Red Can’t Believe he is Blogging About an Impromptu Dance-Off

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USA Today Sports has the skinny on a brawl at a high school football game in Dallas – and this time it did not involve the football teams.  The rival dance teams from Wilmer-Hutchins and James Madison High Schools got a little too excited during an impromptu dance-off after the game and chaos ensued.  Fortunately no one was seriously injured and no arrests were made.  The incident did cause the Dallas ISD to make the following statement.

“Impromptu dance-offs are not part of the approved performance for dance teams and fighting is never acceptable. Disciplinary actions will be taken as appropriate.”

Who knew we needed an “impromptu dance-off” policy?  For his part, Red fully supports not only impromptu but any other form of dance-off.  He does draws the line at impromptu full contact girl fights.

Carly Gets an “F” from Fortune

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Carly Fiorina sole “qualification” for the high office to which she aspires is her supposedly successful business career.  Fortune takes a closer look at CF’s tenure at HP and the results are not good.  Fortune asks the simple question, How did she do?

The answer in short is: Pretty badly.

In 1999, a dysfunctional HP board committee, filled with its own poisoned politics, hired her with no CEO experience, nor interviews with the full board. Fired in 2005, after six years in office, several leading publications titled her one of the worst technology CEOs of all time. In fact, the stock popped 10% on the news of her firing and closed the day up 7%.

Arianna Packard, the granddaughter of HP’s founder, commented when discouraging voters from supporting Fiorina in her 2010 senatorial run, “I know a little bit about Carly Fiorina, having watched her almost destroy the company my grandfather founded.”

However, before Conservative Political Action Caucus in February, Fiorina proclaimed that under her HP command, “We would double its revenues to $90 billion, triple its rate of innovation to 11 patents a day, and go from a laggard to a leader in every product category and every market segment in which we competed.”

Sure, she doubled revenues—through a massive, ill-conceived, controversial acquisition of Compaq Computer in 2002.  Fiorina did nothing to increase profits over her five-year term, with the S&P 500 showing net income across enterprises concomitantly up 70%. Furthermore, shareholder wealth at HP was sliced 52% under her reign against the S&P, which was down only 15% in that bearish period. She modeled the old joke of “making it up in the volume.”

Fiorina rammed the Compaq deal through despite intense opposition by analysts, employees, and shareholders. When it appeared that she would lose the proxy vote, the balance was tipped back the other way using hardball tactics that would make Donald Trump wince.

The lost shareholder wealth and lost strategic direction at HP are only part of Fiorina’s legacy. Also lost during her reign were 30,000 U.S. tech jobs, the company’s revered employee morale, and the egalitarian, humble HP way culture. A new defensive, finger-pointing style of leadership led to waves of firing. Dissent was equated with disloyalty as discovered by Walter Hewlett, a board member and son of HP’s co-founder, when he questioned Fiorina’s misguided Compaq acquisition strategy and refused to be bullied into a board statement of unanimous consent, suffering legal and personal threats.

Despite such carnage, Fiorina pocketed over $100 million in compensation for her short reign—including a $65 million signing bonus and a $21 million severance. I have studied comebacks from adversity, but she’s not shown the required contrition nor earned the needed exoneration, and she’s not served as a CEO since. Upon leaving Taiwan Semiconductor’s board, the firm disclosed she only attended 17% of the board meetings. Under Meg Whitman’s brilliant leadership, HP’s character and performance have recovered, but we have not seen Fiorina’s parallel resilience just yet.

Today in Texas History – September 24

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From the Annals of Assassination – In 1964, the Warren Commission, headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren, delivered its report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which had occurred on November 22, 1963, in Dallas. The task was made difficult by the sheer incompetence of the Dallas Police Department.  The DPD had failed to protect, the alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, who was in turn murdered by Jack Ruby, before any real investigation could be started.  The resulting turmoil and speculation, led LBJ to form the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy to investigate Kennedy’s death – which became known as the Warren Commission.  The WC concluded that Oswald had acted alone and that the Secret Service had failed to adequately protect the President.

The WC’s findings which were riddled with inconsistencies did little to stop the numerous conspiracy theories as to who was actually responsible.  The WC’s conclusion that Oswald was a “lone gunman” was disputed by many who witnessed the attack and others whose research found conflicting details in the commission’s report. To many, the assassination of JFK remains the great unsolved mystery of our time.  For his part, Red is particularly fond of the Joe DiMaggio theory.

El Papa es Contigo

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Pope Francis began his first papal visit to the U.S. today.  Sadly, Red will miss it.  But PF’s message of forgiveness, humility and service has not been lost on Red who does occasionally strive to modest improvements on those fronts.  Red further completely supports PF’s campaign to root out the corruption at the heart of the Catholic Church under the abominable reigns of Pope John Paul II and his chief henchman Pope Benedict.  But the Pope’s focus on what must be done to correct the social injustice in society has raised the ire of the right-wing bloviators.  Here is what they have to say about the world’s leading religious figure.

Rush Limbaugh  – “Pure Marxism.” 

Michael Savage – “Hand-selected by the New World Order. The same people who gave us Obama gave us this pope. “

Alex Jones – “Part of the globalist plan to destroy the world.” 

