By Daniel B. Kline
Having grown up Jewish, I never celebrated Christmas as anything more than a day to go to the movies, eat Chinese food and complain about all the stores being closed. Now that I'm married to a woman with a Catholic family I have to sandwich family events and Christmas dinner into the day, forcing me to drop the movie and eat the Chinese food fairly late at night.
Those traditions aside, I've never really thought much about the holiday other than it being a day off from work until I entered the world of retail. As the manager of a store, Christmas takes on an enormous importance in your life beginning months before the actual day.
In the retail world, the Christmas season cures your ills and pays your bills. A healthy month of December means you survive for another year and your continued viability trickles down to employees, vendors and everyone else touched by your business.
This year, due to the economic uncertainty in the country, most retailers have some fears about how well they might do in what should be their busiest season. With people losing their jobs, their homes and their retirement savings, just how much will they want to spend on gifts?
Despite this logical pessimism, I remain a foolish optimist. We have no money, our future looks bleak and the wolves appear to be howling at the door, but I believe we'll continue to act like everything is okay and somehow it will be.
While Santa Claus may have to layoff a few elves, negotiate givebacks with the reindeer union and switch to a store-brand beard conditioner, I imagine gifts will still appear under people's trees on Christmas morning. This might be wishful thinking from someone who runs a gigantic toy and hobby store or it might be a comment on America's unfailing optimism.
As a nation, even when we're battered and bruised, confused and scared, we still inherently believe that better days lie ahead. There may be no underlying logic for that belief, but most of us feel we will eventually come back even as the worst fates befall us.
Perhaps this comes from our birth as a country where we defeated a much more powerful enemy in order to gain our freedom. Maybe it's simply part of our national DNA or maybe we've all seen the Rocky movies too many times on cable TV, but most Americans have an inherent ability to get back up after they have been knocked down.
In some ways, spending money we don't exactly have to buy Christmas presents for kids who don't really need them shows an undying faith in our country. Many of us are broke, unemployed or underemployed and quite a few folks face home foreclosures, but Christmas will occur, at least for the kids, as regularly scheduled.
Somewhere between foolish and romantically optimistic, I prefer to take our commitment to buying stuff over the holiday season as a bet on our future. Things may look bad now, but we feel that the stock market will recover, jobs will come back and there will be better days.
Call me a financial patriot or a damned fool, but I truly believe that we can cure what ails us, fight back from the edge of defeat and return to the "good old days." I think most of us believe that and that's what keeps us going even when there seems to be no reason to carry on.
Daniel B. Kline's work appears in over 100 papers weekly. When he is not writing Kline serves as general manager of Time Machine Hobby New England's largest hobby and toy store, www.timemachinehobby.com. He can be reached at dan@notastep.com or you can see his archive at dbkline.com.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Obama not ready for the White House
By Daniel B. Kline
Despite his popularity and growing lead in the polls, Barack Obama has yet to make a convincing case that he should be president. This likely will not stop him from winning the White House, but it still seems to me like we're giving the keys to a Porsche to someone who barely knows how to ride his Huffy.
Basically, Obama has gotten this far because of what he isn't. He isn't part of the establishment, he isn't "business as usual" and he isn't another old white guy. He is pretty charming and has done well at telling people he's different, but he has done little to actually show that he can run the country.
Put simply, Clamato may be different than orange juice, but that does not make it better. Obama represents change, but a person needs to be more than unlike what we currently have to run the country.
Nothing Obama has accomplished suggests he has the ability to go from being a senator for a very brief time to running the United States. The man has potential, but Heath Shuler and Akili Smith had potential and, well, neither one of them exactly made the Football Hall of Fame.
Obama has essentially no experience running anything larger than his campaign for president. He's also an inexperienced legislator who has no significant accomplishments during his time in the Senate.
Democrats have rallied around Obama largely because of the ideas he symbolizes. He's not a Washington lifer (at least not yet) and he's not another Al Gore/John Kerry limousine liberal calling down from his mansion to raise taxes.
We know what Obama isn't but we don't really know what he is and everything that comes out of the man's mouth suggests we should try to find out more. One of Obama's key talking points involves taxing "rich" people who make more than $250,000 a year.
