True wisdom is less presuming than folly. The wise man doubteth often, and changeth his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubteth not; he knoweth all things but his own ignorance.
Akhenaton
Congratulations, St. Louis Cardinals:
2011 World Series Champs!
Well, I believe in being a sportsman ("a person who exhibits qualities especially esteemed in those who engage in sports, as fairness, courtesy, good temper, etc.") I have been an American League fan all my life (oddly enough, the Minnesota Twins; I've discussed this in past posts), although the only major league games I've seen in person were with the Houston Astros during my graduate student days at UH. An odd coincidence: I did see Nolan Ryan pitch while he was with the Astros. Ryan finished his career with the Texas Rangers and is the principal owner, President, and CEO of the ball club.
So congratulations to the St. Louis Cardinals. I have two nephews and a beautiful niece whom live in the St. Louis area with my baby sister and her husband; I suspect they are Cardinal fans. On the other hand, I have 5 nephews and a niece whom live (or have lived) in the Dallas area with my younger middle sister and her husband, and I know for a fact that they are die-hard Rangers fans.
It was one of the most entertaining World Series in history, but this is the actual heading of the email I wrote last night to my second oldest Dallas area nephew: "Not good... Rangers blow World Series". The Texas Rangers were leading by 2 runs heading into the bottom of the ninth and tenth innings, and the Cardinals rallied to tie both times. That should never have happened. And then a Cards player (Bob Freese) hit a walk-off home run (tie-breaking/game-winning home run by the home team in extra innings) in the next inning. I went on to tell my nephew that I don't think I've seen the losing team ever recover to win the next/clinching victory under similar circumstances.
Remember the epic Yankees-Red Sox series in 2004? The Yankees won the first 3 games--and then Boston came from behind to tie in the ninth and eighth innings of the next 2 games, winning both games in extra innings. I think everybody just knew the Yankees were done even though the final two games were in the Bronx. You just felt the whole momentum shift, as if the Red Sox were a team of destiny. The World Series was a mere after-thought.
I know enough about statistics to realize that my intuitive judgment is based on little more than a mere coincidence.
I give the Cardinals props. But tonight's game featured 6 walks and 2 hit batsman, leading to 2 runs in the fifth inning (e.g., with the bases loaded). Let's just say if I was the Rangers manager, knowing this was the last game of the season, I would have had every pitcher on my staff working the bullpen; heck, I myself would have warming up in the bullpen. I'm not trying to dump on the manager here, but walking batters with the bases loaded? Of course, the Cards won by more than 2 runs...
Barack "We Can't Wait" Obama:
Abuse of Power or Incompetence?
It would be funny if it wasn't so sad and pathetic. How stupid and gullible does Obama think the American people are? For instance, progressive Democrats are always disingenuously bitching that the Republicans were stopping everything. At the same time they bragged they were able to pass over 40 laws during the 111th Congress. The GOP couldn't stop the stimulus bill, the health care bill, or the financial reform bill. The Democrats had, after a Republican Senator defection, a filibuster-proof Senate majority. Did they take up the expiring (2010) Bush tax cuts then? No. They waited until after Scott Brown unexpectedly won Kennedy's old Senate seat in early 2010--in fact, after the mid-terms in November and into December. (The reason there was an election of Brown in the first place was because the Massachusetts Democrats were paranoid that Gov. Romney would name a Republican to fill out the term of John Kerry, whom they expected would defeat George W. Bush to be President in 2004.)
Now the Democrats' procrastination on Bush tax cuts caused issues for American businesses which did not have closure over tax rates and relevant considerations with New Year withholding. (It sounds fairly innocuous--just change a few numbers in the computer database, right?) I've had to deal with payroll issues all the time as the corporate DBA--I even had to deal with issues of printer jams with very expensive payroll check forms, resetting payroll batches, etc. There are month/quarter/year end processes and reports. You need to do due diligence on major changes--and on top of everything else, you have a lot of staff (including accounting staff) taking vacation days, along with holidays at year end.
