2009-A year in Review

Duffy sees the ole' calendar about to turn over into another year, 2010, the start of a new decade. Actually to be precise the year 2010 is really the end of the first decade of the 21st century but we'll go with popular opinion. It's been an amazing year in which Duffy saw some things he never would have believed would happen.

Of course the signature event of 2009 was the inauguration of Barack Obama as the nation's first bi-racial president. That's right, bi-racial, born of an African father and white American mother. Obama seemed to come out of nowhere to be elected president and Duffy still wakes up sometimes and wonders, "Who is this guy?". Nevertheless, he is our president at least for three more years and Mr. Obama and the Democratic majority of Congress have embarked upon an ambitious scheme to remake American society.

Duffy knew that things would not be the same early in the year when the Federal government took over Chrysler and GM. The brutal way they trampled the rights of bondholders by essentially negating commercial contract law to seize the companies and appease the UAW was chilling to this writer. Both companies could have survived Chapter 11 in Duffy's view and the necessary changes made to ensure their survival could have been accomplished without massive government intervention. Now the government owns two auto companies, one of which, Chrysler, will probably fail anyway and the other, GM, will probably never pay back the $50+billion of taxpayer money. The Democratic insistence that GM and Chrysler build "green" cars before the market is ready will impede their progress even further.

GM and Chrysler is the primary example of what Duffy believes is the main force driving Obama and the Democrats: an ever increasing role of the federal government in American society. Of course "Health Reform" is the signature issue of Obama's first year in office and the most glaring example of come hell or high water the Democratic insistence of passing a bill, any bill, no matter how bad, to obtain their goal of universal health care. The fact that the Democrats feel impelled to ram this monstrosity through Congress with not one iota of Republican support, as soon as they can, is glaring proof to Duffy that they know the bill will not go down well with the American people. The Civil Rights Act and Medicare in the early 60's were both passed with bipartisan support but with more than 50% of the people opposed to the bill, why the Democrats insist on passage is beyond Duffy's understanding. Duffy believes the American people are quickly becoming disillusioned with arrogant one-party rule and will enact massive retaliation against the Democrats come November.

At first Duffy didn't know what to make of Barack Obama. Anybody that could defeat the Clinton machine to get the Democratic nomination had to have a lot of chutzpah, not to mention courage and stamina. The Democrats probably could have nominated Elmer Fudd and beaten John McCain who couldn't overcome his dreadful pick of Sarah Palin and the collapse of the economy at the same time. However, Duffy doesn't think that the American people necessarily voted for Barack Obama as they voted against George Bush and the Republicans. After observing Mr.Obama in his first year in office, Duffy feels that he is a combination of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Terribly naive and inexperienced, more so than Jimmy Carter even but with the supreme self-confidence and ability to give a good speech like Clinton, Obama incorporates the best and worst of both men. Duffy thinks that Obama really does believe he is a "game-changer" not only for America but for the world. But now that the man has been in office for a year he is finding out that the Pelosi/Reid Congress pretty much ignores him and foreign leaders don't fear him. Obama's foreign policy of seemingly apologizing for America everywhere he goes (bowing to the emperor of Japan was especially ridiculous) plus engaging enemies in endless "talks" will do nothing to advance American standing in the world.

As for the beginning of the next decade Duffy fears that passage of a terrible health care reform bill will enrage a large proportion of the American people when they discover what's in the bill as will as the fact that most
"benefits" don't begin until 2013 and 2014, but the higher costs and taxes begin immediately. Obama and the Democrats know they have a limited time to jam through their agenda before the American people vote a large number of them out of office in November. Duffy thinks November can't come soon enough.

Tiger's in Deep Doo-Doo

Duffy has been following the Tiger Woods saga with both interest and amusement. It's really true that everything happens in either California, Texas or Florida. It is evident that Mr. Woods is in real trouble. And it's not because 12 (or is it now 13) women have claimed to have had sex with him. It's not even if a couple of big sponsors drop him. Duffy thinks that Tiger is in real deep doo-doo when neither Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton have appeared in front of the gated entrance to his posh sub-division with a bullhorn chanting, "free Tiger now!" If you are an important African-American in this country you know Jesse and Al will quickly show up to "help you out" by deflecting attention away from your transgressions. Now, let's face it, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have been totally irrelevant to 99% of the American people for some time now and especially since Barack Obama got elected president. But at least they make the effort to show "solidarity" (don't you just love that word?) whenever a "brother or sister" got into trouble. No Jesse, no Al. Oh No!

The problem for Tiger is that he has never embraced the whole African-American Civil Rights thing. Tiger considers himself multi-racial with a father of African heritage and a mother of Asian heritage. Tiger has assiduously kept himself away from controversial topics, events and situations where he would be expected to promote a controversial cause be it civil rights, gays and lesbians, peace, global warming, etc. You name it, if it's a controversial topic or cause you won't find Tiger Woods anywhere near it. And, furthermore he marries a beautiful blond Swedish woman to further drive home the point. Somebody that looks like a Nordic goddess instead of Michelle Obama. Folks, Tiger can't expect any help from the African-American Community, that is, all the movers and shakers and opinion makers. Tough! He's in it by himself.

