Captain Plastic

Discussion in 'Miscellaneous' started by FFCinPCB, Jan 25, 2008.

  1. pettyfog

    pettyfog Well-Known Member

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  2. FFCinPCB

    FFCinPCB New Member

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    Mac is back!

    Even Captain Plastics concession speech was fake, fake, fake. Nevermind the flip-flopping, the Captain has asshole tendencies that just surface, probably sometimes unbeknownst to him, in his speech, facial expressions, and body language that say alot more about him than he wishes they would. Not dissimilar to Hillary, actually.
     
    #42
  3. andypalmer

    andypalmer Active Member

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    PCB. No, but I perhaps know more about the specifics of HIS church upbringing than most. :wink:

    As for abortion, I covered that in my LONG post - he took the most conservative approach on the issue that would get him elected, thereby allowing him to affect change while in office in the "right" direction. His personal views never changed (though he can't say that in the press; the voters of MASS would turn on him), but elected office is always a balance between personal beliefs and the desires of your constituency. He therefore represented his constituency, in the most conservative manner that he could (which in MASS, is pretty liberal).

    Could you elaborate more on the Iraq thing?

    Don. I agree with you in principal (and on many of the specific points you brought up), but you don't get nominated to represent the incumbent party by knocking the current incumbent. I wouldn't be surprised to see whoever gets the nomination to distance themself from Bush, but NOW is not the time for that.

    Regarding the MBA thing - if he JUST had corporate background, I'd agree, but he was effective as governor of Massachusetts, so understands, at least to some degree, the differences.
     
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  4. FFCinPCB

    FFCinPCB New Member

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    Didn't Romney want an early withdrawal and now he is claiming he was in favor of the "surge"?

    Regardless, he panders too much based on what his needs are, as my impression is he is an "ends justify the means" kind of guy. But runnning a company is different than running a country in many ways, not least of which it is not just about the "bottom line" and it is never "just business".

    He's one scary dude, and I'm glad he got some of the air taken out tonight. Hopefully we can officially put a fork in him next week.
     
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  5. pettyfog

    pettyfog Well-Known Member

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    I think we have the FIRST CERTIFIABLE CASE of MDS.. Mitt Derangement Syndrome. Romney is only 'scary' to those who dont want him to win and think he just might.

    No worries, PCB. I'm pretty sure that Dick Morris is right when he made the outrageous comment that the whole GOP is moving left. They arent REALLY, but they are going for 'electable', first.

    Romney was against the surge, but so were a lot of Generals, and he made a comment that he was sure that the Pentagon and admin had a timetable based on results of the surge. Which McCain spun {but it's a lie when it's said by someone who knows what he meant and believes the same thing, isnt it?} to make a headline splash so some could take it just like the MDS victims.

    Poor argument on the 'just biz' thing. Just as McCain's leader vs manager bit. He put together teams, for both the Staples and Olympics rescues.

    But like I say... it's pretty certain that McCain would have to really piss people off to lose it from here.

    Oh... and brilliant move by McCain to spend a lot of his victory speech invoking Reagan, and mentioning 'we conservatives' several times.

    BTW: notice the 'Christian Conservative' preferences shifting from Huck to Mitt?
     
    #45
  6. andypalmer

    andypalmer Active Member

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    I think McCain wins unless Huckabee withdraws. Huck and Mitt are splitting the conservatives and McCain is getting the moderates.
     
    #46
  7. pettyfog

    pettyfog Well-Known Member

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    Based on conversational TRENDING, and indirectly suggested by Don.. moved to Campaign 08
     
    #47
  8. FFCinPCB

    FFCinPCB New Member

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    Censored. What is happening to this website??
     
    #48
  9. FFCinPCB

    FFCinPCB New Member

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    That was a joke. Although the title of this thread immediately flies in the face of your "no flaming" limitations imposed on Campaign '08 topics. And I started it outside of that limitation for that reason.
     