The Islamofascists are pikers by comparison. If these morons are against him, he must be doing something right.  And he likes soccer to boot.

Photo of Pope Francis with Argentine soccer legend Carlos “El Apache” Tevez from www.balls.ie.

Red’s Texas College Football Game of the Week

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This week we travel to the South Plains for an interesting matchup between the Texas Tech Red Raiders and the TCU Horned Frogs.  Tech coach Kliff Kingsbury is still looking for a signature win in his third season as head coach.  He has a prime chance on Saturday afternoon with the somewhat wounded Frogs coming to a sold-out AT&T Stadium Lubbock.  The last ranked opponent Tech beat was a rising Arizona State program in the 2013 Holiday Bowl.  Last year was a major step in the wrong direction as the Red Raiders went 4-8 and were almost shut out in the Big 12.

Is there an upset in the making?  Well Red likes both of these teams, but has picked TCU to make it to the 4 team playoff – so Red is not completely disinterested here.  Normally, Red wouldn’t bet against the Frogs, but things have not gone smoothly for the Frogs in losing some key defensive starters and Coach Gary Patterson has had distractions aplenty this week.

Tech has already improved from last season when the Red Raiders were 119th in turnover margin (minus-13) and dead last in the country in penalty yards per game (89.2).  The Red Raiders lead the Big 12 with the fewest penalty yards per game (46) and are tied for second with a plus-5 turnover margin.  The ability to put points on the board was also in doubt at times last season, but Tech is averaging a spanking 54.3 points and an astounding 590 yards per game so far against admittedly second-rate competition when compared to TCU.

On the other side of the line of scrimmage, the Horned Frogs will be playing several new defensive starters.  But  Coach Patterson has consistently put together excellent defenses and will be ready to throw the book at Tech to disrupt KK’s game plan.

Ultimately, Red thinks this game will turn on the quarterbacks. TCU quarterback Trevone Boykin is Red’s favorite to  win the Heisman Trophy.  Meanwhile, Tech seems to have finally found a signal caller after a few years in the wilderness.  Tech quarterback Patrick Mahomes actually has more passing yards than Boykin (1,029 to 985), a better completion percentage (66.4 to 65.7) and is almost even  with Boykin in yards per attempt and touchdown passes.

In the end, Red thinks that experience will out and Boykin will make the key plays in the stretch to win a game that will be a lot closer than expected.  But it will be an exciting affair, so get someone else to take the nachos out of the oven; you don’t want to miss a minute of this one.  The oddsmakers think so too as the line has dropped considerably with Tech now a 6.5 point dog at home.  Red likes Tech to cover and the over at 80.5.  TCU 45 Tech 42.

Today in Texas History – September 23

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From the Annals of Panic –  In 2005, Houston and the surrounding area was gripped in the midst of the worst traffic jam in the City’s history.  All freeways heading out of the City were turned into massive parking lots as residents fled from the oncoming Hurricane Rita.  The storm coming quick on the heels of devastating Hurricane Katrina threw officials and residents into panic mode resulting in the largest peacetime evacuation in U.S. history.  And it was mostly for naught – in Houston at least – as the storm veered eastward and came ashore south of Beaumont.  Sadly, the mishandled flight from the City killed almost as many people as Rita did. More than 100 evacuees died in the exodus. Drivers waited in traffic for 20-plus hours, and heat stroke impaired or killed dozens while 24 senior citizens were killed in a bus fire.  The evacuation exposed horrific flaws in the system and was largely mismanaged by the local governments as there was no effective plan to handle the amount of traffic generated by the call to evacuate.

Today in Texas History – September 22

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Josephine <i>Lucchese</i> Caruso

From the Annals of the Sopranos –  In 1920, soprano Josephine Lucchese Caruso of San Antonio made her operatic debut with the San Carlo Grand Opera as Olympia in Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffman at the Manhattan Grand Opera House.  Lucchese was born in San Antonio in 1893 and was the daughter of legendary bootmaker Sam Lucchese.  She trained entirely in the United States and primarily in San Antonio.  Lucchese toured in the United States and Europe for two decades giving both opera and concert performances and singing opposite such leading tenors as Tito Schipa and Giovanni Martinelli. Known in Europe as the “American Nightingale,” Lucchese was an operatic success at a time when it was considered impossible to achieve an international reputation without having first studied in Italy.

The Last Full Day of Summer

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Red’s favorite season is, without a doubt, Fall.  In much of Texas it lasts from November 1 to Christmas.   Even a month of a really good Fall is worth waiting all year long for.  The official end of summer is typically more of way station on the route to another month of summer-like weather.  But on the last day of summer, there is hope in the air that the last of the punishing heat is on the wane and that the days that make you want to live in this state are on the way.  So celebrate the Autumnal Equinox tomorrow morning at 3:22 a.m. and maybe just maybe Fall will come a little early this year.  And while we typically don’t get the spectacular Fall displays common to other parts of the U.S., Red predicts that there will be some decent Fall color in Texas this year.  We deserve it.

Photo of Lost Maples State Natural Area from Texas Parks & Wildlife.