In fact, so far, Duffy doesn't see anybody really coming to Tiger's aid other than the few golfers who say, "it's his business, let him be." Fact is, Tiger's business is in fact, a MAJOR business in the U.S. and around the world. Thousands of people depend on Tiger Woods either directly or indirectly for their livelihood especially including the PGA tour and everyone who counts on Tiger's participation in the golf tournaments.

Tiger's refusal to show himself and stiffing the Florida Highway Patrol has done him no favors and unfortunately when he does finally show up in public even months from now, the media frenzy will be just as great if not more so than now. Wait for the first book, "My secret life with Tiger" to show up soon. Poor Tiger.

The Rise and Fall of Bobby Bowden

Duffy remembers when the last second ticked off the clock on January 1st 1994 and FSU had won it's first national championship. Duffy breathed a sigh of relief and thought, "well, I can die a happy man now that we have won a national championship." Duffy won't rehash the career of Bobby Bowden and all the accomplishments he's achieved over 34 years as FSU coach. Yesterday's sad ending to a legendary career was inevitable and would have happened next year as well. Because Duffy believes that Bobby Bowden never believed he would quit, never believed that the school would nudge him out and would have been perfectly happy to die on the sidelines at age 90. As much as Duffy loves and respects Bobby Bowden and admires him for his character, faith and what he has done for FSU and college football, Duffy believes this is a classic case of a man not knowing when to quit. Hindsight is always 20-20 but at the end of the 2000 season is when Bowden should have retired. His blunder in hiring his son as offensive coordinator Duffy believes is the primary reason FSU football started a decade long decline. Bowden's refusal to face up that he had made a mistake with his son and failure to see an overall decline in the quality of recruits led to FSU becoming an average team in the ACC and one that could not match up with UF and Miami.

Over Duffy's long business career he has known CEO's (and that is how Bowden saw himself, as a CEO) bring a company up from nothing to a position of prominence in the industry, then surround themselves with sycophants, lose touch with the changes in the market and take their eye off the ball. At some point the Board of Directors says, "enough is enough" and the most surprised person in the company is the former CEO as he is led out the door. Examples abound of athletes who stayed long past their prime as even Michael Jordan realized he couldn't hang with the young guns who ran past him on the court. Bowden would have coached till he dropped dead on the field which is how Joe Paterno will probably go out. He could not understand or accept until the very end that the man looking in the mirror every morning was the one responsible for FSU's decline from a football superpower to an average team in an average conference. The CEO is responsible for his company, the Captain is responsible for his ship. When either fails, the company declines and the ship sinks.

Duffy believes it was time, past time, for Bobby Bowden to retire. It's too bad that he couldn't have gone out in a more dignified way, but dadgummit he brought it upon himself. And Duffy fervently hopes that at some point Bowden realizes that unpleasant fact.

Bobby's faith and interests in travel, military history and golf should occupy his time in retirement. And his accomplishments at FSU won't ever be forgotten. Duffy looks forward to a new coaching team leading FSU back to being a national power starting in 2010.

Cooking the Golden Goose

Duffy has taken a little break but is in blogging mode. Today we're going to discuss Duffy's take on all the recent scams and Ponzi schemes that have been unearthed in the past year. Let's start with the Madoff scam, the largest Ponzi scheme ever discovered and one that apparently went on for more than 20 years. Many books will be written about how Madoff pulled this off (some already are) but I think Madoff shows the main factor of how these things get started and keep on going. And that factor is, trust. Madoff was noteworthy in that he preyed on mostly his Jewish friends and contacts and continued to burnish his own reputation as a Wall Street insider who "knew the rules and how to play the game". His genius was to credit his victims with a reasonable steady return on their investments, never too much year by year but always a steady investment income. In other words, what most investors want from their money. His undoing was the astounding collapse in the entire financial system that panicked his investors who wanted to get liquid as much as possible. Like a receding tide exposing hidden shipwrecks, Madoff quickly ran out of money to redeem to his clients. So far, many other Ponzi scams have been uncovered due to the unprecedented recession the past two years. Duffy suspects more will be uncovered in the months ahead.

Why would otherwise intelligent people entrust their funds, even life savings to one individual? Greed is one aspect but more importantly in Duffy's view is that people trusted ole' Bernie to do right by them. Apparently a lot of proper due diligence was not done because of Madoff's reputation and insider status as well as testimonials from his early clients who, in fact, got paid oftentimes more than they put in.

Fraud like this is hard to detect and a lot of people are going to change their investment philosophy due to the numerous scams that have been unearthed the past year. "Trust but verify" as President Reagan said.

Duffy has never been scammed (not yet anyway) and has followed some iron core rules over the years that has enabled him and his family to maintain their lifestyles even into retirement. Let me share them with you.

First of all this treatise is intended mainly for young folks, single , married and married with kids. During this Great Recession a lot of these pointers will be disregarded or ignored for folks who are treading water in the shark tank without a life preserver. Nevertheless, when things do get better, and trust ole' Duffy the economy will get better and hopefully will be back to "normal" (whatever normal is) by the end of next year. Elections are coming up and the Democrats need people back to work. They will do whatever it takes to get folks working again. "Normal" won't be like partying like it's 1999 but it won't be like panic in 2008 either.

