Here’s the last piece of advice:

5). Last suggestion: start succession planning on day 3. Joe Biden cannot and should not be President. Recall that George W. lost the White House for his party because he selected an unelectable vice president. Don’t make the same mistake, or we’ll have Jeb Bush in the White House in 2016. That will be your mortal sin.

And what are we hearing these days? Jeb Bush is meeting with advisors in Washington to consider his run for the Presidency in 2016. Heard anything about succession, other than Hillary Clinton might run (I doubt it)? Not really..

So, all in all, I appear to presently be 0 for 5. No surprise in that – after all, I am frequently ahead of my time in understanding these things. But eventually the Democratic Party will regret that there is no clear successor that has been named now. I guess there’s only room for one big ego in the room, at least until the inauguration in January. But those who rest on their laurels frequently find themselves behind the curve, and regretting the lack of action in a timely fashion.

But I’m still not ready to let go of #4. The problem of veteran’s suicides is really serious, and it demands our attention. I am determined to try to do something about it every day until there is some progress on this front. Any and all ideas from you, my gentle reader, would be appreciated.

Here’s piece of advice number 4. This post will lack the light-hearted touch of previous posts, as this is the most serious and difficult of topics for me.

4). Our veterans are dying daily. They need for you to devote a huge portion of your second term to finding solutions, not just rhetoric. Find someone with passion to run Veteran’s Affairs-Eric Shinseki needs to go. Ask somebody like Ross Perot seemed to be to run it for a dollar a year. Get some FDR mojo on this one.

What’s the latest suicide statistic for the Army? Interesting question, because there is nothing about it on the Web since the rate spiked in July. The election and the economy trumped news about veterans’ killing themselves. But thru a circuitous route, I found the statistic on the Stars and Stripes web page. Eighteen a day. That’s 126 a week; a year will net you over 6,500 suicides of veterans. Why does this happen? This little piece for one vet’s story is a recurring theme:

The former soldier had been distraught for weeks, frustrated by family problems, unemployment and his lingering service injuries. He was long ago diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, caused by a military training accident, and post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from the aftermath. He had battled depression before, but never an episode this bad.

Has there been any introspection on the part of the Army on this topic?

How about this headline from the Army G1 Suicide Prevention Team?

Army Suicide Prevention Month 2012
September 2012
Suggested Activities
“A HEALTHY FORCE IS A READY FORCE

So they declare one month a “Suicide Prevention Month”? Kind of reminds you of those old training films about Syphilis from WWII

We don’t want you to kill yourself because if you do, you won’t be ready to fight in the next war…oh my. Sure looks like rhetoric to me.

Here’s a map I took from the Veteran’s Affairs Website dealing with Suicide Prevention:

It tells Vets to visit their nearest help center if they’re feeling suicidal. There are 24 circles on this map, by my count. According to Wikipedia, there are 3.79 million square miles in the United States. So that means there’s a Veteran’s Suicide Help Center for every 157,917 square miles in this country. Might take a while to get to one of them if you live in a fairly rural area, eh?

But fear not – the Army has entered cyberspace to deal with the problem – there are mobile apps to remind you of why you shouldn’t take your life if you are a distraught vet:

If what I’ve written sounds angry, it’s because I am angry. I am tired of reading about the problem, and finding that little to no progress has been made in dealing with it. If you don’t have a loved one or family member who is one of the 2.4 million who served in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, then you really don’t appreciate the impact those wars had on these young men and women.

So my advice to the big man is: find someone of high stature and lots of moxie to take on this problem for a dollar a year. The pay is symbolic; the point is to elevate veterans’ suicides to the status of the other problems we discuss every day and that dominate the media. Like the economy or who knew what before and after Chris Stevens was killed in Bengazi. At this point, that is a very small issue, compared to the eighteen young men or women who risked their lives in service to their country, and today will decide to end that life out of hopelessness, depression and despair.

God damn it, man! Do something!

Here’s item #3, and … oh my … it has surely been the topic of conversation on the Sunday shows for the past two sessions:

3). FIND the will and a way to work with the Republicans. You are way smarter than them, but you need to get past that. Without bipartisan cooperation, we cannot solve any of our problems. So get over the fact that they hate you for being who and what you are and rise to your level of potential. I’ll bet Michelle tells you the same thing.

The key words in advice item #3 are “the will”. If you can find the will, the way is fairly easy. But I think finding the will is hard because you have to summon a modicum of respect for your adversary to effectively negotiate with them. Because the President is so much brighter and has more integrity than the Republican cadre, he is struggling with dealing. Instead, he puts the onus on the Congressional Dems who, we all know, could not manage their way out of a brown paper bag.

That just won’t work. They may not be as smart or have as much soul as you, sir, but nonetheless they exist and YOU, sir, have to be the one to make the deal. No other…

How would I approach this if I were in your shoes? I’d do these three things:

a) Role play the negotiations with trusted colleagues – just like the practice for the debate. That way, you can actually see the face of your trusted colleague when you’re talking with John Boehner or Mitch McConnell, because you’ve practiced it that way. That will help with your body language which, frankly sir, you are lousy at hiding.

b) Figure out what you want and communicate that within the next five days to the populace…make it the obvious conclusion. Forget the political debt you owe the left side of the party who want you to hold out and go over the cliff. You don’t owe them anything. You could have shown up drunk for each of the three debate sessions, and they’d have come out stronger for you. Besides, the White House is lost in 2016 anyway, so… what the hell? Go for whatever it takes to negate the ‘no taxes of any kind’ pledge that the Reps are ready to give up. Tax rates up by a little, and deductions down by a little. Now – wasn’t that easy?

c) Finally, recognize that even though they were mean to you, you don’t trust them, in point of fact you loathe them and everything they stand for, you still have to reach a deal with them. As such, recognize their dilemma, clues of which could be found in the Grand Bargain negotiations from last year. The Republican party’s problem isn’t John Boehner or Mitch McConnell, it’s the stalwart holdouts from the last vestiges of the tealiban members in the House. They need to be sufficiently won over to prevent a mass exodus to the door when the vote comes up. There is still enough fear in the average Republican’s heart of being replaced in the next primary that a real potential exists for this ‘no’ vote to occur. Can you help John and Mitch with these folks? Who knows – but at least you can have a frank discussion with J&M on the topic, and volunteer to try with the vast resources at your disposal. That will show empathy and maybe help you get past the smug attitude that is so off-putting to them.

