I’ve been busy trying to troubleshoot one of the devices that keeps me partially off the grid. I figure it’s a good idea until the administration makes doing for yourself illegal, too.
Good week for the Dow so far. Back to the lows of Inauguration day.
Well, Sonia Sotomayor (or So-So, as I like to call her) is quite the celebrity this week, unlike the 32 Czars that try to stay out of the limelight. The Car Czar had to be replaced due to a criminal investigation. Yes, the man Jackass appointed to be the smartest businessman in all the world was so good he learned the only way to make money is illegally. I wonder how So-So would decide that case.
We haven’t gotten it right.
A century ago, a number of political philosophers saw the suffering of the population at the hands of the rich and the powerful. They saw violent revolution followed by a system of equality. We now call that communism.
Instead of being a solution, it became a whole new way of spreading misery. The rich and the powerful were replaced by the powerful and the favored. The government had the control and those who manipulated it reaped the rewards. Again, the population suffered with no hope of improvement and a failing economy.
Even now, countries around the world struggle with the balance of public vs. private institutions. What yields the best financial results? What gives people the most opportunity? What creates the greatest public good? The fact is, no one really knows.
This is the frightening aspect of global justice. Many world powers are trying to join or lead large governmental bodies. Eventually, some people want a global law that everyone has to follow. How do we know that law is the most just? Does a simple majority decide it? Or will the powerful write the laws to keep them in power?
The test of a good country is where the people go when the walls come down. Do they run out or run in? In the US, people have mostly run in. That pace is slowing now. The rich and the powerful in this democracy have written the laws to help themselves. Now, they find the global community a good place to spread their influence. If we get this wrong, how do you leave a planet with one failed world government?
I was going to phone this one in today anyway, but I think it’s a good time to post this link from The Real Barack Obama blog about how a new Czar may move to take out the internet critics of President Jackass.
http://therealbarackobama.wordpress.com/2009/07/12/regulatory-czar-wants-bloggers-to-just-shut-up/
Is this the third Bush term?
I see this knee-jerk reaction a lot from Democrats who are disgruntled with Jackass. They complain about the Democratic party and their legislation. Some claim that both parties are corrupt and all the bums should go. Then I see phrases like the third Bush term.
Well, this is the third Clinton term to me. The ignorance of terror, the secret health care meetings, the tax the rich solution to everything all bring to mind Bubba. But he’s not the president. Neither is Bush. Get over it.
Bush derangement led to the lukewarm McCain reception. Bitter partisanism made hollow messages about post-partisanship more attractive. By the same token, Clinton hatred made Hillary less desirable compared to a blank slate.
Let’s deal with the situation at hand. A jackass is in the White House. The inmates are running Congress. Only a small percentage more Republicans are better than Democrats. If an incumbent Republican is up against a Democrat, I’m voting for the Republican. I just hope I don’t have to make that choice next year. But I’m not going to fight old battles with people who are already out of office.
So much for post-racialism. A contry club in Pennsylvania is being accused of kicking out a group of children from a pool when their racial makeup was noticed by the members. Now, complaints are running through the community.
I blame the kids. They’ve been taught that white people don’t like them and are hypersensitive to the discomfort of parents who wonder why a group of non-members are in their pool. It’s up to them to be the outstanding citizens who sympathize with the people who have had their life interrupted.
That sounded pretty stupid, huh? If someone is doing wrong, they are doing wrong. Understanding isn’t going to do a damn thing to help unreasonable idiots. Still, we take that attitude toward terrorists and the communist countries that seek to end our way of life.
At the recent G8 meeting, China and India still refused to reduce carbon emissions even though the United States plans to do so. US non-compliance is the reason they gave last year for doing nothing. The path to US compliance will be to push more and more manufacturing overseas. The carbon will still be emitted, but our balance sheet will look good. Just ignore that plastic now being made with Iranian oil.
Caving in seems like an easy way to cool down tensions. Jackass goes on an apology tour to make himself look gracious. Instead, it makes the rest of us look like bastards. The US didn’t go after the Taliban when they blew up 2000 year old Tibetan statues or subjugated their female population. They knocked down the World Trade Center anyway. Maybe we should fight for our human rights along with everyone else’s instead of getting out of the pool and going home in defeat.
According to Jackass, big business is too big. People with big bank accounts have too much. People who are too heavy are too big for society. So why doesn’t he feel the same way about government?
It’s the health nut philosophy. Fat people are unattractive so the obvious solution is to trim the fat. If you’re too big, you’ll fail. All kinds of things are going on inside you that you can’t control. Never mind that health nuts spend all kinds of money trying to stave off their inevitable death. They don’t notice that they are miserable regimenting their lives out of fear.
