This evening I watched President Obama address the nation with regards to the debt ceiling controversy that has been raging in DC and beyond for a few months now.  I also watched Speaker Boehner’s response to President.  Both men made it clear that it’s the opposing party’s inability to compromise that is “holding the economy hostage”.  Both men asked God to bless America, reminded American’s that we are the greatest country that has ever existed in the entire universe, and spoke of the need to grow our economy and put American’s back to work.  It wasn’t so much what they said that I found lacking in understanding of the issues at hand – it was what they and nearly every politician has neglected to say for months if not years now.  No, I’m not referring to the fact that we’ve been in multi-billion dollar wars with third-world countries for nearly a decade now – nor how morally corrupt it is to continue to provide multi-millionaires and billion dollar corporations with amazing tax breaks and incentives to hide their wealth and transfer their workforces overseas.  The 800 pound gorilla in the room that either nobody sees, or nobody wants to confront, is that the world has changed and the cause is not politics, religion or immigration policies – it is the conflict between our rapidly growing technology and our archaic economic system.

Our current economic system, which finds its roots as far back as medieval times, is based on a simple principle that every third grader knows – Supply and Demand.  The concept is simple – there is a finite supply of everything, and prices are set by the demand for that item versus its relative supply in the marketplace.  For the past few centuries, this system in its various incarnations, generally worked.  A community could only produce so much product, that product would then be divided based on the needs of that community and how the members of that community decided to spend their earnings relative to their station in life.  While there was certainly trade, for the most part, a community’s resources was limited by its geographical area and the skills of its people.  Over time, with advancements in transportation and communication, the scope of what a community could source grew.  Even so, no one would have imagined in 1900 that the majority of the products people in the United States would be using a hundred years later would be coming from China and other foreign nations.  The notion that someone in New York would be eating a tomato grown in Mexico would have seemed ridiculous.  Yet, as transportation costs and low-cost labor benefits stacked up, suddenly American’s were importing the majority of their goods rather than producing them.  Today it’s estimated that only 2% of clothing purchased in the US is actually produced here.¹

Now we mustn’t get nostalgic about the glory years of NYC’s garment district – those were never the most desirable jobs available, and most went to first generation immigrants who worked painfully hard in less than ideal situations.  My point is not that we need to look for the “Made In The USA” label – it’s to highlight how the technology of the 20th century, which primarily focused on greater industrialization and massively improved transportion, radically transformed the world we lived in.  A century that started with the horse and buggy ended with satellites and airplanes circling the globe.  All the while we patch-worked our economic system, supported struggling industries, lamented the closing of America’s industrial strongholds, and continued to ask our politicians where the jobs were.

Now, in the 21st century, technology is racing at a far greater pace, and still we seem incapable of recognizing the radical shift that is occurring all around us.  The simple fact is that technology is created by technology.  There could not have been televisions, until Edison spread the understanding of electricity.  There could not have been computers had there not been the invention of the television, and the various technologies discovered in its development.  With each breakthrough in understanding, the capacity for greater breakthroughs arise.  Many are familiar with the observations of Intel’s co-founder Gordon E. Moore, referred to as Moore’s Law, that processor speeds for computers double every two years.  This is the result of the fact that the technology itself creates its own improvements, and thus “the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years.” ²

This phenomenon helps explain why the rotary phone in the house I grew up in was not particularly dissimilar to the phone my parents used when they were a child, and yet I’ve upgraded from a flip phone, to an iPhone, to an iPhone 3G, to an iPhone4, all in the scope of five years.  The fact is, our technology is growing at an exponential rate, and thus each next iteration is greater than the past version by greater and greater measures, in less and less time. And, what applies to circuit boards applies to almost every facet of our lives.

