not everything is falling

some businesses are failing. in fact, a lot of businesses are failing completely. a lot of people are going unemployed or underemployed. there are many industries which are built on the notion that people will always have disposable income that they would rather spend on consumer purchases than save for later times.

some businesses are thriving. nintendo had a great year, as did amazon. walmart, mcdonalds, etc will all do fine throughout this, as low cost sellers. differentiation companies, like starbucks, will have to rethink their entire perspective or face a grim year or two. and this will last at least through 2010.

so in the meantime, we have to look at this as an opportunity. in 2 million minutes, one of the commentators notes that Americans lack the basic economic urgency that Indians have, and thus are not as committed to innovation. well, I wouldn’t count on our security blankets to last too much longer. the financial bailout has done nothing. the auto bailout will do nothing. in the end, we will probably have to nationalize large swaths of public companies just to stay afloat. and to those laissez-faire free-market proponents, I’m sorry, you had your chance, people got greedy, and now we’re SOL.

what I ask myself, as a hopeful entrepreneur, is how to develop and deliver value to someone in a time when money is sparse, consumer confidence is low, and no one wants to buy anything. mainly I see that I don’t want to enter the job market anytime soon. even still, my prospects as far as employment opportunities/future education are looking great, so I’m not terribly worried. I’m worried for the rest of my peers. this may not be something that we bounce back from and grow stronger because of; this might be something that irrevocably changes the dynamics of the global economy. so what side of the globe will you be on when all is said and done?

post-election

• Single-Issue Voters are a blight on the electoral system.
• The passage of Prop 8 should remind liberals not to count on the Black vote for all issues.
• Mike Huckabee’s show on Fox is mildly entertaining, thought provoking, and interesting to watch. This is a first for any show on Fox News, as far as I know.
• If Bush had a “mandate”, Obama sure as hell has one. Don’t listen to those who say otherwise; they just want to discredit his impressive victory.
• The fact that celebrations were held around the world because of our choice for President should probably be indicative that we did something right.
• All of those die-hard Bush fanatics who rallied around the cry of “You may not agree with his policies, but he’s our President and we have to support him” – turnaround is fair game. 

14 Days of Media Speculation about Hypothetical Outcomes

Voted Early for Obama. Nels Ackermann (running for Congress in this district) and John Polles (running for State Representative) both came to our house a few days ago to talk to our brothers. Ackermann was a distinguished Purdue grad, president of Farmhouse and the FFA here and his nephew was a Purdue DU; Polles was a DU at Cal Poly (I believe, can’t remember exact name of school). As house photographer, I have some pictures from the event that will be up on our website once I find out how to update it. Both seem to have good interests at heart and impressive political/educational/military careers.

Colin Powell’s endorsement speech of Obama was simply beautiful. It’s a simple and straightforward, yet eloquent testament to the political sphere. I’ve watched it several times, and each time it reminds me why I’m voting Obama. I’d watch the video on Youtube if you haven’t seen it yet. Efforts by some conservatives to discount his endorsement as simply being of race are disgusting and juvenile. Powell is one of the most accomplished, respected, and authoritative figure of US politics over the last decade. His race should be an afterthought, not the prefix to his title.

McCain’s choice of Palin (if he was the one to choose her in the first place, which I highly doubt) continues to prove a further nail in the coffin. One issue in particular that bothers me: Her implications that because she has a disabled child, she somehow is an expert on the topic and fully understands the needs of parents of disabled children. Disabilities, even within the same group (such as Autism) come in all forms, shapes, sizes and depths. John McCain recently noted that he knew no one better to support such families than Palin, oftentimes seemingly grouping Autism and Downs Syndrome as one in the same. He has obviously never met my mom, nor anyone else familiar and educated with these issues. This is pandering at its finest. Palin has little to no grasp on the actual issues, has further ostracized the moderate conservatives, has offended almost the entire female demographic who had supported Hillary, and continues to bring important topics down to a childish level without a real understanding on the underlying concepts.

Listen, Palin / Republicans – I am Not Bob the Builder, Dora the Explorer, Joe the Unlicensed Plumber, etc. I am more than my career, more than my salary, more than my economic status, and more than my job title. I do not appreciate efforts to reduce the sum of my being as a single word description. I am just as Pro-America as anyone from any small town, and I’d say that to suggest otherwise is decidedly unpatriotic. There is NO “Real” America. You are inciting division at a time for unity, spreading fear at a time for hope, and resorting to name-calling and guilt-by-association. Dissent is not disloyalty, and we can continue to disagree without being disagreeable. You are exploiting the base instincts and primal fears of your supporters rather than striving to elevate the level of political discourse. Your style of character assassination is a step back for all of us, and regardless of the outcome of this election, we will all have suffered for bearing witness to it.

commentia

A large portion of my day is spent online, and I spend quite a lot of time on the internet reading various news stories about current events, technology, the environment, politics, etc. Google News, Fark, CNN, etc – I scan News Aggregators for most of the time I’m in labs pretending to work.

