Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a ouch of genius--and a lot of courage--to move in the opposite direction.
Albert Einstein
Why I Have Confidence in the Next Generation:
Kudos to These Sportsmen; God Bless!
Rush Limbaugh: Be Nice!
Mr. Obama, our imam-child, they have already taken their trillion dollar ball home, and they’re sitting on it, you jackass. Extend the tax cut to everybody, and you'll inspire confidence,to spend some of the capital they’re holding onto and hire people, which, once upon a time, we were told, was Obama’s top priority...He's a jackass. He's an economic illiterate. He's an economic ignoramus. And that's being charitable.I'm sure some readers may think I'm being hypocritical because I've invented my own national award called "Jackass of the Year"; this is meant to be more of a play on words, since the symbol of the Democratic Party is a donkey and I'm singling out particularly egregious Democrats, like Grayson, whom alleged that the GOP health care plan was for senior citizens or seriously ill people to hurry up and die already.
One of my best friends got exasperated with me when I termed Obama a narcissist. No, I'm not a psychologist; it was based on a pattern of observations, e.g., his cockiness in delivering speeches, the fact that his first two books were autobiographies, his ultra-defensiveness and need to scapegoat others, the exaggeration of his meager accomplishments in the Senate, the way he constantly interrupted and contradicted Republicans invited to his health care summit, etc. I had never read or heard anyone else make the same observation, but one day mostly out of idle curiosity, I did a relevant search, not really expecting anything to show up, and was astounded to find thousands of results.
I've dealt with a lot of people professionally and in academia. There are certain people whom are always difficult to deal with because they possess a certain amount of knowledge, but they don't have the more competent scholar's realization of his limited expertise. When I was the corporate DBA for the American subsidiary of a chip-testing equipment manufacturer, I had a boss whom, for a tech manager, had very good people skills. Like Obama, he had this simplistic confidence that intrinsically difficult technical problems could be resolved in a 10-minute conference room meeting; I wryly observed that 10-minute meetings can resolve 10-minute problems...
Let me relate one experience to make the point. When the IT manager was hired at mid-year, he had put on hold a project which involved a web-based expense report system. (I had been hired as a temporary DBA a few weeks before he filled a vacant position.) His priority was the implementation of a second application system where he pulled the contract from a group of consultants, headed by a former company executive. In early November, he suddenly resurrected the project, putting a new hire without no experience with the software in question as the project lead. (I ended up running the project de facto.) It was originally a 6-month project until he put it on hold; I didn't have a test environment up for it, but he set a project goal for the fourth week in January to go live. The software was poorly configured out of the box (I had to modify setups to ensure managers got a sufficient review time before the request was automatically rejected). In addition, the software was very particular; the supervisor's correct email address had to be in the system at the time of employee submission or the expense report was effectively lost (even worse: if a manager left without HR configuring a manager, that employee's submitted expense report was also unusable). While I was visiting home in Texas over the holidays, I got a call from the nominal project lead, saying that my boss was sending out staffers to do training in our branches after New Year's, effectively pushing up the go live date 3 weeks. My boss had staffers going to train company branch employees to use the expense report system and have them submit them in production. (In fact, I had not even installed the application software in production.)
Among other things, he was doing a transition in company email servers but at the last minute, decided to grant a deferment for managers. The email address differed by email server, so now we had to make changes in manager records if the manager exercised his deferment rights. So I'm just walking by when evidently my boss came out giving training to the company's top managers, and I heard him telling the senior engineering manager to go ahead and submit his expense report in production. I literally dashed for my PC, double-checking the CEO's email setup. My boss was making commitments without checking with me; he didn't understand the technical issues with the software. If that manager's initial expense report submission had failed, it would have been politically very damaging.
What does this have to do with Obama? My boss had been an IT manager with Tyco. He had supreme confidence in his ability to manage, to get the most out of his employees, etc. But he seemed totally oblivious to the riskiness of his moves; I was his key employee, and he never discussed what he was doing or promising. It's possible that most readers don't appreciate the risky nature of what he did as standard operating procedure. He never asked me whether the expense report software was installed and configured in production; he never even sounded out the possibility of pushing up go-live date. He simply wasn't aware of his true risks and the limitations of his knowledge in this context. And even when he was warned, he disregarded it; I had raised the setups before my boss ever spoke to the senior engineering manager. He had to be aware of the sensitive nature of managers submitting expense reports, but he never checked with me before making the commitment.
For the most part, I agree with the substance of what Rush was saying but not with how he said it. I've made it clear that we need a simpler, fairer tax system, that the current system is too progressive (when one out of 2 workers doesn't pay a penny towards government operation), that permanent tax cuts are better than temporary ones, and that it's counterproductive to raise taxes on the job creator class in a tough economy. I also agree that business decisions often occur at the margin, and the increased costs of higher taxes will discourage certain income-producing economic activity.
There's no question this is an ideological, not economic argument being made by Obama. It's laughable to hear the Dems talking about the GOP holding the middle class tax cuts "hostage" and to advance disingenuous economic arguments to argue only higher income tax cut affects the budget deficit. They are willing to forgo middle class tax cuts in order to squeeze not quite a nickel more per dollar from the economically successful--never mind the Bush tax cut compromises as is increased the percentage of federal revenue from the high-income classes.
But, Rush, let's not make this a doomsday scenario. The US economy managed to prosper despite the Clinton tax hikes (although I think we would have done better without the tax hikes).
Interesting Chart of the Day
Got a Vote?
Fiscal Responsibility (1981-2010)
courtesy of Richard Rahm /The Washington Times
| Party in control | Average fed. spending as a % of GDP | Governors’ average grading |
| Democrats | 21.8 | 47 (D) |
| Republican | 19.5 | 56 (B) |
Paladino vs Dicker: Offsetting Penalties: Thumbs DOWN on Both
The recent notorious confrontation between New York Post's Fred Dicker and GOP NY gubernatorial nominee Carl Paladino. First of all, in my opinion, Fred Dicker was acting unprofessionally; he was getting in Paladino's face. I do get Paladino's complaint about the Post harassing his young daughter; I think young children are off limits.
But Mr. Paladino, threatening a reporter and impugning Dicker's integrity is not acceptable. People will need to address to their own satisfaction as to whether Paladino has the temperament necessary to govern a state with a Democratic-controlled legislature. One needs to choose one's battles carefully. Aggressive reporters and legislatures go with the territory.
Political Humor
A few originals:
- Donald Trump on a morning Fox News show indicated that he was seriously thinking of running for President as a Republican in 2012. I can just see it now: "I have lots of experience emerging from bankruptcy, so the first thing I'll do with a $15T national debt is file Chapter 11... And I'll make some changes at the White House. A white house? Give me a break! Wait until you see the Trump House!" No thanks, Donald... But we will give you the honors as we approach the end of the season for The Presidential Apprentice: we'll let you tell Barack Obama that he's FIRED!
- President Obama has been touring Middle America with his series of "backyard chats"; he's found that American voters are enthusiastic about the upcoming election. As he has been driving through neighborhoods, he's noticed the same ones showing up on most front lawns wherever he goes: "NIMBY".
Musical Interlude: The "British Invasion" of the 1960's Series
Eric Burden & The Animals, "We Gotta Get Out of This Place"
