I’m tired of the phrase, “Flip-flop”. You know, a politician could change his mind on an issue because he learned something new, and not simply to pander to the needed demographic. It’s possible, I bet. After all, if you’ve not changed your mind on an issue lately, it’s probably because you haven’t learned anything new lately. And no, NPR… By ‘learned’ I don’t mean “turned more Liberal.”

He’s finally dead. That’s what you get, Mr. Captain Crazy of the strange brigade.

Dana Vashon said something interesting on Red Eye a few weeks ago, It’s not a lack of demand, it’s a drought of good ideas, and it’s got me thinking.

Let’s understand where we are. We’re not in a recession. Recessions are a psychological condition where a people hangs onto its money due to uncertainty. In our case though, the recession has lasted too long, and we know that many of our economic loses are permanent. This is a retraction, a permanent change in size.

We’re undergoing an information and technological revolution, and many of the jobs we’ve lost have been replaced by that technology. Much of the consumer demand our economy became accustomed to was fueled by home equity and wildly available credit. But through the housing collapse we lost over $2 Trillion in home equity, which shut off the easy-credit, and that won’t change because the home equity came from a pumped-up housing market. We’re also seeing our overseas competition advancing in all areas, including technology, America’s former monopoly.

During a recession, stimulus can be effective in “shocking” the economy back by filling in the missing demand and alleviating uncertainty. But in our situation, the lost demand is permanent, that’s why stimulus has been so miserably ineffective (and the fact that it wasn’t honest stimulus). The thing we’re trying to shock awake is gone. Washington sprinkling borrowed money into our economy isn’t going to recreate those lost jobs or consumer spending. Many of the unemployed people lack the skills required by the new jobs, and many of the consumer spenders now have under-water mortgages, are paying high rent, have ruined credit, or are trying to pay down expensive debt. Stimulus won’t make those people spend.

Technically, we’ve recovered from the recession, according to growth figures. The trouble is, we’re still missing the jobs we lost. Businesses and investors both have a lot of money safely penned-up. One of the reasons they’re keeping this money safe, besides the high level of uncertainty, is the utter lack of good ideas to put that money in.

To use Dana’s example, Facebook is valued at nearly $50 billion, and what does it do? It reduces productivity… Why are people investing in Facebook? There are no better ideas worth investing in.

We need to increase tax revenue, not necessarily tax rates. The core problem is the bad economy, growing medical quality (notice I didn’t say costs), and entitlements that haven’t been adjusted for 50 years of change, including increased medical quality that has people living into their 100s and not just their 60s and 70s when SS was constructed.

Raising tax rates won’t fix any of this, and any intellectually honest person with even the slightest understanding of economics will agree that raising tax rates right now could easily decrease revenue, and make the problems worse. Just because the last few harvests have been poor doesn’t mean we should fall to the temptation of selling the tractor… We’re undergoing some serious economic change and we need our “rich” to invent the new economy before our rivals do and we end up behind or buried.

I watched Charlie Rose yesterday. He had a political analyst on there who said something I’ve heard multiple times since the speech, on NPR and FOX, which makes a lot of sense. Basically, according to the commentator(s), Obama’s strategy – political strategy – was to wait for the Republicans to come out with their radical Teapartyish budget reform plan, let it scare everyone into pooping their pants, then appear on TV with a 45 minute speech doing his election-2008 shtick, criticizing all the easy targets of the Republican plan and offering an “alternative” in the form of inspiring moderate ambiguous intangible rhetoric.

But the strategy sort of failed. People didn’t poop their pants after hearing Paul Ryan’s plan. Instead, people praised Ryan – including The Economists magazine – for finally offering some seriously needed reforms. The only partially scary sounding part of the plan is turning Medicare into the type of insurance buying system that Congress gets. Democrats are running around trying to hype it up, calling it a ‘voucher’ plan – which it isn’t. It’s a copy of the prescription drug plan, which works well. Instead of having a monstrous government agency controlling the prescription drug benefits, Medicare recipients have a choice between several private companies. You just check a box. If you want to change you can. The different companies all have to fight over you. Payments to these companies come directly from the government, no vouchers.

