Dispatches from the future: The moon base mission patch.

Posted November 8, 2020.

Above: Mission patch commemorating the establishment of the first American moon base in the final year of President Gingrich’s second term.

Though the moon base’s name was auctioned off to the highest bidder as soon as it became operational, it was originally named after Vice-President Herman Cain’s famous 9-9-9 tax plan, which made it possible for federally-backed private funding to finance 100% of the project.

Happy Florida primary, everyone. It only gets weirder and crazier from here.

Note: Credit where credit is due – The original template was this brilliant little design by The Heads of State.

*          *          *

CEO-Read  –  Amazon.com  –  www.smroi.net  –  Barnes & Noble  –  Que

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Ever wondered where your tax dollars go?

With all the partisan bickering in Washington and the vitriolic anti-government rhetoric filling the airwaves across America, it can be hard to tell where made-up BS ends and reality begins. Before cutting programs like Medicare, shutting down the entire US government (sending every government employee home without a paycheck) or defaulting on our debt (say goodbye to the dollar), let’s all take a deep breath, step away from the TV and the radio, and replace opinions with facts, rhetoric with knowledge, and political religion with practical analysis.

Yes, something needs to be done about both the national dept and the federal budget deficit. That goes without saying. But shutting down the US government and asking the US to essentially… file for bankruptcy overnight isn’t just an overreaction, it is also counterproductive. The US won’t be better without the EPA, the FDA, the IRS, OSHA and the Department of Education. Americans won’t be better off without Social Security and Medicare. Those agencies and programs exist for a reason, just like the CIA, the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice. No matter how much some people want to go back to “the good old days” of 1792, we’re in the 21st century now, and the expectation of what it means to be a country, a nation, a society have evolved. High standards of living and food safety, a world class infrastructure, competitive public schools and access to affordable medical care have replaced the reality of high infant mortality rates, witch trials, fortified hamlets, slavery, and rampant illiteracy. Throwing the baby out with the proverbial bathwater is not the answer, no mater how angry some people are with government waste, corruption and abuse of power.

So again, let’s everyone take a deep breath, give the anger and rhetoric a rest, and begin the process of understanding exactly what is working, what isn’t working, and where we can begin to make the kinds of course adjustments that will yield real results. We will all be better off if we take the time to solve these problems calmly and carefully instead of just taking a chainsaw to everything the US has struggled to build for the last two hundred years, just because some jackass on TV or the radio tells us it’s the right thing to do.

First things first: Understanding where your tax dollars actually go. Forget the dept for a minute. Unless you have a PhD in macroeconomics, you might as well be arguing with each other about superstring theory. Once you grasp the basics, then you can get back to dept, trade deficits and surpluses, monetary policy, and the interconnectivity of global currency markets. For now though, start at the beginning. Start with the basics: Understanding why taxes exist, what your federal tax dollars pay for, and how everything gets parsed out.

Because this sort of information shouldn’t be a mystery to anyone, the White House created a handy interactive digital worksheet to help us see for ourselves exactly how our own tax dollars are put to work. Just go to whitehouse.gov/taxreceipt to check it out. Regardless of your political views, it’s a handy tool that will help you better understand how your taxes are actually spent. (Opinions are nice, but they’re a lot more useful when backed up by facts, aren’t they?) If you are still angry at the world and President Obama and imaginary socialist one-worlders after playing with the worksheet, that’s up to you, but at least you will know how your hard earned tax dollars are spent (and not spent).  It’ll be a good start.

Kudos to the folks at whitehouse.gov for creating the worksheet, and a big thumbs up for both clarity and transparency. (Especially the transparency.)

Happy tax returns, everyone.

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Flashback to December 2005: A letter to Ford

I found this in the vault and thought it was worth dusting off… since it’s still pretty relevant three whole years almost to the day since I wrote it – back in December 2005. (Note: Some of the links are so old that I’ve removed them.) Enjoy:

The slogan used to go “Have you driven a Ford lately?”

Well… I have, unfortunately. I find myself behind the wheel of a Ford vehicle several times per year. Rentals, mostly. My opinion of Ford vehicles isn’t great. It isn’t great at all. As a matter of fact, unless Ford starts making better cars (or making cars better), I will never, ever buy a Ford, no matter how cheap. If someone gives me a Ford, I will immediately trade it in for another brand.

