GM is a big company. The combination of Ford, GM, and Chrysler has a major financial influence on our economy. If you’ve read my blog in the past, you know what I think of GM. They are big, fat, and stupid and can’t seem to figure out what people really want or need.

That said, we can’t just walk away when they get close to going belly up. In spite of their weaknesses, GM puts 39 billion dollars into the market through their suppliers and employ thousands of laborers. I think the U.S. needs to be strong in manufacturing, so letting our auto industry fail is not in our best interest.

There is talk on their airwaves from career politicians and financial analysts that we need to refocus the auto industry on producing “green” vehicles if we are going to help bail them out. I would settle for a restructuring that boots out the wall street installed loser executives and replace them with tough decision makers who can eliminate wimpy middle managers and put together product plans that produce cars that people want to buy. If GM produced a car that mirrored the performance of my Volkswagen station wagon or Audi sedan, I would be happy.

Yes GM is strangled by unions and yes wall street is always looking to the short term, but there comes a time when we have to look to the future and show labor a little tough love. Product decisions belong in the hands of creative engineers and product managers if the industry will succeed. No one will like the fallout from the tough decisions, but on the other hand, no one wants to lose their industry and jobs forever. Ask the steel workers of the 70’s and 80’s. If tough concessions would have saved their jobs in the long run, they would be a heck of lot happier than they are now.

The alternative is to do nothing, and resign ourselves to buy cars from the same people who sell poison milk to babies.

I don’t want to seem partisan as I join the masses of people who look to the Obama administration for optimism and leadership, but I have a few minor comments on the Republican party.

Dear Republican Leadership (or lack thereof),

You came into office in 2000 with a party president and legislative majority. You quickly established bad policy and presented it to the American people with arrogance. You called anyone who challenged those policies unamerican and accused them of being unpatriotic. In essence, you went down your own road for almost 8 long years. You were wrong. Your policies failed, and you continued your arrogance to the end. Independent of what you say, you blindly followed the president’s policies with little question until it became apparent that you were supporting a sinking ship.

Now the will of the American people have spoken. We elected Obama, and even before he takes office, you attack him in an unconstructive way. He selected Rahm Emanual, and your leadership blasts Obama for his choice for his chief of staff. This is unconstructive. Emanuel is not a policy maker, but in a support position. Your attack is not only uncontructive, but it is devisive and mean.

Let me give you some personal advice. Stop being mean and negative. It will not help your party. It will make us angry and hopeless. It is unamerican to tear down out our optimism for your own personal gain.

Lets be clear. You ruined this country. We are in crisis, and are looking for leadership. Leadership motivates the masses and gets us focused at solving the problems at hand. We need positive solutions that will move us back to economic and political health.

I ask that you tone down your rhetoric and focus on problem solving. If you disagree with the president, then offer alternatives. Question and challenge him in a constructive way. Become part of the answer, not the problem.

When you finally get around to re-building your party, look at yourself in the mirror. Stop being mean and destructive. It is clear, you don’t have all the answers, and we are much more open to graciousness then attacks.

Finally, the republican party has become the voice of the southern evangelical movement. It is uninclusive to outsiders, except in the most superficial ways. While I personally share many of your moral and ethic values, I recognize that those views are my own and are not shared by everyone. In case you forget, you are a political party, not the U.S. version of the church of England. Stop being driven by religious zealots, and focus on running the country.

I am no expert on psychology or the stock market, although I have an MBA from Carnegie Mellon with a concentration in finance, but it seems to me that the market entered its panic stage when our legislators failed to pass the bailout plan the first time around. I understand that there were lots of reasons to reject the house bill. After all, Nancy Pelosi made partisan political statements to the press, which is reason enough to send the economy into a tailspin. At least according to Virginia representative Eric Cantor.

Having been through the last crash in 2000 and 2001, it seems to me that any positive steps by the administrator or legislator has a profound impact on alaying fears and giving investors confidence in the market. Our congressment failed us big time when they rejected the bailout and sent the markets into panic.

I know what you are thinking. This is Wall Street’s doing. I concur that the credit crunch driven by the felonious practices by the investment houses has set up the world economy for failure, however the markets are current driven downward by fear, and that was easily prevented. Or at least mitigated.

For years Google was my primary search engine. If I wanted to find something on the Internet I went to Google first. In the past year, Google has become completely irrelevant. A simple search on a common topic returns utter nonsence. For instance, I was trying to let Google know about my frustration and searched on “contacting google.” All the results were about contact managers and adding contacts. There was nothing in the results about contacting google corporate or support. I tried to refine my search by adding the phrase “customer support”, but this took me further from my goal.

From a business perspective, I can’t figure out where Google is going. They have so many projects that I am left with the impression that they have lotsa money and no focus. Not a good combination in a failing economy.

Maybe Microsoft should pass on buying Yahoo and just stick it out for a few years. My guess is that Google will be available for a song by then. I know Eric Schmidt is better and smarter than me, but as far as I can tell both Sun and Novell eventually went to the toilet, so why not Google too.

Only time will tell.

I am keeping my eyes glued on the Nokia acquisition of Trolltech. I expect good things to come from that relationship.

