Where My Mind has Wandered

Sarah Palin's Prospects

Sarah Plain can work the conservative speaker's circuit and make a living from speaker's fees through the next election. After that requests will come less often, even the tabloids will lose interest, and eventually someone in the Palin family will need to get a job. Maybe she can eke out a few more years on the church circuit, but I don't know what speaker's fees are like on the religious right.

Her brand is so tarnished on the national stage it is hard to imagine her coming back. Perhaps Fox News will give her a paid seat as a commentator or host in the run-up to the next election? Or she can hire a ghostwriter and try to make it is a less-vicious, intellectually vapid version of Ann Coulter. The odds on her success are quite long with both those scenarios, but she can try.

Fortunately for this country being an elected official will no longer be an option for Sarah Palin. There is no way she can survive her post-election performance as a Governor and her decision to step down. Her career as an elected official is completely over.  Now she has no track record and no home base of operation. Just ask Rudy Giuliani how difficult it is to run for national office when your home state loathes you.

The Bing Thing

I expect the new search offering from Microsoft, named Bing, will generate as much social media chatter as it will coverage from the traditional media, or air time from paid placement. And I expect that much of that chatter will be negative, as the masses are quick to attack the evil empire of Microsoft. Google is cool geek, Microsoft is uncool geek, and on and on. The launch of Bing will also generate some really strong discussion about the nature of search and how search may evolve. Google may have won the battle for search, but war will never end.

Google improved the search engine enough to essentially kill the search directory model, which preceded it. It's simple presentation, meaty algorithms, and unobtrusive presentation of paid results provides a solid framework for organic search results.

In developing Bing Microsoft did not tilt at an organic search windmill. Instead they are focusing on certain tasks, like finding medical advice or shopping for electronics or travel. Bing will layer subcategories onto the organic search results, allowing the user to see the search results in logical groups. Users will be able to filter results by type, such as articles, reviews, coupons, retailers, etc, or by location, or price. This may sound like a step back towards search directories, which tried to organize information by topic. In a way it is adding a directory-like layer, but in a manner which provides the user with an additional line if inquiry beyond the initial organic results. The ability to divide search results into pre-set categories is something Google does not offer, and could be a competitive advantage for Bing.

It is easy to nay say, or to suggest that Microsoft will ruin the experience by simple being Microsoft. Microsoft is rightly accused of trying to think too much for user, which can make Microsoft software extremely frustrating at times. To think that Google doesn't do the same thing in some ways, despite their stripped-down user experience, is perhaps a mistake. The all-powerful algorithm is thinking for the user. The more information the user provides Google in the search query, the better the results, but not all users are that search savvy. Bing wants to offer a next step for those users, essentially saying to them "can I organize these search results for you in a away that might be more helpful?" It is in the delicate balance of offering additional options, versus forcing them upon the user, that Bing may succeed or fail.

In focusing on shopping and advice, Microsoft has positioned Bing right where the most money is spent in pay-per-click advertising. Bing's paid model doesn't look too different from Google's, but starting where the money strikes me as smart business and might help generate some real revenue. As revenue is an important measure of the success of such ventures, the ability to generate some revenue would drive additional interest and put some wind in Bing's sails.

Todd Helton turning into Wade Boggs?

Todd Helton and Wade Boggs share a career batting average of .328, and Helton's career on base percentage is .428, just 7 points higher than Boggs OBP of .415. Helton has averaged 46 doubles a year, Boggs averaged 38. Both won gold gloves at an infield corner position. The big difference is Helton's power. Helton has averaged 30 home runs per 162 games while Boggs averaged just 8. That said, Helton hasn't hit 30 home runs since 2004 and he is on pace to hit only 13 in 2009.

What Helton is doing this season is getting on base, sporting a .341 battaing average and .398 OPS, and if he can stay healthy for 150 games and keep this pace he will have 189 hits and 26 doubles. Those stats look a lot like Wade Boggs between 1989 and 1991. Helton is even sporting some Boggs-like facial hair.

WordPress Rocks, TypePad ... not so much

I use WordPress professionally, TypePad personally. TypePad is just a quirky nightmare in comparison to WordPress. The latest example? I no longer have tags (called categories in TypePad, WordPress has categories and tags, apparently that is too hard for TypePad). My tags just vanished one day. No reason, just vanished. This is on the heels of several episodes where my style sheets and template bought the farm for no reason; hadn't touched anything. No comparison, use WordPress.

alas, alas

Amy Poehler is the funniest woman in America. If you saw Saturday Night Live when she left on maternity leave, you sensed something was missing. It wasn't the election. It wasn't Tina Fey. That something was Amy Poehler. When she is in play you can see the energy in her face. She is the difference.