And I guess a lot of people feel the same way because despite a huge advertising budget and aggressive price cuts earlier this year, a lot of people aren’t buying Ford vehicles either.

So now, Ford is cutting 30,000 jobs.

Strangely, you won’t find that little bit of info on Ford’s website. Instead, you’ll read that Texans Love Ford Trucks. You’ll learn that Mustang pedal cars make kids happy. You’ll learn what conferences and trade shows Ford will be attending next. More importantly, you will finally find out who that girl in the Mercury commercials is.

If you really dig, you’ll also get to read a tiny little cryptic blurb about how Ford is all about inclusion and diversity, citing Volvo’s advertising in gay and lesbian markets.

Huh?

Oh yeah, in case you hadn’t heard, Ford has just agreed to pull all of its advertising from gay and lesbian magazines in response to a boycott launched by the American Family Association. The ads were specific to the Land Rover and Jaguar brands. (Thanks to Emergence Marketing for reporting this today.)

So… Let’s recap: 30,000 jobs are going to get sacked because sales are down. Meanwhile, Ford decides to pull out of lucrative markets because of pressure from a gay-bashing religious group.

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

How about this, Ford:

1) Start making better cars. Not more expensive cars, but better cars. Cars that don’t fall apart. Cars with comfortable seats. Cars with decent suspension. Cars that people will actually enjoy driving. It’s called design. The Japanese know about design. So do the Europeans. You can learn it too. (There is life beyond giant pickup trucks.)

Maybe once you make your cars cool, reliable and fun to drive, people will start buying them again.

Don’t believe me? Look at the Hummer brand. What could be more American in spirit than that giant military-like gasoline-guzzling tank on wheels? Even with gasoline prices hitting $3 per gallon and doomsday reports of impending fuel shortages, Hummer vehicles are selling like hotcakes.

Tell me design and passion don’t drive sales. Tell me the car market is all about pricepoints. Just try to make that argument stick.

Make better cars and your sales will increase. Period. End of story.

2) If a significant percentage of gay and lesbian drivers buy Land Rovers and Jaguars, don’t do something stupid to alienate them… Like pull your ads out of their magazines. What are you thinking?!

What’s next? Will a boycott from other right wing groups make you pull ads from magazines geared towards ethnic minorities? How about Jewish and Muslim publications? How about European markets while you’re at it? (Those pesky French people keep saying bad things about us after all. Long live the Freedom Fries, right?)

Why don’t you start targeting white, Christian, straight red-blooded Americans exclusively?

Seriously, Ford. What’s up? It’s like the lights are on but nobody’s home. Do you need a quick lesson in leadership?

30,000 jobs down the toilet, and your next move is to send away a healthy chunk of what few customers you hadn’t yet chased away? Why?

Couldn’t you have told the American Family Association that Ford will advertise to anyone it wants to? Couldn’t you have told them that you will advertise in whatever publications you see fit? Couldn’t you have told them to just mind their own business?

Perhaps you could invite their leadership to start designing your cars. Perhaps you should begin to seek their approval before launching your next ad campaign. (Is it still okay to advertise during the Superbowl? Can you still advertise in anti-family magazines like Esquire, GQ or Cosmo?)

*sigh*

Ford, you’ve hit an all-time low this week. You really have.

Let me let you in on a little secret: The reason that foreign auto makers are kicking your butt is because –

1) They make the best car possible for the money. You make the most easily manufacturable car for the money.

2) Their attention to detail is evident in their design. Your attention to detail is almost an oxymoron.

3) Japanese cars are fun to drive. Yours aren’t. (And no, the Mustang isn’t all that great, and it doesn’t corner very well.)

4) Japanese engines. Ford engines. End of story.

5) Japanese car makers will advertise and sell to whomever loves their cars, regardless of gender, race, religion or sexual orientation.

I’m sorry to say this, Ford, but I’m not sure that you have much of a strategy anymore. Tell me, what are you about? What’s your purpose? Tell me why I should buy one of your products? Tell me why I should choose you over anyone else? (Besides the whole “buy American” thing.)

BMW’s X5 is made in America, just fifteen miles from my house. Japanese automakers are employing thousands right here in the US. Buying their cars is buying American.

Time for some leadership changes at Ford, methinks.

Related posts: Tom Peters’ “The View From Home“

Definitely read the Tom Peters post. It’s excellent.

And we wonder how we got here.

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Barack Obama: A nation’s dream realized.

