The Season of Gifting

When some of us sit down to make New Year’s resolutions, it’s fair to say that cutting back on spending will be a popular choice, if circumstances haven’t already forced that on us.

In our family, we make a pre-holiday resolution to have a “little Christmas,” meaning, we’re going to cut way back on gift-giving, though we never quite make it. True, we did spend less this year, but that was largely because stuff cost less, as the merchants were desperate. A big thanks to Amazon for the free shipping.

A lot of the spending has to do with annual gift-giving to other branches of the family. Some may say this is wasteful and the result of false obligation, but there is something to be said for tradition. At least, if you’re going to cut people off after umpteen years, you owe them an explanation. Sometimes you don’t even know that you have a family until you get their boxes of pears or whatever.

For me, the wrapping of the gifts is the hard part. This time I will hear from the green freaks who will complain about the waste generation and damage to the environment. Nevertheless, wrapping is important to us, so much so that I almost feel as if we’re grading each other. Paper selection, 9.1; color coordination, 8.7; Scotch tape use, 7.3; degree of difficulty, 5.9. My wife and I work as a production team. She hates working with paper and I hate ribbons and bows, so we divide up the work.

I must say there are few things more satisfying than finding exactly the right gift for someone, when you know they need it or crave it, even if it costs a little more. For the others, there is always the gift card, if you defeat the cop-out feeling.

But gifts don’t always have the expected effect. A friend’s little girl, who is just over a year old, was showered with gifts, including a teddy bear and such. But what most interested her was the wrapping, not the gifts themselves.

If your experience as a giver or receiver or both was less than perfect, well, there’s always next year’s holiday season. And birthdays are pretty good practice in between.

There, now I’ve said it.

Did Obama Pull a Sarah?

President-elect Obama’s decision to have Pastor Rick Warren deliver the invocation at his inauguration has ignited the expected firestorm. Pastor Warren opposes abortion rights and same-sex marriage, and how could a liberal Democrat like Obama make such a choice?

Similar criticism was aimed at Republican John McCain when Sarah Palin was named as his running mate. as many of her views were far to the right of his. If the goal was to appeal to the GOP’s conservative base while hanging on to McCain’s own constituency, it didn’t work.

While the choice of Palin may have seemed like a Hail Mary pass, Obama was on solid pastoral ground when choosing Warren, who is considered one of the most influential of his ilk in America today. He has been invited to speak at the U.N. as well as other prestigious venues. As the Billy Grahams and Robert Schullers fade into history, it will be clergy members like Rick Warren taking their place.

But what was Obama trying to say with this choice? It’s OK to try to turn your administration into some kind of big tent. But others who have tried forced inclusiveness have found that it’s a bad strategy, and I agree with those who believe Obama made a mistake with this selection.

Then there’s the question of consequences. Pastor Warren will go down in history as the invocation giver, but then his job is done. It’s not as if Obama named him a cabinet secretary. I think it did damage to Obama’s image, but certainly not irreparable damage.

While it seems Obama’s trademark ears were made of tin in this case, there are a lot more important issues to worry about now, which may be his saving grace from a PR standpoint. But you just can’t put all kinds of kids in the sandbox and expect them to play together nicely.

There, now I’ve said it.

Past Due Notice

If there’s anything out there that’s really past due, it’s this set of restrictions on credit card companies.

Credit cards are truly instruments of the devil, but I guess you could also say that about guns, and the argument you get in return is, it’s the user, not the instrument, that’s the problem. In the interest of full disclosure, let me say that I have a credit card balance and as far as I know, the card companies I deal with have always treated me fairly.

After hearing the horror stories from others, though, I was waiting for the day when I might be treated unfairly, so I could file my multibillion-dollar class action lawsuit. That would be the day I was late on a utility bill and found my interest rates jacked up to 29 percent by all my card issuers. But I am never late with anything, knock on wood, so that day hasn’t come.

I found that practice especially offensive, whereby being late on one bill would trigger mass rate increases among all creditors. As far as I’m concerned, if you have a relationship with one creditor, all that creditor should be concerned about is your check or payment arriving on time to them. What happens in other relationships is none of that creditor’s damned business. I’m glad this is an abuse that will be corrected under the new rules approved by the Office of Thrift Supervision (in 2010, if we last that long). Exactly what has the Office of Thrift Supervision been supervising all this time?

The credit card companies are warning that if rules are put in place to keep them from playing the games to which they have become accustomed, costs will be going up for current users, and it will be harder for many people to qualify for new credit cards. Perhaps that’s a good thing, compared to hidden fees and unexpected rate hikes.

It has always been curious to me why they raise rates to penalty levels for those who have been late on payments. If someone is late on a payment, is that an indication that they may have trouble paying even the current interest, much less covering the penalty?

The card companies are perfectly within their rights as creditors to be strict with their customers – as long as they do it transparently and for good cause. Credit – even unsecured credit – is one of those things that all of us – even the most responsible – need from time to time. Few of us are taught to use it responsibly, and in that regard, the card companies have been little or no help.

For these companies, there must be a middle ground between drowning us in credit and forcing us to die of thirst.

There, now I’ve said it.

Trader or Traitor?

Just at the moment when our confidence capital is in its shortest supply, the Bernard Madoff scandal is another black eye for the American financial system.

Everyone, of course, is innocent until proven guilty, but should the allegations be true, Mr. Madoff’s actions are, in my view, right up there with treason, in terms of the damage done to this country’s standing in the world. The only mitigating factor is that treason probably wasn’t his intention, but the result is about the same.

You may not have a lot of sympathy for the Madoff clients in Palm Beach rushing to pawn their Ferraris, but many individuals who thought they had a comfortable retirement suddenly have nothing. Some cities face an instant financial crisis, as well as some of the most respected charities. A big problem, though, is how many foreign banks have been affected and the resulting loss of faith in the American system, especially our system of regulation.

The difference between this situation and the mortgage-backed securities meltdown is that this crisis is the result of alleged criminal activity, a giant Ponzi scheme. Wikipedia defines that as “a fraudulent investment operation that involves paying abnormally high returns to investors out of the money paid in by subsequent investors, rather than from profit from any real business.” The earlier Wall Street shenanigans were at least legal, so far as we know now.

If Mr. Madoff did what he’s accused of doing, he will likely get what’s coming to him. It’s pointed out that the analysts for many of his investors should have taken the time to find out what he was doing and figure out that the deal was just too good to be true. As is typical with these situations, the stain of blame has begun its rapid spread.

But what about that international crisis of confidence? Do we in the United States have an obligation to make the foreign Madoff victims whole, or as whole as possible? Instead of letting our own banks continue to stuff the bailout funds in their vaults, maybe some of the $700 billion should be reserved for the foreign entities that have been scammed. The necessary restitution isn’t available from Mr. Madoff or those folks who should have known better, including those in our own regulatory system, if there is one.

Restoring international confidence in our economy is practically a matter of national security. We have to show the world that whatever legitimate loss is the result of the Madoff case, the United States is good for it. And then we have to get about the business of plugging the holes in our regulatory dike. That is, if we want to continue to be proud to be Americans.

There, now I’ve said it.

You'll Always Need Them

Long before the Big Three auto companies got into trouble, the bloodletting was well underway at media companies, especially newspapers. Journalists are losing their jobs by the boatload, and some of the most respected daily papers in the country aren’t even printing a daily edition anymore. Critics blame the failure of media giants to adapt to the online world, but even those that have adapted can’t figure out a way to make it pay – at least the way it used to pay.

So the quality of news coverage is going down as staffs dwindle and those who remain are expected to gather audio and video as well as prepare written pieces on almost constant deadlines. Editors are losing their jobs, too, and it shows clearly in the product. My local paper, for example, did a cover story involving the Marriott hotel chain, with a huge front-page graphic that had the name Marriott misspelled.

I used to be a newspaper editor myself, and I was constantly telling reporters worried about their jobs that their talents would always be needed -- it was just a question of the market figuring out a successful business model. There’s always going to be a need for local reporters to tell you what’s really going on at city hall,the trends that will affect your bank account or the fascinating story you didn’t know about your neighbor. Editors are also needed, not just to make sure the second “t” is on the end of Marriott, but to steer the product in the right direction.

Journalism is one of those professions that many consider superfluous. You know you need police officers, firefighters, doctors and nurses, plumbers, auto mechanics and teachers, just to name a few. You don’t know you need journalists until they’re missing. It’s also one of those pursuits in which every amateur considers him or herself an expert. For those who complain that the New York Times and CBS News aren’t telling you the real story -- how do you know the average political Web site is telling you the truth? It’s great that consumers have choices now, but most consumers don’t have time to make them or are able to evaluate what they’ve chosen. For that, you need editors.