I am a huge Amy Poehler fan, a huge fan (big fan). The first episode of Parks & Recreation was terrible. Awful. Miserable. I like The Office. The American version has, in time, found its voice and is every bit as good as the British original. I get the joke, that wasn't the issue. It was just awful. It didn't even have good moments. The closest was possibly catching the canvassers playing Rock Band, but even that was a subtle laugh. It was terrible.

Airing the first episode before The Office may make it worse. The Office is a mature show, it is mid-stride, looking good, has some swagger. The comparison makes Parks and Recreation's debut even worse.

Alas, alas.

Falling Housing Starts are a Good Thing

The news that housing starts fell in March after an unexpected rise in February is considered bad news. Add the fall in new building permits and the analysts are in a funk. I understand this, a lot of our economy over the last decade has been fueled by aggressive home building and sales. But wait, wasn't that what got us into trouble? Hmmm.

Perhaps we should be pleased that new home construction has declined? I'd like to see a revised "normal" level of new home construction, a lower normal. There is plenty of housing stock in the marketplace judging from real estate inventories and foreclosure rates. We don't really need a lot of new housing at this point (we really don't). I'd like to see some home improvement and rehab tax credits. That would stir up some activity in the sector without adding more inventory. The additional inventory only puts more downward pressure on the price of existing homes. The mortgage loan limits -- at $417,000 across much of the country -- have already put a damper on sales of homes costing more than $500,000.

There is also a direct correlation between  construction and unauthorized immigration. Construction became a major source of jobs for workers entering the country illegally. As housing starts declined, so did illegal border crossings. At a time when municipal budgets are being cut by declining tax revenues, the fewer people municipalities need to support with social services the better (please note, this is by no means an anti-immigration rant, just a sliver of economic data to consider).

Home builders are still cranking out 500,000 new homes a month.There are approximately 308 million people in the U.S., and the population is growing at just under one percent. Those 308 million people live in a combined 130 million housing units. Even if every new American needed a new house, just for themselves, we would need approximately 2 million new homes. At the current rate of new home construction we would meet our annual need in 4 months.

Granted, factors like population shift to the Southwest mean less demand in some areas of the country and more demand in others. Housing starts are much more likely in high-growth areas, but they are by no means limited to those areas.Too many jobs have become dependent upon new home construction, and new housing starts seem to have as much to do with keeping those jobs than meeting actual demand (starting to sound like the U.S. auto-industry?) A contracting new home construction industry will be painful, but in the long run those resources would be better utilized creating something we actually need.

Gaining a Perspective: Four Books on Africa

The American media and public, already intrigued by Somali piracy, is now in a full-on lather of interest due to the recent hijacking and rescue of an American ship and crew. Somalia is back in the news, a reprise of the Black Hawk Down period. The same questions are being asked: How could Somalia be so violent? How did it become a failed state? Is this another example of Muslim extremists run amok?

Like most Americans, I know very little about what is happening in Africa or much about African history. I probably know more than the average American (I doubt that is hard) but I don’t know much. Lately I’ve been trying to change that by diving into a number of books. I started with Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present by Michael Oren. Oren traces American involvement in the Middle East back to 1700s. The parallels between today and the early involvement are stunning, particularly the evangelical mindset with which Americans approached both religion and democracy in the Middle East. I’m still working on the book, but as is typical with me I have four going at the same time.

The second book is King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild. The book is not great, but it provides a very solid overview of the exploitation of Congo from the late 1800s to the early 1900s.  Hochschild seems to relish both caricatures and unsupported speculation when describing people, something that I cannot stand when reading a work of history. That has slowed me down, but I am almost through the book and I am learning perhaps more than I’d like to know.

Chief of Station, a memoir by Larry Devlin, the CIA station chief to Congo during the early Cold War period, was a good, quick read and an informative first-person account of the early, post-colonial years in the Congo.  The fourth book is by far the best and most compelling: The Zanzibar Chest by journalist Aiden Hartley. The book contains two stories. The first is of the author’s experiences as a journalist in Kenya, Somalia, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and the Balkans. The second story, which is embedded within the first, traces the experience of his own father and another British man named Peter Davey. From the first story you learn a lot about the nature of conflict in modern Africa, from the second you gain a telling perspective on the tragic consequences of European involvement in Africa during the 20th century.  I have a few more chapters to read in the Zanzibar Chest, but as I don’t want it to end I have been finishing up King Leopold’s Ghost.

