Oh Protest where have you gone?

Today the President of the United States met with the Queen of England . It was somewhat adorable to see the Obama family tower over the Queen. It seemed to be a very cordial affair. There were photos taken and some casual talk regarding family. Outside in London was a large protest group for the G-20 conference. Now I believe some are there for expressing their feelings and thoughts regarding the world wide financial issues many are not. I am upset with how protesting in the 90's and well into this new Millennia have become more into one-upping each other.

Where are the Martin Luther Kings? What happened to Women's Suffrage? Where is that type of organization. Today I saw Anti-Iraq war protests, Women's rights, Palestinian Liberation, Gay rights, I even think I saw someone holding a sign about Parking Costs in London! What is going on people. History has shown that the most effective protests, in free countries, are peaceful and educated approaches. When venues are available to let yourself be heard smashing a bank window while screaming about Palestine and wearing a shirt about Animal rights just is confusing. Also it irritates people who may be on the fence. It's ok to be angry. I'm a huge advocate of not pressing anger inside pretending it's not socially acceptable to get upset. Getting your point across is a lot more important. Sure a little chant is easy to remember and a crowd yelling a rhyme about banks or Afghanistan is powerful. What's really powerful is saying something that kids will study in school forty years later.

I'm upset about what's going on. I want things to get better but the same reasoning that got us into this mess will not let it get fixed. What I'm talking about is instant gratification. Large sweeping change never happens quickly especially Social and Political change. We as a nation are still dealing with the concepts put in place by the Puritan founders. The Emancipation Proclamation was put into effect 146 years and 4 months ago and we are still dealing with issues of African American rights. Standing in a square and yelling till your horse isn't going to change everyones mind. Just put together something that will have some lasting impact. Something that people will begin to associate with a great moment in humanity. At least just get everyone on the same page. If everyone is there for a financial summit then focus on oh I don't know.... FINANCIAL REFORM

Politics of the People

I know that pretty much no one will read this. It's boring to most people plain and simple. I worry for the people of this country and I worry because I am guilty of the same things. It is very hard to be tuned into the ills of the world on a regular basis. It's depressing and it's easier to just flip the channel or change the subject. I do it all the time. We all do it all the time. Something struck me yesterday that was said and it struck me because I had a slight personal touch on the subject. A couple of days ago a woman committed suicide about 200 feet from my front door. She did it on the street and made the Police do it for her. It's a sad story on a couple levels. The main reason was she ended her life and a life lost is just sad. The other reason is it happened very quickly. I had just driven by her home minutes before and there was no commotion on the street. Less than twenty minutes later a friend and neighbor called to say someone had been shot out front of her apartment. Without any information the immediate thought was something like a drug shooting had happened and we rushed back home. There was a definite feeling of frustration with people in the neighborhood and the Police that were there. It would be several hours before we got any concrete information. A woman called the Police to say she was going to kill herself. She had a BB gun in her hand that was a pistol shape. She pointed it at the Officers and they shot her. A large part of me respects the officer for protecting themselves from a woman who could easily be seen as having a deadly weapon. The actions by the police afterwards and the Police Chief seemed to show that they were very unsure how to proceed. Also that the situation probably should have been handled differently but with the resources they had the best was done.

The Reason I go into all this detail is because this is Maine. Police shootings of any kind are rare. Police assisted suicide is even more rare. A gun that goes off in this state not aimed at a target or a deer is rare. This is a news story and deserves investigation. The problem was most people outside of this town have already moved on. I talked with all kinds of people last night and the only reason why many of them knew this happened was because of my Facebook status. Sometimes we are too easily distracted. There are two big stories right now in the news that are overshadowed by much smaller stories.

1. North Dakota's Red River has broken a water rise record of 40.2 feet. Look up at your ceiling. Most peoples ceilings are 10-12 feet from the floor up. Now imagine that as a 4 story building and it's water. Oh and you're under it. All of a sudden Duke's loss last night not a big deal.

2. United States and Japan will attempt to shoot down a rocket launch by North Korea. This is still the fanatical leader of North Korea developing Nuclear weapons. This is a big deal. To a crazy person that might be the camel that breaks his back. Not to mention his health has been in question and when you can't even die without it sending you're country into complete turmoil then you do not have a stable government......with Atom Bombs. Maybe you missed that because rapper TI was sentenced to 1 year in Jail today.

Here is the good news though. We don't have to follow everything all the time but we can do a little better. We complain the News Media is the reason for all the ills of societal ignorance. Look they are a business. They print and display what you want to see and read. If you aren't interested in North Korea they stop printing it but if you cannot get enough of how Kaylee's Mom like to Party and make out with Boys then that's what you get.

You can do it all though. You can read about Brangelina and their baby wrangling and about Russia's issues with the Missile defense shield in Eastern Europe. We have the technology and you all have the ability. You might even find a story out there that really gets you interested in something. Maybe even allow you to put together a new opinion.

My Kingdom my Kingdom for a car

General Motors released some of it's plans for the different divisions of it's huge empire. Like most great empires of the world it's reacting to it's troubles with a hack and slash mentality. Now let me just say by no means do I truly consider GM to be an empire but I do see the parallels to the greats of the past. GM is simply a very verrry successful company.

So the divisions on the chopping block are SAAB, Saturn, Pontiac, and HUMMER. The plans simply are to stop production or just give them away for a little money. It reminds me of Rome (which I do have an extreme fascination for so expect to see many references to Rome over this blog) in how it dealt with it's vast empire over the centuries. Sometimes things got tough for those guys and the solution was to pull the forces back and let the tribes of the area reclaim their lands. Often this had a bad result a generation or so later. Other times they would just be stubborn and keep grinding into the opposition. In all honesty over the long haul that tended to work best for them. I think of Gaul or the attacks from Hannibal. When the Romans were beat they were beat badly. Think of a Ku Klux Klan member walking into a DMX concert. The Romans though had this ingrained sense of entitlement though ( Sound familiar? ) that made them refuse defeat. When they finally regrouped and won they were stronger than ever.

