There’s a delicate balance in management. Understanding what those who report to you do and what they know is important. But is understanding everything required? The more complex the issue, the greater the difficulty in understanding everything about that subject.

Good leaders surround themselves with subject matter experts (SME) who provide them what are expected to be well informed, thoughtfully considered recommendations on their area of expertise. The leader takes this information and along with the information from their other SMEs formulate a decision on the matter at hand.

Good leaders acknowledge when they’ve miscalculated the response. Bad leaders will blame the SMEs, but a good leader knows they are the ones ultimately responsible because they let the SME persuade their decision.

So today President Obama said this:

This says, Mr. President, that you are surrounding yourselves with the wrong people. Timothy Geithner is ineffective and improperly advising you. You are the president and you are responsible. So do something about it already.

WASHINGTON, Jan 9 (IPS) – Contrary to Israel’s argument that it was forced to launch its air and ground offensive against Gaza in order to stop the firing of rockets into its territory, Hamas proposed in mid-December to return to the original Hamas-Israel ceasefire arrangement, according to a U.S.-based source who has been briefed on the proposal.

It appears that Israel intended to let the clock run out on the agreement. What was it Hamas was asking for?

The Hamas officials insisted that Israel not be allowed to close or reduce commercial traffic through border crossings for political purposes, as it had done during the six-month lull, according to the source. They asked Suleiman, who had served as mediator between Israel and Hamas in negotiating the original six-month Gaza ceasefire last spring, to “put pressure” on Israel to take that the ceasefire proposal seriously.

Seems rather straight forward. For those unaware, there are six (6) crossing zones in and out of Gaza. Each is designated with a special function. Historically, Israel has closed one or more of these crossings anytime it feels the need to put Hamas in a pinch. (Or at least, that is the reasoning given.) This policy has instead had a similar effect as what is being seen now: a humanitarian catastrophe.

As Israel had just as recently as November closed another of the essential crossings, it is no wonder Hamas wanted to insure the people living inside of Gaza were presented some sort of guarantee of available resource paths. Instead, Israel appears to used this as a snubbing point on attempts to reach a cease fire.

Israel’s rejection of the Hamas December proposal reflected its preference for maintaining Israel’s primary leverage over Hamas and the Palestinian population of Gaza — its ability to choke off food and goods required for the viability of its economy — even at the cost of continued Palestinian rocket attacks.

Precisely. The hope of Israel has largely been to use scenarios like this to force the Palestinian people into following new, “non-threatening” leadership. This always has the counter effect however, as has been proven time and again. The end result will be that international aide alongside the local government (in this case, Hamas) will be forced to rebuild around the aftermath of Israel’s destructive attempts. It is as failed an ideology as the neo-conservative drive to bring “liberation to the people of Iraq.”

You can not bomb people into willingness to follow you. They may however be driven to follow someone to stop you.

Here’s one way to insure the world dislikes you just a little bit more:

Yesterday, the U.S. Senate agreed on a voice vote to a non-binding resolution in support of Israel’s attack on Gaza. The House was expected to pass a similar resolution.

2 Superpowers against a city the size of Philadelphia. How is this in anyway a good thing?

Junior Senators must be taking notes that the best way to win a re-elections to ensure the APIAC is on your side.

From yesterday’s White House presser:

PERINO: Well, you know how — the President’s style is always to be one that’s a little bit prepared early, and he and Mrs. Bush have been working to box things up. They didn’t come with a lot of things; they didn’t bring a lot of furniture here. So mostly what they have are books, obviously their clothes, and then some of the things that they’ve picked up along the way on their travels as they’ve traveled.

Hahaha books. Does this look like a man who reads a lot?

Picture says it all…

Yes, yes… someone else is in pain. Yes, it’s wrong to laugh at that. But really, how can you not?!:

Page Six is reporting that right-wing agitator and controversy-seeker Ann Coulter’s jaw is wired tightly shut.

Apparently it was broken, but by whom, no one seems to be sure. We could hazard a guess, but why throw roses yet. – LA Times 11.24.2008

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *break for tear wiping* HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *wipe coffee snorted off of screen* HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn’t require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.

…the Bush administration has committed $290 billion of the $700 billion rescue package.

Yet for all this activity, no formal action has been taken to fill the independent oversight posts established by Congress when it approved the bailout to prevent corruption and government waste. Nor has the first monitoring report required by lawmakers been completed, though the initial deadline has passed. – Washington Post 11.13.2008

This seems pretty straight forward to me: No oversight, no money.

In approving the rescue package, lawmakers trumpeted provisions in the legislation that established layers of independent scrutiny, including a special inspector general to be nominated by the White House and a congressional oversight panel to be named by lawmakers themselves.

Some lawmakers and their aides fear that political squabbling on Capitol Hill and bureaucratic logjams could delay their work for months. Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office, which also has some oversight responsibilities, is worried about the difficulty of hiring people who can understand the intensely complicated financial work involved.

One more time: No oversight, no money.

Those corporate shills who lobbied for the package in the first place can now begin lobbying for oversight if they need that money so badly. But they’re not likely to do that, are they?

Throughout McCain’s campaign we kept hearing about continuing to fight in Iraq so that our troops would not come home in defeat but “with honor.”

Question: Did all those who fought in Vietnam not return “with honor?” Does that then not include McCain himself?

Glad I’m not the only one…

Nothing about the CNN “hologram” made sense. Part of the value of sending reporters to different areas to cover what’s going on is to allow viewers to look beyond the onscreen reporter, and see the raucous environment. And it also affords the reporter the opportunity to walk around and show viewers some of the visual highlights at the event.

But with the help of its “hologram,” CNN destroyed the value in sending a reporter, and instead made it, in the paraphrased words of Wolf Blitzer, “a more intimate setting” for the interview that eliminated all the noisy people that would have been standing behind her. – CNET 11.06.08