But even more than I read the news stories themselves (I’ll usually just skim through), I read the comments at the bottom of the page that everyday people all across the world have posted. It’s usually an exercise in masochism, trying to parse through horrible grammar, inconsistent capitalization, misspellings, and the bewildering need to segment every other word or sentence with four or five commas.

And, as such, I’ve started to notice a clear trend in the comments of news stories – either Obama supporters are becoming a lot more vocal, or there are just a lot more Obama supporters out there. I’m hopeful that it’s the latter. Back during the primaries, you’d have pretty even numbers of commenters attacking Obama because they were pro-McCain, attacking Obama because they were pro-Hillary, praising Ron Paul, or supporting Obama. Those percentages have shifted now – you have a few sparse comments along the lines of “we don’t know enough about Obama” or “REZKOREZKOAYERSAYERSWRIGHTWRIGHT”, maybe one or two “I could never support someone who publicly mistreated Hillary so horribly”, and the Ron Paul supporters have all but given up the fight.

Which leaves the rest as either Obama supporters or disenfranchised former Republican supporters who have finally started to take note of McCain’s dispicable campaigning and insulting choice of VP. Now, I’m not saying the grammar or syntax of these comments is any better, but I’ve noticed an unmistakable shift in opinion – which seems to be reflected in the national polls. I realize the demographic of people who sit at home and post angry capslock comments on news sites doesn’t accurately reflect the majority of Americans – but I’m hopeful that the change I’ve seen reflects the sentiments of a lot of them.

where is this re-energized base I do not see them where are these numbers coming from

An Interesting and Rather Depressing Story

The highest ranking military officials did not agree with the surge, and their voices were not given much consideration. We escalated already thinly-stretched forces based on the desire of civilian personnel, against the desires of the JCS and other commanders on the ground. And let’s not forget that this ’surge’ is still ongoing – we still have more forces on the ground than before it began, and Petraeus has said we cannot begin reducing troops to pre-surge levels till June. And there was little to no contingency plan for what would happen if the surge proved to be a failure – no backup plan for if some conflict starts elsewhere in the world that requires our immediate attention, like let’s say Russia trying to start a new Cold War. The only option left after that would be conscription, an option which apparently has been on the table – if only the edge – since 2006.

Mission Accomplished 2: The Homefront

Well, John McCain said the US needs an ‘economic surge‘ to get our country rolling again, essentially saying that the way to tackle our financial problems is basically the same as quelling an insurgency overseas. I await his details on just how many additional troops we will need to deploy to the American economy before we see positive results.

It’s not that he’s old, it’s that he’s wildly inaccurate. And old.

Today, on a prominent morning news show, John McCain said we need to secure the Iraq/Pakistan border.

Sure, perhaps it was a simple gaffe, and in all honesty he probably meant Afghanistan/Pakistan border. (For those confused, Iraq shares no border with Pakistan.) Simple mistake. But add that to him not knowing that Shia and Sunni Muslims are different (they are), claiming last week that Czechoslovakia was still a country (it’s not), and claiming repeatedly that Iran is training Al-Qaeda agents (they’re not), and you start to build a sense of mistrust: Does John McCain actually know a damned thing about what’s going on in the world?

And yet, the biggest nontroversy generated by the right blog hemisphere is that Obama’s daughters (like most young girls) are fans of the Jonas Brothers, who apparently have joined in solidarity with Rachel Ray in the wearing of the Keffiyah.

If you’d like to read a few more factual errors, I found this article to be enlightening. Or, you know, just google “John McCain” and “factual error” – there are plenty. Just skimming the same results of Obama seem to show several hits about that other nontroversy about his grandfather’s involvement in freeing a WWII prison camp (it went something like, Obama said it was Buchenwald, but really it was a subcamp of Buchenwald, therefore Obama is a terrorist). If Barack Obama were consistently making grossly inaccurate statements involving current affairs (especially in the middle east), he would be ridiculed on every nightly news show. Why are we giving McCain such a pass? My guess is that no one wants to chastise an elderly man for forgetting the names of places we’re bombing; just shun it off with an ‘oh, grandpa!’ type laugh. But if that’s the case, how are we expecting this man to lead the free world? I’m terrified that we are so willing to substitute ‘alzheimers’ for ‘retarded’ and let the show go on as normal.

*Edit : Some people are taking notice.

Also, I think this article puts it pretty succinctly: Republicans never liked McCain until they realized they had to pretend to support him. He’s perpetually confused about the Middle East, echos longstanding policies while claiming himself a ‘maverick’, and has admitted to not being too well educated about the economy. I think that article also does a great job pointing how much the media plays into the public perception – it’s big business to make it seem like it’s always a close race. It’s painful when the best advice for your campaign is the familiar adage, “It is better to keep one’s mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and resolve all doubt.”