In the video, Obama and Biden bemoan, “We arrived in ’09 on a rainbow of hope, but 2010 blew it all up in smoke” and “Oh 2010, we can’t wait for you to jet like that guy from JetBlue.”

The video is also a departure from JibJab’s trademark dancing cut-out faces style, dating back to its first hit, “This Land.”

Chris Cox, Facebook’s 28-year-old vice president of product, manages the teams of programmers and designers behind last week’s unveiling of the social network’s newest feature–the ability to sort small groups of friends–as well as other recent additions like check-ins at real-world places.

In a company filled with often reclusive programmers, Mr. Cox is an extrovert who plays in a reggae band. His top job is deepening Facebook’s role in the lives of its users while toeing the line on privacy concerns by making the site hew to real-world social norms.
A Stanford-trained software engineer who joined Facebook in 2005 after dropping out of a graduate-degree program, he takes a social approach to designing products. Humans, not computer formulas, Mr. Cox insists, can make Facebook and the Internet more useful.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

“I don’t think John McCain could run a major corporation. I don’t think Barack Obama could run a major corporation. I don’t think Joe Biden could, either. But it is not the same as being the president or vice president of the United States. It is a fallacy to suggest that the country is like a company. To run a business, you have to have a lifetime of experience in business, but that’s not what Sarah Palin, John McCain, Barack Obama or Joe Biden are doing.”

– Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina

Her dreams of heading up the World Bank dashed, former Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) CEO Carly Fiorina, the architect of one of the worst tech mergers in history, has turned her attention to the U.S. Senate.

After months of speculation, Fiorina officially announced her candidacy today. She’ll run as a Republican against Sen. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.). Of course, to do that, she must first win the Republican primary. Fiorina broke the news in an op-ed in the Orange County Register.

“Admittedly, I have not always been engaged in the electoral process, and I should have been,” she wrote. “For many years I felt disconnected from the decisions made in Washington and, to be honest, really didn’t think my vote mattered because I didn’t have a direct line of sight from my vote to a result. I realize that thinking was wrong.”

Reflecting on her personal history, Fiorina continues: “As I grew throughout my career, beginning as a secretary and eventually becoming a CEO, I saw how government impacted business. I learned more as a member of advisory boards at the State Department, the Pentagon and the CIA. I now understand, in a very real way, that the decisions made by the Senate impact every family and every business, of any size, in America. This is what motivates me to run for the U.S. Senate. And so today I am announcing my candidacy to serve the people of California as your next U.S. senator….Together we can turn things around.”

Together we can turn things around? Not if Fiorina’s performance at HP is any indication. Before she was forced out of the company by its board of directors, she was so at odds with the uniquely Californian “HP Way” that her corner office could have been powered solely by Bill Hewlett spinning in his grave.

UPDATE: Here’s another Fiorina op-ed from earlier this year in which she discusses executive pay. Unsurprisingly, she is against President Obama’s efforts to restore “common sense” to CEO compensation. And why wouldn’t she be? After all, she walked away from HP with a $21 million severance package.

UPDATE: For those of you just joining us over at CNet, the headline is a joke referring to HP’s ill-starred merger with Compaq.

Ironic, yeah?

It’s not certain why WSGR prepared the presentation, but the document obviously applies to the close ties between Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) and, if nothing else, offers insight into the “interlocking directorates” provision of the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 and just why the FTC might be concerned that the companies may be in violation of antitrust law by sharing four board members and advisers between them: Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Genentech (DNA) CEO Art Levinson, Intuit (INTU) chairman Bill Campbell and former vice president Al Gore.

According to the WSGR presentation, the Clayton Act stipulates that a person cannot serve as director or officer of two or more competing companies when the two are engaged in U.S. or foreign competition; each has $25,319,000 in aggregate capital, surplus, and undivided profits; and at least one has two percent in overlapping sales (note: while that $25 million figure was correct at the time the deck was prepared, it has since risen to $26,161,000). Now, Apple and Google clearly both meet the “aggregate capital, surplus, and undivided profits” condition. They probably don’t meet the second, but it’s conceivable that they might in the future as Google’s Android platform rises to challenge Apple’s iPhone in the mobile phone software and services market.

