New Media Alliance - Thomas Lindaman

Happy New Year! Once again, it’s time for that tradition that is as heartwarming as trying to return the sweater Aunt Edna gave you for Christmas. You know, the one that’s olive green with pink stripes and orange polka dots that looks like a dog threw up on it? Yes, I’m referring to my annual New Years Resolutions for Other People.

For those of you just joining us, I’m horrible at keeping New Years resolutions (among other things, like holding my tongue when Congressional Democrats do something stupid), but I am good at making them. So, in the honor of keeping with traditions (and because it’s been a really slow news cycle), I present this year’s installment.

To President George W. Bush, I resolve that you take it easy for a while. Of course, your critics claim you went on vacation more frequently than a slacker from North Dakota with more frequent flyer miles than God, but I understand the Presidency is a big job. Take some time off with your wife and enjoy being out of the limelight for a while. Oh, and make sure your satellite TV bill is paid up so that you can enjoy watching Barack Obama screw up in his first year.

To Vice President Dick Cheney, I resolve that you have a t-shirt made for when you go out in public. The message? “Hey Democrats, IMPEACH THIS!”

To President-Elect Barack Obama, I resolve that you make good on your promise to unite the country under your leadership. Given that your Cabinet picks are as ideologically diverse as a cult, you might have bitten off more than you can chew. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. Take the advice Republicans will give you and do with it what you will. After all, they’ve had plenty of experience in the past 25+ years in running the country.

To Vice President-Elect Joe Biden, I resolve that you find Cheney’s secret bunker and stay there, waiting for a call from President Obama giving you an opportunity to help him. (Oh, and Mr. President? Make sure you never call the bunker. Ever. Not even as a goof.)

To Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, I resolve that you step down. Seriously. You two made the Three Stooges look like geniuses, and there are only two of you. Take the Congressional version of a golden parachute and resign from Congress. We’ll all be better off.

To John McCain, I resolve that you think twice about running for the Senate again. As badly as you screwed up on the campaign trail against the worst Affirmative Action hire in history, the fact you’re considering running again is a mystery. There’s a reason the Republican symbol is the elephant, and it ain’t because they love peanuts.

To Sarah Palin, I resolve that you clean up your own house a bit more. You’re exactly what the Republican Party needs right now as far as energy and leadership, but there are some skeletons in your closet that need to be addressed if you want to have a chance to kick butt in 2012 or later. Take some time, do an honest appraisal of your life, and work on those elements that were used against you in the 2008 election.

To the Republican Party, I resolve that you find your souls again. Since the mid to late 90s, the only difference between you and the Democrats has been the color of your ties. You guys talk a good game about smaller government and more fiscal responsibility. Seven words for you to consider: Ted Stevens and the Bridge to Nowhere. Stop being the party of spending and start being the party of Reagan again. Then you might win an election sometime in the near future.

To the Democrat Party, I resolve that you prepare yourself for the kind of crap you spewed for 8 years against President Bush and the Republicans. Now that you guys control the White House and Congress, you won’t have Republicans to blame for your screw-ups anymore. And the right will be as fair to you as you were to them. That’s right, kids. You’re screwed.

To Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, I resolve that you cooperate with Patrick Fitzgerald in every way you can. That way, you might be able to avoid the changing of your last name to a prison term that rhymes with “Blagojevich.”

To Rahm Emanuel, I resolve that you cooperate with Patrick Fitzgerald in every way you can. That way, you might be able to avoid the changing of your first name to a prison term that starts with a word similar to “Rahm.”

To Rosie O’Donnell, I resolve that you SHUT UP. We get it. You’re gay and you’re a Leftist. There’s no need for you to remind us of both with everything you do now. It ruined “Rosie Live” and it will continue to ruin anything you attempt unless you learn to keep it to yourself. Ellen DeGeneres found that out with her sitcom after she started getting preachy about gays, and now she’s not as focused on her sexuality as you are. And guess what. She’s successful and likable! Take a page from Ellen’s book before you get any more bright ideas about putting on a show.

To the mainstream media, I resolve that you go back to journalism school. Just because you have opinions on who should win an election doesn’t mean you have the right to inject those opinions in news stories. There’s a difference between news and commentary, and you guys crossed that line more than an obsessive compulsive illegal immigrant from Mexico with no sense of direction. Go back to school and learn how to be reporters, not pundits. Oh, and by the way, I insist on teaching it and I will flunk you until you get it right.

