Frankly, all this conservative blather about new strategery, hocus pocus focus group polls, think-tankery, and QQing is pretty lame, unimaginative, and worst of all ... boring.

It's really simple. If conservatism is truly the superior ideology, THEN PROVE IT. ^_^

I would direct aggressive efforts at implementing conservative principles at the state, city, and local levels where Reps are in charge.

Conservative governors, senators, mayors, officials, etc. should form an alliance and work together towards putting the conservative ethos into practice.  Instead of waiting with their hands outstretched for a federal bailout to improve their economies, why won't conservative leaders and officials band together, roll up their sleeves, and tackle the problems themselves? Hmm? Hmm? Hmm?

Really, you're wasting your time at the federal level which is rife with corruption, lobbyists, apparatchiks, and two-legged rodents.  It's a lost cause, imho.

And it's rather sickening hearing Reps whining about how they lost power - as if they don't have enough power already with congressmen, governors, and other elected officials. 

For a party that preaches "limited gov't," conservatives seem to crave a lot of power. Too many overlook the efficacy of a "bottom up" approach. Take what power you have available to you and make the best of it.

The Reps have far more than enough to start a revolution.  So what are you waiting for?

If you're looking for a leader, try Gov. Palin as a possible leader of such a movement, I suppose.

Anyhoo, blah blah blah. whine whine whine.

Hmm, some brief blah blah blah.

1) heck of a win for Obama. A lot of the battleground states were very close, but he pulled through to rack up a decisive electoral margin.  I thought he would win, but badly underestimated his margin of victory.

2) Throughout all of the election coverage, there was genuine pride and excitement beaming in the faces of African-Americans and the young supporters of Obama.  A great moment in American history.

3) The honeymoon period might last longer for Obama since he is the first black President, but I wonder how long it will take before things degenerate back into politics as usual ... after all, these are bureaucratic creatures of habit with their own sense of self-preservation and organizational agendas.  Beware, when you start to tread on the territory of these beasties.

4) Obama does have a trump card, should he encounter problems from the Dems or Reps. Because of his historic presidency, he might be able to use a Reagan tactic and appeal directly to the American people to try to transcend / bypass political obstacles through grassroots momentum.

5) there needs to be a shift from rhetoric to reality.  For example - his foreign policy consisted of nice talking points that would attract voters, but those ideas did not really form a practical or coherent plan.  Again, there are a lot of ideas out there that may sound plausible superficially in a rhetorical vacuum, but in actual practice will fall flat on its face - kinda like that neato Marxism idea.

Overall, both McCain and Obama seem like genuinely decent people.  I just thought that a lot of their ideas sucked.  Hopefully, Obama will succeed in doing what I had hoped Bush would have done ... which was to do very little, not mess things up, and leave people alone by staying the hell out of their business. 

Unfortunately, the circumstances of history made that impossible for Bush.  Hopefully, fate will be kinder to Obama, and his tenure as President will be boring and uneventful.  And I hope that Obama understands that a wise leader isn't one who knows how to rule over the people, but rather, one who knows how to let the people rule themselves.

bleh, what sappy "little grasshopper" pablum, heh.  more likely everyone's gonna go all FDR II on us, lmao. ah well ...

The scientifical consensus is that SEA MONSTERS are the natural enemis of pirates! There is overwhelming evidence showing that global warming has unfrozen the sea monsters trapped in ice during the last ice age, and their release into the oceans has decimated the pierat population!

Furthermore, computer models predict a concomitant thawing of fire-breathing dragons, thereby resulting in a positive feedback effect causing even more rapidly melting ice and increases in global temperatures. This will result in a tipping point in the near future where our skies and seas will be dominated by monsters, and our last, best hope for survival will rest in an alliance of ninjas, pirates, and vikings, all led by Beowulf.

1) as some mentioned in the comments - self-selection. people who choose journalism tend to be populist crusader types who often opine "why isn't gov't doing something about this problem?" and view journalism as an active vehicle for addressing social injustices or inequities. kinda like how marxists prolly don't jump into wall street. this results in more liberals in journalism.

2) i don't think competitive selection forces favor unbiased journalism. slant right and get the conservatives. slant left and get the liberals. add more competition from infotainment and screech monkeys throwing verbal poo at each other.  how can boring, unbiased reporting compete against that? in the future, it might only survive with a small, niche audience.

The Trouble with Greenspan

I'm a bit disturbed. Not a surprise. That's my usual mental state.

However, I am particularly disturbed by Greenspan's comments that his fundamental thinking and model of how the business world works were incorrect.

Bummer, man.  Sucks to be you.

I don't know if he is being dumb or deceitful.  Although semi-autonomous actors are acting within their own self-interest, it is only at a local level. 

Hmm, analogy to make things simple.

Cancer.  Cancer arises from our own cells.  It would be in the best interests of the cancer to stop growing before it kills its host - since then the cancer also dies - but it doesn't.  It grows and grows and grows until eventually, everything dies - including itself.