And if and when they should? Well, that leads to what WSGR describes as “occasion of sin”– a theological term that refers to circumstances that by their very nature lead to sin.

In other words, inevitable sin. And competition between the two companies is no absolution, either. As the presentation explains, there is “no safe harbor for de minimus competition.” Given the obvious overlaps between Google and Apple–between both products and directors–the two companies would seem to be heading for some sort of confrontation with the FTC. Especially if, as sources say, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has no intention of resigning from Apple’s board–even in the face of increasing government scrutiny of the company.

UPDATE: WSGR tells me the document was prepared for an internal training session. It had no explanation for why the firm published it on the Web.

UPDATE: As Danny Sullivan notes in the comments, Google has removed the cached version of the document — rather expeditiously. However, there’s still a cached version available over at Microsoft.

Clayton Act Section 8 Interlocking Directorates – Free Legal Forms

If you are feeling bad about the tech stock meltdown yesterday, this spoof–the second hysterical one from the comedy television show–video by Tina Fey as Alaska Governor and Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin will make you feel much better.

I am only a millimeter away from writing in “Fey for President” on my ballot for this perfect impression, although Amy Poehler’s take as the pompous Katie Couric of CBS is Fey’s perfect foil (as she was when playing Sen. Hillary Clinton the week before).

The best line was actually from Poehler: “It seems to me that when cornered, you become increasingly adorable. Is that fair to say?”

It’s fair to say this pair does, without crossing the line to rank meanness like a lot of political satire.

Here’s the video:

Next to go are VP of Media Engineering Bharath Kadaba and the higher profile Rachel Glaser, a senior vice president of operations finance. (Both are pictured here.)

It is not clear when either will leave, although a Yahoo spokesperson said Glaser would indeed be leaving “in [20]08.” Sources said that would likely be sooner than later.

Was it Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang in the conference room with a knife? Or was it President Sue Decker in the cafeteria with a rope?

Whoever it was and for a variety of reasons (some jumping, some being pushed), there have been yet another passel of high-level executive departures of late–such as Vice President and Editor in Chief of Yahoo News, Finance and Sports Neil Budde, Marketing VP David Riemer and VP Jennifer Dulski, who headed shopping, travel, autos, real estate and local.

“They’re not saying it explicitly, but there just have been too many chiefs and not enough Indians,” said one person close to Yahoo. “This is a continuing acknowledgment of that by this effort at streamlining the executive ranks.”

That also includes not replacing execs, such as marketing chief Cammie Dunaway, who left in October, as well as reorging divisions to cut top management, such as the ouster of Vince Broady recently in the media unit.

This slimming down is a good idea, given Yahoo’s VP obesity.

Back in September, when we reported on a senior management meeting in a post called “The Attack of the Yahoo Vice Presidents,” we noted that there were about 300 VPs and several dozen senior VPs, as well as the clutch of tippy-top execs.

Yahoo is well known in Silicon Valley for having a VP-heavy culture, so we noted that the meeting would be pretty uneventful for its sheer size alone:

“So as much as I would love it if Yang gathered all the VPs in a room, split them into two tribes and declared that Yahoo’s new plan for reinvigorating itself was to conduct a corporate version of ‘Survivor,’ let us all level set our expectations.”

Well, it still has not come to that yet–drat!.

But such shedding of top execs might assuage the common complaint of Yahoo execs at all levels about the inability to launch products and services easily and to make quick decisions without fear of getting a chorus of nos from on high.

Some lovely breakfast pastries. Blah, blah, blah, better corporate culture! A doubtlessly tasty lunch. More blah, blah, blah, more content and ad coordination! Some yummy afternoon snacks. Blah, blah, blah, we really appreciate your efforts and goodbye!