For those of you who are considering journalism as a profession, don’t be discouraged about what you’re seeing. Someone is going to figure out not only that there’s a demand for you and that what you do is vital to the functioning of a democracy, but a way to market it. Maybe you’ll be working for a nonprofit, or maybe some high-minded person in your community with money will pick up the ball that the big media chains have dropped. But I submit that it’s just a matter of time.

There, now I’ve said it.

Is the Glass Half Full?

Does this economic collapse have an upside? I hesitate to even go there because of the perceived insensitivity to those who have lost their jobs in the middle of the Christmas season. But even forest fires do have a cleansing effect.

First of all, what’s happened has been necessary. The Wall Street whizbangs were flying too high. There was no accountability for bad loans. These are lessons that needed to be learned.

And many of our captains of finance and industry needed to be shocked out of their comfort zone. The economic calamity is having the effect of hastening the death of failing enterprises, or if not that, forcing those in charge to rethink what they’ve been doing. If there had been no economic meltdown, the automakers could all continue with business as usual for that much longer. I used to be in newspapers,, and we’ve all known for a long time how much that business has to change. But now it’s really do or die, and for many, it’s too late to do.

What about all those people out of work? The immediate prospects are dire. But for many who lose their jobs, it’s a new opportunity. To do what, most of those out of work don’t know right now, and that’s an uncomfortable place to be.

A friend of mine who was a newspaper editor quit the position in a huff about a year and a half ago. He was angry about the way the corporation was doing business and how it was treating its people and its customers. He spent the next few months on his blog bashing the company. But this doesn’t put food on the table, so he took some real estate courses, got his California license and is now a Realtor. You’re going to say, not such a good time for that business, either. But people always need places to live, and while home prices are down, sales volume will pick up as bargain hunters move in. He admits that if you told him 18 months ago he was going to be in real estate, he would have laughed pretty hard.

Somehow, I have faith that the harder these hard times are, the faster we’re going to get through them – and the world will be a better place for it on the other side.

There, now I’ve said it.

Redistributing Wealth

Remember the campaign – seems like a year ago now – when John McCain caught Barack Obama saying to Joe the Plumber that he wanted to “spread the wealth around”? Critics tagged Obama as a socialist.

Now we’re in desperate need of having the wealth spread around. I’m not talking about changing tax policies. I suspect there’s plenty of wealth around – it’s just not being spread. The feds gave it to the banks, but are the banks making it available to borrowers?

When you buy something, your wealth is being spread, to the vendor from whom you bought it, to the wholesaler from whom the vendor bought it, all the way back to the manufacturer or provider. But it depends how wealthy you feel. If you have a lot but you think there’s only a limited supply of whatever it is beyond your holdings, you tend to hoard. That’s subjective, of course. Some millionaires feel poor because they used to be billionaires. Poorer people might feel wealthy if they had even some of the millionaire’s shrinking pie. But if you don’t feel comfortable doing something with what you have, then no one gets ahead.

Some folks are scrambling to invest in government bonds that are giving them zero percent return. They’re too scared even to put their money under a mattress – actually, it’s the ultimate mattress, at least for now.

If the bailout plan was supposed to stimulate the economy, it’s not working. I hope someone finds out why not, and soon. Get some money into people’s hands so they can spend it.

But there are some of you out there who have plenty. I hate to sound like George Bush after 9/11, but please, if you’ve got some wealth sitting around, now’s your chance to spread it. You could actually help stimulate the economy. The government can’t seem to get the job done, but you can. It’s a great time to buy something. Cash really is king, and it would help if some of us actually got off the throne.

There, now I’ve said it.

Keeping Score

I looked up my credit score the other day. I won’t tell you what it is, because it isn’t really the point. It’s about scores, ratings and reviews.

Look, I’m not against the reasonable use of scores. I was never in favor of the abolition of grades in school, even when mine weren’t good. But almost every part of life has a number attached to it, and the credit score is just one. And it gets more complicated as we go along. We used to measure ourselves by height and weight. Now they check you for your cholesterol level and your percentage of body fat and so forth. It goes on and on.

If it isn’t numbers, it’s stars, or bullets, or light bulbs, or little men jumping out of chairs. Everything is rated.  And even if numbers aren’t used, EVERYTHING is reviewed. Doctors.  Plumbers.  Restaurants, Airlines, Hotels. Do the review sites themselves get reviewed? 

The only unfortunate thing about all this is, no matter how great a product, service, professional person, hotel, or restaurant is, there’s always someone who had a bad experience that one time, and posts an awful review which lowers the average. I’d love to become an eBay seller but am in mortal dread of getting bashed by someone who just doesn’t like the cut of my jib, or maybe is simply in a bad mood, and down go the numbers.

But don’t let that stop you from rating this blog. I’ll take an audience anytime, whether they cheer or boo. If you like it, tell your friends. Tell them even if you don’t like it – they may need a punching bag some day, too. We’re here to please.

Is that a little man I see, asleep in his chair?

There, now I’ve said it.

Party Monster

So your company has decided not to hold a holiday party this year. Or instead of flying you and all the other employees to Maui for dinner, they told you it’s your job to bring the spinach dip.

They used to be called Christmas parties. Now we call them holiday parties so as not to offend anyone – except perhaps those who don’t observe any holidays this time of year. But be honest – are they really all that much fun?

Your boss puts on the event in part to thank you for all your hard work and in part to update you on the state of the company. The second part, maybe you can do without this time around.

As for conviviality with your colleagues,  probably most of you are convivial with those you want to be convivial with the rest of the year. And, of course, you can’t be too convivial at a company holiday party – there are prices to pay for that when you go back to work.

I guess it all depends on the approach. If the company puts on a party out of a sense of obligation, then your presence at the party is an obligation, too. It’s different if the atmosphere involves everyone getting together to try to have a little fun in spite of what’s going on. But what most of us don’t need this year is another obligation.

So if the boss tells you there’s no party this year, well, worse things could happen and may already have. Be grateful that you have an extra few hours of free time, which are precious at this season.

For the rest of you – ask around and see who has the best price on spinach dip.

There, now I’ve said it.

Baby, You Can Fly My Plane

Look, it makes no difference to me how the Big Three auto bosses got to Washington. I would have been fine with it if they plane-pooled. Making a seven-hour drive from Detroit to Washington was kind of a slog. I guess that if they made the trip in hybrids, they found out how well their new products worked on a trip.

It’s satisfying to bash the auto companies. They want us to bail them out after they dragged their feet for years on developing vehicles that weren’t gasoline-dependent. Sure, they claim they started modernizing three years ago. That was only about 27 years too late.

Fine. But the current economic crisis certainly wasn’t all their fault. It wasn’t entirely the reason people aren’t buying cars. The financial services industry bears a large part of the blame, but as we’ve said in this space before, all of us enjoyed a prolonged period of avoiding reality. The auto companies were not first in line for the handouts, and the farther back you are in line, the harder time you have.

The problem is, the bailout money handed out so far to stabilize the economy has come with almost no strings. If you’re a college student, you get into financial trouble, and your parents bail you out, don’t you think they would demand to know how you were going to spend their bailout money – if they gave you any say-so at all?

I don’t think we should let the auto companies fold up. There are few things more American than the auto industry – we started it, and we should be leading it. But if any bailout money goes to the auto companies, even in the form of loans, it ought to come with serious conditions. Forcing the auto executives to drive instead of fly doesn’t accomplish anything substantive. While I’m the first to tell you that symbolism is important, it’s not substance.

There, now I’ve said it.

The More, the Merrier

I'm talking about brain cells. President-elect Obama has announced his national security team, and there are more than a few such cells to rub together. That’s refreshing.

That’s not to put down everyone that’s on the Bush team, but you can’t accuse Obama of filling positions with old cronies. If you do, well, he has a better class of cronies.

Maybe it’s just that he realizes there are people out there with more experience than he has and he needs their help – his challenge will be to make sure these folks know that he is the decider, to borrow an expression, but he is reassuring us that he’s aware of that. 

It doesn’t bother me at all that I don’t feel like I could have a beer with any of these people, much less the President-elect. There are plenty of people I could have a beer with, and maybe some of them could run the country -- but beer-sharing is not a qualification for high office, as far as I’m concerned. 

John F. Kennedy had to digest a lot of conflicting opinions as he was deciding how to handle the Cuban missile crisis, and even then, he was taking what most historians now consider a terrible risk, which worked out in his favor.  When he took office, he didn’t have all that much more experience than Obama.

Because of what didn’t happen with the Russians and what later happened to President Kennedy, many have elevated him to near sainthood. Obama’s name is often mentioned in the same sentence, or at least the same paragraph, as is the case here. While Kennedy was President, he was a mere mortal, as is Obama. I don’t think Obama is going to be able to walk on water, but I’ll be OK with it if he walks on the rocks for a while.

