Global warming conference is well-attended

(Photographer unknown. anyone claim this?)

I guess you already heard about that big conference on global warming?

You didn't?

I don't understand that; it was so well-attended. Here's part of the crowd.

(Special thanks to my brother
Rick for sending this along.)

Conundrum o'the week: Cut deficit with what?

President Barack Obama said Monday that he plans to cut his inherited budget deficit in half by the end of his first term.

H'mmm ... and he's going to do this after signing that gigantic $787 billion stimulus package into effect?

I'd like to know what drugs have leached into the Washington, D.C. water supply.

Southern GOP governors to sit out feeding frenzy?

Ever since President Barack Obama signed that massive $787 billion stimulus package into effect, a number of states and municipalities have been lining up at the trough, wish lists and pet projects in hand.

However, a few GOP governors -- mostly from the Deep South, in states that could sure use the bucks -- banded together to call the stimulus package by its right name. They're calling it the mother of all spending sprees, saying there are too many strings attached, and suggesting they may even sit this one out.

These governors are not a bunch of backward country boys, either. There are some real stars in this group, including Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who along with Sarah Palin is considered the future of the party.

Ad South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford to this mix, too. In fact, you can probably call him one of the ringleaders in this mini-rebellion.

Readers of this column know I respect mark Sanford. I don't know the man, but I like what he's been doing here, and I especially like where he's coming from. Don't be fooled by his party affiliation. He's listed as a Republican, but in reality he's a libertarian in elephant's clothing. Sometimes, especially with guys like John McCain and Arnold Schwarzenegger floating around, it's hard to tell the pachyderms from the donkeys on the political landscape. Maybe it's because they all tend to be jackasses. But Sanford stands out.

Sanford's not exactly been enthused about accepting even a dime of the stimulus package, but later softened his stance some. Some. Just a bit. Meanwhile, Congressman Jim Clyburn, a Democrat from South Carolina's Sixth District, is trying to bypass recalcitrant governors (such as Sanford) and get stimulus money into the states without them. Oh, well. So much for states' rights.

This past weekend, Sanford said it's lunacy to mortgage the future and hock the family jewels for a few stimulus bucks today. OK, he didn't use those exact words, but you get the drift.

I don't claim to be any kind of economist. For me, high finance is making sure I can feed self and dog, pay my bills, and maybe salt away a few bucks. I could say I put my money into CDs, but they're usually of the Miles Davis or Willie Nelson variety. I can work up a personal budget and make it work, and that's about it for economics. But I do know a few basic truths.

Like, you can't creat money out of thin air. You can't make something out of nothing, though a few corporate heads have tried. And you can't spend like a drunken sailor today without getting a huge bill for it tomorrow.

OK. Governments are slightly different in that they have a few more ways to raise revenue than private citizens do, and they can play with the time line a bit. They have a few more tools at their disposal, but the basic truths remain the same.

Here's the reality: Floating money now means the bill will still come up big in the future. No way around that. The time line is a lot looser, though. If you run up a lot of debts, you'll get phone calls within months. The government can spend, string the taxpayers along, and the bill will still come up. Only it'll come up far in the future. Would you care at that point? Probably not. You may be dead by then, or at least at the point you don't know what color Jell-O they're feeding you at The Home. Your kids or grandkids will get the bill. OK, screw 'em, you say? Wrong at every level ...

OK, you say. The government still has an out. Crank up the printing presses, spit out more $100 bills. Let 'em eat funny money.

It is a possible scenario. Our money is already funny, not backed up by anything. It's not like you can tie one dollar to x amount of gold or silver, so good luck trying to define a dollar. If I remember correctly, the print-'em-like-crazy angle has been tried, and it was a big reason why the economy did its tank job in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Gold was up to $850 an ounce, silver up to $48, inflation was in the double-digit range, and unemployment was ridiculously high. Forget it. Don't want it, don't need it.

Getting back to our holdout governors, I don't expect many others to pick up that ball. The Jindals and Sanfords are operating from a principle (though I'll admit their statements are ideologically motivated, too). And principle doesn't pay in politics, especially when the trough is full and all the barnyard creatures are lined up for what they feel is theirs.

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[You tell me! Do governors like Bobby Jindal and Mark Sanford have their constituents' best interests at heart, or are they just a bunch of cranks? And what's your take on Clyburn's efforts here? Use the comments section for input.]

You got a password for that?

I have a theory that the human brain is like a hard drive. OK, a floppy drive. Anyway, the theory holds that there is a finite amount of room on it.

And, like your computer drive, if you load your brain with a bunch of crap, there's not a lot of room for the really good stuff.

OK. I hear folks snickering and whispering here, what with my own fondness for useless information (some of which I recently shared in this space). Gee, no wonder I'm brain dead, considering all the political and sports trivia, factoids, chord progressions and lyrics to various songs, and who knows what else I have bumping around in that organ I call a cerebrum.

I think it was Albert Einstein who said a person should never make an extra effort to remember something that could easily be looked up. Einstein was plainly a genius at unraveling the mysteries of the cosmos, but by all accounts he was a real space case when it came to remembering unimportant things like his own address.

Oh, yeah. Many of my valuable brain cells are used to just juggle passwords. And I'm not alone here.

Back in the early 1980s, I had only one password to deal with -- the code so I could access my bank account through an ATM machine. And already, that was one too many. It was too much like work.

I've simplified my banking, somewhat. I deposit my paychecks in a savings account, and order bank drafts to pay my bills. I don't even bother with an ATM. No problem there, except I still need to use my account number for all of this. Fortunately, that number is in a card in my wallet. And it's a small enough bank that the tellers can remember my account number faster than I can drag the card out.

But, like everyone else in this computer-happy world, I have passwords coming on top of passwords. I even have a computer program to keep track of all these passwords. And, yeah, there's even a password to work that program. A password to access all my passwords.

A fast inventory of where I have passwords:

- On the handheld computer I use at work. I was assigned a username when I was hired, and I make up my own password. I'm required to change it every couple of months.

- Two usernames and passwords on my personal computer. One is for the user account, and one for the root account. This is probably a little excessive because I'm the only one who uses this computer, but it still makes sense. My user account allows me to do my usual work. To do any major work on the system files, I go to root. It's an extra level of protection, a built-in warning. It's like the computer is asking me:

"Do you really want to do this?