Never mind, that $250,000 in New York is very different than $250,000 in Des Moines, and consider the populist vote grab that this idea truly is. Everyone making less than $250,000 a year who never hopes to make that much will get behind taxing the so-called wealthy.
Of course, these folks making $250,000 a year already pay a heavy tax burden and increasing that burden simply removes incentive. Why work harder to have, spend and save more money, when a Socialist like Obama simply plans to come in and redistribute the wealth?
Recent Obama ads also attack company CEOs and their supposed excessive salaries. Of course, working in the public sector Obama may not know that CEO salaries and their so-called golden parachutes are not gifts, but negotiated contract points.
A top executive is like a baseball free agent and he has the right to make the best deal possible. If a company wants what it sees as the best available talent, they have to pay market rate and take the risk that they might be bringing in Stephon Marbury when they thought they were getting Tim Duncan.
Or, to put it into language that even the kids can understand, "don't hate the player, hate the game." CEOs, like any other workers, make the best deals for themselves they can in what, until recently, was a capitalist society.
Not wanting Obama as president does not make me a huge fan of John McCain. I preferred McCain a lot more before his ridiculous pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate and his showing that being a real "maverick" meant a lot less to him than pandering enough to get into the White House.
Still. if the choices are McCain and Obama, I'd have to pick McCain and hope really hard he doesn't die in office. That may be a pretty tepid endorsement, but neither party has given us much to work with.
Daniel B. Kline's work appears in over 100 papers weekly. When he is not writing Kline serves as general manager of Time Machine Hobby New England's largest hobby and toy store, www.timemachinehobby.com. He can be reached at dan@notastep.com or you can see his archive at dbkline.com.
Despite his popularity and growing lead in the polls, Barack Obama has yet to make a convincing case that he should be president. This likely will not stop him from winning the White House, but it still seems to me like we're giving the keys to a Porsche to someone who barely knows how to ride his Huffy.
Basically, Obama has gotten this far because of what he isn't. He isn't part of the establishment, he isn't "business as usual" and he isn't another old white guy. He is pretty charming and has done well at telling people he's different, but he has done little to actually show that he can run the country.
Put simply, Clamato may be different than orange juice, but that does not make it better. Obama represents change, but a person needs to be more than unlike what we currently have to run the country.
Nothing Obama has accomplished suggests he has the ability to go from being a senator for a very brief time to running the United States. The man has potential, but Heath Shuler and Akili Smith had potential and, well, neither one of them exactly made the Football Hall of Fame.
Obama has essentially no experience running anything larger than his campaign for president. He's also an inexperienced legislator who has no significant accomplishments during his time in the Senate.
Democrats have rallied around Obama largely because of the ideas he symbolizes. He's not a Washington lifer (at least not yet) and he's not another Al Gore/John Kerry limousine liberal calling down from his mansion to raise taxes.
We know what Obama isn't but we don't really know what he is and everything that comes out of the man's mouth suggests we should try to find out more. One of Obama's key talking points involves taxing "rich" people who make more than $250,000 a year.
Never mind, that $250,000 in New York is very different than $250,000 in Des Moines, and consider the populist vote grab that this idea truly is. Everyone making less than $250,000 a year who never hopes to make that much will get behind taxing the so-called wealthy.
Of course, these folks making $250,000 a year already pay a heavy tax burden and increasing that burden simply removes incentive. Why work harder to have, spend and save more money, when a Socialist like Obama simply plans to come in and redistribute the wealth?
Recent Obama ads also attack company CEOs and their supposed excessive salaries. Of course, working in the public sector Obama may not know that CEO salaries and their so-called golden parachutes are not gifts, but negotiated contract points.
A top executive is like a baseball free agent and he has the right to make the best deal possible. If a company wants what it sees as the best available talent, they have to pay market rate and take the risk that they might be bringing in Stephon Marbury when they thought they were getting Tim Duncan.
Or, to put it into language that even the kids can understand, "don't hate the player, hate the game." CEOs, like any other workers, make the best deals for themselves they can in what, until recently, was a capitalist society.
