Following and Gathering

Is it better for a person to gather a following or to follow a gathering?

What happens for those who do both?

Why Did Romney Fail?

Why did the Repubs fail? Why does any business fail?  Their market lost faith in their product.

The Republican party has become a professional sales organization.

Romney was a product. He emerged from product testing in the primaries as the candidate most likely to win the conservative vote in the general election. Salesmen assume things, and in this case there was an assumption that whatever enthusiasm conservatives had for him in the primaries could be expressed as enthusiastically by all voters in the general election - given the help of the conservative entertainment complex. It could at least be presented as the general view, even if that's not the case.

Romney had problems. Bain offended some voters. RomneyCare offended others. His marketers attempted to solve this by trying to make Obama look even worse than Romney. Put the focus on Obama. So they plastered Obama with lies. But more than that, they plastered him with attitude, sneering as they lied. The continuing dark attitude expressed by conservatives could not take down Obama's happiness and sense of humor. Republicans suffered a loss on the emotional front as well as the conceptual. They will be remembered for their dark attitudes, Obama as the evangelist of "Yes We Can!"

There are pieces of the Republican blow-out laying all over the ground. The ORCA system that broke. The pre-programmed voting machines that should have put Repubs into office, but didn't. The two polls that were strangely 2 percent off, showing Romney the winner. The angry donors, who were guaranteed a return on their investment.

Then there were the renegade radicals who captured the spotlight just because they could, using the big stage to exposit their own weirdness rather than temporarily suppressing their - uniqueness - on behalf of the party's possible success.   

Any campaign does its best to use its dollars well, and not to spend more than it needs to. So it is natural that campaigns should run neck and neck most of the way. This creates a vulnerability. A small surprise can lead to a big upset.

If the Petraeus affair had somehow come to light before the election, the press could have blown it into a scandal of a failed administration. The Republican-owned voting machines in Ohio and elsewhere could have produced an electoral college win. The two national polls which had  robocalled voters on their land lines, missing the cellphone crowd and thereby showing the Republicans winning, would have been right. And the election would have been nicely stolen. 

But instead, Sandra came ashore. NJ Governor Christie and NYC's Bloomberg embraced Obama, and the edge went the other way. Those who were thinking of winning the election in illegal ways may have discovered it to be so close that they had a failure of nerve.

Repubs had sold the idea of lower taxes and less governmental oversight to the big money crowd. Then they tried to sell the same ideas to the voters. Serving two clients who are at odds with each other doesn't work. It required Repubs to speak out of two sides of their mouths, and you just can't do that any more.

The Republicans paid people to go door-to-door in their GOTV effort. Dems had massive cadres of volunteers. Occupy Wall Street sold the world the idea of citizen empowerment. The Dems rode a million horses to victory.

So this election in ways was a battle between a business - a capitalist structure - and the people - a social network.

Businesses often cycle between salesman-driven booms and bean counter-driven busts, depending on who is running the show.  For Republicans, it soon may be bean counting time. Time for an audit, a reality check. What do they really have to sell any more?

President Obama: Why Must We Needlessly Kill?

Dear Mr. President,

You may soon be asked to explain how the law allows our military to consider all Pakistani men between 20 and 40 as at risk for targeting by drones. A government spokesmen has been quoted saying this, and it sits unrefuted.

Is this general policy? This fulfills a definition for war crimes. We are warring against a demographic.

Discussion of the right rules for extrajudicial killing could unite red and blue Americans. We all believe that we shouldn't kill anyone in our name when we don't absolutely need to.

I trust you will have your explanation for why this is happening and how it can possibly happen under our constitution well prepared.

In distress,

etc.
 

Can We Pay Down Gov't Debt When Times Are Good?

Dear Mr. President,

Suppose Congress wrote a law requiring government to pay off debt a little faster as the economy improves?

The law could set up an increment. The increment could vary, increasing as the economy improves,  decreasing when it sags. The increment could vary geometrically. 

When the GNP grows more than 1% a year, we could double the increment. When it grows more than 2% a year, double the increment again. The healthier the economy, the faster - geometrically - we could pay down our debts.
 
Small-government enthusiasts may appreciate that accelerating the debt pay-off in good times would tend to keep government small. It would keep government from automatically growing larger as the economy grows larger, only to become a burden when it slows.

At the same time, in a year when the GNP shrinks 1%, the pay-off increment would shrink by half, freeing tax money for pump priming.

If such a plan were in place, people might feel more easy about priming the pump when times are bad.
 
We borrowed to prime the pump, and doing this gave us 2% growth this year, while Europe floundered on the edges of recession. Foreign capital is finding its safest haven within our shores. This drives stocks up, and business owners like to see that. Persuading the business sector that in addition to priming the pump, we should set ourselves up here and now to pay off our loans more quickly as good times come may be the key to a compromise that could make America bloom.

The law is very simple. We do well - we pay debt faster.

Can we do this?

With tremendous regard for your vast potential,

Yours, etc.

Orca Sanka

One of the Romney campaign's key tools on election day was to be a communications system called "Project Orca" that would link observers on the ground out in the precincts with a central database that would let them update individual voter records.

Something like this is hard to test. It didn't survive in a real-time environment.

Orca sanka, along with thousands of votes, supposedly.

Puff The Magic Dragon Returns To Honah Lee

It's going to be an interesting four years. The poor will still be with us, including the poor in mind and the poor in spirit. The waste of money spent on warring when we could be supporting rebellion may soon end. And it looks like the waste of money spent on enforcing at least one drug law soon will come to an end, too.

Colorado and Washington have legalized weed. But there may be some growing pains. The feds have threatened to enforce the federal law against it. They will probably hit the big operations first, and that is where the battle line will begin. Scrimmage may never move to the far end of the field, to where people casually grow it in their homes. Colorado's Amendment 64 makes it immediately legal for Colorado adults to possess, grow, consume and give away marijuana.

In Chicago's Little Italy, old men - 20 years ago - used to make wine in their basements. Forty years ago in San Francisco I made beer in a small plastic garbage can in my kitchen (that's how you do it, folks! Covered with Saran wrap, of course.) Home production of euphoric experiences is common in many households.

Meanwhile, anyone busted for possession may want to ask for a continuance. The rules are changing rapidly. Once the legislatures start discussing taxation and regulation, the judges won't be far behind.

We just elected - re-elected - a President who enjoyed, as a teen, the weed. When a joint was being passed around, he would dive in, shouting "Intercept!" and grab a toke for himself. He invented "Total Absorption," a smoking method wherein one holds the smoke in the lungs for as long as possible. Nothing is wasted.

He now has two daughters, and the President's views on cannabis surely must have become more conservative than they were in his youth. But he has been there. And he is an understanding person. His administration did little to defend the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act in court, and it may be that his support for the current legal classification of marijuana as a harmful drug will find itself susceptible to rational change.

How soon will the current laws against marihuana be quietly ditched? How soon will legislatures in other states quietly discuss their own potentials for income from regulation and taxation of the weed?  Will people outside Colorado who wish to grow their own marijuana for personal use be safe and secure in their homes?

Puff The Magic Dragon is coming over the horizon. Somewhere up there with Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds. It looks like Puff may find a place to land.