Is it really a new revelation that focussing on short term results is not necessarily in everyone's long term best interests? Come on, our parents taught us better than that. Give them some credit.

The advent of the day trader turned the market from a tool to invest in solid companies to a bet on a hot roller at the craps table. CEO's are incentivized to drive up the stock price quickly. The easiest way to do that is by reducing costs. Smaller raises, less spent on employee training, reduce R&D, redirect R&D to only projects which promise near term returns, and don't invest in infrastructure are all great tools to reduce costs without hurting competitiveness in the short term. Who wants to invest long term in a company doing these things?

Well, sooner or later, long term is now. And we are paying, and will continue to pay for these types of decisions. All of the information in the world about a nation full of companies with disgruntled, untrained employees, working with aging infrastructures and no new technologies won't help us.

The technology saviors, start-ups, now seek only to get far enough to get bought out by one of the giants following the guaranteed to fail in the long term formula spelled out above. We must go back to the top, and incentivize executives for long term success, or the downward spiral will only accelerate.

The Pats don't want to go undefeated, they want to be perfect. 19-0 will only make them happy for about a day. I'm not a fan, but I do respect their attitude.

Tim, I can't speak for Americans, but I can speak for myself. The U.S. bases that girdle the world were built by Americans, and paid for with American dollars. Almost all of them are in countries that traded our access to that land for significant injections into their economies, and an agreement that we would defend them if they were attacked (see the stories on a missile defense base in Poland). I will never condone actions by our government, or it's citizens, that are against our laws and morals, or international treaties that we have agreed to. But we have as much right to bases built on agreements like Poland is requesting right now, as the Australian Embassy has to be here in the US.

The Panama Canal, although not a military base, was a perfect example. 2000 American citizens died building the Panama Canal. We leased a worthless strip of jungle for an astronomical cost, and turned it into something extremely valuable. We agreed to pay greater and greater sums of money, despite having an existing lease. Then the country, whose economy was built around that canal, decided that it should be theirs, not ours. I say we should have filled the damn hole back in before we left.

You may argue that we have no right to bases built on lands acquired through conquest - which we are certainly not the only nation guilty of possessing. If you want to make that argument, and you are not indigenous to your continent, as I am not indigenous to this continent, then it can be argued that we have no right to be where we are either. I believe that we have every right to the vast majority of our bases that girdle the world. Just one American's opinion.

Republicans telling jokes about Republicans in prison? Sounds like an act of desperation.

"We are going to wave the magic computer wand, sprinkle some fairy dust, and transfer the knowledge from your best experienced employees into as many inexperienced people as you want. Whether they speak English or not." At this point the executive's eyes glaze over and their pupils turn into dollar signs. They fall for it every time, it's almost laughable. The only thing that gives them a bigger wallet woodie is when they are told that the knowledge will be transferred directly to the computer, and employees will no longer be necessary.

I spent 23 years designing things, or leading people that designed things. I bid jobs done on the drafting board and probably a dozen new computer aided design systems, each one sold to executives that believed it would eliminate design engineers. Took about 1 man-month per drawing on the drafting board, and 23 years, and roughly a dozen new massive software and hardware investments later, it took about 1 man-month per drawing on the very latest computer aided design system. The only savings I saw were to the design engineers, who didn't have to buy their own drafting equipment any more. Sprinkle more fairy dust.

KateTex: in that entire time period, there was only one state that Clinton won by a 2:1 margin, that was West Virginia. Yet somehow your calculator determined that when they were all summed together, she won by more than a 2:1 margin. Get your calculator checked.