So what does that have to do with GM? Well for the most part GM is planning on pretending that some of their divisions don't exist. Hummer and Saturn especially are trying to be forgotten. There are a couple problems with this.

1. This is a continuation of the same thought process that got them where they are now. They lived in the moment. 2-5 years ago everyones want's big trucks and powerful cars so we'll retool and build all those then. Now everyone wants small cars and we can't retool so we'll just shut down. Now is the time to figure out what's coming next. My guess is people will want big powerful green cars and trucks. What would be cooler than a revamped Hummer that runs on hydrogen fuel. I'd want one.

2. Your leaving a hole in the market for competitors to move in. Look at Honda and Toyota they are making more and more truck like vehicles and they are slapping their hybrid tech right into it.

Look at Microsoft recently. They were in a knuckle down drag out fight with Sony of the forms of HD in the DVD market. Once they started to lose they just went and moved there plans up 5 years. So while Sony is basking in the Blue Ray DVD world Microsoft already figured out a deal with Netflix and streaming HD movies on existing equipment. Who won that one?

Get on the ball guys. If Toyota is making Hybrids then make hydrogen or ethanol but probably hydrogen. Obama's plan for more green energy will give us power to create hydrogen fuel cleaner. Also hydrogen fuel lets us keep something electric cars don't. The ability to drive as far as our pocket cash allows. Japan doesn't think about that because they don't have the Great American land. They haven't piled into their cars and said "Lets take a road trip! Where? I don't know how about Iowa?" Electric cars need to recharge and that defeats a lot of what we do. Hydrogen fuel you can fill up and keep going.

IF YOU BUILD THEM THEY WILL PUMP

So your afraid of building hydrogen cars because how will people get fuel? This is America and as soon as the market shows people want them companies will build those pumps. States will mandate them just like California. People want to make money especially if it does nothing to the environment. Plus hydrogen cars will keep oil companies happier than electric. Electric cars don't need a lot of fluids like a normal combustion car does. So if electric takes over the world there is another industry that will go by the wayside. Look here it is.

I WANT A HYDROGEN POWERED GTO THAT WILL LAY A STRIP FROM MAINE TO FLORIDA. I WANT A HUMMER THAT CAN CLIMB OUT A REVINE OF A 40 DEGREE GRADE AT 30 MPH AND ONLY HAVE WATER COME OUT OF IT'S TAILPIPE. I WANT A SATURN THAT WILL TAKE MY FAMILY SAFELY AND BE LOADED WITH EVERY TECH POSSIBLE ALL WITH THE HUM OF A REAL ENGINE.

I hope that's simple enough for you guys.

So here we are

Things aren't great.

That's an overly simple way of putting things but it's the truth. I'm a little upset by some things going on lately.

STOP LOSING THE BALL. That's you America. There you are out there in center field waiting for the pop-up to fall into your glove. You know it's coming down you watched it go up. High into the sky up like a rocket. Part of you thought it would never come down. Even the guy who hit it thought the same thing. Hell he's all the way at third base already. Someone started a ruckus in the stands and you lost your eye on the ball. Now this is probably going to hurt.

So what does all that mean? Well AIG and some other big guys out there are distracting us. Yeah they are being jerks. They are greedy and taking advantage of the situation and you know what? That's a big part of how we got here to begin with so really are you surprised? Take their names and who they are and settle up with them later. We've got a job to do and that is correcting this giant ship from hitting the iceberg and we've got all the time in the world to slap their faces once we stop falling on ours.

WE ARE ALL TO BLAME

We all benefitted from this economy. Even if you didn't think you did well you did. Jobless rates were down. Cost of living was better than it had ever been. There was more wealth in the collective american pockets then ever. Sounds great doesn't it? To bad it was all crap. I remember years ago having a conversation with some adults about the stock market. I said during the dot com boom that this was foolish. There is nothing here of substance. Sure you had some legitimate business ideas like Ebay and Amazon but pets.com?? Seriously? They were dumping all they had into any stock with a company name ending in .com . It made me understand things like the Holocaust or Slavery. How could an entire society be so blind to things going wrong? Well as long as things are ok for the average person they look away. So the .com blew up but with all that extra capital we just bought houses. Huge oversized and way overpriced houses. It was said at one point if an average middle class family was transported into the middle class house of the 2000's they would think they were in the Rockefeller's home. This is why I am not surprised that the stock market has corrected back to the levels of the mid nineteen nineties. That was right at the beginning of the .com boom so it makes sense. The point is though we shouldn't look for one group of people to blame.

Here's a history example. France in the late 1700's was angry. Upset at the leadership and poor. So what did they do? They went and took care of the small part of the population that caused them all the issues. Now we got a bunch of heads in baskets. Good problems solved right? Well don't forget that way less than a lifetime away we have Napoleon. If you don't change the behavior then you'll just repeat. We can get rid of all the current compassionless and greedy leaders but if we don't continue to promote those that do the right things and actually make sound decisions then we'll be right back on the horse in 30 years.

So what's my opinion? Infrastructure is a good bet not just because it's what came out of Obama's mouth but because it's honest hard work. It's digging ditches and tightening bolts. It's sweat on the brow and pouring concrete. It's even running fiber and configuring servers. It's real not virtual. It's not an idea in the back of a guys head on how to skim money out of everyones pocket. It's something you can touch, see, and use. Next time your on the highway and traffic just stops open your door and touch some hard work.