1) You need insurance. Health of course but also life insurance, especially for those with families. If both parents work then both should have adequate coverage, at least five times your salary.

2) A reserve fund. Duffy's rule of thumb is six months equal to the highest wage earner's take home pay. Start at three months as a goal and work up to six. Duffy got it as high as a year at one point. That pile of cash is a nice safeguard if one or both lose their jobs.

3) Never finance a car longer than 48 months. Longer and you will be "underwater" the entire period of car payments. Cars last longer and you get a nice paycheck from yourself if you can pay off the car before the loan period ends.

4) Proper use of credit. Duffy believes you only need two credit cards. One for normal use and one for emergencies. An emergency is not a new HD TV or Coach purse. Get into the habit of PAYING OFF YOUR CARD EVERY MONTH! Think about using VISA's money for free for a month, every month. You are using their money for 30 days for free! What a deal is that? You have to determine what your limit is every month. That is the hard part as well as having the fortitude to stay within that limit.

5) If a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Just because Uncle Fred is investing in cocoa futures and making a killing does not mean you should too.

6) Diversify. Never put all your funds in one investment. Don't heavily invest in your company.Spread your investments around many different asset classes, e.g. stocks, bonds, real estate funds, cash. Find a solid, reliable and strong financial institution to use as investment managers like Fidelity, Prudential, Vanguard, etc.

7) Make a budget and stick to it. Both spouses have to buy into the budget and even though little emergencies will pop up from time to time, keep your eye on the ball for the long view.

Finally, in spite of the worst recession since the Great Depression, Duffy believes this too shall pass. Wall Street and Washington have been scared silly by what happened last year and Duffy believes will take corrective action to make sure something like this won't happen for another fifty years. The above suggestions are all common sense and I'm sure people who read this blog have their own systems to manage their affairs but being diversified, sticking to a goal and being sceptical,prudent and reasonable in expections will save a lot of heartache if followed.

Have a great Thanksgiving!

"Can't we all just get along?"

Rodney King's question posed back in 1994 after the California riots seems even more pertinent today. Duffy has seen a steady increase in the amount of intolerance and incivility in the public discourse year after year. Talk radio, talking pundits on the cable channels, blistering opinion columnists in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, all engaging in screaming, hollering, yelling, insulting, denigrating "the other guy", whoever it is that doesn't share their opinion, on whatever topic (and they are always right, by the way!). It's enough to make someone of Duffy's age wish for the peaceful days of, say, 1962 when people said, "please" and "thank you" and listened politely to other's opinions even if they didn't agree with them.

Duffy can date the descent into the current morass back to 1987 when Teddy Kennedy and other Democrats led a vicious campaign against Robert Bork to join the Supreme Court. In Duffy's view this televised hearing set the tone for future attacks of one political party against the other. Duffy is convinced that the Bork hearings and the later Clarence Thomas hearings gave the Republicans the license to ramp up a continual vilification of Bill Clinton for his entire presidency. The rise of Talk Radio and the Fox TV channel gave Republicans and conservative outlets a way to "push back" against a perceived (and in Duffy's view) correct Democratic/liberal bias of the major networks. It didn't take long for MSNBC to become the Anti-Fox network. Folks like Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs, Keith Olbermann and lately Glenn Beck all discovered that their more outlandish claims against the opposition got them higher ratings and bigger paychecks.

The election of America's first bi-racial President just seemed to increase the hostility. The Democrats swept into office believing they have a mandate to sweep away all the sins of the Republican administrations going back to Reagan and finally completing all the unfinished business of FDR , LBJ and the New Deal and Great Society. In this they have misjudged the electorate of a country that is more centrist and conservative than liberal. Nancy Pelosi and President Obama will find this out in November 2010.

Meanwhile, Duffy suggests that in one's day to day life one should act with consideration and kindness to as many folks as one can. Broaden your views. If you watch Fox all the time, watch CNN and MSNBC to find out what the "other side" is saying. Even if you don't agree with it, you will have a better understanding. Don't believe ridiculous assertions like Obama isn't an American or Bush caused 9/11. If it sounds ridiculous, it probably is. A well rounded person shouldn't have just a large waistline but also be able to listen to and decide between both sides of an argument. Duffy has no patience with pundits who yell at their guests or belittle them or interrupt them. Duffy has no respect for comedians who insult or belittle public figures.

Duffy thinks the next three years are going to be the most contentious between the two halves of America that he has seen in his lifetime. There is a widening gulf between the Democrats/Liberals and the Republicans/Conservatives. Moderates and Independents are disgusted and turned off by this. Duffy thinks it will get worse before it gets better. Unfortunately for the country....

TV Commercials are driving me crazy!

Duffy, who has been around for a while, has seen many profound changes in the television industry. Both "hardware" i.e. TV sets, and "software", i.e. programming. He has been pleasantly amazed at the technological changes over the past 50 years, particularly over the past 10 years in the incredible transformation of TV sets. Having purchased a large screen HD plasma set last year, "watching football games" has a whole new meaning. Cable transmission means over a hundred stations to choose from with more of them becoming HD every day. DVR time shifting is a wonderful invention for people with busy schedules to be able to record their favorite programs and then watch them when convenient. Wow, what a difference when Duffy remembers his father bringing home the neighborhood's first color TV (a 21" RCA) in 1958. This is definitely the Golden Age of television technology.

