Obama Deserves An Award For His #SOTU

Obama during his speech last night.

Staying on topic is not easy for some filmmakers. With studio budgets being so high, and special effects so tempting to employ, theater-going audiences are seeing a lot of glamorous, but empty content on screen. Michael Bay deserves to have an award named after him.

The ‘Michael Bay Award’, which should be given last at the Academy Award ceremony so that everyone knows who is receiving it, will be for the most shallow, over-scripted, special-effect laden, biggest budget and poorly executed piece of garbage. All three Transformers, Pearl Harbor and Armageddon all should have won this award unanimously.

It’s worth noting that usually in a Hollywood-director’s early works, there is almost always a film that warrants them getting the studio’s backing for the rest of their working career. It’s blind faith, but that is okay. After Martin Scorsese created Taxi Driver, he could have started dolling out low-quality films, but he did not do so. Four years later, he released Raging Bull. Did Bad Boys warrant this for Michael Bay?

This year, considered for a nomination for the ‘Bay Award’ should be the President’s State Of The Union address. Let’s put it up against Green Lantern, Fast Five, Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and, of course, Transformers: Dark Side Of The Moon.

Michael Bay.

At the end of each of the Transformers movies, I couldn’t recite anything I had just seen except robot’s fighting and Megan Fox’s body. It was like a special effects snuff film. I felt the same way about our Obama’s speech, but instead of Megan Fox we short-changed and were given a withered Hilary Clinton.

What used to be Obama’s strength, his public speaking abilities, may have made him look lost last night. He forgot to mention important subjects, would skim over others, weakly prospected his coming year and focused too much on irrelevant issues. He tried to say too much and in the end said nothing.

The greatest film maker in the history of film is not Spielberg, Scorsese, Kubrick, Welles and so on. His name is Abraham Zapruder. In 18.7 seconds, he told the world more than any man had ever done in two-hours. He did so without cut shots, special effects or b-roll. There is a reason that his images of President Kennedy being assassinated in 1963 are so impressive. There is nothing to get in the way of the information happening in front of him.

A single frame from the Zapruder film.

He obviously made this film without knowing that he was about to witness the most controversial murder in history, but he captured the event without fretting or panicking. He had one goal: get the president on camera. Luckily we had a man filming from the grassy knoll with patience and not someone who couldn’t keep his hands off the zoom controls on the lens. This would have led to him missing everything while trying to capture too much. That’s something that Obama could not do last night.

The public should know that this was not a “State of the Union” address, but it was a ‘State of My Campaign’ speech from the incumbent. It was the basis for his upcoming election run. Why else would he say things that don’t fit within his Democratic Party’s ideologies and still get a standing ovation from them? He was trying to win over new voters.

I watched the speech twice last night. If you watch it again, you will actually be able to listen to what he is saying and not be thrown off by the carrots on a string his is holding out to his audience, an audience that was expected to clap for him. Clap they did. This was all part of the presentation. How many of the 85, interrupting claps were actually warranted?

Hilary Clinton, among others, clapping for Obama.

Go and read the transcript of his speech; it’s available quite readily on most news websites. After doing so, see how many times you felt like you needed to applaud the 13-page word jumble. You’ll probably end up thinking that there were only a few times this was necessary.

First, you should be applauding our military and his numerous mentions of such throughout. Their faithful service has been nothing but extraordinary and any commendation could never be enough.

His list of accomplishments at the opening are actually not bad. During his time, and more so recently, we’ve seen positive trends in employment numbers. This is not solely due to him, as labor swings are cyclical and markets are self-correcting, but they are now on a positive trend which is better than anything we’ve seen in the past two years. He does, however, fail in the way he presented the information.

While non-farm payroll numbers have gone up, that is not an indicator of an employment market. That is an sign of how individual business are operating, not a job force as a whole. What he should have focused on was how the employment rate was down almost an entire percentage point, from 9.4 to 8.5, between Dec. ’10 and ’11. This is being picky but a president who was elected on the promise that he would fix the unemployment crisis, as one of his main platforms, should know what numbers are important to focus on and what we can call ‘accessory data’.

