News: It’s going to keep getting worse?

Excerpted from Yahoo! News:

–GM cuts 2,000 jobs
–Home Depot cuts 7,000 and closes Expo chain
–Sprint Nextel cuts 8,000
–Pfizer buys Wyeth, then cuts 8,000
–Caterpillar cuts 20,000

Yikes. And this is just one day.

A post-election post

I don’t normally talk politics on my blog, but it’s darn-near impossible to not address the major paradigm shift we’ve just begun as a country. So I’m going to try to be as objective as I can – drawing on my liberal arts undergrad studies (thanks, Ursinus College) and my journalistic training (thanks, Temple University). (Apologies, Dear Reader, sometimes I’m such an academic snob/dork.)

Barack Obama won in a landslide because he ran a campaign about hope that inspired millions. John McCain lost for a variety of reasons, but the major one being that his campaign wasn’t very McCain-like.

I really wanted to see a civil campaign in which the candidates discussed their positions intelligently. I wanted to see political advertising that was more about “what I’m going to do for you” and less about “the other guy’s flaws.”

While Obama seemed to live up to my expectations, John McCain didn’t. The man who built his reputation as an aisle-crossing, let’s-work-together Congressman ended up approving attack ad after attack ad. His campaign trotted out the anti-American, anti-Semitic Reverend Jeremiah Wright, even though Sarah Palin’s wacky clergyman was praying for protection against witchcraft and hosting anti-Semitic guest speakers.

McCain approved messages talking about Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers, a “domestic terrorist.” Obama, to his credit, never discussed McCain’s involvement in the Keating Five corruption scandal of the late 1980s/early 1990s.

Americans had a simple choice: positivity vs. negativity. And after the past eight years, it was time for some good old-fashioned American hope.

P.S.: Although I am personally very happy to see Barack Obama win this election, I am also glad he made sure to note in his victory speech that our nation’s problems won’t just go away because he won. But I think he’s the right man to lead our country out of these troubled times. And I wish him all the luck in the world.

Unpaid Endorsement: FactCheck.org

Supported by the Annenberg folks, this completely objective Web site goes line-by-line through political speeches and debates and lets readers know who’s lying and who’s telling the truth.

Go check it out:

FactCheck.org

Too funny.

Stolen from The Daily Kos.

The big news!

From today’s Dallas Morning News (online):

“Report: Dallas-Fort Worth has strongest job market in U.S.”

No duh – I got a job!

More details later…suffice it to say that I’ll be a Senior Copywriter, mostly direct marketing to start, for a rapidly growing agency.

Really psyched to start next Tuesday!

It’s been too long.

Sorry about that. Did some vacationing in South Padre Island (go – but not during Spring Break), some interviewing for jobs, some navel-gazing.

Remicade treatment today. Two hours of a continuous IV drip. Yay? (At least the chairs are comfy, and the WiFi is OK.)

Check this out:

LABOR DEPT: FEWER WORKERS KILLED ON JOB IN 2007

Aug 20th, 2008 | WASHINGTON — The number of U.S. workers killed on the job has dropped to a historic low.

A government report released Wednesday shows there were 5,488 fatal work injuries last year. That’s the lowest number since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping track in 1992.

There were 3.7 fatal work injuries for every 100,000 workers, the lowest annual rate ever reported by the fatality census.

The 2007 numbers represent a 6 percent drop from 5,840 deaths reported to the Labor Department in 2006.

There were increases in some types of work fatalities. The number of fatal falls on the job rose to a high of 835 in 2007, while workplace homicides increased by 13 percent.

The numbers are preliminary, with a final report on 2007 due next year.

Salon provides breaking news articles from the Associated Press as a service to its readers, but does not edit the AP articles it publishes.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
——————————-

Question: Do they take into account the fact that less people are working anyway? It’s hard to die on the job when you don’t have one.

RIP, George Carlin

Another comedy great is gone. As a very lame tribute, I would like to note something that would hopefully annoy Mr. Carlin enough to rant…

Our local paper published an online “article” from The Associated Press, which was basically just quotes of some of Mr. Carlin’s best and funniest observations.

And below the “article,” the AP had their legal mumbo-jumbo, copied here verbatim:

“© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.”

So it’s OK for the AP to redistribute Mr. Carlin’s material – without, by the way, citing where they got it – but we can’t copy and paste it?

You know what, at least the Internet is awesome and we can go find, as Jon Stewart said last night, HOURS of Mr. Carlin’s video.

I wonder when Washington will admit we’re in a recession.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/05/19/homeless.mom/index.html

Main story on CNN.com, if you can’t link directly.

The “R” Word

Just read yet another article about an impending recession.

As someone who’s freelancing because he’s “involuntarily between jobs,” I can tell you that we are smack-dab in the middle of a recession.

My proof is simple: I’m not the only one hurting.  There are plenty of us.

You start to figure out that there is a big problem when you contact people, hoping to get some freelance work or a networking contact out of them, and they tell you that they too have been laid off.

I’m not going to get all political here, but I think most of us will agree that the blame belongs a lot of places: federal, state and city administrations, mortgage companies that ran wild in the earlier part of the decade, and just as importantly, all of us consumers.

Consumers are the ones who spent way beyond their means, buying McMansions and cars and stuff they couldn’t afford.  And the lenders said, hey, you got credit of any kind, we’ll work with you.  (Having heard first-hand from Shannon what the insanely unethical mortgage lenders were doing–and she refused to do when she worked with them–made me sick.)

I think a lot of us keep hoping that someone or something will bail us out of this situation.  Many people probably believe that the next leader of this country will “make it all right” somehow.  Or that Gen Y (or Tweeners or one of those mini-generations after us X-ers) will spark their version of the dot-com boom.

Frankly, everybody just needs to go on a budget.  Yikes, does this mean I’m a fiscal conservative?

You think you have it bad at work?

Utah man waterboarded at work
05:07 AM CDT on Monday, April 14, 2008

Washington Post
PROVO, Utah – No one disputes that Chad Hudgens was waterboarded outside a Provo office park by his boss.

Mr. Hudgens volunteered for a “team-building exercise, ” went outside and laid down on his back with his head downhill. Then co-workers pinned him down while their supervisor poured water on his nose and mouth.

The supervisor, Joshua Christopherson, then told the sales team: “You saw how hard Chad fought for air right there. I want you to go back inside and fight that hard to make sales,” participants said.

What’s at issue in the lawsuit Mr. Hudgens filed against his former employer is the question of intent.

Prosper Inc. maintains that what the supervisor did, while misguided, was not torture.

“We’re not the mean waterboarding company that people think we are,” said George Brunt, general counsel for the firm. The company sells “coaching” packages for $3,000 to $15,000.

Late last May, the all-male sales team was having “a rough week.” Mr. Christopherson asked for a volunteer for an exercise.

Mr. Hudgens raised his hand, expecting something similar to the last exercise, an egg toss. Prosper officials maintain that Mr. Christopherson explained what would happen; Mr. Hudgens insists he had no clue.

Mr. Hudgens said “toward the end, I’m starting to black out. I’m getting very dizzy, lightheaded. The sensation that’s going through my head is, ‘I’m going to drown.’ “

Mr. Brunt said Mr. Christopherson said he was inspired by the Greek philosopher Socrates, who reportedly held a student’s head underwater and told him he must want to learn as badly as he wanted air.