"I mean REALLY want to do this?

"Whatever it is, you'd better be right.

"OK. Fasten your seat belt. I hope you're right, 'cause if you're not, you WILL bork the system."

By then, I'm definitely awake. A good thing, too. Since I like to live on the edge with my computer, I'm always running that risk, and I have borked the system more than once.

But hold on. I have more passwords:

- A password to access voice mail on my cell phone.

- Optional passwords to operate my cell phone, and to run my mp3 player. I have not activated these. Enough already!

And I haven't even gone online yet. That's where things get real interesting:

- Five email accounts, two of which I actually use. Email accounts are cheap these days.

- Three blogs which I actually maintain, at least every once in a while.

- Other communications programs -- Twitter (which I use), and Jott (which I don't any more).

- A nifty little program called "Remember The Milk," which keeps to-do lists. Also another one called "Backpack," which I fooled around with.

- Three advertising accounts that are there to put said blogs on a paying basis (hint hint). Plus my PayPal account, which is where any advertising revenue ends up. I think the balance is about three bucks and change now.

- At least four job-search boards, because most bloggers sure don't make a living at it.

- Several social networking sites: two MySpace accounts, Facebook, Eons (social networking for us golden oldies), LinkedIn (a professional networking site), and a few others. Most haven't been maintained.

- A few blog communities, such as fuelmyblog.com. I've captured some readers from those.

- Many online forums, for each of my interests. As an example, I'm in at least a half-dozen Linux forums.

- Some of the online newspapers I read require a password, too.

Depending on how I count them, I'm up to 30 or 40 passwords by now.

To be sure, I don't have a different username and password for each of these. Are you kidding? I use two or three username/password combinations, with variations of each. And I use Firefox as my Web browser, which saves my passwords. Without that feature, I'd be lost. Except I sometimes use Opera, or Seamonkey, or Lynx, or Dillo to surf.

Ugh. After thinking of all this, I need to step outside for some fresh air. I just wish I can remember the password to open my front door ...
 
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[You tell me! How many passwords do you have? Are you afraid to count them? How do you manage them? Use the comments section for your input.]

Another Friday the 13th? Have a lucky day ...

Has anyone noticed we will have Friday the 13th for two consecutive months?

That's right. You thought you made it through the one this month, but sit tight. Another one is coming in a couple of weeks.

Two consecutive Friday the 13ths are as rare as, well, as the aforementioned "perfect month." In fact, this phenomenon can only occur when there is such a symmetrical February, so the next time this happens will, again, be in 2015. But don't take my word for it. Check any so-called perpetual calendar to see this -- you may find it in your phone directory, and definitely in something like the World Almanac.

My thoughts on Friday the 13th? Balderdash. A bunch of hooey. Hogwash. Bushwah. But then, I'm one who charges ahead without seeing whether I'm walking under ladders. I break mirrors simply by looking at them in the morning. And, back in my Nevada days, one must-pick number on my Keno tickets was 13 (I often won, too).

I do draw the line at black cats crossing my path, though. Especially when I'm not looking where I'm going.

February 2009 an OCD dream

(Graphics from smashingmagazine.com)

OK. You've been staring at it for more than three weeks now, and you might have caught on to a relative anomaly. February 2009 could be called "the perfect month."

So what's this perfect month? It has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the month; in fact many people will say that February 2009 has really sucked so far. I'm talking about how it lays in the calendar, four weeks, starting on Sunday, ending on Saturday, with nothing left hanging over on the first or last lines. A perfect month, if only for the esthetic standpoint. Or, if you have a slight case of obsessive-compulsive disorder -- one of those types who checks five or six times to make sure the stove is off before leaving for work (and more if you actually turned it on) -- it's a dream month.

A neat bit of trivia, too. These perfect months are not real common. In my 51 years, I've lived through six of them. I've seen them in 1959, 1970, 1981, 1987, 1998, and now -- always February, of course.

This isn't as big or splashy or rare as Halley's Comet, but I find it kinda interesting (admittedly, I find a lot of mundane things to be interesting). The next "perfect month" will be in 2015, and my OCD self will be ready. By then I'll have straightened the pictures at home numberless times -- that's something that really bugs me.

Meditations from the throne room

In a companion posting I wrote about how the newspaper industry is going through massive changes, making the argument that your small local newspapers will probably outlast the giants from New York and L.A.

And while those papers are going to Web sites more and more, don't expect them to lose the presses and newsprint anytime soon.

Figure it this way. You can't roll up a Web site and smack your recalcitrant puppy on the butt. You can't wrap fish in the .pdf version of your local paper. And, unless you're a) a real techno-geek or b) have a real bad problem with ADHD, you're not going to take the laptop into the bathroom with you.

Don't discount this last part. It doesn't matter what the news outlet is, your local paper is tailor-made for bathroom reading.

We discussed this topic at work a few days ago, and the folks in my department all thought I was crazy for mentioning the subject. Well, it might be because I'm the only male in the morning crew, and taking a newspaper into the bathroom is probably just a guy thing. I did admit that homesteading in the latrine is about the only way a guy can rest his ears for a few minutes, and to say I'm lucky this all-female crew likes me a little bit is probably stating the obvious here.

I'm big on bathroom reading, and if it's indicitave of ADHD, so be it. But I'm not the only one. Some years ago some publisher came up with an ingenious concept -- ultra-condensed versions of many books, bound as the Great American Bathroom Book. Single-sitting classics is what the publishers called the final product, and they did kick out several volumes of that work. Granted, it's a real stretch to condense Plato's Republic or Aristotle's Ethics down to two pages. Even breaking down Stephen King's The Stand (at 1,141 pages, not a small book) down to a two-page capsule leaves a lot of the good stuff out, but it still was a neat trick. Of course, after reading the single-sitting version of The Stand, I had to pick up the whole book.

For bathroom reading, though, you still can't beat the World Almanac. It's the classic. Now, this book is an old friend of mine -- I've had nearly all of them from about 1969 or so -- and it's one of those books where you can start anywhere, finish anywhere, read as much or as little as you like, and educate yourself. Or, if you're like me, you'll at least absorb an awful lot of useless information.

