out, the mind set was like "I wanna be popular, I wanna stand out from the rest," and then it got flooded and that became harder to do. It took more money. Now with the power of the Internet it really takes less money and you get more promotion with less effort and cats don't understand that 'cause they are used to putting in so much effort to be popular. It's like "nah I'm not up on that," or "that's too easy," or "I'm not throwin' my stuff up there to be up there with like a million other people." They still wanna show out the old way. Gotta get with the time's man.

First they tried to kill his dad, now are the Iraqis attempting to attack the Bush ranch? It appears that way.

"An Iraqi-terror team armed with hundreds of millions of dollars tried to hire smugglers to sneak them into the U.S. through Mexico this month in an attempt to ''get to'' President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, a law enforcement source told the New York Daily News.

The unidentified members of the Iraqi ''hit squad'' reportedly asked a Mexican doctor and a lawyer to change about $100 million in Iraqi dinars into about $325 million in U.S. currency.

The "Texas White House" in Crawford is where the president and first lady Laura Bush spend most of their downtime. The 1,600-acre Prairie Chapel Ranch is nestled in the central Texas scrubland and was where the president wooed world leaders into his ''coalition of the willing'' against Saddam Hussein.

The Iraqi dictator tried to assassinate Bush's father, the former President George H.W. Bush, in 1993, while he was attending ceremonies in Kuwait to celebrate the success of the Gulf War.

Secret Service officials would not comment about the possible threat to the ranch or the suspects' whereabouts, but as WorldNetDaily reported last week, CIA sources revealed that a half-dozen Iraqis – possibly carrying chemical and biological weapons – were being sought in the border region."

Recently, I have had some requests for sites that I got to for the latest and greast financial and economic news. Well here is the list of my current favorites (see below). In addition to these sites I enjoy reading Grant's Interest Rate Observor, The Doom, Gloom and Boom report by Marc Faber (pick up his book Tomorrow's Gold at Amazon too, it is a fantastic read), Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Barron's, Economist, Forbes and Business Week along with research reports, Goldman's economic data (a plus on GS cause Richard Crump writes some of this...big ups) and Morgan Stanley's research (Barton Biggs on equities and Stephen Roach on the economy--which prudent bear links to almost weekly).

Here are my daily and weekly on-line reads---

Daily Reckoning -- Great daily info (though it is ultra-bearish) and Mogamboguru, writes weekly and can be reached using the same link. There articles on the left hand side are usually decent also.
Misses -- from use economic perspectative from the Austrian school of Economics.
Prudent Bear -- read the articles on the top left and also if you scroll down, they update breaking news via forbes, bloomberg, ft, wsj etc as they happen. Usually 90% of the articles are availble, though some you need to subscribe to x-site (ala wsj or ft).
Northern Trust has fantastic weekly and daily economic news both for the US and the world. They also usually include some fantastic charts.

I have a couple more, but those are pretty good starts and will offer an abundance of qualtiy information. Enjoy.