The highest point he hit was the idea that we should stop sending individuals, who are on educational visas, back home after they get their degrees. We should be bending over backwards to keep these skilled workers within our borders instead of forcing them out. This was strong, but beyond this it’s hard to find anything that was not just bait for the audience to take.

Let’s look at how much sense this made: “let me put colleges and universities on notice: If you can’t stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down. Higher education can’t be a luxury – it’s an economic imperative that every family in America should be able to afford.” 

The audience, of course, stood up and applauded this notion, but why? Well, they did so because of the last part of the phrase. What person doesn’t think that every family should be able to afford their children attending to higher education? The answer is none. That’s where the applause came from. The laughs, like from me in my living room watching, came from the first phrase.

You cannot expect tuitions to go down while simultaneously cutting back your funding. If you want the price of anything to go down, pulling a revenue stream away isn’t the way to do it. That’s basic economics. Stopping funding will accomplish the exact opposite of what he would intend and send prices for education to an even-higher level.

He moved on from here to talk about entrepreneurs and businesses. It’s apparent that Obama thinks the people in this country value a start-up business more than they do an economic-driving  corporation. Well, I thought he believed that until he mentioned Steve Jobs.

In the GOP response, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels mentioned that the pioneer behind Apple created more employment opportunities than any stimulus package ever did. This may or not be true, but it’s odd that Obama would have brought Jobs up during his speech. Most should realize large corporations are creators of jobs and facilitators for the government to expand influences here and abroad.

Gov. Mitch Daniels.

Jobs was a symbol for corporate America. The company’s stock on the Nasdaq, APPL, broke $450 a share today based on record earnings. Record earnings for a company like Apple means they are essentially cornering a complete economic sector let alone a segment of the market. Obama would never criticize Apple publicly. This would be a mistake to do in any of campaign speeches and last night was no different. Apple is too popular a company.

He has promised to regulate big business and to make sure that they didn’t get away with the economic crimes they had been committing for so long. Why can he not paint an even picture for all forms of business? Earlier in his speech he criticized large banking firms and General Motors for not being regulated heavily enough.

When he found his way to small-businesses, there was the opposite logic: give them the most ways to find money and stop looking over their shoulders so much making it hard for them to grow. The audience loved that. Were they listening to what they were clapping for or were they busy being distracted by the topic jumping tour that he was taking them on?

This is the first president who has formed the basis of his platform around pitting differences in society. It doesn’t matter what your position is on taxes in this country, you should be able to see that he likes pointing the finger at that “1%”.

By creating a rift between levels of classes in society he is disjointing America more than helping it. In no model of business, or even life, does this work. Unifying by segregating is not practical.

Then he did something those present found to be hilarious. He made a joke. He criticized a former law, that his legislation ended, that regulated how farmers and others in the dairy industry were handling high-quantity milk spills. You can imagine what the joke was if you haven’t heard it already.

Obama after he made his "spilled milk" joke.

However, that type of spill should not be taken so lightly. Milk contains animal fat. Animal fat is an oil. Milk should be viewed as toxic to the environment because it is indeed detrimental to plants and animals in high quantities. This is what Obama left out when he was busy making a joke to please his public. The EPA affirmed that milk was dangerous to the environment, but them watching over it was redundant because the FDA already did so by checking the quality of piping and storage containers for weaknesses that could harm the milk. He was effective in giving half of an issue throughout the night.

These are some of the many things that he said. None of these things are firm and, for a speech that last 65 minutes, at least one topic should have been.

For the first two Transformers movies, young men ogled at Megan Fox. Then, in the third installment, she was missing. Her absence wasn’t addressed and the story moved on without her. For the first two years of Obama’s tenure in office, it seemed like his sole focus was on healthcare. That’s no longer his hot topic, so it was avoided completely in his address to the nation. How do your priorities changed that quickly? The public decides that for you.

