From the cranky man's upcoming book on bad management styles:
It's important for some managers to be thought of as the smartest person in the room.
Accordingly, if you want to be the smartest person in the room, there are two variables: how smart you are and the size of the room.
Here are some common tactics to follow:
-- Be the smartest person in the room.
-- Work hard and learn a lot to be the smartest person in the room.
-- Pose as if you are the smartest person in the room and treat everyone else as if they are idiots. Dilbert’s pointy-hair boss.
-- Be quiet and don’t expose your weak spots. Learn to mumble.
-- Get a room your size and stay in it.
-- Adjust the size and shape of the room and control it to accommodate your individual smartnesses. This can get kind of messy, but if you use some of the tactics above, you can sometimes confuse people enough to keep them off balance.

Many pundits are starting to get on President-elect Barack Obama for appointing some Clinton administration officials to his new government. They rant that appointing these throw-backs aren't the change Obama promised.
Perhaps during the campaign the pundits mislistened. Yes, Obama promised change, but mostly change from George Bush and the Republicans, not change from competent government. Apparently, some will only be happy if we flush everyone from Washington, DC, then scour the front-porches of Arkansas, the barrooms of New York, rest homes in Florida and malls of California for new talent. I guess they envision a return to the yahoo government of the Jackson administration.
John McCain tried this and look where it got him!

The election is over. On to the crummy economy:
And the economy is in the dumpster. A month ago there was much hand-waving about a predicted collapse of the banking system. And there probably would have been except for a big infusion of federal cash into the biggest banks. However, after that some weird things started to happen.
Part of the purpose of the federal infusion of money was to convince banks to start lending to each other to restart the day-to-day of funds through the financial system. I bought into the idea along with anyone who didn't live in a trailer in South Carolina. It turns out that the banks, which are large, fat, conservative institutions, instead of lending money, acted like large, fat, conservative institutions. They have sat on the money, continuing to pay dividends, but aren't opening the dollar spigot.
Apparently the fear now is that the large banks haven't revealed just how bad their financial footing really is. They are pretending the whole mess will go away.
On top of that last week another set of large, fat, conservative businesses, the auto companies, went to Congress last week to ask for a piece of the federal bailout action. The sole argument of the auto executives was "fund us or we will go out of business and cripple the economy. " Their argument wasn't bolstered by the fact they all flew to DC in fancy corporate jets. (These are the same clowns who continue to advertised monster-sized trucks during football games.) Congress beat them up sent them away until they could come up with a better plan.
I don't this plan will included a General Motors version of the Prius anytime soon.
Perhaps Congress is starting to hear from taxpayers who are tired of large, fat, conservative corporations.

Okay, pussy, you woke me up in the middle night to sleep on our bed, then you howled to go out at 4 am. When you came back in, you meowed until we threw something into your food bowl.
Well, Cat. I'm home today and I am going to play the stereo loud, run the vacuum cleaner and occasionally stop by and rough up your fur and pet you on your head. Yeah, you are laying on the bed facing the other direction with your paws over your eyes, hoping I will go away, but no such luck for you.
Both of us are putting on a little around the middle, so we both need to run around a bit. If I have to do it, you can too. So, cat you can spend your day outside hiding from the duck or spend the day hiding from me. After that 4 am wake-up call you had better hide pretty good!

Please someone explain to me why John McCain is appearing on Saturday Night Live. Isn't someone telling him, "John, for God-sake, don't go there!"
He would be better off going bowling in Scranton with Sarah, Todd and Tito.

Okay I stole some of this idea, but has anyone else noticed that the John McCain, Sarah Palin 'Joe-the-Plumber' or 'Tito-the-Builder' shout-out does not include Fred the Architect or Sally the Software engineer or Najib the Chemist or Phil the Physician or Arturo the College Professor or John the Aerospace Engineer.
This is another case where the Republicans are counting on class warfare to save themselves. Others, including many conservatives, have written that the GOP is painting itself into a corner courting middle-state, under-educated, small-town white voters at the expense of folks on the coasts and people who have more than just your basic education.
Yep, John McCain is following the Karl Rove class warfare scenario and hoping no one will catch on. He's hoping that one one will catch on John McCain's old fashioned conservatism is much harder on lower-middle class folks than Bush's. At it's core Bush had a bit of a populist streak which is missing in McCain's perspective.
Some have also written that the Republican party is rapidly becoming the party of the under-educated and knuckleheads. But that would be class warfare too.