Warmest congratulations, President-Elect Obama. Not just on your victory, but on the unprecedented voter turnout your historic campaign generated. You may have done more to restore America’s faith in the electoral process than any other presidential candidate in history. You got people to care. You got people to vote. You got people to stop taking their right to elect their representatives for granted. Whether loved or hated, revered or reviled, trusted or feared, you made people care. You engaged Americans of every stripe to participate in the greatest political experiment in history. For that alone, you deserve our respect, and at the very least a standing ovation. Our hat also goes out to Senator McCain for putting up such a great fight for all these months and making such an honorable speech last night. You are both great Americans, wonderful statesmen, and examples to us all. Thank you both for elevating the game at such a crucial time in our country’s history, when we so desperately needed to be inspired and moved to act. America couldn’t have asked for better candidates in ’08.

President-Elect Obama, it’s your turn to lead us now – Republicans, Democrats and independents alike. All 305,579,683 of us. All you have to do now is stay true to yourself, stay the course, and make us proud.

Cheers, baby. You did it!

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Today is your day to vote.

Today is November 4th 2008. If you are a registered voter in the USA and haven’t voted already, go talk to your boss and find out when would be a good time for you to run to your precinct to exercise your right to participate in the democratic process.

If you manage people and some haven’t had a chance to vote yet, ask them what you can do to help them find time today to go perform their civic duty.

If you have already voted and have some free time, find out of you can help drive an elderly or physically impaired neighbor or co-worker to the polls.

I know businesses still have to run and make money today, but with a little bit of good will, giving everyone the flexibility and opportunity to vote today shouldn’t be too hard to fit into our busy schedules.

For those of you who have some free time on your hands once you’ve made your mark on the elections, swing by Starbucks or Liquid Highway to share free coffee with many of your closest friends and neighbors. (Bring your “I voted” sticker for that free cup.) Update: As it turns out, federal election laws prohibit this kind of promo, so everyone can claim their free cup regardless of whether or not they have voted.

Nb: While I dig the Starbucks, I’ll be getting my latte fix at Liquid Highway (Downtown Greenville). See you there.

Have a great election day, everyone! 🙂

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File under “Clever creative cranks my tractor”

Someone sent me this today, and it made me laugh outloud. Funny and clever no matter what your political views.

Also a great little example of the power of a well executed viral campaign. (Even Fox News picked it up!)

Click on the image to see the video.

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Political Brand-Building: Crossing the candidate-brand barrier, one logo at a time

Pictured above: Barack Obama’s 2008 Presidential Campaign logo.

Brand development: A quick look at the power of symbols.

Back in the good old days of cowboys and cattle drives, “brands” were marks to identify ownership of livestock. That ownership eventually became a stamp of quality in cattle markets. Over time, the terms “mark” and “brand” became interchangeable in the world of product marketing. (In francophone countries, the word “Marque” – the French equivalent of ‘Mark’ – is still in use today.)

Whatever your language of choice, the term “brand” has since evolved to encompass almost every facet of a specific business’ identity, from cultural relevance and market leadership to the ability to routinely create iconic products and build a great reputation. At the forefront of a brand (as printed on a company’s packaging, products, websites, letterhead, front door, etc. is its mark. Its logo. Its symbol.

Humans like symbols and emblems, whether they show up on flags, military unit patches, family crests, educational institutions’ emblems, sports teams’ uniforms, the butt of livestock, products, or corporate letterhead. We wear them on T-shirts and baseball caps. We stick them on our cars and laptops. We paste them onto our desktops. We add them to our Facebook walls. Some of us even get them tattooed sometimes. (Note: The next photo is not of me.) That is the level of emotional attachment that people can have with symbols, which is why almost every organization in the world uses them.

Without flags, symbols, marks and logos, what would initially separate Nike from Adidas, France from Belgium, Dell from HP, Volkswagen from Audi, or even the Yankees from the Socks? (I said initially! Chill, sports fans.)

To illustrate the role that evocative emblems (logos) can play in the success and longevity of a brand, here are a few you might be familiar with:

Pretty potent stuff. Okay, so we’ve established the power of logos. Badges. Emblems.Symbols.Whatever you choose to call them. We can move on now.

The emergence of branding concepts and logos in political campaigns.

One of the prime newcomers on the list of most-viewed “logos” in the last few months has been Presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s distinctive circular sunrise and stripes. Last month, I brought you the history of the Republican and Democratic parties’ elephant and donkey emblems; today, I bring you a little bit of insight into how the Obama campaign logo came to be.

