I’ve had a monstrous seven days of work with quick hops up to Pittsburgh twice (sorry I couldn’t reach out, Gene).  Very good stuff with lots of folks at my client taking notice.  Consulting can be a frustrating job, and it has been with this client.  My frustration lies in doing something with the work I’ve done.  Execution.  It is the downside of working outside of a company, that I can’t make anything happen to drive results.

Such a riotous week to be this busy.  Here in the ATL, gasoline is the challenge facing everyone (or the lack thereof).  It seems at times like we’re some sort of lab rats in a strange experiment–cut the fuel flow in half and see what Americans do.  Some head toward panic, some withdraw and stop all discretionary travel, some drink the Kool-Ade and drive their tank toward empty rather than topping off continually, some slow down to below the speed limit.  It is absolutely the worst thing for the local economy as all the service industries take a big hit.

I picked up an iPhone yesterday (the starter 8GB version).  Haven’t gotten too into it yet, but I need the internet access and email capabilitiy as it looks like my travel will pick up a bit.  There’s a good chance that I’ll be gone from mid-November to the end of the year/beginning of January.  Destinations (if I can close the deal this week) include China, Japan, Korea, (possibly a couple other places in Asia), UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Holland, Saudi Arabia, possibly Venezuela and Brazil.  Plus a couple weeks in the US.

Any soccer fans and/or Seattlites should head to World Soccer Daily podcast (on iTunes, head to Podcasts/Sports to find it).  23 September has a great hour with Drew Carey, the new minority owner of the MLS Seattle franchise.  I still listen daily to World Soccer Daily.  I have an ESPN Soccernet fantasy team this year (not in a league, just doing it).  Anyone who might be interested in starting a league, ping me with a comment or an email at csquard@gmail.com.

I’m hoping I’m back, but let’s see if the posts flow before we get too excited.

I’ve received many different links of thought leaders regarding the bailout.  The best synopsis I’ve seen is from Naked Capitalism’s Yves Smith (Why You Should Hate the Treasury Bailout Proposal).  Too many to list here, although I’ll try to update this page with as many as I can find.  Very busy the last couple days, so sorry for the lack of posts to all.  Definitely read the Yves Smith post before you do anything else.

I like to think I’m pretty smart, although I am the first to admit that I don’t know everything about everything.  High Finance is one example.  I’m pretty sketchy on advanced financial instruments, as well as the Corporate twists and turns used to create earnings out of thin air.  I’ve seen it at work all the time when I was in Corporate America, when several business units came in short only to see the company meet or exceed their promised earnings to Wall Street.

So you won’t find a detailed description of exactly what is going on Wall Street and in America.  Here’s the Cliffs Notes version: the Housing bubble created a ton of bad debt, the funds of that bad debt created alot of dissipating revenue that evaporated quickly, and the bad debt permeates a ton of disparate financial instruments held by a variety of big firms.  Firms and individuals ran up incredible profits as they whipped the money all over the place.  Everything was good, so everyone was smart.  Now, the next shoe is in the process of dropping.

And how has our leadership addressed all of this?  By acting much like my local Home Owners Association would (no disrespect intended to our HOA, a thankless job if there ever was one).  Get in a conference room, have snacks brought in, facilitate Bank of America’s acquisition of Merrill Lynch (check), tell Lehman Brothers they’re out of luck and can go into bankruptcy (check), decide to take over AIG (check), break for lunch (check).

Are these the correct decisions?  I have no idea.  These are the choices you make when you have no choices, and you have no choices because you wait until you have no choices.  And you wait until you have no choices because you don’t take ownership of an America and an economic situation that must be intimitely understood and mastered, at the first whiff of a stench not as an inferno rages around you.

It is very easy to point at the White House, and believe me, it is where ultimately I feel the problem is.  This is just one more example, in my mind, of an Administration that believes something philosophically, doesn’t take ownership, and isn’t proactive about mitigating risk and charting a clear path that may hurt us.

It is very easy to point at the White House, but that isn’t the problem.  The problem is that our nation, our citizens, you and I, cannot fix our system.  We do not put our best and brightest forth to lead the nation in evermore complex times and evermore complex situations.

