Sticks and Stones May Break Their Bones, But Words Will Cost You $10 Million

See, this is why I prefer to use the term "douchebag" instead of doofus...

Former Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz's less-than-flattering remarks about her fellow board members may have just cost her $10 million.

In her first interview since being fired from the Internet giant, published Thursday, Bartz told Fortune Magazine,

"These people f*ck*d me over," before referring to the other Yahoo board members as "doofuses."

But Bartz, who became the company's CEO in January 2009 and was axed by Yahoo Tuesday, may have made a costly mistake by venting her frustrations in the media.

The ex-CEO had a non-disparagement clause in her employment contact that had $10 million outstanding, sources close to the company told Fortune.

It was likely that her ridiculing "doofuses" comment would have violated that agreement, and she would therefore have to forgo the settlement, people familiar with the matter added.

Okay, douchebags might not have been advised, either.  But perhaps the truth would be an adequate defense -- maybe they are doofuses. 

One More Thing Obama Got Wrong

I expect the Daily Show to start mocking Obama for this factual inaccuracy any day next week.

Look For The Union Label -- It Will Be Screaming An Obscenity

The article is a day old, but I wonder what would have happened if Tea Party members ever behaved like this...

Earlier this morning 500 or so members of the AFL-CIO stormed a port in Washington, vandalized the facility, reportedly cut the brake lines of train cars, and held six guards hostage. Shockingly, no one was arrested. Earlier that week a judge issued a restraining order against this same group after they clashed with police while brandishing bats and issuing death threats. Nineteen people were arrested for misdemeanors.


While all of this was going on, the group’s head, Richard Trumka, was invited as a guest of the President to tonight’s jobs address.

Wait, it gets better.  Here's a proud member of the longshoreman's union speaking with reporters today...



What a cuddly guy. But if it makes you feel better, John Hinderaker over at Powerline notes that the average longshoreman on the West Coast makes a piddling $136,000 per year, with some foreman making more than $200,000 per year. And that's before the benefits.  Hope those foreman are married -- if they're single, Obama considers them rich.

And to think, on the Simpsons, Mr. Burns was offended when he learned the union was getting its members a green cookie on St. Paddy's Day.

Depressing Stat of the Day

Okay, this pretty much blows my mind...

As for Detroit itself, the official unemployment rate was 14.1 percent in July; the true unemployment figure in the city might be as high as an astounding 50 percent. The Big 3 automakers were the city’s top employers as recently as 2007; as of November 2010, the city’s five top employers were the Detroit Public School system; the City of Detroit; the Detroit Medical Center; the Henry Ford Health System (a non-profit, managed care health care organization); and the US government.

But remember, the auto bailout was a raging success.  Nothing else to see here, just move along.

What Annoying Song Is Stuck In My Head Today?

If I need to suffer with a song stuck in my head, why shouldn't you have to do the same? Sometimes they're good, most times they're bad... but no matter what, they make you suffer. So I like to share the suffering whenever it happens.

This band sets a new mark for this category -- I merely saw their name mentioned on a web post today, and this song popped into my head.  Frankly, the Gallagher brothers are just weird.  I know they've had substantial success since this song, but it's either this or "Champagne Supernova" that pops into my head when I hear the name Oasis.  And to this day, I'm still mystified by what a Wonderwall might be.




You're welcome.

File This In The Thank God We Never Had To Use It File

Put this alongside Ike's draft press release announcing  the failure of the D-Day landing: here's Nixon's draft speech of what he would have said if Armstrong and Aldrin had been stranded on the moon.

Seeing that in black and white drives home a central point -- just how brave those guys really were, and what was at risk. 

The Weekly Rant

A new feature... just because...

I’ve reached a conclusion regarding Barack Obama.[1]  He’s a really crappy lawyer.