There, now I've said it.

It's Only Money

So now we hear that the federal government is going to make 800 billion dollars more money available for bailout purposes, including 200 billion to banks and credit card companies, designed to unfreeze credit. Which means these institutions are supposed to loan us money again. The question being, will consumers want the loans, or have some of us gotten used to the idea of living with less?

So the government – meaning we -- is on the hook for trillions of dollars. Where is it coming from? The analysts tell us it’s going to be printed. If you print more money, is it worth less?

Look, I couldn’t even tell you how many zeros there are in a trillion, though by now I should know. I used to tell people I had a six-figure income, but that I wasn’t happy about where my employer put the decimal point. But if it were my job to figure all this out, I’d be on TV like all those other analysts, including the guy who won the Nobel Prize. As they say, that’s above my pay grade.

It’s all about results. It seems to me that it probably doesn’t matter if all this extra money is worth the paper it’s printed on, as long as buyers and sellers think it is.

It’s true that many of us have to be weaned off carrying excessive debt; it’s also true that financial institutions have to be prevented from giving us a fix whenever we want it. But while we’re congratulating ourselves on not buying stuff, the vendors, who are people just like us are suffering from our sudden frugality. If we don’t have a good holiday season, neither will they.

Something has to start the engine, though, and after that, something has to keep the RPM down. I think this is a soluble problem, but somebody has to do the solving, whether it’s the Bush administration or Obama’s, and I can’t blame either of them too much if there’s a false start or two. Doing nothing doesn’t seem to be an option.

So start the presses.

There, now I’ve said it.

She's No Longer News, But Now It's Her Turn

Maybe I’m watching the wrong TV shows, but it’s my distinct impression that I haven’t seen nearly as much of Sarah Palin. 

OK, there was the now-infamous segment of her pardoning a turkey for Thanksgiving while another hapless gobbler was being slaughtered in the background. But Palin just isn’t news anymore. 

It’s time now for her to cash in – and I hope she does. Sarah Palin was elevated to a position she didn’t belong in by a GOP campaign team whose judgment must have been on vacation. Did she lose the election for McCain? I don’t think so. For every Republican voter who may have been turned off by her selection as a running mate, there was likely at least one who was inspired by it, so at worst you could probably say it was a wash.

Governor Palin was ridiculed and abused by people like me, albeit people who get paid bigger bucks and have a national audience, for two months. Now, it’s her turn. In my opinion, she has earned a zillion dollar book deal. And don’t forget what she might pull in from endorsing a line of eyeglass frames. If Joe the Plumber is cashing in, she’s entitled to multiples of what he will get.

But the clock is ticking, and she needs to strike while she’s hot. I’d hate to see her go the way of that losing vice-presidential candidate who made those American Express commercials which as I recall, revolved around the joke that you wouldn’t remember him. And I don’t.

As for political capital, well, that’s a whole ‘nother animal. If Sarah Palin wants that, I still think she’s going to have to earn it, serving a term in Congress or the U.S. Senate.

But right now, opportunity is knocking on another of the doors in front of her, and I hope she walks through.

I’m glad she’s not real news anymore – there’s certainly enough of that to deal with. But it’s ching-ching-ching time for Sarah, and I’m really happy for her.

There, now I’ve said it.

Losing Fair and and Square

Opponents of Proposition 8 here in California have been using a wide variety of tactics to express their displeasure with the outcome of this month’s vote, which came out against same-sex marriage. I also voted no. But we lost fair and square.

How can it be fair, you may say, when the pro-8 side was funded mostly by religious groups and that their ad campaign was deceiving? Well, the same rules apply to almost any election, and the anti-8 forces just plain didn’t mount as effective a campaign as was necessary. In elections, like sporting events, there are winners and losers. At the risk of trivializing this, one team just played a better game.

Now of course, it ain’t over till it’s over, as Yogi used to say, and there are lawsuits pending in the California Supreme Court, which has agreed to hear arguments relatively quickly. The anti-8 forces are demonstrating in front of churches and targeting businesses and individuals who supported Prop 8. They are certainly within their rights to do these things, but these are tactics that are of little use in this new arena.

Steve Pougnet, the mayor of Palm Springs, an important resort community for gays and lesbians, questioned the use of economic boycotts in a period where businesses are already suffering big-time. 

Personally, I think the word “marriage” should be removed from our laws altogether and replaced with “civil union” or whatever you want to call it. All government would do is issue a certificate to those who need one, regardless of gender, and the recipients would have exactly the same rights under the law. Those who want a marriage ceremony could go somewhere else to get it, rather than a city or county clerk’s office or a judge’s chamber.

The anger shown by opponents of Proposition 8 is certainly understandable. The challenge is channeling that anger into actions that actually fix what’s broken. The history of all the civil rights struggles in this country shows us that this may take time.

There, now I’ve said it.

Attach the Strings

Every dollar that’s doled out by the federal government -- alias, the taxpayers -- ought to have strings attached.

Money that’s given to the banks to stimulate lending ought largely to be used for just that – lending. And the banks that get the money ought to be renegotiating loans with borrowers in trouble. It shouldn’t be assumed they will do that automatically.

If money or even loan guarantees are given to auto companies, it ought to be tied to retooling plants to increase the production of alternative energy vehicles. As taxpayers, we should feel no obligation to preserving the status quo. Bridge loans to preserve as many jobs as we can in the short term, OK, but after that, let’s make vehicles people will actually buy. We had more than 30 years to deal with this, and we didn’t, but now we have to.

Blame may make us feel good, but it restores nothing. The most that we can do is to remove those from power who either didn’t have the vision to avoid the situation we’re in or those who had it and failed to act.

If you want to make brain surgery out of this process, have at it. But there’s a simple principle involved. Whatever we bail out has to do more than just stay afloat. It has to be headed in the right direction. Make sure the captain of the sinking ship isn’t rewarded, but don’t waste time on punishment, either. Those who concentrate on leading us out of this financial crisis – and there is a way out – will have their reward.

There, now I’ve said it.

We're All Mutts

Our new president-elect, talking about the dog he is planning to get for his children,  said it might be a mutt like him. He was referring, of course, to his being of both black and white heritage.

Interesting thing about skin color.  Everyone calls Mr. Obama African-American,  but that’s because his skin is dark. I am no genetic expert, but could he not have as easily been born with a light skin, coming from a white mother? Then what would we call him?

For those attracted to the notion of racial purity, you’re going to have a long, hard search for it. We categorize people racially based on what we can see. But what about those factors we can’t see? I suspect that if we all had our DNA analyzed, we’d be pretty shocked at whatever went in to producing us. So there is really little basis for prejudice, at least according to standards like skin color.

Not that I’m in favor of analyzing everyone’s DNA right now. You can see where that road heads, too. Remember the movie “Gattaca,”  in which only those with no genetic defects got to be astronauts? The insurance companies would have a field day with such information.

But when you realize how little separates us,  it’s just too hard to maintain old attitudes that are based on, well, nothing,  really. So as one great American said not long ago, “Can’t we all just get along?” In the modern world, we’re going to find that we have to in order to survive. Barack Obama’s election is one big step toward getting us used to the idea.

There, now I’ve said it.

Educating Sarah

Sarah Palin is not an unintelligent woman. Even her fiercest critics will tell you her problem is ignorance, not stupidity. The thing about ignorance is that you don’t know there are things you don’t know. She was put in a very bad position by people who treated her as a means to an end, and they are the real villains of this piece. 

She’s been used and abused, but now she has the opportunity to turn it to her advantage. You don’t think those book publishers are salivating already over a deal? What about the Sarah Palin line of designer spectacles? Heck, she could make enough to repay the Republican donor whose credit card she allegedly beat up on shopping trips to Neiman’s, and still have plenty left over. 

Even Gov. Palin  realizes that she’s not a realistic choice for 2012. But if she really has a commitment to elected office, she has a pretty good future ahead. She could run for Congress or the U.S. Senate, learn how the system works, or doesn’t work as the case may be, and then she’d have some credibility as a maverick. As we’ve said in this space many times, to fix something that’s broken you have to have a clear idea of how it’s supposed to work in the first place.

There is one condition under which I will offer Sarah Palin my vote right now if she wants to go for the big prize in 2012. Tina Fey absolutely has to be her running mate. Job No. 1 of the vice president is to be a spare president. I wouldn’t have a problem if they switched off from time to time. Who’d have to know?

There, now I’ve said it.