Our problems aren’t soundbite problems, and they cannot be solved by studying talking points.  For some of these problems, the inability to accept short-term pain to minimize the impact of a situation causes us to suffer long-term struggles left with expensive choices which may not work.

W vs Gore.  W vs Kerry.  This is the best we can do?

Both of these parties are screaming change at the top of their lungs, but they created this with our encouragement.  What exactly are we talking about in change?

When I look at a business or personal, I try to see the glass as three-quarters empty instead of half full.  What is the potential downside, and how to I minimize it?  The Democrats have nominated a candidate high on charm and short on experience.  The Republicans have nominated a vice presidential candidate from the same cloth, who was basically mayor of Travelers Rest, SC (just north of G-Vegas) a couple years ago.

It is totally irrelevant which of these has the least amount of experience or whose experience is more relevant.  It is simply that two of the four potential leaders of our nation don’t have the greatest, broadest capabilities necessary to lead this great United States of America.

Remember the days when an NFL Head Coach would demand full control of the club, forcing them to give him the GM role as well as coaching?  Well, those days are gone.  The reason is that the job is just too complex, the competencies required too unique and too varied to be consistently housed in a single person.  Why are the Patriots the best run club in sports?  Because they have individuals in every position who are excellent at what they do and understand how to execute as part of an organization all headed in the same direction.

The President of the United States is an incredibly challenging job requiring tremendous people management skills, analytical abilities, charisma, candor and bluntness in examining a situation, strategic planning, fortitude, a balance of fearlessness with pragmatism, and content expertise on every topic from religion to economics to Southeast Asian fractional politics to military to science to environmentalism to aging to education to racial/ethnic issues to immigration.

This day, 17 September.  It is a dark day in a dark time in our nation.  And I have brought us here, me and the millions of neighbors across this nation.

I’m every woman’s dream when it comes to gifts, truly.  My wife is the least materialistic person I’ve met (in case you need evidence, she last bought a pair of shoes two years ago, and the only clothing purchases she’s made for herself in the last six months are two blouses from J. Jill using the gift card I gave her for Christmas).  When I was traveling to Asia a couple times a year, I would stop in Singapore and buy jewelry inventory for gifts.  I’d been introduced to a jeweler their by a former executive friend of mine, and she regularly gave me the Bob discount on baubles and jewels.  Inventory then is distributed for Anniversary, Christmas, Birthdays, you name it.

Our 17th Anniversary came and went with no special gifts.  I’ve given my wife a teapot for our Anniversary each and every year, so I still have to hunt for this year’s edition (see all the teapots here on Flickr).  Seventeen teapots in all (one given to her on the day of our wedding, and one every year after that).

While most everyone was snuggling down to a USC blowout of The Ohio State University Saturday night, I was sitting across from my wife and her best friend at dinner before seeing the Indigo Girls in concert.  South African cuisine Boerwors, Crab Pastries, Biltong, Sosaties with an off-the-menu spice instead of the Apricot sauce.

The Indigo Girls celebrate their twentieth anniversary of recording music this year, and it was nineteen years ago that a fourth-year co-ed at Georgia Tech drove back to Furman to see them in concert for the first time with me.  I’ve seen them in eight states over a dozen time, and she’s seen them maybe twenty times.  Amy and Emily.  They’ve written songs together since high school, which is to say each writes a song then together they arrange it.

Let It Ring (above), performed in Dublin.  Amy’s songs are harder, more raw, and hers is a talent that has grown rapidly over these two decades.

Kid Fears (above) was one of the early hits of theirs, here with the cameo from Michael Stipe.

Sugar Tongue (above), a new song on their upcoming indie CD after they were dumped by their record label.

Emily’s songs are more melodic, gentler, stunning in both their lyrics and in their tone.  Power of Two is a favorite of mine, and I’m normally drawn more to Emily songs.

Missy Higgins (above) opened for them at Chastain Park, just as she did the night before in Hilton Head (where my wife had flown to see them with her best friend, back-to-back concerts). 