Duffy also remembers from the early days watching programs that lasted 30 minutes with three commercials, one at the beginning, one in the middle, and one at the end. The commercials lasted no more than a minute each and several commercials were included in that minute. Fast forward to today. Duffy never watches a program more than an hour unless it's sports as he can't bring himself to watch the multitude of commercials jammed into every program. Now eight minutes of commercials are allowed in each 30 minutes of programming with more than that allowed on cable channels. It is extremely annoying to watch 8 minutes of an interesting program and then have it interrupted in the middle by 5 minutes of commercials. Another 8 minutes, another 3-5 minutes of commercials. One of Duffy's pet peeves is seeing the same commercial at the front of the commercial break, followed by several others, then repeated again at the end of the break. Every year it seems somehow broadcasters manage to jam ever more commercials in an hour time slot.

It is Duffy's opinion that Congress, being as feckless as it is, holds hearing and passes laws on the most ridiculous subjects that usually have not very much, if anything, to do with the well being of the country. The latest example being the hearings held on the BCS system for college football. But Duffy would love to see a law passed either outlawing (probably unconstitutional) or delaying to a later time, commercials promoting prescription drugs. This is a relatively new phenomenon but has been increasing the annoyance factor. The most egregious example are commercials on erectile dysfunction in the prime 6-8 p.m. dinner slot. Duffy just imagines the scene around the dinner table when the 6 year old asks his daddy what erectile dysfunction is. But we also see commercials on drugs to treat Alzheimer's, diabetes, sleep disorders, heart conditions, you name it. All have to be prescribed by a doctor. Duffy counted 5 commercials in a row for prescription medication the other night. The drug companies spend billions of dollars hiring cute women to visit doctors to promote their latest new miracle drug. They don't need to spend billions more on TV commercials when they can spend that money instead in additional research. In Duffy's opinion, "There ought to be a law!"

The networks wonder why they are losing viewers. They ought to just count the number of commercials each hour to get the answer. Just like a newspaper can't be all ads, the television programs can't be all commercials.

Duffy longs for the day when a TV manufacturer makes a set that will automatically blip out commercials.

Obama, 1.42 trillion!, Fraud & Waste

After a spell of writer's block and a short vacation, Duffy is back at again. Let's listen in as he opines on Obama, the federal deficit and fraud and waste in government spending......

Duffy is of the opinion at President Obama should now acknowledge that he "owns" all the problems he inherited when he came into office. To continue to blame Bush and the Republicans for all his problems 10 months after he was inaugurated is to put it mildly, annoying and repetitious. The American people elected Mr. Obama to fix the problems, which by the way, had been building over the past 20 years since even before the Clinton administration. Enough already! Bush's war, Iraq, is going a lot better than Obama's war, Afghanistan. The bailout funds are creating their own problems by getting out too slowly and the American people are starting to realize that 787 billion of "stimulus" funds and certainly not improving the lives of most Americans as The Great Recession continues to grind on. This economy is yours Mr. Obama, along with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Duffy, for one, sure as hell doesn't want to hear anymore about "the problems we have to deal with from Bush" talk. Dude, we elected you to fix the problems!

Two weeks ago it was announced that the 2008 fiscal year Federal deficit was 1.42 trillion dollars. That's "trillion" folks, as in 1,000 billions. This was 2 1/2 times greater than 2007 which also set a new record and as a percentage of GDP was the second highest on record since 1943 when the U.S. was in a little thing called WWII. For the average person, these numbers are meaningless. A $1,000 bill would get Duffy's attention but a trillion dollars? Duffy can't even comprehend that number. But what it does mean for all you 30 somethings that I hope are reading this, is that two things are almost guaranteed to happen sooner rather than later. One, your taxes are going up. Way up. (and we're not even counting universal health care) and two, your standard of living will probably stay the same or even decline in the years ahead as the cost of money, for everything, is going to increase substantially as interest rates rise to pay for all the new bonds the federal government will have to issue to pay for all this debt. Duffy is very leery with the Democrats in charge that serious efforts will be made to reduce the deficit in the years ahead, even though, in one of the few good things that Clinton did as president, was work with Republican to cut spending, raise taxes and reduce the yearly deficit to the extent that this country had surpluses for 3 years in the late 90's. 1.42 trillion. That's a HUGE number that will have serious consequences for this country in the years ahead. Liberal Democrats seem to care less.

Duffy recently read some articles about all the fraud and waste being discovered in various federal stimulus programs. You think? Who would have guessed? When "free" money (i.e. tax payer's money) is being thrown out in such programs as "Cash for Clunkers" and the $8,000 tax credit for new home buyers, you can bet that lots and lots of people are scheming to get at those dollars. The rule of thumb is that about 10% of funds are lost to fraud and waste in any government program. So that's 78.7 billion of taxpayer money obtained through fraudulent means if the stimulus funds are all spent. I'm sure that 78 billion will be spent on something to aid the economy it's just the wrong people will be spending it. Like flies around honey, any federal program that dispenses money to "help the citizens", a portion will be siphoned off to fraudsters and crooks. Count on it. The arrests and trials will start soon.