The consequences of that are far-reaching, and yet seemingly ignored.  Several times this year I’ve had conversations with friends or colleagues in which I’ve stated the next industry to disappear is the publishing industry.  I’m not referring to books or authors, just the printing of text on paper, and primarily the stores and distribution methods setup to support this industry.  One only has to download one free Public Domain book on their iPad to suddenly realize they will never purchase a paperback copy of Plato, Thoreau or Shakespeare at a bookstore again.  In fact, I can’t really imagine why I would purchase a new book in its traditional form ever.  Arguments to the contrary typically state, “oh, but I love the feel of holding a book in my hand” or “I love the smell of ink on paper” or my favorite, “I like to be able to give my books to someone else when I’m done” (a wonderfully altruistic argument, I must admit). I typically just smile and shake my head, as I imagine folks in the last century century must have done when friends argued how much they’d miss their daily conversations with the milk man.  Yet, just last week it was announced that Borders, one of the largest bookstore chains in the US,  will be closing all 500+ of its stores.  The company had not made a profit since 2005.

So what does the closure of Borders have to do with the global economy?  Ask the 19,500 employees of Borders who are now looking for a job.  If you can’t reach them, perhaps ask one of the 60,000 individuals that Blockbuster employed in 2009.  You might still find a few of them if you look hard enough, but you better act quickly… what few shops remain will be closing soon, and no amount of political magic will bring them back.  You won’t find any employees from its major competitor Hollywood Video either, they closed the doors of their 2000+ stores in May of 2010.

Why have all these videos stores and the thousands of jobs they created disappeared?  Those damn Democrats?  Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy?  No… Technology.  Very few folks are interested in jumping into their cars and driving to the local video store to rent a movie they can either have delivered to their home or streamed over the internet thanks to Netflix or iTunes.  The only problem is that Netflix doesn’t need to employ nearly as many people to manage their supply chain as a Blockbuster or Hollywood Video (not to mention all the contractors and constructions crews, electricians and custodians needed to build and maintain physical stores).  In fact, I would argue the recent Netflix price increase is nothing but their less than subtle attempt to ween folks off of mailed DVDs, and force them to watch streaming only videos.  Why?  Less folks to employ.  Whether one copy of “Mad Men” has to go out, or ten thousand, when you do it digitally online, it takes no more effort and no more human interaction to make it happen.  No envelope stuffers to hire, no mail sorters to pay, nobody to scan this or mail that. Beyond that, it’s far more advantageous for the customer to just download a digital copy, than hope there is a physical copy at the local store.  I remember when Batman came to video when I was a kid.  Our local Blockbuster had 100 copies, that took up nearly three floor-to-ceiling shelves.  But each time for the first few weeks I ran to the the New Release section in hopes of getting a copy, not a single one was to be found.  There just wasn’t enough to go around.

And thus we come full circle to the original thought that triggered this post – welcome to the age of limitless supply.

We are only just entering what will be the most radical shift in human culture since the advent of the written language – the age of plenty.  Whether its books, music, clothing, food, medicine, or just about anything else one can imagine, there is either now, or in the very near future, going to be an unlimited supply available to us.  ”BUT GREG, OUR NATURAL RESOURCES ARE SO SCARCE… WE WON’T EVEN HAVE ENOUGH WATER FOR EVERYONE IN TWENTY YEARS.”   First, stop using the caps-lock, that’s annoying. Second, you’re forgetting Moore’s Law.  You’re trying to solve future problems with today’s technology.  That’s like trying to get to the moon in 1900.  You need the Wright Brothers before you can have a Neil Armstrong.  The problems of our future will be solved by our unbelievable technology – devices and sciences that are unimaginable today, but will be reality in a mere decade.  Then those technologies will rapidly develop even more profound technologies.

When politicians speak about what things will be like in 2040, they always seem to imagine that 2040 will have all the same technologies and scientific understandings we have today.  That is beyond ignorant.  Just as profound as the technological advances from 1980 to 2000 were, the advances from 2000 to 2020 will be exponentially greater.  Not twice as much… exponentially greater.  As there was no internet in 1980, there will be new technologies and improvements to transportation, medicine and communication 20 years from now that not even someone who daydreams about technology as much as I do can foresee.  When you consider how disconnected and fragmented our education and scientific communities were a mere decade ago before the rise of the internet, one can hardly imagine the impact that this technology is and will continue to have on the future of those professions.  The amount of information being shared and thus learned today overshadows even the greatest libraries and universities of the 20th century.