This is How It Goes (live, above). Grab her CD’s if you don’t already know her.

Hearing Amy and Emily, they’re such an intriinsic part of who my wife is.  The complexities of this lady who was gifted to me, who deserves so much more.  A shy woman with a closet passion for vampires.  The bookworm is the same, only she’s transformed over these years from the little girl in mason jar glasses to a bouquet who becomes more beautiful with each year.  The one of few words who is probably smarter than anyone I know.

I’ve belted out these songs at my wife’s side for so many years.  Saturday, I just sat there with my eyes closed most of the evening, a full moon beaming down on us with a few stars in accompaniment.  It wasn’t my time to sing, just to drink it all in.  Some couples drift away over two decades, and some people change as their circumstances batter them down or set them apart.  She is no different, but the woman she has become is so much bigger and richer and deeper than the curly-haired co-ed I fell in love with.

How I found her; well, it was surely accidentally in this huge mass of humanity.  How I captured her imagination; well, it was surely a momentary lapse of judgment on her part.  How I’ve kept her heart; well, it is surely not for my achievement nor my attractiveness nor my wit nor the depth of my thought.  I cannot say.  She doesn’t like change, so I’ve had that going for me.

All I know that her touch, her smile, all of it. I treasure each new day she’s still here, each morning she brushes by me, each night I flop my arm over and touch her back. And I think the best days may still be ahead.

For my parents, it was when JFK was shot.  I thought it would be when the space shuttle Challenger exploded, I thought that would be the point in time that would be forever burnished on my generation, the “Where were you?” question that could always spark a solemn memory.

I drove out of my subdivision this morning and saw flags at half-mast.  There had been a bitter debate within our Home Owners Association on where the flagpoles would stand (they were moved from near the main road back to our clubhouse/tennis courts).  I was a bit puzzled about the flags at half-mast and headed on to my appointment.  He was late (standard), and I wondered to a USA Today stand outside of the Starbucks that was our meeting point.  The article about seven years having past brought it all back.

The economy was much like it is now back then; not exactly, but it was slowing down.  I’d finished a phone call with an executive at Raytheon who I used to work with (his office was in Washington, DC).  My home office was outside of our living room seven years ago, and I wondered out of the room and glanced at the television for some reason.  I don’t even remember why it was on nor what our morning ritual was then.  Smoke was billowing from the World Trade Center, and no one knew that the world had changed.  Then the second plane hit and the tears streamed down my stunned face.

It wasn’t even like it was yesterday.  It was just a moment ago.

Most people like to have some connection to a famous or tragic event (how many people were there when Joe Namath won Super Bowl III?).  The father of the husband of a friend of my wife died that day, which is to say I had no personal connection to the people who lost their lives.  I worked in Manhattan but never ventured to that neck of the woods, spending my time in the Garment District or Queens or dare I say the South Bronx or Junior’s in Brooklyn.

It was just a moment ago.

The New York Times audio-visual tour of Hangar 17, containing fallen infrastructure and vehicles from the debris of the World Trade Center.

It was just a moment.

It’s a long list, those avocations that consume Americans.  Head to your attic or garage, and you’ll find the relics like tennis rackets, skateboards, Rubic cubes, and yes, poker chips.  The newest thing sweeping the States?  Bashing anyone who chats about poliitcs.

IGGY’s taken barbs, along with everyone from Don to my favorite sports radio show (the Herd) and my favorite daily soccer podcast, World Soccer Daily.   Toss one comment or opinion about the Presidential race, and a firestorm of criticism comes your way.

I actually think that is part of the problem.  With the explosion of cable outlets and talk radio, more and more of our opinions are shaped by a core group of pundits and talking heads from both sides of the aisles.  It is counterintuitive, I know, but there it is.  Don’t believe this?  Listen or watch one of the ladies or guys that you don’t agree with, then listen to those you bump into at the water cooler or at the soccer game over the next week.  We’ve become a nation shaped by propaganda, and we have powerful engines who shape large chunks of us on a variety of topics.  Disney/ABC/ESPN does it to us on sports.  The GOP and Democratic Party does it to us on politics.