Some samples:

- Loving County, Texas, favored John McCain in 2008, with 67 votes to Barack Obama's 12. King County, Texas, wasn't even that close, with 151 for McCain to 8 for Obama. Kennedy County (of course) favored Obama, 108-93.

- There really is a Deaf Smith County in Texas. I could have told you that anyway; I drove through it. Wasn't much there.

- Mario Andretti was the well-rounded race-car driver, winning the 1969 Indianapolis 500, NASCAR's Daytona 500 in 1967, and the 1978 Formula One World Grand Prix championship.

- Famous South Carolinians include jazz pioneer Charles "Buddy" Bolden, boxer Joe Frazier, Senators Strom Thurmond and Fritz Hollings, John C. Calhoun, Jesse Jackson, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Ronald McNair, and "Swamp Fox" Francis Marion.

- In 2007, Americans spent more on medical care ($1,681 billion) than they did on housing ($1,460 billion) or food ($1,329 billion). Scandalous, just plain scandalous. We also spent $340 billion on gas and oil, $102 billion on new cars, $93.4 billion on tobacco products, $85.3 billion on casino gambling, and $49.3 billion on nursery, elementary, or secondary schools.

- In 1969, the average American production worker pulled down $120 per week, at $3.22 per hour. In 2007, the average weekly earnings for production workers was $589, at $17.42 per hour.

- About a third of the world's population (or 500 million people) was infected in the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1919. Fatalities worldwide: Between 50 million and 100 million.

- The Rolling Stones concert tour of 2005 played 42 shows in 38 cities, grossing a record $162 million. OK, so Mich Jagger was 62 years old for this tour, and Keith Richards was pretty well perserved himself. Or something.

- Riverside County, CA, checks in with a 2,073,571 population in 2007, up from 1,545,387 in 2000. This is a guesstimate, as the turnstiles broke in Moreno Valley around 2002 or so.

- As the old joke goes, "There were these two Chinese ... now look at how many there are." Like, 1.3 billion as of mid-2008.

- The highest per-capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the world in 2007 is ... Qatar, with $80,900 per head. The U.S. ranks 8th with $45,800 behind Qatar, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Brunei, Singapore, and Cyprus. Zimbabwe is the lowest, at $200 per capita. Somalia sits at sixth-lowest ($600), and Afghanistan at 17th lowest ($1,000).

These reading habits may explain why I have so many factiods bouncing around in my brain, ready for all occasions.

Other bathroom-reading possibilities include the dictionary -- one of my co-workers who doesn't read in the bathroom goes to her paperback Webster's to burn off a few minutes here and there (look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls, kiddies). Writers and journalists will do well with the Associated press Stylebook. Others worth mentioning are The Psalms (good uplifting meditative reading, and they're just the right length). Reader's Digest (again, a good length for short stays). Any collection of poetry or short stories.

One more:

- American Nobel Prize winners for literature: Sinclair Lewis (1930), Eugene O'Neill (1936), Pearl Buck (1938), William Faulkner (1949), Ernest Hemingway (1954), John Steinbeck (1962), Saul Bellow (1976), Isaac Bashevis Singer (1978), Joseph Brodsky (1987), and Toni Morrison (1993). Most of the earlier prize winners were pretty heavy hitters at the bar, too.

Sorry. Couldn't resist.

[I'll throw this to you, the reader. What reading material do you take into the bathroom? Or would you actually admit to such a practice? Use the comments section to give me your input.]

Mainstream media dying out, or is it just paper?

I'm hearing scuttlebutt that the print journalism industry is on its last legs, that the newspaper will soon become obsolete.

Some blame the failures of mainstream media, and I'll admit there's a point to that. Even when I was in the business, few newspapers could afford to devote a team of reporters -- or even a single staff writer -- to any story that takes more than a few days to develop. The pressure is to fill that news hole now. With the smaller dailies -- where I did most of my best work -- I'd usually have two or three stories per issue. Every day. And newspapers then were reluctant to run anything that might upset one of their advertisers or any of the local power brokers, as advertising revenue is the grease that keeps the presses humming. No industry deliberately craps in its own nest.

But that part is old business. During the most recent elections, mainstream media took a back seat to electronic news -- the web sites, the blogs, and just about anything else that isn't printed on paper.

Much of this is just a shifting of the technology. Last week, the Charleston Post & Courier -- that local newspaper I pick up on the bus every morning for free -- ran two side-by-side, quarter-page house ads in Friday's sports section. Here's part of the copy from one of the ads:

"The Internet is killing the newspaper business?*"

"*Unless you consider that most of the people who go online for news and information go to local newspaper websites."

The other ad claims the Post & Courier, along with its companion site charleston.net, has an audience of 376,400 readers -- the largest in South Carolina.

Readership figures are wholly manufactured, anyway. Generally you can assume that so many people are going to read one copy of a newspaper. Only one newspaper may make it into your household, yet everybody in the house my read it. The kids may battle over the sports section and the comics, but that counts. See?

What I find interesting with this double ad pitch is that the P&C is nodding to the Internet phenomenon. It's as much a part of the newspaper as the copy that rolled off the press this morning.

Although the big guys -- the N.Y. Times, the L.A. Times, the Washington Post, USA Today -- may find themselves losing out to the smaller newspapers. Even with more electronic publishing and shrinking news crews, the small guys will still hang onto their niche for a while longer.

The New York Times will go toes up long before the Posey County (IN) News, the Mohave County (AZ) News, or the Fontana (CA) Herald-News. Folks still like that news-from-home touch, and few are going to do it better than those one-reporter-and-a-few-stringers operations.

The Herald-News, by the way, did shut its doors in 1990, a few months after I left their employ and moved to Arizona. That state of closure lasted maybe a few minutes, as the paper was quickly bought up and resurrected. I have no idea what the actual newspaper looks like, but its Web site is still my main source for news from the town that had been such a big part of my life.

The so-called mainstream media may be in deep stuff here, but expect local reporting to be alive and well.

$enate to vote on late$t golden trough

I'm still trying to figure something out.

The big news out of Washington is this so-called stimulus package, which is billed as a far-reaching, broad-based effort to crank up the economy and create jobs. That's how it's promoted, anyway.

