Remember When Information Technology Was Hot, Hot, Hot?

I came across a very telling article recently while cleaning out some old piles of my journalism. In January, 1999, I co-authored a piece, "IT careers for sale," that appeared in Computer User magazine. The subhead stated: "If you have computer skills and a pulse, recruiters want you on the IT front lines."

Remember when information technology (IT) was hot, hot, hot? Clinton and Gore were in office in those days, and the overheated dotcom boom was still underway.

Here is how the article began:

Chances are, you've gotten their calls. And their emails. And their faxes, postcards and letters. You've seen their big "Now Hiring!" signs hanging on the sides of buildings. You've read their billboards, heard their radio commercials, even felt their earnest handshakes and gotten their business cards at professional association social gatherings.

Lately, you may even have noticed their pitches in a most unlikely place: On monthly statements from some of your credit card companies.

It's a recruiters' jungle out there, and you, friend, are the big game they are stalking, even if you don't want to be hunted.

Blame it on demand versus supply. There are now many more information technology jobs than there are computer professionals to fill them. The Information Technology Association has estimated that one in 10 computer-related jobs currently is going begging--that's almost 350,000 vacancies.

Desperate companies are searching far and wide, recruiting on the Internet, on college campuses, at rock concerts and in distant lands. They are offering referral bonuses, signing bonuses and bigger bounties to outside recruiters. Some even are raiding their competitors' talent--or at least being accused of it...."

Sadly, those days likely are long gone now. But that seems to be how the American economy works: in cycles of boom and bust.

A decade later, in troubled 2009, if you have computer skills and a pulse, you likely are unemployed, underemployed or in fear of losing your job very soon.

It may be time now to recruit yourself and turn your computer skills and job experiences into self-employment. If you still have a job or need more income, you can start something on the side and test the waters of small business. If you are unemployed and standing now with others in long lines to compete for one, two or a few jobs, it may also be time to recruit yourself and create your own job.

It's not easy, but if you have computer skills and a pulse, you can do it. You might even have to do it if the economy doesn't pick up soon.

Operators, unfortunately, are not standing by.

--Si Dunn

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Robbing Peter to Pay Paul(son) and Golden Parachutes

By Si Dunn

In just one week, America's Republican-dominated economy has gone from "robust" and "fundamentally sound" to "in imminent danger of collapse" if $700 billion of taxpayer money isn't delivered immediately to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, so he can dole it out to Wall Street, banks, and other financial entitites.

This naked grabbing of money from average Americans' pockets supposedly will help keep the "robust" economy from going bust. But it also will help finance plenty of golden parachutes for the financial executives and leaders who got us into this mess and have been trying to conceal it until just after the end of the Bush Administration.

John McCain is no fan of this proposed bailout. But he can pretty well kiss his election to the White House goodbye. He's Republican, after all, and the Republican Party in general will suffer a very large, and very well-deserved, thumping at the ballot box Nov. 4, in the fallout from this fiasco.

Runaway deregulation plus rampant greed adds up to: (1) financial cycles that swing out of control; and (2) financial bubbles that explode.

The "trickle-down" economics famously championed by the Republicans has never worked. The upper class keeps getting more "upper," while spilling precious few drops of the money that is supposed to dribble down to the middle and lower classes.

Maybe it's time for some "trickle-up" economics, for a change.

To hell with the big financial institutions that lost sight of fiscal reality and got hooked on gambling with their--and our--money. Let them consolidate, downsize or die. Don't give them another dime.

Give most of the $700 billion, instead, to Main Street and small business, the real heart, soul and drivers of the national economy. And set aside some of it to help the thousands of lower-echelon employees in the financial industry who will lose their jobs, pensions and homes as a result of the avarice and selfishness of their corporate executives and the Republican political leaders.

Remind your Senators and Representatives in no uncertain terms: The buck starts here...well away from Wall Street and the Washington Beltway.

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Attack of the Killer Attack Ad Killers? (Huh? What?)

By Si Dunn

In a Sunday report from CNN, former Bush adviser Karl Rove declared that Sen. John McCain had pushed "one step too far" in some of his recent ads attacking Sen. Barack Obama.

The ads, Rove said, didn't pass "the '100 percent truth' test."

Rove, of course, has leveled similar charges at Barack Obama's campaign. And the former White House adviser has been accused of supporting the use of savage attack ads to help George W. Bush defeat Al Gore and John Kerry.

This time, Rove urged both McCain and Obama to "be careful" with their attacks on each other.

Has Karl Rove suddenly been infected with a "fair play" virus? Or is he beginning to realize he is backing a losing campaign and is trying to distance himself from the oncoming November train wreck? Or is he trying to reinvent himself with a newer, more neutral reputation so he can hire himself out as a political consultant to the Democrats after the Republicans are swept from power?

At some point soon, attack ads will have to be replaced by statements of substance and examples of proposed policies, legislations and programs. Otherwise, the 2008 presidential campaign will be much ado about nothing much except, maybe, "my change is better than your change" and "liberals don't know shit about eating raw moose meat."

But for now, the political Swift Boats are still making their high-profile runs, shooting themselves with their own torpedoes, and sinking beneath big clouds of smoke...and mirrors...and tubes of lipstick.

Is it November yet? Can't we please just vote now and send all of the clowns out of town?

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Putting Lipstick on This Pig of an Economy

By Si Dunn

Here come the Republican Swift Boats, right on schedule, firing tubes of lipstick at the Obama-Biden campaign.

That's all they've got, folks. Lipstick. They're trying to smear lipstick on the pig of an economy they have created (and looted) over the past eight years. They desperately hope you won't notice how ugly it is--and keeps becoming.

