Author: parvenu

The MSM is currently busy doing the “Texas Two Step” for Rick Perry. Most commentators have moved Romney from the GOP pack leader back to private citizen. The problem is that all of these so-called political experts do not concern themselves with the major divisions currently splitting the Republican Party. In respect to these facts I am watching the person who I think will wind up as the standard bearer for the GOP in the general presidential election and it sure ain’t Rick Perry. More below.  
There are three major groups striving for control of the Republican Party. There are (1) the Christian Evangelicals/Southern Baptist group, (2) the Plutocratic Corporate Oligarchs, and (3) the Libertarians. Since the election of President Obama each one of these groups have been able from time to time to dominate the MSM headlines and the national conversation. In Congress the “lock step” enforced unity masks the turbulent “no holds barred” struggle going on behind the scenes within the GOP. Mitt Romney failed in 2007 to convince the Republicans that he was their presidential candidate due to the strohg sectarian opposition from the Christian Evangelicals. Unfortunately for Governor Romney the situation appears unchanged this time around.

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann functioned as a stand-in candidate for the Christian Evangelicals who were hoping and praying for a good Christian candidate to enter the GOP presidential race. Their prayers have been answered by Texas Governor Rick Perry. Bachmann also grabbed the leadership role for the Tea Party movement. The Tea Party is the political tool of the GOP Plutocratic Corporate Oligarchs, who in addition to creating and funding ALEC did the same for the Tea Party. It is my personal opinion that Governor Christy of New Jersy was and still is the desired Presidential candidate for the Corporate Oligarchs.

Finally the Libertarians are the strongest most politically powerful group in the Republican Party. Most political commentators treat the Libertarian ideology as if it was the charter of some local paternal organization like the Masons or the Rotary Club. In fact the Libertarian ideology is the most demanding of any in the Republican Party including the Christian Evangelicals. Further the Libertarians have been active within the Republican Party since the days of Ronald Reagan. The House Libertarians have already demonstrated their political muscle during the recent battle over raising the debt ceiling. This group of 87 freshman Libertarian Republicans were able to bring their caucus leader the speaker of the House to his knees.

Ron Paul remains the Presidential choice of the Libertarians, and his close finish on the heels of home town girl Michelle Bachmann speaks volumes about who has the polical power in this race. If Ron Paul wins in New Hampshire (and I am predicting that he has a great shot) the field will shrink to a two man battle between Paul and Perry. Unfortunately Rick Perry does not have the huge dedicated following of Ron Paul, and the Pauline fanatics will snuff out Perry’s campaign leading up to the Republican Convention. If Ron gets the nomination, I would not be surprised to see him bring his son Rand Paul along as the GOP Vice Presidential candidate, making a GOP Pauline ticket. This would be the dream ticket that the Libertarians have been dreaming about for almost four decades.

Make no mistake a GOP Pauline presidential ticket would really give President Obama a tough run in the general election, simply because Ron Paul currently has a LOT OF SUPPORT among INDEPENDENT white male voters. I’m definitely keeping my eye on the New Hampshire GOP primary. As I write this MSNBC is showing a clip from the Jon Stewart show where Jon is raising a similar question over the way that the MSM has ignored Ron Paul’s tight second place finish in the Iowa straw poll. Hmmm do great minds think alike?

At the outset there are two things that I would like to make clear. (1) I  really intended for this to be a short diary. (2) This is NOT an Obama bashing diary. I simply want to offer some opinions from my perspective of the current situation and Obama’s chances to secure a second term in 2012. In my estimation there is still sufficient time to effect some changes in the current political theater. Immediately after Obama won the presidency Rush Limbaugh set the playbook for the devastated Republicans when he said  “I hope he fails!” Since then everybody on the right wing political spectrum in America from the Republican Congress, Talk Radio, Fox TV, Corporate America, Wall Street, and a super rich American plutocracy have been working overtime to bring Limbaugh’s wish to a resounding fruition. Obama is not stupid and I’m sure that he is well aware of the array of forces who stand in opposition to him on every issue. (More below the fold.)
It is my assumption that from the start of his term, Obama took an in-depth analysis of the opposition against him and decided that the chances for his success in the White House were best served by maintaining an obsequious posture of compromise. This aspect of the Obama plan was destined to create a myriad of unresolved problems over the long haul. My disappointment with President Obama set in very early in his administration when I reviewed the people that he had selected for his closest advisors and the people he chose for his Cabinet. There were a few good selections made such as Hillary Clinton to State and several others, but the majority were people from the old Clinton Administration, while some of the others were just political hacks.

I was really disappointed with his selection of Eric Holder as AG, because as the first black president Obama would need a strong resourceful Justice Department. It was obvious to me that a significant part of the battles with the right wing that Obama would have in the future would be legal events. Justice has done less under Obama in terms of investigating civil rights cases than any other Democratic president of recent memory. The success of any Administration is determined by the quality of people with whom the president surrounds himself.

