Our Forefathers Did Not Party

OK, so stay with me for a minute.  Our forefathers created a country and a system of government that did not have parties!!  Yes this is in fact true.  So last time around, or two or three times ago we had John McCain, the young version, outspoken, brash, not a party line kind of guy, and his party basically TOLD him to step aside because he was too far to the left.  When Howard Dean ran he had the same problem with his party, that and getting over tired and not having someone from his campaign tackle him, but they both had some things in common: love for this country, very smart, very outspoken and willingness to piss off their parties for the good of the country.

At the time I told a few people, mainly to get a reaction, they should run together, and I really did not think it would have mattered who was where on the ticket.

Next!!  Condalisa Rice and Hillary Clinton!!  I do not care which is where, as a matter of fact I think that they should flip for it and then change half way, as in four years from now.

I realize this is out there and many people will not be able to get their heads around it, but right now we have a third of the country dead set, not for Mitt, but against President Obama.  We have a third of the country against Mitt Romney, and we have a third of the country not knowing what to do because they do not see a lessor in the two evils.

Simple, right in Condalisa Rice and Hillary Clinton!!  Yes I am suggesting two women run the country and realize that may make some people uncomfortable, southern men for instance, and Hillary has always scared me, and Bill I think, but what choice do we have.  They are both smart, they are both powerful, they both have endless energy, and they would bring the country back together on the same ticket!!

Your thinking about it aren't you??!!

Bleeding Heart Liberal

I do not know about the liberal part, I am fairly confident that if at any point in your life you felt the correct answer was to make a crater out of all countries that are 80 % sand or more that the liberals won't have you, but bleeding heart I have been all my life.

The really funny part to me is that to this day I am both a "bleeding heart liberal," and a "right wing conservative" depending on who you ask, and yes someone related to me did give me a very square, very bleak briefcase one year for Christmas with the declaration "that since you are a Republican I thought you would like this."  I of course have also received, from someone else related to me, a briefcase befitting an English professor at Dartmouth College.  The answer is no one really knows what category to put me in, although I am fairly certain everyone has.

I have said on a number of occasions, and in a number of different formats, that my favorite commercial is the Coke commercial from the seventies where the young (hippie) girl singing the first line from "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing," and as they widen out she is at the top of a mountain with hundreds of other people standing in the shape of a Christmas tree and they are all singing.  I do indeed want to teach the world to sing, metaphorically speaking.

Without question I would like to help everyone that needs helping, be it folks in New Orleans that will have to try and recover from yet another hurricane, or the little kids I saw on the news the other night being raised in a family where the parents are king and queen and the kids literally run the household, cooking, cleaning, lunches, you name it.  There are homeless people all over the world that if they are able to work and work can be found for them great, but what about the homeless dad that has a seven year old child that needs care 24/7/265 and therefore cannot work?  Should someone like that not be helped.  How about the millions of folks that lost their homes, and the ones that would have, if someone had not stepped in to help.  I am not an economist, and I am not even that bright, so I know that there are all sorts of sides to the housing question and an incredible impact to both sides of the issue.  If you bail people out and help them stay in their homes someone has to pay for that.  If you sit back and let people default on their homes, spend the time to go through the process, someone has to pay for that as well, and you are left with a very different housing demographic when all is said and done, is that good or bad for the country.  It seems to me that both are bad, the question is which is worse for the country as a whole??  But at the same time you are then allowing people to fail, not helping people that could be helped, and where does that leave us??

What I do know that is if I won the lottery I would build a turf stadium, not lacrosse only, but lacrosse first and then everyone else as available.  If the money was great enough it would be more like a Dick's Sporting Goods kind of place like they have in Denver.  Next, I would set up a trust that would fund Boise State Men's Lacrosse forever.  Third, I would buy a really big, safe, cool car for my friend Fred Flintstones (the names have been changed to protect the innocent).  Next would be my Mom and my sisters, the Sage, my nieces and nephews, and some friends that have always been there, and once all that was taken care of the rest would go to starting a foundation, "The Bleeding Heart Foundation," to help all those that just cannot help themselves: cancer kids, homeless moms and dads, children and women of abuse, not that men are not abused, but the defenseless and the underdogs definitely come first.