Instead, he hit every other hot-button issue he could without saying anything substantive about any of them. Why did he bother to bring up credit card reform and higher education? That’s easy. This was the beginning of his sequel that will be in theaters soon titled ‘The Campaign Trail’.

What Good Is Our National Fabric Without Buttons?

While I do enjoy my fair share of Mr. McConaughey, I don't think we could all pull off this look... Source: Dolce & Gabbana

There’s a shirt in my closet that has quickly become useless to me. It’s a blue, plaid shirt that I’ve only owned for the better part of three months. While shopping for a new item to add to my wardrobe, I stumbled upon this beauty.

It was, and for some of these descriptors still is, warm, fashionable, versatile and cheap. I could wear this button-down to work, around the house and on campus without any hesitation. It’s only been worn about a dozen times. This beauty is now a disaster.

The problem with this garb isn’t the quality of the fabric, but the accessory-items that make it a functional piece of clothing. The amount of buttons on this shirt that are either missing or broken outnumber those that are still attached and operational. That’s unacceptable.

Without getting into the usual politics that goes along with the fact that this shirt was made in China, I’d like to focus on how important something like a button can be to the overall product.

The fabric is still warm. The stitching in the bottom of the breast pockets are not blown out. In fact, the only thing that makes the left breast pocket any less valuable is the button it is missing. It’s a compartment that I’ve never used, but the first time I tried to open it, that fastener broke into five pieces. Dependability? I have no faith in this shirt to keep my chest covered during even the softest of breezes.

Our government is built like this shirt. All of our focus is on the fabric and not the small pieces that hold it together. The television networks host debate after debate, something which I am openly against, featuring candidates who can only hope to appear as the least of all the evils.

In the middle of the 18th century, the founding fathers of this country were facing some of the heaviest decisions in the history of mankind. That weight may never be felt again. They had to set what the balance between the nation’s citizens and their government should be.

There was nothing to compare our model to, but they settled on the fact that there should be reasonable cooperation and acceptance of the powers that both the federal and state levels of government held. This resolution would eventually lend itself as a main cause for a civil war, create red states and blue states and even reinforce bipartisanship.

Processes and practices have changed throughout American history, but it remains that there is an obvious influence on the decisions in Washington from our state capitals. There are 535 elected members of Congress who aid in the completion of laws being passed and of policies selected.

Those in office have been selected at the state level. They are in place to balance the power that the executive branch has. They have the power to veto anything that the person sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office proposes. Their role should ideally eliminate the possibility of a czar or monarch from taking over. It’s a simple system of checks and balances.

The attention given to the election of the president and the campaigns, debates and scandals that go along with that, garner unequaled attention. While it is the most important, individual political position, the commander in chief cannot operate without strong subordinates.

As citizens we need to value the elections of state officials and representatives more than we do now. In the past few months we’ve seen how they can both stop bills and use their numbers to avoid responsibility.

A group was asked to find a solution to the hemorrhaging that is the national deficit. They showed up empty-handed. Are these the same people we’ve elected to office? Yes. There is no excuse for the fact that there are unsuited statesmen running proceedings. We cannot finger point, that’s on us.

Whether we elect the right person to be president every four years is as relevant as the fabric of my plaid shirt. Without the other pieces, even if only missing one component of the total product, they will be deemed as a failure. Obama is currently at that level, but that may only be because those around him on Capitol Hill are not allowing him to function. He is the fabric, they are the buttons.

We’ve neglected all the elements in our government’s apparel for too long. It’s time we start looking at every part, not just the biggest in our local, state and federal elections. Until then, our leaders might as well be tucked away with our winter hats and gloves.

Loyal Users Will Ruin Apple

Apple once prided themselves on being different. Source: Apple Computers

The meaning behind all advertisements and marketing campaigns inevitably change over time, but Apple’s ’1984′ Superbowl commercial still holds the values that Steve Jobs had until his passing. Someone should make the current executive board watch the should-be outdated clip.