From Chicago Business News:

A team of Chicago graphic designers has given Barack Obama’s campaign its signature look. Sol Sender of Sender LLC and five others in his firm created the logo the Illinois senator is using for his 2008 presidential bid.

The icon, a gradated blue “o” featuring three red stripes, is prominently displayed on Mr. Obama’s campaign Web site pages and featured on t-shirts, buttons and bumper stickers.

Sender LLC is a Chicago brand consultancy and design studio whose clients include Crain’s.

“We were looking at the “o” of his name and had the idea of a rising sun and a new day,” Mr. Sender said. “The sun rising over the horizon evoked a new sense of hope.”

“It begins to break with tradition while also rooting itself in tradition,” said Peter Krivkovich, CEO of Cramer-Krasselt advertising agency in Chicago. “Patriotism is the foundation, but above that is hope, opportunity, newness.”

While most presidential campaign sign designers have traditionally not strayed beyond the realm of background color and font type, it is interesting to see logo design finally make its way into the world of voter influence tactics.

Of course, we don’t need to look too far to find another example of catchy political logo work of late. Our sitting president, George W. Bush’s iconic “W” (ironically adopted by Oliver Stone as the title of his latest movie) has served as an emblem in its own right, showing up on bumper stickers, T-shirts and even underwear.

Where do we go from here?

Are we seeing a new trend in presidential political marketing? Possibly. If the objective is to help a candidate appear to stand stand for something greater than a political platform or formulaic series of promises, why not create an emblem that can hold that message for them and resonate with an audience in the same way that our favorite brand logos do? Why not transcend agendas and soundbites to create something greater – something that can be conveyed in a symbol? It looks like political strategists have finally tapped into our need to rally behind symbols rather than… words. In the same way that we get behind Apple, Harley Davidson, Nike and New York Yankees logos, we can now get behind our presidential candidates’ logos and truly join their team.

It’s probably too soon to tell whether or not a candidate – in spite of their record, position in regards to issues and even charisma – might actually gain an advantage over another by having a well-designed logo, but the question is well worth asking.

Eh.

One quick word of caution as present and future presidential hopefuls begin to venture across the candidate-to-brand barrier in order to gain a strategic advantage: The margin of error in the world of brands is razor-thin. As expectations rise to unrealistic levels (political leadership is much more complex and volatile than market leadership), each mistake become increasingly costly. (The White House doesn’t have a customer service department. You aren’t likely getting a refund or a discount coupon in the mail when things don’t go your way.)

The power that comes with becoming a brand can be too much for just one man (or woman) to handle – even for a Washington, Kennedy, Roosevelt or Lincoln.

As my uncle Ben once told me, with great power comes great responsibility. Something to consider once elections are behind us and the time comes to actually deliver.

Have a great weekend, everyone. 😉

image of Super Obama by legendary graphic artist Alex Ross.

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“Asset Purchase” vs. “Wall Street Bailout: – The importance of words when it comes to naming things

http://wray-mccann.com

Perhaps calling it a “bailout” was a little counterproductive. Whether or not you support a bill to inject liquidity back into the market in an effort to get the credit machine rolling again (and whether or not you believe that such a bill is even necessary) it became pretty clear today that calling the effort a “bailout” certainly contributed to HR 3997 not getting the votes.

Watching MSNBC, CNN, Fox and Bloomberg today, I heard a common thread: Constituents of representatives who voted to defeat the bill simply didn’t want to see their hard-earned money go towards “bailing out” ginormous banks on Wall Street. In other words, President Bush, Speaker Pelosi, Secretary Paulson and the press probably killed the initiative from Day One by calling it a “bailout.” Perhaps if the plan had been referred to as something else, like an “Asset Purchase,” an “economic intervention” or even a “national credit adrenaline injection,” we probably wouldn’t be looking at the Dow’s worst day on record. Regardless of election-season politics, could today’s failure in Washington simply be due to a poor choice of words when it came to giving it an identity?

From Ina Fried over at Cnet:

I’m going to try to briefly accomplish in a few paragraphs what it seems to me our government has completely failed to do in this financial crisis.

No, I don’t have $700 billion of my own to shell out. But to me, Congress’ failure came not today on the House floor, but over the past week as both elected officials and members of the administration failed to translate the crisis into terms that have meaning for everyday Americans.