Time For a Purge

As the Republicans try to figure out why their man lost, they should find out who the architects of that loss are and get rid of them. Whose brilliant idea was it to tap Sarah Palin as a running mate for John McCain? I heard from a good source in Arizona that he was livid when they told him Palin would be his VP choice, but he went along with it, figuring that was at least one of his paths to victory. But if he didn’t want Palin , then who did, who backed them up, and why did McCain let himself be victimized? Was it the same group of geniuses who told him to suspend his campaign after the economic crisis exploded? 

I don’t think these were entirely his mistakes, although he let himself go along, and that’s mistake enough. But clearly, the people pulling the strings screwed up. Sarah Palin wasn’t remotely qualified to be a vice-presidential candidate and should never have been put in that position. In her defense, she made the best use of what she had available, but it wasn’t enough, and in a way, she was victimized, too.

We’re all very interested right now in finding out who is responsible for our economic meltdown. But who is responsible for the meltdown in the GOP campaign? To paraphrase John McCain, we should know their names, so that they aren’t around to screw up the next one.

Now that the election is over,  Republicans have the time to do a little navel-gazing. What will it take to make the Grand Old Party grand again? It seems to me that a grand old purge is in order.

There, now I’ve said it.

It Had to Happen

I don’t pretend to be eloquent enough to provide any useful comment on the historic nature of what has happened tonight, neither the dramatic acceptance speech of our new president-elect, nor the gracious concession speech of the man who was defeated.

All I can say is that I have the strong feeling that Barack Obama’s victory was just plain necessary. We needed his election not only to galvanize this country, but to send a powerful message to the rest of the world that things are finally different here.

Our challenge is to be realistic about what this election means. By himself, Barack Obama cannot dig us out of the pit into which we have sunk. He can wave his wand, but it’s doubtful the Red Sea is going to part. The nation’s voters have expressed enormous confidence in him. But he puts his pants on one leg at a time like the rest of us; he will make mistakes, and many of us may find ourselves upset with him from time to time, just as we have been with his predecessors. Circumstances may prevent him from delivering on his campaign promises. Sure, he may get us out of the war in Iraq, but may have to plunge us deeper into the war in Afghanistan. All we can expect is that he brings his personal qualities and intellect to bear on the problems we face going forward.

But it’s fair to say that the big difference is that from here on in, we’re going to be paying attention. For the first time in a long time, this will be a participatory democracy. And just like Barack Obama’s election, this is a necessary development. We can no longer allow the special interests, whether they be lobbyists or PACs or corporations or associations, to lead us and our representatives in Washington around by the nose. We can no longer live narrow, comfortable little lives, assuming that someone has our back. Barack Obama isn’t going to save us by himself, and it would be unfair for us to seek that of  him.  What we can reasonably hope for from him, however,  is leadership.

There, now I’ve said it.

Distinguished Company

So the economy’s in the toilet, your portfolio is close to worthless and your retirement age is now 124. But at least in one respect, you’re on an equal footing with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, and you’re just as powerful as the President.

They only have one vote, just like you.

Of course, it all depends on how you use it. It’s a really important thing, and not all of us take it as seriously as we should. Do you vote a certain way because your family always has, or because your spouse or your best friend vote that way, or even because of the opinions of Keith or Rush? Or do you make up your own mind?

How about “sending a message?” It seems like a forgone conclusion that Obama will win California, but I have a relative who wants to send a message to him that he’s not entitled to a mandate, even though that voter believes Obama is qualified to be president. Then there’s the issue of having Democrats in charge of everything and the presumed need for checks and balances. If the Democrats do win, don’t worry. They’ll have no money to spend, and if they want to raise our taxes, well, we don’t have enough to pay them anyway, do we?

I think you should vote for the candidate you want to fill a particular office -- even if that candidate doesn’t belong to a major party. You’re going to hear a lot about “throwing away your vote,” but true throwing away is, of course, not voting at all. If you vote for the person who is really in line with your views, you’re sending all the message you need to send.

Where I live, there’s just too much stuff on the ballot. If you really take this voting business seriously, it’s work. You have to study the candidates and the issues, especially if there are all those no-means-yes and yes-means-no propositions facing you. Sometimes I just don’t have a clue, but I never flip coins or do the eeny-meeny-miny thing. I just leave those items blank. I feel that I’m not qualified to vote on something I really don’t understand. Usually, those are the least important things I just didn’t get around to reading about.

The great thing about this election is that the electorate is finally paying attention. I have a strong feeling that whoever wins the presidency won’t be able to get away with very much, because too many of us will be watching.

This is really an historic moment for voters, whether you’re doing it for the first time or you’ve been at it for decades. It would be a real shame if you had the ability to participate and didn’t. Heck, you can be right up there with Bill and Warren. Or Keith and Rush. Or Barack and John. And even Sarah.

There, now I’ve said it.

When Losing Is Winning

I really like John McCain. I actually think he is more qualified to be president than Barack Obama.  Still, I hope the Republicans lose.

McCain doesn’t deserve to be beaten, but the GOP, as presently constituted, needs a wake-up call. I consider myself a Republican, but it seems the so-called base of the party has a problem with anyone who holds a moderate or balanced view, or penchant for seeking common ground with opponents, or respect for intellectual capacity and breath of knowledge. 

Most McCain-watchers have for years appreciated his independence, his willingness to reach across the aisle, and his insistence on transparency in government. But then they told him he had to do something to appeal to his party’s base, and presto, Sarah Palin, who is given all this credit for energizing the party. But how many has she alienated? How many are insulted by the notion that this is the best the Republican Party can come up with as a vice-presidential candidate? Why couldn’t they let McCain be McCain, and why did he allow himself to be manipulated? You can’t get me to believe that he willingly chose Palin as his running mate. It just doesn’t compute.

It seems all the GOP has left is this “base,” because everyone else who might be attracted to the party has been shown the door. And it’s not the door to a big tent, but to the doghouse.

Perhaps a Republican defeat next week would lead to a badly needed rebuilding of the party. Maybe this time, Republicans will learn that its time to find a new base on which to build.

There, now I’ve said it.

From Powell's Mouth to God's -- and Obama's -- Ears

If Barack Obama ever needed the hep of a 700-pound gorilla, he got it on Sunday with the endorsement of former Secretary of State and retired Gen. Colin Powell.

Powell praised Obama’s calm, patient and intellectual approach to problem solving. He said it’s time for a generational change and a fresh set of eyes on the challenges this country faces, and noted that Obama’s election would help patch up our reputation in the rest of the world.

He wasn’t rejecting John McCain so much as the Republican Party, saying the focus of the GOP campaign has become narrower and narrower, and that the party needs to change direction. His feelings about his party certainly aren’t new, but perhaps this endorsement will make its members sit up and pay attention.

As for Sarah Palin, he gets it; the vice-president’s primary job is to be a spare president, and Palin is unqualified, in Powell’s judgment, to do that job. But when is Palin going to get it? Sorry to break it to you, Governor, but there’s a great gulf fixed between “Live, from New York, it’s Saturday night!” and a State of the Union address.

As for Obama’s ears, the cartoonists and now even the candidate himself have had a lot of fun with the organs seemingly borrowed from Alfred E. Newman. But will Obama use those ears to listen? Clearly he isn’t going to be able to pursue a classical liberal agenda in the current economic climate. The government is too busy with the bailing cans to think about spending any new money – there is none. Campaign promises are so much air; it’s the qualities the candidate brings to the table. After this crisis passes, he'll need those qualities to deal with the next one.

There, now I've said it.

Fighters and Boxers

In the boxing world, sometimes it takes three fights between the same two rivals to determine who’s the better of the two. There are fighters, and then there are boxers.

John McCain is the fighter. He swings and tries to score on his opponent, not caring much about style – and he occasionally connects. Barack Obama is the boxer. He doesn’t usually throw knockout punches, but scores points with style and deftness.

If you watched Wednesday night’s debate, you saw McCain score points by painting Obama as a tax-and-spend liberal, which he is. McCain made convincing arguments about cutting federal spending. But can either of these guys actually come up with a radical new plan to fix the economy? That would have been the knockout punch, and it didn’t happen in that debate.

Obama had the clear advantage on health care, and McCain’s lame attempts to link him to reputed former terrorist William Ayers fell flat. As for Joe the Plumber, I don’t think he worked very well as a debate device, but with all the publicity he got, he should be able to buy his own business after all.

I did find Obama’s answer on appointments to the Supreme Court. It sounded an awful lot like he would employ a litmus test, and I agree with McCain, who said it should be all about the qualifications of the nominee. So how does he explain Sarah Palin?

With McCain, you can always tell where he stands by his facial expression and body language – he may be a good fighter, but he’s a terrible poker player. It’s not as easy to read Obama. Do you prefer passionate or inscrutable?

The pundits can pund all they want, but in a boxing match, it’s up to the three judges to come up with the official score – and the commentators are sometimes left with saying, “Where did that come from?”