The consequence however, is that our economic system and our culture as a whole is not setup for this.  It is setup for a world in which there is a ton of work that needs to be done, monstrous sums of production required to create the goods we need, and thus anyone willing to work can certainly find employment, get paid, and acquire the goods they desire.  But as population continues to grow alongside technology, we will soon, if we have not already, surpass the need for our available workforce.  We will either have to force industries to deprecate the technologies available to them, or find alternative means to determine an individual’s worth.  We either ban digital copies of music, videos, books and applications, or we accept that fact that the millions of jobs those various industries created in their 20th century manually distributed means are gone.  As each new industry begins to defend itself from technology in a desperate struggle to save jobs, whether it be teachers, nurses, customer service reps, oil rig workers, cashiers, mailmen, gas station attendants, realtors, travel agents, lawn care professionals or  Yellow Page salesman (yes, my good friend Gary sold ads for Yellow Pages until a year ago) – more and more folks will find themselves replaced by technology, and politicians will offer more promises of a better tomorrow, and blame the other guy for the lack of jobs.

Certainly, in a perfect world, there could never be enough doctors and scientists and artists – individuals living to full potential, sharing their gifts and passions with the world.  Sadly, while our technology continues to double, our compassion for our fellow man and our understanding that we are all in this together does not.  We point fingers and long for better days long gone, instead of recognizing how amazing the time we live in is and will be.  How profound a time we are soon approaching, when man struggles for nothing.  Where man can dedicate his time not to labor, but to family and community.  That his value will not be measured by his paycheck or his hours worked, but the happiness and fulfillment he finds in each limitless day.  That instead of fighting for scarce resources, he shares in the abundance of the good life with friends, family and neighbors alike.

BUT GREG, THIS SOUNDS LIKE COMMUNISM, AND COMMUNISM HAS ALREADY FAILED.  Again, stop with the caps-lock.  Technology does not lean to a particular political ideology, and neither do I.  Any attempts to share in the bounty life provides in the past would have no doubt been crushed by the reality that there truly was a limited supply and a great demand.  Class systems inevitably form when demand outweighs supply, and thus any attempt to share the wealth is pointless when there are limits to that wealth.  My point is simply that those limits are coming to an end – and not 100 years from now, or 50 years from now.  They are ending now.  Our economic system is crumbling not because of politics or greed, but because it is archaic, outdated, and if one spends a few moments trying to figure out where money comes from, completely illusory. (hint: it’s not gold… and even if it were, that’s just a mineral we’ll most likely be able to replicate in a decade or so, the way we do with diamonds today).

On New Years Eve in the year 2000 I sat in a room with several friends and I suggested a scenario.  Imagine you woke-up tomorrow morning and opened the Best Buy circular (I believe I said Circuit City at the time, but they closed their 567 stores in 2009), and they announced that all television sets were free that day.  How many would you get?  Some folks said two, a few others were greedy and said five.  I decided to be the most greedy and I said I’d probably get at least 10.  I’m not sure what I would do with 10 tvs, but if they’re free, why not?   Most everyone then agreed that they would probably carry out as many TVs as they could fit into their car.  I then said, what would happen the next morning when you woke-up and Best Buy announced again, that today, all television sets were free.  How many would you get then?  The room fell silent. When you have everything you need, you long for nothing. In a world of limitless supply, there is zero demand.

Just imagine.

Bob Dylan turns 70 this month and tributes are pouring in from around the world.  I figured it was only appropriate that I take a moment to put down some thoughts on the man who I point to as the most influential person in my life (parents not included of course).  While these days my musical library is a bit broader, there was a period of my life, from around 16-22 that I listened to almost nothing but Bob Dylan albums and bootlegs.  I took his words as gospel, finding meanings within the meanings and associating the various ideas and phrases he painted into every aspect of my life. There was only one truth, and that truth was Bob Dylan.

My journey with Dylan started in 1994 at the age of 16.  I was doing math homework in the living room and my mom was watching a tv show about the history of rock-n-roll.  As they began crawling through the 60s, the show started discussing Bob Dylan.  They played a clip of a young Dylan playing “The Times They Are A Changin” – and my head literally exploded.  I remember looking up from my homework, and seeing this young man saying everything that I had ever felt or thought or feared, and with a voice so real that suddenly every pop singer and rapper of the day became a foolish actor – a gussied-up puppet spewing childish nonsense.

