I'd rather have someone who is honest, and tells us where he's going, and sticks to it, than a liar with a silver tongueUmm, that was Jimmy Carter, and we all know how well that turned out. And, in retrospect, Jimmy was right, and Regan was wrong to dismantle all the energy stuff that Carter got rolling. We'd be a hell of a lot better off had we pursued that course since the 70s.
And I sure hope that medical school you're going to is not a STATE school. And that the highways you ride on are private highways and not state funded projects. And really, really stay off the freeways, them thangs are Federal Gub'ment projects, lock, stock and barrel.
Those diets you talk about, that's more or less a regional deal. And for sure that classic 'cookin with lard' Southern Cuisine is just a big old heart attack on a plate looking up at 'cha. But its not everyone in the country. Half the people I work with are veggies, and of them, 30% are vegan. So, I don't think its them. On a nice Saturday or Sunday afternoon the trails through Annendale are so packed with trail bikes (the pedal kind) that they are going to need traffic lights soon. No matter what time of day I'm out riding around I see other people riding, walking, running - so again, its not everywhere.
And it's not just Obama, nor even Bush. State governments, republican and democratic states alike are in big financial trouble. Local counties and cities are also having huge budget issues from coast to coast, so it's not just a Federal problem.
When companies that have been in business for over a hundred years are failing that would seem to indicate a more systematic problem. One that is not just an issue of debt load.
Nor is it just an American problem. Its worldwide. Something is very wrong on a fundamental level.
Are these people going to solve it? I doubt it. Not because they are not going to try, or because the solutions they implement are wrong in some political sense, but because the problem is so deep that band-aid solutions will not solve the massive at the core issues.
At root - and I have no idea of how they will work it out - the system just got too big to be stable any longer. It's not that Obama can't fix or control it, or that Bush couldn't do it either - but that I don't think anyone can.
On a micro level, there was a band. Phish. Kind of a dumb name, and not all that good, but they were doing OK. They were selling out shows, making money, working. But it got bigger, and bigger, and bigger. By the end they were selling out 3 day festivals that featured them, and pretty much only them. And then it all fell apart on them. Did they get tired of being big rock stars? No. Did they say 'hey, we've got enough money now, let's quit?" Not likely. What happened was it just got too big for them to run. It took all their time planning and doing logistics for these huge events, it was just one headache after the other. In the end (or by the end) putting on these shows had become such a huge deal that the music (the reason they were doing it in the first place) became lost in all that. They had pretty much stopped being a band and had become planners, and that's not what they wanted to do.
On the macro level, all the finance, all the economics, the banking, stocks, bonds and all has lost any relevance at all to what it was originally intended to do.
So enamored in the process, they lost sight of the product and the reason.
So too with Iraq. So enamored with the process of war, they lost sight - if they ever had it, and I don't think they did - of what the goals really were.
After the Tet Offensive, LBJ got an old Washington hand, Clark Clifford to come in and try to do something to run things. Clifford called all the generals in and asked them some pretty obvious questions.
How many more men were needed?
Would that number do the job?
Could the enemy respond in kind?
Could bombing by itself stop the war?
How can we win?
How long will it take?
When there was no agreement on the answers, and in particular as Clifford noted in his memoirs: "Not only was there no agreement, I could find no one willing to express any confidence in their guesses."*
And not only is that Iraq today, its the economy too. Not just the Federal one, but just about every state and city. And most Western nations too.
As Clifford found out, there is no agreement, nor any confidence in the guesses.
*You can read Clifford's own writing on it here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=tGvq4ORMMzoC&pg=PA111&lpg=PA111&dq=clark+clifford+vietnam+questions+to+generals&source=bl&ots=EqzR-7_7M_&sig=McACc-x48Ducdph5FsVhI6o4_68&hl=en&ei=kjj7SbrqDpDutQOkp_3XAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#PPA113,M1