The World Series starts soon. Yankees and Phillies. Will the rest of the world care? Until next time.....

Cash for Clunkers, Health Care & more on Obama

This week Duffy decided to comment on three topics of interest. As a postscript to the Cash for Clunkers program, the September auto sales figures are out. They show a 5% decline for Ford, 42% for GM and a whopping 45% for Chrysler, just what Duffy predicted would happen. Chrysler just fired two top executives and the top sales executive for GM resigned yesterday. Rats jumping (or being thrown) off a sinking ship? Time will tell. Duffy is somewhat of an automotive buff and feels that Ford has the best selection of vehicles of the Big 3 with Chrysler the worst. Duffy expects that within a year 10 billion in taxpayer money will be flushed when Chrysler declares bankruptcy, this time for good. I doubt if Obama will try to save the company again. Duffy recently drove a Ford Fusion for 10 days while on vacation and was highly impressed with the car. Looked great, rode well and got about 33 mpg overall! Check it out. Meanwhile GM is too big to fail and it might not be until 2015 or ever for the taxpayers (you) to get your $50 billion back.

Duffy has been following the health care debate closely and doesn't like what he sees. A mishmash of compromise, consensus and confusion that will achieve little towards universal health care and cost the middle class billions in tax increases. The bill refuses to touch tort reform which is a big cost driver and will impose severe cost reductions on Medicare which will change the program for the worse and impact on seniors, in spite of what Obama says. Duffy would like for the whole thing to go away and to start over next year but the Democrats and Obama are determined to get a bill, any bill, no matter bad it is, passed. If passed your taxes will go up next year, count on it! And to require every American to have health insurance or else that person is fined by the government is, in Duffy's opinion, unconstitutional as hell and will be quickly taken to the courts.

Duffy woke up this morning to see that Obama won the Nobel Peace prize. Duffy is curious as he doesn't see any peace breaking out anywhere but the left leaning liberals of the Nobel Committee evidently felt that Obama's emphasis on "engagement", "talking" and "extending the hand of America" to one's enemies apparently shows great promise and potential. Duffy remembers when Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace prize and look how looney he's gotten in his old age. Duffy accordingly takes this with a grain of salt. But this prize will certainly be one more thing to inflate Mr. Obama's self-esteem.

Finally, Duffy believes the best philosophy he has ever heard is simply the Golden Rule, "treat others as you would like to be treated yourself." A corollary is this rule, "put yourself in the other guy's shoes." Duffy has tried to keep those principles in mind his whole adult life and if you do the same, believe me, it will help you a lot, both in business and personal relations. Some of Duffy's greatest deals in business were made when he "put himself in the other guy's shoes". Joint understanding often leads to the best solutions.

Have a great weekend!

"Change" now and "Hope" for the best

Duffy has been watching our new president for nine months now and even though he still wonders "how did this guy get elected president?" nevertheless he is our president until 2012 or longer. So, a few comments: First of all, Duffy personally likes Obama. He knows how to give a speech. He is smart. He is charismatic and has supreme self-confidence. He has a beautiful wife and two lovely children. He appears to be devoted to his family and seems to be a an upright guy. He is not an narcissist like the last Democratic president, who was in Duffy's opinion, a sociopathic liar and a all around sleazebag. That said however:

Obama ran as the "Not Bush". Duffy didn't vote for Obama but he wasn't terribly upset when he won. Maybe a new face, new change was in order after eight years of the Republicans. Duffy suspects that Obama and the Democrats think they were elected to make sweeping changes while in fact, the people just wanted Bush out of there! After McCain torpedoed any chance of winning by picking Sarah Palin, the Democrats probably could have run a kumquat for president and won. A lot of people liked Obama. They liked Bush less. And McCain took himself out of the running with his pick of Palin and the collapsing economy.

Duffy still believes this country is fundamentally right of center and conservative. Obama made a big mistake right out of the box by deferring his entire legislative package to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Pelosi is the most left-wing ultra liberal partisan Speaker of the House in history and Reid is a political hack owned by the unions and not respected by anybody. Obama's experience, such as it is, consisted on less than three years as a U.S. Senator where his legislative accomplishments consisted of....nothing. The man really is still a neophyte to Washington. Only now does he realize that he needs to get personally involved in the legislative process. Duffy thinks that most of Congress, including most of the Senate and many in the House, including not a few Democrats, have no fear of Obama. He is not a head-cracker like Lyndon Johnson. Obama fundamentally doesn't appear to want to get into the middle of the process and "get dirty". Duffy doubts if Obama ever played football or rugby.

Obama needs to quit apologizing whenever he makes a trip overseas. The U.S. has little to apologize for and the American people are getting tired of it. Obama's "new openness" in foreign policy is in Duffy's opinion naive at best and silly at worse. The dictators and bad guys don't care if Obama is "open" with them or not. They take it as a sign of weakness and no amount of talking to Iran, North Korea or even Israel is going to change their ways. Words followed by action is a lot more effective than words and then more words. Hilary Clinton is probably the "toughest" person in the administration and Duffy suspects that most foreign governments don't respect her very much either. Talking and talking will buy you some time but won't change any minds. Obama's self-importance and belief in his own ability isn't going to get him far in foreign affairs.