    #49
  10. HatterDon

    HatterDon Moderator

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    I didn't suggest ANY censoring, only the movement of the Edwards withdrawal to its own thread.
     
    #50
  11. pettyfog

    pettyfog Well-Known Member

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    ##$@##$##@$#
    PCB Are you deliberately trying to prove that either your reading comprehension SUCKs.... or that you'll do anything to provoke me?

    I specifically SAID why I was moving it!
     
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  12. FFCinPCB

    FFCinPCB New Member

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    I understood what you wrote, but I question whether your moving it will provide a chilling effect on the freedom of speech I wanted to protect to begin with. It may degenerate into name-calling yet again. And if so, so be it.

    But, leave it be. We'll cross that bridge and perhaps that issue will ripen on this vine.
     
    #52
  13. Spencer

    Spencer Active Member

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    With regards to our man of the people Mitt I have to see the real Mitt Romney to fully make my mind up on this character. I know he didn't turn around companies and the Olympics and whatever else by flattering everyone with fake smiles, cracking bad jokes and using the most stale talking points he could find. There is a real Mitt Romney but surely this is not it. NO ONE ACTS like that!

    What’s his management style really like? Is he open to outside ideas or is he insular and oblivious? Does he command respect from his organization by way of fear of sorts? By being a dictator? By empowering those who work for him? Or what? Hands on or hands off? Al of those styles I mentioned can work depending on the situation. But which will he use? I feel like I can get a pretty good idea of what it will look like if Clinton or Obama or McCain or the Huckster were running the country but I really can't when it comes to Mitt. I know he'll continue to be Mr. Smiley Face:D and embarrassingly unlikeable (to me anyway, maybe some people go for that shit) in front of the cameras but I don't know what he'll be like in the job which is the most important element. What’s he going to be like when talking to Brown, Putin, or Harper?

    The problem is that as it goes along he'll try and be more "genuine" but it will only make the problem worse. More acting to cover up the acting. He's 10 times as bad as Kerry ever was in this respect.

    In any case it looks like McCain will come through. I did listen to Rush for a while today and he's being very defiant and stubborn in defeat. He'll have to do a 180 once McCain is the nomine you'd think.
     
    #53
  14. pettyfog

    pettyfog Well-Known Member

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    It evolved to a higher plane, PCB..... I thought one or two who stay away from the 'open forum' might like to see what that looks like. I've been reading forums a long time and it's pretty rare.

    This comes back to 'Leader' v 'Manager' as McCain brought up. And McCain's wrong in his assessment. You dont MANAGE high profile projects, you lead them. It's when they are 'managed' that they fall apart.

    Now it's possible he 'managed' the Staples rescue, but I'd say it was more a matter of 'direction and delegation'

    Really, there's stuff about McCain's demeanor coming out that aint very pretty. More like Hillary than some feel comfortable with.
     
    #54
  15. andypalmer

    andypalmer Active Member

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    From what I've read about his management style, he's the kind of CEO that I like to work for. He wants to hear advice and ideas, he'll listen to counterpoints, and THEN he'll make a decision and expect everyone to be 100% behind it.

    One funny thing he did with the Olympic Committee - they were losing money hand over fist and Mitt came in and found out that the committee was having catered lunches with every meeting. He immediately put a stop to that and, for the next committee meeting, they had pizza delivered and everyone had to throw in $1 for each slice they took.
     
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  16. FFCinPCB

    FFCinPCB New Member

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    Interesting he would do that.

    A few questions pop into my mind immediately, the answer which only Captain Plastic knows for sure.

    1. Was he too cheap to buy the pizza himself?
    2. Did he think the workers did not deserve a paid for pizza?
    3. Was making them pay for the pizza part of the message he was trying to get across?
    4. Was he trying to set the tone by making them pay for it?

    Obviously, it was just a pizza, but perhaps a small glimpse into the mind of Captain Plastic and how he would make decisions on a grander scale.
     
