How screwy is this world?

Take a minute. Close your eyes. Breathe deeply. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

Open your eyes and scream at the top your lungs: Stop the insanity!

Item 1: The United States is going to build a new embassy in London. There has been no statement on what was wrong with the old embassy, just that we're building a new one.

The location for the embassy will be outside of Central London, and will have humongous trees, and ponds and natural barricades to keep terrorists out. Being it's England, there'll probably be peacocks roaming the grounds, along with black and white swans, and probably a small herd of those smallish animals the English like to call forest deer.

The official reason for why this country is building a new embassy is typical: "Just because." That's not the official reason given, but the accurate one.

The new building will cost $1 billion.

Good gosh, Maudie!

This country is drowning in red ink and we're spending $1,000,000,000 on a building in London? What is wrong with our leaders? What is wrong with us for electing the same yahoos over and over again?

Item 2: As a personal policy, every American can change this country overnight by going to the polls in November and refusing to vote for a single incumbent. Make a stand. If we don't do it now, we have no right to gripe and moan in the future.

Item 3: The military's don't ask, don't tell policy on gay soldiers is asinine, discriminatory and violates federal law. Personal opinions on the issue are the issue; the law is.

Army Chief of Staff George Casey believes that repealing the current shhhhhh policy could do harm to the military. He's paid to say that and he does a good job at parroting the military position for the past 200 years.

But Casey is missing a point: Gays have always served in the military; some have received the Congressional Medal of Honor. For decades, blacks were not allowed to serve in white units; women were not allowed to serve at all, and still today are "prohibited" from front line duty. Those rules did not keep these brave soldiers for dying for their country.

Discrimination in some form has always been a trademark of the military and it's current internal stance on gay soldiers is just wrong-headed.

Circumference of Me

Hiccups are no big deal

It’s important for managers -- in business and in life -- to learn what mistakes are important and what are merely hiccups in life.

A hiccup is here and gone. It is not a permanent condition. A single hiccup occurrence leaves no permanent damage and few people remember you ever had it.
A business hiccup is . . .
 An email sent without its intended attachment.
 A typographical error in a report.
 Writing down the wrong time for a meeting.
 Missing a minor deadline.

Life hiccups include:
 Forgetting the name of the restaurant where you are meeting your significant other.
 Forgetting something on the grocery list.
 Men: Forgetting to put down the toilet seat ... or worse, not putting it up in the first place.
 Women: Griping at men for not putting up or down the toilet seat.

There is a major chasm between a hiccup and a certified disaster.

It is a frightful part of human nature that some people cannot differentiate between the a hiccup and a disaster. A temporarily misplaced report arouses the same reactions in some people as does a lost account.

For active, multi-tasking managers in business and in life, hiccups are like mosquitoes in swampy areas, they are going to pop up no matter what you do. Hiccups, while aggravating, don’t ever make or break careers. That is reserved for the reactions of those who do the hiccupping or evaluate their effect on the business.

Swallow the hiccup by acknowledging it as a mistake, apologize if necessary, and get on to more important issues.

There will be bumps long life's path. A bump is a bump. Don’t make it bigger than it is and don’t allow it to ruin the journey.

Circumference of Me is a book in progress by Steve Burnett of New York City and George Smith of Cabot, Arkansas.

Where have all the heroes gone?

The United States is in a world of hurt.

Just take a look at the headlines: Record deficit piled on top of record deficit. piled on the back of taxpayers – the ancients and those future ones still learning to pull up their diapers.

We’re fighting two wars we can’t win; chances are there’s an army general or three looking at future war sites in case there’s ever a scenario in which we can extricate ourselves from Afghanistan and Iraq.

God knows this country can’t properly function without a good war or two to keep our minds off other problems.

Shoot, about that next war: Iran is handy and that Amenijarhead needs a good butt-stomping!

We bail out banks that are too big to fail and carmakers who give too much money to elected officials to be allowed to go belly-up. The home of free enterprise has evolved into the home of the free lunch money.

After 9/11 we added a bloated level of bureaucracy that checks our shoes for bombs and thinks its part of their job to frisk a little old lady named Gladys because a similar name appeared on some risk-list somehow.

Wear a doctor’s ordered back brace and try and go through airport security and you risk a real chance of a two-saddle-wide security guard playing hide-the-finger in orifices high and low.

We elect mealy-mouthed word-weasels with the backbone of melted Jello to represent us in Congress and sit back and adore their protestations about anything in which we think we don’t believe but are not sure because we don’t listen because we might miss the newest episode of the stupid, pouty Kardashians or Survivors in Watts if we stopped long enough to have a single, uncommercialzed thought.

Look in the mirror. That’s what a lemming looks like. If you vote to re-elect a single politician – ever -- that contributed to the Hellmess in which this country finds itself, you deserve what you get.

If you believe a single word that comes out of the mouth of any politician already in office and trying to stay in office, shame on you. If you believe a single word that comes out of the mouth of any politician trying to replace an incumbent politician, shame on you again.

Politicians, with few exceptions, will do whatever it takes to get elected and stay elected.

Wait up. Vote them all out and start over. That, and only that, will send a message that we are tried of monkey business as usual.

This announcement didn’t cost you a durn thing…except the time to read it.