In my estimation the massive amount of political capital that Obama spent on the Health Care bill was definitely an error. Although Obama has signed it into law, its actual political cost cannot be calculated, simply because it provided a cause around which all of the right wing racialist and reactionary groups could rally against Obama. As we all know too well RALLY they did, as demonstrated by the creation of a new political force called the Tea Party, which successfully sent 87 new uncompromising hard right Congressmen to the House. What is constantly lost in all of the talk about the Tea Party is the fact that most of these new House Republicans were successful in defeating “establishment” incumbent Republicans in their respective primaries.

Aside from the problems created by the loss of the House, Obama faces an unbelievable catalog of anti-union and VOTER SUPPRESSION laws in a large number of states around the nation that are controlled by Republicans. The Republicans have dissected every detectable block of voting support for Obama in the 2008 elections and have written laws aimed at hamstringing such support in 2012. Many of these laws are silly and capricious, but they still are currently the law in their respective states. Some states have gone beyond the Voter ID suppression technique and have moved a number of polling places out of black areas, while increasing the number of polling stations in white areas. Legislators have also written legislation manipulating the polling hours in the same manner. Some states have written legislation requiring anyone or any group from another state who is present in the state to assist citizens in voter registration, or providing voter information must register with the Secretary of State’s Office within “X” number days of entering the state. The list goes on and on endlessly. (Just as a note there are 21 Republican controlled state governments versus 11 Democratic controlled state governments. There are 18 split (no one party control for legislature and Governor) control state governments.)

A topic forgotten by everyone except these same state Republicans is the status of the unreliable easily hacked VOTING MACHINES still sitting in the warehouses in many of these states. The current budget crisis in the states will definitely be a rational excuse for reusing these same high criticized voting machines in 2012.

Whereas the Obama Administration has not challenged any of this new voter suppression legislation in the states or taken some action to prevent reuse of well-known defective voting machines, it looks pretty grim for his chances in these 21 Republican controlled states.

Finally in his efforts to be the Compromiser-in-Chief, Obama has steadily chipped away at the enthusiastic support of HIS base. Obama has become a proponent of the old Democratic saw which we hear over and over from Democratic candidates, “If they don’t vote Democratic who are they going to vote for?” Since America is essentially a two party system, this old question implies that there are no reasonable alternatives. However this question overlooks the question of “enthusiasm Suppression”, which is a very effective “campaign worker suppression” technique.

The failure of Obama to deliver on any of his campaign promises to those folks who were energetic enthusiastic members of Obama’s army has created an environment of “enthusiasm suppression” or good old fashioned political turn-off. Unquestionably these people will vote for Obama in 2012, but they WILL NOT provide the ground support that he will so desperately need in 2012. The right wing plutocratic oligarchy will pour billions into videos, advertisements and organizations to fight the Obama campaign on the ground. Therefore Obama’s decision to place his bets on the uncommitted “independent” white voting population at the current time looks very much like a loser’s line. There is something about Obama’s political life thus far that reminds me of an actor playing a character whose psyche morphs from a Cyrano de Bergerac to a Don Quixote, all the while onstage. The interesting thing about this scene is the music coming from the orchestra pit accompanying the Obama character’s transformation shuffle. Gracious me! It’s none other than the Republican National Square Dance band playing the “The Turkey in the Straw, Do Sa Do to the Right” Overture.

PLEASE, PLEASE. PLEASE. Quit calling these House LIBERTARIANS, Tea Party Republicans. Damnit… there is no such thing as elected “House Tea Party Republicans”! It is a MSM made up myth and does not exist in reality. I keep screaming this over and over, but somehow the air seems to be thick with cement, because no one appears to understand what I am saying. So once again,
“Libertarians want NO GOVERNMENT AT ALL. No Cabinet departments, no Homeland Security, no Pentagon, no Social Security, no Medicare, Etc, Etc.” Every one of those Libertarian/Republicans that ran as Tea Party candidates and were elected to the House of Representatives FANATICALLY embrace the Libertarian ideology of NO GOVERNMENT

Come on America, wake up and smell the coffee!! For some reason Americans (including Democrats, Progressives, and Liberals) cannot process the idea that the same people elected to sustain and protect the American Federal government could at the same time be passionately dedicated to destroying the very government that they took an oath to serve. So let’s stop our amazement every time these Fanatics raise the budget cut stakes in return for keeping the Federal government operating for another 2  weeks. Whereas it is their goal to eliminate the Federal government entirely, WTF do they care about trying to negotiate different levels of budget cuts to keep the government operating for another 2 weeks. It is their goal to SHUT THE GOVERNMENT DOWN, and I for one say LET THEM DO IT at least while most of us still have full bellies.

Why is Hoyer trying to prop up weepy John Boehner? Hoyer is playing old time politics which is about as useful as an recently used unflushed toilet when you have a whole bunch of Libertarians sitting in the House! It must be quite amusing to these newbie Libertarians to watch old time “Beltway Politics” in action as they sit and make the players (Dems and Repugs) sweat it out on the political negotiation grid.