I’ve heard the phrases “Main Street” and “Wall Street” a lot, but what I haven’t heard is plain explanations of what credit really means and how essential it is to our system of doing business.

Here goes.

If the credit markets should freeze up–which many say is happening and will continue without massive intervention–everyone that borrows money will face a cash crunch. That means companies that take advantage of short-term loans to get by won’t be able to buy raw materials or make payroll. Even businesses that don’t need short-term capital may defer purchases to preserve capital.

If even banks are having a hard time getting money, what does that say for the small and midsize business? The Wall Street Journal had a story on Monday on how companies like McDonald’s may face a squeeze as their franchisees are unable to get loans to purchase or upgrade stores. I suspect that is just one visible example of a growing issue for businesses across the country.

We are stuck trying to move forward with new loans–essentially to keep the economy moving–while dealing with clearly bad ones of the past. While much of the attention has focused on concern over home loans, there are also construction loans and business loans that are at risk of default, risks that grow as those businesses find themselves essentially shut off from getting any new capital, extending the vicious circle.

You don’t have to take it from me.

Here’s C.H. Low, CEO of social-networking software start-up Orbius and a serial entrepreneur.

“When financial markets don’t function well, the ramification is broad,” he said in an e-mail interview on Monday. He said he is disappointed that the bailout is so misunderstood. Even the term bailout, he said, is a misnomer.

“This is an asset purchase, not a 100 percent bailout expense to taxpayer,” he said. “There is risk but also possibility of making a profit. Government’s main function is to do things that private sector cannot handle. This Market Stabilization Bill…is as necessary as having an Armed Forces to defend the country.”

Low noted that the main beneficiary is not Wall Street.

“As an early stage start-up, we rely on venture investments to carry us through a few more stages before we can be self-sustaining,” Low said. “With turmoil, smaller venture funds which fund many early stage companies themselves get anxious and their own investors may be affected and may affect their capital call. We ourselves planned for a rainy day but even we don’t have that much for a prolonged monsoon.”

He said that the seizing up of credit creates uncertainty in every sector. “Doing nothing is the worst of all choices,” he said.

Read the rest of Ina’s piece here.

Whether HR 3997 was a good plan or not – let’s face it, transparency about the latest contents of the bill hasn’t been great, – perhaps if it had been dubbed something other than a “Wall Street Bailout,” our representatives in Washington wouldn’t have been under so much pressure to vote nay on Monday. Lesson: Regardless of how great you think your product is, you probably won’t be able to launch it if you start by calling it the wrong thing.

The words we use matter.

PS: Since it is election season, click here to find out if your elected representative voted on HR 3997 the way you wanted them to. 😉

Photo by Christopher Wray McCann

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More political animals

Following my earlier post about the origins of the Democrat donkey and Republican elephant, here are possible replacement party animals. Source: walkerart. Hat tip: the OC’s Bear Gautsch.

My favorite so far: A tossup between the snail and the man-o-war jellyfish.

(Why are there two amoebas?)

Oh wait… and just for Lord:

Wow. That’s seriously geeky. Even for me. ;D

Have a great politically charged day!

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Political Logos: The origins of the Republicans’ elephant and Democrats’ donkey

Just in case you were wondering – From From William Safire’s New Language of Politics, Revised edition, Collier Books, New York, 1972, via freerepublic.com:

The symbol of the party (the elephant) was born in the imagination of cartoonist Thomas Nast and first appeared in Harper’s Weekly on November 7, 1874

An 1860 issue of Railsplitter and an 1872 cartoon in Harper’s Weekly connected elephants with Republicans, but it was Nast who provided the party with its symbol.

Oddly, two unconnected events led to the birth of the Republican Elephant. James Gordon Bennett’s New York Herald raised the cry of “Caesarism” in connection with the possibility of a thirdterm try for President Ulysses S. Grant. The issue was taken up by the Democratic politicians in 1874, halfway through Grant’s second term and just before the midterm elections, and helped disaffect Republican voters.

While the illustrated journals were depicting Grant wearing a crown, the Herald involved itself in another circulation-builder in an entirely different, nonpolitical area. This was the Central Park Menagerie Scare of 1874, a delightful hoax perpetrated by the Herald. They ran a story, totally untrue, that the animals in the zoo had broken loose and were roaming the wilds of New York’s Central Park in search of prey.