And yet, that doesn’t apply to the body politic for the Health Nazi in Chief. The government is supposedly efficient with money, even though many government programs exist because the private sector alternatives were too efficiently stingy with money. The reason people love government programs is because of their ability to become bloated, indiscriminate money distribution machines.
Too big to fail is a misnomer in business. It’s like terrorism or mutually assured destruction. It’s an idea that is hardly imagined. If it does happen, destruction follows. The only barrier that keeps it away is fear. Any business can fail and a big one can take down a government trying to fund its demise.
The free market is a grand experiment, but there are limitations. When I learned about NGOs, organizations as powerful as entire nations, a little bit of nationalist pride died inside. The primary threat to capitalism is communism. A business with enough market share is effectively communism. Frankly, any business large enough is.
The government should be dealing with bite-sized pieces. Smaller government is part of it. The other part is denying the kind of mega-mergers that turn businesses into international powers and good old fashioned trust busting.
So, Mr. Jackass, you keep smoking those cigarettes and let those free radicals roam around while you bitch about super sizing. And keep blaming the rich while the US government accumulates more debt than all the business profits in this country combined. Don’t worry about those falling approval numbers, you’re too big in the eyes of the media to fail.
I’m better than you.
Call it the anti-Franken. I don’t care if I’m good enough, smart enough, or that people like me. I just have to be better than my opponent. Believe me, that’s not a high bar.
If you look at society as a mathematical model, you don’t worry so much about the peaks and valleys. Now we could have a devastating nuclear conflict or a global pandemic, but even then, 7 billion people makes for a global population that’s hard to dispense with.
Conspiracy theories always boil down to the incredible genius at the heart of the scheme. Now, if the architect is Satan and a plot of pure evil, he might have the smarts to pull it off. Regular human beings I don’t think so much of.
If you ask the smartest people in the world how to solve the world’s problems you’ll get more divergent answers than if you ask a collection of average people. Smart people’s biases are amplified by their intelligence. Politician’s biases are amplified by power. Shakespeare’s genius was his common sense. Power corrupts.
This Jackass is screwing up the country’s finances somethign awful. Carter screwed up the economy, but Reagan was able to fix 4 years of destruction in another 4 years. Government programs are hard to kill, but not impossible. Europe is beating back socialism. Chinese communism is being supplanted by cheaper, leaner capitalist Asian countries. The Tea Party movement is fighting back against all-inclusive government. It’s not morning in America, but dawn may be coming.
Global trends don’t require much intelligence. There may be more mob mentality involved in crap like pandemics and global warming carbon taxing than planning. But there are the people getting rich from global trends. I’m going to cover that this week. Stay tuned.
Within the next 3-4 months, we will see the shape of politics for 2010. The parties will field candidates for everything from state representatives to US Congressmen. Likely, the Republicans will try to compete in every spot. The question is, who else will run?
This is the point at which any PUMA Democrats, Tea Party protesters or throw the bums out proponents will need to enter the fray. The traditional political junkie in me says the unified Democrats will blow away two candidates who would split the anti-Democrat vote, a la Ross Perot. At this point, I’d like to be proven wrong.
Public sentiment will determine the future of American politics. Are the citizens ready to be citizen politicians or are we destined to see the political class as somehow different from we are? Will we take ownership of our own government?
I might have had my Palin moment.
I was listening to people on the radio either insult the Republican political field, question Sarah Palin’s motives or generally try to spin President Jackass’ incompetence into brilliance. Usually, I know how to spin the argument the other way, but I felt the argument shifting. We really are at the point where the administration and the Congress are on the defensive.
Now, they are certainly not on the run. They have the numbers, they have the agenda. Approval numbers are still okay, but not the spectacular levels touted early on. What they do have is ownership. When the economy is criticized and the massive spending of the stimulus are questioned, there are three stages of defense. First, there’s denial. This is known as the imperceptible “green shoots” which are lacking in lagging indicators like employment or leading indicators like the stock market. The next is empty promises. The stimulus will “reach” the economy any day now or maybe another one can be passed. Finally, there is blame. They had no idea how Bush planted economic time bombs that will reverberate for months or years to come. Regardless of the excuse, they own it now.
The good news is that it’s indefensible. Don’t fight with a pig. You both get dirty and the pig enjoys it. People have eyes. They see their flat 401Ks. They see their jobless friends or they have their own pink slips. Prices on food and gas are rising and the malaise is setting in. The time has come for the positive message, the message that says the current government is irreleant and not worth debating.
Governor Palin had that moment. Being the governor was putting her on the defensive, literally. Democrats and sellout Republicans were wasting the state’s money launching investigations that led nowhere. Even though few politicians voluntarily resign office, the ones who are damaged most are the ones who try to hold onto it. Look at Arlen Specter. Sometimes the way to win is to pick another arena.