“Come mothers and fathers throughout the land.  And don’t criticize what you can’t understand.  Your sons and your daughers are beyond your command.  Your old road is rapidly fading.  Get out of the  new one if you can’t lend your hand, ’cause the times, they are a changin’.”

It was a warning of the apocalypse - a message from the beyond that my perfect little suburban world was going to be washed away in a flood so fierce that only the righteous would be spared.  That I had “better start swimming” or I’d “sink like a stone“.  How had I not heard this warning prior?  Why was everyone not listening to Bob Dylan?  Who was this figure?  Was he still alive?  Had anyone heeded his message?  My mind raced.  What more had he said?  Were there other warnings?

I asked my father if he had any Bob Dylan albums, and he informed me he thought he had one of them.  I ran to the basement and searched through my father’s extensive record collection and discovered he did indeed have one album from this Dylan character – “Blood On The Tracks”.  I placed it on my old Fisher Price record player, and the opening notes of “Tangled Up In Blue” began to play.  This album was completely different however than what I had heard upstairs – this wasn’t a young folk singer telling the world to wake-up.  Was it the same man? Yet I found the album captivating and listened to it over and over again.  The stories it told were so profoundly different than any of the contemporary music I’d been listening to prior.  The next week I would go out and purchase “Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits”, and begin my journey of owning every Dylan album and memorizing every word of it. The things I would learn from these albums would radically change my way of thinking and how I saw the world around me.  Two years later I would go to my first Dylan concert, and mid-way through a harmonica solo on “Girl From The North Country” all the perceived chains in my life would evaporate, and I would feel a spiritual freedom that has stuck with me to this day.  I would deviate at that very moment from whatever path I’d been on prior, and begin a journey I still find myself on today.

These are some of the things I learned from Bob Dylan.

GO OUT INTO THE WORLD AND DISCOVER YOURSELF

I would soon begin to read about Dylan and quickly learned his story.  That his name wasn’t Bob Dylan, but rather Robert Zimmerman.  That he had come from a small mining town in Minnesota, but upon learning his hero Woody Guthrie was dying in Brooklyn State Hospital, had hitch-hiked his way across America to New York City in the hopes of meeting him in January of 1961.  He had met him, gotten to know him well in fact, and along the way met most of the great folks singers of the day.  At first Dylan fit right in, learning the various folk standards, and performing those songs in coffeeshops and bars around Greenwich Village.  However, very quickly Dylan would start writing his own songs – the first being a breath-taking tribute to Woody.  This was something others weren’t doing at the time.  Folks singers interpreted traditional songs, but very few actually wrote their own pieces.  Dylan not only began writing songs, but he wrote better songs – songs that would become standards themselves.  Before long, other artists were performing his songs, and works like “Blowing In the Wind” would become “hits”.  He would get signed to Columbia, something else most folk singers weren’t doing – and Dylan would become a mainstream folk artist.  Two years after hitch-hiking to NYC, Dylan would perform at the March on Washington For Jobs and Freedom where Martin Luther King would deliver his famous “I Have A Dream” speech.  The simple act of leaving home had transformed a young nobody into a folk legend, and placed twenty-two year old Dylan in one of the most important moments in American history.  If that doesn’t inspire you to go out into the world and find your calling – nothing will.

YOU CAN CHANGE – AND NOT JUST A LITTLE

As I would collect more and more Dylan albums, it became apparent that this man was a chameleon.  Each album brought a different sound and a different face.  Not only had he changed his name, he could change his style and change his voice.  From folk music, to rock music, to country music, to gospel music, to music that defied any recognizable genre, Dylan has tried it all.  Each time he made the genre his own, and created new standards.  Folk musicians could now write their own songs, rock musicians could write songs longer than four minutes that actually said something.  Country songs could have a folk-rock sensibility, and religious songs could… well… not suck. Whereas most artists, and in reality, most people, found one style and stuck with it, Dylan tried them all.  Just when he seemed to reach the apex of that style, he would abandon it for something else.  One didn’t have to slowly evolve over time – a chapter could be closed and a new one opened abruptly. You didn’t have to dwell on your past, you could focus on the moment and that moment could be anything you desired.  This freedom to change and not be tied to how others had previously perceived you opened my mind to unlimited possibilities, and the freedom to try something new at a moment’s notice.

