index.xml Index file Bush and Schwartzerenegger More Popular in China Both our Gov. and the Pres. are in China promoting more Globalism, and are probably more popular over there than here! Think of it, if things are too hot at home, hightail it to about as far as you can get away. There two are about as far away as they can get. Schwartz, is pleading with the Chinese to respect our intellectual property, which they don't, and Bush is lecturing them about Freedom and Individual Rights, which they haven't had a history of repecting either, and Bush is a fine example of respecting the rights of others, as more torture centers have been found in countries that aren't supposed to tolerate such things. This comes on the heels of an indictment of Vice. Pres. Chaney's Chief of Staff "Scooter" Libby, over the as yet unresolved question of disclosure of the identity of a CIA Operative, who is the wife of a critic of the War in Iraq, who was named as the source for that event. It suggests that someone at the top disclosed the agent's identity which is a volation of the Espionage act. Libby was indicted not for violating a security clearence but for Obstructing a Grand Jury investiation. Who actually violated security has yet to be determined. If it turns out to be the President or Vice President, one or both could be impeached, and with Bush's approval rating down around 35%, the specter of an on-going investigation leading to an indictment can hardly help. It seems that arrogance and deciet are comming home to roost, well good. Newsflash: 85% of people are Idiots Yes sir, you heard it here first. I have concluded that about 85% of the people around are idiots. Now, I didn't say that are either stupid or retarded. oops, sorry the PC term for that is now "developmentally delayed", for this is not a problem of basic intelligence or access to information. It is a problem with judgement and belief. Now, if you take the recent election in California as a possible counter example and add the principle of nullification, how votes for and against cancel, then 15% having been able to become aware and exercise rational self-interested judgement could have as clear a choice as was made. It is when people are either lulled to sleep, as some of the pundets for the GOP were hoping, or accepting a myth, that they are stupified idiots. I am convinced that the above idea is also demonstrated by management and decision making in business. There is no doubt in my mind that many of the companies I have had some contact with in high tech are run by cadres of managers who are idiots. They are more concerned with looking good along side their peers and parroting whatever fad comes out of the senior staff and the brains who are the darlings of the executives than with checking the outside world and the individual contriutors to see if the ideas have any realty. I worked at Sun Microsystems from 1997 to 2004 and I felt jerked about by the management there and not respected or valued for what I knew. Sun had a reputation for being one of the best companies to work for, but I knew it was only a matter of time and how I was going to leave and with what by the middle of 2003. The pivotal event was the very quiet discontinuing of anonymous means to communicate issues from the level of individual contributors to senior management around the line managers. I had the misfortune to be reporting to a manager at the time whose character was more like Scott Peterson than most of his colleages wanted to admit. Idiots hang together. Another example of this idea is the almost cluelessness imblanaces that one sees at all levels in the economy, but the one I know best is that in my towm there is a very popular restaurant that becomes very busy on the weekends and especially with families with little squaking kids which is all the more annoying because the place is a cafe and not a full serve restaurant with true family-style seating. While, I am happy that the owners of the place have the extra business it is a sign of the idiot factor in all the other business people and their backers that not a one of them has seen the advantage and taken it. There is even a very fine breakfest place nearby that refuses to open on Sunday to take up the slack, and there is the whole phenomenon of people who go into the restaurant business, one of the most rsiky businesses to enter, who don't get a big enough place with enough parking. Prehaps the risk is a measure of the idiocy of the people who usually think about opening a restaurant. They seldom seem to get it right and they certaintly haven't seen the need here. Moral Decadence in American Politics caused by poor Business Ethics Al Gore addressed students at Stanford's Graduate School of Business a couple of weeks ago, as well he should, for in many ways Stanford is the brain trust of the Regan-Bush administrations, G.W. having just drawn from that well for his choice for the next Fed Chairman to replace Alan Greenspan. We will probably get somone of about the same stamp. So, with the moral lapses of the Administration with respect to truthfulness and arrogance, one must look to the values of thier backers, such as at the Hoover Instiution and prehaps the Biz School and ask yourself whether cutting sole-source deals with favored contractors, or not giving full fiscal and logistical support to troops put in harm's way in the name of war that has a thick exconomic hidden agenda which looks less and less like it is really about the welfare and freedom of anybody except Bush's business cronies, whether poor ethics that seem to crop up with fair frequency in business, such as price fixing, speculation, insider dealing or simply a sociopathic lack of regard for the lives of the people asked to do their bidding, now have tainted the judgement of political leaders who increasingly have long careers in business. What may seem necessary for the self-preservation of a corporate entity such as ruthless elimination of jobs regardless of the excellance showm, or cost cutting and shortcuts that might endanger worker or public safety, can hardly be tolerated as "promoting the general welfare". How does someone like Donald Rumsfeld or the President or Dick Chaney go from being sleezy businessman to upright public servant? I actually did not vote for candidates I knew nothing else about if their title was "businessman" in the recent election. I know that there are plenty of honest people in business, but never again will being in business be enough for me to judge that a person might be a sound character.