Election Ends

And the election ended as Americans had been prepared for government split. We heard reports of various scenarios from complete Republican control of Congress, to Democrats hoping to hold on and win, and to what we eventually obtained - a split where Republicans have the House and Democrats the Senate. What does it all mean?

1) The country is still a strong democracy - what isn’t working can be voted out with a chance to change course. It is also a last gasp for the old guard to get their programs in before things change. Notice how all the House Republican leaders are older white with business ties? Well, one thing about the Obama win was the understanding that America will no longer be majority white going forward, so in many ways Boehner’s team looks like a flash of the past. And, that last chance is good for America because the debate doesn’t stop just because of an election - give these guys a chance to show what they have.

2) Voters are interested in the economy and jobs - no matter about the Tea Party rhetoric - incumbents and professional politicians won for both parties. Voters in the mid-west returned several Republicans to congress that had been voted out two years earlier. Alaska retained their sitting Senator and long-term congressman despite calls for changing Washington. It seems as if the problems that started this economic mess aren’t over and won’t be for some time.

3) What is going to happen within the Republican Party over the next two years? Whatever it is will be historic, whatever it is. We see Rand Paul wanting to bring in the Tea Party for Washington meetings just as Boehner names his country club leadership. Will Sarah Palin take the party and run for President giving Americans a chance to vote for someone where more than 60% of Americans say is unqualified? Fascinating what happens when uneducated people are fed short half truths and outright lies.

4) Jon Stewart/Keith Olbermann - liberal ignorance? Chamberlain? Maybe not that bad, but let’s remember that if Republicans and Tea Baggers are the enemy and have another agenda, and have shown they will do almost anything, then appeasement just might not work. And maybe I’m getting the wrong thing out of the message here, please enlighten me, but more civility to a bully didn’t work in elementary school and probably won’t work here. What we need to do here is respond here in kind, and then cooperate when the bullies do. It’s all in Robert Axelrod’s, The Evolution of Cooperation, where game players studied what the best strategy would be with someone that doesn’t share your goals. And, to briefly sum it up, the winning strategy is to respond in kind, and then cooperate as long as the other side does it. So, don’t put down those guns yet - we’ve seen the warnings, but hopefully it won’t get that far if we start now with the program.

The president's truest opponent.

Balancing forces exist in nature. Gravity is countered by natural force, movement is countered by friction, and every powerful governing force, such as a Czar or King, is countered at least partially by the nobility.

A king will be able to do whatever he wishes to do. Should the corn supply in his fiefdom raise, he can raise taxes. Should a neighboring kingdom refuse to wed their princess to his prince, a war would not be far off. Anything he would wish to do, good or bad, would be within the realm of possibility. Every good king in history has been legendary. Every bad king has been horrible. Nowadays.....

We have removed the king. In England, the royal family are more or less celebrities without any real power. In America, we have the president. The latest of the presidents that we elected was elected because he wished to change things for the better. He was to be the first in eight years who did something positive for the country, and he wanted to do a good deal of things. It was later found, however, that he is not quite as all powerful as a king.

Why is this, you ask? Why can't this man do everything we want him to do?

The answer is simple. America has set up a system that prevents too much power from being in the hands of one man. The founding fathers decided that, rather than having one person and letting fate go off how good or bad he is..... They would rather add opposition and prevent anything bad from happening. Unfortunately, this also prevented the positive from coming about, because the odds of getting someone bad in office is...... Well, I'd say equal to the chances of getting someone good in office. And the original thought was that it should be easier to stop something from happening than to cause something to happen.

Obama was not running against Mccain. Obama was running against the system which detests change, requiring more than just a majority to be successful. America's slogan from the beginning was "The same unless everybody agrees otherwise", and Obama's mantle was that of change. The republican ideal of resistance against change is, by the by, their most powerful candidate. It's far more simple task to resist change than it is to cause it.

If Obama was a king, he would have been capable of doing something. But.... No, he's just president. He isn't all powerful, and no matter how pure his intentions, he cannot fix things alone.

Health Care opposition revealed to support more not repeal

Doh!! Polling numbers today show what many of the quieter among us knew all along - President Obama and the Democrats didn't use the mandate we gave them and give us the health care overhaul we wanted. Instead they listened to biased and undeniable Fox News, along with bogus 'grassroots' support financed primarily by billionaires who, as an irony to their very supporters, advocate survival of the fittest. Not only would Republicans and Tea Partiers let insurance companies drop the chronically I'll, they offer as alternatives an exchange where the sickest would pool together for insurance. As one friend noted to me, it's like putting everyone whose house burned down into a pool with others who'd had their houses torched. Obviously the distressed would pay and the lucky would not - but what is insurance for if not to pay when unfortunate events occur?

Maybe I'm jaded because I actually studied - and passed - economics. Oh yea, and I've worked globally in banking and finance too. I listen to a few out there who obviously know nothing about how our money and banking system work but are against anything our government will try and do. Some times you just want to slap them but you know it is a result of the decay in our educational system - a product of those poor home schooled kids who learned from their clueless parents, and from those in schools gutted by greedy homeowners and those without the ability to see the benefits of actual wide-spread learning beyond rigid and uncaring dogma.

Maybe too because I'm terminally I'll with cancer. Medical Bills to keep me alive totaled nearly $23,000. Prescription medication averages nearly retail $6,000 per month. And because I was relatively healthy when I contracted my disease, I've already lived longer than I should have statistically, and am faced with maybe 5 years of $200,000 in bills. Who that much besides the billionaires trying to talk the rest of us to drop this health care and give them another tax break.

Or, maybe it is because of my co-editor who lived in a country that spends 6% less of their GNP on medical care, and yet outperforms our 'capitalist' system. You see, my friend on the right above crushed his elbow. We drove to the nearest hospital who surgically repaired it without even asking for anything beyond his name. He could have been from Mars for all they cared. And when he was discharged did they ask for anything? NO! And did they do a good job? Their work was perfect and has never caused any problems in the dozen or so years after inserting screws.


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