IGNORE YOUR CRITICS

People don’t always like change – especially when something they love changes to something they don’t fully understand.  As such, Dylan has always had as many critics as he has fans.  I can think of no other popular artist who has been booed as many times as Dylan.  Whether it was plugging in an electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival, or refusing to play his hits during gospel-like performances during his Christian phase, Dylan has never let the criticism of others control his creativity.    It is easy in life to let fear of what others will think temper your personal growth.  The fact is that most people can’t appreciate what others are going through, and criticism is typically misplaced anyhow.  In one of the most classic moments in rock-n-roll history, Bob Dylan is called “Judas” from a fan prior to playing “Like A Rolling Stone” during a performance at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1966.  You can hear the crowd cat-calling and booing throughout the performance.  ”Like A Rolling Stone” is now considered in poll after poll as the greatest rock song of all time.  Had Dylan listened to the critics, we may never had heard this masterpiece and many others.  Time and time again critics have suggested it’s time for Dylan to retire – that this album wasn’t as good as that album, and these songs aren’t nearly as good as those songs.  Yet he presses on, and in time, many of those albums are seen later as far more brilliant than originally thought.  Dylan has rarely given interviews during his long career, preferring to let the music speak for itself.  Even though he has avoided mainstream press and self-promotion, countless articles are written about him on a daily basis.  I visit Expecting Rain daily, a website that collects all the various Dylan mentions throughout the world on any given day.  It’s shocking how much is said about someone who rarely speaks out.  Those who criticize Dylan these days are often met with a barrage of criticism of their own, as dedicated Dylan fans rush to his defense.  Live your life as you need it to be, without worrying what others will think – chances are they’re wrong anyhow.

THE WORLD ISN’T AS SCARRY AS IT LOOKS

Dylan’s songs are filled with a menagerie of characters.  The first time I heard “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” I was captivated by all the various people he encountered.  “A newborn baby with wild wolves all around it”, “ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken”, “a poet who died in the gutter”, “a clown who cried in the alley”, “a young child beside a dead pony”, “a young woman whose body was burning” and more.  Dylan’s songs are filled with these images, people and places and encounters that mystify and inspire.  I dreamt of going out into the world and finding these people too.  I longed to “walk to the depths of the deepest black forest, where the people are many and their hands are all empty.” After college I would move out west in pursuit of this vision.  To find myself in a new city, surrounded by strangers, and to meet as many people as I could.  I would take road trips down the coast, train rides across the Canadian landscape, adventures through Europe – typically by myself so that I was forced to meet as many people as I could.  I met a large woman who ran a forensics clean-up company in Louisville.  I met a white bearded man who saw everything as a conspiracy. I met a 90 year old woman on a train who taught me life isn’t short, it’s wonderfully long.  I’ve met cab drivers who are wealthy men in their home countries, homeless men who had almost been famous athletes, musicians who can only perform with their eyes closed, salesmen who wished to be artists and more.  I’ve learned to listen to those around me, to hear their stories and to care about the outcomes.  To inspire people and permit them for a moment to speak their dreams out loud.  To not judge or preach or inform – to simply witness life as it truly is and see the beauty in everything.

So Happy Birthday Bob Dylan.  My life is wonderfully more alive because of your words and the wisdom they provide.  Now if you don’t mind, “I’m going back out before the rain starts a fallin’.”

These are things the elderly woman sitting beside me on my 3.5 hour flight from Houston (a stop-over on my flight from Philadelphia) told me. I won’t bother to detail which points I agree with or disagree with. The point of this exercise is that we are all bat-shit crazy, and should probably just learn to smile more and listen for the sake of the story.