OK. What we have here is a package that costs a lot (estimates start at $800 billion) and is, according to the Obama administration, expected to generate up to two million jobs. Assuming it's that many jobs actually created and the package rounds out at $850 billion, that's $425,000 spent per job created. But that's OK. It's only funny money, and the bill won't come due until future generations pay the taxes.

The Senate is expected to vote on this bill this week, probably Tuesday. Already some states and municipalities have their hands out for a slab of that pie.

Later with the golden parachutes companies offer. This is the golden trough.

In North Charleston (just a duck snort up the road from its more famous namesake), Mayor Keith Summey says he's eyeballing a wish list of almost $315 million in stimulation from the federal government. He's looking at $100 million for a light rail system, $50 million for various street projects, $40 million to continue redeveloping the Navy base, and more than $37 million for a new City Hall. OK, that last one smells particularly porky to me, but commuter rail sounds interesting and I'm impressed with a lot of the work already done on the mothballed Navy base.

Maybe I just don't have much of an imagination, but I don't see where many of these projects can create jobs. But then, maybe it's a shortfall of imagination on my part. It's possible I'm failing to see that many jobs because, well, I swore off the hard drugs decades ago. Yeah, maybe that's it.

Instead of jobs, I'm seeing a lot of pork. I'm seeing a lot of political favors being called and packaged into this thing that our legislators have the gall to call a "stimulus plan."

Perhaps the more solid aspect of this stimulus plan is in some of the infrastructure improvements here and there. But even that is a touchy subject. When you're talking infrastructure you start getting everything from the essential to the screwball, and the only thing linking the projects is that they're all expensive. Folks old enough to remember the Depression (and it's a shame there are fewer and fewer of those) will tell you about the make-work programs that came up in the 1930s to put people to work. Maybe the Works Progress Administration (WPA) did some good things, but most of the Depression-era stories I'd heard were of people leaning on their shovels. We Poke Along, that's what WPA meant to some.

And what better "thanks for the support" letter can be sent anywhere than a new stretch of highway, or a bridge, or a military installation? That's pork at its finest. Alaska Governor and recent vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin drew kudos for her opposition to her state's Bridge To Nowhere. Now, think of a thousand bridges to nowhere. If you look, you'll probably see that in the stimulus plan.

[What do you think? Is this stimulus plan more pork than progress? Are you applying to the federal government for a little economic stimulation yourself? Use the comment section for any ideas and/or diatribes.]

Job scene looking bleaker

About the only good news happening is that gas prices are lower. Not that it does much good; few people have the right kind of disposable income anyway, so it doesn't really matter what a gallon of gas costs.

If you're following my occasional news dispatches in the left-hand column of this blog (and if you're not, shame on you) you'll get an on-the-fly sampling: Layoffs, layoffs, and more layoffs.

Like in a three-day period last week, more than 100,000 people got notice that they're no longer working. Now, that's rough. It's more than rough. It's unspeakable. It shouldn't happen here in these United States.

Even the seemingly invulnerable industries are taking it in the shorts. I mean, what's this about Microsoft laying off a few thousand people? I guess world conquest is a tough business. And Pfizer? THE Pfizer? Those wonderful folks who brought you Zoloft and Viagra? Yeah, THAT Pfizer. They're cutting research and development right between the eyes. I'm having trouble with this one. When there's a financial free-fall going on, the only thing people can do is a) get depressed or b) have a lot of sex. Or both. At least you'd think so.

But when the Microsofts and the Pfizers start cutting back, you know things are not good. These are companies that practically print money.

In my news dispatches (usually sent via text message through Twitter), I'm stuck on a catch phrase: Are we in a depression yet? Economists say no. The government says no. But keep in mind none of these guys never really owned up to the fact we're in a recession until when? Last December? About nine months after the average guy in the street was calling it a recession, anyway.

Locally, a few companies have either left town or are in the process of doing so, all in the name of downsizing. The biggest of these is Maersk, the Denmark-based shipping giant that accounts for nearly a quarter of the containers coming in to the Ports of Charleston. Yeah, the party line is that they're still negotiating with the State Ports Authority, but their bags are packed. And this is affecting several other industries -- several trucking firms have cut back, for example. Last week, Atlantic Trucking shed 11 driver's positions, and I'm wondering how they can legally do this because the drivers are owner-operators, meaning they're independent contractors. About the only way I can think of canning an independent contractor is if the driver violates the terms of the contract -- for example, if a driver has too many tickets and is uninsurable. It's a good bet the drivers aren't telling me the whole story, but you never know.

But that's peripheral stuff. Again, things are bad. Jobs are scarce. In the Charleston Post and Courier, job ads were down to a little more than one column for at least one day last week. That's one column, and there are nine of them per page. When times are flush, expect more than a page -- often two -- of just job ads. It's beyond ugly. It's butt-ugly. It's bugly.

Here's the deal. Right now, if you have a job, you're Texas-lucky. I'm one of the lucky, though my hours were cut back about a month ago. And with the economy showing so few signs of life, nervous time is not quite over for me. For now, though, no worries. I was talking to a truck driver about it the other day.

"I have this job," I said. "I have my benefits. I can still fog a mirror in the morning. Life is good."

Sometimes the only thing keeping a fella sane is that kind of attitude. Even if things get totally messy, I still have that mirror-fogging power.

Oh, yes, and gas is cheaper, too.

If rough start, Obama's in good company

If nothing else, FDR looked and sounded confident. (Photo from picturehistory.com)

The pageantry is over, and it's time for Barack Obama to stand and deliver. It comes with the territory, as any new president comes in with a sack full of great expectations.

Obama may find it a rough go as he gets ready to start work. We're in two wars -- one of them more unpopular than the other -- and the economy is in the worst shape I've seen it in since the early 1980s. Rough times, and I don't envy Obama for all the stuff he has on his plate.


Writer/historian Mark Updegrove says eight presidents in particular were tested early and often when they took office. He outlines his thoughts in a recent book, "Baptism By Fire." I haven't read the book yet, but he discussed the topic on a recent radio talk show with Jim Bohannon.

Updegrove's choices for the Presidents with the biggest batch of crises when they came in were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Tyler, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Gerald Ford. Some of these choices are obvious while others are ... well, I wouldn't have thought of them. Just who is this John Tyler guy anyway?