The problem with our America is that the needs, opinions, and views of its populace doesn’t break neatly into two buckets anymore.  At the same time, we’ve run into a bad period of time where the two political parties regularly fail to produce the best America has to offer.  How can McCain select Palin knowing that he will be the oldest elected president to take office?  It is his responsibility as a future President to assume that he will die in office.  I hope he lives to be 100, but you have to plan for the contingency if you say you are the right choice for President.  Anything short of that is reckless.

Obama is charasmatic, no doubt, and it is almost funny that this has been turned into one of his flaws.  Yet the situation is no different in that party either.  He’s inspirational, no doubt, but the questions of his capabilities and experience aren’t slanderous.  They are real.  With Obama and Palin, we’re saying the highest office in America is second only to NBA coaches in the prerequisite for actual experience.

And let’s put aside all of the partisan red herrings, shall we?  My wife forwarded one of these email chain letters about Obama raising taxes.  My comment to her was uncharacteristically blunt and passionate.  I know absolutely nothing about Obama’s plans for taxes, but let’s put this in proper context.  Our nation has its Armed Forces deployed in a foreign, sovereign land.  Men and women are dying weekly.  I am bearing absolutely no cost to that.  Our infrastructure is barren and broken, from the product of our education system to the physical infrastructure of our lands to the energy consumption and production of our nation to the natural resource consumption and production of our land and, increasingly, the developing world.  Our long-term commitments are underfunded (see General Motors et al for symptoms of what happens next).  Our country is diving deeper and deeper in debt to peoples who do not share our motives nor our values.  Our Federal Government has demonstrated a long-term inability to solve long-term problems.

And we’re realistically whining that our taxes may go up?

There’s no mystery here.  Our taxes should go up while our level of services should go down.  In case we need a primer here, we are spending more in areas we historically have not spent more in (e.g., the Military), and we are taking in less in the process.  The costs born by our citizens have increased, as have the costs born by our massive Government.

Maybe none of this should be talked about during an election, I don’t know.  Both parties understand without a doubt that the objective in an election is to get elected.  Both parties, by and large, are competent enough not to give an opinion that will cut themselves off from a group of voters crucial to getting elected.

So really, we’re left to ourselves to talk about this stuff and try to raise both the awareness and importance of what’s really important in our nation.  Shout it out, whatever your opinion.  If you’re a reader, lurker, listener, or viewer of a content-specific source of humor, content, or community, embrace it and dont’ fight it.  “I don’t want to hear about politics on your _______ site/show/program,” is a cop-out.  I’d much rather hear about it or read about it there than listen or read the pundits.  Don’t forget.  We are America.

Here’s a quick top-of-mind view from here in the basement.

1. Miami Don may have the scoop on this, but I cannot figure out the city of Miami in particular and south Florida in general when it comes to sports.  I watched some of the Jets-Dolphins game yesterday and was struck with the relatively scarce crowd in attendance for the first game of the season and Brett Favre in town.  I expect that here in the ATL, but the mighty Dolphins?  An embarassment.
2. Congrats to Serena Williams for regaining the #1 ranking in tennis and taking the US Open title.  There are few sports figures I dislike more than Chris Evert (she made only about a hundred different excuses as Martina Navratilova routinely toyed with her).  Her calling out of Serena in an open letter in the May 2006 issue of Tennis Magazine.  “I don’t see how acting and designing clothes can compare with the pride of being the best tennis player in the world,” said Evert.  Well, Serena and her sister have simply shown that the two of them can compete at the highest level in sport while balancing their lives with other interests.  Let’s celebrate that!
3. Does anyone care about baseball?  Anywhere?  I get the NY Times on Saturday and Sunday, and I’m amazed how such a big chunk of America lives and dies with the hardball when surely most of the country could care less.
4. If you’re waiting for parity to reach college football, you’re a year or two too late.  East Carolina and Utah may have grabbed the headlines, but look at how many I-AA schools played their big brothers tight the last two weeks.  Furman could have beaten the Hokies, no doubt about it.  Isn’t it time to simply ban these games though?
5. I stumbled upon a young poker pro, Alex Fitgerald, playing online as well as recently in Macau at the APPT.  A sobering look at what it’s like to make a go of playing professionally, especially the tough parts away from the felt.
6. Speaking of parity, is the balance back in the NFL between the NFC and AFC?  I love soccer, but really there is no sports league in the world that approaches the NFL.  All the talking heads get paid tons of cash predicting and analyzing these games ad nauseum.  In reality, is the NFL really sixteen games between mostly teams of equal talent and coaching, where a couple of twists here and there can lead to a victory of defeat?  Do this sixteen times in a season, and standard variation leads to most teams finishing somewhere between 10-6 and 6-10?
7. Speaking of not caring, does anyone care about the PGA’s FedEx Cup?  I’ve casually read about who qualified for what, and to be honest I can’t get even the smallest amount of interest in this.
8. College football polls are moronic.  How can the Top 10 be identical between the two major polls when we’re two weeks into a season with results all over the map?  I know nothing about this, but college baseball seems better to me as their two major polls rarely look similar to one another.

