Another Fine Mess

Good advice

2009-03-09T11:44:00.000-07:00

It is time to defend your job. Here are ten good ideas that will help your boss think correctly about who should stay and who should go.

1. Be seen taking random photographs with your cell phone. Take photos of the cars in the office parking lot and the restaurants where coworkers go to lunch.

2. Leave copies of gun magazines on your desk and start wearing cammo on casual Friday.

3. Make up a story about a lawyer relative who recently passed the Bar who can’t find a job and is looking for something to do. Repeatedly ask the HR people if they can help find anything for him since they’re not busy hiring people.

4. Join a social club that your boss belongs to and begin attending his church.

5. Make psychiatrist appointments where coworkers can hear you.

6. Enroll your kids in the same day-care as your supervisor’s bosses’ kids go to, and tell your children to make friends fast or the Wii gets sold on eBay.

7. Immediately begin to cry uncontrollably whenever someone mentions layoffs or any negative employment news.

8. If you have a coworker with a similar job and jealousy issues, send a tell-all letter to him from his wife’s lover.

9. “Hurt your back”, and go home and read the long-term disability policy.

10. Tell your wife to put the moves on your boss. See #1 if successful. One picture is worth a thousand paychecks.

Hateism

2009-03-07T09:43:00.000-08:00

The rabidly wrong radical right wing of the Republican Party has collectively dropped its basket. Its voter mandated exile from the decision-making portions of the legislative and executive branches of the federal government has the worst elements of what once was the party of Lincoln discombobulating in a public paroxysm of powerlessness and self-loathing.

Public speaking opportunities are few and far between for minority party officials. Press conferences are ill-attended and irrelevant. Cynical party efforts to obscure the historic Republican preference for politicians with European pigmentation have thrust forward ill-prepared and not quite ready for prime-time figures like Michael Steele and Bobby Jindal - as if changing the publicly televised face of the party, changes anything.

Meanwhile the actual Republican message of the day is being shouted out by actors portraying comedians portraying news people. Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity now carry the lightly pigmented water – albeit from a hate poisoned well – to the thirsty few. They dispense their daily dread dollops of “ISMs” like socialism, communism, protectionism and liberalism all over their reportage hoping to incite the rank-and-file Republicans into following their mad charge up the hill, and, like lemmings, continuing over the hill and off the cliff into the political void.

So, in a word, the Republicans new national strategy is nihilism. They’ve committed their base to entertainers who spend their time screeching out Hooverisms and who have roundly rejected the only “ISM” that can help us now. That rejected “ISM” is Patriotism.

Republican Obama Nexus

2009-02-22T16:41:00.000-08:00

The National Republican Party has reacted to their ouster from all three branches of federal government by adopting an obstructionist strategy that has defined what appears to be their entire legislative agenda. The Republicans are now being derisively referred to as the “party of no” (PON) by pundits and television talking heads. I confidently expect what remains of the once great GOP to be able to execute this PON agenda, and to regret it.

Not long ago, Karl Rove effectively presided over a strategy of Unitarian control that he believed would create a "permanent Republican majority". To Rove’s credit, the lockstep Republican zombie-like unity was astounding and frightening to behold. However, like most strategies authored by self-styled mad geniuses, it ended in a cascade of unintended consequences that the RNC will be trying to explain away for years to come. All that remains now of Rove’s permanent majority is a preposterous willingness of the leftover GOP shards and scraps to mindlessly follow a poor plan crafted by poor leadership.

The voters have rejected the ideology of the idiots who destroyed the economy and international respect of my country, and so should you. This PON strategy will only further corrode public respect for the Republican Party. The Rove-style policies and politics failed. It’s not worth arguing; it’s a fact. The entire world is suffering an economic catastrophe that absolutely will not be solved by using the word no every time.

I have a suggestion for my Republican friends: become an Obama Republican. Start a group. Use a tricky and fun name. I like the acronym RON. RON stands for Republican Obama Nexus. It honors the Great Communicator himself who also had a substantial crossover delegation from the opposition party.