Of the eight, Roosevelt's situation is probably closest to Obama, and the incoming president may well take a page from him. I'm not talking about the New Deal here, which not only did not solve the Great Depression (World War II was the final solution here), but throwing taxpayer money at a problem never did anything but make the problem bigger. But let's hand it to FDR; he was one confident guy. You can see it in just about every photo of him, and you can hear it in just about every taped radio address or speech. The photo that comes to my mind is one with Franklin D. behind the wheel of his hand-controlled car, cigarette holder poking upward upward, jaw out to here. Doesn't matter whether the man was full of it at that point; he looked confident enough to lead the public through anything.

The President can't really do anything to turn an economy around -- it takes sea changes on the business level and among the workers, and the 535 idjits in the legislative branch have more pull than the President there. But the President can set the tone, forge an example, urge, exhort, maybe even be something of a cheerleader. FDR did this, and so did Reagan.

Obama's hero Lincoln had a tough go early on. As soon as he was elected, South Carolina pulled out of the Union, followed by 10 other states. And Abe wasn't even sworn in yet. Things were so bad around D.C. that Abe had to be smuggled into the capital to be inaugurated. Quite a bit different from the love fest we saw during this recent inauguration, yes?

The old joke about Washington was that he couldn't blame his predecessor for leaving a mess for him to clean up. He had no predecessor; in fact the Constitution was still a little murky about what to expect from a President. Like, what do you call the guy? Mr. President, or George I? "He could have been the first monarch," Updegrove says. Although George wasn't exactly a man of the people, he wasn't about to wear any crown either. Had he opted for a third term (basically becoming president for life), I'm sure no one would have really minded. But his personal two-term limit created a tradition before FDR broke it, and now that limit is in the Constitution.

Jefferson's presidency was the first one that was really contested (his opponent was that lovable scoundrel Aaron Burr), and the election itself was decided by Congress. Jefferson was also the first chief executive not associated with the Federalist Party, which kicked open the door for the two-party system we still have.

Until President William Henry Harrison died a month into his presidency, Tyler was little more than an afterthought. Instead he was thrust into an unprecedented situation, and no one was sure what he was. Acting President, or the real deal? The Constitution wasn't real clear on that either, so it was up to Tyler to clear things up a bit. "He insisted he was the President," Updegrove says. "That strengthened the presidency."

If you want someone who was ill-prepared to take the job, how about Truman? Let's see ... we were in the mother of all wars. We had this new weapon that would change warfare. Truman didn't have the background. He was vice president for only a couple of months, and he wasn't very tight with his predecessor anyway. Plus there were questions about how to contain the Germanys and Japans in the future. Ol' Harry S. didn't look or sound much like a President. He wasn't real popular during his administration; he had to fight to be elected on his own and went out with an anemic 31 percent approval rating. But let history record that the ol' buckstopper did all right while he was in office -- especially for a guy who was flying blind.

When Kennedy was inaugurated, the Cold War was probably at its frostiest. The hard-line tough guys of the Communist world probably figured JFK as inexperienced, callow, a lot more sizzle than steak -- something Obama can probably relate to here. Kennedy didn't help his own cause much in the early going, though he did take the heat publicly for that train wreck called the Bay of Pigs. The Cuban Missile Crisis of '62 probably pushed us closer to a nuclear exchange than we've ever been, before or since.

In a lot of ways, Ford wasn't really President. He wasn't even elected as VP. Besides his sometimes brain-dead ways, he made sure he would never be elected President by pardoning Richard Nixon. A very unpopular move, but history is looking more kindly at that decision these days. Public trust was at an all-time low then, and the move did bring some closure to Watergate. It pulled one gigantic monkey from our backs. The pardon, Updegrove says, "helped in the healing process ... it put Nixon behind us."

Obama's going to have a rough time, and you can bet the love affair will be over before the year is out. That is, assuming the populace uses the brain rather than the emotions, which can really be a stretch. But he'll have ample opportunity to tick everyone off.

He'll have company here, but at least Secret Service didn't have to smuggle him into D.C.

Q: How much does a house weigh?

Possible answers:

a) A lot, b) Just a tad more than a rural two-lane bridge can hold, or c) I don't know?

Thanks, Rick, for sending this! (Rick also wanted to know how something like this would be covered -- homeowner's insurance? Car insurance? Roadside assistance?)

He's the only President we've got

Recently, about 60 percent of respondents to a poll by conservative commentator Bill O'Reilly said they were rooting for new President Barack Obama to succeed. This basically means the other 40 percent are, basically, hoping he falls on his face.

OK, this isn't a scientific poll, and admittedly O'Reilly's audience isn't representative of all America. O'Reilly himself isn't a down-the-middle guy, and he probably has more than a few crazies listening to him out there in radio and TV land. But these numbers are interesting.

Like him or not, Obama is the new President come Tuesday. And to steal a phrase from the Lyndon Johnson notebook, he's the only President we've got. This means that, for the next four years, his fortunes are our fortunes.

Got that?

The "other" 40 percent on O'Reilly's poll, I hate to say, are loons. To them, ideology is worth a lot more than making things work. Anyone who wishes our Chief Executive to fail doesn't have the nation's best interests at heart.

Hey, I don't like his politics. That share-the-wealth crap he was tossing out during the campaign doesn't bode well for our future. The economy can't withstand much more of the line he's peddling. I don't think he'll be strong on foreign affairs. Before his term is out he'll be indistinguishable from Jimmy Carter. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. But since he's in, yes, I wish him well.

That said, keep an eye on what he and both houses of Congress are doing for the next few years. You know the drill. If all these players are doing the Republic right, applaud. If not, let the fur fly!

 

Bush gets mixed marks for performance

The Bush Era officially ends at noon Tuesday, an event for which many have been counting the days as if it was a wedding or prison release. I can't tell you the number of personal Web sites I've seen that had a Bush countdown clock.

In truth, though, Bush is already gone. He might as well have been in hiding since the November election for all the good he's done since then. He's been a nonfactor for the past two months.

You can bet Bush won't go out with a splash a la Bill Clinton and his last-minute pardons of a questionable nature. There will be no burning of midnight oil as Jimmy Carter did over the hostages in Iran. Really, the country's been run by Bush's old staff and Obama's new transition team. Bush? He's been the lamest of all lame ducks.

