Oh Pioneers!

O you youths, Western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,
Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Today is the day we Utahns celebrate the Mormon Pioneers' arrival and settlement of the Salt Lake Valley. I am proud to be a sixth generation Utahn.

Still, all is not well in the Beehive State as the fireworks explode in the night's sky. The drought has brought wildfires and arsonists to torch our lands. Our elected officials love to waste taxpayer money on message bills and political lawsuits rather than the betterment of the people they were elected to serve.

The spirit of our ancestors--the ones that pulled together to survive a plague of crickets, extermination orders, and a trek across the Great Plains--is being undermined by efforts to exclude those whose views differ from the favored ideology. To make those who are different "other," despite the fact that this same kind of other-ing is what lead to the suffering of our ancestors.

There may be no more land on Earth to "discover" and settle. But we can make strives to pioneer into new fields of knowledge, into new levels of understanding and empathy, and out to the furthest reaches of space--the final frontier.

Oh Pioneers! Strive to shatter the barriers between peoples. Never give up or give in. Yearn for demand, and expect greater from those in public office. Push those holding the levers of power to do something to prevent the world from further spiraling out of control thanks to their inept handling of this interconnected planet--or let someone else have a try. This Pioneer Day, let us seek out our own frontiers and to challenge ourselves to reach higher and farther than we ever dreamed possible. Carpe Diem.

Name Change

Did you notice that after the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act, the media stopped calling it ObamaCare and started calling it the Affordable Care Act? I sure did.

They broke it, we must fix it

In this cynical age, we must look again to our ideals to repair the broken government, the hopeless press, the overburdened courts, and the abject failure of just about every institution of repute in the last ten years.

Short sighted greed is to blame for most of our troubles. This is why Wall Street sold crappy financial products they knew were crappy. This is why professional athletes took performance enhancing drugs, why college coaches looked the other way while their assistants and/or students did terrible things, why reporters made up stories or copy and pasted press releases, why compromise became a dirty word on Capital Hill and lobbyists wrote bills. Why people remain willfully ignorant of climate change. But now the future is not so far away after all, and the proverbial day of reckoning has come. and yet, it seems that most have yet to learn their lessons.

Wall Street is still egged on by callous recklessness and disregard for their supposed clients. The press still prefers to "balance" rather than report what is actually happening and prefer coziness with power over digging to the bottom of a story. Sports are still dogged with people prizing short term success over all else, including the welfare of children. And politicians prefer "winning the week" over passing meaningful legislation, regulations, or treaties that actually makes their constituent's lives better.

I don't know how to lure people from the quick high of short term rewards that come from leveraging the future. But one would have thought the last four years of a painfully slow economy, where everyone is seemingly one false step from financial ruin, would have made people think twice about how they have been acting.

Having narrowly escaped the abyss myself, I must say not only do I appreciate what I have more, but I also think about how my actions will play out several more times down the road.

As a lawyer, you realize the cheap route to victory will come back to bite you one day, and without your credibility, you are not worth much in court or in business. At least some of us do. Other lawyers saw a chance to be famous or wealthy or both, and seized it, laws and ethics be damned. and they, like the accounting firm of Arthur Anderson have became a footnote in history. a lesson of what not to do.

Tuesdays for Orrin

Utah's crazy nominating system starts on Tuesday. If you beat beat Hatch before the primary, or force him into an expensive one, then the Republican caucus fun is for you.

If you want to make sure whomever the nominees are address the issue you care about most, Tuesday is your day to be heard. So go already.

Party like its 1996?

Which the presidential election year does it seem most like this time around? Obama's team seems to think it is 2004, where the opposition was very motivated to beat the incumbent, but nominated an uncharismatic guy from Massachusetts.

Many have said it could be like 1984, where the economy sucked up until it mattered for Reagan's reelection. Others have said 1988, where none of the Democratic candidates were strong enough to clear the field...and they nominated another dud from Massachusetts. Or maybe 1996, where Bill Clinton looked oh so beatable in 1993, 1994 and 1995, but utterly untouchable in 1996. Especially against a guy who refers to himself in third person and seems ancient.

But it sure doesn't feel like 1992 this time does it? Back then, a popular war president lost because the economy when south and that incumbent literally said "message: I care." The voters, however sent him a message that they thought he didn't. Perhaps if the Republicans had someone, any one, to run as their nominee who had a personality and was not an extremist, it would been 1992 in 2012.

Unless Mitt Romney suddenly changes his phony stripes and stops trying too hard like Al Gore in 2000, I really do not see Willard getting 270+ electoral college votes.