Few people remember waaaay back when George Bush ran for President as a 'compassionate conservative,' with a center-right message of political conciliation. But after he was sworn in, it became pretty obvious, President Bush was going to be conservative and would freeze out Democrats and any other kind of opposition. Either he was faking or he was captured by conservative Republicans.
Anyway, we know that his plan to govern from the edge of the political spectrum just resulted in one of the most unpopular presidents in history.
Now it looks as if Democrats are going to win the presidency and gain substantial advantages in Congress, it will be interesting to see if liberal Democrats will repeat the Bush legacy, only from the liberal side of the political spectrum.

Okay knuckleheads. Despite the recent polls, en masse the American voting public is just to the right of center. It's one of those facts of politics politicians such as Bill Clinton and George Bush in 2000, hung their presidential hopes on.
Don't be surprised if in the last days of the Presidential campaign, the polls will squeeze closer. Occassional, low-information votes are projected to break that direction. And the John McCain campaign is setting the whole scene up with message of the day -- the Democrats and Barack Obama are coming to take your money.
And if Democrats sweep the map, they will have to realize that Americans aren't giving them a blank check for liberal economic causes.

Alan Greenspan, formerly America's most powerful economist and header of the Fed, to Congress yesterday: D'oh!!
As a note of background, our whole world economy is based on the concept of risk. Economists, such as Greenspan, have devised theories and written papers-- and even won Nobel Prize -- about how risk is incorporated into the financial system. When pressed on the fact Greenspan reached for a pink glazed donut and told the House Oversight Committee, 'Hey, we had one thing wrong.'
Turns out it was a pretty big thing. All those theorists missed something.
Here it is in a netshell: As Greenspan explained in one sentence, he and other economists have always worked under the assumption that banks and other financial institutions would always act in favor of the long-term health of the institution and their investors.
Greenspan, academics and government regulators never thought that banks and investment houses would act like plumbers with a $30,000 credit limit on their VISA bills and go our and buy a new car and a flat screen TV. Then when they couldn't pay that back, refinance their mortgage to the max on low-wage incomes. Someone please get Alan another donut!

Ok, I usually don't do goofy video but here is one from Ron Howard on the election.
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/cc65ed650d

Arrrrggghhhh!! Back in the day. Like the 1800's when the United States was starting to assert itself as world power through trade, the biggest threat to the country around the world was pirates. We built up the US Navy and sent them our through the sea-lanes of the world to make sure the world was safe for commerce. At the time the biggest nest of pirates was off the coast of North Africa.
Now that we have been distracted by imaginary nuclear weapons in Iraq, guess what's making a comeback. Pirates. Now, off the east coast of Africa. The Europeans are scrambling to come up with naval forces to keep the seaborn theives from stealing their oil tankers. Funny, you don't hear George Bush talking about pirates. Maybe that's a good thing.

I am learning that egg-head economists are saying that 70% of the American economy is driven by consumer spending. I have also learned that consumer spending in September dropped 1.2% from the previous month, and that if those numbers keep over time that could mean we are in a fairly serious recession. (Of course this drop in spending is caused by people either maxing out their charge cards or some are getting smart about debt, you pick)
I blame my dear wife for this recession. She wouldn't let me go out and buy new socks. These numbers prove I should sneak out and pick up some new ones. Let the good times roll!

A new flurry of public opinion polls have been released, and it looks like John McCain and Sarah Palin's new agressive campaign style has had an effect. Unfortunately, it looks like that effect is the opposite from what they had hoped.
As the GOP pair caved in to hard-core party followers that they take on Obama personally with harsher, more personal attacks, polls results have showed that Obama's margin is widening. It appears that middle-of-the-road American voters are turned off by the increasing nastiness.
McCain may have activated the Republican base, but in turn that may have cost him the election.

Now I am ready for the Presidential campaign to be over. It's getting ridiculous. Both Barack Obama and John McCain are now trying to best themselves about who will cut taxes this most. I hate paying income tax as much as anyone else, but, HELLO, has anyone noticed that George Bush has left a monster budget deficit. Oh, that conservative George Bush who believed in low taxes and strong military and allowed the GOP congress a free rein to run up the debt, in part to pay for his war in Iraq.
Sooner or later all this red ink has to be paid off, and in the face of a monster recession.
Promising more tax cuts now is like buying a huge wide screen plasma TV and putting it all on a credit card . . . when you don't even have a job. Pass me another beer, Dude.