The lone airing for the commercial was during the third quarter of the 1984 Superbowl. That’s all it needed. It showed the world what Apple, and specifically the Macintosh computer, was all about.

They were about change and fighting the ‘man’. It was a reminder to never stop fighting for a better life, which was directly associated with their computers. You were prompted to go out and buy the best product available. They built their empire on the phrase, “Think Different.”

At the turn of this century, the average Mac user was someone who went against societal norms and demanded a better product. They jumped off the Windows bandwagon. They ignored Linux. They didn’t quit until they found what they were satisfied with. The problem was that they hopped right onto the Apple bulldozer and have never looked back. It’s that loyalty which will be the downfall of an empire.

Since 2007, when I convinced my parents to buy me a Macbook, I’ve been one of those people. When conversation arises about what computer a relative should buy during an otherwise peaceful Thanksgiving meal, I’m that guy screaming that there is nothing else that compares to my Mac family of desktops, laptops and smart phones.

While I’m doing my best lobbying, I keep thinking in the back of my head about how slow my iMac has been running and how several functions of my iPhone haven’t worked in months. I know this can’t be something that is exclusive to me either, which is where the problem lies.

That brief debate, which quickly turned into a one-sided shouting match, is just one example of why consumers like myself will run this company into the ground.

When was the last time Apple did something truly innovative? Even if it’s only been a year, based upon their track-record, that is entirely too long. One of the amazing things about the company for the better part of three decades was that they pushed technology, and its role in society, further.

The iPad has become a cult product. I love them, but how do I know that I won’t become inseparable from an HP or Samsung tablet? I would never even give them a try let alone a serious consideration.

HP has had an all-in-one PC similar to the iMac for the past few years. What’s the only difference? While Apple has been making theirs prettier and prettier over that time, HP has made their product faster and given it a feature that Apple fans have been asking for…a fully capable touch-screen.

Apple has been dubbed the king of touch-screen technology, but is it really warranted? Today’s loyal user more than likely didn’t even try the competition’s product. They were mesmerized by the elegantly simplistic storefront and the fact that they didn’t want to disappoint their fellow consumer brethren.

Without Steve Jobs as a figurehead and driving force, their engineers need to get creative on their own. Of course there is still an executive board, but remember what happened the last time they tried to operate on their own? They barely could.

The foundations for this company are still very strong. They have a great user support system and can still rely on their already strong operating system. However, the strides they’ve made in the past 27 years since the launch of the Macintosh computer will be quickly forgotten if they don’t keep pushing forward.

Any time that they spend idling will allow the competition to catch up, and quickly too. As users we need to take a look at ourselves and make sure are still demanding the best product and not just the least of all the evils. We can’t let them get too comfortable. If we do, we will be the cause for Apple’s failure.

The 'Think Different' slogan is missing from the current Apple culture, which extends to its users. Source: Apple Computers

Publications Need To Embrace Technology, Not Fight It

There’s a long and ongoing debate about what will happen to the news media. Will newspapers die? That is an idea that finds its way into my daily thought process and, quite frankly, scares me.

It seems like an obvious notion that they will never be what they once were, but how far will they fall? Is theNew York Times going to be something that we tell our grandchildren about when we’re old and telling stories that make them roll their eyes?

We’re already at the point where some young adults have never actually seen a typewriter in person. I’ve personally seen one. It’s in my grandparents basement on display like some type of trophy from a time that once was.

Technology has taken over. It’s now quite easy to have yourself published online and to have your voice heard. Twitter is where some people get their news from. That’s right, Twitter.

When Apple released the new iPhone operating system, iOS 5, last month, I immediately downloaded it. This is partially because a number of years ago I decided that I would support anything that this company rolled out. I have yet to be disappointed, but that’s neither here nor there. I’m a consumer whore and that is a column in itself.

There are several major and welcomed additions to the operating system, but one has been mostly overlooked. ‘Newsstand’, as it is called, is not liked by the average consumer. I find it to be very useful.

