Occupy likes to think of itself as an ultra-democratic, grass roots, no formal organization and leaderless body. That’s great for a utopian dream, but impractical in today’s reality. You can take your hippie-dippie values and shove ‘em, the only thing that counts is real change and real change takes leaders and solid ideas. Unfortunately or fortunately the only way to make real change is to wield the levers of power. The two levers of power in this world are money and politics. So either Occupy finds some very rich support or they had better start figuring out how to get folks elected to local, state and national office. I’m sure most Occupy folks abhor money and politics but if they don’t get over this problem soon, they will amount to a hill of beans. Yell, scream and shove signs in my face all day and I don’t care. Why don’t you pick up a shovel and get to work already. Stop shouting and DO something.

Again, this is where you have to greatly respect the Tea Party. They did their protests in the park and waved their signs, and then they got to work getting people elected. They realized the current folks in power were not going to pay attention to them, so they worked to get them out in favor of candidates who held values closer to their own. It didn’t always work and they lost plenty of times, but they moved the needle.

This is how it works and unfortunately I don’t see any ambition or organization in Occupy to do anything like this. People WILL tire of your bitching and complaining if that’s all you seem to do. 2012 is the make or break year for Occupy. Time to stand up or fade away.

I really liked this article by Matt Miller in the Washington Post on American exceptionalism. I’ve always thought the whole concept was a bunch of bullshit. Not only that, it’s obnoxious and arrogant. America is awesome and everyone else sucks. If you don’t believe in that, than you suck too. Really?

Is America a great country? Absolutely. Would I rather live somewhere else? Nope. Unlike some proponents of American exceptionalism I have traveled the world some and experienced other countries that I though were really great. How can someone like Sarah Palin crow about American exceptionalism when she’s barely been out of the country? How can you know everyone else sucks so much compared to us? Just a completely uninformed opinion which is much like many of her other opinions.

I think America is awesome and so are some other places I’ve been and that’s ok. There’s plenty of awesomeness to go around. And let’s just get it on the record, America has plenty of problems too. We’re hardly the perfect country. If we close ourself off to other countries and become unwilling to believe we might have something to learn from others, that’s our loss and we will be weaker for it.

I love my country but excuse me if I don’t thump my chest and wave my flag in your face to prove it.

I actually think Trump would have an excellent chance to win and might even make a decent president. Here’s why.

Name Recognition

It goes without saying Trump has the biggest name recognition of any potential Republican candidate. What’s better, I would bet his positive ratings are fairly high. It’s pretty easy to accomplish when you have never held elective office and had to answer to anything. Still, name recognition is critical in elections and Trumps got it.

A True Outsider

There has been so much talk about “outsider” candidates lately, people are in love with anything that doesn’t appear to come from Washington. But the truth is, many of the Tea Party candidates are not outsiders at all. Many had previous dabblings in and around politics. Trump is truly an outsider as he has been a pure businessman his entire life and everyone knows it. Trump seems to be the least tainted with anything vaguely political. While he surely is a Republican, I don’t see any grand political agenda which frees him up from having to cow tow to any particular interest group.

A Straight Shooter

For all his bombast, ie. You’re Fired, Trump is known as a straight shooter. He’s going to tell you the way he thinks it is and he’s not afraid to fail now and then. He may decide to run for president but if he doesn’t make it, it’s not going to kill him. Some of these other candidates I get the feeling they want it too badly. Trunp’s straightforwardness would be refreshing and I think people would really respect that.

Its The Economy Stupid

If the economy has not recovered sufficiently by 2012 and the jobs are not there, it’s going to come down to who can finally fix the economy. What better man for the job than someone who has already proven himself a master of economics.

Achilles Heel

Of course the big weakness in Trump is going to be his experience outside of economic issues. Does he have enough foreign policy and non economic domestic experience to get the rest of the job done? Generally Trump is regarded as a pretty smart cookie, so he may be able to slide on this one but if he is too much a one trick pony, he may fail.

We are in a state of continual political overreaction. The pendulum always swings, but lately it has been swinging harder and faster than ever before. When the Republicans were swept out of office completely in 2008 their reaction was to believe their problem was they had not been conservative enough. The Tea Party was born and Republicans took a hard right turn. Now Democrats have been swept out of office just as dramatically in 2010. What will their reaction be? I am already hearing it. Progressives, liberals, whatever you want to call them; the hard left of the Democratic party has decided their problem is that they were not liberal enough. Too much compromise with the Republicans will be their diagnosis. The Democratic party is going to take a hard turn to the left going into 2012.

Where will that leave us? Going into 2012, Republicans dug in hard on the far right and not giving an inch. Democrats dug in hard and not giving an inch on the far left. When you have two opposing forces pulling that hard in opposite directions, I think we will be reaching a breaking point. As the saying goes, something’s got to give. Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity was great and well meaning but I fear it was a shout into the darkness. What are true moderate independents like myself to do when left with these choices? I’ve often lately wished for a third party, the Reasonable Party I call it. Anyone else interested?

I love it when someone makes content that expresses exactly how you feel about a situation. Democrats have been so incredible wimpy and inept this year, letting Republicans and conservative pundits bully them around. It’s one of the reasons I am on the hunt for a new political party or more likely political philosophy, independent of party as I am thinking more and more when you get yourself into a “party” situation, that’s when things start to fall apart.

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