Not rational?  No.  Perfectly rational.  You are looking at the wrong organizational level.  A cancer cell is seeking optimal stability at the cellular level.  Humans are looking at cancer from a multi-cellular, organismal level.  Similarly, we are willing to sicken ourselves with chemotherapy and kill off our own cells so that we survive at the organismal level.  From a purely cellular point of view, I suppose such actions would seem insane.

Interpretations of rational and irrational behavior depend upon the proper level - although everything is fundamentally rational because there is a proper cause and effect for everything.  Another dumb, poorly thought out analogy - a mentally deranged person is irrational at the societal and perhaps at the organismal level, but the biochemistry and genetics of such an individual is perfectly logical and orderly.

But I digress.  Back to Greenspan's comment.  The same universal forces that select for the existence of cancer, also select for similar beasties within our political and economic and military-industrial-infotainment systems.

Anyhoo, I suspect that Greenspan's fundamental flaw was adhering to memes that are widely believed simply because they sound correct.  For example, it is not survival of the fittest that is correct.  It is survival of the relatively stable.  Persistence is valued more than superiority.  To remain is more important than to rule.

Heh, actually, that is why I have so little faith in the existing political system.  Our system selects for people who are maximally adapted for just getting votes and retaining power.  Is it a surprise that Obama's greatest achievement so far is "running a good campaign?"  Is it a surprise that the monetary investment into campaigning keeps rising?  The first thing people start working on after getting elected is how to get re-elected.  It is the perpetual campaign because our system selects for it.

Our Congress is filled with people who are better at simply remaining in power, rather than in actually governing.  The Democratic and Republican parties are simply optimized, vote-getting machines that use people, organizations, and ideological memes to maximize the number of its members in power.

And I can't really blame them.  Although I may blah, blah, blah, whine, whine, whine, and QQ about how lousy they are, they are behaving perfectly rationally.  This is how the system is currently set up to work, and they are simply conforming to the hills and valleys of the political landscape.

But I digress again, and now I'm lost, and I don't know how to return to whatever point I started out making.

Oh wait, I never had one from the beginning.  This is just a blog.

Note: for some reason, it started out as semi-rhyming doggerel, but this was not intended. i subconsciously keep trying to turn it into rhyme, but i ain't gonna waste my time to pen a poem about a bunch of fatheads.

The masters of the universe have all convened due to a crisis of magnitude never before seen. When the masters of the universe tremble should we all not quake and fall to our knees? And pray for the heavens to hear their desperate pleas?

The common man revolves around the world-axis of these Titans and Atlases of industry.  As these epic heroes of capitalism struggle to rally a new order against the Dragon of Chaos, battling at the edge of the economic precipice.  But the common man is too ignorant and stupid and dumb and moronic and imbecilic and pea-brained and dimwitted and dense and shortsighted and obtuse to realize the dire magnitude of the events that are portending - too profound is the saga and scope of interbank lending.

The great center of gravity of the solar system is threatened, and should the Nine Planets of the world of banking fall, our miserable lives and existences as pitiful satellites merely leeching off of their credit-based noblesse oblige will be scattered and flung off into the nether realms.  The planet-gods must be restored!  Their cosmic arcs and cycles must be kept regular and serene.  For by saving them, we save ourselves - the tiny, unworthy moons that we are, who orbit their grand splendour from afar.

Perhaps they may even annoint a new global emperor, a Sun King, to regulate the seven continents and the primeval seas and ...

Aw hell, get over your own sense of self-importance, you stupid b@st@rds.  The world doesn't begin and end with your existence - even though you may think so, and everyone else has been suckered into thinking so too ...

We've been focusing too much on just the banking system.  We seem to have forgotten that the early slowdown in the global economy was not due to the housing mess and its ripple effects. 

It was oil.

Oil siphoned off trillions of dollars out of the world economy, businesses, and consumers.  The rapidly booming markets in China and India hit walls because of high oil prices.

Although the oil bubble has burst, it is because the world is tanking - as I kinda expected.  The drag effect of high oil prices has sapped the confidence of consumers and was compounded by the credit nonsense.

However, the credit and financial mess has been addressed - imperfectly perhaps, but nonetheless addressed. 

I think we now need to focus on stimulating confidence in the general economy.  One of the ways is by driving down the price of oil.

Every time confidence in the economy improves, oil speculators spike prices back up - essentially driving confidence back down.  We need to obliterate the price of oil and gas.  Nothing will improve consumer confidence more than to see regular back down to around a buck and being able to fill up our gas tanks without wincing.

To drop oil prices, the following should be done.

1) Release the hounds, er, the strategic reserves.
2) Raise interest rates by 1/4 pt. Low rates aren't doing squat anyway.
3) Pass a drilling bill including the highly symbolic ANWR
4) Begin building nukes
5) Pass legislation limiting some types of oil speculation.
6) Push solar, coal, wind, etc. funding, blah blah blah.

Low oil and gas prices will have a strong, positive ripple effect on the world economy - THAT EVERYBODY CAN UNDERSTAND - and doesn't require friggin psychoanalysis and hand holding of bank lending fears.  Stop mucking around with banking reform.

IT'S DAMN SIMPLE. SPIKE OIL AND GAS DOWN FAST. NO RECESSION. THE END.