To Hollywood, I resolve that you learn how to entertain people again. Seriously, did we really need “Knight Rider” remade for TV? Just because you guys have run out of original ideas in Hollywood doesn’t mean you should give the thumbs-up to shows that would insult the intelligence of single celled organisms. You say we ask for the kind of crap you put out there for public consumption, but I don’t exactly remember being consulted whether to make a second “Dukes of Hazzard” movie, let alone a first one.

To Jessica Alba, I resolve that you stop calling me. I know you find me incredibly hot, but I’m already seeing someone. Besides, don’t you have a husband and kid to take care of? Sorry, Jess, but it’ll never work between us. (Okay, so I made that one up.)

To Border Patrol Agents Compean and Ramos and their families, I resolve that you never give up trying to clear your names. What happened to you was nothing short of a travesty of justice, and I won’t let it stand. And I’m not alone. Keep the faith, and good things will happen. It’s just a matter of when.

To the feminist movement, I resolve that you speak up against Muslim extremists, like, yesterday. You may regard George W. Bush the same way you regard a lame pick-up line from a drunken guy from Iowa, but you have to admit Bush was on the right side of this whole Muslim terrorist thing. Considering that Muslim extremists consider you like you consider Bush, count your lucky stars that Bush took on this fight. Now that he’s out of the picture, it’s up to you to speak out against the atrocities committed against women by Muslims. If you want to regain the intellectual and rhetorical high ground you gave up to the Commander In Briefs, Bill Clinton, this is a good place to start.

To the members of KISS, I resolve that you take some time to think about the fans. If you haven’t heard, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley are considering hiring a KISS cover band to tour on their behalf. Of course, they’ll get a cut of the money without having to do any of the work. Not only is that insulting to the fans, but it makes me wonder if Paul and Gene are considering a run for Congress so they can make even more money doing absolutely nothing.

To my thoughtful critics, I resolve that you keep my feet to the fire and make sure I’m not trying to pull any funny stuff. Well, except when it comes to the jokes, of course. It’s folks like you who keep me engaged enough to do my homework before putting down 700-1000 words on a given topic.

To my thoughtless critics who call me a “partisan hack writer,” I resolve that you take a look in the mirror. You may not like what I write, but I don’t see you trying to do what I do. That’s the saddest thing about the bitter critic. More often than not, they lash out at those who do what they wish they could as a means to quell their bitterness. Kids, you don’t score points by tearing down the successful. All you do is make yourselves look like the angry little people you are. (And, no, I’m not referring to people of small stature, so you folks with the Munchkin Anti-Defamation League can just back off, okay?)

And finally, to my regular readers, I resolve that you keep enjoying my twice-a-month musings. You may not agree with what I say or how I say it, but you keep coming back for more, and I deeply appreciate it.

Well, that’s done. Time to get blotto!

Thomas Lindaman is a Staff Writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. and NewsBull.com. The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets. He is also Publisher of CommonConservative.com.

If you read my last piece on the automakers’ bailout, two things should have been made quite clear. First, I really like Cherry Coke Zero. And second, I am 100% against any kind of bailout for the Big 3 automakers because there are alternatives that deserve consideration before putting taxpayers on the hook for worse financial decisions than letting Kellie Pickler do your taxes.

Listening to the Tammy Bruce Show recently got me thinking about the auto bailout a little more deeply. In her commentary, Bruce noted how the automakers would get the money in January and would have to prove they can repay the funds by March 2009 or else the automakers would have to repay all money the federal government gave them. It didn’t hit me at first, mainly because I’m good at ducking, but finally something clicked in my brain. I’ve heard about this kind of deal before.

And it’s called the International Monetary Fund.

For the uninitiated or the aforementioned Ms. Pickler, the IMF acts as a middleman between successful countries and poor countries and helps the latter secure loans for infrastructure. The poor countries are under constraints to repay any funds they get from the IMF, just as anybody borrowing money would be. The thing about it is that these poor countries rarely repay the loans they take out from the IMF, requiring more financially stable countries to pump more money into the IMF to continue distributing funds to the poor countries.

Now, what happens if a poor country defaults on their loan? Do they get calls from a collection agency?

“Hello, Upper Lower Craplackistan? Hi, this is Steve from the IMF. We’re just calling to check to see if you’ve made a payment on the loan you got from us. We really want to work with you so that you can pay back the million dollars you got from us to rebuild the infrastructure for your country, whose GDP equals whatever your President can find in the couch cushions.”