Stung by the economy, bit by bit over the past week, McCain has been slipping behind in the polls. Today begins the last phase of the campaign, the phase in which Republicans excel. When things get tough, conservative Republicans just make stuff up. Today's claims that Obama pals around with terrorists would be laughable, except a lot of people believe this kind of stuff. Sure the media is knocking the story down, but they will repeat it over and over and over.

If the economy goes into the dumper, as it looks as if might, there will be very good sales at Fred Meyer and Macy's. It will be a good time to stock up on socks.

Okay, you little wussies of the pampered generation. The economy is going south, and things are going to start getting a little rough. Those of us who are a little older will remember when there were days in the early '70s when some days there wasn't hamburger in the stores or gasoline at the station. There were times when prices would make big jumps for no real reason. We heard our parents talk about the '30s when massive amounts of people were thrown out of work. Now folks are used to being to buy what they want, when they want it and sometimes even if they can't afford it. Hah!?!

Securitized credit card debt!?!??
This is where credit card companies who gave 18% credit cards with a credit limit of thousands of dollars to gomers who barely have jobs. Then they urged these yahoos to use the cards to buy everything from groceries to their gas bills on the things using the faint hope a free trip to Tahiti.
Then some Wall Street guys figured out how the credit card companies could slice and this debt up into unrecognizable parts and sell them as blended securities with promised high returns. Guess what many of the knuckle-heads with $10,000 balances can't or won't pay their credit card debts. Now the folks who bought the securities would like to sneak their way into the proposed federal bailout package. Give me a break!

Forget all of the other noise going on in the world right now, here's the big question. What is it in raccoon's DNA that makes them chew up plastic swimming pools?
Early this morning the raccoon came back and again chewed up our duck's pool. He bent the edge over and put teeth holes through the bottom so it probably won't hold water. What do we do? Go out and buy a stack of plastic kids swimming pools?
Put Ben Bernanke to work on that one!

I hate to obsess about the GOP vice presidential candidate, but can you visualize Sarah Palin in charge during an economic meltdown like we are now going through?

The economic news has been very dire lately. But I don't know who is scarier: the goofs on Wall Street who invented a series of financial monsters which caused the system to implode or the mass number of idiots who are gaining traction in the political sphere. For the past couple of decades it has been cool to be stupid. I fear we are now paying the price. Happy early Halloween!

Okay, I have been trying to be objective. I have been sitting on the sofa with my laptop reading the leading opinion makers of America and browsing news stories about Sarah Palin. Granted these are all members of the "liberal media elite," but everyone seems to be apoplectic about the GOP's vice presidential nominee. Everyone seems to be as cranky about it as I am.
While the American public seems to be approaching the presidential election with the same consideration they gave the election of the senior class president, (Popular? Check. Cute smile? Check. Enthusiastic? Check. Not a geek? Double check!), they are caught up in the mania of a fresh face. I guess everyone has seen to many Alicia Silverstone movies and don't think competence matters.
Meanwhile, Bob Herbert of the New York Times frets that not only is dimwittedness taking over, it may now actually prevail. My favorite comment came from James Fallows who writes for The Atlantic. It's his opinion that while Palin is now boning up on economic issues and international relations, these are things she has really never ever cared about. Someone who has followed a subject such as government or sports or rock music their whole life has a complex depth of knowledge, unlike those of us who have ignored fashion, opera or home decorating. She may knock our socks off on the nomenclature of a snow machine engine, but the world economic system?

To steal a phrase from Tom Friedman, America's best newspaper columnist, the presidential campaign is starting to make us all stupid.
As the candidates are starting to look for votes among the general electorate who are just starting to wake that there is an election this year, the campaigns have take a turn to the insipid.
John McCain has his crowds chanting 'Drill, Baby, Drill.' Never mind that even if we started drilling off our coast it will take 8 to 10 years to see the gasoline in our tanks and never mind it will only maybe knock 20 cents off the price of a gallon of gas, Republicans have successfully been able to launch themselves into the lead in the polls. And we won't even mention more drilling just continues our dependence on a polluting energy resource.