This is not a conclusion that I reach lightly.  In fact, it’s against my own self-interest, since I attended the same law school and determining that he’s not a good lawyer tends to undercut the six figure investment I made in my education.[2]  But it’s a relatively straightforward conclusion at this point.  Ask yourself this question – would you hire Barack Obama to represent you as a lawyer?[3]  Most of the time, lawyers get hired to be an advocate.[4]

I don’t think I would hire Obama as an advocate.  At least, not if I wanted to win.  My view of a great advocate has always borrowed from the advice I first heard imparted by legendary legal scholar Bum Phillips.  Okay, Phillips was a football coach, but the general philosophy fits when judging the quality of your legal representation.  Phillips repeated a statement that I believe was first used to describe the greatness of Bear Bryant as a football coach:  “He can take his’n and beat your’n.  And he can take your’n and beat his’n.”[5]

Translating that to the law, a truly skilled courtroom advocate is someone who can take a certain set of facts and win the case arguing either side.  Does that description apply to Obama?  Is he someone who can make a convincing argument for both sides of an issue, enough so that he can convince people on the other side of the issue to hear him out and possibly change their minds?

If I’d asked that question in December 2008, the response from the vast majority of the country would have been “Duh.”  Obama had just convinced a majority of Americans to elect him President[6] – something that was seen as particularly amazing by people who were convinced that America was made up tons of people with latent racist feelings.[7]  Based off that performance, perhaps it was okay to believe that we were on the precipice of some grand age, that this would be the moment when “the seas stopped rising and our planet began to heal”, to steal one particularly idiotic bit of overselling from our President, made during the heady days of his 2008 campaign.[8]

Turns out that was the high point of the Obama Experience thus far, and will likely remain so.  The 2008 campaign was essentially a fantastic ad campaign for a product (Barack Obama) that could be morphed into whatever people wanted him to be.[9]  If you were a liberal anti-war zealot, this was the guy who would end the wars and close Gitmo.[10]  If you a moderate sick of the divisions of the Bush years, this was the man who would unite America under a post-partisan banner of a rising sun or whatever the hell that logo was.[11]  If you were a conservative disillusioned by the Bush years… well, he was not a conservative, but he had a first-class temperament and would listen to people on the other side in a way that made them feel like they were being heard.[12]

To be fair, this effectively trapped Obama when he arrived in office as a victim of unrealistic expectations – once he became President, he had to start actually doing stuff, and some of that was bound to take the bloom off his rose.  But since he created those expectations and openly surfed the wave created by them to the Presidency, it’s fair to assign the headache of navigating these problems to him.  Some of us foresaw such an event, but it should have been obvious from the start.

Which brings us to today, and the President’s upcoming 79,124th speech to Congress/press conference/random White House speech/townhall/whatever.[13]  Other than unnecessarily cluttering up my television screen prior to the kickoff of the NFL season,[14] the address is supposed to focus on jobs… and in reality serve as the latest kickoff to Obama’s Presidential re-election campaign.

The real question is whether any of this will convince anyone to vote for him.  It won’t convince me,[15] but I’m not the target audience.[16]

However, while I’ve been concluding that Obama is a really crappy lawyer, liberals have suddenly begun bitching about his leadership style.  The grumbling has been audible since late last year, but it’s now kicked into high gear, although a good chunk of it is people hoping to push the President back to his leftward base to spur them to vote.[17]  But to the extent the bitching is about leadership, allow me to make two points.

First, it’s not really a problem with leadership – it’s a matter of executive competence.  President Obama had no experience coming in at running anything of real importance, save for his own Presidential campaign.[18]  And it shows.  He’s been doing a lot of on-the-job learning, and in what should be most depressing of all to his supporters, he’s not picking up the lessons very fast.[19]

Second, this is a reputation that he’s earned.  As I noted recently, GOP candidates are typically classified as mean or dumb, and the press has started to classify Rick Perry as dumb already, as they once did with W. and Reagan.  Sometimes the rep sticks, even if it’s unfair.  But Obama was hailed as brilliant from day one, and only recently has the press started to come to a conclusion that many on the right reached long ago – the President is out of his depth and not ready for this job.  Again, he’s earned the reputation of being an incompetent leader.[20]  People may or may not trust the press when they allege or intimate that Rick Perry is short on brain cells, but they’re more likely to believe it if they reach that conclusion independently based on seeing him in action.  And they’re doing that with President Obama now.  Way to go, champ.