And people all this time have been wondering where the hell the President has been. We’ve got serious problems, people are worried about the debt and the future, one guy has produced a plan, but all Obama has done is criticize that plan without offering a solution of his own. People don’t like that. This is lack of leadership. This is indeed political pooplery.

Did anyone catch Obama’s Libya speech? I just watched it. He spent the first third tidying up on political points. Then he made his single valid point – that allowing Gadhafi to regain control of the country with outright military force against the citizens would have prescribed to all the other dictators losing power what to do.

Then he made a bogus comparison between this non-war-war-making and the invasion of Iraq, in an attempt to show that this is different from Iraq, specifically because the goal of the Iraq invasion was (naughty word) regiem change. Bill O’Reilly agreed with him on that point. I think they’re both full of shit…

The problem with the Iraq invasion wasn’t the goal of regime change, or the actual change. It was that the goal was reach far easier than we expected and were ready for. The damn country collapsed in on itself and insurgents pored in from every America-hatting hole in the world. From there fear and complacency came over the Iraqi people, waiting for the US to fix it.

Libya is a totally different situation. The Libyan people are a different kind of people. They formed an army out of their neighborhoods – and without social networking. FFS, the rebels have already set up a new national bank and are trying to sell oil from fields they recently captured. WTF?!?!? How smooth would Iraq have gone if a couple a couple dozen of these guys lived there??? They sure can’t fight for shit, and shoot way too much ammo into the air – but they’re industrious.

Like I said, we should have let the Enterprise savage Gadhafi’s aircraft that first day when he unleashed them on the rebels. Without Gadhafi’s fire power, the rebel’s momentum would have continued, and anyone sane would have dropped loyalty to Moe Crazy.

Of course that was never a possibility. We can’t have anything that politically looks like our unilateral Iraq expedition. But if the goal of all this business doesn’t include regime change, I don’t know what the hell is going on, and I doubt the sanity and/or honesty of everyone involved. What scenario worth our military intervention could possibly include Gadhafi still ruling Libya???

Oh shit, I’ve got to change a fuse in the bull-shit detector again…

Afghanistan isn’t limiting our capability to level NK. We don’t need more troops. We’ve got a lot there now and the South Koreans are a serious group with an highly professional and dedicated army. And this time – well, one would assume – we won’t have to worry about 1/2 million screaming Communist Chinese suddenly pouring over the border.

We will have to worry about China bitching about the droves of refugees fleeing NK when that thread breaks holding society together.

But the main thing is taking out those some-thousand artillery batteries pointing at Soul. After that, you’re talking about air superiority within hours over a battle field decades behind in technology. After that, it’s hard to predict what they’ll do with their one effective weapon: Infantry. Regardless, it won’t be much unless SK sends forces miles over the border. That country suffers from mass-hysteria, so I wouldn’t recommend it.

Oh yeah, Crazy Kim might shoot a missile into the ocean…

After that the military would be in control for sure.

When Kim croaks, his son will take over, and it’s safe to say, that little kid might as well be from outer space. If the boy doesn’t take over, or even if he does, the military will take over. Some think the military is already in control, and that explains the weird spontaneous attacks we’ve seen this past year.

That whole society will need deprogramers, the kind cult members need.

You know things are getting bad out there when James Carville and other prominent hard core libs/dems are turning on their beloved Obama. It’s quite an implosion we’re witnessing. It’s shocking how fast the dems went from fab to drab. And drab is stating it kindly. To see republicans and conservatives winning in long held liberal states is monumental. the people are speaking, and doing so with vigor. The next elections will be very interesting, especially after having seen the results of the recent primaries.

The oil spill has really taken Obama by surprise it seems. Things have gone from bad to worse for this guy, health care, cap and trade, immigration, and now the spill. These crises are really showing him to be completely incompetent. His age and inexperience are shinning through like a spotlight. The more this spill expands, figuratively and literally, the more Obama really does seem to lack the slightest dam clue as to what he is doing. He’s waning from one opinion to another trying to stay political ground. When the media turns on him saying he isn’t passionate enough, he starts cursing in a really awkward attempt to look enraged. And he gets hammered by the same back stabbing media.