But lipstick attacks or no lipstick attacks, they can't hide the deep pig plop they will leave behind as their legacy once they finally get their butts booted out of Washington in 2009.

The Rove-McCain-Palin-Bush-Cheney ticket is smart enough to realize "It's still the economy, stupid." But with their long track record of economic misfires, lipstick is now all they have left to put into the Swift Boats' torpedo tubes.


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McCain Predicts GOP Will Fail in Fall Election

By Si Dunn

You only thought John McCain was warning Democrats when he accepted the Republican Party's nomination for President of the United States and declared:

"And let me offer an advance warning to the old, big-spending, do-nothing, me-first, country-second Washington crowd: Change is coming!"

Actually, McCain delivered the perfect summation of the GOP's record in power during the two terms of the current Bush Administration.

It was a stern alert that McCain is now ready to storm back into the City of Power and stamp his feet while the Governor of Alaska barks at passing cars bearing lobby-coddled conservatives and those dreaded, evil limousine liberals to and from the halls of Congress.

Poor "Maverick." He really wanted to be his own man, with Joe Lieberman at his side on the convention podium. But the Republican powers who pull the puppet strings--i.e., Karl Rove and others--said hell, no! and brought in "the Babe," to use Rush Limbaugh's lustful term of endearment. A pistol-packin', moose-shootin' mama who, if Putin invaded the Ukraine, could lead a savage countertattack on his abortion record.

Not unlike the infamous Blues Brothers, John McCain and Sarah Palin now are on "a mission from God" to offer four more years of failing to meet the basic needs of most of the American people.

Hey, good luck with that.

Change, indeed, is coming to the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives this November. But the party of Lincoln and George W. Bush definitely is not going to like who and what will get changed.

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McCain-Palin: A Big Snowball's Chance in Hell?

By Si Dunn

Is it bold...or just bizarre?

John McCain's pick for vice president appears to be both at the same time.

Ultimately, however, it will turn out to be just a slightly bigger snowball, once it starts melting in the hell of American presidential politics.

These amazingly troubled times cry out for a stronger and more qualifed #2 to stand a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Calling up the "aggressively pro-life" commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard--brave and noble though that unit may be--is not a sound act of presidential decision-making on Maverick McCain's part.

Gov. Sarah Palin surely is a rising Republican star (particularly with her political nickname, "Barracuda"). But a bolder and more grounded pick would have been Glenn Close, who, after all, has more national, international and universal experience, serving both as Harrison Ford's vice president in Air Force One and Jack Nicholson's First Lady in Mars Attacks!, AND as a Supreme Court justice in The West Wing. Hey, and she also has narrated a documentary on George and Martha Washington. That, my friends, is experience.

Faced with new threats to European security by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his presidential da-man, Dmitry Medvedev, what would a President Palin do, based on her national and international track record thus far? Aggressively condemn their stances on abortion? Throw snowballs across the Bering Strait and send dog-sled troops into Siberia to try to force regime change?

Bottom-line predictions from this pundit: (1) Joe Biden's gonna make moose-burgers out of her in the vice presidential debate. And (2), the Bush/McCain-Palin ticket will have only a big snowball's chance in hell once it starts melting down over the next few days and weeks.

Gov. Sarah Palin indeed may be a political barracuda. But the media's thousands of tiger sharks now are circling, and they just see a fresh new fish sandwich in the sea.

In the new age of instant journalism, instant Swift Boating, instant attack ads, and instant disinformation campaigns, it's still a long, long time until November.

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John McCain to Fight Global Warming by Cutting Earth's Atmosphere

By Si Dunn

WASHINGTON, D.C.--Building on his promise to preserve and extend George W. Bush's tax cuts for wealthy Americans, Republican presidential candidate John McCain announced today that he will fight global warming by removing 50 percent of the nitrogen from Earth's atmosphere by 2012.

"It's mostly an inert gas, folks. It just floats there, takes up space, and does nothing to contribute to economic growth," McCain declared at an impromptu press conference near the Lone Sailor statue at Washington's Navy Memorial. "So we're gonna suck it straight out of the sky and start creating more room for carbon and other aerial byproducts of a robust, growing economy."

To avoid a nitrogen glut, McCain also announced a plan to encourage automakers to voluntarily retrofit existing SUVs and other gas-guzzling vehicles to run on nitrogen by 2058. "Yeah, the cars will be pretty old by then," McCain conceded. "But if they are kept up on blocks in a decent garage, they can provide affordable transportation and housing for the poor--housing that the federal government won't have to subsidize--fifty years from now. What low-income family wouldn't want the chance to live in a classic Ford Expedition or Chevy Suburban or Lincoln Navigator and also drive it around burning almost-free nitrogen?"

A spokesman for the Obama campaign had no immediate comment. But a well-placed Obama consultant hinted that the Democratic contender may now be working on a plan to reduce hot-air emissions inside the Beltway. "He'll say that we deserve a cooler government. And the best way to get it is to reduce Republicans in the House and Senate by 60 percent, or more, by 2012."

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Bush on Climate Change: Better Never Than Late?

By Si Dunn

With barely nine months left in his lame-duck presidency, George W. Bush is set to propose a “new strategy” for reducing greenhouse gases.

Details have not yet leaked out. But some pundits predict Bush will proclaim that making his tax cuts permanent is the only way to save the planet from thermal runaway. Others speculate that he will call upon all environmentalists to “surge.” Or, he may send Condoleezza Rice on a secret mission to meet with dissident Chinese climatologists.

More boldly, however, Bush may order a preemptive nuclear strike on water vapor, which causes more of the greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide does. That way, if we can’t have victory in Iraq, maybe we can at least have some serious shock and awe… in the stratosphere.

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