Not wanting Obama as president does not make me a huge fan of John McCain. I preferred McCain a lot more before his ridiculous pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate and his showing that being a real "maverick" meant a lot less to him than pandering enough to get into the White House.
Still. if the choices are McCain and Obama, I'd have to pick McCain and hope really hard he doesn't die in office. That may be a pretty tepid endorsement, but neither party has given us much to work with.
Daniel B. Kline's work appears in over 100 papers weekly. When he is not writing Kline serves as general manager of Time Machine Hobby New England's largest hobby and toy store, www.timemachinehobby.com. He can be reached at dan@notastep.com or you can see his archive at dbkline.com.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Shared pain unites the American people
By Daniel B. Kline
Fear and uncertainty bring people together. Whereas Americans seem to be too competitive to share joy on any grand level, we have an amazing capacity for empathy during shared moments of pain.
Nothing unites us like a national crisis and the current economic meltdown certainly qualifies. Everyone -- even those of us with good jobs and reasonable security -- faces the possibility of the economy interrupting or even ruining there lives and none of us wishes that on anyone else.
Normally, we all remain divided by our differences and unable to see just how much we all share. Disaster, however, brings out the best in Americans and somehow causes us to see beyond ourselves.
Like a community that rallies one of its own when he or she gets stricken by disease, as a nation we have rallied around each other. Maybe there's not much we can do for each other, but our national tone has softened and our empathy for one another has increased.
The first time I ever felt this was on the streets of New York in the days immediately after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks when the city became engulfed in a shared camaraderie. Something terrible had happened, but those of still standing shared a common loss and a common desire to press on.
We stood together partly in defiance and partly because we owed it to those who weren't there any more. Mostly, the petty differences that make regular life stressful seemed insignificant and we all felt a part of something bigger.
In America's common areas -- the shops, restaurants, bars and meeting places -- it feels like that now. Every single one of us feels the same pain whether it be for ourselves or for someone we know and that breaks down barriers between us.
I thought about that early on Sunday morning as I got out of my car in front of the local coffee place, an older black man I had never met called to me and said, "that was a tough loss last night." It took me a minute to realize that I was wearing a Red Sox t-shirt and a second longer to see that he was decked out in New York Giants gear.
"Not as tough as the last one for us I said," gesturing towards his sweatshirt. We chatted for a few minutes and our exchange held none of the normal vitriol that a Boston fan and a New York fan would normally exchange in the no man's land of Connecticut.
Just one conversation out of the millions taking place that morning, ours seemed to me as emblematic of the times. With the economic world crashing around us, with people not knowing if they have jobs, homes or money for retirement, everyone softens towards his fellow man.
It's hard to find silver linings in the partial collapse of our economy, but anything that brings us together even a little bit can't be all bad. Maybe it takes disaster to remind everyone that no matter how great our differences, we really are not all that different.
Daniel B. Kline's work appears in over 100 papers weekly. When he is not writing Kline serves as general manager of Time Machine Hobby New England's largest hobby and toy store, www.timemachinehobby.com. He can be reached at dan@notastep.com or you can see his archive at dbkline.com.
Fear and uncertainty bring people together. Whereas Americans seem to be too competitive to share joy on any grand level, we have an amazing capacity for empathy during shared moments of pain.
Nothing unites us like a national crisis and the current economic meltdown certainly qualifies. Everyone -- even those of us with good jobs and reasonable security -- faces the possibility of the economy interrupting or even ruining there lives and none of us wishes that on anyone else.
Normally, we all remain divided by our differences and unable to see just how much we all share. Disaster, however, brings out the best in Americans and somehow causes us to see beyond ourselves.
Like a community that rallies one of its own when he or she gets stricken by disease, as a nation we have rallied around each other. Maybe there's not much we can do for each other, but our national tone has softened and our empathy for one another has increased.
The first time I ever felt this was on the streets of New York in the days immediately after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks when the city became engulfed in a shared camaraderie. Something terrible had happened, but those of still standing shared a common loss and a common desire to press on.
We stood together partly in defiance and partly because we owed it to those who weren't there any more. Mostly, the petty differences that make regular life stressful seemed insignificant and we all felt a part of something bigger.