Like his father, Bush has had a wildly schizophrenic term in office, with extreme highs and lows. Because of this, he'll be difficult for pundits to rate, and historians will certainly have a different view of him in 20 years, one way or another. This isn't unprecedented, either. Harry Truman's widely considered a hero now, but he was nothing but a goat when he left office in 1953. I'm sure people counted the days until ol' Buck Stops Here Harry was to leave office.

Bush will primarily be remembered for two things: the economy's collapse, and the aftermath of 9/11. Although Iraq rightly hurt him in the approval ratings, it's the economy that really did him in. In the past year your investment portfolio became a wallet, and Bush sat on his thumb watching this happen.

For the most part, though, Bush got a bum rap on the economy. The President's role is not as great there as it is in foreign policy or setting the tone for the administration. Besides, the seeds for disaster have been in the ground since the days of Carter and it took a whole lot of manure from a Democratic-led Congress over the past two years to really nurture our economy into the fiasco it is now. Having a bunch of guys like Barney Frank and Harry Reid in the legislative branch did more damage than a platoon of presidents could.

But the truest test of Bush's abilities lie in the 2001 attack on America, and in our response.

Give him some major credit here. The Bush response after the bombings was a whole lot more decisive than the mamby-pamby can-we-talk that had been part of our usual dealings with terrorists. The invasion of Afghanistan was the right thing to do.

Unfortunately, the wheels came off due to the Bushian obsession with Iraq. Even the 9/11 Commission Report said Saddam Hussein's association with al-Quaeda was sketchy at best. While the earth is probably a lot better place without Hussein, the same can be said about many other heads of state and we're not making any effort to go after them.

Now, however, it would be a mistake to bail out of Iraq. The old souvenir shop rule applies here: You break it, you buy it.

The future will tell more about our domestic response to the 9/11 attacks, i.e. the advent of Homeland Security. Are we actually safer? Maybe a little. But at what price? Americans have again proved they're willing to trade off some of their rights for a little extra security. Do that enough, and the United States would be indistinguishable from a handful of other nations across the globe.

OK, we haven't had any further terrorist attacks. You can say it's from the enhanced security, but I don't think so. I really believe al-Quaeda shot its wad on 9/11, and it would take a long time to pony up enough resources to do anything significant again. Homeland Security had little to do with that.

OK, Bush wasn't the most intelligent guy to occupy the Oval Office. But then, Ronald Reagan didn't have the sharpest or most probing mind around either. But if sheer intelligence was overrated, Clinton and Jimmy Carter would be among our greatest presidents ever. Now Clinton, the Rhodes scholar, wasn't half bad when he was in even though he could have done a lot better at a) keeping pants zipped and b) convincing the public he was an honest guy. And Carter? It's a little hard to argue with a Nobel Peace Prize winner who studied nuclear physics in the Navy, but as President he was totally ineffective.

I guess hard work shouldn't be a criteria for judging a president, either. Carter was a legendary micromanager. Richard Nixon probably cracked under the strain of office, though most of his labor went into trying to keep from being indicted. Meanwhile, Reagan never let the rigors of the Oval Office get in the way of his nap, and Dwight Eisenhower didn't exactly kill himself with overwork either.

Without being a cloudy idealogue, you can't say Bush is a bad guy. By most accounts he's a good man, but so is Jimmy Carter.

My own grade for George Bush would be a low C. If it wasn't for his short-term response to 9/11, I'd have to give him a D minus. On the percentile scale, give him about a 32 or so out of 100. This is well ahead of the Fillmores and Carters, but put him at about the same level as the Hoovers and Tafts.

Now, don't even bother to ask me to rate Dick (Deadeye) Cheney. The scale only goes to F.

Amputate or bench these words, please!

For years I've made a living with words, and I've had a passion for them as long as I can remember.

And like many wordsmiths, I'm quick to express my opinion at the drop of a poorly-used word or phrase. It's like if you used a socket wrench as a hammer in front of a master mechanic. He will tell you what an idiot he thinks you are, and it's not even his socket wrench.

Words are special. words grouped in a certain way are also special. You can argue that they're just symbols, but then again so are things like a dollar bill, a property line, a flag, a religious icon. Wars have been fought over all of them, and a war could certainly break out if Barack Obama uses the wrong words to a foreign leader. Tell me if he can get away with saying to Iranian head Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, "your mama eats bacon."

But some words and phrases sound brilliant when first coined, and are recycled to the point where they lose all meaning. And the more situations where they're applied, the more any meaning is diluted.

Every year, Lake Superior State University releases a list of words and phrases that have reached that fate. The school's website calls this the "List of Words to Be Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness.

OK, they're nutted out over capital letters and hyphens (there's no promise that those in the academic world are literate, as any editor who's suffered through press releases from an educational institution will tell you), but they mean well. The list does bring up valid points, and there are some good choices there. Here's the list. Unattributed comments are my own, and attributed ones are from the website:

-----

Green - "If I see one more corporation declare itself 'green,' I'm going to start burning tires in my backyard." writes Ed Hardiman of Bristow, Va.

Carbon footprint, or carbon offsetting - Mike of Chicago says that when he hears the phrase 'carbon footprint,' "I envision microscopic impressions on the surface of the earth where an atom of carbon forgot to wear its shoes."

Maverick - I first heard this one applied to George Wallace in the 1968 election when he ran for president under a third party. It's a good word, but it is overused. Personal note: I've been called a maverick, even by those closest to me. Like the 100-year-old man said when he was named in a paternity suit, I'd be right proud to plead guilty.

First dude - "Skateboard English is not an appropriate way to refer to the spouse of a high-ranking public official." Paul Ruschmann, Canton, Mich.

Bailout - I guess your attitude depends on whether you're the getter or the giver of said bailout. Ben Green of State College, Penn. says this: "Use of emergency funds to remove toxic assets from banks' balance sheets is not a bailout. When your cousin calls you from jail in the middle of the night, he wants a bailout."

Wall Street/Main Street - Ugh. The recent presidential campaign got to where a speech wasn't official until this phrase was worked in there somehow. Whatever happened to "a chicken in every pot?"

-monkey, as in Internet and texting blues monkey - "Especially on the Internet, many people seem to think they can make any boring name sound more attractive just by adding the word 'monkey' to it. Do a search to find the latest. It is no longer funny." Rogier Landman, Somerville, Mass.

