Barack me Amadeus

OK, I suppose it's my duty as a blog-owner to talk a little bit about what just happened. Of course, I'm not referring to the senses shattering mindfuck* that is the Arizona Cardinals in the Super Bowl, but the less surprising fact that we have a Commander-in-Chief with a Kenyan father. Yesterday was a historic day. Regardless of whatever else happens he will be one of the presidents that goes down with Madison, Kennedy, and the guys we see every day on our money as one of those leaders that even the kids that didn't go to college remember. Electing him was a profoundly good idea because he represents something that exists outside of himself and he is fully aware of this fact.

Whether you were pro- or anti-Democrat, you at least "get" why yesterday was a big day, and you can't be wholly against it. You get that people voted for an idea, you get that people looked at those "hope" posters and actually felt something. Everyone and their mother knew that the democratic party was going to win this election, it was inevitable. When the battle was Barack v. Hillary, we all knew that one way or another, revolutionary change was going to happen, that history would unfold. I think the reason that it had to be Barack is that in addition to his being of African descent and having a dark complexion, he is a man that is able to speak to us, he is a man that knows how to create an ideal. The spirit of this event was clear, the power of the event was felt by the masses, but we shouldn't just pat ourselves on the back, the job is not done, change needs to happen.

The problem with Barack Obama is that we all know the broad ideals he is meant to represent, but we're unclear of how specific policies will be leveraged to enact a better tomorrow for our republic. Outside of NCAA Football, we don't know his specific plans for anything, and oh, by the way, there's nothing he can really do about the NCAA without dicking over a ton of people. The biggest problem we have is the economy, that is the one thing that is going to impact us (and by us I mean people under 40) and our children the most in the long run. Right now we have a very large deficit. It was already incomprehensibly large, and now the only way to compare it is to say how much it's grown by factors of it's own former size since we're using the type of cartoonish numbers that you make up in kindergarten when estimating how many home runs you think Don Mattingly would retire with or how many men your floozy teacher had slept with. We have a serious problem in that no one thinks of this as a real thing. We're thinking of it the way you think of your student loans when you're buying a quarter from that kid you had that one class with junior year, but the thing is, eventually you're not going to be in school anymore, and guess what? You have to pay that money. The only way for us to magically pay this debt would be to circulate more money, thus devaluing every note of tender that we have. I don't think I need to explain why that's a bad idea. We've grown used to being the world's only economic super-power, but that's not a birthright, it can change. By my understanding of things, Obama is planning on ADDING to our national debt. No no no no no!!!! What we have to do (and no one wants to hear this) is increase taxes and decrease government spending. I know, no Democrat wants budget cuts and no Republican wants to pay more taxes, but unfortunately there isn't a virtuous unicorn of justice that's going to magically make our debt go away... what we're doing now is akin to living off a credit card without looking for a job or having any way to pay the bill when it comes, and personally I'd rather not see our nation in bankruptcy court.

I'm not even going to get into all this bailout stuff in too much detail, because I really don't know Obama's stance on it, and I think both situations are totally different. With banking we basically had no choice, the damage was already done and we needed to put the genie back in the bottle. Clearly, changes need to be made so that this cannot happen again and that people are held legally and financially responsible for their actions. The issue of nationalizing banking is an interesting option, but between that and talk about nationalized health-care** we'd be in serious jeopardy of looking socialist, something that traditionally been thought of as a dirty word in this country. In Detroit, I personally think we should not have given the bailout. American cars, by and large, suck; I'm sure there are a few individual models that are cool, but for the most part NO MAJOR INNOVATION in that sector has come from our country. Some people currently pay more to buy an American car, for no other reason than to buy American. WHY? When you buy wine, do you make sure it's always from America rather than France, Spain, or Italy? Do people honestly think that American cars are better even though every conceivable metric says otherwise? I say don't bail them out and the market will work itself out, survival of the fittest. I understand a lot of workers would potentially get laid off, and of course I sympathize, but automotive workers would see incresed openings at plants for foreign companies, which would expand to meet the demand, and quite frankly I would hope they would be retiring off at some point. I have no sympathy for any young man or woman that, in this day and age, gets into an occupation with the full understanding that they could be replaced by a machine at some point in the future. I also understand that some of these foreign companies may pay less as the demand curves for work are changing. Again, this is a normal fluctuation that is simply righting the fact that maybe, just maybe, these workers were making too much money to begin with, and may have been contributing to the lack of quality and innovation in American machines.