I am OK with being a bleeding heart as long as those that are in need, that have had hard lives, that God threw the 12/6 curve to, are well taken care of by those can afford to help.  California would be a rich state if they ever had a governor that would tax Hollywood, but you can't get elected to that office in that state if you even suggest it.  Meanwhile the California education system, the teachers that teach there and the students that have no say in any of it have to deal with education from kindergarten through graduate school that is 100 % dependent on how much money you have and where you live.

I am not saying help those that can help themselves but choose not to, but rather help those that need the help and have no way out.  I am also saying thank every soldier you see as you travel through the airports, level any and all countries that want to mess with us, lock up and slowly torture any and all people that would do what Sandusky did.

I believe that I have just convinced myself that I am the definition of the middle...oh well!!  Or maybe I am a magnet, different polarity on each side??!!

By the way, one funny stat for all of you to ponder, in one single poll Americans said that they thought that President Obama would be better for the "middle class" (by 8 %) while Mitt Romney would be better for the economy (by 12 %).  Let that settle for a minute and then remember back to a math class you most likely had where you studied a curve that looked something like a bell.  To address the economy you have to impact as many people under the big part of the curve as possible...the middle class lives where under that curve??

I am apparently not the only one in the country that is confused!!

Level 1

If you have never read the "5 Levels of Leadership" I highly recommend you do.  It does not matter if you are a teacher, coach, Vice President, or CEO, it is very much worth the read, and for two reasons.  First, it is very well written and in a way that makes a great deal of sense from level 1 to level 5, and second, because it will make you chuckle as you read it and think of different people you know, bosses, coaches, teachers, that are at different levels, especially level 1, "position - rights - people follow because they have to!!"

It is difficult for me as I approach my fiftieth birthday, having had all sorts of coaches, teachers, and bosses, to see people at level 1 and especially those that I have to deal with on a regular basis, to not have an immediate and visceral reaction.  To see how poorly, more often than not, these people communicate to those over whom they have "power," and how in what they communicate it is so obvious that one, they enjoy that perceived power over another individual, and two, how they so obviously misunderstand how misguided their perception is.

There is a saying that "perception is reality," and I do not know who first said this, but in the case of a person at level 1, that reality tends to only be in their minds.

What is the most difficult about watching folks at level 1 is to watch those in education at this level, be it teachers, coaches, or administrators, and I have had the opportunity to see all of the above at both the high school and college level.  What makes this so difficult to deal with is the complete lack of understanding from  people at this level that they are supposed to be the educators, and it is the students that are hurt by their inabilities, or their refusal to work to move to another level.  Obviously this comes from complete ignorance of leadership form, structure, purpose, concepts, but the reasons do not matter, these are young minds, young hearts, young soles, that are in their hands and the damage that people at level can do to these young people is enormous, and can be permanent, and yet they are completely ignorant of this fact.  They appear to enjoy the power so much that all is is missed.

I am not perfect, we have previously established that FACT.  I also do at times as a coach utilize, out of necessity, the listen to me and do what I say because you have to approach to life, but obviously over w ten month period of trying to drive a group of young men towards one very specific goal there are going to be moments when this is required, but there will also be moments when  these same young men "follow you because they want to," level 2, and even when they follow you because they see what it is you are doing for the "organization," or the program, level 3, they may even at times along the way follow you for "what you have done for them," not in the specific material sense, but because they begin to see and realize just how much they have improved, grown, benefited in a way that serve them for years to come, level 4, and they may even decide to follow you "because of who you are and what you represent," level 5.  In my mind level five is when you truly put others needs before your own, and the programs needs above all else, "the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the few or the one," Spock, I love when I can quote Spock on this specific point.  Hopefully this also means you make better choices on a consistent basis that they can see and begin to understand, and that through that consistency they can see a means to an end.

I am not saying that I have personally achieved any of these levels, let alone all of them, and part of the fun is in trying to identify leaders that you can say without a shadow of a doubt have achieved every level and have been able to maintain their leadership at those levels.  I struggle to find one such person that can stand up to intense scrutiny on each of these points, obviously especially level 5, but it is fun to look, and fun to try.

To me just being aware of the levels and trying to understand them and working to achieve them even in some small way will make you a better leader, just like being completely unaware of them and their intrinsic value and purpose makes one a very dangerous "leader," and I do use the term loosely in this case.

The Other Side of the Coin

Yes there are two sides to every coin, and I was thinking early on in the Augusta discussion about the other side of the coin and then got distracted.

