Monday, February 2, 2009

The Medicine Cabinet Recommends

1. Now that Barack Obama has been sworn in, and is hard at work on his economic recovery package and the minutia of governing, many of his most ardent supporters are feeling a little down. No more encouraging speeches. No more rallies. No excuse to buy candidate-themed merchandise.

Where to put all of that energy, now that the horse race is over? Obviously, Obama was looking to be more than motivational speaker of state. He's hunkered down over his desk, oblivious to the rousing his rabble desires. So they've moved on. The people are looking for a new iconic figure to lead them out of the wilderness. Results have not been promising thus far:



2.Frank Rich tells beltway republicans to grow up or get out of the way.

3. Bill Clinton at the World Economic Forum:



4. I'm no economic genius. That's why I appreciated this fleshing out of our current economic situation, provided by This American Life.


5.Science & Faith:



6.Life. This is a poem I wrote about a year ago for Dan Tricarico's Litsnack experiment. It's message is very apropos to my situation right now as I try to secure letters of recommendation for grad school, and try to land a job in my field in this shoddy economy. It also seems relevant to the mood of our nation right now: We're rolling up our sleeves and trying to solve some serious problems at home and abroad, so our children won't have to.


7. "Cash Rules Everything Around Me":

7 comments:

  1. Grow up and get out of the way, hmmm. So when someone disagrees with the democrats they are childish and obstructionists. When the republicans were in power and the domocrats disagreed it honorable and patriotic. There is no hypocracy there (that was sarcasm). The stimulus doing anything except providing a great deal of money to democratic croneys is a falacy. It may create busy work for some (if your are not a white male according to Robert Reich). If you look at Bill Clinton's record. his biggest successes have been his ability to do nothing and let things fix themselves. The jenga block that caused this tumble were democrats forcing banks to generate bad loans creating the housing bubble. This, or any stimulis package ANY president or government official would propose does not guarantee one job or one million. The republicans have nothing to brag about and are not the marketers that the democrats promoting their bigger more socialist government. In this case count me amongst the childish, obstructionist, patriotic and honorable who stand against the adminstration when they want to do wrong. Spending trillions to give ACORN and other cheats money and hopefully create a job or two on the way is typical government misappropriation, and needs to be stopped.

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  2. No comments on this month's first recommendation? I thought you might think that was funny. Oh well...

    Maybe 'Grow up or get out of the way' was too harsh, but it was basically Mr. Rich's point. He's not saying criticism of the majority party is bad, he's saying the republican leadership has failed to come up with an adequate solution to our current situation. If you listen to recommendation # 4 for the month, you'll hear how absolutely unscientific ALL of our market models are. The Obama plan can be tweaked, but at least he has a plan. All I've heard from Sean Hannity's 'Rebel Republicans' so far are complaints about spending on contraceptives, which is no longer a part of the bill. I'm not 100% happy with every aspect of the bill that I've heard, but I like the infrastructure spending, the spending on our education system, technology spending, and the SCHIP provisions, as well as the tax cuts and rebates. I'm not a true believer when it comes to economic systems. I'm a pragmatist. I hope this thing works. I don't want the U.S. to end up like Iceland.

    Also: I know bad lending practices led to the problem with the banks, but I am just as opposed to pointing fingers at the democrats for that as I was to pointing fingers at Bush for invading Iraq on bad intelligence. We screwed up, we're in there now, let's fix the mess. No cut and run.

    I thought Bill Clinton's comments about Putin's seeming concern about free markets were funny. I don't think the 'bad banks' idea sounds terrible. I don't know. We'll see.

    Thanks for sharing your thoughts, and thanks for reading my blog. I look forward to many more conversations with you.

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  3. When it comes to the market, there is some science but there are too many variables. To fix some problems you need to know the cause. We can argue about if we should have removed Hussein or not and yes we need to finish the job. The two issue are not related. In this case, I was pointing out that government intervention based on good intentions, screwed everyone.
    Soooooooooooo, why should I believe that government intervention based on good intentions, especially from the same party will repair the problem. It is not dissimilar to cracking an egg with a tack hammer then using a sledge hammer to fix it. I have not read the revised bill, but if that other stuff you like are in there, break them out of the stimulus and vote them seperately. If there is an ounce of pork in the bill, kill it, then the go inform the idiot that put it in there that it won't be tollerated. The reality is democrats don't need the republicans to do anything. They however want to share the blame when things go wrong. If Obama believes this will fix things, he should stand up say we are going ahead without republican support. I would have much more respect for him. Any former president commenting on current presidential policy should be told by the people to STFU and sit down, you had your turn (hopefully Jimmy and Bill heard that). I stand fundamentally opposed to this adminstrations, congress (and previous adminstrations) attempts to slide all of the crap in one bill and give it a name that makes it sound like something you have to support. It should be one bill, one idea. Not "Stimulus, ACORN, S CHIP, Infrustructure, Softer Toilet paper, pay off that guy in the green suit who helped me get elected, etc. bill". The fact that they are saying this has to be done NOW, its an EMERGENCY, if it doesn't pass in the next 6 hours we're all going to DIE, the republicans are ignorant bullies who don't agree with us so we can't get it to pass, should send up red flags and fireworks to the entire nation that makes us say "HEY, STOP, LET ME READ THIS THING YOU'RE TRYING TO PASS". Caution should be excersied whenever government thinks they are the only answer, when usually they are the only problem. Oh, the republicans have offered solutions, but Pelosi and Reed have decided republicans should just sit over in that corner and let the democrats handle this.

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  4. I never really liked the guy in the green suit.

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  5. He's been a real pain at times. He hard of hearing to, I think its the ear hair.

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  6. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126941.700-born-believers-how-your-brain-creates-god.html?full=true

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