The key is to put a serious Republican presidential candidate up in 2012. We need someone who is an actual Conservative AND who will appeal to the Independents – not one or the other. He/she needs to be conservative enough to rally the base, and have a strong and reasonable enough temperament to appeal to reasonable people.

Like I’m always telling people during conversations about this: There’s no hope in hell for an actual centrist to make it all the way up our political system. It was starkly apparent to anyone interested in finding out, that Obama was one of the most Liberal people in Congress. The Left loved him! “The One,” they called him.

But Obama also successfully sold himself as a Centrist to the Independents: We will have the debates on CSPAN. When we disagree, that’s when I will listen most closely to you. We have more in common than we don’t.

It’s hard to predict how formidable of an incumbent Obama will be in 2012. If he pulls a Clinton and moves to the middle, he’ll have Hope. But if you ask me, Obama’s no Clinton. When it comes down to it, Obama is an image, an phenomenal image that’s lost its phenom. There’s not a whole lot to the actual man, little character. He can read a teleprompter like it’s not there. He’s great at saying one thing in a way that three different people wanting to hear three different things each hear what they want to hear. He’s a great campaigner. I’m sure he was a great community organizer. And I bet he would make a great party leader.

But he’s not a good President. He’s not as interested in leading the country as he is in changing it – defeating his political enemies – and so on. Amidst a serious recession he leads the Democrats on an aggressive campaign to grow government (cap’n trade, health care reform, stimulus) vilifying any opponents and claiming horrible consequences as the alternative… Foolish Liberal knee-jerk responses… Cheap baseless political attacks… Dishonest descriptions of the opposition arguments… Dishonest math… Fundamental misunderstanding of leverage and negotiation… Blatant violator of logic… War against FOX… Calling out citizens who speak… making fun of citizens… Reconciliation…

It’s been a constant campaign. Obama was all-consumed with get’n while the get’n was good. But now that it’s not – I’ve got a little optimism sparkling inside me, wondering if we might see Obama transform into an actual leader, an actual problem solver, the guy in his book. Not a jerk selling us ill conceived garbage as a solution.

*sigh*

I’m exasperated by our current events. Obama… Yeah… He did another talk. He said a bunch of things he and his team determined would garner him support, based on their analysis. “I’m sticking a moratorium on offshore oil.”

Why? Because offshore oil is in the news and people are angry at it? No. Apparently we want to find out if there’s like – trouble – or something, with drilling.

I’ve been tempted to make the argument against a moratorium. You know, point out the chances of another exploding rig, the magnitude of difference between the cost of this spill and the much greater cost of the moratorium, the fact we’ll replace the offshore oil with imported oil, and the fact that the gulf coast economy is half fishing/tourism and half offshore oil. And don’t forget we NEED oil. A reality with 200 million electric cars running on wind-generated electricity is a little ways off, and we can’t get there without oil.

Obama tried telling us he’s got things under control – he’s doing the right stuff – everything’s being done right now. Yeah, Obama is like the flight attendant on Die Hard 2 who tells McClain’s wife they have plenty of fuel, but an hour later the pilots are attempting a desperate night landing on a terrorist controlled runway with no lights in the middle of the night during a blizzard without ground clearance.

And Obama is using the crisis as a stick to hit his opposition to the cap and trade bill. Not the best tactic if you ask me. To anyone directly affected by the disaster, it will seem cheap – a politician tapping us for political capital. To people already apposed to tricky taxes on energy, it will also look cheap. The only people buying the idea that an oil leak is a reason to tax carbon are the people already wanting to tax carbon.

- All this without talking about stopping the leak. All he said was that BP would be recovering up to 90% of the oil gushing out – soon. Up to? Seriously? Is this an ad for a weight loss program???

If I had to describe the address in a tweet, it would be thus: Obama trying to talk himself out of trouble.

As for Obama’s support regardless of the address, this one is just another bean for sorting. The same Democrats who were blaming anything and everything on Bush – and are still – are now defending Obama with the simple logic that eluded them so throughout most of this decade. And the same Republicans who were defending Bush are now content to let Obama drown in the sea of ignorant public perception, finding it a just irony.

Scott Brown elected Massachusetts State Senator

Do you think a woman who had posed nude could ever achieve national political office?

Disaster in Haiti

The only hope long term for Haiti is a deadly disease that only affects jerks. That’s the only hope for a lot of developing nations criminally ruled by jerks. The CIA got close with AIDS, but they didn’t realize back then that butt-sex and being a jerk were not mutually inclusive. Ah well, dreams for the next conservative administration.

‘We are the world’ Haiti relief recording session begins

These people need to be stopped. Send your money to Red Cross.

State of the Union address

I don’t know why people take Obama’s speeches to seriously. I mean, they were never meant to be taken literally. His message is one of hope and change. We can all learn valuable lessons from his speeches but – lol – you can’t apply those ideas directly to policy – that was never the intended purpose of his message.

Toyota Recall

Yeah! Another fat-cat scapegoat! Yeah, let’s get’m! Whoohoo!

Obama getting tough on China for trade agreement infractions

I’m getting tough on my credit cards too. I’m taking a different approach though. I’m paying off the debt – or at least trying.

Underpants bomber now talking, encouraged by parents

Wow Obama administration! Way to go getting the kid to ignore his lawyer’s advice. If only all terrorists had responsible parents. And thanks for telling us about it too. Now all of America knows how great of a job you’re doing protecting us. Hey, so have you gone ahead and put Al Qaeda on the list to receive your FUCKING news letter yet?