Nope. What these poor countries get is more money! The fact that these poor countries can’t make the original loan payments is of no concern to the IMF because they have countries like the United States pumping money into it. And, in some cases, the poor countries can have their loans forgiven so they can get more money! And you thought you had to be Franklin Raines to be able to pull that off!

So, what does this have to do with the automakers’ bailout? Right now, the automakers are making agreements to do just like the poor countries getting IMF money do. And since we’ve already bought into the buyout this far, it’s not outside of the realm of possibility for the automakers to come back and say they can’t make the payments. (The irony here? The automakers are a lot less forgiving when one of us miss a payment to them than they might ask the American taxpayer to be when the roles are reversed.)

Then, all it would take would be some Congress-critter to make the argument that we can’t let the Big 3 fail and that we should give them more money to get back on their feet. Maybe, just maybe, that same Congress-critter will ask the federal government to forgive the loans we gave the automakers to begin with because, well, our economy would freefall faster than the Stock Market after Barack Obama won the popular vote. But then we could put more conditions on them to repay the new loans, which they may not be able to repay, and then the cycle continues.

Yeah. Nothing bad could happen there.

You can’t make someone fiscally responsible by throwing money at it. In a lot of cases, all you do is give that person an excuse to be less fiscally responsible because he or she knows that you already have a vested interest in keeping him or her afloat. And once you’re in, you might as well be a member of the Columbia Music Club because you’re going to be in for a long time.

So, what do a poor country and an automaker have in common? Thanks to the federal government, far more than they should.

This year’s annual plea for Christmas sanity deals with shopping. As you might know, I’m not a big fan of Christmas shopping for two reasons. One, so much is made out of spending money to find the ever-elusive “perfect gift.” Two, I hate standing in lines longer than the results of a Keith Richards drug test. Will things change this year with the economy being shakier than Rosie O’Donnell in a hot tub full of Jello on the San Andreas Fault during a 6.3 on the Richter Scale? Considering that I’m writing this on a Blackberry (sorry, Community Organizerberry) exactly 15 miles from the front of the checkout line at my local WalMart, I’m going to say no.

This year, consumers are walking a tightrope between what they want to spend for gifts and what they can spend on gifts. This is not always an easy decision, but it should be. If you’re making less money than your paper carrier, you probably shouldn’t be putting a high definition flat screen TV on layaway. By the same token, if you make more in a day than the Gross National Product of Saudi Arabia, I think you can afford to spend more than $3 on a Christmas gift for your spouse. Then again, if all your money’s in the stock market…

I could pontificate on the state of the economy and how it will impact holiday shopping, but that wouldn’t do any good. Not to mention, I’m not getting paid to do that and I could really use the cash. Instead, I’m going to offer some helpful hints to save a little money this year.

[PUBLISHER’S NOTE: CommonConservative.com bears no responsibility for the loss of friends, family, inheritance, or body parts if you take this advice. For entertainment purposes only. Violators will be towed. Offer void in Rhode Island, Utah, or anywhere that has made fun illegal. No rain checks. No checks. No shoes, no shirt, no service.]

Exchange names. With some larger families, instead of buying gifts for every member, people will draw names and set a spending limit. My family does this and we have a good time doing it because it can be a challenge to find something that the recipient would like that would fit into the prescribed monetary limit. You get creative when you have $10 to spend and the best gift you can find is $20. That’s where creative accounting comes in handy! And if you can’t crunch numbers like Arthur Andersen, look for coupons or just buy gift cards. They’re guaranteed to fit, be the right color, and not suck as badly as getting a pair of socks from your grandma.

Regifting. This has become popular within the past few years. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept because you actually like the people you’re giving gifts to, regifting is where you repackage a gift you received and give it to someone else. The concept originated with a family who kept passing Aunt Edna’s fruitcake from family to family every year. If you have something you don’t use, consider wrapping it up and giving it as a gift to a friend or family member. Just a word of caution, though. Don’t regift a present to someone who gave you the gift the year before. It’s bad form, and there’s the possibility they remember that they gave it to you, which can lead to serious bodily harm.

Homemade gifts. This is a good way to save a little money because all it takes would be the materials to make the gifts. Of course, if you’re like me, you may want to stay away from any projects involving power tools if you want to keep your fingers and other body parts intact. This can be hit or miss, so you want to make sure the recipient would appreciate your handiwork. To some, a homemade gift is a sign of sincere love because the giver spent so much time and care to get it just right. To others, a homemade gift is a sign that you were too cheap or lazy to get something from a store.