Since the Libertarians only control the House, the only weapon that they can use in their campaign to destroy the Federal government is a stalemate which would result in a shutdown of government operations. Obviously a 6 week shutdown of the Federal government would lead to explosive unrest throughout the nation, which is exactly the goal of the Libertarians sitting in the House. They recognize there would be little chance that Obama could win re-election in the midst of widespread riots against the government by people whose incomes and services were suddenly cutoff by a government shutdown. There are many people who are living on a social security check or some other government subsistence alone from month to month or week to week. A cutoff of this income is equivalent to being sentenced to a undefined period of starvation for all concerned. The elderly and infirm may be forced to quietly die inside their sparsely furnished rooms. But other more able bodied people will not be so passive and will take their fight and blood to the American streets.

My advice to Obama would be to hold a quiet back room meeting with the lions of Wall Street, who are also currently concerned by the prospect of a default on the American Government’s international debt caused by a governmental shutdown. (It is scratch my back time.) Wall Street does not have any influence over these Libertarian fanatics, however, Wall Street does have a myriad of creative means to capital manipulation which properly employed could hold off another American  financial collapse which a government shutdown is certain to cause.

Folks this is a deadly serious business, however IMHO there are not enough American citizens treating this as an urgent emergency problem of the highest priority in terms of the national interest. Maybe some words from the “Lost in Space Robot” might help as he signaled loudly in his monotone voice, “Will Smith, Danger, Danger ahead!”    

I am perplexed. There isn’t one iota of confusion in my mind concerning the ideological identity of the newly elected House pseudo-Republicans. Furthermore I am sorely disappointed that NO ONE attempts to identify these people by their chosen ideology, LIBERTARIANISM. I fully expected the normal bumbling obfuscation from Corporate American Media (CAM), but what is surprising to me is that the progressive/liberal Democratic side of the political spectrum is also guilty of the same stupid political obfuscation. How do Democrats think that they can secure the support of the American public when they fail to identify the actual enemy of the average American citizen to the American people? I would humbly submit that less than 12% of the American voting population actually knows anything of substance about the Libertarian ideology. To this end, I will describe the message that the American people need to hear below.
As a preamble to further discussion below, I would like to pause to note some generalities about the Libertarian movement in America. There are two major groups of Libertarians, those who consider themselves to be principled Libertarians and those who consider themselves to be more pragmatic in reference to implementation of Libertarian ideology in American society. The principled Libertarians I have given the shorthand name of “PureLibs” for Purist Libertarians. The pragmatic Libertarians I have tagged as “PragLibs”. It also is noted that the Libertarian Party has fielded a presidential candidate for every election since 1972 with very limited success. In 2008, Bob Barr received 0.4% of the popular vote. With this very limited overview of Libertarians in America, I will move on to the reasons that I am writing my concerns.

It is imperative that those of us who participate in the progressive/liberal Blogging community STOP calling these newly seated pseudo-Republicans (House or Senate) Tea Partiers, extremists, or far-right Republicans. The proper politically ideological name for these people is LIBERTARIANS.  When Ronald Reagan entered the presidential race in 1981, in addition to his southern strategy he recruited hundreds of PragLibs into the Republican Party. Reagan took advantage of a highly volatile internal Libertarian Party debate (which proved sharply divisive for the national Libertarian Party) to recruit the disaffected PragLibs. A split in the ideological viewpoint between the PureLibs and the PragLibs simply was this. The PragLibs believed that government should be as small as possible, but they recognized that some specific functions were necessary, such as an Army, Navy, Air force, police, Fire department, etc and some limited social services. On the other hand the PureLibs maintained a fanatical belief in the principle of NO GOVERNMENT AT ALL PERIOD. From the PureLib perspective all required services, local and national would be STRICTLY VOLUNTARY! Therefore for the PureLibs all government departments, such as Department of Education, Department of Commerce, Department of Homeland Security, the Pentagon and all military branches, etc must be immediately unfunded and disbanded. Thus until recently, the PureLibs were mainly political jokes and forgotten outsiders until the Tea Party Express rolled into town. Desperate to field candidates for the 2010 Congressional elections the Tea Party express welcomed anyone who physically appeared “physically credible” to the voters.

The Tea Party solicitation gave the PureLibs the opportunity to get into the political fray under the Republican banner. They accepted the challenge and ran in various House races around the country with an extraordinary amount of success, allowing the Republicans to take control of the House of Representatives. The PureLibs are unquestionably fanatically dedicated to dismantling the entire federal government, which if successful would quickly make the United States into an insignificant colony for any interested nation with global reach. Unfortunately there is a “Neville Chamberlain” type attitude among most Americans that “these guys cannot be taken seriously, after all the Republicans have had Libertarians in their party since Reagan’s time”. However as I indicated above, these were the PragLibs who are definitely NOT THE SAME as their fanatic Principled PureLib brothers.

MoveOn.org and other progressive organizations on the web and around the country are starting to recoil from the draconian funding cuts currently being proposed by the House PureLibs, who have targeted organizations that have existed as honored American institutions for decades. Currently the House PureLibs have zeroed in on NPR and PBS to be removed from all governmental funding. This follows a recent House bill to kill all funding for the United Nations. Even in the midst of a flurry of these PureLib sponsored House Bills; this despicable pernicious legislative activity continues to evade any form of widespread public attention.

