Some Extra Sunday Silliness :o)

I found some of the hypocritical information below very entertaining so decided I would share :o)

Recent Lester & Charlie Poll Results:


Last week, some of the world's most evil people gathered under one roof for the annual CPAC convention. In one of the most popular speeches, Jason Mattera stated that the gathering was very much like Woodstock:

"...except that unlike [that] gathering, our women are beautiful, we speak in complete sentences and our notion of freedom doesn't consist of cocaine, which is certainly one thing that separates us from Barack Obama."

Apparently, the CPAC-ers forgot about Bush's cocaine sniffing, Rush's painkillers and Palin's interview with Katie Couric.

So we asked: How else can the GOP prove that they know how to call the kettle black?

And here's how you voted:

Sarah Palin calling Evan Bayh a quitter (28%)
Glenn Beck calling Al Franken a comedian (13%)
Dick Cheney saying that Bill Clinton has bad aim (10%)
Rush Limbaugh calling Trig retarded (7%)
Ann Coulter calling Hillary Clinton manly (6%)
Bristol Palin calling John Edwards a slut (6%)
Michael Steele calling Barack Obama half white (6%)
Rudy Giuliani calling RuPaul a drag queen (3%)
Joe the Plumber calling Liquid-Plumr unfair competition (3%)
Strom Thurmond calling Ted Kennedy dead (2%)

7% of respondents wrote in their own answers and comments, including:

Bill'O calling the Pope a Nazi
GWB calling Kerry part of the east coast educated elite (oh wait, he did!)
Scott Brown calling Levi Johnston overdressed

And from blogger Rod Davis:

It is becoming increasingly clear that one of the prerequisites for being a member of the Republican party is the depth and breadth of your ability to be contradictory and hypocritical - the more you can demonstrate this ability, the more likely you are to be a leader within the party.

Inside the Nuclear Threat

The Chief Nuclear Officer of Cook Plant is being featured in a segment of a program that starts airing next week on the National Geographic Channel. Titled Inside the Nuclear Threat, the program focuses on the potential for rogue nations or terrorists to develop nuclear bombs, and the difference between nuclear bombs and nuclear power. It airs on Tuesday, March 2, 10 p.m.; Wednesday, March. 3, 1 a.m.; Saturday, March 6, 7 p.m.; and Tuesday, March 9, 6 p.m. Click here for a preview.

Sunday Silliness - Persistence :o)

It's over, man. Let her go.

Crirtical Thinking, Where Are You? :o(

This is from a column of Leonard Pitts, who is in our Sunday paper each week.  I often appreciate and agree with his conclusions.  Here is a link.

If you and I had an argument and I produced facts from an authoritative source to back me up, you couldn't just blow that off. You might try to undermine my facts, might counter with facts of your own, but you couldn't just pretend my facts had no weight or meaning.

To listen to talk radio, to watch TV pundits, to read a newspaper's online message board, is to realize that increasingly, we are a people estranged from critical thinking, divorced from logic, alienated from even objective truth. We admit no ideas that do not confirm us, hear no voices that do not echo us, sift out all information that does not validate what we wish to believe.

I submit that any people thus handicapped sow the seeds of their own decline; they respond to the world as they wish it were rather to the world as it is. But objective reality does not change because you refuse to accept it.

The fact that you refuse to acknowledge a wall does not change the fact that it's a wall.


And you shouldn't have to hit it to find that out.

Leadership Quick Tip :o)

When faced with a challenge, effective leaders resist rushing forward with “The Answer.” Instead, they often look for ways to buy themselves a little time so that they can think about the most sensible way to proceed.

Adapted From Leading Quietly, Joseph Badaracco, Jr., Harvard Business School Press, 2002.

NBCU and the Winter Olympics, Financial Bust?

NBC's Olympic coverage is scoring big ratings with viewers so far, a relief to the network still recovering from the whole" fire Conan O'Brien to get Jay Leno back on the Tonight Show" debacle.

For the first three days of coverage for the Winter Games live from Vancouver, the network averaged 28.6 million viewers per day, a 25 percent jump from the 2006 Torino Games. Including viewers who at least sampled (watched for at least six minutes,) NBC had an audience of 117 million viewers throughout the first three days of coverage.

The average is the highest non-U.S. Winter Games rating since 1994's Lillehammer Games, which received a nice boost in viewership after figure skater Tonya Harding and her intellectually challenged husband conspired to whack fellow skater Nancy Kerrigan on the knee.

The horrific death of Georgian luge racer Nodar Kumaritashvili during a training run on Friday may have also helped boost viewership of the Olympic Games opening weekend.

