Occupy Wall Street == Tea Party

I'm not really qualified to make this kind of statement, but aren't they germinating from the same forces of economic discontent and an anger at the utter unfairness at the way the government has handled this economic downturn?

Which is why this kind of comment is so dumb.  I know I know a lot of this kind of commentary was coming from the left about the Tea Party crowd, but this whole, our protestors are better than yours is kind of tiring nonetheless.

One of my critiques from the Tea Party crowd is that they were just against a lot of stuff but weren't proffering any solutions.  My sense is the same from the "Occupy Wall Street" crowd as well.  I'm not sure if just outright anger is enough, although there are a lot of justifiable reasons to be frustrated and angry.  What we got from the tea party is a Congress that pushed our government to the brink of default and a lot of nationalism (close the border!) and anti-poor rhetoric that would make a hash situation harsher.  I'm not sure what we'll get from this group.

But one thing I'm certain of, is there cause is more than justified.  Wall Street investment banks are largely responsible for our current mess; the government has become too beholden to them; and we are priming ourselves for enough bubble/crash as our biggest banks have gotten even bigger and more powerful since the crisis.

But both groups are basically about the same thing, that tax payer funds went to bail out rich bankers who refuse to change their ways or to even express an ounce of remorse or regret.  It's the same transaction, tons of government money going directly toward the banks.  The tea party group just vented against the government side of this transaction.

Why can't the two movements coalesce, find common cause, and work together to get the government to work for them. Getting the tea party to unite with rich bankers who are getting, in effect, billions of dollars in corporate welfare has been a coup for the bankers who have used that anger to redirect back at Obama who has been in their back pockets all along. I am rooting for the "Occupy Wall Street" gang, but I think this movement could be much more powerful if the tea party recognized that they were both on the same team. Depicting this group as blue-haired hippies doesn't help things a long on this front.

Why this Democrat Might Vote for Mitt Romney

First of all, I don't think Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are that far a part ideoligicall speaking.  However, for a variety of reasons, I was pretty excited about an Obama presidency in 2008.  Reading this rather damning book about the Barack Obama's presidency drains the excitement I had for Obama coming into office. The book's primary point is that Obama lacked executive and management experience to effectively take on the massive undertaking of correcting the worse downturn since the Great Depression. Obama erred, as a result, by trusting too much in a different set of economic advisers than the ones that helped him get elected: Larry Summers, Timothy Geithner, Rahm Emmanuel, people who did too much to keep those on Wall Street whole, the very people who took massive bets with other people's money and were primarily responsible for the economic downturn.

These same people who got bailout after tax-payer funded bailout. Ironically enough, as Obama basically turned over the keys of the government to Goldman Sachs, et. al, these same bankers then turned on him and undermined everything Obama has tried to do to reign them in. On top of all of this, the tea party movement, a populist movement inspired by the bank bailouts, has turned hard against Obama and left Wall Street completely unchecked.

I've already gone into quite a bit of detail of what Obama could have done differently in his first term. Here are some reasons Mitt Romney stands apart from the other Republican candidates.  In addition, Mitt Romney has a much stronger executive background than Obama, although now Obama has his first term as a US president as experience, so he's better now than four years ago.  And having a Republican president would take the wind out of the sails of a Congress hell-bent on saying no. Perhaps Romney could institute some Wall Street regulation with teeth? And really tackle our tax code? And institute more stimulus?

It's a long shot, and there's a better chance Obama would be better in term two than in term one.  But he now has a much more hostile country and much more hostile Congress than he did coming in that will prevent him from doing many of things he really needs to do.  

I'm off of Facebook and back on Blogger (at least for now)

I decided to dump Facebook for now. I honestly do not have the capacity to handle more than one social media tool at a time. Facebook has such a low barrier to posting, in just a couple of clicks my cool article is linked and a couple of sentences of my own commentary is added, then, poof, all done.

The problem with Facebook is that it's walled off, but for those people within my wall, they are subjected to my use of Facebook without really asking for it. Sure they extended the invitation - I hardly ever go out looking for friends, almost everyone came to me. They, innocently enough, recognized my name from some chance happenstance long ago (college acquiantence? friend of a friend? high school buddy?) and they linked me as a friend. I'm inclined to accept such requests thinking, are you sure you really want what I'm about to give you?

Then, they get flooded by my stuff: mostly political, lefty bias, sometimes inane, sometimes overwrought, mostly more than people want on that kind of platform.

Actually Facebook is hard to pin down, right? It was used as a tool to overthrow Egypt by the way, so how is my stuff more serious and heavy than that? But mostly people use it to talk about their kids or their day. It's a weird experience, actually, to see the multi-uses of facebook streaming down your wall from all of these diverse sources. There are some too sad and maybe too private to be on facebook kind of posts, a few crazy/silly posts, a lot of mundane I'm eating breakfast kind of posts, an occasional brilliant posts, and a fair of amount political and religious posts.

And I definitely had my style. I love to debate, probably about 100 times more than almost everyone I've ever met. I can carry on a an on-line (and off-line) debate as long as it takes and I never get frustrated or tired of it. I love it. And since fb comments can just go on and on... I've frustrated more than a few people.

So, I'm back on blogger for now. I have some ambition to generate a much better website, but for now, blogger is a place where I can be basically me. People can link to me or they cannot, but it's all mine.

It's more work than Facebook and that's a major downside, and it's much easier to be ignored, which is another major downside, but I'm currently experimenting with other ways to scratch my need for on-line "discussion" itch. Hopefully I'll find a home for that and I'm almost assured it's not here. The blog as a community discussion form is too biased in favor of the blogger. I get all kinds of space to say what I want to say. People can respond in my comments but I've already dictated the topic and expressed my point in a much easier to compose format.

But expect more activity from me here world. I'm glad to be back.

By the way, because I'm nt on Facebook for now, I came across a really cool article making a point I've never heard before. Normally, it would have gone onto facebook, so now it's going here. Here it is, "The Death of Reading". Read it, it's pretty interesting:

Why don’t most people like to read? The answer is surprisingly simple: humans weren’t evolved to read. Note that we have no reading organs: our eyes and brains were made for watching, not for decoding tiny symbols on mulch sheets. To prepare our eyes and brains for reading, we must rewire them. This process takes years of hard work to accomplish, and some people never accomplish it all. Moreover, even after you’ve learned to read, you probably won’t find reading to be very much fun. It consumes all of your attention, requires active thought, and makes your eyes hurt. For most people, then, reading is naturally hard and, therefore, something to be avoided if at all possible.

I love to read, but I've read all my life. Growing up in Yuma, being as utterly and completely painfully shy as I was, being raised by a Mother who I'm convince has Aspergers although she's never been diagnosed conspired to make me a pretty lonely kid. Books became my primary escape (did I tell you that when I grew up the internet didn't exist and we couldn't afford cable). So, I spent the hard work re-wiring my brain to enjoy reading. I love it now and I can't relate to those who don't.

But apparently, loving to read is a skill that's earned through hours of work. I was lucky enough have basically been given it as a gift of circumstances.