Let me close with an observation from Instapundit that is dead-on.  He's been running a feature mocking "hope and change" and had this to say...

I can’t find the link now, but somebody was criticizing this feature a while back as “juvenile.” Well, I am quite deliberately rubbing it in, as the ridiculously inflated expectations for Obama are regularly and repeatedly exposed as . . . ridiculously inflated. But what’s really juvenile is expecting that an inexperienced former community organizer could successfully execute the office of President of the United States. And if I’m peeing all over the wave of hope-and-change hype that got him into office despite his obvious unsuitability, it’s to help ensure that nothing this disastrous happens again in my lifetime. I realize that it’s painful for those who fell victim to the mass hysteria to constantly be reminded of their foolishness, but I hope it’ll be the kind of pain that results in learning.

If they're anything like the President they supported in 2008, they'll be slow learners.

---

[1] Actually, in case you haven’t noticed from my earlier rants, I’ve reached a lot of conclusions about Barack Obama.  I doubt he cares.  And frankly, I’m not sure he should.

[2] To be fair to Obama, not every lawyer who graduates from HLS turns out to be a good lawyer.  Some of my clients might enthusiastically agree with this assessment.  Okay, most of my clients might agree.

[3] Keep in mind, I’m talking about legal representation.  There are definitely jobs where I would hire Barack Obama.  For example, I think he would make a terrific greeter at a casino.  Or a psychologist.  And he'd be a fabulous doctor -- "I want to offer you the red pill.  No, wait, let's give you the blue pill."

[4] There are obviously other jobs lawyers will perform (hey, we’ll do anything if the money’s right!).  For example, many lawyers work as negotiators… and that’s not really a job we’d hire President Obama to perform, either.

[5] The “his’n” and “your’n” refer to Bryant’s football team and an opponent’s team.  At least, I hope they do, because otherwise this quote becomes a Beavis and Butthead joke.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.

[6] Even Bill Clinton never got a majority of votes in either of his elections. 

[7] I was tired of this stupid trope before the election.  About 40% of Americans wouldn’t vote for Obama because they think every Democrat is some form a pink-panty wearing Socialist (it’s not my fault if they perpetuate the idea by electing people like Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker).  No Democrat would have won the votes of these folks (just like no Republican can win the votes of the 40% of Americans who are some form of pink-panty wearing Socialists).  As for everyone else, Obama received the same fair hearing every other candidate did from the populace (along with a spectacularly affectionate caress from his friends in the mainstream media).   Americans were and are more intelligent, open-minded and tolerant than the elite in this country ever acknowledge.

[8] One of the things that always kills me is that the same people who openly mock people of deep religious faith for believing in the text of the Bible willingly swallow crapola like this without blinking.

[9] If they had marketed a Barack Obama action figure, it would have been able to morph into anything.  A bird… a pterodactyl…

[10] Hey, how’d that work out again?

[11] Between that and the Shep Fairley poster of Obama, I have to give them an “A” for use of imagery, as creepily fascist as the whole exercise was.

[12] They meant that he would listen, but they did not say he had an open mind.  Obama’s style of dealing with his opposition’s position is embodied by the line from Sounds of Silence: “People hearing without listening.”  Seriously, go back and watch Paul Ryan address the flaws in Obamacare during the silly health care reform summit.  Obama’s willing to let him say his peace, but he’s not listening to a word of the criticism. 

[13] In honor of the President’s budget numbers, that figure is wildly inflated and completely unsupported by any rational analysis.  Although it's still closer to reality than any budget he's proposed this year.

[14] Has anyone analyzed the impact of a pre-game policy address on the Packers and Saints?  Sadly, Vegas probably has done so.  My guess: if the President’s jobs package proposal is greater than $400 billion, take the Packers and lay the points.

[15] As Glenn Reynolds has said, I’d vote for a syphilitic goat before I vote for Obama.  Actually, I’d vote for Jimmy Carter before Obama, and that says a lot.

[16] I know, under the new civility guidelines, I can’t use “target”, unless I’m the offspring of someone buried in the Meadowlands.