The Libertarians are smart enough to cater to a few select pet interests of certain loud mouth Democrats in Congress, thereby neutralizing the opposition from publicizing the impending more draconian PureLib spending cuts. Other Democrats, too lazy to mount an alarm against the PureLib onslaught, pacify their consciences with the self-delusional conjecture that any crazy PureLib bills created in the House will be stopped in the Senate or sub sequentially vetoed by the White House, so why worry.

As I mentioned above PureLibs are very clever people and they are also very quick learners. Their battle plan is to use this current period to become efficient in the respective Congressional processes before the 2012 elections. It is their expectation that the Republicans will win back control of the Senate and possibly even the White House. However, they believe that the odds favor them to at least win back the Senate, while expanding their majority in the House.

If the Progressive/Liberal Democratic segment of the political population fails to make all voting Americans fully aware of EXACTLY WHAT LIBERTARIAN/Republicans stand for ideologically, the PureLibs in Congress will make America into less than a third world country.    

Finally, Ben Bernake during his most recent appearance before a House committee has warned that many of the draconian cuts being put forth by the House will endanger the progress of the fragile economic recovery. However, as I mentioned above, the PureLibs are fanatic in their pursuit to dismantle the American government. Therefore Bernake’s warning most likely fell on very deaf ears. The current crop of House Libertarians represents a serious threat to all of the standard government institutions that millions of Americans depend on for their daily survival. Medicare and Social Security are two that top the list and are currently in the cross hairs of the Congressional Libertarians. We need to shine the spotlight on these Libertarians and publicize exactly what their ideologies mean for the average American citizen. America can no longer afford ignorance on this subject at this critical point in our country’s history. Talk it up! Talk it up!!

Since I am my own best booster I will say this….
I have a great idea for reinventing the American economy and thereby creating all the jobs we need! My idea is grounded in the obvious premise that virtually of the 20th century jobs will no longer be available in 21st century America. Therefore, all of the current talk about creating jobs for Americans is just that, talk and little else. We will not be creating jobs in America where American companies actually manufacture American products. The current effort of the powers-that-be is to make 21st century America the modern “Silk Road” to the world. This scenario requires a social restructuring where America maintains its crowning achievements in the field of modern technology while retaining an unshakeable grip upon the ebb and flow of the world’s financial institutions. The new American oligarchy has determined that this is the new destiny for American superiority in the world. However, to meet the dire immediate needs of our nation a new cycle of job creating businesses must be implemented. This was the inspirational essence for my idea.
I presented my idea to my Congressman and his aides where it received a strong positive reception. However, the Congressman’s committee assignments did not match up with the respective sections of the Executive agencies that would be involved with the implementation of my new program. So the best that the Congressman could do would be to pass it on to another Congress person whose committee assignments would be a closer match with the targeted Executive agencies. (For example if you had a proposal concerning development of a new energy source, its best route would be to forward it to someone who sits on a Congressional Energy Committee.) Chronologically, my idea was submitted back in May 2010 to my Congressman, and currently (outside of a  perfunctorily acknowledgement receipt) no response has been forthcoming as of today.

After sending my idea to my Congressman I tried to contact someone in the White House. The White House email website is set up to channel all correspondence through an “Issues” filter. (A partial “Issues” category list consist of the following samples; Civil Rights, Defense, Disabilities, Economy, Education. Energy & Environment, Ethics, Family, etc.)  The website does provide a place for general inquires/comments. However it is in the form of a box for input text that is limited to something like 256 words, which is certainly not enough space to lay out a conceptual proposal for putting millions of people back to work. I tried calling the White House phone line and was told by an operator that all messages are limited to one sentence, which may or may not be passed onto the President and his staff. (I doubt that even the best texter in the nation could reduce my plan to one sentence and still maintain any sense of coherence.)

So my conceptual proposal is currently resting comfortably in my desk drawer, just below this keyboard and unless a miracle occurs down in Washington it is likely that my proposal will never get the hearing that I feel that it deserves. So much for the President’s declaration that he will solicit ideas from every corner of America for proposals to relieve the unemployment problem in America. If the President was serious he would create a White House website wherein the American people could upload serious proposals.

There are many internet website tools available that could be installed for screening out input from spam robots, professional snarkers, and sophomoric clowns, while providing secure input access for serious dedicated registered validated users of the website. IMHO hiring professional and technical expert to read and evaluate the feasibility of submissions would be far more productive in a logical sense than hiring recycled Wall Street people to attempt creation of lame “out of the box ideas” for putting Americans back to work.

OBTW, if anyone has any realistic suggestions as how I might be able to get my conceptual proposal for rebuilding jobs in America a serious review by the Obama Administration, I will cheerfully welcome them.
Q.E.D.

