lakechamplainer comments

What an outrage! The United Nations should investigate.

Drucker's ideas always seemed good to me. However, my experience is that in the US his ideas were taken by corporations and simply used as yet another attempt to browbeat workers and replace them with computers.

When I worked at W. R. Grace, for example, we went through all the Total Quality stuff, all the stuff about taking responsibility, etc. We would watch videos about people taking the initiative to order a helicopter to make sure something got delivered "just-in-time", yet I still needed about five signatures to order a $2,000 pump.

Somehow management never saw the disconnect, or more likely no one would point it out to J. Peter Grace.

Were people around the world really expecting him to be God, as Mehmet Onal is quoted as saying in the article? And people say Americans are ignorant?

Klein2: I'm well aware of the Bush family, believe me. Thankfully none of them are on the ballot, at least this time. I hope that Jeb Bush or George P Bush or any others are ever on any ballots in my lifetime.

I think the Republicans succeeded in making this a referendum on Obama, which at the margins has the result of more Republicans winning. Two years ago, the Democrats succeeded in making it a referendum on Bush, and likewise more Democrats won than would have otherwise. Both cases are OK with me, they work towards my goal of voting the ins out. The scary part of this story is Andrew Cuomo running obviously on his father's name, and Jerry Brown, who succeeded Reagan who succeeded Brown Sr. as governor way back when, running again. We have to get away from these "dynasties".

And the real world relevance is......?

My favorite Danno story was the one where some psycho went around murdering people based upon characters in a comic strip called Judy Moon, because he thought he was protecting her, so Danno had to go back into uniform while the cartoonist drew him in the comic strip, and they caught the psycho, and everyone lived happily ever after.

In the old days McDonald's managers used to do MVRs, "Manager Visitation Reports". I was devastated once, as a callow 17 year old "swing manager", when we had a tough visit. The MVRer, who was the store manager's boss, made the comment that "the drink had good ice bricks", apparently because there was nothing else worthy of praise.

What would W. Edwards Deming say?

When are the people who run American soccer teams going to get some, and play sudden-death after a 90 minute tie? Why do they have to follow FIFA's dictates, acting as if they come down from Mount Sinai or Mount Olympus?

I have been to Woonsocket, RI: There is no "there" there.

How does one tell a rising sun from a setting sun?

How well are women doing when their husbands are out of work?

I assume ACTIVISTS = INTELLIGENCE OPERATIVES

What was Tojo doing in the time between the Japanese surrender and his attempted suicide/capture?

Sushisake3 - I don't follow your argument - why should I be as concerned with what did or didn't happen in Northern Ireland as I am with what happened in the United States?

Note to some of the posters who seem to think Americans are intolerant and mean-spirited - if President Obama is not re-elected, I assure the (most likely Republican) next President will take a much stronger stand, having been led there by the American people. The Islamic World is not likely to have a President who is as interested in reaching out to them as President Obama, and I say that with all respect. I like President Obama, I voted for him in 2008 in both the Democratic primary and the general election. Right now I don't know if I would vote for him again. If a moderate to conservative Republican, like for example Congressmen Paul Ryan, is elected President, he will almost certainly not be as interested in furthering a dialogue with the Islamic World as President Obama. No disrespect to the President or Congressman Ryan - they would just be following the thoughts of the American people - as put forth by Palin et al, probably not with the best motivations.

I think these discussions and controversies over these issues are good. I prefer to see the American people engaged on this issue, peacefully as they are, rather than passively attending memorials.

I see the building of the Mosque in that location as provocative - I don't see how anyone can see it otherwise. Also, where is the money coming from to build it? How come everyone else is always encouraged to be tolerant and respect others viewpoints - it sure seems that adherents of Islam are never encouraged to do so - certainly not by their leaders.

I think the President is "on the side of the angels" in this debate. However, we need him to take a stronger stand against what to me is clearly wrong, and is apparently viewed as wrong by most Americans. We need him to show leadership, and not get bogged down in trivia, which these discussions are, from the standpoint of the Presidency. This reminds a little of the "Beer Summit" issue involving the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Gates by a Cambridge, MA policeman - not really an issue requiring the President's full attention.

Janet Wood from Three's Company. Janet "Would". Get it?

I might have missed it in the 300 plus posts, but is there any sort of plausible explanation for the premature announcement of the building 7 collapse?

The Iranian "holy men" haven't changed their offensive scheme much since the late 70's: they still run a "spontaneous demonstration" scheme, not much finesse, just pound it between the tackles.

I think he should visit one of them. I might recommend Nagasaki (Not that I would be asked of course) on the basis that there is some basis to question whether the second bomb had to have been dropped or had to have been dropped so quickly after the first bomb. Also, most of the focus is on Hiroshima since it was first (it also had more loss of life, as the Nagasaki bomb target was not hit).