“We’re dying down here!” exclaims Carville to the nation on TV. Obama must have been cursing at the screen at that moment. If only he could have redirected the certain rage he must have felt toward Carville at the actual oil spill, he would have looked very concerned, like his media wanted. I never thought I’d see the day when Carville was calling out his guy so prominently and with such abandon.

Perhaps our government system really does work. The people are so outraged with Obama’s nation killing policies and welfare programs that he’s actually forcing his own political demise. People are speaking with decisive action at the poles. He will likely be a one term president, which is still evidently long enough for him to do some serious and long lasting damage to our economy, laws, policies, industry, and general way of life. Now we know what happens when an ideological and inexperienced adolescent is allowed to run the country. It really seems to come down to this, the difference between an idealist and a realist.

We have a professor running the country. Which if we all needed to learn something, would be great. But we need a professor who has lived, worked, and run in the real world. And not the sleezy Chicago political world. Obama seems to embody all the most inadequate qualities for running a country, which is clearly showing now. Like cracks in a brand new road made with an inferior cement mix. We need a Roman road president, who’s experience and character have a deep and solid foundation. Politics as usual would even be an upgrade from Where Obama has taken us. After all these blatant back room deals, failed policies, platitudes, etc, it makes you want to scream and gives you a sense of real helplessness with regard to what is going on in washington. Obama has redefined politics as usual, setting a completely new standard for the depravity of politics. Obama politics as usual makes Clinton politics look like girl scout cookies. This is a bold new standard and total hypocrisy we are witnessing. Obama’s promises on the campaign trail got left on the trail, replaced by a Grinch smirk. When voters go to the poles, it will be interesting to see if the pendulum will swing back center or far right. With the extent to which Obama has poisoned the political landscape for all politicians, it will likely swing hard right, bringing who knows what. We’ll either see balance or something new we’ve never seen before, perhaps. For now, we just need to get the bull out of the china shop while there is still a few good dishes left.

Why? Because a resolution in this sense are goals, or steps required to achieve a goal. Only losers would do something this necessary for success only once a year. 

Take weight lose as an example. It’s probably the most common, along with quitting smoking and ‘reducing’ drinking. Listen – if you want to lose weight you have to change you lifestyle – you have to change the way you behave. This isn’t a goal. This is just something you do. It’s easy. First: stop buying garbage at the grocery store. Second: stop eating fast food at work and sipping syrup all day. Third: Find a way to require exercise of yourself on a daily basis – take the stairs at work, park far away from the front door, hop on the elliptical while you catch the news.

Many self help books will tell you the following in a much fancier and more enlightening sounding way, but I’m not here to make you feel good about buying a $20 self help book so I’ll give it to you simple. People who succeed at things do so because they follow – or at least try to follow – a detailed plan. Is there something you want? Cool. Figure out exactly what you need to do to get it, break those requirements down into tasks, and make sure you complete those tasks according to a schedule.

And here’s the big secret: Your plan isn’t going to work. If you do succeed it will be because you learned more about your goal along the way – following your plan – and revised your plan to improve or fix it. You never know what’s going to happen. You might think you want a certain position at your company – so you make it a goal and develop a plan. Maybe that plan requires some additional training? And maybe that training teaches you that you’d hate that position? Your plan failed miserably – but – you’re one giant step closer to success – which is getting a position that you actually will love as much as you thought you’d love the initial one. Get it?

Or maybe you want to work in a certain field, so you start training for it – perhaps learning technology ‘A’. And as you start to get a handle on technology ‘A’, you slowly start to realize that technology ‘A’ is becoming obsolete and you need to instead learn technology ‘B’. Now, the six months of spending your two hours after dinner and before bed studying technology ‘A’ might seem a waste, part of a failed plan. It’s not though. Now you know what you need to know. And believe me, when it comes to technology understanding what you need to know is half the damn battle.

Just don’t get horribly ill because that screws everything up.

Fireworks Brushes by Obsidian Dawn