It is impossible to separate the current political wars going on down in Washington from being either class or racial. Therefore anything Obama does will never be able to escape an analysis in regards to either class or race. However, in his unyielding dedication to “COMPROMISE AT ALL COSTS”, Obama allowed himself to be played by the Republicans like some wide eyed yokel from Leftovershoe Maine, in town for the annual hardware store owner’s convention. How could this happen you might ask? Obama was a U.S. Senator. an esteemed member of academia, and one who has had a political past from the streets of Chicago? Simply put Obama does not know how to play the “Beltway Blues”. It’s tough enough to figure Washington politics with both eyes wide open, but when you walk around wearing “rose colored glasses” of UNCONDITIONAL COMPROMISE, you are begging for a political fleecing.
When I voted for Obama, I did not expect him to be a super hero on any level, but I did expect him to be a solid manager who would know how to select the proper staff for the impressive array of tasks facing him as he walked into the White House. This disappointment is the reason why he was blindsided by the Republicans over the recent tax bill. In my opinion Valerie Jarrett would be excellent in any position except her current position. The same for Axelrod. It is these folks in the President’s inner circle who have contributed to this huge mistake.

Let me update you as to why the liberal Congressional Democrats are outraged about this bill and the President’s support of its passage. This bill was designed by the Republicans to be a $900 Billion budget buster, and the Republican Propaganda Machine (which is most of the MSM) soaked the public with the mythical Kool-Aid of “the first step towards bipartisanship in Washington”. Obama pulled out all the PR stops to convince the Democrats that this was truly a bipartisan bill and that they MUST cave in and vote for it. The MSM painted the objections of the Democrats as simply an obsession with Millionaires and Billionaires getting across the board tax cuts, which long term greatly expands the nation’s debt. Meanwhile Obama lamented that “he could not, and he would not let two million unemployed Americans lose their pittance checks at Christmas time!”

The real reason liberal Democrats are mad about the tax bill is the Republican trickery. The Republicans knew that the tax bill that they offered to Obama would add another trillion dollars to the deficit. So what, you say, we all knew that? Well this additional amount of federal debt is the budget buster that the current Republican leadership has been looking for to really energize the Republican majority 112th Congress coming into session next month. First big issue on the Congressional agenda will be raising the government debt ceiling. Under the highly efficient coaching of the current Republican leadership, the new tea party Congress people will go absolutely nuts when the bill to raise the national debt ceiling is placed before them. Geithner will start to panic, telling the President that if the “debt ceiling” bill doesn’t pass, the U.S. government will lose its credit rating. Horror of Horrors!

Mitch McConnell will then quietly meet with the President and suggest that the Republicans would be reluctantly willing to COMPROMISE, only if the President can bring some real assets into government finances in order to offset the legislative act of increasing the debt ceiling, something like … perhaps Social Security? Mitch and his buddies are hoping that Obama will do another swan dive cave-in and agree to modify the status of Social Security such that it comes under the CONTROL OF CONGRESS. (Currently Social Security is an independent agency that is funded via a payroll tax for each working individual the proceeds of which winds up in the Social Security Reserve. The beneficiaries on the other hand are paid out the Social Trust Fund.)  This orchestrated encrouchment would be the first step towards the elimination of social security, which has been a long time ambition of the Republican Party going back to FDR. The Republicans believe that they have currently available a kind of weak President that they can manipulate and force to cave in under pressure on this issue regarding the sacrifice of Social Security. (The Republicans would have drawn up a new version of the debt ceiling bill which would these new Social Security re-organizational provisions in place before meeting with the President.)  The tea partiers want to kill Medicare and the Republican leadership want to kill Social Security, and after the 112th Congress is seated the only real stop we who live on Social Security and use Medicare have remaining is the Obama veto pen. However, if past behavior is any predictor of future results, it is definitely time to bet on the Obama pen staying in the oval office desk drawer.

One other reason why the Republicans want to knock over Social Security (SS) is that the SS vault contains well over a trillion dollars in I.O.U.’s from the Department of Treasury. Money has been continuously bled off from the SS reserve by President after President to fund a list of secret so-called “black ops” off budget programs for a whole host of White House Administrations over the decades. If the status of SS is changed in any way to put it closed under government control all of the I.O.U.’s will simply become null and void and worthless. There have been efforts in the recent past, long before Bill Clinton, to force the Government to pay up and get rid of these I.O.U.’s but the Congressional argument was that the amount of money owed to the SS Trust Fund was so large that it would bankrupt the nation. If Mitch and friends get their way a stroke of Obama’s compromise pen (not veto pen) will make that trillion dollars owed to SS simply go poof!

The Deficit Commission like President Obama lacks the one critical attribute guaranteed to get this country out of the current economic depression and that attribute is VISION. Since I am older than dirt, I have been able to look back on those programs that really worked in America’s past. For the President and those around him, free of charge, here are my two suggestions.
(1) Expedite the patent process by SUBSTANTIALLY INCREASING the number of EXAMINERS and digital processing of patent applications in the U.S. Patent office. Before Obama took office it took two years on average to just get to the “patent applied” stage of a routine patent application. To its credit, the Obama administration has recently increased the number of examiners in an effort to reduce this backlog, but in consideration of the current hard economic times this increase is still woefully insufficient. America was built on CREATIVE INNOVATION, and as a nation its fortunes are still dependent upon CREATIVE INNOVATION. The only things that will get the American economy moving again are good solid patents supported by a widely available supply of venture capital. We have an advantage over India and China when it comes to technical innovation due to the nature and character of AMERICAN SOCIETY. Indian and Chinese culture is drastically different than American society and this is the inhibitor which dramatically dulls their educational edge over creative Americans. We create modern technology and they study it. They can overtake the U.S. in technological innovation but only at the rate that their society evolves to naturally emulate the character of modern American society.