Duffy has noticed that Obama is somewhat thin skinned. He doesn't take criticism easily and seems to overreact to perceived push backs from people who aren't impressed with his arguments. This could be a self-damaging flaw that manifests itself later in his administration. Moreover, Obama needs to realize that if something he says in Peoria is the opposite of what he said in Portland the day before, the press and public are going to call him on it.

In spite of all his flaws Duffy thinks there may be hope for Mr. Obama the rest of his administration. A few things he needs to do: 1) Tell Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid that he is calling the shots from now on with legislation. 2) Enough of Bush bashing. Obama is president now and the people don't want to hear anymore about "fixing Bush's problems". 3) Tell the truth. A tax is a tax, not a "fee". The people know the difference. 4) Obama doesn't need to give a speech every day. Be on every talk show. Be on Letterman. That only demeans the office of the presidency and after a while people start tuning you out. 5) Quit apologizing every time you go over seas. Enough is enough and most people don't like their president apologizing to tinpot dictators. 6) Make decisions. Grow a backbone. Be a president, not just act like one. 7) Make a decision about Afghanistan and stick with it. Indecision and ineptness about Vietnam ruined Lyndon Johnson. 8) Fix the economy first. Health care and the environment can wait. Take some time and work with the Republicans to get it right. Finally, 9) A lot of the people elected you because they were sick of Bush, not because they especially liked you. You need to understand that the U.S. is still a conservative country. Even though Clinton was a scumbag he was smart enough to switch back to a middle of the road legislative program and did work with Republicans to get things done to get reelected. Duffy hates to say this, but be more like Clinton and less like Pelosi and you may get something accomplished in the next three years.

Ya Gotta love Universal Health Care

Duffy's vision of universal health care in this country: Duffy would get his identification card from the National Health Care office after showing them his passport and paying an annual fee of $250. He would be able to use the card to go to any doctor, any hospital, get any test, any drug and any medical procedure he wanted. No co pays, no upper limit on benefits, no pre-existing conditions limitation. This all would be "free" because the Government would not be taking any additional taxes. There would, however, be an additional 33% "health access fee" taken from his paycheck but this wasn't a "tax" strictly speaking, according to President Obama. All legal U.S. citizens were covered under this plan and Medicare and Medicaid were abolished and folded into the National Universal Health Care Plan.

Duffy did notice that waiting to see the doctor was now twice as long and the doctor, when he did get to see her, was noticeably more rushed as he had to be in and out of her office in five minutes. Until the new graduates of the 50 new medical schools that Obama promised started to appear, the American people would just have to put up with these inconveniences. Duffy noticed announcements appearing quite frequently of doctors retiring and turning over their practices to the government. Since all doctors were now strictly limited to how much they could charge, many doctors just retired or moved into other professions. Duffy heard many complaints about the many foreign doctors who could hardly speak English. Hundreds of thousands of insurance company employees were now out of work, but at least they had health care. Many of them went to work for the NUHC Department. Millions of health insurance agents went into other jobs such as selling real estate but at least they had health insurance. Duffy read of tens of thousands of illegal immigrants turned away from medical care because they didn't have their NUHC card. Thousands of illegals were "caught" this way and deported. Meanwhile crops went unpicked and more construction companies failed. Millions of employees lost their group health care benefits as companies ditched them in order not to pay a NUHC "fee" to the government . Famous names such as Blue Cross, United Healthcare and Hartford vanished into history. Their assets were confiscated by the NUHC to help pay for the program.

Duffy needed a knee replacement but was told that it would be at least 18 months at the earliest before he could have it done, and only if the NUHC Authorization Board deemed him sufficiently disabled to have the knee replaced. A tax on sugar and sugar products was instituted to fight the "obesity epidemic". Alcohol and tobacco taxes were increased 500% to encourage people to quit smoking and cut down on drinking. Senior citizens were made to go to mandatory sessions for counseling put on by the AARP on "end of life" decisions. Even funeral homes were limited in what they could charge to prevent "gouging." A National Universal Health Standards Board set national protocols on how all medical procedures should be done by all doctors and hospitals in every state. Failure to follow the national standards would result in loss of license.

Duffy thought how great this was now the U.S. had universal national health care. His taxes did not go up "one dime" just like Obama promised though his paycheck was now about one-third smaller. Even though American lives, as far as medical care was concerned, was 100% in the hands of the Government, Duffy knew that all the small inconveniences in the system would be fixed in the next 20 years according to projections by the NUHC Department. "Fees" might have to be raised another 25% soon to pay for the additional 5 million Federal employees to administer the program but it was well worth it to have universal health care.

Duffy thought how appropriate for Nancy Pelosi to retire from Congress and be named as the first Director of the National Universal Health Care Department at a salary of $1 million a year.

A little extreme? Yes, but this vision is shared by many far left liberals as the "solution" to UHC for America. Just warning ya.....