In spite of all the polls, it’s clear to me that this race is not over by any means. Just like those at the press table at ringside, we’re going to have to wait for the judges’ decision next month.

There, now I’ve said it.

To the Moon, Alice

The good thing about being a former media person is that I won’t have to stay up all Election Night doing broadcasts or trying to meet a newspaper deadline. I may be up anyway, but it will be a lot easier consuming the news than reporting it. But why does it take so long?

It’s 2008, and I’ve felt for years that Election Night should take about 15 minutes. The last polls close and bang! There’s the final number. Here’s another sentence that begins, “We can send men (and women) to the moon, why can’t we…?

Elections should be simple and standardized, and I’ve always wondered why we all couldn’t vote on the Internet. You can buy almost anything securely; many folks even file their tax returns electronically. So why couldn’t they vote the same way? There wouldn’t be a need for expensive voting machines of multiple kinds. We are used to the Internet now, and those who aren’t could be easily shown how to vote by click. After you vote, you could print out a record of what you’d done. Heck, maybe you could even change your mind at the last minute, by signing in securely and amending your vote. 

Before I began the third sentence of the last paragraph, I already heard the screams: YOU’RE NUTS! I know -- some hacker could run away with our election. Like there aren’t zillions of “hacking” incidents already going on, even with paper ballots.

But I have a feeling the real obstacles in the way of an accurate count have to do with the non-standardization of laws and procedures and plain old human error, and I cling to the feeling that these problems are soluble. Yeah, it takes money. But what could be higher on our priority list than bringing our voting systems up to speed? Why can they count votes in Iraq faster than here?

We’ve been to the moon so often that it’s almost boring. Can’t we have our best minds working on this problem?

There, now I’ve said it.

The M Word

Some day, the long fistfight over whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry will be over. Both sides will have punched themselves out.

I don’t mean to trivialize this, but if I could write the law, it would come out something like this. For the purpose of rights and responsibilities, there would be no such thing as “marriage” in our legal codes. All couples, regardless of gender, seeking what we now call marriage would get some kind of certificate of union, with all the rights and privileges –- and I mean all -- currently afforded couples whom we now call married. But issuing that certificate would be all that government could do, and the spiritual and emotional components would be the province of some other entity. 

This way, the county clerks wouldn’t be in the position of having to perform any ceremonies, and their sensibilities, or their biases, if you prefer, would not be part of the equation. If a couple wanted to find a church or some other party to perform a ceremony so they could call themselves “married,” that, in effect, would be none of government’s business.

We could avoid the insoluble arguments over which kinds of couples are more capable of raising children, or whether a same-sex union lasting 20 years is more valid or justified than a heterosexual union lasting only three years. etc. Clearly, if two people of any sex want to make a long-standing or even a till-death-do-us-part commitment to each other, that’s something that society should encourage. And it appears that a certain percentage of human beings, indeed, mammals in general, are gay. They can’t “fight” it; why should others waste time trying?

I know this horse left the barn a few thousand years ago; I’ll leave it to the interpreters of the Bible or other books to tell me how many thousand. Just so you know, I will vote against California’s Proposition 8. But I’m hoping that evolution takes us past this discussion eventually and that we can focus on other issues. How about ending war?  Well, there’s a horse that may never leave the barn, but we can hope, can’t we?

There, now I’ve said it.

The End of the Credit Card?

Are the days of the credit card, as we know it today, numbered?

This may be the next big shoe to drop in the current financial mess. Indeed, it has already started. The card issuers are notifying their riskiest customers that their credit lines are being cut to about what they owe. In other words, those proud of themselves for not being maxed out may soon find themselves instantly maxed.

Could you function without a credit card?  You may have to someday. But think about it – would that be such a bad thing? We’ve heard a lot about predatory lending over the past few months, but the credit card could be the most predatory instrument of them all. How many Americans are indentured servants to some card issuer?

In the interests of full disclosure, we have credit cards in our family, and more often than not, have had running balances of various sizes. We have never missed a payment in more than 30 years, and the card companies have always treated us fairly.  But for many of us, the running balance is an institutional part of our finances.

The current crisis is all about credit. There’s nothing evil about credit per se, it’s just a tool. But misusing it has become a way of life. The banks and other card issuers have been dangling the bait in front of us for a long time, and we’ve taken it. Now it’s crunch time, and they’re likely going to pull in their lines. And the regulatory fever that’s coming may make it very hard for many of us to get a credit card in the future.

Credit cards began their lives as charge cards many years ago. You had to pay off the balance at the end of each month. How many of us do that today?

Maybe there’s a stop on the gravy train short of cold turkey. Suppose your credit card company gave you a credit line for each quarter, and you had to pay it down to zero by the end of the quarter, or not get the next one? 

The mess this country is in – indeed, the mess we have put the rest of the world in – can onlybe  cleaned up by a massive shift in thinking, and for many of us, it has to start at home. This is the only kind of “trickle up” economics that is going to save us.

There, now I’ve said it.

Pick Your Battles

So now it seems a legislative committee in Alaska has concluded that Gov. Sarah Palin exceeded her authority by canning Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan for refusing to fire her former brother-in-law, state trooper Mike Wooten.

For me, this whole Troopergate story has been a complete waste of energy, if not an outright red herring. From what I read, this Wooten guy’s record was pretty awful, and he probably wouldn’t be a state trooper in any other self-respecting force. And it was a family thing, with the Alaska First Dude on the phone trying to get the firing done. In many quarters, Sarah Palin’s efforts to root a bad guy out of the police force and out of her family might be applauded, so the Democrats are wasting time trying to make an issue out of this. Too bad for the governor that Tony Soprano doesn’t live in Alaska. Otherwise, Mike Wooten might have had an unfortunate highway accident with a moose in some remote area – and there are lots of those  -- moose and remote areas – in Alaska.

The Troopergate issue ranks right up there with the William Ayres allegations against Obama. The public just doesn’t care about this stuff, which seems petty compared to the hardships they will soon be facing, if they haven’t already.

Let’s close the gate on Troopergate and move on. Democrats, if you really want to go after Sarah Palin, there are plenty of other issues available. On the face of it, does she really have the experience and confidence to be vice-president, and potentially, president of the United States? Compared to that, Troopergate is small potatoes indeed.

There, now I’ve said it.

New Rules

Many of you have likely seen Bill Maher’s feature New Rules on his HBO TV show or have read his books with the same title. It all takes off from the old comic theme, There Oughta Be a Law, which inspired one California state senator  to create a contest inviting his constituents to come up with ideas for bills to deal with problems the professional legislators have overlooked.

We’re likely to have a whole bunch of new rules to govern our financial system going forward. For those who complain, “There should have been a law,” well, look at it this way. It’s taken about a century for our motor vehicle laws to catch up to what they’re regulating. The rules usually follow the abuses.

To start with, how about the creation of a financial FDA, to which new instruments like credit default swaps could be submitted for study and testing before they’re deployed in the marketplace?

There are a number of institutions that were created following the Great Depression, like the FDIC and the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are still there helping us today. As serious as our current situation is, it would be a lot worse if we didn’t have these institutions protecting us from further harm.

Wild Wests always have to be tamed if progress is to be made. The challenge is finding a balance so that the new rules don’t stifle exuberance and innovation, but protect us all from damage. Sounds kind of like raising children.

Many of us would like government to go away, but there are times when government is needed, and it seems clear to me that this is one of them.

There, now I’ve said it.

Credit Where It's Due

It makes me gag to have to give Sarah Palin credit for something, but in that vice-presidential debate, she made a good point.

It was about living within our means as individuals. It’s easy to blame Wall Street and the predatory lenders. They were offering deals that were too good to be true, and as the old saying goes, they were. But the borrowers have to share some of this blame for taking the bait. Some even lied on their loan applications, though of course, the lenders didn’t fall all over themselves looking for the truth.

There is nothing inherently evil about credit. It’s just a tool like any other. The problem comes when it’s misused. Credit cards are a convenience – they give us the freedom to make decisions out in the marketplace easily and quickly. You don’t have to have a degree in economics to know that when you overextend with credit, you get into trouble.

We’re constantly told these days to conserve, to cut back on our usage of gasoline, electricity, water and the like. How about cutting back on the use of credit? Note that I didn’t say stop, I said cut back. Wouldn’t we be helping the economy, and the health of our financial institutions, if we reduced our credit load? It seems to me that credit is like any other commodity – if we used less of it, the price might go down. But hey, I don’t have a degree in economics, and I’m among the offenders here, to be frank.

When it comes to credit cards, I’ve always found it amusing that when customers miss payments, the card companies jack up the interest rates to 29 percent or so. As if the way to get blood out of a stone is to pound on the stone.