With a 26.2 million viewer average, NBC over the first eight nights of the Vancouver Games scored a 27% jump from the 20.7 million from Torino, and are the most for a non-U.S. Winter Olympics since CBS posted 38.3 million for the tabloid-fueled Lillehammer Games in 1994

Still, NBC Universal expects to lose around $250 million on its Olympic Coverage due to slow ad sales and overpayment for the rights to broadcast the games. NBCU paid $820 million for the TV rights to the Vancouver Games and is only expecting to bring in around $670 million in advertising revenue. 

At $500K to $600K per minute in prime time, $250M is a lot of ground to make up.  I think that NBC did a great job on the Winter Games, and I hope that they did better than the above predictions.  I will be sorry when the games are over.

Excerpt from Senator Bayh's New York Times Column

The genesis of a good portion of the gridlock in Congress does not reside in Congress itself. Ultimate reform will require each of us, as voters and Americans, to take a long look in the mirror, because in many ways, our representatives in Washington reflect the people who have sent them there.


The most ideologically devoted elements in both parties must accept that not every compromise is a sign of betrayal or an indication of moral lassitude. When too many of our citizens take an all-or-nothing approach, we should not be surprised when nothing is the result.

Our most strident partisans must learn to occasionally sacrifice short-term tactical political advantage for the sake of the nation. Otherwise, Congress will remain stuck in an endless cycle of recrimination and revenge.

The minority seeks to frustrate the majority, and when the majority is displaced it returns the favor. Power is constantly sought through the use of means which render its effective use, once acquired, impossible.

What is required from members of Congress and the public alike is a new spirit of devotion to the national welfare beyond party or self-interest. In a time of national peril, with our problems compounding, we must remember that more unites us as Americans than divides us.
 
So, what do you think?  Can we find a way to pull together just a bit and start to help each other, or will we continue our divisiveness?

Successful Steps :o)

Taking the First Steps to Success

• Seek out information because you know you need it.
• Follow established processes because you know it’s the best way.
• Get buy-in from people whom you know are important for success.
• Raise issues and risks, analyze them and elicit support to address them.
• Share information with people you know should have it.
• Put all important information in writing.
• Commit to a success and then ask and expect others to do the same.

Adapted From Project Management for Dummies, Stanley E. Portny, Dummies Press, 2006

Doing Good Badly

This was an article about "giving" in the 2/22/10 issue of Time Magazine, and is primarily directed toward Haiti.  There was great outpouring of support, and always discussion and push to "give", but is it the right thing?

Help never arrives fast enough because no two disasters are alike and chaos is an agile enemy. So how would we feel, after texting our $10 donations to the Red Cross and writing checks to Save the Children, still coming home night after night to the growing mass grave on our flat-screens.

Epic disasters inspire dreams of glory. "Everyone wants to be a hero. Everyone wants to help," Dr. Thomas Kirsch, a co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Refugee and Disaster Response, told MSNBC. "It's not the way to do it." A team from his school arrived in Haiti so unprepared, its members needed rescue themselves. "They had no bedding, supplies or food," he said, and they had to rely on other relief agencies for support.

One's duty in the face of disaster is not just to be kind but to be sensible. Chances are that if the 82nd Airborne can't get food to the tent city fast enough, your food bank can't either.  Then there is the help that is no help at all. After the 2004 tsunami, aid poured in from all over the world. But it included tons of outdated or unneeded medicines that Indonesian officials had to throw out. People sent Viagra and Santa suits, high-heeled shoes and evening gowns. A year later, after an earthquake in Pakistan, so much unusable clothing arrived that people burned it to stay warm. It may make us feel good to put together children's care packages with cards and teddy bears--but whose needs are we trying to meet?

Money is fleet and nimble. The very thing that makes it unsatisfying to give makes it powerful to deploy. It can turn into anything--a water bottle, a prefab house, a tetanus shot, a biscuit. It lets relief agencies buy locally whenever possible, supporting local markets for products that are culturally and environmentally right. In the past decade, accountability has become a watchword of relief agencies around the world, with new guidelines to help donors know that their aid won't be wasted. Give money, Presidents Bush and Clinton implore, and by implication, leave the rest to professionals.

We can give globally and help locally. Either way, the same principle holds in helping as in healing: First, do no harm.

So while it may feel good to donate food to the local food bank for a disaster somewhere in the world, and providing clothing and blankets may seem like the altruistic thing to do, the real question is, who are you doing it for?  If you really want to help, leave it to the experts, not your local church or food bank.  Let the locals help here in our country, and donate dollars to let the experienced organizations do their things at ground zero.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article

Viral Art Rocks :o)