Let’s take another jump. As a person who is overly concerned with the media and wants to make a career in journalism, the amount of time I spend actually reading the newspaper or its online counterpart, is laughable. Part of this is because I don’t have time to do this job, take five classes, work another part-time job and have a social life, let alone stop and pick up a newspaper.

In my newsstand is the New York Times digital publication. It’s my connection to the well-reported world. Twitter is not reliable. Depending on the blog, that may not be reliable. They are great resources, but should always be taken at face value.

The Times, and other equally reputable publications, have codes of ethics, editors with experience, news teams and so on. There is someone to check your work. That doesn’t exist at a blog. Heck, the internet allows someone like me to have a blog. That’s a scary thought. Almost as scary as the thought of them winning the media war.

I was juggling my daily life, and texting while driving, when I saw Obama’s announcement about his plan in Iraq. The notification popped up at the top of my screen and I was looking at the story instantly. It was well reported. It had access to the right sources. I trusted it. That’s what will be lost if newspapers disappear. They don’t have to, they just need to adapt.

The ‘old school’ shouldn’t be fighting technology anymore. It will allow their messages to reach people they would have never reached before. They’ve put up a fight for too long. Now they need to embrace the opportunity they have, before they fade in to memory.

Now someone needs to figure out how to make money on the digital production and we will all benefit.

AAA Politics

Source: AAA

“A little to the left. Too far. Your left. That’s not left.”

Sweat is beading down both of our foreheads. I, standing in my khaki pants and button down shirt, have now become a dictator from the other side of my car.

The person I’m yelling instructions to is clad in dark blue scrubs and a yellow reflective work vest. We’re standing in the sun in the parking lot of Hebrew High School of New England.

The glass and steel box that is a Jeep Wrangler is a statement of simplicity in a vehicle. The only thing they didn’t skimp on was the door locking mechanisms.

Over an hour earlier, I was late for teaching my second class at HHNE. I decided to put my cell phone in the glove box, so I would not be one of those administrators whose phone rings after they expect you to not have one yourself.

In the process of putting my phone in the glove box, something that I never do, my subconscious was overly concerned with getting to my class on time. It also may have also gotten confused about what my hands were doing.

The usual process of getting out of a vehicle is as follows. Park. Turn the car off. Take the keys out of the ignition. Put said keys in your pocket or bag. Lock the doors. Shut the doors. Walk away.

Somewhere in that process I got distracted. Possibly by the aggravating schedule I keep or just the simple fact that I threw my brain a curveball by reaching for the glove box. Sorry for adding an extra step and throwing us so far off course!

As I walked away from the car I realized I didn’t have my keys in my pocket. I also remember that I had locked my trunk the previous night when I went to the movies. My trunk is always unlocked, but I thought it would be foolish to let it sit unlocked in the Loews’ parking lot in Plainville for several hours.

I told myself I would deal with my car afterwards. So here we are, back to the parking lot with the burly Latino man from the American Automotive Association, or AAA (Triple-A).

As he worked to get the door open for me, I stood there and thought about how ridiculous it was that this was even happening. It also occurred to me that this is just another example of what we should be doing as a country.

AAA was founded in 1902. It got its start because of a demand for service and repair on the nation’s growing road infrastructure. It was created due to the fact that roads and streets were literally damaging cars. The association was formed as a club. This club would take care of its members and help them get to their destinations safely. They provided, and still do, maps, road side services, driver training and the list goes on.

What struck me was the fact that we did this without waiting for the government to do so. The painful stretch of time that we now call the ‘Obama Administration’ has turned us into dependent lumps. We are waiting to be saved. There was once a time when Americans would take it upon themselves to fix a problem.

Because of AAA, and their vast amounts of members behind them, the departments of transportation around the country had to listen to the voice of the motorist. It’s time we did that with politics. We may have been founded on this basis, but we certainly have lost it.

“You’re really close. Just a little to the left.”