[17] The real terror for the left will be if the dead rise from the grave… and start voting Republican! 

[18] Still one of the dumbest arguments ever made by anyone in Presidential politics was Obama’s claim that his allegedly brilliant Presidential campaign showed that he could manage a large enterprise well – “Look at the great job I’m doing in this job interview!  Just ignore the paper-thin resume!”

[19] And that’s where he’s really devaluing my Harvard degree.  You’re supposed to be smart enough to adapt, Mr. President.

[20] A good analogy can be drawn to how his #2, VP Joe Biden, has earned a reputation for being likely to say something incredibly stupid whenever he opens his mouth.  The media tried for years to show Biden as a serious talking head, capable of deep policy discussions, and yet the public sees him as a goofy guy prone to saying dumb things.

A Word On Texas Executions and Liberal Hypocricy

I'll have more to say about the GOP Presidential debate later, but one thought that I needed to throw out there now.  Many liberals are appalled by this moment from Rick Perry...




Perhaps the most representative summary comes from Andrew Sullivan...

A spontaneous round of applause for executing people! And Perry shows no remorse, not even a tiny smidgen of reflection, especially when we know for certain that he signed the death warrant for an innocent man. Here's why I find it impossible to be a Republican: any crowd that instantly cheers the execution of 234 individuals is a crowd I want to flee, not join.

Let's note at the outset that I'm one of the few hard-core conservatives in America (I've never voted for a Democrat for any position in anything) who's opposed to the death penalty (entirely on policy grounds -- the death penalty is clearly constitutional).  Let me take the liberal position to the extreme and agree, for the sake of argument, that those folks in the audience were cheering the execution of convicted killers.

Do these same folks start screaming in horror when Democrats like Barck Obama promise, in speech after speech, in Presidential debates, in TV appearances, etc. to "protect a woman's right to choose?"  And follow through on such statements by preventing measures like parental notification and allowing procedures like partial-birth abortion?  I'm assuming they do.  If not, perhaps they should consider what it sounds like when people cheer statements like those, which condemn to death utterly innocent life.  Whether you think that life in that form is worthy of protection or not, one must acknowledge that those life forms are in almost every case more innocent than the lives being taken by the state pursuant to the death penalty.

I'm not necessarily comfortable with Perry saying his conscience is untroubled, but his rationale is that he is following the will of the people in carrying out executions, and there is a process in place that (he believes) ensures fairness and makes sure innocent people are not executed.  Perhaps he's not correct on that point (although it's entertaining to find liberals so hellbent on proving the flaws of government agencies).  But I'm not going to pretend to be offended by people who favor application of the death penalty because they view it as a form of retributive justice, and I'm certainly not going to be offended by people who think I should care about that and not care about people cheering abortion.

The Last Word on Hoffa

Jonah Goldberg's take on the Hoffa quote strikes the right tone...

... I do not think that Hoffa was deliberately committing the crime (yes, crime) of willfully inciting murder. However, given the absolutely ludicrous standard created by the Democratic Party and its media enablers after the Giffords shooting, what Hoffa said was absolutely beyond the pale. But, again, that’s only because of the idiotic, sanctimonious and plain stupid standard created by Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Paul Krugman et al. You can’t bleat about Republican “eliminationist rhetoric” and a “climate of hate” and then say there’s nothing wrong with what Hoffa said, never mind find it outrageous that anybody is complaining about it. This is point I made with some pique not long ago here in the Corner, in what became the most viral post of my online career.


I think it would be a shame for conservatives to adopt the same asinine standard established by the folks at Media Matters simply because it embarrasses the Democratic Party. The issue here is not that Hoffa incited violence, but that Obama and all of his supporters and enablers are astoundingly hypocritical. If you could have ever believed that Sarah Palin’s Facebook map incited murder, you are forever disqualified from lecturing others from over-reading political rhetoric.


We can reject the standard while at the same time call out the hypocrisy.