Other than that: A whole lot of nothing.

First off, let’s set the record straight about this “confidential meeting” of Yahoo’s leadership team–meaning everyone with a vice president or higher in their title. I am not sure exactly how sneaky CEO Jerry Yang and President Sue Decker can be when that means about 300 VPs and several dozen senior VPs, as well as the clutch of tippy-top execs.

Yahoo is a VP-heavy culture and so it is likely the event will be pretty packed, but also pretty dull. In fact, corporations have these kind of gatherings all the time, which are usually about as spontaneous as a presidential debate. Wait, make that a vice presidential debate.

Wait, both of those are less scripted and more exciting than this meeting will be.

“I want to figure out a way to sneak out,” said one VP to me about it, sick as this exec is of Yahoo’s meeting-centric culture.

So as much as I would love it if Yang gathered all the VPs in a room, split them into two tribes and declared that Yahoo’s new plan for reinvigorating itself was to conduct a corporate version of “Survivor,” let us all level set our expectations.

(Although it would be a lot of fun to watch wily Brad Garlinghouse vs. energetic Jeff Weiner in a reward challenge to see who could, as on a Vanuatu episode, “deliver coconut juice from the starting line through a series of obstacles and finally into a glass jar.”)

But this is Yahoo, after all, which so far in Yang’s 100-day No-Sacred-Cow Vision Quest–he told investors on July 17 that he was going to take that long to refurb Yahoo with all company bovines at risk of death–has been less than gripping (even though BoomTown has been following it all as if it were the first season of “Heroes” and saucy cheerleader Claire Bennet’s in danger again from that creepy Sylar!!!)

Sure, there have been some nice baby steps, like axing some minor crappy products (such as yesterday’s dumping of its moribund podcast offering). And some of the acquisitions have been pretty good, like BlueLithium and Zimbra, although none are the kind of game changers needed to really get things going.

In fact, while Time Warner execs are busy torching AOL’s HQ in Dulles, Va., laying off scads of people and pretty much decimating the service to become a glorified ad network (now that’s certainly cheeky of CEO Randy Falco!) and while Facebook is hard at work trying to ransack Bill Gates’s wallet and while widget companies are Hoovering up audiences with their zombies and superpokes, Yahoo feels preternaturally calm.

Well, about as calm as you can be living in the eye of the hurricane, I guess, which is why it is probably a good idea to gather the troops at HQ and give them a more meaty idea of direction, given all the unrest and uncertainty of late.

But there’ll be no sudden announcement of cuts in, say its Santa Monica, Calif., office, which has often been rumored. (Anyway, why do that when most of those properties, save its premium music service, are doing OK?)

Indeed, Entertainment and Video head Vince Broady’s blog post about better integration of its entertainment properties today practically screamed: You’ll have to do a beach invasion to unseat us from our cushy Colorado Center offices!

That post said a whole lot of nothing too, although it was breathtaking in its mastery of Web 2.0-speak: “We’ll be investing in the development of next-gen media platforms, applications and services, creating cool new opportunities for third-party publishers and media companies while also harnessing the power of social media and user-generated content.”

I have absolutely no idea what that means, but sign me up!

As to its also rumored Project Apex, which Valleywag wrote about yesterday and which will be discussed today, too–that’s about three months old already and simply a renewed push to coordinate ads and content to compete better with Google’s similar services. Another good idea, but it’s just another obvious fix that needs to be made.

So what else? Probably the most important part of tomorrow’s gathering will be to give Yahoo’s culture a kick in the pants.

I cannot tell you how many Yahoo execs at all levels complain about the inability to launch products and services easily, to make decisions without fear of getting a no from on high, to take the kind of crazy risks needed to succeed (and sometimes fail, which can also be a good thing).

There’s an old bromide that it’s always better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

So maybe the best takeaway that herd of Yahoo VPs will get from their bosses is simple: Success means always having to say you’re sorry.