Coupons. No, not the ones you cut out of a newspaper. Some people make up coupons to give to loved ones for different activities ranging from an afternoon of “me time” to more amorous ideas not suitable for print on a family website. These are low cost ways to show someone you love them. Of course, if you’re giving your paper carrier a coupon for a free body massage, that’s another story. And I’m guessing it involves the words “Dear Penthouse.” Also, these coupons may not work for unfaithful spouses. Then, they’d be doubling their coupons, if you know what I mean. And if you do, please tell me because I’m still a bit spotty on it myself.

As you can see, there are a number of money-saving alternatives to overextending ourselves and our credit cards. Each method mentioned above is relatively easy and can be done in no time flat. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think the line is moving. At this rate, I should be able to finally finish my Christmas shopping by April. Fortunately, the Christmas decorations will be up by then so I can grab a roll of wrapping paper on the way.

Thomas Lindaman is a Staff Writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. and NewsBull.com. The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets. He is also Publisher of CommonConservative.com.

With the recent Senate vote putting the breaks on a proposed bailout of the Big 3 automakers, the future of said automakers is in limbo. To be certain, there has been a lot of politics injected in this situation. Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm said that Senators who voted against the bailout were “un-American.” Of course, considering she’s originally from Canada, I’m not sure she’s the best person to be throwing around that accusation.

For the record, I am against the Big 3 bailout, just like I was against the bailout of the banks. The reason is simple: giving money to entities that got into the financial messes that “required” them to ask for a bailout in the first place isn’t that great an idea. And given the bank bailout and what we’ve seen out of AIG in particular, I’m thinking the Big 3 bailout would end pretty similarly.

Instead of a bailout, I propose a series of changes for the Big 3 automakers and their employees. That way, they can work out whatever needs to be addressed themselves and it won’t require me to keep paying taxes after I’m long dead to pay for it. In other words, you can get my wallet when you pry it from my cold dead hands. (Note to the readers: This is not a request for you to do this.)

The first step in this process is for the Big 3 automakers to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy. On the surface, this sounds worse than letting Paris Hilton direct a movie, but it’s actually not as bad as it sounds. What a Chapter 11 allows a company to do is restructure its debts to make it (hopefully) more fiscally sound. This is an important step because it will give the automakers a chance to see just how their money is being spent and figure out what needs to be adjusted to stay viable. It’s the business world’s version of a Reset button on a game console.

Of course, this means the unions involved are going to have to make some adjustments. Granted, that’s as easy as getting Michael Moore away from an all-you-can-eat buffet, but it’s essential. Maybe this hasn’t been covered in the union newsletters, but if the company goes out of business, there really aren’t going to be union jobs in that company anymore. Union workers have a vested interest in the financial health of the company that hires them, so it is time for them to make some concessions so they still have a job. After all, an extra nickel towards your dental insurance doesn’t mean much if you aren’t making that much due to being unemployed.

The unions aren’t the only ones who will have to make serious changes. The automakers themselves will need to adjust their business models to ensure that they’re doing business the right way. The easy answer is to start making quality vehicles that maximize benefits to the consumer while minimizing risks and expense. The tougher answer is to get people in charge who actually know something about the business. Just because you managed a chain of Subway shops doesn’t make you qualified to head up Microsoft. Ever try to get Microsoft Office with tomatoes and lettuce? Not pretty.

Today’s business environment is full of people who came from one company and were put into a different company that had a different purpose. There will be some overlap of business strategy from business to business, but there will always be fundamental differences that prevent such a hire from being as successful as they should be. Remember the UPS strike from a few years ago? Instead of closing up shop right away, the heads of UPS actually rolled up their sleeves and tried to take up the slack left by the loss of striking workers. It may not have been the most successful business decision, but it is an example of what CEOs should be able to do if the situation warrants it. The people at the top should know how to do the jobs of the people below them. Not only will it give them an appreciation of what working people do for them, but it will help them make better business decisions that will benefit the entire company, not just the select few who make the big bucks.

Put simply, there are other avenues to explore that don’t require putting taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars, and these avenues should be explored before the Big 3 automakers go to Washington with hats in hand asking for money. It’s going to require that all parties involved suck up the harsh realities of the situation and adjust their expectations and demands accordingly, but being willing to make the hard decisions to make things better is what makes America great.