GM is discussing the prospect of cutting thousands of white color jobs and eliminating more of it’s brands in an effort to stem their financial bleeding. Chief Executive Rick Wagoner has been poo-pooing calls by board members and executives to trim the fat and reduce the redundancy. I personally think that Rick Wagoner is an goofball who couldn’t manage his way out of a paper bag. I wrote Rick two years ago and suggested that he trim the fat and consolidate his car lines before it was too late. Guess he didn’t wan’t to listen to me either.

I’ve been missing in action. Actually, I didn’t really have a lot of motivation or energy to blog. I thought I would provide an update to anyone who cares. Zoie is 12 and 1/2 months old. She is the cutest baby on the earth with my nieces and nephews running a very close second. Alla and I have constant backaches from bending over Zoie and holding her hands while she learns to walk. Zoie is tiny and her hands are not much high than knee level.
It’s amazing, but I just don’t have the energy or drive to get angry about anything. The economy is in the toilet, there is no relief from the fighting in Iraq, and we have a president who is a moron, but it all seems so far away when Zoie is flashing me one of her well rehearsed smiles.

Here are the important things I learned this year:

1. Children are fun. Even when both parents are exhausted and burnt mentally. Raising children is a truly amazing experience.

2. With teenagers, time is your friend. Eventually, they get on with their lives so you can get on with yours.

3. Everyone else’s job always seems easier.

4. Vacations are god’s way of reminding us that we are usually to tired to notice that we are too tired.

5. The more money you put into fixing the car, the more it breaks.

6. People will vehemently defend their irrational and losing position until the evidence is 100% against them. Then they start looking for someone to blame.

7. The same people will continue to believe the above mentioned people they blame if it supports another somewhat related albeit irrational and losing position of their fancy.

8. An intelligent black man will lose his color with each well reasoned argument he makes, whereas an equally intelligent and well reasoned woman will still be a woman.

9. Barack Obama is too inexperienced and John McCain is too old. Both are equally good at flip flopping the issues. Not much of a choice, if you ask me.

10. Anthony Scalia would be considered great judge and superior intellect, if we lived in the Soviet Union and weren’t bothered with such nonsense as habeas corpus.

A few years ago I worked for a Boston based company that has a remote office just outside Portland, Maine. The company had an ongoing rivalry between the Suburban Boston and Maine branches. The Maine employees referred to the ones in Boston as “the city folk” while the Boston referred to the “potato farmers” in Maine. All pleasant name calling aside, the Maine branch was run like a family town grocery store with more focus on country anecdotal experience then sound business judgment. They were very proud of the way they held onto customers in spite of the fact that business was flat or falling in their region.

Alla and I just returned from a very pleasant week with Zoie in coastal Maine. Anecdotal research showed that the tourism business has been in steady decline over the past few years, in spite of increasing travel costs due to high price of gasoline. At the same time, the Cape Cod chamber of commerce is reporting record bookings on the cape. Maybe there is some truth in the potato farmer moniker that the Boston people gave to those from Maine. The only booming businesses we could find in our coastal Maine towns was lobstering with prices driven sky high by the dollars low value. Seems that the rest of the world has developed a taste for Maine lobsters at bargain prices. I hope the dollar continues to stay in their favor, cuz the rest of us local folk have lost our taste for the expensive ugly creatures. It’s good to know that someone is benefitting from the current U.S. foreign policy debacles.

Speaking of lobsters, did you know that Boston has a professional tennis team called the Boston Lobsters? You didn’t? Well … neither did I. Go figure.

I am still around, but life is very busy with a one year old. Hard to believe it, but Zoie will be one this month.

I am still spending a lot of time on the road. Right now I am at Logan Airport waiting for my flight to California. I recently flew USAIR, United, and today I am flying Jetblue. I admit that I don’t know much about the airline industry, but in my humble opinion, Jetblue is going to win out over many other players because the offer a good comfortable seat and entertainment at a fair price. No elite fliers, or upgraded first class passengers to eat up all the $$$ allocated to passenger comfort and safety. We are all equals and are treated as such. Maybe this will change in the future, but I don’t want elite status. I want to be treated reasonably well for a fair price.

I can say this from years of flying experience. I have been gold level on Continental and American and Premier executive on United. Jetblue is a much better experience.

If I get the time, I will update the blog periodically.

We are at home this evening watching the Jack Nicholson and Dianne Keaton movie “Something’s Gotta Give” when the program goes to commercial and Pizza Hut tries to entice us with pre-cut pizza strips served along with three plastic cups of various dipping sauces. The value of this novel idea escapes me completely. Take a marginally flavorful pizza and cut it into tiny strips. Then buy three cups of pre-packaged salad dressing, dump out the dressing, and then fill the empty cups with salty goo of various flavors. Is this suppose to be appetizing? If the pizza is so good, then why do they need dipping sauce? Shouldn’t the pizza already have enough flavor on its own? I know that if I made pizza, and someone tried to dip it in goo for extra flavor, I would be really insulted. I guess the chefs at Pizza Hut have much lower standards. It must come from making pizza that tastes like cardboard.

Anyway, we were unmoved by the pizza commercial and decided to have ice cream instead. I had mine with chocolate dipping sauce