Into mysteries I shall delve in 2012

Salve my immortal soul in 2012

Nothing rhymes with twelve in 2012

Oh man, 2013’s gonna be the year of the bean.

Don’t Go to Heaven in 2011 - Success

Guy on a Buffalo-OO-oo!!!

Government debt is strangling the US economy? We’re worried about public debt but what about private debt?

They say that we need to run the government like we run our businesses and households. That’s exactly what we’ve been doing, borrowing to get what we want. We need to change the way we run everything and avoiding debt is one major way to do that.

American consumers’ long-running love affair with debt is on the rocks. And as they repent for their credit-driven Bacchanalia, the foundering U.S. economy is left to pick up the pieces.

Per Wall St. Journal

Don’t you know that we’ve been borrowing money to make the economy grow for the past 40 years? If we actually start saving money to pay off our debt and stop adding to our debt how will our economy grow?

Why are you being so selfish? I’m heading to a bank right now to get a loan and get the economy growing again.

Besides riding on the train and trying to break into buildings to get up on to roofs, what is there to do in this town?

Colter Bay, Grand Teton National Park

But as long as you’re comfortable it feels like freedom - Billy Bragg

Could Nic Cage be a vampire (who has the power to go bald and gain weight while aging)? Maybe, an old Civil War era photo that kinda resembles him leads the guy who tried to sell it on ebay to speculate that there may be more to the star of Knowing than meets the eye…

Via the Wall Street Journal

President Barack Obama, citing the struggling economy, asked the Environmental Protection Agency on Friday to withdraw an air-quality rule that Republicans and business groups said would cost millions of jobs.

I can’t really think of anything that Obama has fought for that’s going to make any real difference in our lives in 10 years. Health care reform was a hand out to the industry. He rolled over on re-regulation of the financial sector. He gave up without a fight on climate change and he will allow the Keystone XL project to proceed. Tax cuts for the wealthy? Sure we’ll extend them until right after the next presidential election, I can’t see any problem with that.

I once read a biography of Franklin Roosevelt. One of the things that really stuck with me was the author’s assessment of his Presidency. During the Great Depression (the first one I mean) the average American revered Roosevelt not because he was making the economy better, because often the economy wasn’t improving, but because he was actually fighting for something, for them.

Regardless of how the Obama Administration’s policies would affect the lives of any given person in this country you can say almost as a rule that he isn’t fighting for what he believes in. His speeches take a professorial tone and he says that the American People just want compromise and for Washington to get something done.

Then he turns around and gives in to whatever the Republicans want. Guess what, the problems we’re facing, even the ones the Media actually talks about like the debt ceiling, have been around for forty years or more. They are problems that are structural to the very functioning of society. They require a little more than compromise to fix.

Most liberals only tacitly support Obama’s policies because he belongs to their team, the Democrats. I’d rather have a Republican in office because then at least people would oppose their policies because it’s the opposing team. That’s how American politics works.

Tell me again why I’m supposed to vote for someone who isn’t willing to support the most basic tenants of his platform? Obama, if he actually has any beliefs beyond his own ambition, needs move past the media and speak to the American People directly. He needs to show that he is actually fighting for them rather than compromising away their future to avoid some bad press. Please give me just one good reason.