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?