In concert the four books have been a wonderful, albeit depressing, primer in 20th Century African history. I can sum up what I have learned in a paragraph. During the colonial period forced labor, slavery, sadistic murder and disease decimated African populations and violently disrupted societies. The colonial powers extracted minerals, rubber, oil, and personal glory.  During the post-colonial period the United States, Russia, and China pumped weapons and ammunition into the continent to fight the cold war and meddled with emerging governments and elections (including the funding mercenary armies for warlords). The result, more death and destruction, and the continued fraying of African societies. Then the United States decided Africa represented a battlefield in the war on terror and saw an Al Qaeda threat in numerous countries (something Al-Qaeda has made some effort to live up to, although with little success). Which brings us to the current period of chaos and misery across large swaths of Africa, with little prospect of change as long as the rest of the world continues to use Africa as a battleground for ideological and economic struggles.

The four-book African taster’s menu may not be for everyone, but I do highly recommend the Zanzibar Chest. It too, may not be for everyone. It is at times sad, depicts graphic violence, and chronicles the author’s relationship with drugs, sex, and alcohol.  It is valuable because it provides an interesting first-person source from which you learn a lot about violent conflict that neither a traditional news story or a history book can show you.

Boomers and Social Media

Two weeks ago I was involved in a dialog about boomers and their participation with social media. Available data indicated they had no interest and little involvement in social media. I suspected the data was outdated, and offered up this response (this is copied directly from an email, please pardon the composition):

"The research suggests that boomer use the internet for research and shopping but aren’t that into blogging or social media. That said, things are changing. If our target audience starts in the mid-40s they are on the front edge of having their customer change significantly, because 45 is where the numbers seems to turn. Also, the audience in their 60s and 70s  -- my parents are that age -- have really started to jump into social media over the last year. I think they are also probably experiencing more of a shift in who does the research about health, with more and more being done by women. Essentially there is a wave coming, that they may just think is high tide, but it is the front end of a tsunami.

Boomers use their children as guides in the beginning, and then heading off on their own with more confidence. I’m hearing lots of stories about people finding old friends and flames on Facebook, people they haven’t seen or talked to since the 50s (camp and high school) and 60s (college, dating, and the armed forces).

There is a core group boomer bloggers, I’m not sure how much of an audience they have, but there is enough to form a critical mass.

My take on boomers and social media is that social media is not generational in the way people think about it traditionally. It isn’t that the boomer generation doesn’t get social media and is not interested. What is happening with social media is that it hits each generation at a different time. It started with college kids. The spread out to tweens, teens, and 20-somethings. Then it hit 30-somethings. Right now it is ripping like a tidal wave through the 40 somethings. The 50 to 70 year-olds are starting to feel the impact, but there is no question it is going to hit them. Boomers have more time on their hands to get sucked into it, and they have that built in interest because of their interest in nostalgia.  Social media (Facebook and the bulletin boards people often visit when doing web-based research) lead you to other things, including blogging. Boomers may never become big bloggers themselves, but they do read blogs seeing them as any other kind of online content."

Now Forrester has released a study that backs that hunch up. The percentage of boomers ages 42 to 52 involved in social media increased from 46% to 67%. For boomers ages 53 to 63 it increased from 39% to 62%. The Forrester data supports the tsunami theory.

Channeling Alan Sorkin

President Barak Obama didn't walk to the capitol to meet with congressional Republicans like President Jeb Bartlett did in the West Wing, but he did make the trip. It was not the first deja vu moment for West Wing fans, and I bet it won't be the last.

The strangest coincidence for me remains the bizarre choice of photo backdrop during the McCain acceptance speech. McCain was pictured in front of a mansion-like building for an agonizingly long time during his speech, prompting even Republicans to question "what is that, one of his mansions?" It turned out to be a Hollywood high school commonly used as a backdrop for TV and movie shoots. Over and above the odd, even disconcerting pairing of McCain with Hollywood, the school was also used as a backdrop for the West Wing scene in which Jimmy Smits announces he is running for president. Add to the story that Sorkin based the Smits character in part on Obama, and the bloggers went banana cakes for a very amusing 48-hour news cycle. Good times, good times.