<3 - This isn't a word, but is an Internet symbol for love. And you should know how I feel about this kind of crap by now. Sorry, folks, I send text messages, but I use real words in them. If you love someone, just say so. Nothing wrong with that.

Icon, iconic - I used this one earlier in this column, but correctly. An icon is something to be venerated. A cross may be an icon, but Britney Spears sure isn't. Even though I'll get real combative if you besmirched the memories of John Wayne, Hank Williams, Dale Earnhardt, or John Coltrane, they don't qualify as icons either.

Game changer - Another sports term that made its way into the mainstream. Send it to the showers.

Staycation - This becomes a feelgood word. If you spent a week sitting on the front stoop in your underdrawers drinking beer, you used to be a lazy bum. Now it's staycation. Somehow it sounds better.

Desperate search - as in, I'm on a desperate search for some of that there bailout money. Does that mean anyone will listen? Or care?

Not so much - I've probably used this at least once, and if I did I probably should be hosswhipped. From David W. Downing of St. Paul, Minn: "Do I like concise writing? Yes. Do I like verbose clichés? Not so much."

Winner of five nominations - I see versions of this, and let's get something straight right now. Anyone who has cleared third grade without political influence can get nominated for anything. Now, if he actually wins something, then let's talk.

It's that time of year again - Is it? OK. Can I go back to sleep now?

----------

That done, here are more words and phrases that make my own list. Some are a little more dated than others, but that just means they've stood the test of time:

State of the art - An oldie, but it's held up well. It meant nothing back in the 1980s and means nothing now. There are a few other phrases from the same quarters:

Cutting edge - Again, like "new and improved," means nothing. I did like "bleeding edge" when I first heard it, but that's mostly because it's so fraught with mental imagery. That was then, and it is now ready for a good amputation.

__ is the new __ - I think I first heard this when someone said, "50 is the new 30." Or something. What with my own age I hope that statement is true, but it still had me scratching my head. Now you'll find this expression everywhere, including in the Lake Superior press release. Christy Loop of Woodbridge, Va. said 'leaving a carbon footprint' has become the new 'politically incorrect.' " Enough said.

Back in the day - I first heard this one in an old stoner movie, and I'm guilty of using it myself, even in this column. Time to leave this phrase back in the day. And if you're younger than say, 50, you probably have no business using that expression.

__-friendly - Computers are user-friendly. Good and consumer products are environmentally friendly. The more I hear or read this one, the less friendly I feel.

__gate - We had Watergate, which started this mess. Several other -gates since then. Every time there's a scandal, someone's got to stick a -gate at the end of it. Sarah Palin took some heat for "troopergate," her own political mini-scandal. Let's give this one the gate, shall we?

Hands-on experience - As opposed to ...? It's kind of like your favorite newspaperman writing about a brutal murder, to distinguish it from a gentle murder.

__holic - I've been called a workaholic, but the person saying it was living off a trust fund. Consider the source. You also have chocoholics, coffe-holics, and who knows what else. The great Associated Press editor Rene Cappon once commented on this linguistic travesty, too: "I need a drink."

Annual event - One of my old photographers knew how I felt about this one, so when he took a picture of something that happened once a year he'd tell me "it's an anal event." What's worse is when someone calls something the "first annual" whatever. Now, how presumptuous is that?

Enough already! Back to my Elements of Style ...

Cashless society comes to post office

So here's what happened:


I stopped by the post office on the way to work, about 6:30 a.m. I needed to mail a letter and needed stamps. The office itself wasn't open, but there is a 24-hour section where you can check your post office box, something, and allegedly get stamps.

In the foyer of the post office there is one vending machine for postage stamps. It doesn't accept cash. Credit cards or bank cards only.

It's coming. Cash may soon go the way of your old 8-track tapes. It's not something I want to see.

An unpaid ad from a non-sponsor

New toys make me miss C:\

I got my first home computer in the early 1990s, and it took me at least a couple of weeks to get past C:\.

It wasn't like I was a total newbie. I'd used computers at work, but all of them were set to boot up directly into the program we used. Never had to start from a cold start before.

While my then wife threatened to put my picture on a milk carton, I swore I was going to break down this whole mystery. And of course I had to do this the hard way, true to my nature. No way was I going to ask anyone for help. That's a guy thing, and of course I don't ask for road directions at gas stations either.

Eventually, in a fit of madness, I typed in my first command:

C:\Bite me.

Back to the drawing board.

As I write this, a consumer electronics expo is going on in Las Vegas, with all the latest and greatest toys on the market. If there's a special section in Heaven for geeks, it's probably something like this expo. Needless to say, my technical knowledge has grown considerably, and I would feel right at home there.

One of the real gee-whiz products at the expo is a Sony Vaio mini-notebook weighing in at a little more than a pound. With all the trimmings. It has Bluetooth, GPS, and your standard wireless Internet package. I'm drooling.

Of course, I'm cheap. For me, the ultimate computer is a few steps behind the top of the line. What you'd call a bare-bones package, and of course I'll wipe that hard drive clean and install my own operating system anyway. And tweak it to my specs.

Meanwhile, my first home computer is in a landfill somewhere. I don't understand such wastefulness. It had serious power -- a screaming 512K (not megabytes) of RAM, and a 42-megabyte (not gigabyte) hard drive. With a Hercules graphics card and 2400-baud modem that made a whole bunch of noise when you dialed with it. The rig had DOS 5 under the hood, and was enough to get me on line when I discovered the Internet in 1995.

It took me a long time to get to Windows when it came out, and for a long time I kept going back to alt-F4, which put me back to the DOS prompt. And when I saw someone wearing a shirt reading, "C:\Real men use DOS," I wanted one.

The computer I have now is a golden oldie. A puny 1.3-gigabyte processor, 256 megabytes of RAM, and an 80-gigabyte hard drive. And a gigantic monitor, not one of those thin LCD jobs. It had Windows XP, which I removed in favor of my own system. The hardware is old. The software is very up to date -- much of it is in beta.

I've come to love my electronic toys. The computer is a must-have, and it even drives my stereo. I have about 250 albums (yes, I still call them that) in .mp3 format on the hard drive, so the computer acts as one beast of a jukebox. It's always on, because with the Linux system I can get away with rebooting once a month or so.