    #56
  17. pettyfog

    pettyfog Well-Known Member

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    I had two different CEO's at Lexis/Nexis. The first - one of the founders- was pure Manager. His expertise as Lawyer/Computer Engineer was key to it's success. But he had to be presented and evaluate every significant thing that went on.

    Later the parent corp decided we needed a new direction, they brought in a guy who was almost 'pure leader' style. And everyone liked him, he believed in team-building and coherence of purpose. All good except, for his managers, he brought in people he knew and had worked with and depended on them for direction, especially in tech areas. {from IBM..mid eighties, need I say more?}

    And we then had numerous stillborn and wasted projects, duplicating those that were happening across the then infant internet.

    Specifically a 50 employee team to develop a proprietary GUI interface at the same time Mosaic Browser was coming into wide usage.

    Costs: at least 15 million for a product that the customer didnt want.

    Moral: A good leader must ALSO manage his managers.
     
    #57
  18. pettyfog

    pettyfog Well-Known Member

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    Kinda answers the Leader/Manager question!

    I WONDER if those guys in those meetings, having had to pay for their lunches, THEN submitted, and/or signed off on, expense reports for 1st class airline tickets, and five star hotels and restaurants?

    Get my drift?
     
    #58
  19. HatterDon

    HatterDon Moderator

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    There's a fine line in the leader/manager situation. As a boss, your job is to help identify your subordinate's roles and then create an environment where your job is to eliminate everything that gets between them and the job they're hired to do. What goes with that is making sure that you are an assiter and not an obstacle to getting that job done.

    If you translate that into the kind of leadership we're talking about from the Oval Office, you have a disaster. You have to be the one pointing and you have to drag everyone along with you. It's always a good idea to hire good people and mine their thoughts, but it is YOUR vision that got you there and YOU are the one charged with getting the job done.

    Here's the thing. When I was on the front line intel-wise, I once told a smug SOB corporate lawyer in an airport bar: "if every lawyer in your firm took six months off to sail around the world, it woudn't cause a ripple on Wall Street. If all of us take ONE NIGHT off, everyone in the country had better start learning Russian." Okay, I'd had a few and he was an asshole, but you get my drift.

    Business performance doesn't give you a model for presidential performance. The USA is not a big corporation. It's much more complex than that which is why MOST people -- even talented, smart, caring people -- know from the getgo that they're not qualified for the job.

    Remember Hoover -- great businessman and disaster as a president -- and Truman -- crap businessman but a great president. What was their difference? Well, Hoover was certainly smarter and, on paper, certainly more qualified, but Truman had led troops in battle, and had overcome personal obstacles time and time again. It wasn't his intelligence and business acumen that stood him in good stead. It was his toughness under pressure. What kind of pressure has Mitt been under?

    It may not be fair, but I always worry about the spoiled children of highly-successful parents. Our current president isn't half the man his father was, nor has he half the understanding of his job. Many of us oldsters like George Romney and thought he was unfairly derailed from his own presidential bid by the "I was brainwashed about Vietnam" remark. Like GWB, I don't think Mitt is the man his father was, and I think he's not as qualified or as capable as McCain.

    Good discussion and talking points though, andypalmer, 'fog, and PCB.
     
    #59
  20. andypalmer

    andypalmer Active Member

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    PCB. ??????

    The Committee (there are the Managers/Executives/Board, not the "workers") was expensing (i.e, charging to the USOC) expensive, catered lunches, all while the project was failing financially. Romney stopped that practice, and basically told them "you get to eat on the USOC's dime when this project becomes successful." Oh, and Romney donated his entire salary for the USOC job; i.e., he effectively did the job for free.

    i.e, if Mitt is in the White House, you won't see the Congress getting away with giving themselves another pay-raise.

    Don - I do GET the "MBA concerns", but Mitt was governor of Mass, so he's familiar with the ways that government is different. I spoken to some of my friends in Mass, all Democrats, and they all grudgingly admit that he did a good job.
     
    #60
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