Afghanistan: I've seen this movie before

This week Duffy gets serious and gives his thoughts on our fight in Afghanistan. I well remember the days back in 1964-1968 when the U.S. escalated our forces in Vietnam. Looking back on that conflict which had such a serious impact on the nation and especially the leading edge of the baby boomer generation, I am still ambivalent about the reasons for fighting that war. In the end it was a huge waste of American lives, not to mention American resources and had a profound effect on American society. Vietnam was a civil war and we backed the wrong side using the wrong tactics with the wrong goals.

Afghanistan is a country larger than Texas, with a 13% literacy rate, no history of democracy or ever much of a functioning national government. In the countryside the population lives in almost feudal conditions in family clans outside the reach of any sort of government. The central government has a long history of corruption. No outside nation has ever "conquered" Afghanistan. The Russians and British tried in the 19th century, the Russians again in the 20th century and now the Americans in the 21st century. Fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda is somewhat like fighting the Vietcong except now we are fighting religious fanatics with the goal of establishing a extreme form of Islam not only in Afghanistan but across the Middle East. Radical Islam is supplying fighters and arms into Afghanistan from many Islamic countries to fight the Americans. The American forces will never kill "enough" Taliban to "win" the war. There will always be more fighters infiltrating the country to fight the infidels. The U.S. is not fighting a country, we are fighting a radical religion that despises all things Western. This is a civil and religious war going on in Afghanistan.

I've yet to hear Obama state clearly what our objectives are in Afghanistan. How do we "win" and declare victory? Set up a democratic government with control over the whole country? Establish an effective police force and army not riddled with corruption that is respected by the population? Duffy doesn't believe this is possible in Afghanistan. Ever. But, if that is Obama's goal, then he should tell the American people that it will require many thousands of more troops, much more money from American taxpayers, much more time, years and years, much more casualties and with a very uncertain and unpleasant outcome if not successful.

Duffy would reduce forces and concentrate on training the Afghan army and police. Concentrate on the Afghan border working closely with the Pakistani army who now seem to be serious about stopping the Taliban in their country. Concentrate on killing Al Qaeda leaders. (Why haven't we killed Osama Bin Ladin?)
"Nation building"? Forget it. A waste of American lives and resources. Afghanistan is too big, too backward and too primitive to "build a nation". There really never has been one there.

If Obama persists in feeding more and more troops into Afghanistan it will turn into his Vietnam. I have seen this movie before.

The U.S. and Western nations will be fighting radical Islam for many years and the American people will have to understand and accept that reality. The Cold War is over but the Long War started even before 9/11.

Keep the BCS! (but with a few modifications)

Duffy was going to write a blog about Afghanistan but decided to put that depressing subject away for another day and since tonight is the start of the college football season give you my thoughts on the BCS system and determining a National Champion.

Supposedly there is an overwhelming majority of support for abolishing the current BCS and staging a playoff system to determine the "true" national champion. Well, I've yet to see a playoff system format that makes sense to me or that would satisfy all critics of the current system. And, it appears that the folks who really matter, i.e. the college presidents and athletic directors are firmly against a playoff system. And I agree with them. And I'm just as avid college fan and anybody else out there. I think the current system is just fine. And here's why. From the very first game of the season, every game for every team in the BCS conferences means something. Every week's game is in essence a "playoff" game. Though LSU proved a two loss team can make it to the the NC game, I don't think that will happen very often if at all anytime soon. From the very start, every game means something to the BCS formula mix to determine the top two teams. Excitement every Saturday!

It seems to me that the REAL reason there is so much grumbling is that there are only the six major conferences who make up the BCS and the other seven "less major" conferences are outside looking in. The crux of the problem, in my view, all boils down to one thing: MONEY. The five BCS bowls last year distributed, I believe, $16 million to each team while the other bowls paid out anywhere from $5 million to $750,000. Sure, teams like Boise State, Utah and Hawaii don't get to play for the NC, but what really galls them is that their other conference teams play in lesser bowls with much reduced payoffs.

With that in mind, here is Duffy's solution to the BCS shortcomings. Do away with the top six conference monoply. ALL 120 teams in Division I football (I refuse to use the silly "Bowl Championship Division" classification) are to be included in the BCS system. No team is left out of being able to play in the NC game no matter which conference they're in. The big pot of gold of the five BCS games will be distributed to all 120 teams in Division I. However, to mollify the critics of this socialist redistribution of wealth, the conferences of the ten teams who do end up playing in the BCS games will get half of the payouts with the other half distributed to all the teams in D-I. In practice I can see that what will happen is that the six major conferences currently in the BCS formula will continue to supply most of the teams to the BCS bowls. But, teams like Utah and Boise State and other "lesser" conferences will have an equal chance to play for all the marbles.

Duffy believes that the current BCS conferences, The Big 10, Big 12, SEC, ACC, PAC 10 and Big East should quit being so piggy and agree to share the wealth or else somebody like Barack Obama or Congress will do it for them. Every game from the start will still mean something and everyone will have a chance for the NC. And most importantly, BCS Bowl money will be spread far and wide.