Oh, yes. I have my other electronic gadgets. A thumb drive, eight gigabytes, with my favorite programs loaded on it so I can use them on anyone's computer. My mp3 player (two gigabytes, carrying about 25 albums, and it doubles as a voice recorder. My cell phone -- a basic version, but most of the Twitter dispatches you see in this blog are sent from that. And an old Sony Clie PDA, which needs a sync cable but makes a nice quick-and-dirty laptop when I can get all the parts. I'm loving the wired life.

My Dad is in his 80s and Mom will be there this year. They both have their toys, a lot more so than you'd expect for folks their age. Both have cell phones and their own email addresses. When they travel they swear by their GPS. They're the type that would rather send a letter than talk on the phone, so we keep track of each other (not often enough) via email.

But thinking about that electronics expo for a moment: It doesn't really matter how bad the economy is, we must have our toys. Folks are holding on to what little job they have left, but they have their smart phones (another toy that intrigues me; the a PDA, cell phone, and Internet rolled into one). They have their mp3 players. They have all that good stuff. I can understand that. I dare say I may take bread out of my own mouth just to buy some new gadget, and it sure looks like I'm not alone there.

Even in my 50s, I have a myspace page, though I haven't maintained it in a while. As I mentioned, I have Twitter. And linkedIn. I use instant messaging, and I do send text messages.

I could say "I text," but I refuse to turn a noun into a half-breed verb. I do have my scruples. My IM's and texts also stand out because I use complete sentences, proper spelling and punctuation, and none of those LOL or ROTFL abbreviations. My texts and IM's are in English.

All of these toys are fun, they're great tools, but they're no substitute for real life. Virtual reality can not touch the real thing. You can probably go on line and simulate any experience you want, but I'll take the real thing.

And while text messages and instant messages are a great tool, they don't beat real conversation. I've seen folks sitting in the same room, not making a sound, but sending texts to one another. They're still having a conversation. Allegedly.

I'll take eyeball-to-eyeball contact any day, with real voices being used. So call me a Neanderthal.

Although I have a decent digital library, I'd rather read a real book than download the e-text version.

OK, I miss my old Underwood typewriter.

And vinyl records.

And clocks with hands.

And TVs that run with rabbit ears, and don't require the use of remote control to change the channel.

I miss C:\.

Sanford: Federal money doesn't help the problem

The Charleston Post & Courier ran this guest editorial by Gov. Mark Sanford Friday. It's excellent.

Some background: Sanford is frequently mentioned with the Sarah Palins and Bobby Jindals as the future of the Republican Party. But he's not a pure Republican. He's really a libertarian in GOP clothing, which is probably why I like him.

Here Sanford argues that throwing more government money into the economy does not save it, but aggravates the problem instead. Well, read the article.

Mearsk loss worst news since base closure

It could well be the biggest economic reversal in Charleston since the Navy packed up and left a decade ago. Earlier this week, Maersk, Inc. announced it will leave the Ports of Charleston over the next two years, and it's anyone's guess how much it will affect the area.

Maersk spokesmen blame the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) for its the decision. According to the Post and Courier, the ILA "rejected the company's proposal to move the so-called common area of the port and allow State Ports Authority workers to perform jobs that would otherwise fall to union labor."

Although labor unions have become a convenient scapegoat (and one must admit, much of the heat is warranted), the real issue is what will happen next.

Folks who visit Charleston may not realize how busy a shipping center it is, but it's huge. Three container terminals, plus plans to build a fourth on the old Navy base. A smaller breakbulk terminal downtown. A handful of smaller, vest-pocket shipping interests, and several oil docks. For years Charleston vied with Savannah for fourth place among the busiest shipping entities in the nation.

If shipping is the largest industry in the region, Maersk is clearly the largest customer. Now, the huge Danish company -- the world's largest shipping line -- accounts for 20 percent of the containers moving in and out of Charleston, and until recently its share was 30 percent. The Wando-Welch shipping terminal, on the Mount Pleasant side of the Cooper River, has room ("berths") for four container ships. Two of those berths are reserved for Maersk/SeaLand ships, and there have been times a Maersk ship has had to borrow one of the other berths. Using that as a yardstick, Maersk/SeaLand accounts for more than half of the business at the Wando docks. All the others -- MOL, Evergreen, Hanjin, MSC -- are bit players by comparison.

While it's possible the pullout is merely a bluff by Maersk to force a better deal -- such things are possible -- you may soon hear the sound of wagons circling in Charleston. Expect thousands of jobs to be affected in the area.

Although Maersk is closemouthed about where its ships will call, I'm betting on Savannah. Apparently the ILA is not as strong there, and there is already a network of warehouses and distribution centers in the area. Charleston does not have this; there are plans to build along the I-26 corridor (including about 12 million square feet of warehouse space in nearby Jedburg). However, already-existing distribution centers are a lot more useful for storing containers and shipped goods than something that merely exists on paper. And, with Maersk planning to pull out, this may well put most of these plans in doubt.

I deal with a lot of Maersk containers on my job, and one trucking firm -- Bridge Terminal Transport (BTT) hauls the bulk of those. Six months ago, BTT had the busiest bunch of trucks at the rail yard where I work. That has slacked off considerably, and now the drivers are wondering about their future.

"I'm real curious what we're going to get now," one BTT driver told me.

Other drivers, you can bet, are looking to jump ship. That is, if there's a place to jump to. While BTT's business has slacked off considerably at the rail yard, it's been that way with most of the truckers. It's just that the decline was most noticeable with BTT and Maersk containers. For most of the drivers I deal with, the local lobs from port to rail yard are their bread and butter.

Maersk won't just affect one trucking firm. The shipping company is big enough that all haulers will feel the bite, and this is not a good time for it. Business has been abominably slow in the past few months anyway, with many truckers (and as I mentioned in an earlier post, rail companies) cutting back.

Frank, a BTT driver, says he's not especially worried. His response surprised me; he's one of those guys who will complain about anything and everything. It's just part of his personality -- even when things are going great, he'll think of something. He's one of those guys who comes in just to give me a hard time, knowing I'll give it right back.

"Something else will come along," Frank says. "Ome door closes, another one opens."

I can't muster that same sense of optimism, though. The economy has been bumpy in the Lowcountry, and things just got more contentious.