In America's common areas -- the shops, restaurants, bars and meeting places -- it feels like that now. Every single one of us feels the same pain whether it be for ourselves or for someone we know and that breaks down barriers between us.
I thought about that early on Sunday morning as I got out of my car in front of the local coffee place, an older black man I had never met called to me and said, "that was a tough loss last night." It took me a minute to realize that I was wearing a Red Sox t-shirt and a second longer to see that he was decked out in New York Giants gear.
"Not as tough as the last one for us I said," gesturing towards his sweatshirt. We chatted for a few minutes and our exchange held none of the normal vitriol that a Boston fan and a New York fan would normally exchange in the no man's land of Connecticut.
Just one conversation out of the millions taking place that morning, ours seemed to me as emblematic of the times. With the economic world crashing around us, with people not knowing if they have jobs, homes or money for retirement, everyone softens towards his fellow man.
It's hard to find silver linings in the partial collapse of our economy, but anything that brings us together even a little bit can't be all bad. Maybe it takes disaster to remind everyone that no matter how great our differences, we really are not all that different.
Daniel B. Kline's work appears in over 100 papers weekly. When he is not writing Kline serves as general manager of Time Machine Hobby New England's largest hobby and toy store, www.timemachinehobby.com. He can be reached at dan@notastep.com or you can see his archive at dbkline.com.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Justice sort of gets served for O.J.
By Daniel B. Kline
Putting O.J. Simpson in jail for his involvement in an attempted robbery of stuff he actually claims was his in the first place will do irreparable damage to the football great's "search for the real killers." Without O.J. scouring the golf courses, strip clubs and low-rent autograph shows of this wonderful nation, nobody will be doing anything to bring these mysterious murderers to justice.
With the "real killers" free from O.J.'s relentless pursuit, one can only assume they will be free to kill again. Basically, if we put the one-time rental car pitchman in prison, we must all fear for our lives.
Of course, those of us not in the Los Angeles jury pool who actually believe Simpson murdered two people and miraculously got away with it will probably just go about our normal lives. Some of us will even feel a little safer because while O.J. probably wasn't going to murder us, with him you never know.
After getting away with murder, most people would count their blessings and live as quiet a life as possible. Fortunately, O.J. Simpson can't stand being out of the spotlight so after not being convicted for killing his wife and her friend, he continued to commit crimes just so we would pay attention to him.
O.J. behaves so poorly that Ashley and Jessica Simpson have done the last name proud in comparison. Even Papa Joe Simpson -- famous for making creepy comments about his daughter's breasts -- seems like a swell fellow in comparison.
O.J.'s latest escapade (which followed "The Juice" getting in trouble for stealing cable) was a convoluted tale involving guns, sports memorabilia and collaborators racing to turn on each other. Mostly it seemed like a fairly minor incident that should not end with anyone going to jail for a long time. But, when the police and most Americans assume you got away with two murders, they tend to be eager to get you for something else.
Basically, whether you did it, didn't do it or didn't do it and wrote a book about how you would have done it, it's not smart to get in any sort of trouble again after you get acquitted for murder. Simpson, however, seems incapable of living a quiet life of obscurity.
Once a football and television star, Simpson was so famous that he got put into movies despite not being able to act. Because he seemed like an extremely amiable fellow most of the country even took a "wait and see" attitude when O.J.'s ex-wife and her friend turned up dead.
Even as evidence piled up against the one-time Heisman Trophy winner, many of us liked him so much, we simply assumed he could not have done it. A Los Angeles jury felt the same way, letting Simpson off the hook despite his blood being all over the crime scene.
If you remember that trial, Simpson's only defensive strategy was the entertaining, but scientifically useless "if the glove don't fit, you must acquit" gambit. Generally, the ability to rhyme does not score you points in a court room, but in L.A., apparently, Dr. Seuss would have made on hell of an attorney.
Desperate to stay famous, Simpson resorted to releasing a book explaining how he would have committed the murders, that he still claimed to not have committed. This worked for a time, or at least it worked better than his ill-fated straight-to-DVD reality show "Juiced," in which he he played "Punk'd" style pranks on people.