So why is the comparison between Jeb Bartlett and Barak Obama so ... so ... well, so natural? It might be easy to say that after eight years of wandering in the desert liberal fans of the West Wing simply see their ideals finally represented in the White House. I think it is much more than that.

• Both Barak Obama and the fictional Jeb Bartlett are intellectuals. They are smart, damn smart, and it feels good. The President of the most powerful nation on the planet should be smart and accomplished.
• They are well-spoken. They can string a sentence together that is not only coherent, it can be at times insightful, compassionate, subtle, and inspiring. After eight years of pre-K English it really jumps out at you.
• They comport themselves in a manner that is presidential. It is impossible to define, but you know it to be true.
• They both project an aura of thoughtful, ethical behavior. It is an open-minded, intellectual ethics that is both more worldly and more paternal than the narrow, ideological, fundamentalist ethics of the past administration.

A little Google will lead you to plenty of comparisons and connections between the two. I'd get used to it, I expect more to come.

Little Wisdom in Tax Cuts Alone

The congressional Republicans risk looking very out of touch with voters in their insistence on a tax cut-only stimulus package. Not only does it seem an overly simplistic answer to a complicated problem, Republicans once again look like they are hewing to a narrow position based more upon ideology than common sense. That approach has gotten them, and the country, in a heap of trouble over the last eight years.

Their complaint that the Democrats won't listen to their ideas, particularly in the House, is undermined when their sole idea is simply more tax cuts. The Republicans did not do much listening when they were in power, but I do have sympathy for their complaints. Yet, how much listening does one really need to do when the Republican plan is a one-trick pony?

Will tax cuts alone improve the economy? I think a little, but too little and much too late to pull us out the nose dive we are in. Home Depot didn't shutter Expo and lay off more than 15,000 employees because taxes are too high. They did it because home building and renovation is at a dead-halt, and giving the average family a few thousand dollars in tax relief isn't going to change that.

Will tax cuts stimulate the economy? First, let's place the horrific pile of debt we are creating by lowering taxes at a time when tax revenue is caving in off to the side and consider tax cuts in a comfy, unrealistic vacuum. Tax cuts will help a little in the short-term, and probably more in the long-run.

Publicly traded companies may have little incentive to turn that tax cut into new jobs. Companies are "right-sizing" to a new economic outlook that suggests a long, slow recovery (after when we hit the bottom). They are not going to add more salary and benefit commitment to their expense line. With money frozen they cannot take on additional debt to finance new investments, and are unlikely to do so even if they could. They are more likely to focus on margin performance and shareholder value.

Mid-sized companies might spend a little of that tax break. They are more likely to be privately-owned, giving them some relief from shareholder expectations. They are also less able to absorb deep staff cuts without undermining their business. Small companies can only scale with staff, but the economy dictates their scale. They are more likely to use the cuts to keep the people they have, not hire new ones. Business tax cuts are more likely to help save existing jobs and create some freelance, contract, and part-time work than create a big lift in full-time employment.

The personal income tax won't do much of anything. We won't see a tax cut that exceeds average household credit card debt, so any spending it generates is still debt-spending. And now with Americans have tightened their belts and expectations they are too scared to spend money. Even the money that leaks out in consumer spending isn't a long-term solution. We saw that with the 2008 tax credit, which did nothing to help heal the underlying economy. And a tax cut can't help you if you have already lost a job. What you need is a salaried income, and that's why we need investment in projects that save jobs and create new jobs.

Public infrastructure projects can generate a lot of regional work. The construction is just the start, there is a ripple effect that spreads from arts to public affairs to communications. And it can happen quickly; the money starts flowing well before people start digging and pouring cement. It is not my favorite solution, but it is a piece of the puzzle. A lot of business can get hurt from construction projects, particularly road construction. Many business did not survive the Washington Avenue, Vandeventer Overpass, and Highway 40 construction projects over the last few years in St. Louis (I really miss King Louie's). But the stimulus outweighs the disruption and many of the projects sorely need to be done.

The investment in alternative energy also makes sense. It will impact science, technology, and ultimately manufacturing -- all sectors of our economy that need to be more competitive. This is a success by a thousand cuts scenario. We can't just expect the blunt tool of tax cuts to get the job done.

A fire needs both oxygen and wood to burn. Tax cuts may give us more oxygen, but we need to add some fuel to the fire.