Logically, the next place to go from automotive workers is to energy. Quite simply, the regulations we have in place are insulting. The environment is another REAL problem (just like the economy) that needs to be dealt with. Trust me, I know as well as anyone that it's always easier to push back real things you don't want to deal with, but I hope everyone that's ever gone through a breakup knows: the quicker you can get it over with, the sooner the healing can begin and the sooner you can go back to being carefree. We are killing our planet. To say that you don't believe in global warming is good and fine, I disagree, but there's no way you can say that humanity is currently having a POSITIVE impact on things. In addition, there are limits to the amount of consumable fossil fuels we have available and we are in the unfortunate position of buying large quantities of it from nations that we would otherwise prefer not to have us over a barrel (pun fully intended), so why not make a change now? Why don't we demand that the auto industry have us an alternate way to power cars by a certain date? These are the things that can fuel innovation, this can be how Detroit can come back. If we saw (just a for instance, I have no idea the feasibility of this) we said that all new cars needed to be 100% electric by 2014, do you think we couldn't make that happen? Can't we at least try? Also, let's stop burning so much coal, it's totally gross. Nuclear power is not evil, and there are so many reusable power sources that haven't been tapped nearly as much as they used to be. Personally, I don't want to use my iPod or my TV less, so we need a way to make power more plentiful. I know it seems ridiculous to think of a world where all homes have their heating/air conditioning powered by solar panels, but not so long ago the paperless office seemed like a pipe dream, in college I even did a presentation about it. How many things have you printed at work this week? Do you think the same person doing your job 20 or even 10 years ago used more or less paper? Also, who do you think did their job more efficiently? All I'm saying is, we NEED to change, otherwise we will replenish the fossil fuels the same way they were created the first time... by having a mass extinction because of an ice age.

Iraq... that is one topic I'm not touching with a ten foot pole.***

Finally, I have one suggestion for Mr. Obama. Think about legalization. Don't ask legalization of what, you all know what I'm talking about. Personally, I don't really partake of the stuff that much, so don't think I'm some stoner with an agenda. The reason I'm suggesting that is that it's already clear that Obama is going to earn the title of "cool president," but if he wants to stand with the historically cool presidents like Teddy Roosevelt, Taft, Kennedy, and Clinton, he's going to need to do something historically cool, and what would be cooler than the president that came out as pro-legalization? Also, there are other facts such as cigarettes and alcohol are similar and legal, everyone in the country is able to get marijuana (there, I said it) more or less consequence-free anytime they want it, and we would be able to regulate it in a way so that it would actually be harder for minors to get it. PLUS, it would be cheaper, all the supplemental crime would go away, and we could tax the living shit out of it (in case you're coming in late, we could use the money).

To close, I'd like to reiterate that we have a good thing here, we've realized we need to make the change. We've taken the first step, but there are still 11 more that we need to go through with. On the inauguration day my friend Meagan told me "we should have set our DVRs" and I agreed. Then she said, "there's always in 4 more years" to which I replied "No, not like this. There will never been an inauguration like this ever again. At least, I hope not." That's because I hope that we never need change like this again, I hope we're never in a hole like this again. We cannot forget the message, we cannot forget why this was important. This was not about an issue of race, this was about change, this was about believing that it's possible to go to sleep at night and wake up in a better world the next day, and that can happen every night if you want it enough. The only way we'll have an inauguration that we'll remember this much, have an event that we all agree is packed with this much meaning, would be if a giant sea monster attacked us and we either elect a president that vows to personally fight it with his (or her) bare hands, or we just decide to elect it president because nothing says more about hope than electing a sea monster. Did that sound racist? I should have stopped with the better tomorrow thing. Ignore these last few sentences.

* I love that spell check wants me to change that to "mind fuck," the little red squiggly reminds me of freedom

** (which I'm also against, but not for the reasons you'd think, I may get into that at a later time if and when talks about that become a little more serious)

*** and by topic I mean vagina, and by Iraq I mean (some random girl's name) from accounting.

PostScript: I now realize that the Daily Show had a segment with a similar title to the name of this post. Sorry, I swear I came up with it independently and it's too late for me to come up with another pun now.