• She was born in Chicago, but moved to Missouri
• She was 1 of 11 children.
• She acquired the job of head editor for her high school newspaper because the girl who had received the position originally was lazy. When a famous riverboat performer came to do an assembly at the school and refused to give interviews because of limitations on her time, she had offered to help the woman pack up her stuff, and in the process recorded short notes. When the performer noticed this, she suggested that because the packing had gone so smooth, she now had time for an interview. With story in hand, she took the position right out from under that other lazy gal.
• She has 3 children. One lives in Portland, one lives in Honduras working as a missionary and the other lives in California.
• There are various types of fish oil vitamins on the market, but only one in the US that uses purely Salmon.
• Her favorite bible passage is Matthew 21:22 And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.
• While she and her husband and two of the kids were stationed in West Germany in the 50s, they took a two week camping trip through 9 countries. They purchased a German VW which they eventually had shipped back to the states when they attempted to homestead in Alaska.
• Cell phone towers only exist in the US. Everywhere else people just use their cell phones and there are no towers. She knows it sounds a bit crazy, but she believes the towers are probably used to track us using those very cell phones.
• She sold the German VW several years later for $500. A local car salesman had offered her only $150, but she felt she could sell as good as him and proved that. She was offered $250… she was offered $400… but she held out till the morning and sure enough got what she wanted.
• When she and one of her sons went to attend her daughter’s wedding in Honduras she had him stay with this older couple and a young man. Unbeknown to her, the young man had a sister, who on the second day stopped by, and though she spoke no English, and apparently he no Spanish, by year’s end and after three trips down, they were engaged.
• She hiked the base of the grand canyon in two days. It was her 3rd attempt. The first time, her group was too large with 28 individuals, so she offered to stay behind. The second time, her knee began to hurt right before the hike, and had to pull-out. The third time was with her brother. He had done it before alone in a single day. She says if she had done it alone, she would still be there.
• As a child, she wrote to the head of the local dentistry school at the haste of her mother, and he was so moved by the letter he allowed her to get braces at the school at no cost, even though she needed stage 3 braces, which the school wasn’t totally qualified for. She couldn’t stand the delay, so when not in the presence of authority figures, she would tie as many as 8 rubber-bands on each of the braces. When the braces came off, the doctor told her to put on some lipstick. “No, more he said. A girl is told she has a nice smile, she starts thinking about her hair – she cares about her hair, suddenly she starts dressing nice. Boys start to pay attention. She went from being on the 5th rung (1st Rung: Popular kids, 2nd Rung: Athletic Kids, 3rd Rung: Kids with money, 4th Rung: Nerds and Bookwords, 5th Rung: Nobodies) to the 1st rung – a real popular girl.
• 98% of women who have abortions are later diagnosed with breast cancer
• Sales runs in the family apparently, because when she posted her truck for sale (now living south of Eugene Oregon) a farmer from outside Portland drove all the way down after talking to her son on the phone, unaware that the voice on the other end was that of a 11 year old. He had to wait around till she got home from work to close the deal.
• People with Vitamin B deficiencies have a long canal running down the middle of their tongue. Upon closer inspection, my tongue suggests I am VERY deficient in Vitamin B and while she’s not saying this about me in particular… people like me are often short-tempered, easily irritated, and while they might be super nice to an old lady they don’t know, such as herself, we can be super cruel to our own mothers and the people who love us. It’s easy to pretend to like a stranger, but when we, the vitamin B deficient, know someone loves us, we can afford to be quick with them and often quite mean, because we know they won’t abandon us.
• By the very fact that President Obama can not produce a birth certificate, he must be a foreigner and untrustworthy.
• She hadn’t been raised religious, that was more her husband’s thing. But he had been attending a church and they asked if they could come over after dinner a few times a week to chat with her about God and her faith. They explained that they wanted her to sign this card to pledge her devotion to God. She said she would probably never do that, but agreed to listen to them, and invited them into her house. The first evening, they chatted a bit about life and family and work, but they spoke a good deal about God. When the meeting concluded, they asked her what she had though – and she said she wished they’d done 80% real issues and 20% faith discussions, and not the other way around. But she agreed to meet again. They did this for three weeks, when she suddenly woke in the middle of the night and knew she had to sign that card. She didn’t know why – she just felt compelled by God to do so.
• In response to an article that downplayed the use of vitamins in curing certain kidney ailments, she wrote an editorial that was read by a deacon in her Church, who apparently was associated with a vitamin company and asked her to become a rep, a job she has till this day.
• Many of our health issues comes from aluminum something both the industry and the government has been suppressing for almost a century now.
• She sold encyclopedias for a brief time, but never had much luck. The crutch of the sales pitch was showing how important it was for children to be able to get information when they are inspired in the moment – a service your local library just can’t provide. She never had a sale, although her husband did sell one set to a co-worker for her, but she doesn’t feel that counts.
• On the prior flight from Honduras to Houston, the gentlemen beside her was an intern for a senator, who had sent him there to monitor the elections. Apparently he was not associated with ACORN.
• She was married to her husband for 27 years, then one day he said he just couldn’t stand to be tied down any more and asked for a divorce. Several years later he came back and admitted he had been foolish and asked her to take him back. She said if he could be faithful and a good husband for a year, she would agree to marry him again. He stayed for five months and then left again. She gets asked out for coffee from time to time by gentlemen, and that’s all well and good. But coffee leads to dinner, and multiple dinners lead to the bedroom, and she has no intention of going there. Sure, she can keep a conversation with a guy like myself, but I’m her youngest son’s age, so the pressure isn’t there (and I shouldn’t be offended by that). If it’s God’s plan for her husband to come back, she doesn’t want to be tied down to someone else when it happens.