I know that many of you really do want the President to succeed. Stand up. Be Counted. Support Obama.

john@johngalish.com

The Disenfranchisement of the Republican Party

2009-02-15T05:28:00.000-08:00

The Stimulus bill passed the House without a single Republican vote. This Quixotic Republican lockstep obstructionist behavior should alarm all of us. It suggests that there is an unseen and unelected political boss that controlled the voting behavior of every one of our Republican Congressional officials - in effect, disenfranchising our entire Republican Congressional delegation. Frankly, we need our Republican Congressmen and women to rise above the control of this unseen puppeteer, whoever he is. The American people need all of their Congressman and women to do their job.

There are 300-million unique people in this country – all of us different – but we have found ourselves in a situation where our thoughts and actions are often described by one of two labels: Conservative or Liberal. Come on America! We’re more complicated than that. We shouldn’t have to choose one ideology of only two every single time we vote for a Representative. Wouldn’t our Government work far better if our Republican Congressmen and women were allowed to freely cast their vote based on their own unique experience and value set?

We need at least two political parties in this country, and this Republican insistence on a lock-step march into irrelevance does not bode well for any of us.

john@johngalish.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1391951134

Good Riddance George W. Bush

2009-02-09T10:02:00.000-08:00

Good riddance George Bush. Your reign of terror may be ended, but the effect of your evildoing will last as it shapes your legacy into polite terms as a history lesson that will be incorporated into my children’s adult lives and into what was supposed to be my retirement. Your legacy will be fear.

The America you are leaving behind contains a terrified shivering mass of people who are so afraid to spend whatever money they do have that our economy is actually teetering on the brink of Great Depression 2.0.

A country filled with citizens so frightened that they have agreed to be publicly searched before they get on an airplane or enter a County Courthouse - a people so terrified that they allowed their Government to order the torture of fellow human beings and so fearful that they allowed fundamental aspects of their judicial system to be violated when there were clear absolute directives preventing that very action by our founding fathers.

A Government so terrified of further job losses that they are throwing bailout money at every company that asks for it when we all know it represents a tax burden that our children’s children will be paying long after these specific saved jobs are a moot point.

George Bush will never feel the intrusive hand of a pat-down security search or a cold chill of fear when he looks at his checkbook or credit card balance, but I have a feeling that he may have a fear of his own.

In the next few years there will be an unprecedented powerful international effort to try George Bush and Dick Cheney for war crimes.

I hope by then America has overcome its national petrifaction and has the courage to do the morally right thing when the extradition requests are made.

Stimulate This!

2009-02-09T09:54:00.000-08:00

Hey Barack, stimulate us!

My wife and I would each like one of those 3 million jobs that you’re creating this week with the Stimulus Bill. Both of us are out of work and we need to have jobs so that we can continue to support our family. Please put us on the list.

We actually have lost 4 good jobs in this recession. Early in 2008 the steel company that both my wife and I worked for went out of business. We know; we know… all eggs, one basket. But we managed the end so well.

We were proactive, and as soon as we sensed the end coming, we vigorously threw ourselves into a job search. Our old company had two cross-town competitors who stood to benefit from our company’s demise, and we worked that angle hard. My wife got a job at one, and I went to the other. Whew! We had a double-barreled economic shotgun pointed directly at us and, together, we ducked both blasts.

What is particularly galling is that we did exactly the right thing. Instead of placidly going down with the ship with our old compadres in the end-of-days wind-down of our old company as Nearer My God To Thee played in the background, my wife and I worked the phones and the internet and networked as if our lives depended on it.

And after all that, the world ended. Her new company had three quick rounds of layoffs and she was given her pink slip the last day before Christmas. I lost my new job three weeks later in my new company’s first-ever corporate layoff. Just like that, our home economy went from comfortable to crisis to catastrophe

So, here we are - downed by the echo of a months-old shotgun blast. We’re living on unemployment, and we are looking for jobs. This time my wife and I don’t have any good ideas.

Barack, my family applied for food stamps and free school lunches for our children the day that you were inaugurated. I keep hearing from our elected officials how things are going to get worse before they get better and I wonder what worse really means for my family.

So Barack, my family needs just two small favors out of the 3-million about to be granted. Please put my wife and me on the list for just two of those jobs. We’re out of ideas and we’re running out of cash.