(2) American high tech manufacturers claim that the best engineers are located in India and China. Meanwhile they complain that there are not enough engineers available in the U.S. This is pure double speak. What they are NOT saying is that the reason that they shipped the engineering jobs overseas because the cost for an engineer in India or China is a fraction of the salary that they would have to pay an American engineer (when benefits are considered along with nominal salaries). So where is the incentive for American students to choose engineering as a major when the majority of engineering jobs are already located overseas? Greedy American high tech CEOs continue to publish this canard that American college students are no longer interested in engineering, hence they are forced to look for engineering talent overseas in other populations. This situation may be liken to the one where the fox, who has been put in charge of the hen house, scratches his head and wonders aloud. “Why is it that the number of chickens in the hen house keeps going down?”
The most successful engineering generating programs that I have had the opportunity to observe first hand is the CO-OP PROGRAM pioneered at North Eastern University in Boston. Undergraduate students enrolled in the CO-OP program were allowed to periodically work full time in the industry of their major. This program was conducted with the strong backing of virtually all of the corporations in the area, and was a win-win situation for both the student who had an opportunity to gain real world experience on the job, and the company picked up a solid engineer in training who in many cases joined the company after graduation. The CO-OP program also significant reduced the financial burden on the student and his/her family. Finally North Eastern credited the student for his/her time for the weeks spent working on the job in industry. Finally, I should point out that one of the better known successful students to come out of the CO-OP program was Dick Eagan, one of the co-founders of EMC Corporation. Several years before his death Dick Eagan gave North Eastern hundreds of millions of dollars as a tribute to the University and to support the Maureen & Richard J. Egan Engineering Science Research center.  

In summary, I propose a two pronged attack on the economic problems of America, specifically in regards to our ability to create and manufacture products for the world. The first is to release the patent log jam. This coupled with the freeing up of venture capital will energize the “start-up” new technology businesses across America. A significant increase in the number of these new “start-up” manufacturers will immediately start to put downward pressure on the unemployment rolls across America. You need engineers to develop new products but you need a lot of people to take the product out of the lab and into manufacturing.

In regards to American engineers, I am not interested in creating more high tech engineers just to occupy more cubicles at Honeywell or at IBM or at Raytheon. I am interested in providing more engineers to CREATE more START-UP new product business ventures, period. The responsibility for creating new American engineers is on the shoulders of America’s colleges and universities, and it is my proposal that bold initiatives for a CO-OP program enacted between the school and the business community will greatly expedite the creation and of a new generation of highly productive American engineers. Undergraduate science labs operating in such an environment could become instant incubators for new revolutionary technological developments. What I have proposed here can be easily accomplished without the support of Washington and in the tough grinding atmosphere of Congressional gridlock. Again all that is required is for local colleges and universities to seize the CO-OP vision and initiative. An aggressive concerted push of this idea by students and school faculty is bound to be successful in securing aggressive support from the local business community. I say now is the time to stop looking to Washington for leadership. Now is the time to role up our sleeves and get started building the America of tomorrow.

This diary is a brief reflection of the conversations during yesterday’s Thanksgiving day dinner that focused on the past two years of the Obama administration. My African American family is quite large and is rife with many opinions which always are exchanged at Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings with a mixture of deep reflection and highly therapeutic strong assertive humor. When folks arrive they always expect to find plenty of good cuisine and warm conversation and they are never disappointed. Thus it is fairly obvious that sooner or later the conversation around the dinner table would turn to President and Michelle Obama which I will share with you in the next section below.
It was unanimous that all of my family members held the First Family in high regard and a series of sincere compliments were paid to the FLOTUS and her children. One nephew wondered what Obama would do if fighting breaks out between North and South Korea, considering that the U.S. is already tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan? An aunt held up her fork and said, “You know that poor man has been getting hit with one thing after another. Two wars were going on and the economy was crashing before he even took a step inside the White House. It’s a doggone shame what do they expect him to do, and all those big mouth bigots are just ripping him up day and night!” A niece, recent college graduate, spoke up and said, “Well what has he done for black folks? I realize times are bad but black unemployment is up to 30% to 40% in some areas across the country. He really needs to do something. People can’t eat speeches no matter how much eloquence he puts in them!” (The whole table breaks out with loud laughter, with side comments.)

An older family friend paused from a sip of cider and said, “You know Obama can’t really get anything through the Congress. Those darn Republicans just hate him cause of his color and they don’t intend to give him the time of day. He’s just wasting his time trying to get them to compromise, COMPROMISE FOR WHAT!” (A number of people responded to her emotional question with “that’s right” and “you know it!”)

