Elmer Fudd Presidential Adviser

Mr. Pwesident, during the last four years you've had lots of trouble with all those wiberals. I would be more than happy to join your administration and help you put those wacky wiberals in their place. Now I know it does not wook good that I have been hanging out with all those wiberals, but I can assure you I have not been wookin for any of those wiberals. The wiberals are varmint lovers and I've been chaseing me a wittle wabit. I just know they are hiding that scwewy wabit somewhere. Mr. Pwesident I am adviser material! I have my NRA membership card in my back pocket and my shotgun slung over my shoulder. I will protect you from all those wacky wiberals. Mr. Pwesident get rid of all the yes men and women. The last four years the Oval Office has sounded like an echo chamber. At Harvard they taught you that airing conflicting views makes it more likely that the final decision will be fully vetted. Make sure that there are voices who will tell you when your decisions are not looking too good. It is very important to recruit people and delegate task, you have had trouble with your management style. During the run up to the Iraq war you ran around in secret from one adviser to the next never telling any of them what was going on. Too much of the hands on style! Harvard should have taught you that an inconsistent managerial approach often leads to inconsistent results. Don't sweat all the details, just enough of them! If you want to manage hands on take an equally hands on approach to information. You do not need to know ever fact just enough facts to be able to effectively evaluate and ask the right questions. Stop making decisions bases on your philosply and faith! Make your decisions on the merits of its evidence. Put less emphasis on getting the right answer and more on the rigor in which you arrive at the answer. Mr Pwesident be resolute in the face of criticism rather than show weakness by admitting mistakes. Strong and wrong is not the lesson for the real world. Mr. Pwesident I hope all my advice will help you during the next four years. Mr Pwesident I could use a favor. Could you send me your instructions for "smoke them out of their hole"? You used the instructions to smoke Ben Waden out of his hole. I could sure use them to smoke that wittle wabit out of his hole. Now that I think of it your instructions did not work very good, Ben Waden is still out there somewhere and you do not have a clue where he is! Just send me a couple of men from your 82 airborn unit, they can teach me to jump out of a pwane. I will land on that wittle wabits head. Mr Pwesident could ask your men to bring me a pair of their special 82 airborn jump boots? That wabit has long ears and they might be sharp!
Your faithfull adviser- varmint hunter
Elmer Fudd

Small World

A decade or two ago, a tsunami in the Indian Ocean would have seemed like an abstract tragedy, a set of grim but distant death statistics. It's different now. A disaster even in a remote part of the planet sends shock waves through out our interconnected world. Natural disasters are a constant in human history. But what's different today in our newly interconnected society is that people from one end of the globe to another feel the impact. Americans have distant connections and even for those with no personal ties in the disaster, the spread of global communications brings the distant horror home. Yet even as it unfolds in our living rooms or on our computers screens, we are still powerless as ever to rescue the doomed. There seems nothing else to do but sit and hope, here on the far side of the planet that seems so tiny yet so vast.

Brent Laywell 

2004 Zoom Zoom it's gone

What have we learned about 2004? Things seem to run from the divine to the boardroom. The movie about Christ brought in 370 million dollars at the box office, yet the number one show on TV was Desperate House Wife. Professed morality vs real morality that's what 2004 was really about. We talk a good puritan game but still enjoy a little sex and violence in the bedroom and our media.
The year started with Janet Jackson exposing herself at the Supper Bowl. America was agassed and CBS was fined $500,000 for letting it happen. So many people used their TiVo recorders to view and review the event that the whole TiVo system almost crashed. My favorite event of the year was when they carted Martha Stewart off to the Big House and it got even better when she was busted stealing sugar from the prison kitchen so she could make holiday cookies in her cell. On to Bean town, the Sox's won the world series. The team looked as thou they came from the cover page of a lumberjack magazine. The last time the Sox's won a series was 86 years ago and it will be another 86 before they win another one. Americans dropped pounds like there was no tomorrow. Stores could not keep the low carb breads, past's and cakes in stock, but all that faded away. I say bring on the doughnuts. We all thought we were going to get the flu and all rushed to get the vaccine, finding there was a shortage. It was going to be a crisis for sure and we got all worked up about not getting our flu shot. Now they can not give them away, nobody is taking the time to get the vaccine. Will and Grace and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy were top ten TV shows, yet seeing homosexually marry in public was too much for America. Maybe we are not as comfortable with homosexuality as we thought we were.
Moral Value was the top election issue in 2004. Americans talk one game and play another. The USA is really not a place for me, my moral values run more with those of the Europeniens. They do not talk out of both sides of their mouths at the same time. I was just born on the wrong continent.
AND SO IT GOES