He should not apologize. He should go there in a spirit of solemn remebrance, which I'm sure he would. no doubt he would give brief remarks on why nuclear war must never happen again and why countries must work together to make the world a safer place.

Note to borscht: At Gettysburg, brave Americans were fighting and dying on both sides, or at least that's how I see it.

If we make the assumption that the "official" story is more or less what happened - by that I mean that "Al-Qaida" was planning this for a long time, that the US had intelligence info but "didn't connect the dots" that there were exercises going on that day,etc. I would still expect to see this mass of back and forth, overwhelming information, for several reasons.

The basic reason is that after the incident, both sides (and other sides) would want to further their various agendas. In the US, this would certainly include an effort to confuse the enemy as to what you do and don't know. There would also be multiple "CYA" stories, trying to blame other people, and similar stories explaining how various people and organizations did everything right.

The enemy side would certainly want to take credit and establish fear in the US population and other populations. Other US enemies would potentially play the information to weaken the US. Other enemies of the Al-Qaida cause, for example Israel, would want to try to influence the story to get their long-term goals. I consider the Anthrax attacks to be tied into the airplane attacks - I don't think we have any idea what happened there.

As they used to say in the X-Files, The Truth is Out There, but there is so much planted misinformation and honest misinformation that the facts will never be known. I think that in ten or twenty years a big part of an analysis will include the fact that the US was very successful in Afghanistan right after 9/11, to the credit of the US military. Also, the whole anthrax situation will have been studied further.

Below is a link to the Wikipedia article on the Global Guardian annual training exercise, which was held at least in part on 9/11. Makes reference to the various (at least de-classified) exercises going on at the time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Guardian

I think the key to understanding 9/11 was that apparently the US had training exercises scheduled for that day simulating something at least somewhat similar to the actual event. This stills begs the question - Did outsiders figure this out on their own - perhaps by knowing there would be such an exercise in the fall, and then somehow finding out the date, or did they have some help finding out the details of the exercise or exercises.

whitepocky - You ask if America has seriously contributed more than the Ancient Greeks/Romans, and the Chinese, Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese and British. As you know, that is eight other countries. Also, depending how you look at, Rome last about 2,000 years, China has been a more or less existing entity for longer than that, and the other countries have existed for say 400 to 800 years. The US and colonies have existed for about 400.

I don't understand your comment about cars: The automotive industry is an American invention - the ability to manufacture, market and distribute vehicles was the key, not the ability to make a prototype or two. As for Velcro, who cares?

I myself do feel that The British Isles have had a more decisive effect on World history than the US. Among other things, it is where some form of limited government developed, which is perhaps the key legacy to its North American colonies. Also, it is where the Industrial Revolution began, and it is the land of Shakespeare and of Newton.

This is not what they call a man bites dog story. Zero surprise factor here.

I have not given money to the Pakistani relief effort and make no apologies for not doing so. I gave about $80 I think to Haitian Relief Efforts, one donation on my own soon after it happened and one as a funeral remembrance. There are many Haitians who live in my area (Boston area) and they are good citizens - many work very hard in nursing homes and other health providers, and I have had interacted with them quite a bit the last few years, due to relatives in nursing homes. Charity is charity - it is done of free will. In my cast I felt a sense of moral responsibility towards the people in Haiti I don't fell towards the people in Pakistan. I don't think that makes me a bad person.

I don't think the article is "over the top". I am an unemployed American who has been unemployed for a while, I feel I am a "hard working American" even though I'm out of worked - I've worked hard my whole life. I'm a chemical engineer by training and have a license to practice engineering, but my last job was as a supervisor in a food plant, so I have adjusted to new realities - i.e. most of the factories are gone and are never coming back.

There are some good points made in the article, some of which are understatements even. The article starts off with information about people jumping a line for public housing spots with people below an income of $16,000 per year. There is a problem right there - why aren't average people eligible, why do you have to have a very low income? More to the point, subsidizing housing like this costs money as it keeps the price of housing artificially up and of course building and maintaining the money costs tax dollars.

From the article, " Long-term joblessness is at the highest level since the Great Depression. Nearly 15 million Americans are unemployed. About 11 million more adults have been relegated to part-time work or given up altogether. Half the nation has no net worth."

This is understatement - the 26 million number is probably fairly accurate, I think it may be more like 36 million, but it doesn't change the author's point. The elites still call it a recession. It is a Depression. And if half the nation has no net worth - I think this may be an exaggeration - there will continue to be problems with anger and envy. The solution isn't so much to "Share the Wealth" as to once again have a society where "a rising tide lifts all boats".