That, and Cherry Coke Zero. Nectar of the gods, I tell ya!

Thomas Lindaman is a Staff Writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. and NewsBull.com. The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets. He is also Publisher of CommonConservative.com.

There’s one group of people who were ecstatic that Barack Obama won the Presidential election this year. Was it Democrats? Nope. Was it the state of Illinois? Not really. Was it conservative commentators who can now say about Obama what Leftists said about Bush for 8 years? Close, but no.

I’m referring to the mainstream media. As much as the Democrats wanted and needed an Obama victory, the media really needed it. Of course, now they’re stuck having to figure out how to blame everything wrong on George W. Bush without having him in the Oval Office, but I’m sure they’ll figure it out somehow. After all, the New York Times figured out on their own that Jayson Blair was making up stories, right?

You may be asking yourselves, “Why would the media need Obama to win more than the Democrats?” You may also be asking yourself, “If I were stranded on a desert island with this bozo, how long would it be before I bashed his head in with a coconut?” The answer to the first question is forthcoming. The answer to the second question is 4 hours and 28 minutes. Don’t ask me how I know.

First, the media needed an Obama victory to remain viable as entities in the media universe. Since the advent of the Internet, the traditional media (newspapers, magazines, television, vicious gossip between neighbors) have become less relevant than the guy who played Erkel in “Family Matters.” This doesn’t sit too well with media figures, as they usually believe they have their fingers on the pulse of the world. And that’s on days when they have low self-esteem. As you might expect, the media’s shrinking relevance doesn’t sit well with them. In order to make themselves feel like they still matter, they needed to have someone who they could elevate to the highest office in the world.

And since someone was already the head of Microsoft, they settled on making Barack Obama President.

At this point, any self-respecting journalist worth his or her salt would have asked a serious question: What will taking this course of action mean to journalistic integrity down the line? As a former journalism school student, I can tell you what my mentor would have said. “Wake up, Lindaman! You’re drooling on your textbooks again!” But then he would have said a journalist should never compromise his or her integrity, even if it means not taking a side you might normally take. The truth is paramount to personal preferences.

Unfortunately, most of the media types today didn’t have my mentor as a professor. On at least three occasions, I read articles online from journalists from the major media saying that they were giving Obama favorable news coverage. Their reasons ranged from “he’s new on the scene” to “he’s more exciting than John McCain.” Some even went to far as to say Obama was a “rock star” due to the number of people who went to see him speak at rallies. The number of people who saw him speak in Germany over the summer was quite impressive. Then again, David Hasselhoff is big in Germany, too. I’m just sayin’.

When the media went from being watchdogs to lapdogs when it came to Obama, they lost whatever credibility they had left as journalists. They became nothing more than a really big PR firm with multiple departments working towards the same goal. And no media source was more blatant with their pro-Obama sentiment than MSNBC. Whether it was Chris Matthews with his tingly leg when talking about Obama, Keith Olbermann doing more trash-talking than at an NBA game, or generally how they framed stories about the candidates, MSNBC went from being a third-rate cable news network to a fifth-rate propaganda machine. For a while there, I thought MSNBC stood for Mostly Stuff Noting Obama’s Cool.

Now that the media have helped Obama win, they have to do a little dance where they pretend to be objective and “criticize” him. That way they can say, “We were tough on both Barack Obama and John McCain.” Of course, the fact that they’ve waited until now to start asking questions undercuts that point a bit. Think about it for a moment. The media scrutinized Sarah Palin more than they scrutinized Barack Obama, and Palin wasn’t even running for the top job! Anyone else see a problem with that? I didn’t think so.

Barack Obama’s trip to the White House would not have been possible without the help of the media being so far in his back pocket they could hand him a hanky if he sneezed. Obama managed to use the media effectively by not only being an interesting candidate, but by feeding their egos and making them feel important. They scratched his back, and now he’ll tax them to the point where the only change they’ll see is in their pockets. It’s a bit like “Fatal Attraction” if you think about it. Obama showed a bit of affection to the media, and they responded by going ga-ga over him. Eventually, that relationship they have will start to falter, and when it does, let’s just say we now know why Obama didn’t get his daughters a rabbit.

Thomas Lindaman is a Staff Writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. and NewsBull.com. The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets. He is also Publisher of CommonConservative.com.