What a World

What a world, we now have a new President-Elect who will be inagaurated on January 20, 2009. The world is changing and we as Americans need to change along with it. Unity is what is going to get us out of this economic crisis so I say to the haters-"Stop trying to divide us". It is Barack's time and the time to make the change is now. We as American's need to band together and get this country back on track. I say if you want to be a hater and divider then we should just leave you behind. All of the world is looking at us as Barack tries to put us back as a world leader. Which will be no easy task since we are in a deep recession and involved in 2 wars.

The Real Indicator the Economy is Moving into a Deep Recession

Although the stock market dropped another 300 plus points today and is now below the 10,000 pt mark. The real story is hearing the loss of 159,000 jobs lost in September and the report will be much worse in October due to the current financial crisis and the freeze on credit.

The sign that the economy is in the tank is that the creation of jobs substantially is dwarfed by the loss of jobs over the last 8 years. With an election year we need to hear our candidates talking about how they are going to create more jobs, not the smear tactics that have been publicized by the media over this weekend. We as Americans want to know how each candidate plans to create jobs to stimulate the economy. Having said that, this election year is more important than any election in past history.

Selecting the wrong candidate can make the Bush Years look like Camelot. Electing the wrong candidate who may drive the economy into a deeper recession and having no idea how to get us out of this mess, that would be the real crime.

No One to Blame but Ourselves

After today’s financial fiasco we have no one to blame, but ourselves. Not being informed and making decisions is no way to go about things. We are running into a war with not only the races, but also the classes. The haves and have-nots. Those who will not be able to prosper the legal way will resort to crime. We may soon see a huge increase in crime because people will not be able to prosper through legal and ethical means.

People will not be able to run their small businesses let alone make payroll. The country and economy is built on these financial foundations. The radicals on both sides are also a cause of making this situation blow up. After listening to Lou Dobbs say the American people won today. Makes me want reach through the TV and give him good right across the face. He will be fine regardless as will many of the very wealthy in America.

This however will affect the middle class more than anyone. It will effect people who are employed by small companies to lose their jobs, due to their employer not able to make payroll. Smaller companies who use payroll services will have difficulty making their payroll if at all. Most small companies if not all rely on loans from their banks in order to make their payrolls every week. To show you it’s a vicious circle payroll companies who rely on borrowed money won’t have any access either.

Since this crisis basically freezes credit it will also affect large companies who rely on huge lines of credit. The other entity that hasn’t gotten as much press on is how it affects the rest of the world. Today this affect the closure of some banks abroad due to America’s financial crisis.

The other effect is how we are viewed by other countries. This is a huge aspect that no one is really focusing on. We are talking from foreign relations to foreign investments in the US being taken out. The American people need to know what’s really going on and how it will dramatically affect the American people. The government needs to put the American people first before politics.

Who you Hire Today Will Determine You're Future of Tomorrow

Today's companies are suffering from poor hiring practices of talent. Companies are more interested in hiring someone from a resume versus the person themselves. It all starts with the talent you hire for your HR Department and Talent Acquisition.

The managers in charge of Talent Acquisition need to be competent and need to be more resourceful in today's war for talent. They need to do much more than just going through the motions of a hiring process.

The other talent that seems to be a lost art is doing references on the individual. If it is an impact position for your company, you need to take special attention to this matter. References should not be done by your Admin Assistants. They should be done by either the hiring managers or someone that is well versed in knowing how to ask the right questions.

Asking the right questions is the key to hiring top talent. Too many companies either don't take much stock into this and just ask the basic questions re: How do they get along with their fellow employees? or just don't understand the potential for disaster by hiring a bad employee.

The other area they need to be aware of is that today's middle tier in companies is disappearing. What I mean by that is that you have your managers who are baby boomers and maybe retiring in a few years and you have your newbies that really aren't that impact employee who have the potential to be your future leaders.

Similar to the vetting process that John McCain did on Sarah Palin. Companies cannot afford to continue making very bad hires. In fact one CEO of a fortune 500 company told me the biggest mistake his VP of HR could make, and something he would not tolerate is for that person to make a very bad hire.

