When you've lost Dilbert ...

… the game may be over. Ok, this is a very well written, and extremely cogent argument. Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, indicated why he’s not supporting Obama, and is endorsing Romney in the US Presidential election. His reasons boil down to a firing offense Mr. Obama committed (in Adams' opinion). More specifically, he indicates that he doesn’t like lots of Romney’s positions, but Romney hasn’t committed this particular offense. And specifically to the point of competence, Adams gets that Romney is a turn-around guy. Which is arguably what this country needs right now, far more so than an ideologue. That is, in the universe of choices, you can vote for someone, or against someone. Endorsing someone’s opponent doesn’t mean you necessarily agree with what they say. But you recognize that you have a choice between evils, and the lesser evil, however you evaluate evil, may be the choice you stand behind. They may be evil (or a chameleon as Adams describes it), but one is a greater evil, and one is a lesser evil. I agree with Adams on the firing offense issue. Michigan has a medical marijuana law, specifically to help patients with pain management for life threatening or ending diseases. I wholeheartedly support that law in concept (don’t know of the details in implementation). Put someone on a hard chemo and radiation program that hurts them, bad. Now what in your pain relief arsenal do you have, that will not have other seriously negative side effects? Hook them on morphine? No. Other narcotics? Not a great idea. What if marijuana, or more specifically, derivatives of this, could be given to these patients to alleviate pain? Would this non-addictive treatment help or hurt more than narcotics? And shouldn’t the people to decide a course of treatment which may or may not include this, be the patient and the doctor, and not a legislature? Adams' point fundamentally is that Mr. Obama committed a firing offense by causing someone to be jailed for what he termed a political convenience … as part of his re-election bid. I don’t know specifics of this case, haven’t heard of it or read up on this. So I can’t really comment on that specific case.

I should point out that given my family’s brush with cancer (my wife, younger sibling, and now my father), yeah, I really want as many treatment options open as possible, inclusive of pain management. So I’m in agreement with Adams on the value of this. And I do think these items are very much states rights issues, and should be decided upon at that level. Mr. Adams indicates that he thinks this action (of which I know effectively nothing) is a firing offense. I’d point out that there were many … many … others, of far greater import to our nation as a whole, which range from small failures, to ongoing, epic failure cluster****s, some of which have been used for political gain, when they should not have been. That is, I’d point out that you have a whole range of firing offenses to chose from, not simply this one case. I’ll read up on this case more, regardless of this. Honestly, I’d thought the “four dead Americans is non-optimal” on Jon Stewart’s show last week should have been the last straw for most everyone. The mother of one of those dead responded with a tiny dose of her pure agony, asking precisely WTF is this guy doing or thinking? But as I noted, there are soooo many to chose from. I respect Scott Adams, as he’s created something that is as entertaining as it is incisive social commentary at times. I don’t necessarily agree with all his writing, and I don’t have to. Land of the free and all that. But I respect his stance in this matter. He’s found something he dislikes profoundly, that is an important issue for him, and has made up his mind based in part on that. His reasoning is really on the money, and even if you don’t like his conclusion, read the post. Its worth it. This said, our president certainly does have his supporters, including other writers whose work is very hard for me to put down. Charles Stross, creator of some wonderful stories, tweets and blogs in support of Mr. Obama, and very much against Mr. Romney. I understand why he likes Mr. Obama, as their political sensitivities line up, though Stross might be a smidgin to the left of Mr. Obama, and indicates that he’s a Scottish Socialist. I won’t diminish my enjoyment of Mr. Stross’s tales, or reduce my purchase of books and stories he writes, simply because I find his political stance not to my liking. He often has insightful and thought provoking articles, posts, and tweets. But I rather disagree with some of his Chef’s article this morning. There are significant and substantial differences between the two as Scott Adams pointed out. Stross indicates that this election is Mr. Obama’s to lose. That was about 2 months ago. Today the landscape looks very different, with Mr. Obama now fighting (and losing) containment battles in states that should have remained his. Yeah, the electoral college is someone anachronistic, and not really all that transparent or understandable to folks outside (or even inside) the US. Short version. On November 6, no president will be (re)elected. That happens when the electoral college meets in late November/early December. What we are voting for is which party gets to send delegates to the electoral college. Who then cast their vote, supposedly, representing us. That word “supposedly” is very important, as there can be “faithless electors” who change their minds on who to vote for. And yes, this does happen. Remember, the US is not really a pure democracy, we are a republic representative democracy. One extra level of abstraction. The president is effectively the CEO of the US. The VP is the president of the senate. Our bicameral legislature was meant to divide power between states and proportional representation. Fundamental to the founding fathers of the US (or war criminals in the UK if you prefer), was the concept of a balance of power, so that one entity never got too large and too out of control … so we did not devolve into a dictatorship. Where people can be thrown in jail for political purposes. Which goes back to Scott Adams' point. I agree with Adams, we need a new CEO. Badly need one. Here in Michigan, we have Rick Snyder as our governor, who has a very similar background to Mitt Romney. The same type of campaign was waged against him three years ago. He prevailed 2 years ago. And now this state is on the mend … if you ignore the occasional loony out in the wilderness screaming about extremist positions. Rick Snyder is as good a CEO as this state can get. A breath of fresh air after nearly a decade of suffocation. We need a new CEO for the US, and the shareholders meeting is on the 6th of November, with the board that we elect on the 6th of November meeting sometime late November or December to finish the job of appointing the new CEO. Whomever we hire for the CEO, they work for us. As Scott Adams noted. Ideology aside, if they fail in their jobs, we are going to be worse off. If they misunderstand their position and abuse their power, then they have failed, and should be fired. That was Adams' point. And it was a good one.