Is it my imagination, or is my postal mailbox only half as full as it used to be? I’m just not seeing those credit card offers that I spend a good part of my time shredding. Maybe we’ll save a few trees. At least there’s room in the mailbox now for all the political junk mail, but fortunately, that will be over soon.

We’re a nation at war. But we’re always at war against something. If it isn’t Iraq, it’s poverty, drugs, teenage pregnancy, you name it. How about a war to save our economy? The last time we were all asked for individual sacrifice to support a common effort was World War II. Americans put up with a lot of drastic regulation in those years, because they knew what the goal was.

Now it’s time to do our bit for the war to save our economy, and whether we like it or not, we’ve all been drafted into this one. If it means keeping the old plastic thing in its holster a little more often, is that too much to ask of ourselves?

There, now I’ve said it.

Advanatage, Obama

We always learn a little something in debates, almost in spite of the speechifying.

First, let’s agree to dispense with the words winning and losing, when we talk about performance. At the most you can say who did better and who did worse in Tuesday night’s town hall meeting.

Many voters want these guys to come up with a definitive plan to save the economy. Fact is, they don’t really have a clue. The best economic minds in the country are working on this now, and these two candidates are just lay people when it comes to this stuff.  John McCain’s suggestion (which he is not the first to make) that the government take charge of distressed home loans and renegotiate them to allow residents to stay in their homes makes perfect sense. But if you step back and ask which of these two men could be the most effective at pulling the nation through this crisis with him, I would say Obama has the advantage – at least that’s the one with whom I’m most comfortable.

I think McCain showed his age in the debate, pacing around in circles and petulantly calling Obama “that one” on one occasion. I also wish he’d stop using the words victory and defeat when talking about Iraq, though his closing remarks were eloquent indeed.

We’re all getting tired of what each of these candidates did in the past, or what they say they other guy did in the past -- and I wish both campaigns would learn that. If it comes down to which one I believe, at this moment, could best take us us into the future, even thought I disagree with him in many respects, it’s Obama.

But perhaps both hopefuls can take comfort in the fact that I won’t be mailing my absentee ballot in for a while yet.  I want to see what happens in the next episode.

There, now I’ve said it.

Lusting After An Elitist

I’m sorry,  Governor Palin, I don’t think I want a hockey mom for Vice President of the United States. When it comes to really high office, I want someone more qualified than I am. I know my limits. Why don’t you?

Being a hockey mom qualifies one  to manage a kids’ hockey team, not to be a spare president. So don't keep pushing that as a plus. True, you're a governor;  I  seriously believe you would make a fine congresswoman or senator. Put in a term or two at that first,  then come back and run for the big prize. 

Deliver us from people who want to be our leaders and look like us at the same time. I don’t want anyone as my leader who has to come down to my level. My name isn’t Joe, and it’s been a really long time since I had a six-pack (or even drank one), so that approach doesn’t cut the ice with me.

By the way, there are other voters in this country besides average people. How about those poor abused elitists – don’t they deserve representation, too?

There, now I’ve said it. 

The Only Thing We Have to Feahh.....

My head is really in the clouds today. Maybe it just seems that way because I have cotton for brains right now, just trying to get the aforementioned head around this economic mess. But I’ve been thinking a lot about faith.

For those fortunate enough to have a lot of gold holdings, why is gold valuable? Gold, believe it or not, has some spiritual qualities. Not only is it beautiful, but it doesn’t corrode or tarnish. It’s solid, and it will still be there when other metals have rusted and disintegrated – it has that feeling of eternity to it. And it’s relatively hard to find. Of course, the real value of gold to an owner is that others value it, too. People have faith in it.

It’s also interesting to see people are buying up U.S. Treasury bills as they seek a safe haven. A Treasury bill is only a piece of paper, but it’s said to be backed by the full faith and credit of the federal government. That is, of course, if you have any faith in the federal government or feel like giving it credit for anything right now.

FDR said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” How about the flip side? The only thing we can really have faith in is faith itself. When you invest in something, you have faith that it’s going to bring you a return, and when you lose that faith, you sell it. The Bible says, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

The things that make some of us feel safe at the moment won’t save us from every calamity. If you had a brick of gold, but, as an example, were really thirsty after being lost in the desert for a week, you’d part with it in a New York minute for a drink of water, if that meant your survival. All those pieces of paper you’ve put under the mattress are worthless unless backed up by something and, as a consequence, valued by others. In some circumstances, the mattress itself may have more value than what you stuffed under it.

I’m sure you’re saying, “My life savings are on their way to being wiped out, my house is upside down, and I can’t afford the gas to get to work, so thanks a lot for this little talk.”

But the bottom line, as everyone says these days, is what you have faith in. As for me, I have faith that eventually our faith will be restored. But let’s not be surprised if we find that faith resting on something different.

There, now I’ve said it.

Enough, Already

How much is enough?

Looks like the answer to that question is in for a makeover.

A few years ago, when I was in radio news, I covered a speech by actor Edward James Olmos to an audience of high school students, and it left an indelible impression. In a lesson about human nature, Olmos told the students that he was being paid $10 million for his role in an upcoming movie. That probably sounds like chump change today -- perhaps even to him. His message to the students was, there’s never enough. “If they pay you $5, you want $10,” he said. “If it’s $100, you want $1,000. If it’s $10,000, you want a million.” The point being, there’s no such thing as “enough” when it comes to human nature. But at some point, we all have to define the word for ourselves. Typically, if we don’t come up with the right answer, life gives it to us.

A few years ago – actually about 20 now – I thought my credit card interest rate was too high and I was shopping around for something better. There was a little bank in the South that got a reputation for offering the lowest rate in the country. Problem was, you had to qualify for it, and I quickly realized that I just couldn’t  – their income standards were much too high for me. That southern bank was Wachovia.

This past week, on Jim Cramer’s Mad Money show on CNBC, he talked about the once-proud American Express, reminiscing about the time when the only cards they issued were the kind where you had to pay off your balance in full every month  -- no exceptions. When you flashed an American Express card, people knew instantly about your standing in life.

Then, Cramer said, the company started issuing credit cards – the kind you didn’t have to pay off every month, and that became a major part of their business. Of course, their business grew – but at what price? Now, he said, there is a lot of “toxic waste” on Amex’s books, and the company is a shell of its former self.

After I left radio, I went into the newspaper business. Newspaper companies were used to having dominant positions in local markets and making enormous profits, but now many are in trouble, because those profits aren’t there any more, due to fierce competition from the Web. The newspaper conglomerates whose business models are based on the traditionally huge percentages of profit are having to live with less, and because of their outstanding loans, some of them just can’t do it.

The current economic collapse is forcing huge corporations and kitchen-table budgeters alike to take a hard look at that little word enough. It’s best summed up by a line from that Oliver Stone movie Wall Street, when Charlie Sheen says to Michael Douglas, playing the ruthless Gordon Gecko, “How many yachts can you ski behind?”

There, now I’ve said it.

Great Expectations

There was no knockout, so as announcer Michael Buffer says,  after 12 rounds, we go to the scorecards.

Sarah Palin did a lot better than expected, though I thought all along she would do well. It’s about what she did well at. 

She looked right into the camera; she spoke plainly and with energy, and she connected with her audience.

But she didn’t answer some of the questions – at one point, even downright refusing to do so. She relied a lot on sloganeering and talking about the subjects she was comfortable with – energy and corruption on Wall Street. But could we follow her arguments? I felt kind of like a hunter trying to chase a fox down a  long, twisty path. I never knew where the path led, but it didn’t matter because I knew I would never catch the fox. 

As for Joe Biden, he, too, did better than expected, with a clear command of the issues and his arguments. But I thought he spent too much time looking backward, as Gov. Palin said, and while his energy level wasn’t bad, it didn’t come up to hers. He won most of the arguments, but not necessarily the points.

I think it’s safe to say that if John McCain is elected President, Sarah Palin will be the reason.

Only, please, God, don’t let anything happen to him.

There now I’ve said it.

Don't Take the Points

If you're counting on Joe Biden to put away Sarah Palin in the vice-presidential debate -- well, don't.

We've heard a lot about the bar being lowered so far that Palin only has to avoid stumbling to "win" the debate. But "winning" and "losing" are words that make almost as much sense in this context as they do in t he Iraq war.

First of all, Sarah Palin is not stupid,  and I have no doubt that she's a quick study. She's been going to debate camp. It's too bad the GOP couldn't have let her cut her teeth on some more interviews, so she'd be more comfortable. But she's going to do just fine in this debate situation.

So what does a debate actually tell you? It's a great measure of debating skills, and some are just plain better at that than others. Palin may actually out-debate Joe Biden.