Companies wake up! With the economy in the toilet you need to really make good decisions on hiring based on how these people will fare in the company's environment. It all starts with the quality of your hiring process which needs to result in hiring the best person for that particular company not based on pedigree.

And they say we're not in a recession when their are layoffs of 100 or more employees at 4 different stores in the OC alone. You also have the President of a retailer Quicksilver who is getting a severance of 2 million plus a 60,000 a month retainer for 6 months and then another 100,000 for another 6 months on a consulting basis. This is the same President who had the company quadruple in size in reference to staffing. It that doesn't outrage you as an individual then there is something terribly wrong. I'm sure those 270 people who will be getting laid off will be quite irate once they find out how much the guy who is the cause of the problem is getting to go away.

Epiphany Dream

Last night I had a kind of epiphany that I needed to get back to work. It wasn't the same as the ones I normally have with me in the grocery store #487 in the Produce Department. No this one was very different. It was a clothing retail store and I was building displays with sweaters. The other part of the dream I saw a family friend who died quite a while ago and she was asking if I was going back with her. I told her no. Although I was dreaming, it was a lucid dream so I was able to control my actions, but still letting the dream take its course. It seems like I might of even had an out of body experience because I remember seeing myself and yet another self floating through a kitchen and seeing my aunt and her daughter making breakfast. You ever get one of those dreams where you have a dream within a dream. That is what I've had for a few days now. I think they call that REM sleep.

Miracles still happen

This past Tuesday was a very big wakeup call for all of us. It started with a phone call from mom that Juliana was very sick and would not be able to attend our annual New Years day with the family. We never had a New Years where we didn't have the whole family present and Juliana and Teresa had left a very big void in that day for all of us.

Wednesday morning was even worse news when I was told Juliana had been taken to Emergency due to something going haywire with her diabetes. A few hours later she was transferred to ICU in St Josephs Hospital which is part of the CHOC family. I met mom and Kathy at the hospital and when we first walked in it was very depressing. Juliana was being asked questions by the doctors and she was non respondent. It reminded me of the time when she was at school and she got really sick. They had to take her to Emergency and discovered later that she was a Diabetic, but this time it seemed worse since she couldn't even respond to the doctors questions. Alot of things were going through my head as the doctors were talking to her. Was their brain damage? Did she have a stroke and she couldn't talk? All of these things were going through my head and I was just hoping that everything would turn out alright.

An hour went by and still no response so we relieved each other for lunch. After Teresa and mom went to lunch and the doctors left I sat their watching Juliana as they had Hanna Montana on the hospital TV. I then noticed her moving around so I decided to see if I could talk to her. After numerous attempts to get her to talk she let me know that both her arms were hurting and that this was a good episode of Hanna Montana and I should watch it. As soon as I heard her say that I knew everything would be fine and that she would be back to her old self before long. That was a great sigh of relief to hear her respond and in her usual very definitive manner. I'm a strong believer in fate, and at that moment I realized that miracles still happen.

Reflection

Today I was looking at my old yearbooks from junior high school (what is now called middle school) and High School. What I realized now is I lost contact with alot of my friends from that era because the people that were in my 7th grade yearbook went to other middle schools right after 7th grade.
Some of them were very good friends in elementary school and in 7th grade, but after that some of them moved away and therefore attended a different Jr High School.
Its interesting when you think what might have been. I look at the pics of these people and I could tell you a story about almost every one of them. Some of them were very popular in Jr High School and High School and were the noisemakers of the graduating class. Now, not a peep.
The other interesting concept is what they scrawled in my yearbooks. Some of them made their entries in my yearbook after one of our graduation parties so you can just imagine what they wrote and why I refer to it as a scrawl.

I could write a story based on specific grad pics and who that person was then and who they are now. What memories good and bad, but always interesting. Some of the stories I could date back all the way to elementary school during recess playing kickball or being asked by the teacher to stand in the corner due to talking too much which is now referred to as "timeout". There would also need to be someone narrating in the background with probably 70's music in the background.