ELECTION 2012

Sooooo.... I have been gone but have not been missed. It is Saturday night. I am sober. I just cooked a pot roast. My wife is out of town. My kids have moved out. No one really gives a shit about me. I am sober. Thinking about drinking makes my body hurt. I have neglected to send bills out for my law practice for two months and when my wife does return...she will kill me. did I mention I am sober? One of my dogs got into the bacon grease jar under the sink and has been puking up bacon smelling dog food all evening which slightly (but not profoundly) diminished my enjoyment of the pot roast. I say the movie “Drive” tonight. Women love Ryan Gosling. I don’t know why but my talent at judging man flesh is...”limited”. Gosling had to say less than 100 words in the whole film. He did kill at least 4 people however. Silent, handsome...psychotic. What is not to love. The movie was well films but just too slow for an action film. I am still sober.

So it is politics today. We are well over a year from the election and I am exhausted. I do not understand anything. Why, oh why would the Republicans embrace Rick Perry? Why will the country elect another Texan? It is very early and we have no ideas about what skeletons he has but one has to believe if he is a graduate of Texas politics that they would have crucified him early and often. It is clear he is a classic pork barrel Republican who really knows how to help his friends who are now all OK because they are “job creators”. Which is another thing. How did everyone who makes over 200k a year become a “job creator”? Why do they believe that we are so stupid? Why do we keep proving them right. The idiot buzzwords of the season:

1. The “Elite”
2. The “top 1%”
3. Taxing the jets
4. Romneycare
5. Obamacare (recycling from 2010 election)
6. HPV vaccinations causing mental retardation, “Government Injections!”
7. Do nothing congress
8. Leading from behind
9. No tax pledge
10. Ponzi Scheme
11. Corporations are people...like soylent green....IT’S PEOPLE!!!!
12. PASS THIS JOBS BILL!

There are a hundred more. I mean, really...seriously... I am not going to make it this time. Last election I was excited about Obama. Now I want to be clear, I do not blame him AT ALL for the lack of recovery from the recession. I am not even going to blame him when it double dips and i will not even blame him if it turns into the next great depression. Who you have as President does matter but we are reaping the seeds that were sewn for the last 80 years. But seriously... he has shown himself to be a really typical left wing politician. So boy would I be ready to get rid of him, but for the fact that the Republican candidates are THE WORST.

The Tea Party has totally skewed the Republican party. Everything is an absolute, no compromise eternal truth. Do not concern yourself with facts. Do not concern yourself that there are people who disagree with you. NO NEW TAXES. CUT ALL SPENDING. MAKE GOVERNMENT SMALLER. PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. ONE NATION UNDER GOD! The sad thing is that on one level or another I agree with all these platitudes. I just also see that government does have a purpose. The free market and capitalism do not naturally solve all the worlds problems and that there really are no simple answers to the problems our country faces. So I will not be able to vote for any of the Republicans I have seen so far. I also have to admit, I really would have a hard time voting for a Mormon. I really feel bad about that but I really don’t think I can. And I like John Huntsman. He sounds like a totally reasonable guy to me. But he is a Mormon.

So here is what I want and what the country deserves. We deserve a candidate who is going to say the following:
“This is how it is, our country is in deep financial trouble. The world “including China” is in deep financial trouble as well. We don’t make a lot of things here anymore and the things we do make are military stuff (which makes a lot of jobs) and hi tech stuff and software (which does not). But it will take some time to figure this out but it is unlikely that we are going to bring a lot of high paying manufacturing jobs back here to restore the middle class. If someone tells you we are, they are lying and telling you they think you are stupid. Along those same lines, the housing industry, ain’t coming back. That was a bubble. Houses will need to be built, as population expands. Also, while we should not embrace illegal immigration we need to keep in mind that there are roughly ten million illegal immigrants here, we cannot to find them and send them back and... by the way by 2050, with or without illegal immigrants, we are likely to be a Hispanic nation. Embrace it! Change is good. Don’t be afraid. We are the greatest country in the world. The new economy might not be the consumption economy of the past. We might have a lower standard of living. We might have to live inter-generationally. We need to redefine what it means to be a GREAT country. People are going to have less government services. people are going to pay more taxes. Don’t let simpletons on the right tell you that it can all be done by cutting services and don’t let the Democrats tell you that we can make it up by “taxing the rich”. We need to demand that they treat us as adults, but in order to do that we have to hold them to a higher stadard and demand candor, even if it alienates the base.