Click.

“You got it!”

At this point, this service agent and I were now jubilant and yelling. It may have taken a half hour, but victories like this make you really appreciate a system that works.

A Need For Less Debate

Rick Perry and Mitt Romney at a recent debate. Source: ABC News

The perpetual tug of war, which we now know as democracy, needs to find a balance. The current system is teetering over the line and someone needs to speak up before one side loses its grip.

Our media is very pervasive. They find a way into our homes in a variety of ways, in the mail, on television, over radio and on our computer screens. This is especially noticeable during election season.

As you drive down your block you can expect to see sign after sign pertaining to a candidate. There comes a certain point when you stop paying attention to those signs. Your brain will eventually shut them out. There are too many. It’s an over-saturation.

The same can be applied to the Linda McMahon flyers you got in the mail, the Tom Foley television ads and the Dannel Malloy billboards. You stopped looking.

There’s another GOP debate this week. Don’t worry if you have plans and can’t watch it, in two short weeks there’ll be one more. Followed by one, on average, every ten days until March, when the Republican Party will announce their candidate for the presidential election next November.

The media has taken all motivation out of the viewer to tune in and watch. Why would someone make their schedule around these debates when they know they can catch the next one in two weeks? They don’t. They won’t.

This is the tug of war that the politicians and the media are having. It started as a fine idea. Why wouldn’t the Parties want more coverage? For their own benefit that only makes sense. What they didn’t want was an over load of information. So much so, that the messages aren’t remembered after the next debate.

You can ask the most astute political junkie what answers Rick Perry gave to questions posed on September 7, and they would most certainly confuse that debate with the other four he’s participated in since then. The answers are muddled together. This weakens the quality and general intent of the debate completely.

The famed 1960 debates between Nixon and Kennedy are remembered for a reason. There were four of them. They may have been the deciding factor in that general election. If there had been a dozen meetings between the two of them, it would have watered down the meaning. There wasn’t. Debates were rare at that time.

Today, debates are plentiful. They can be found on your television set like clockwork. They can be found as easily as a potato in your local market. Some of us need to fill up our gas tanks at a lower frequency than we see a debate during this season.

It’s unfortunate because these public dialogues could be very beneficial to the general population. They should be able to use them to make informed decisions when they go to the polls, but they’re now missed.

We’re playing with fire. Voter turnout is a telling number, but it doesn’t tell the real story. What will be the percentage of people who come out a year from now and make an informed judgment before they punch their ballot? Based upon the amount of information that is available, the potential is very high.

We don’t live in a world based on potential. Ryan Leaf had the potential to be the best quarterback the NFL had ever seen. Obama had the potential to turn this country around. The Tucker Car Corporation, Polaroid and the Titanic all had potential and failed.

There will be a point when these debates mean nothing. At that point the media will have won the battle against the politicians. They should be working together to make the most of each debate and not let them get lost with all the other aspects of campaigning which we’ve tuned out.

The Ever-Changing Landscape

The workforce today is deprived. Deprived of individuals who can make a difference and who want to succeed. During the economic meltdown, many hard-working individuals lost their jobs. They lost them to corporate shutdowns and shrinkages. Their positions were either cut out or replaced for those who can accept lower wages.

Unfortunately for those who were cut out of their existing situation, these lower wage employees usually fell into a lower skill set category. Salaries and salary expectations are traditionally followed by, and reflect, an employees experience. So where did this leave us?

While companies are trimming the fat of high paid employees to become profitable, they are inevitably sacrificing long term quality and production. There is no doubt that this is creating a viscous cycle of failure for the American economy.

When you infuse cheap labor into a retracting economy you are making a weak foundation moving forward. A person with lesser training will no doubt cost the company in time and money to train and get the results they want from these individuals. This is juxtaposed by the fact that if they hired an individual who was ready for the position, from experiences from another similar position, they would need minimal training.

This is going to be a problem. Cutting corners to make ends meet doesn’t work.