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All about the standing-upright chimps that really love to talk about themselves.

Next Generation, Waiting

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There has been little doubt that employment has been improving in the US.  From the trough three years ago 5M jobs have been created.  That’s not enough to fill the 12M or so that need to be created, but it’s a start – and it’s been steady progress.  But who is being left behind as the situation (very) slowly improves?

The most important group are the young who are looking for their first job.  Those 20-24 have a lifetime of expectations and habits created by the start of their career, and by any measure their outlook is not good.  While the economy transforms itself into whatever will create the next wave of opportunity the young are being left behind.  This is true throughout the developed world, particularly in Greece and Spain, but the problem is also acute here.  Let’s start by defining the problem.

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Leadership as Strategy

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Leadership.  There has been a lot of talk about it lately, or more to the point the lack of it.  In common talk it is defined as “Doing or standing for the things I like” far more often than is useful.  But most people will agree that the inability for our US Government to do something about a large deficit coupled with a lack of support for genuine growth comes down to a lack of leadership.

I argue that this is to be expected, given the horrible lack of leadership everywhere in the developed world right now.  Can anyone name a powerful nation with good leadership?  Perhaps you can name a few businesses that have it, but not many.  How about social leadership? Religious leadership?  Are there more than a few people in rich nations anywhere who have a strong following that is capable of getting done what they want or need to?

Then again, the lack of leadership is hardly surprising.  It is not about a charismatic figure that molds the masses to action – it’s about getting things done.  That requires strategic thinking, and strategy is something horribly under-appreciated.  I might chalk that up to excessive selfishness or a failure of moral character in our world, both of which are issues.  But upon reflection, it seems to come down to a lack of understanding of what Strategy is and why it is important.  And how we got here may well be fascinating.

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Say, Can You See?

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Oh say, does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave
O’er the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave?

Not according to Wayne La Pierre of the NRA, it doesn’t.  He has a vision of a nation imprisoned and afraid, an America I simply cannot recognize.  His call for a new security regime with armed guards posted at every school, every place where the vulnerable cringe with fear from gun violence, has drawn detractors from every corner of the country.  That’s only reasonable, of course.  But I have to thank him for starkly painting the picture as to exactly where we are going if there is not a change of some kind.

A school in Connecticut, a church in Pennsylvania, a trap set for fireman in New York – every week it seems there is another event or two.  The corrosive action of fear creeps in like rust, never sleeping and eating its way gradually to our core.  A change must come because this is intolerable.  The change, however, must not just be one of law.  The change has to be one from deep inside us as a people.

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Let Christmas Come

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Christmas is easy to dump on – and I’ve been as guilty of that as anyone.  It should be a sacred holiday, but it’s been turned into an orgy of consumerism.  This year, there are so many news items that deserve reporting and discussion, ranging from the NRA’s response to the Connecticut shooting to the fiscal cliff to Prince Harry getting his first official “kill” in Afghanistan.  It’s all so … not Christmassy.  And the only defenders of Christmas appear to be the ahistoric lunatics at Fox Nooze.

Let me be true to the motto “I don’t break news, I fix it” – and let me make that a subtle pitch for your contributions to keep this humble blog going.  Christmas needs a lot this year.  It needs defenders, it needs reinvigorating – it needs to be fixed.  Let’s do it.

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Light a Single Candle

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Winter Solstice arrives right on schedule this Friday, 21 December, at 11:12 UTC – 5:12 in the morning here by mythical Central Time.  It’s being celebrated as the end of the world, probably not because anyone believes that’s going to happen.  No Mayan actually predicted such an event, but it is the end of their 13 Baktun cycle.  My guess is that the Mayans would have used this as an excuse to celebrate too, although their idea of a “party” often involved horrific acts of violence.  It’s a staple of the day.

What really happens is that this is the moment when the North Pole is pointing directly away from the sun and starts its wobble back.  The exact moment of change in the orbit is also the moment when the long nights change the least, in keeping with the nature of cycles.  Light defines the season for us even more than dark notions of destruction because it is the light that will return.  That is more worthy of a party to me.

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