Now, Simpson faces life in prison for a crime he may not have committed and which not have actually been a crime. You could get mad about the injustice of that or simply look at is as the scales of justice falling back into balance.
I'm not really sure what to think, I'm just happy that our legal system works well enough that you can't murder two people, then continually break the law for years without eventually getting into trouble. If we're lucky, maybe Phil Spector will rob a 7-11 and Robert Blake will become an incompetent pickpocket.
Daniel B. Kline's work appears in over 100 papers weekly. When he is not writing Kline serves as general manager of Time Machine Hobby New England's largest hobby and toy store, www.timemachinehobby.com. He can be reached at dan@notastep.com or you can see his archive at dbkline.com.
Putting O.J. Simpson in jail for his involvement in an attempted robbery of stuff he actually claims was his in the first place will do irreparable damage to the football great's "search for the real killers." Without O.J. scouring the golf courses, strip clubs and low-rent autograph shows of this wonderful nation, nobody will be doing anything to bring these mysterious murderers to justice.
With the "real killers" free from O.J.'s relentless pursuit, one can only assume they will be free to kill again. Basically, if we put the one-time rental car pitchman in prison, we must all fear for our lives.
Of course, those of us not in the Los Angeles jury pool who actually believe Simpson murdered two people and miraculously got away with it will probably just go about our normal lives. Some of us will even feel a little safer because while O.J. probably wasn't going to murder us, with him you never know.
After getting away with murder, most people would count their blessings and live as quiet a life as possible. Fortunately, O.J. Simpson can't stand being out of the spotlight so after not being convicted for killing his wife and her friend, he continued to commit crimes just so we would pay attention to him.
O.J. behaves so poorly that Ashley and Jessica Simpson have done the last name proud in comparison. Even Papa Joe Simpson -- famous for making creepy comments about his daughter's breasts -- seems like a swell fellow in comparison.
O.J.'s latest escapade (which followed "The Juice" getting in trouble for stealing cable) was a convoluted tale involving guns, sports memorabilia and collaborators racing to turn on each other. Mostly it seemed like a fairly minor incident that should not end with anyone going to jail for a long time. But, when the police and most Americans assume you got away with two murders, they tend to be eager to get you for something else.
Basically, whether you did it, didn't do it or didn't do it and wrote a book about how you would have done it, it's not smart to get in any sort of trouble again after you get acquitted for murder. Simpson, however, seems incapable of living a quiet life of obscurity.
Once a football and television star, Simpson was so famous that he got put into movies despite not being able to act. Because he seemed like an extremely amiable fellow most of the country even took a "wait and see" attitude when O.J.'s ex-wife and her friend turned up dead.
Even as evidence piled up against the one-time Heisman Trophy winner, many of us liked him so much, we simply assumed he could not have done it. A Los Angeles jury felt the same way, letting Simpson off the hook despite his blood being all over the crime scene.
If you remember that trial, Simpson's only defensive strategy was the entertaining, but scientifically useless "if the glove don't fit, you must acquit" gambit. Generally, the ability to rhyme does not score you points in a court room, but in L.A., apparently, Dr. Seuss would have made on hell of an attorney.
Desperate to stay famous, Simpson resorted to releasing a book explaining how he would have committed the murders, that he still claimed to not have committed. This worked for a time, or at least it worked better than his ill-fated straight-to-DVD reality show "Juiced," in which he he played "Punk'd" style pranks on people.
Now, Simpson faces life in prison for a crime he may not have committed and which not have actually been a crime. You could get mad about the injustice of that or simply look at is as the scales of justice falling back into balance.
I'm not really sure what to think, I'm just happy that our legal system works well enough that you can't murder two people, then continually break the law for years without eventually getting into trouble. If we're lucky, maybe Phil Spector will rob a 7-11 and Robert Blake will become an incompetent pickpocket.
Daniel B. Kline's work appears in over 100 papers weekly. When he is not writing Kline serves as general manager of Time Machine Hobby New England's largest hobby and toy store, www.timemachinehobby.com. He can be reached at dan@notastep.com or you can see his archive at dbkline.com.
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