Just to give an illustrative example, I was the contractor production DBA for a Chicago public entity a few years back. I won't going into specifics here but a vendor I did not work for was tasked with a very aggressive upgrade schedule. (They started in mid-August with go live (with the target upgraded database/ ERP system) in mid-November.) This project was the worst managed I've ever encountered from both the city and the vendor--for example, by the end of October, the city hadn't even acquired the software licenses needed to process payroll updates. Within the first 6 weeks, the project manager didn't even have a single upgraded test database. I was then basically asked to step in and help (in addition to my regular production duties). The whole process was hyper-political; the project manager didn't want me on the project because I was not his resource. My boss was trying to charge off some of my hours on the project, although I was still doing my regular job. (And my rate was bargain basement.) I was in project meetings where the malcontent junior DBA's were complaining about working in the (cold) server room and wanted the city to buy them software for doing work from the comfort of their cubicles. (It was an artifact of the entity using Windows as the database platform.) However, I'm not writing to talk about dysfunctional projects; after all, the federal government has more than its own fair share. The point is--the entity was inflexible: it had to do the upgrade by mid-November or it would be a no-go (until sometime in the spring). I was sounding alarms by mid-October; as good as I am, I cannot change the laws of physics. I was dealing with software bugs, data problems, and various other issues the prior contractors hadn't encountered because they had never gotten to my stage of the process. We wouldn't be able to finish by mid-November. The managers were in a state of denial.
The point of going through this real-life example is to illustrate how important the time element is for end-of-year processing, even in the public sector. And they weren't even dealing with potential changes in tax policy. So here we have Obama not moving towards a compromise until literally less than a month before the tax cuts are ready to expire. You can only explain this by an anti-business President absolutely clueless of how businesses are run in the real world.
And so now, let's flash forward to the middle of the summer. Obama is talking about a jobs program--which is literally nothing more than a lower-scale Stimulus 2.0. For weeks beforehand, he has Washington buzzing over the details his Nixonian secret plan. You can go back and read my speculations on this, but I remember at the time thinking: the only thing Obama knows how to do is to spend money; all he's going to do is bang his head on the wall and window-dress old tried-and-failed policies.
But also remember, the one point over all this was covered by the media at the time: if Obama really had a mythical Nixonian secret plan to "fix" unemployment (what would have surprised me was if I had done something truly patriotic, like putting a politically radioactive ObamaCare on hold), why would he wait a few weeks to demonstrate the profundity of his Keynesian stroke of genius?
I mean, think of it: in prescription drug trials, if it becomes apparent that the drug is a winner, a live-saver, do you let the control group people (without the drug) waste away and die, or do you give them the benefit of the new meds? Everyone knows what happens: you stop the testing and treat the control group; it's a matter of science ethics.
So what I'm saying is this is a very similar concept: if you know the answer to resolving job growth from a government fiscal approach, why are you teasing to wait? Is it fair to unemployed people whom had to live several more weeks on suboptimal income without the benefit of Obama's "economic genius"?
We now have a President whom decides that while we weren't in a hurry this past summer, we "can't afford to do nothing" now, and those dastardly Republicans are to blame.
How many times have we heard him intentionally misrepresent GOP policy? He talks nonsense about deregulating environmental policy and various other straw men. There's a big difference between trying to abuse the EPA's authority instead of working policy through the Congress and eliminating the EPA. Nobody thinks that the GOP is talking scaling back clean water regulations, basic air quality standards or anything like that. We conservatives are tired of having to deal with endless delay tactics by natural resource-unfriendly Democrats and environmentalists on letting us harvest timber or explore for oil and gas.
First of all, I'm sick and tired of hearing Obama's continued manufactured crisis mode politics: "we can't afford to do nothing". Wrong, Mr. Empty Suit! What we can't afford is an incompetent President pushing us into doing exactly the wrong type things! For example, Cash for Clunkers was little more than a giveaway to people planning to buy a new car in the first place although some people may have pushed up their later planned purchases to take advantage of the program. It borrowed from Peter to pay Paul.
Second, the policy type prescriptions by Obama won't deliver to his rhetoric. We have a $15T economy: the idea that several millions here or a few billion there is going to materially impact the economy is patently absurd. Obama has to know that; he is knowingly setting unrealistic expectations--mostly for political benefit. He is trying to mislead people he's doing everything he can to grow the economy; we know these Keynesian solutions don't do anything meaningful given poor multipliers. What he wants to do is tell voters: those dastardly Republicans won't let me have what I really want--another $862B stimulus. So I'm going to do all these things that don't add material squat to the economy and when the economy doesn't respond, I'm going to tell the voters that the GOP wouldn't let me have what I really wanted (never mind what I really wanted never made any substantive difference in the first place).