This is what I'm referring to when I use the "civility is BS" tag. Jared Loughner (the man who shot Gabby Giffords) is a disturbed human being. Pretending that someone else is responsible for his actions based on their words -- when you don't even have a link between the two -- is disgusting, asinine, and a pathetic affront to common sense. If some jackass follows Hoffa's directive to "take some son of bitches out" by attacking a Tea Party member, that means the person who did it is a distrubed asshole and a criminal. Hoffa is just an asshole.  And that's me being civil in describing him.

Meanwhile, Tina Korbe points out that Joe Biden's decision to describe political opponents as "barbarians at the gates" isn't drawing much press.  To be fair, it's hard to cover every stupid comment by Joe Biden.

What Annoying Song Is Stuck In My Head Today?

If I need to suffer with a song stuck in my head, why shouldn't you have to do the same? Sometimes they're good, most times they're bad... but no matter what, they make you suffer. So I like to share the suffering whenever it happens.

This played in the gym today at work, and I only heard it because I made the hideous mistake of forgetting my headphones.  As an aside, is it a bad thing that I can no longer workout without having musical accompaniment?

Anyway, I always found this song rather pretentious.  But the video with Dominique Swain makes up for that.



You're welcome.

Blog Headline of The Day

So good, it deserves a click-through (hat tip: Instapundit).  And I will be mature enough to avoid the obvious joke about being required to register all lethal weapons.

Wasn't Her Big Break on a TV Show Based in Middle America?

I have to admit -- I knew Mila Kunis would break my heart and reveal herself to be a typical Hollywood liberal.  The only good news is that when Rick Perry takes over and the Tea Party opens their re-education camps, I've volunteered to run the camp Mila gets assigned to.  Hey, my wife won't mind.

Truth be told, the funniest part of this is that she seems more like her character from That 70's Show  when I read these comments.  And President Obama is doing a bang-up job of bringing back memories of 1970's stagflation.

Cliff Clavan, We Need Those Retirement Benefits Back

The Post Office is, once again, teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, in large part because of pension obligations and plummeting direct mail business.  Megan McArdle notes the issues, but doesn't see a real solution...

Congress has given the Post Office two incompatible mandates.  It is to make money like a business . . . but it is not to have any of the freedom that businesses have to, say, close branch offices, cut its delivery area, or change delivery schedules. 

This is, to put it mildly, lunatic.

It was kindasorta somewhat sustainable for a while, because Congress sweetened the deal with a very valuable monopoly over the delivery of first class mail--a fact over which conservatives used to complain bitterly.  But now that monopoly is an albatross.  The only people who really need the service are the people who it is incredibly expensive to serve: those in remote areas that are far from stores, and only spottily serviced by UPS, Fedex, and broadband.  So average cost is rising fast, while rates can't.

Congress has to decide whether universal mail service is valuable enough to subsidize, or whether it wants the post office to be set free to actually compete.  But it cannot survive much longer as neither fish, nor fowl, nor good red herring--while there's some hope of a temporary reprieve by reclaiming some past overpayments to pension funds, that extra money won't last long at this rate.

McArdle notes at least one suggestion for turning the Post Office into a profitable business, but I'm with her belief that I'm not sure why a postal bank would actually work.  I actually visited our small local Post Office last week, since they recently replaced our mailboxes and our mail was held for a couple days.  In any case, suffice it to say that I was unimpressed by what I could see in the back in terms of technology and upkeep.   I'm not sure why anyone thinks such technology would translate over to be used for other purposes.  And let me note that my post office is one of the smaller ones that should close; while I like having a post office within a quarter-mile of my house, there's a big one only three miles away that would suffice nearly as well for the 3-5 times a year I need to visit.

Like McArdle, I'm not sure what we should do with the Post Office, but it seems like a perfect snapshot of the problems we have with government nowadays.  The Post Office provides a number of services, but their most important ones are increasingly outdated and very costly, and the function is too costly due to significant labor costs.  We either need to pay more for the service, or streamline it significantly.  Like everything else, we seem to have put off the decision, but the bill is coming due.

Some People Are Truly Idiots

Jane Fonda's biggest regret is that she never got to sleep with Che Guevera.  Strange, because in the list of things related to Jane Finda's life, I'd probably find about 150,000 things ahead of that regret.