More politics: Despite all the sneering from the liberal media elite, the presidential election has gotten very close. Obama, at the this point, still has a bit of an edge in the electoral vote, but McCain has seen his poll numbers rise.
In his own wacky way, McCain has managed to separate himself from the Bush crowd and is now running well with the majority of voters who have just figured out there is an election coming up. Should be a wild ride.

Now that the political conventions are history, the presidential election moves to a new phase, one in which many new voters will enter into the discussion. From here on out the candidates will not be judged by their views on issues, but on very basic aspects of their personalities.
John F Kennedy edged Richard Nixon, not on his views, but JFK's hair beat Nixon's 4 0'clock shadow. Eisenhower's plain-spokeness beat Adlai Stevenson's pedantic lectures. Ronald Reagan's folksy ease beat Michael Dukakis' wonkiness and Bill Clintons goofy laugh beat Bob Dole's sneers.
Also the Republicans have the one argument that will alway win for them. They just have to say: 'The Democrats are coming to take your money and they are going to spend it on their friends.' I am betting that's what the election this year will come down to this. Watch out for the Wal-Mart moms.

The hard-core Dems and the news media are in a feeding frenzy about John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential pick. Yeah, I did that too. However, liberal NY Times columnist Bob Hebert has a warning for all of us. Don't be too quick to bash Palin and her typically Alaskan family. It could be a trap.
Don't the Palins seem like a family right out of the off-beat '70s comedy 'Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman?' (Today there is a news report that Bristol's boyfriend Levi Johnson is headed to St. Paul to appear with the Palin family.) There is a slim possibility that this family may strike a chord with broad centrist electorate. Yeah most liberals and Democratic activist think that goverment should be run like a 'West Wing' episode, but a lot of Americans realize real life is a lot messier.
Yeah, McCain is probably an impulsive lunatic and Palin would scare the hell out of your PTA much less the whole country. But the GOP is uniting and you never know. One would hope the yapping class will stop for a moment and rethink its humanity.

Someone whack me on the side of the head. Please. I don't get it. Does this sound like a bad movie script. A elderly presidential nominee, for reasons known only to himself, dissatisfied with his choices, almost on a whim picks an obscure young politician few have heard of from an isolated state to be his vice presidential pick. She has held statewide office for just less than two years, and before that was mayor of a very village. In fact she just recently got her first passport.
In the next scene, we see the obsequious political operatives falling all over themselves to explain 'her narrative' and the major press sopping up details about how the new candidate likes to hunt moose and totes a gun. They also hint about how the young mother is five is a major babe, er make that former beauty queen.
Now we see the bad old liberal media raising questions about how she was picked, spreading scurrilous rumors about her pregnant teenage daughter and wanting to know about what she really thinks about 'the bridge to nowhere.' Could Mary-Louise Parker be picked to play the part? Who would play her husband, John Cusack?
Sarah Pallin may be a wonderful person and would make a perfect neighbor. But vice president? Everyone thought they wanted a veep very different than Dick Cheney, but this is ridiculous.

This year's presidential campaign, which so far has been very unusual, has now taken a turn toward the absurd. By picking an obscure Alaskan politician to run as his vice president, John McCain has shown he can be unpredictable and unconventional. But at some point, you have to think he is just plain reckless.
Because McCain would be the oldest president at 72, one would think that his vice presidential pick would be much more seriously considered than a younger man. At a certain level I am relieved he didn't pick Mitt Romney, and at another level I am relieved he didn't pick another Dick Cheney-like character. There is a school of though that when you pick a vice president you want someone who won't burn you with a past, but this choice is ridiculous.
Super-conservatives are doing handsprings over the choice of Sarah Pallin, but Republicans have to consider that picking someone from the weird and wacky world of Alaska politics (and Sand Point, Idaho) may have a risk.

Bushies in the Bureaucracy

    As the cover is being peeled back on the Bush era in the last days of the administration, we are learning more about enclaves of very conservative Bushies trying to turn the government into a permanent Rebublican bastion. While they couldn't win issues in an open debate, the administration, as we now read, tried to quietly manipulate the supposed non-partisan operations of the bureaucracy. 

    Employees at the Justice Department, from entry level lawyers to high ranking judges, were picked for political views over qualifications in violation of federal law, a new inspector general's reported this week.  The head of the Environmental Protection Agency  as it turned out overrulled his staff and vetoed California's attempt to curb greenhouse gases on direction from political operatives at the White House. The sad truth, however, is that really few people other than governmental insiders and consumers of public broadcasting  are paying much attention. Everybody else know that this will all soon be over.