So now the talking point of the moment is: I need to do all these things on my own because the Congress won't rubber-stamp my agenda.
First of all, Mr. Pied Piper of Failed Liberalism: the GOP-led House is the 800-lb. gorilla. They were elected on not supporting overextended government. You need to NEGOTIATE. That means you don't get some of the things you want, and Speaker Boehner doesn't get some of the ones he wants.Your demand for the House Republicans to capitulate is dead on arrival.
Second, you have a big problem, just like trying to explain away why you didn't release details of your jobs plan earlier. The GOP can always say, if we had your plan weeks earlier, we could have evaluated it earlier. So you are directly responsible for any delays.
But you have a very difficult problem on your hands with: I'm forced to act on my own because the Congress won't do something. (No doubt this is motivated by the recent 9% approval ratings of the Congress.)
This seems to suggest that you have to work on your own because the Congress won't--presumably the same things. Now, Mr. Lawyer: if you were entitled to work on your own, why bring the Congress into the equation in the first place? More importantly, if these actions were constitutional, why haven't you already done them? You weren't aware of things you could do on your own to resolve the unemployment problem? What's your excuse? In fact, the President cannot unilaterally impose policies; that power is reserved by the people's voice, i.e., Congress.
Political Humor
"According to USA Today, 74 percent of Americans plan to hand out candy this Halloween. Although President Obama thinks it should be just the top 1 percent." - Jay Leno
[Silly Jay! President Obama would empower all Democratic politicians or registered voters to
"A new poll released today by Fox News has former godfather's pizza CEO Herman Cain leading the Republican candidates for president. And he's the funniest candidate by about 40 points." - Jimmy Kimmel
[The CEO's of Pizza Hut, Domino's and Papa John's filed their papers for the GOP nomination, noting that they operate more stores and have created more jobs than Herman Cain ever did....
On a separate note, Cain accused Mitt Romney of supporting Obama because Romney sent leftover Gino's pizza as a prank to Obama campaign headquarters while on a campaign trip to Chicago back in May. The Obama campaign objected to Romney's 'trickle-down pizza' policy. Romney accused Cain of sour grapes because Gino's comes before Godfather's in the yellow pages.]
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
CCR. "Someday Never Comes." My CCR series will conclude over the weekend. The next group I'll be covering is Foreigner.
I really hadn't heard this CCR performance until recently. Fogerty's pacing of the lyrics makes for one of the deft vocal performances I've heard; I never performed beyond high school choir, but what he does here is hard to do. As a fellow writer, I try to be the songwriter's singer; I'm not a "I bet I can do more octaves than you can" Mariah Carey-type singer; I personally find the little signature bits (like Carey's operatic warbling and the late Michael Jackson's grunts) annoying. I'm not impressed by how long you can hold a note. We get it: you've got pipes. Move on...
It always amuses me to hear an opera singer do a pop song; I usually can just barely make out the words. Often I can't even make out the song they're trying to sing. It's almost like Dolly Parton trying to squeeze into a training bra.
Great pop singing is an art; you need to be able to convey the meaning, the emotion behind the lyrics. You fit your vocals gently about the verses, you milk them: it's not about you, the singer--it's about the song.
When I listened to this song, I wasn't thinking about yet another brilliant performance by one of the greatest rock singers of all time. There's a circle of life /"Cats in the Cradle" theme here: why did his parents break up? Why isn't Dad here anymore? The boy doesn't understand. "One day you'll understand; your mom and I can't live together. But I promise you: I'll come to your baseball games; we'll go fishing." Well-intended, broken promises. I never did understand why he wasn't there for me when I needed him: he never came to my birthday parties or graduation--he's on a business trip or whatever excuse; his calls and visits diminished through the years. When I grow up and have my own kids, I'll be there for them.
Well, I wasn't there when my son was born; and then I ended up, too, having to divorce my son's mother, and I find myself making the same well-intended, never-kept promises. And I realize, despite my best efforts, he'll suffer the same broken heart, but I taught him well: big boys aren't supposed to cry.
By the way, this is my take on the song. I've never been blessed to be married and have my own children. I would hope to be a better man.