POTUS

So today is the day we celebrate Washington's and Lincoln's birthday. This is also a good opportunity to explore those who wish to hold the job.

While I have been disappointed with Obama on a number of issues, Congressional Democrats and Republicans have been far more depressing in their stubborn unwillingness and inability to address all of pressing issues of the day. Climate change is a key example, as is Guantanamo Bay.

But Obama's likely opponent is either without ideas or filled with bad ones that make non existent problems worse. Romney wants to give his fellow one percenters a massive tax cut, raise taxes on the middle class and poor. And he has no desire to tell the voters what else he wants to do.

Santorum wants to tell you what to do with your lives. Freedom, he said, is not having the ability to choose how to act, but to act as Santorum thinks you should. This is known as a Theocracy, while Romney's vision is of a Plutocracy. So I will take disappointing instead.

Newton versus Willard

As much as I have enjoyed the cartoonish fight between the one preventer and the former lobbyist for the one percent, one of these clowns might become president.

John Kerry was tagged with being out of touch because he had become a creature of the Senate. Willard Mitt Romney is out of touch because he has no concept of what it is like to live paycheck to paycheck, to worry about bills, finding a job, keeping a job, or about health insurance. He literally was the guy who was doing the firing, jacking up profits at the expense of its employees and in many cases he company itself.

Willard wasn't a turnaround specialist, he was a flipper. And then he became a flopper. Romney has been willing for since he first ran for office in 1994 to say whatever he thought the electorate wanted to hear. Voters were just a tool, a stepping stone to the real power to do whatever he wanted and could do. There is a reason Willard did not run for reelection. Romney would have lost. Badly.

So the man with no shame would tell one thing to voters one day, and something completely different the next. It is as if Romney thinks he still lives in an era without video and audio recording devices that can transmit Willard eating cake and having it too.

Not that the professor who sold his wife and integrity for power, and then traded in wife number two for a newer model, then resigned in shame, and then became a shill for whoever would pay him is any better. But Newt Gingrich will not last through March while he is pummeled for a month with no money, no supporters, and no organization to defend against Willard's millions. The only thing behind the former speaker is the eighth richest man in the US. Soon enough, he too will get tired of his play thing that keeps losing and saying crazy stuff while he gets crushed.

In the meanwhile, I will try to enjoy my February as I hope you will as well.

January 31, 2012 at 10:51PM

@Saintless trying to link my tweets to my blog so I don't have to write posts and tweets. I used iftt. Suggestions welcomed. http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/164586736767344641

January 31, 2012 at 10:48PM

http://t.co/SXLFfYm http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/164585967565549568

January 31, 2012 at 10:18PM

Wish this existed when I was in high school http://t.co/M04JlSr http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/164578282661089280

January 31, 2012 at 08:48PM

Utah Legislature wants to disregard the 17th Amendment and the Supremacy Clause http://t.co/lMbdyyl http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/164555657087942656

January 31, 2012 at 07:55PM

RT @freddoso: Turnout in FL '08 was 1.9M. This time, not looking like we're going to make it there. http://t.co/FnOSVQlB http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/164542401216655361

January 31, 2012 at 07:19PM

RT @pandagon: Newt to the future! If Obama hadn't taken down Gadaffi, it would be a lot easier to get black market plutonium, though. http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/164533310561849344

January 31, 2012 at 07:32AM

RT @TPM: POLL: Private sector experience of Romney, Gingrich viewed unfavorably http://t.co/mrKPqA0l http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/164355302450413568

January 31, 2012 at 12:03AM

How about using that money to improve Utah's public schools instead? http://t.co/1WdxsW1 http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/164242405799890944

January 30, 2012 at 11:34PM

http://t.co/m2Ry4V8 http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/164235146663436288

January 30, 2012 at 10:55PM

OOPS: Romney ‘Proves’ Gingrich Supported ObamaCare With Three Quotes He Also Said http://t.co/lfb9tg8 http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/164225218519375872

January 30, 2012 at 08:41PM

Americans don’t know much about Romneycare — except that it’s very similar to Obamacare http://t.co/BcseO9I the ACA has more cost-cutting. http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/164191432826036226

January 30, 2012 at 12:47PM

RT @jdickerson: Late endorsing politicians of losing candidates should avoid deck chairs on the Titanic metaphors. http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/164072199819505664

January 30, 2012 at 12:33AM

http://t.co/M53sRJ4 http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/163887584341266432