Twenty-nine years ago on July 15, 1979, President Jimmy Carter gave a famous speech to the nation warning of the country's dependence on foreign oil and an impending energy crisis. The speech made serious proposals that included mileage restrictions for cars, an excess profits tax for oil companies and restrictions on the use of foreign oil. Due to some of the rhetoric in the speech Carter was held up to ridicule as weak. He scolded the country for a 'crisis of confidence' and a 'national malaise.' His suggestions were blown off as the economy improved, setting up the election of Ronald Reagan. Subsequently the US was able to buy its way out of the energy crisis of the '70s.
But the questions arises: how much would gasoline cost today if the nation had followed some of Carter's advice?

I know this is a harsh. You see those guys who walk around with a bluetooth wireless device in their ears. I'm sorry. They look stupid!
I can see wearing one in a car when they are useful has a hands-free device and you can pretend you are jet-fighter pilot. But if you are just walking around, just pull that thing out of your ear and put your cell phone in your pocket. No one's going to call you with that think stuck on your head.
And please, if you are in a public place, never, ever talk into the thing. You look like an idiot!

History

    History will not treat the past few years well. Lyndon Johnson knew that the President of the United States had very little power over the economy and admitted it. But when faced with an economic slowdown and inflation in the early 1960s, LBJ grabbed his telephone and called up leaders of business and finance to harangue them about rising prices. He called this 'jawboning.'

    The current group running the country fervently believe not only that the government shouldn't be involved in the economy, but believe it is their responsibility stand by and watch the train wreck. Look at their absence in the development of the housing credit collapse, the erosion of the dollar and the spector of speculation in the US oil market. It's turning into the Hurricane Katrina, this time only in the economy.

    What the neo-conservatives don't recognize is that most Americans want their government to do something even if its just having the President call up the head of a corrupt, massive hedge-fund and telling him to knock it off. What George Bush has failed to recognized is that he is President of the United States, not just President of the government

The Demise of Newspapers Part 1

    Deep in his book The Fifties, David Halberstam refers to mass cultural trends that journalm totally missed at the time. Along the way he admonishes his readers to look for things that seem to be moving the news and moving history that might not be superficially apparent. In this case, Halberstam is refering to the massive migration of African-Americans from the rural south to the northern cities.

    Regarding the demise of newspapers:  There are obviously quiet social trends at work concerning how people use information. Since newspapers journalists are very uncomfortable with not having an immediate answer to almost everything, everyone has their own theory, and most are probably wrong.

    More later.

Patriotism

    Somewhere a long the line Democrats conceded the concept of patriotism to the Republicans and have been paying for it dearly ever since.

    Maybe Republicans just stole to beat Democrats over the head with it or maybe most Democratic leaders are 'just too cool for the room.' It will be interesting to see if the new Democratic nominee Barack Obama can reach beyond his African-American and Volvo-driving liberal constituencies to middle-of-the road Democrats. He seems to be showing signs of taking back the flag.

New era in politics?

    I could be wrong, again, but it appears that the 'dead-brain' era in politics that be have been enduring for the past six to eight years is coming to an end, at least for a little while.

    Now that it's obvious that the President and his Bushistas have squandered their political relevance, many strong political currents are swirling. Some are obvious, such as Barack Obama's change message. And some are deeper, American's reaction to the economy or their need for security. Eventually the Presidential race will float like a cork in a storm on top of this national soul-searching.

    Heck there are even signs that the national media, except for cable TV, is going to participate at times. But you have to look very closely.

It turns out that ducks and chickens aren’t as crazy about eating slugs as you might thing. I dumped a bunch of the slimly little things in the backyard and the poultry just walked away.

Anyone need a dozen spare slugs?

The truly devout conservatives have been stumbling over themselves the last couple of weeks blasting John McCain as 'not a true conservative.' Today, James Dobson said there was no way he would vote for McCain. Perhaps, since old-guard conservatives and their radio talk show yackocracy are left without a candidate for President, their days of real influence are over. Yes, they have a lot of money and use it effectively to get quoted in the national media, but after the debacle of George W. Bush, they aren't able to demonstrate any real political power of their own.