As I was listening to my very conservative, very republican, country club business partner last night it brought me back to a very simple reality; Augusta National is a PRIVATE club.  The nature of private does tend to mean in this country "not for general consumption," but somehow everyone, even I, wound up in the middle of discussing who Augusta National should admit to their PRIVATE club.

Again, the secret handshakes not withstanding, does anyone have the right to tell anyone else what do with their PRIVATE lives??  I realize that many people want to, abortion, alternative lifestyles, not just gay marriage, but lifestyles in general, buckling in when you drive.  These are all very different examples, and yes some of these decisions, and others, may have an impact on other people, but they are still PRIVATE decisions are they not.

The quote that I found most amazing from yesterday was when a female golf analyst for ESPN said "at least the final bastion of the male dominated  society in this country is gone."  Huh??!!  There are thousands, if not millions, of "old boys clubs," secret handshakes, and just plain old every day examples of "old school," in the worst connotation of the term, still in existence today and there will be for some time to come.  Even when I worked at "the firm," there were plenty of deals being done on Bourbon Street, in strip clubs, with lots of cash, booze, and naked women around, and not only does all of that still happen, but many of the women from the firm that made partner did so because as well as being qualified, which those that I knew definitely were, they also agreed with, supported and took part in that way of doing business.

"the last bastion of male dominated society??"  I bet Augusta wished they were that powerful.

Cond- A - Cending

Right off the bat I need to say this is not a note in anyway against Condalisa Rice as I do not know enough to be dangerous in that regard, either way.

However, having watched Sportscenter long enough this morning I came to realize that the two new member thing is not at all what anyone is saying it is, at least not that I can tell, and it reminded me a great deal of President Bill Clinton making the grand announcement when he first took office about how many of this he was going to appoint and how many of that, and I said it then and will say it now, you can't force diversity in such a planned and structured way and have it be real, and in the case of President Clinton you wind up eliminating a class or race of people from consideration regardless of qualification, which seems to me to be exactly what we are supposed to be getting away from.

Anyway, ten years, almost to the day, that a woman made very public her wanting to be at Augusta and being kept out Augusta adds two female members, very rich, very powerful, one black and one white, female members.  How nice that Augusta can get black and white to keep moving in the proper direction on the race front, they can get rich, they can get powerful, and all at the same time come across as doing such a wonderful thing, and what a great step and so on.

The folks at Augusta National are lying, as all the men in all the exclusive "boys club" do, and they are getting rewarded for it in more ways than anyone can for doing so.

Always there has to be a first step, I get that, and always someone has to push the establishment to take that step, I get that as well, but doesn't anyone else get sick of the fact that one, people can't just do what is right in the first place, and two, that even when they do they can't just say outloud " we are doing this just to keep all of you people quiet for another ten years, and we are going to get all we can out of these two before we let any others in."

I went to "prep" school, and I fought the idiots that ran the place and that went there the whole time I was there.  I tanked an interview at Dartmouth for undergrad because I did not want to do the preppy thing all over again, and because I was never any good or had any interest in secret handshakes, and I worked for the largest consulting firm in the world and fought the partners on the same BS for my eight years there until they had had enough of my telling them it was wrong to lie to people to make extra BILLIONS!!

I just wish everyone would stop the bullshit, do what is best for the planet and everyone on it all the time and allow others to do the same.

Burn Out

"Fan sues Cowboys after burning butt on bench"

It is amazing to me that we have people on this planet, let alone in this country, that will sue someone because the HOT coffee that they ordered was actually hot and they were too stupid, or too clumsy, to deal with that fact, and it is even more amazing to me that someone that is dumb enough to sit on a bench long enough to get BURNT on her butt is allowed legal representation.

I am curious if this woman was naked, or if she has some kind of nerve issues in her but, but how do sit there long enough to actually get burnt without your brain telling your ASS to move.

Worse is the fact that we live in a country that a whole bunch of folks worked, and suffered, and even slaved, literally, to build, and some of the freedoms we were afforded, and some of the rights we were afforded, can be so blatantly abused.  I do not think that everyone being entitled to their day in court meant if you are dumb enough to burn yourself on something hot and feel like blaming someone else for your stupidity.

All these people that take such advantage of all that our forefathers did for us and gave to us are what make this country so much less than it could be!!