Lower Your Expectations

 It has been a bit comical in the past week or two....with the Biden administration making a plea.....to news organization....to just get the 'brand' or 'message' out....you (as an American) need to “consciously lower your expectations.”

I sat and pondered over this.

Generally, throughout my Air Force years.....the folks who walked around with lowered expectations....were deemed losers.

Over the past twenty years....if I span out over sports, business, commerce or just plain lifestyles....when you lower your goals.....you end up at a lesser point.  

Bezos, Musk, Wal-Mart, the New York Yankees?  None of them are willing to lower expectations.  

So I can really imagine how this expectations gimmick would work.  Maybe if I were running for President, and my party asked me to hire some loser to be my VP.....to lower my goals enough to get a one-star candidate....it'd make sense.

Maybe if I ran a government, and I hired one-star character to be my Transportation Secretary, and all he'd done in his life was marginally run a small-town government......maybe it'd make sense.  

Maybe if I had to exit Afghanistan in a hurry, and I didn't give a damn on the outcome, then a no-plan exit would make sense.

The more I think about this.....I just keep seeing a lower-expectations character who acts like a 14-year-old juvenile living in Dad's basement.....always hinting of bright ideas but never showing any.  It's the same guy who seems to smoke a lot of weed and just chatter like a dimwit while in his mid-70s.  

Something's not right.....I just haven't figured out what.  

Humble Opinion on Ten Things

 1.  Hunter Biden.   Luckiest guy alive.  He could walk into a room....crap all over the place, and just get marginal criticism upon walking out.  But I see the guy's fortune in life dwindling out in the next five years, and being penniless by age 65.   

2.  VP Harris.  Probably the least qualified VP ever in the history of the US.  Absolutely zero passion to improve or resolve her own created mess.  She'll leave office in January 2025 and attempt to write a book.....which no one seems to want to read or discuss.

3.  Twitter.  It survives only because of content....once it crosses the line and can't provide content....the users will step away.  Alternate 'toys' now exist and it's only a matter of time when Twitter has lost enough content to be worthless.

4.  Joe Biden.  If Joe worked for a Fortune 500 company....the board would have eased him out six months ago and gifted him a pile of money to just go away because of the funny behavior, and dementia-like actions.  

5.  The Afghanistan Withdrawal.  No matter how you slice it....the mess could never take off and be a success story on reforming the entire country.  That was painfully obvious ten to fifteen years ago.  But on a exit-strategy?  There was never a plan, and the government officials of the Biden administration should worry you over how they handled this.

6.  People To Replace Joe Biden in 2024.  I would imagine at least twenty folks are gathered around their lobby-friends and considering the race already at this point.  Speeches and gatherings already in 2022?  Yes, I'd bet on it.  The problem is....no one is really that remarkable, and some (like California's Newsom) are carrying a ton of negative weight around.  While everyone is mostly agreed now....Joe has to go....the who comes next for the party choice is a joke.  

7.  This idea of another memorial in DC, over the war on terror.  Whether it makes any sense or not....it would appear that the power-players in DC will approve it and it'll move to the design stage.  Location?  Anyone's guess but probably within 500 feet of the Vietnam memorial if you ask me.  How you design this without showing some Jihadist or some connection to Islam....is a curious thing to ask.  Won't this just lead onto a statue or memorial to the 6th of January conflict?  It's best not to ask.

8.  The odds of Omikron affecting the Super Bowl?  I'd give it a 50-50 shot that at least ten players from the two teams will be sidelined because of Omikron.  NBA playoffs?  In the same situation.  You could actually have a marginal NBA team make it to the finals only because their crew avoided Omikron for the whole season.  

9.  This Biden judge nominee saying the Senate and the Electoral College are "anti-democratic"?  Well....yeah, he did say that.  It probably wasn't that smart to utter and will peeve a number of Democratic Senators.  But it generally says a lot about the character of judges being sent up for the 'big' chairs.  

10.  Investigative journalism.  Dead....stone-cold dead.  You could assemble a team of dozen 5th-grade kids, and do investigative journalism over a city council or mayor....without much training.   It's like the dinosaurs....it just evolved into nothing and disappeared.

Stock Chatter

 Yesterday, some question came up to Speaker Pelosi over the idea of banning House members from stock trades....she basically rejected the suggestion, without a lot of words.

Here's the thing....the system we currently has reached some point where it's obvious that some members of the House/Senate (maybe half of them) are actively engaged in the futures/stock trade business.  

If you tried to ban them?  Well...their spouse or kids would be the ones engaging then.  

I think this is a dead-end discussion....none of them want to give up the practice, and any alternate path is doomed for failure.

I'd rather see every single trade of the political member, and their spouse....reported within 12 hours of the transaction.  Let all of us know how they invested and assume our own risk following them.