But what it all comes down to is this: Would you rather have a quick study who does a credible job after two weeks of debate camp, or someone with 30 years of experience dealing with foreign policy issues and with a solid knowledge of how government works as your next vice-president?

It all comes down to that.

There, now I've said it.

Biden-Palin: Pay-Per-View

You want to take a whack at the $700 billion? Make Biden-Palin a pay-per-view!

I’m only about halfway joking here. If you’ve read my previous posts, you know how this is going to be scored – like a boxing match.  Jabs thrown,  power punches connected,  knockout blow. Maybe they’ll even have those little colored bars at the bottom of the screen.

Let’s say you charged about $50 for each TV connection,  with five people watching at each one, the total audience being 40 million. I’m not very good at math, but is that about $400 million? How about if you made it available worldwide? And do the same thing with the presidential debates while yhou're at it. Maybe you could even sell series tickets.

Well, OK, it wouldn’t raise all that much, but wouldn’t it be a start? Aren’t we in a crisis?

We’re already getting the Thursday party organized at my house – we have to find out where that Palin wine from Chile is sold. Somebody will have to bring the chips and dip.

Hey, don’t accuse me of trivializing this process! There are a lot of people who have beaten me to the punch in that department, as long as we're on the boxing theme.

There, now I’ve said it.

Catching Flies With #%$&@!

Thanks, Nancy. You just turned my 401 (k) into a 201(z).

It’s hard enough swallowing cod liver oil by the teaspoon. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted that the Republicans swallow their dose by the bucket, or the 55-gallon drum. Her unnecessarily partisan speech when the bailout bill was brought to the floor may have driven away the necessary Republican votes to get it passed. And with the number of Democrats opposed to the bill, she needed all the help she threw away.

Congressman Barney Frank observed that Republicans shouldn’t have let their hurt feelings destroy the process of saving the country’s financial markets. But why hurt their feelings in the first place?

It will be very interesting to see whom the voters hold this all against. Suffice it to say that if there were a choice for “none of the above,” at least in House election contests, that chamber would turn into one big mausoleum in January.

As I’ve said before, if we were just screwing ourselves, we could let everything collapse in a heap and have only ourselves to blame. But there’s a real danger of our taking the world with us.

At what point does this turn into a real emergency – and what powers would that give the Executive Branch? Do we have to wait for people to take to the streets? This territory isn’t just uncharted – it’s getting to be downright frightening.

So please, Ms. Pelosi, go kiss a few GOP behinds if you have to, in order to get a bailout bill passed. And for those whose behinds get kissed, well, please remember to smile and say thank you – and get back to work.

There, now I’ve said it.

Up the Flagpole

All the players in this historical financial drama are rushing for the final curtain, but many in the audience are saying, “Not so fast!”

This is coming largely from free-market advocates who say that Congress hasn’t taken the time to explore cheaper alternatives to the $700 billion bailout plan. They say the crisis mentality is largely artificial and has a political motivation, as members of Congress are really trying to get this done so they can rush home to their districts and campaign. The worst thing, the critics say, is that there is no guarantee this bailout plan will work, that it’s simply a symbolic gesture.

Symbolism is not the frivolity that some think it is. Those in the marketplace – including the foreign markets – expect somebody to do something. The plan is almost secondary to the action of adopting it. It’s truly a Hail Mary pass – but sometimes prayer is a last – and necessary -- resort. Or at least it’s important to see some folks on their knees.

Now the compromise plan isn’t making anyone very happy, but that’s why they call it compromise to begin with. It appears there will be no golden parachutes for the CEOs of the failed companies and that there will be congressional oversight so that the $700 billion isn’t doled out all at once. The CEO issue is the one that’s really resonating with the average bear – even though cutting back on compensation only represents a drop in a very large bucket.

To make a leap into the presidential race for a moment, the idea that a black man could actually be elected to this country’s highest office, even if he does lack some experience, is really resonating with people in the rest of the world, with whom our relationships are currently in the toilet. If symbolism is a little thing, give me a better explanation for the candidacy of Sarah Palin.

Sometimes, it’s all about running things up the flagpole.

There, now I’ve said it.

Out of the Park

If I hear the expression “hit it out of the park” one more time, I’m sure I will commit a felony, though what section of the penal code that will involve, I’m not sure of yet.

We’re Americans, and we have to score everything. In the big debate, neither McCain nor Obama hit it out of the park, the analysts said. But hey, was there a ground rule double, a bunt, or a sacrifice fly? I guess most people had it a draw.

Did you notice the approval bars that CNN was running continuously through the contest, to show how various constituencies were reacting? What exactly did it tell you? But hey, it’s a score.

Go on the Internet. Everything is rated from one to five stars. We all are assigned credit scores (not that those are of any particular use right now). No matter how good an eBay seller you are, there’s always somebody that wants to give you a low score and bust your average. It’s inevitable.

How good a life have we all led, on a scale of 1 to 10? I  guess I’ve done a passable job so far, but if I had my druthers, I think I’d rather have it expressed in a pie chart that a graph. As long as I get to enjoy some of the pie.

There, now I've said it.

Copybox Numbers

You have no idea what the title of this post means unless you watch HBO Boxing. They use Copybox numbers to keep track  punches thrown,  e.g., Rocky threw 140 jabs and 25 percent connected, while Bruiser threw 60 power punches and 10 percent landed.

Then the boxing analysts go to work. It's usually Jim Lampley and Larry Merchant, along with former heavyweight champ Lennox Lewis and sometimes the unofficial ringside scorer (and former dentist, I think) Harold Lederman. But even they can't tell you who won.

Assuming it's not an obvious knockout, that determination is made by the three official ringside judges. They may lead  to a completely different conclusion than those of all the analysts, but it's their decisions that count.

So how did I score the debate, you ask? Or maybe you didn't. Well, in general, I thought Obama held his own and displayed a more global or comprehensive grasp of the issues than did McCain -- but McCain fared a lot better than people thought he might, and scored points with his "been theres" and "done thats" Some made a big deal of his struggling with the pronunciation of the president of Iran's name. But hey, I used to be in broadcasting, and I can't do it.

The bottom line, of course, is that neither man scored  a clear victory,  leaving viewers and listeners wanting more.

But debates test just one set of skills, and we can't depend on these to form our opinions, if we're fair.  How do the candidates  perform in one-on-one extended interviews,  in town-hall meetings, even in Saturday Night Live show-ups? If the media are doing their jobs, their fact-checking keeps track of the lies told. All these elements go into the crock pot. After a little stewing, we can serve up an informed opinion.

Please give yourself permission NOT to have an opinion yet.  This is a really important vote you'll be casting. No one will hold it against you if you take your time.

There,  now I've said it.

Working the System

A lot of us are pointing fingers at the financial whizbangs and the CEOs that we blame for getting us into this meltdown situation. But the questions remains, were they doing anything illegal, or just working the system?

The FBI is said to be investigating many of these people now. But for the moment, it seems our favorite villains were playing with the cards that were available, according to the rules.

Who among us can say that we never worked a system if it was in our favor? Our accountant turned us on to a quirk in the law that lowered our taxes. Someone we knew got us backstage into a concert, even though we had no real reason to be there. Our uncle was the chief of police, so we didn't get a ticket when we should have. There are probably many variations of this. How many of us refused to work the system when the cards were in our favor? It's OK, you don't have to answer that.

The solution, of course, is repairing the system to that people can't work it any more, or at least not as easily.

Following the Wall Street collapse of 1929, some regulations were put into effect that are still bnefiting us today. If they weren't in place, we'd really be in a pickle. But not every loophole was plugged. And when it comes to money, new loopholes open up as the financial wunderkinds put their creativity to use.

So, we learn by experience --  in most cases, the hard way -- but we do learn. After the earthquake comes and the buildings collapse, the buildings that go up in their place are usually able to withstand greater shocks. That's what will happen when this current crisis passes.

Let's make sure we are grateful for the lessons learned -- and make sure that our leaders turn them into policies that protect us going forward.

There, now I've said it.

Grabbing the Wheel

The Bush administration, and Treasury Secretary Paulson in particular, have been getting a lot of flak over the plan to deal with the current economic crisis.  But hey, at least they have come up with a plan, which is more than most of the critics have done.

No, the Treasury Secretary should not have carte blanche to spend almost $700 billion without oversight. But he has done his job. There's a plan out there on the table to get kicked around, tweaked, picked apart, and transformed.

Is it going to work? You've seen enough of those disaster movies where the asteroid is heading for Earth,  and they launch a spaceship with nukes in it to deal with the threat. In some movies it works, and in others it doesn't -- but somebody has to try.