At this point I spoke up and said, “I agree Obama’s wasting precious time trying to compromise with the Republicans. Originally when he first came into office, the Republican game was to stonewall Obama by saying NO and attending his White House meetings to give the appearance that they were trying to compromise with him on the key issues. But now that they have taken back the House of Representatives, they think that they are close to winning the entire government back, so why waste time going to meet with someone you actually hate. That’s why they snubbed a meeting already scheduled to meet with Obama last week. They have already written Obama off.”

My niece said, “That’s the reason why a lot of young people are turned off by Obama, he keeps begging the Republicans for help, instead of taking care of business.” I put down my fork and said,” My reason for voting for Obama wasn’t because he would become the first black President of the United States. Certainly I was attracted to his campaign messages, but the main reason I liked Obama was the success he had in his academic career and the respect that he had throughout the academic world. It was my opinion that the problems created by eight years of Republican administration of the America government were so perplexing that it would take a number of new highly trained thinkers to come up with new creative solutions, and this was the fastest means of solving America’s problems. It was my hope that Obama would be able to attract many high level academics to his staff in the administration. Unfortunately, he decided to settle for political retreads from the Clinton administration, and so thus far he has not achieved the miracle that the American people hoped and dreamed for. IMO Obama needs to forget about the Republicans and their “shadow government” and use all the tools that he has in the Executive to plan his own strategic moves. He needs to sit down and formulate new powerful daring “blue sky” plans, not proposals, but plans that he can execute solely within the power of the Executive as a means of attacking these problems.
He should confine Biden to speaking engagements and get highly qualified people into the Oval office to help him design these plans. The PREZ needs a real “war room” to plan how to fight his battles both on the domestic and foreign fronts.”

Another Aunt who had been quietly listening to all of the conversation responded softly and said, “What you are saying is that the President lacks vision, and the vision that I mean is vision in the Biblical sense. You know in the Bible it says “Where the people lack vision, they perish”. If the president were to achieve such vision, the rest would follow.”

The room suddenly fell quiet and remained so while everyone digested these softly spoken words of wisdom. The silence was finally broken by someone entering the room loudly asking, “Does anyone have the final score of the Patriots Detroit game?” With that question the dinner conversational buzz resumed on a different topic.

Sarah Palin has taken demagoguery to new heights. She has effectively nourished and grown her notoriety to be the source and impetus for a new industry, namely Sarah Palin Inc. Sarah’s recipe for her new culinary phenomenon started with a skillfully manipulated public relations (PR) campaign. After the PR has been well oiled with generous political campaign funds, it is then vigorously rolled out and then evenly distributed in the pan. More of Sarah’s recipe continuous below.
After seasoning with timely publicity stunts, the Palin PR batter is then allowed to slowly simmer in the national political oven. At this point Sarah keeps a sharp eye on the progress of her PR preparation baking in the national oven. If it shows signs of browning unevenly, she refreshes the process by reaching into the oven and carefully basting her PR batter with selected outrageous statements that have been purposely designed to generate the greatest amount of public controversy which of direct consequence in turn creates the widest amount of attention in the media “echo” chamber.

Though far from being an international delicacy Sarah’s culinary creation has never-the-less captured the appetite of the American media and as a result enriched Palin beyond her wildest Alaskan dreams.

I should like to point out here that I personally have no inside information as to the structure, size and operation of the business entity which in this discussion I identify as Sarah Palin Inc. It should be noted that my observations are strictly as an outside observer and they are based exclusively on the well publicized events already initiated by Sarah Palin Inc. My conclusions are derived from my own personal logic as to the ultimate cost to produce such Palin initiated events.

A TV commentator recently made the following observation concerning Sarah Palin, “She is everywhere!”  As of this date, I fully agree with his observation, indeed Sarah Palin appears to be everywhere. The events that she has been recently responsible for are as follows:
(1) She has written a second book which is due out in a week or so.
(2) She has a full itinerary of scheduled speeches around the nation.
(3) She has a daily show on Fox TV.
(4) She writes various opinion editorials for national newspapers.
(5) She has a TLC network TV show titled “Sarah Palin’s Alaska.
(6) She has a tour to promote her TLC network TV show.

In view of this frenetic schedule it is obvious management of this size itinerary would be beyond any normal human being (unless that person happened to be the comic book hero known as The Flash!) Seriously, anyone with manpower scheduling experience would immediately be aware that a substantial number of backup staff people would be required in order to facilitate such a schedule. I shall provide a quick review of the items on the above list. Starting with item 1, Sarah would need at a minimum 1 ghost writer and 2 editors to get her book manuscript ready for publication. In regards to item 2, Sarah would require at a minimum 3 speechwriters to support the many public appearances on her schedule. In terms of item 3 Sarah would require a minimum of 2 writers and 1 editor to create program material for her Fox TV show. These writers would not only provide her broadcast scripts but would also provide the intellectual creativity to put together the topics, in addition to producing a guest list to complete the material for their respective program date. In regards to item 4, Sarah would require at a minimum 1 experienced opinion column writer to produce the op editorials for various national newspapers. This person could actually provide this support on a part time basis as Sarah does not have a contractual obligation to produce these op editorials on a regular basis. Concerning item 5, Sarah would need at least 1 script writer and 1 editor to provide the program material for her TLC network TV show. Finally, for item 6 Sarah would require at a minimum 5 travel agents to handle booking, arrival and departure schedules. She would also need to have 1 person to oversee, synchronize, and perform management level responsibility for the successful execution of her entire itinerary. A total of 18 highly creative resourceful people will be required to staff Sarah Inc. as defined by the minimum estimates listed above.  