And for the record, Che Guevera was a murdering psychopath... and he still might have been too good for Jane Fonda.

There's An App For That

Just remember, when a Tea Party member comes up with an app that displays public employee unions as hordes of  vampires sucking blood from taxpayers, it was in response to this.  The best part will be that the Tea Party's app will not require any changes to a picture of Nancy Pelosi to make her look undead.

Truth be told, this doesn't offend me.  Anyone who actually thinks Obamacare will work to reduce the deficit deserves credit for overcoming their obvious intellectual deficit to make something of themselves.

It's Not Even A Funny Joke

What's scary is that this may not be the most outrageous statement Maxine Waters has made recently.  I remember watching her at a Congressional hearing that I attended years ago, and shaking my head watching her speak.  Somehow, she's gotten worse, and no one calls her on it.

Jimmy Hoffa Takes The Early Lead For Douchbag of the Week

The award noted in the headline does not exist yet, but Hoffa really deserves it.  I'm going to have some thoughts, but let's start with the story itself...

Warming up the crowd before President Obama’s speech in Detroit this afternoon, Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. had some choice words for the Tea Party.

Hoffa warned the largely union crowd that there was a “war on workers” and urged organized labor to take to the ballot box to fight lawmakers that oppose the president’s agenda.

“We got to keep an eye on the battle that we face: The war on workers. And you see it everywhere, it is the Tea Party. And you know, there is only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what? They’ve got a  war, they got a war with us and there’s only going to be one winner. It’s going to be the workers of Michigan, and America. We’re going to win that war,” Hoffa told thousands of workers gathered for the annual Labor Day rally.

“President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march… Everybody here’s got a vote…Let’s take these sons of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong,” he concluded.

See, it's stuff like that which makes me a sad panda.  But let's break this down with a few random thoughts...

1.  Jimmy Hoffa advocating violence.  There are so many different threads here that I'm going to tiptoe around it as a matter of taste.

2.  Greg Gutfeld made the point on "The Five" earlier today, but it's worth noting that since the left made such a big show of screaming about civility following the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, they're now getting called on their own bullshit.  The language is inexcusable by any standard of civil discourse, but everyone used to let it go for the left because (rightly, in my view) politics is rough and tumble, and words don't break bones.  But Hoffa's assertions are a call to violence, and the standard established following the Giffords shooting means Dems should be scrambling to condemn this crap.  An yet... silence.  But now the silence is being noticed.

3.  Ann Althouse's point here is a terrific one -- Hoffa's calling for war on behalf of unions, but he's claiming that it's on behalf of working people.  The two are not one and the same.  Perhaps they once were, but as Allapundit noted, Hoffa makes north of 300k per year.  The hypocricy of union leaders would be galling, if anyone wanted to notice.

4.  Homer Simpson is far superior to Jimmy Hoffa as a union leader.



5. I'd expect Barack Obama to dress down Hoffa for this rhetoric at about the same time he comes up with a credible econoimc recovery plan. But it would be nice to be surprised once in awhile, huh?

What Annoying Song Is Stuck In My Head Today?

If I need to suffer with a song stuck in my head, why shouldn't you have to do the same? Sometimes they're good, most times they're bad... but no matter what, they make you suffer. So I like to share the suffering whenever it happens.

I had what should be the final extended road trip with a three person family this weekend -- when the next member of the family arrives at the end of the month, I'll be able to experience the joys my parents did of kids fighting in the back seat.  Or not, since kids no longer say anything to one another in the back seat, unless the batteries die on whatever device they are using.

Anyway, when you're on the road late and trying to make it to your destination, 80's music is a good bet, which leads to today's entry.  Apparently the name "Scritti Politti" is an homage to an Italian Marxist's writings... which is fitting, because Marxism probably only makes slightly less sense than the words to this song.  But the tune will stay with you all day.



You're welcome.

There's An App For That

Dammit, why didn't I come up with this app? 

Actually, there's a concept.  For the three to five people who read this blog, it's time to come up with a couple apps for the election.  It wouldn't be that hard to create a Barack Obama drinking game app...