Doing nothing is not an option. Jus the fact that there is a plan on the table is something to calm the markets. Many of the reforms put in place after the crash of 1929 are still working our favor today. That's why there hasn't been a run on the banks.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched the New Deal to lift Americans out of the Depression -- with a little "d" as well as the upper-case one. The launching of those programs accomplished that goal -- even though as time went on, the programs' effectiveness was questioned. But just the fact that someone grabbed the wheel and started steering made the difference.

Let's hope they come together on a plan quickly in Washington -- that needs to happen. But let's give everyone credit for tryihng.

There, now I've said it.

Feel the Pain

This financial crisis can get you thinking what things cost and what they're really worth -- and how we've been insulated from having to deal with pain.

Let's take housing. In California, it's very expensive in some markets, thought not what it used to be. The price of a home was driven up in the Bay Area by a lot of factors  -- fear being one of them. Prices got bid up because folks felt that if they didn't get into something ASAP, the price would go even higher, and they'd be out of luck. Plus, the dot-commers out there, many of whom made their money on products just as ephemeral as today's investmnent bankers, had money to burn. The rest couldn't afford to compete unless they got a banker to give them a loan they weren't qualified for to buy a house that probably wasn't worth the zillions being charged -- or shouldn't have been -- but that was what the market bore. You find out what something is really worth when the market collapses  -- but we're insulated from those things, most of the time.

Take insurance. No one living could afford to pay the out-of-pocket costs for health care these days, so you have to have insurance to insulate you from that level of pain. So the hospital charge for a toohbrush is $40. Your insurance company pays it because it's "reasonable and customary." OK, so maybe they only pay $25, and you get the bill for the rest. Then you get angry, because you wonder why they're charing that much for a toothbrush in the first place. If you -- and everyone else --  had to pay for it totally out of your pocket, would the hospital be able to charge that much for it? 

There's another thing about insurance. It's like one of those bulletproof vests the cops wear. They're great as long as you don't get shot in the legs or the head. That would hurt! Folks are finding out that they're really not insured against all that much.

Take the Iraq War. Lots of people thought that was a good idea -- a lot more people than those getting blamed for it now. Most Americans were insulated from sacrifice. The cost of the war wasn't really part of the federal budget. There were no war bond rallies, like during World War II, to raise money for it. And instead of a draft, the government just called up National Guard and reserve units to take on multiple tours of duty. Many of these have been some of the top prfofessionals in oucr communities, not kids just out of college. But unless you are part of a family that lost a loved one, you probably haven't felt very much, because your daily life hasn't been interfered with at all. If there were a draft, do you think there would have been an Iraq War?

Sometimes it's better to feel the pain, to have to pay the real cost of something.  Feeling pain often protects us from real harm. Maybe this financial crisis will strip off the insulation and make us sit up and pay attention.

There, now I've said it.

Other People's Messes

It seems unfair that we have to clean up other people's messes  -- but we do.

Why should we bail out Wall Street? These are the guys that got us into trouble, right? But we're all in the same boat,  and the boat is sinking. So everybody has to do the bailing, When we get back to shore,  we can fire the captain -- but first we have to get back.

And while there's a lot of pain to go around, it isn't  just the fincincial whiz kids who deserve to feel it. A lot of people benefited from the air in the bubble. Remember, just about everyone's property values have gone up. A lot of stockholders have done very well. Families are living in houses thanks to loans they shouldn't have qualified for. The shame is that they needed to get loans they couldn't qualify for to pay the outrageous prices in the first place --but that's water under the bridge, just co continue with our nautical theme here.

The Iraq war is a very similar situation.  President Bush will leave office with a mess that others have to clean up. We all want to walk away from it, because we didn't create it. But it wasn't just Bush that made the mess -- he had lots of help. From most of us, in fact. Barack Obama can boast all he wants to that he didn't contribute to it,  but even he recognizes we have to clean it up.

Saddam Hussein was largely our mess -- we armed him in the early days as a defense against Iran. Osma bin Laden was once the darling of the West when he was fighting the Russians in Afghanistan.You can't just demonize one or two people. Devils tend to travel in packs, which is why they said their name was Legion in the Bible.

I've always been of the opinion that the bad guys always get what's coming to them, though it's usually not as soon as I'd like. I may not even be around to see it. In the meantime, we all just have to get out our bailing cans and keep dipping. That's the only way we're going to keep from being shark (or barracuda?) food.

There, now I've said it.

American Idol This isn't

On Sunday I got two forwarded e-mails, saying that PBS was doing an on-line survey. The question was, "Is Sarah Palin qualified to be vice president?" There are boxes for yes, no, and undecided.

These forwarded e-mails had an air of urgency because the yesses were outnumbering the nos by something like a 56 to 42 percent margin, and that the "no" side better get organized because the "yes" side is mounting a successful campaign. Of course I voted. If you have been reading Coughswitch, you probabloy know where I stand.

And then I thought, hang on a minute. A poll is just a poll. I'm not faulting PBS for conducting one. But is it really a matter of such urgency that one side wins or loses one of these things?  All the pundits, after talking about polling data for hours, end up in the same place: The only poll that counts is the big one in November.

Now I also hear all the pundits talking about all those undecided white women out there who could swing the election. It's assumed that almost all Republicans will vote Republican but that only some Democrats will choose Obama/Biden and that the white women and "real people" Democrats will be so disgusted that Obama didn't pick Hillary that they'll vote Republican.

But I haven't heard much about a segment that I belong to. What about Republicans who are so angry at the selection of Sarah Palin as a vice-presidential candidate that they'll either vote for the Democrats, or, if they can't bring themselves to do that, not vote at all?  Don't some Republican women find it a little insulting that experienced, intelligent Republican female candidates were passed over for Sarah Palin? Anyone hear of Kay Bailey Hutchinson or Christine Todd Whitman, just to name two?

The object of the race is to win, but Jeez Louise,  is Sarah Palin the best the GOP can do?  Louise wasn't busy -- maybe they should have put her on the ticket.

There, now I've said it.

Barracuda Calls

I can't help myself. Sarah Palin is drop-dead gorgeous. As long as you don't have to listen to her.

The cheekbones are just exquisite. But they'd be obscured by the necessary addition of duct tape.

The governor's voice makes nails on a blackboard sound like the New York Philharmonic. Now, look, I know I'm being unfair. God knows, Eleanor Roosevelt was nothing in the voice quality department, either. But would you really want to listen to Sarah Palin deliver a State of the Union address, which she may have to do someday? Don't get me started on what the content of such a speech might be. I'm just talking about the sound here. It's purely superficial.

I notice that any number of women are wearing Sarah glasses. I think I saw one of the Weather Channel meteorologists wearing them on the night her contact lenses may have been uncomfortable. The stock market may be having its problems, but find out who makes those and invest. The stock will either take a big jump or a big drop Nov. 5.

But whatever you do, ladies, please don't try to sound like Sarah. Leave that to Tina Fey.

There, now I've said it.

Net Worth

The federal government has come up with a plan whereby it -- meaning we -- will assume the bad debts of the financial institutions in trouble. Now you're probably really mad. Why should we be on the hook for a situation we didn't create? Why don't the bad guys take the fall?

Why were there no whistle-blowers out there? Because everyone was in cahoots? Partly, but it's mostly that these new financial instruments like "credit default swaps" appeared on the scene so stealthily -- and the results were so good -- that most of the experts didn't know how or when to blow the whistle. When it comes to regulation, it would be great if there were a financial FDA that could give these things some kind of test on a limited scale before they're actually put into widespread use.

You can lock up all the bad guys you want and deprive all the evil CEOs of their assets and turn these miscreants into the nation's newest homeless. But that's not a fix. These institutions are really too big to fail. It would be one thing if we had just screwed ourselves, but it's not that way. The United States economy is largely owned by foreigners. When AIG was poised to go down, for example, it was going to take hundreds of billions of dollars in Japanese investment with it. And if foreigners lose confidence in their U.S. investments and pull out, this week's calamities will seem like minor foreshocks of the Really Big One.

It all goes back to the question of what has value. Value comes from whatever people have confidence in. The value is in the confidence itself, not the investment object. A lot of people lost confidence in stocks this week and put their money into gold. Why is gold valuable? OK, it's pretty, it's resistant to corrosion, and it's a wonderful electrical conductor, but it really doesn't have much else to recommend it. You can't eat it, drink it or power anything with it. You don't have to think about it or understand it, but you know that a lot of people have confidence in it, and there's where the value is.

So what our leaders have to do is restore the confidence -- the trust -- in the American economy, which really is too big to fail. When the airplane loses power and starts to go down, the pilot pointing a finger at the co-pilot and saying, "It was your job to check the fuel before takeoff today" doesn't solve the problem.

There, now I've said it.