The 18 people listed above only constitute the intellectual component of Sarah Palin Inc. (Sarah Inc.) The other component of Sarah Inc. is her constant ever present security detail. Again I would estimate the minimum size requirement for her security detail to be 6 people available on a 24/7 basis. The logic for this estimate is based on the obvious fact that anyone living at the notoriety level of Sarah Palin would require this size protection detail as an absolute minimum. Six additional people result in a total of 24 people required to staff Sarah Inc. as an absolute minimum. The main product of Sarah Inc. is face-to-face access to the presence of her endearing effervescent personality.

As in any other business, the revenue receipts are used to pay the expenses, with the rest retained as pure profit. Therefore in my estimation Sarah Inc. is currently a rapidly expanding business, which would most likely be instantly oversubscribed if a portion of the Sarah Inc. was made available to the public on the New York Stock exchange.

The only bane of Sarah Inc.’s business plan lies in the highly probable change in the attitude of the general public, namely public fatigue with all things Palin. Essentially public fatigue with notorious characters falls in the category of being less interesting to the public than last month’s newspapers.
Hence it behooves the CEO of Sarah Inc. to make hay while the sun is still shining, and this is exactly what Sarah Palin is doing. At this point she will say anything and possibly do anything (within reason) to keep her image at the forefront of the number one topic coverage of all media. Currently the Palin infatuation has reached the level where the American news media has begun to develop an automatic reflex response to any major domestic news item to ask aloud, “What do you think Sarah Palin would say about this?”  It is this current situation in the mainstream of American conversation that leads me to believe that America is very close to peak saturation with Sarah Inc. One last thing it is important to remember that public fatigue with Sarah Inc. will be established across America long before her ardent diehard supporters actually become disillusioned enough to stop working in her behalf, and with heavy hearts they return once again to the ranks of the undistinguished American anonymous.

As a preface, I want declare at the outset that I am NOT a “gloom and doom” merchant. Instead of ignoring those highly pregnant facts currently swirling about in American society, I am normally inspired to make an attempt to understand their meaning. With that important declaration out of the way, I will attempt to paint a picture of American society now that the midterm Congressional elections have concluded. What is it that the credible news sources are reporting as of Novenmber 4, 2010? I consider certain of these reports to be the “dots” currently representing the more significant influential events in American society. I will list them and attempt to provide a reasonably “connective” meaning which can be drawn from their significance.
(1)President Obama has called for a meeting with the leaders of both parties of the lame duck congress.
(2) CNN reports that a large U.S. state (sorry I didn’t get its name) has setup police details at its unemployment offices.
(3) WTF!! Harley Davidson announced that it will be building motorcycles in India.

In regards to the first news item, Obama and the Republicans are deeply concerned about the seating of the Tea Party people in the next congress. Regardless of all of the Republican leadership’s bombastic statements of NO COMPROMISE, they know that politics is the “art” of compromise. It is critical to resolve some funding issues before Armey’s army take their seats. The two hot issues are extension of unemployment benefits and raising the national debt ceiling. Raising the national debt is necessary so that the U.S. doesn’t default on its outstanding international financial obligations. The consequences of not being able to raise the U.S. debt ceiling will create a sovereign debt crises for the U.S. putting America into an international category similar to Greece, Spain and Ireland. On the other hand, the extension of unemployment benefits is a potential powder keg issue with unemployment hovering around 10 percent. The fight over extending Unemployment benefits dovetails nicely with the second news item.

In my opinion many other states will be adding police details to their unemployment offices for riot prevention purposes. The states are being realistic and bracing for the probability that the Republicans will not in this Congress and certainly not in the next Congress fund any extension of unemployment benefits. With 10% of the population existing on the portal of starvation, further deprivation of meager government funds could lead to riots across the nation.
Elderly people may passively accept the prospect of slowly starving to death, but I doubt if many young fathers and mother will be willing to wait passively while their children slowly starve to death. In this day and age, the “Scrooge” ideology of the Republicans will only lead to widespread chaos and riots. The tension in this case is between the Republicans and the approximate 25 to 30 million unemployed Americans (Pop. of America is 310+ million). In this case I think that the Libertarian/Republicans are playing with highly explosive fire. Further more, the “get the government off our backs” ideology of the Libertarian/Republicans will not produce the jobs that this country needs. Let’s face it, the jobs that America needs are GONE, GONE, GONE FOR GOOD! This observation brings me to the next news item.

Bloomberg TV reported today that (HOG) Harley Davidson will be building bikes (Motorcycles) in India. Holy Cow shit! Oh well motorcycle repair mechanics will still be needed here in the good ole US of A to fix Harleys and other imports. I guess when the very symbol of the heart and soul of the USA, Harleys with flat heads, fat bobs and california high rise bars goes global, we might as well toss in the towel on the American jobs picture.