Cartoonist Thomas Nast took the two examples of the Herald enterprise and put them together in a cartoon for Harper’s Weekly. He showed an ass (symbolizing the Herald) wearing a lion’s skin (the scary prospect of Caesarism) frightening away the animals in the forest (Central Park). The caption quoted a familiar fable: “An ass having put on a lion’s skin roamed about in the forest and amused himself by frightening all the foolish animals he met within his wanderings.”

One of the foolish animals in the cartoon was an elephant, representing the Republican vote – not the party, the Republican vote – which was being frightened away from its normal ties by the phony scare of Caesarism. In a subsequent cartoon on November 21, 1874, after the election in which the Republicans did badly, Nast followed up the idea by showing the elephant in a trap, illustrating the way the Republican vote had been decoyed from its normal allegiance. Other cartoonists picked up the symbol, and the elephant soon ceased to be the vote and became the party itself: the jackass, now referred to as the donkey, made a natural transition from representing the Herald to representing the Democratic party that had frightened the elephant.

Now you know.

Just wondering if maybe political logos like the ass and the elephant – which have pretty much lost their meaning sometime at least three generations ago – are still the best emblems to represent political parties that look and sound nothing like they did back in 1874.

I posed the question to a few friends today, and this is all they came up with:

Star Trek and beer. I may have to broaden my focus group just a tad.

Have a great Friday, everyone. 😉

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Budget deficit math

Watching it burn

Some of us who have managed projects know a little bit about budgets. Simply put, a budget is a bucket of money set up to pay for all of the line items in a project – or a series of projects.

Typically, the budget is set based on little things like what the client (internal or external) is looking to accomplish, what the client is able to spend, and ROI: (Return On Investment) Do the project’s benefits outweigh its cost, etc.

If you’re thinking “wow, that sounds like it takes a lot of planning and strategery,” you’re right. It does. The one thing you want to ensure as a project manager is that the goals, tactics and budget are aligned before a project starts: If the project is going to cost more than the budget allows, something is going to have to be cut from the project. Simple, basic stuff. If you don’t do this, you might run out of money before the project ends, which isn’t good. Your options then are a) ask the client for more money, b) close the project before having delivered it 100%, or c) eat the added cost. None of these options are good.

It’s with this simple methodology that I look at our federal budget deficit. Is it more complex than a marketing campaign? Of course it is. Infinitely so. But the principle is the same: Figure out how much funding you need to operate your series of projects (social security, national defense, infrastructure, research, wars, etc.), make the necessary adjustments, and go forward with what you can afford.

… Except… that isn’t how everyone understands the fundamentals of running a business/country. The latest Budget Deficit figures look pretty impressive. From CNN.com:

The White House on Monday predicted a record deficit of $490 billion for the 2009 budget year, a senior government official told CNN.

The deficit would amount to roughly 3.5 percent of the nation’s $14 trillion economy.

The official pointed to a faltering economy and the bipartisan $170 billion stimulus package that passed earlier this year for the record deficit.

The fiscal year begins October 1, 2008.

The federal deficit is the difference between what the government spends and what it takes in from taxes and other revenue sources. The government must borrow money to make up the difference.

President Bush inherited a budget surplus of $128 billion when he took office in 2001 but has since posted a budget deficit every year.

Wow.

Maybe I am reading this wrong, but if the FY’09 $490 BILLION deficit is indeed for the 2009 budget year, we’re talking about overspending $1,342,465,700 per day for 365 days in a row.

Wait… Let me get this straight. The US government is overspending (all up) at a rate of 1.3 BILLION dollars per day?

Tell me I’m not understanding this correctly. Please. Someone tell that figure needs to somehow be stretched out over the last 8 years or something… Pretty please? Tell me there is no way that the United States of America’s operating budget is so poorly managed that it bleeding $1.3B per day. Tell me I am wrong about this.  Tell me there is a plan to fix this. One that doesn’t involve a) just printing more money, or b) borrowing from foreign banks.

Maybe this kind of topic changes the conversation when it comes to what types of questions really need to be on people’s minds (and lips) when political candidates (from Presidential elections down to your municipal seats) run for office. Maybe the conversation should shift from soft broad-sweeping opinions about religion and security to cold hard facts and specific plans to fix what is broken. And by the way, this isn’t an indictment of either political party. Republicans and democrats together need to fix this – which is to say this isn’t just about this candidate or that one, but about us, American taxpayers and voters, who perhaps should refocus our attention when it comes to our definition of political leadership, and what our silver-haired years will be like, and the future our children will inherit.

