Blame Obama

The company I work for has just about 100 employees. Or it did until last week, when just over one-in-ten of them were shown the door.

Fortunately I survived the layoff. Two people on my hall didn’t. Two more people I worked with pretty much every day are gone as well.

Marketing agencies often grow and shrink with the economy, but this time I didn’t see the layoffs coming. Neither did most of the people that got the axe. Work had been slowing down, but we hadn’t experienced the sudden, major downturn that usually precedes a layoff. It’s just that things kept slowing and slowing until it all added up.

Apparently the bosses had been holding off on things until after Christmas… both to spare people until after the holidays and hoping against hope that things might suddenly turn around in time. No such luck.

The layoff happened on Obama’s watch, so it’s Obama’s fault. Or at least statistically speaking it counts against him.

Oddly enough, I’m not sure I’ve ever been so busy at work. It’s not because I’m picking up work from the people who are gone, but just because my clients happen to be particularly active right now. That’s the main reason I’ve been unable to post anything on the Planet lately. Never a spare second when I’m at my desk.

Just when I finally build up a regular audience larger than the number of people I can guess the names of, that’s when I suddenly go a week and a half without an update. I hope all those would-be readers find their way back here.

Wanted: Serious Policy Discussion

What’s the difference between the big left-wing blogs (netroots) and the big right-wing blogs (rightroots)? I read a fair amount of right-wing blogs, and I think these three sentences from Salon’s former blog editor pretty much hit the nail right on the head:

Erick Erickson, RedState's editor, acknowledged that the "netroots" have an advantage over the "rightroots," but attributed it to an asymmetry in free time, since conservatives "have families because we don't abort our kids, and we have jobs because we believe in capitalism."

This is largely the kind of thinking that dominates on conservative blogs. They can't quite get to policy disputes or serious analysis, because they're too busy mulling over the implications of liberals joining forces with Islamofascists, the United Nations, and Mexican immigrants to execute some kind of nefarious plot.

Or is there a good, wonk-ish, right-wing blog I just haven’t come across yet?