Sarah Palin to receive $100k speaking fee for Tea Party Convention

Only a Liberal would find this controversial. She’s a Conservative from Alaska. What do you think she’s going to do with the cash? Buy something with it? You give those people a rifle and a pair of boots – a few years later they’ve got a city with a shipping port. Watch, she’ll invest in some unknown little jackass somewhere and turn another baby-blue state red. Astroturf my ass… U-S-A U-S-A U-S-A

Healthcare reform bill stalled

Ok guys, I get it. You got caught up in all the inaugural excitement. We elected Obama assuming “change” meant a thoughtful approach, but you thought we gave you a mandate to turn the country on its keel. So you went after you’re dreams: single payer, sky-rocketing business costs, and reduced carbon output. I can’t blame anyone for going after their dreams. And hey, at least you go that juicy stimulus!

But those darn Democrats, they got in your way. Single payer was compromised into single payer under a different name – then into a public option. Then even that was compromised – first into some fancy long winded name coined by Pelosi that essentially meant public option, and finally, a year later, into nothing more than a list new regulations – more similar to the Republican alternative to Hillary Care than the brilliant progressive stride we were all assuming would slide through. (Eh, regardless of the naïve math and unfunded state Medicaid mandates) And to add insult to injury, you have to buy some of those Dem votes too.

And darn-it – you could have passed it. Hell, you could have passed a bill covering sea lions FFS. I know you’d like to blame the Republicans, but shit man – you knew you had all the power and that’s how you wrote the bill. No Republican could have voted for that thing any more than you guys could all climb on board with invading Iraq! Or – wait. You got tricked on that one – hu? Well, you know what I mean. You can’t blame the dog you’re walking when you walk into a pole – even if he was enthusiastic about it.

So the question is: What now. Indeed, this bill is shot to shit. Stack that monstrosity on the back of the toilet in the staff bathroom. But what now? Should you pole-vault over the wall with Pelosi? Should you try to come to some reasonable consensus with a few reasonable Republicans? Should you keep this unorganized circus with your ring leader off in his own ring singing his poems?

I’m not sure what you should do. I’d like to see some actual reform though.

Congress to cut funding for KSM trial in NY

Every time anyone asks Obama or anyone in his admin a question about trying KSM in civilian court, they duck the question and assure us he’ll be convicted and executed. So if this is just going to be a $1 billion show trial – why not just “have the trial” (wink-wink)? You know – take a few days off, “have the trial,” print up some transcripts and stuff, execute the bastard, and use the $1 billion on some new Predator drones or something.

Don’t ask don’t tell – once again up for debate

What part of “don’t ask don’t tell” is so hard to understand?

Obama, since he started his candidacy, has used somewhat rosy numbers to calculate the costs and benefits of the policies he advocates. His first big one was the promise of “tax cuts” for the poor and middle class, do you remember, even for people who don’t pay income taxes in order to “spread the wealth around”? And added to that he was also going to reduce the national debt. Yeah, campaigns are historically full of wishful promises.

After inauguration this didn’t change though. Right away we had the obnoxiously obese stimulus bill. That was based on the rosiest of rosy turn-arounds and unemployment rates. It was hard-core wrong of course, things rarely have the best possible outcome.

So let’s remember this as we examine new legislation. Here is a prime example of a rosy assumption in this health care reform effort: if we put money into prevention it will save the new health care system money in the future. That sounds perfectly logical. Seriously! Let’s make sure we treat our diabetes so we don’t have the expense of foot removal.

In some cases this logic will apply. Someone who suffers from seizures, for example, can sometimes be easily treated with a cheap daily medicine (It’s seriously cheap, my dog is on it). The alternative would be a person seizing and falling on the floor and getting hurt all the time – costing money.

However, according to the Congressional Budget Office, prevention would at best result in marginal savings, and could very well cost more. Here is a good article on the subject:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124476182985608115.html#articleTabs%3Darticle

Disease prevention, like cancer screens, is money spent on people who weren’t going to get sick anyway. You have to screen a lot of people to find the sick ones and you get false positives that require further tests. And life style change is a touchy subject. Even if our society takes the path of compelling people to live a certain way, changing that behavior is about impossible. Look at all the expensive stop-smoking programs – and holy crap look at the diet industry.

Even though cancer, heart attacks, and other common problems are expensive to treat, preventing them isn’t any cheaper when budgeting for a whole society, and as technology improves and creates better screens it will likely get more expensive. And worse, prevention would produce another large cost these types of programs are rarely constructed to handle: people not dying at a convenient age. That is one of the main problems with Social Security. During FDR’s time you were doing well to reach 65 – now you have to get into a car accident to die that young.

Now – if you’re a person who has a difficult time grasping overall subjects and main ideas – you might disagree with a perceived conclusion – I don’t believe in prevention. If that’s the case you can relax. I haven’t made a conclusion.

Here is my conclusion: Contrary to the idea Obama is trying to sell us, prevention won’t be one of the things that miraculously gives all Americans access to health care without raising taxes on the non-rich.

So see, you had nothing to be disagreeable about. In fact, I very much believe in prevention. I also believe in health care/insurance reform. Specifically, I believe in leaving health care the hell alone, for the most part, and focus more on an electronic medical records standard and ways to grow the medical field. Insurance laws need some changes. People get screwed way too often and you should be able to buy into groups outside of an employer.