Thanks for all the kind words as I’ve stepped away for a bit.  So very, very much to put down here, and I’ll get to it next week.  The election, Sarah Palin, my 17th Anniversary, on and on.  Today, I’ve decided to chat about homosexuality.

The incident that brings this reflection is the closing of “Rent” on Broadway this weekend.

As many of you may know, I grew up in a small town in Mississippi.  Homosexuality, gay, and lesbians hadn’t been invented yet.  We had things like sissies, fags, tom-boys.  There was no coming out of the closet then, and being picked on and ostracized was the least of the worries of these deformed people.  These sinners would lose jobs, have businesses closed, or be physically abused if they were found out.  I had mentors, friends, and classmates who were in this hidden group.  I vigorously defended the most influential man in my youth (besides my father), getting into a heated argument with a friend of mine who accused this community leader of being seen in Las Vegas with his boyfriend.

Fast forward to college, and a strange plague was creeping into the consciousness of America: AIDS.  We didn’t really have diseases with cute names like this, and this particular disease was neatly focused on this evil, ostracized group of homosexual men.  I have a degree in Biology, and I was stunned by the minimal amount of understanding of how AIDS was transmitted and how it could be prevented.  It was a death sentence to anyone who contracted it, and the victims literally wasted away before our eyes.  I remember making a particularly horrible first impression at the Corporate HQ of my first employer during a management orientation, as I explained to some executive that I felt the company could start an outreach program communicating information about this disease and its prevention to the communities of Upstate South Carolina.  Needless to say, I left a lasting impression on those folks (not good, I might add).

AIDS quickly spread from San Francisco and New York to all parts of America and the world.  It spread beyond this secret community to heterosexuals, hemophiliacs, health workers, children, blood transfusion recipients.  Two ambitious projects were instrumental in shifting our view of this disease and, ultimately, much of our view of gays and lesbians.  One was the movie “Philadelphia,” the story of lawyer Andre Beckett’s battle with AIDS.  Tom Hanks won his first Oscar for the role, Denzel Washington was masterful, Antonio Benderas provided eye candy.  Hanks moved from one extreme to another, winning the our hearts in “Sleepless in Seattle” then taking on the role of a gay man in Philadelphia.  The move brought homosexuality out in the open, although it was fairly tame by our graphic standards today.

The second project was “Rent,” a musical originally inspired by a desire to merge theater with the music of the MTV generation.  It was a labor of love for Jonathan Larson, the composer who worked seven years on the project.  It was a stunning twist when he suddenly and tragically died from an aortic aneurysm the morning before its off-Broadway premier.  Here is a fascinating photo collage and audio about that last dress rehearsal from the NY Times.

With that is a fascinating video from the 1996 Democratic National Convention, a performance from the Original Broadway Cast of “Seasons of Love.”

And from the NY Times, the original review of “Rent.”  The final curtain falls on its run Sunday, and a video version of last night’s Final Show will be available soon after.  It is a different America today, and Rent was at least one of the catalysts for our transformation.  Rest in peace, Mr. Larson.  RIP, Rent.