My Cash for Your Clunker

The "Cash for Clunkers" program is over and the official line is that it was a smashing success. 690,114 "gas guzzlers" were traded in for new, more efficient vehicles. $2.88 billion of taxpayer money financed the program. A program that was supposed to last until the end of November spent $1 billion in the first week and was over in a month.

The fact that the government takes money from one taxpayer to give to someone else is not new. It happens all the time as taxpayer money is redistributed to favor a targeted group. However, this time with the Cash for Clunkers program it has rarely been so blatant to take taxpayer dollars to favor certain groups. The intent was to get "gas guzzlers" off the road and replace them with more fuel efficient vehicles. This was the intent of the liberal green lobby's devout wish to scrap every pickup truck and SUV (unless it's their own). Secondly, the program was designed to help the car dealers, car companies and let's not forget the overpaid, under worked UAW members. This is in addition to the over $60 billion of taxpayer money that has already been spent on GM and Chrysler.

There were certain rules that had to be followed. The car/truck had to get less than 18 miles to the gallon. If you bought a vehicle that got at least 10 mpg more then you got a $4,500 benefit. If only 2 mpg more then you got $3,500. Why the discrepancy? The geniuses who wrote this legislation realized that GM and Chrysler, especially Chrysler, made very few vehicles that got better than 28 mpg. But they did offer a lot of big SUV and trucks that could meet a vastly lowered standard of 2 mpg improvement. In other words without the lower requirement both GM and Chrysler would have hardly benefited from the program because they didn't offer enough vehicles to qualify. Furthermore, the trade-ins, no matter the condition, had to be scrapped.

The results are in and surprise, eight out of the top ten sellers were cars made by Japanese and Korean companies. Only two Ford products were in the top ten. If fact, about 60% of the new vehicles sold were made by foreign car companies. Moreover, as is often the case with a government program that is ill conceived and hastily put together, the rules and paperwork were horrendous. Most car dealers have yet to be paid, the paperwork demands were enormous and the rules were insanely complicated. (And we want the government to take over health care?) As expected, most of the vehicles traded in were trucks and SUVs thereby appeasing the enviromentalists. However there were also a lot of new trucks and SUVs that were sold with engines that got slightly better mileage, though not much, than the trade-in. Even so, Chrysler sold the fewest new cars and trucks of anybody.

Several comments from Duffy about the Cash for Clunkers program.

1) If you see your neighbor with a new small car when he used to have a large pickup, think of your tax dollars at work .

2) Almost 700,000 cars were sold in one month. Wait for the cries of anguish from the car dealers the next 3 months when nobody buys anything.

3) How many perfectly good used cars and trucks will really be scrapped? Many will, but more than a few will end up being resold on the black market, shipped to South America, or be torn down for parts.

4) Watch for articles in the press (which the Administration will try to suppress) of how many people who bought new cars will not be able to make the car payments and have their vehicles repossessed.

Just another example of the Obama administration and Congress deciding to favor certain groups over others by using your taxpayer dollars. Rarely have I seen anything so blatant and unfair, but I fear this will become a common occurrence with this Administration.

What Obama should have said to the NAACP

About a month ago President Obama gave a speech on the 100th anniversary of the NAACP. Unfortunately, the news media barely covered the speech but by all accounts it was a great speech. As I understand, the speech was broken into two parts, the first part was pretty much boilerplate, "We have accomplished a lot, we still have a long ways to go, etc." About what you would expect to this group. The second half of the speech was more along the lines of, " quit playing the race card, go to school, work hard, stay out of trouble, etc." The type of speech that Bill Cosby gives to black groups.

In my opinion this is what he should have said, "Let me express my honor at being the first African-American president to address the NAACP on it's 100th anniversary. But, actually I'm not, strictly speaking, an African- American. True, my father was born in Kenya, in Africa, but he never became an American. My white mother was born in Kansas and I was born in Hawaii. I consider myself, therefore, as simply an "American", period. Just like millions of other bi-racial folks who were born and live in the United States.

I feel now is the time for this country to do away with hyphenated labels for our citizens. There are no more Irish-Americans, German-Americans, Italian-Americans or Jewish-Americans. Those terms have faded from history. Hispanic is a term that means folks who speak Spanish. But there is no such thing as an Hispanic race. I believe it is past time for this country to stop labeling each other as to who belongs to a race, tribe or clan. This causes divisiveness, strife and misunderstandings. We are all Americans and should look past each other's color, religion or customs as I know so many people do today. But, far too many still put labels on folks who for whatever reason, are "not like themselves."

The 2010 census is next year. As president I am going to issue an Executive Order that all mention of race, color and religion will be eliminated on census forms. From now on I will refer to myself and my family as simply "American" instead of "African-American", a label that strictly speaking, doesn't apply to me anyway. Furthermore, I will order that there will be no more references to race, color or religion in any official correspondence of the United States government. This applies to every employee of the Federal government.

I know most of you will be outraged at this proposal and declare me naive at best and sinister at worst. But my guess is that many, many Americans will finally say they have a President who declares firmly the time for racism is past in this country. It is my firm hope that all race based organizations, of all types, will become irrelevant in the not to distant future.

Thank you for your attention on this historic occasion.