Maybe there’s a branding lesson in there somewhere, both for world powers and the political candidates who aspire to help run them.

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Your chance to control the Federal budget

Guy Kawasaki points us to this very cool little site where you can control where your tax money goes. Well… kinduv.

Connection to the branding discussion: At least four degrees of separation, but whatever. It’s still an interesting and fun little tool.

Update: I just spent fifteen minutes playing with the tool, and managed to push the budget bust back to 2070+ while cleaning up the environment, increasing access to medical care for the poor, children and young adults, and freeing the US from foreign energy.

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The Elephant’s great Kansas City shuffle

Without endorsing either of the three Presidential candidates in the US, and without suggesting any underhanded shenanigans, let me propose a thought about USA ’08.

It occurred to me last week while having drinks with a dozen or so industry peers – almost all democrats, mind you. The subject of the conversation somehow shifted to politics and the candidates… and I fully expected the group to be happy about Sen. Obama’s advantage over Sen. Clinton. That, however, wasn’t the case: No one at the table endorsed Obama.

Let me put it in another way, which is perhaps more telling: Not one single democrat at the table trusted Obama. Not enough experience, rhetoric not matching his record, the whole crazy church thing. The underlying sentiment basically came down to this: “What do we really know about this guy? Nothing. He came out of nowhere way too fast. We aren’t sure what to expect.”

Call it buyer’s remorse. Call it gut feeling. Call it whatever you will, but everyone’s favorite campaign trail rock star, the guy the press is so quick to attach to Kennedy and MLK… well… maybe he isn’t the superstar we’ve been so eagerly sold as the game-changer/unifier/political superhero America has been craving since Kennedy (or Ronald Reagan, depending what side of the fence you’re on).

But we haven’t gotten to the meat of it yet. The truly eye-opening opinion I hadn’t expected to hear. I’m getting to it. Here it is: Everyone there agreed that if Sen. Obama won the nomination instead of Sen. Clinton, they would not vote for him.

I was kind of shocked since I thought Obama – based on what I gather from mass media – would be a clear favorite.

More surprising yet, most admitted that they would actually switch camps and vote for McCain. These are democrats, mind you. People who are fed up with the Bush administration and ready for a change. People who have ALWAYS voted democrat. (Even Dukakis? Really?) And yet here they are, ready to vote for McCain if Obama beats Clinton in the ’08 donkey race.

I just wonder how many democrats around the US feel the same way. Probably a lot. Or rather, just enough.

I am sure every campaign manager knows exactly how many swing voters they can expect to win or lose, all broken down by demos, geos and verticals. The precise impact of these numbers must also be crystal clear to them.

Boiled down to the basics, the equation is simple:

Obama + McCain = McCain wins.
Clinton + McCain = x

What’s the Republicans’ play? Simple: Make sure Obama gets the nomination. Hillary is the real X-Factor, not Obama. McCain can’t shred her. But Obama can with the whole “new dream”/Kennedy/”let’s join hands” thing. Let him do it before we even get to the big game.

Genius.

Elections are a lot easier to win when you control the entire board, not just your half of it. The Dems are still stuck in primary mode. The Republicans, on the other hand, are already five steps ahead in presidential election mode.

Which makes the whole “Hillary should just quit” movement more than just vaguely suspicious. The pressure isn’t just coming from the Obama camp, and now I think I know why.

For better or for worse, I’m calling November ’08 now: McCain will defeat Obama. No Chad manipulation needed. No voting machine hacks necessary. He will win because his people didn’t leave anything to chance. Because they knew how to control the board from the very start.

The dems (yes, the voters) are getting played something fierce.

“Divide and conquer” and all.

As eloquently explained by Bruce Willis in Lucky Number Slevin, a Kansas City Shuffle is where everyone looks left, when they should really be looking right.

Yep.

They’ll be talking about this one for decades to come.

Photo: Bob Elsdale

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Chuck Norris Approved!

Whether or not you like this candidate,you have to admit this ad is friggin’ brilliant.

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So long, Tony Blair.

Today is Tony’s last day in office.

I always thought he looked a whole lot like Kevin Costner.

Maybe Tony wasn’t perfect, but he brought a lot of energy, cool and class to Downing Street, and there’s a lot to be said for that.

Tony, you’ll be sorely missed. 🙂

BBC coverage

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