On Friday – in what was nothing short of a calculated, yet pathetic attempt to kill a huge news story by giving a press conference when most members of the media (including her own spokesperson) were generally at the beach on vacation – my absolute favorite Republican Sarah Palin gave yet another classic rambling speech – this time suggesting she’s doing the only admirable thing, and stepping down as Governor of Alaska mid-way through her first term.

According to Palin, “Once I decided not to run for re-election, I also felt that to embrace the conventional lame duck status in this particular climate would just be another dose of politics as usual.”

Unfortunately, yet again, Ms. Palin clearly isn’t aware of what she’s talking about.  She is not in any way, shape or form a “lame duck” politician.

According to the dictionary, a “lame-duck” politician is:

1.     an elected official or group of officials, as a legislator, continuing in office during the period between an election defeat and a successor’s assumption of office.

2.     a president who is completing a term of office and chooses not to run or is ineligible to run for reelection.

Ms Palin is mid-way through her first term, in a state that allows the Governor two four-year terms in office. She has not lost a bid for re-election and one can assume had a perfectly good chance of re-election, especially with the access to funds she now commands. The fact that she doesn’t want to seek another term as Governor doesn’t afford her that title – only the position of President of the United States is considered challenging and draining enough to allow for early retirement.  And even in that case, the lame-duck still stays in the pond.

She is a quitter.  PERIOD.

To ask the people of a state to elect you as their representative, to obtain that title – and then walk away from the position before your first 4-year term is complete is about the lowest form of governing possible.  Throw in the fact that she abandoned that position for several months to run for higher office – her work as Governor has been half-assed at best.

To suggest that the investigations into ethics violations are wasting Alaska’s time and money, while not recognizing that it might be her ethical violations that are the waste, are the typical Palin-esque views of the news of the day that nearly gave Katie Couric a mild stroke.  Her mind-boggling statements about effecting change from outside the system are the same “mavericky maverick” nonsense that almost made her Vice-President of this country. A state Governor enacts change. Elected officials enact change.  Pundits and speech makers collect paychecks.

Be forewarned my fellow left-wingers – she might not represent the future of the Republican party, but she represents a dark future for an uneducated and blissfully ignorant democracy.  A politician with no experience, but a suitcase full of catch-phrases. No real life lesson but a handful of quaint anecdotes.  Your average Joe-six-pack hockey mom who re-writes her resume much like a young 20-something tries to make working the night-shift at Blockbuster look like “management experience”.

Ms. Palin will never be President – but I assure you others are watching, and there will be better versions of her coming soon enough.  Folks who realize that even if you get ripped by the press and have no chance of winning – you can still land massive book deals and speaking engagements.  Pop-politics, driven by social media and a news industry hungry for sound-bites. It’s the darkside of the new media revolution – and we should all be on high alert.