There you have it – really quite easy…we’ll see whether we can turn a corner with this problem. Because there is much more at stake than this so-called ‘cliff’. There’s every potential for the US economy to begin a true recovery this year if bipartisan cooperation prevails. Everybody wants it – even folks in the rest of the world want it. So let’s see if we can do it, eh?

Here was the second thing I suggested to soon-to-be-newly-elected President Obama last August:

2). The day after the election, you need to convene a round table of the best minds in the world. Note I said the best minds, not the best economists or Wall Street executives or government leaders-just the 15 or so best minds in the World. Put them all in a room and challenge them to develop a plan to fix the world economy. Give them 72 hours and only allow bathroom breaks; send food and water in while they work. Tell them you want the solution in plain English with no more than 15 pages of text. You take the product to the UN and get the world to endorse it. This will atone for Colin Powell’s mortal sin in 2004 and may save us all.

So now every day you read about the President meeting with one group or another, and that he is expecting both sides of the Congressional table to throw aside all their baggage, issues and dislike for one another and agree on a compromise.

That’s about as likely to happen as … well, you get the idea.

So now I’m 0 for 2 in my sage advice to the president. I’m starting to get the feeling he isn’t listening!

On the other hand, a guy named Peter Diamond, a notable economics professor emeritus from MIT, wrote an Op-Ed in the New York Times this morning. Here’s a link, if you’re interested…

The title of the piece is “Down with Supercommittees”. And – surprise, surprise, surprise as Gomer Pyle used to say – Professor Diamond suggests that

“Instead of wide-ranging, politically motivated panels, we need narrowly targeted commissions, without sitting members of Congress, modeled on the successful Base Closure and Realignment Commissions of recent decades.”

Hmph – that kind of sounds like a group of really smart people locked in a room until they come up with a really good plan.

So from all of this, one could almost glean the conclusion that Washington truly does not want to reach an agreement.

An alternate conclusion would be that they are not sufficiently competent managers to achieve that goal. A third conclusion could be that politics is still the best game in town, it’s still payback time for the Dems and the President, and there will no substantive agreement before the FC is breached. So in spite of a tick upward in the Dow and other indices yesterday, I stick with my prognostication that there will be no meaningful agreement, and there will be consequences to this failure.

Final note: my advice to the Chief Executive was to have the smart folks develop a solution to the woes of the world economy. This post is about the US economy. If anyone thinks one has no effect on the other, you just haven’t been paying attention for the past 4 years.

Maybe those Mayans knew what they were talking about!

Let’s talk about the fiscal cliff. Everybody asks me: what IS this thing called the fiscal cliff? And I say, oh gee whiz, let’s not talk about that now.

Let’s talk about the fact that since the election, the DJIA (Dow Jones Industrial Average) has gone from 13,120 to 12,570. If my math skills remain intact, that is a loss of 550 points in 8 days. That’s a loss of 4%, as pointed out by today’s Marketwatch online site. This is what the trend looks like…

If, hypothetically, this trend were to continue, with 47 days left before the end of the year (as indicated by that tiny little ‘fiscal cliff’ link in the predictions section that takes you to the site that counts down the days)…anyway, back to my point..

If this trend were to continue, that would equate to a 23.5% further reduction in the DJIA. That would put it at 9616.05, which is 1384 points lower than even I – the doomsday prepper – predicted. So we’re likely not looking at a linear downturn…

But I stick with my prediction of 11,000 by year’s end. That is a net 16% loss from the value of those 30 stocks that make up the DOW. And why, my gentle reader asks, is this happening? The answer is quite simple: dithering over the FISCALLLLLL CLIFFFFF…….(note picture above – pay particular attention to the location of that rope)…

Are the learned ladies & gentlemen of Congress and the Executive Branch aware of this trend? I’m confident they are. The more important question is: do they care? Or are they so caught up in the drama, they fail to see the impact their head fake games are having on ordinary citizens? That is the question..

To that end, I have a thought: I think the learned ladies & gentlemen in Washington get so caught up in the goings-on in their world that they rationalize the impact on the real world. Otherwise, how do you explain the behavior of the individuals involved in the mess known as the Petraeus scandal? Get ready…going to change subjects on you here…

Jill Kelley, the squealer, gets some guy in the FBI to check out some messages from a person whose identity she likely knew. How does that happen? If you complain about this blog post anonymously, do you think I could get the FBI to discern your identity? Sure…so she complains, once the investigation gets going, it really spins out of control and then the investigators have a real tiger by the tail. In the end, four families are somewhere between troubled and devastated, careers are on hold or lost forever and all of this is because…some gal got pissed off at another gal.

So what’s the moral of the story? Every so often these pampered and coddled folks come up for real air and sense the gravity of their transgressions. Unfortunately, just like in most Greek tragedies, alea iacta est…Latin for ‘the die is cast’…and once that die is cast, there’s no putting it back in your pocket and walking away.

And so it goes with the so-called negotiations over the fiscal cliff. The Republicans are trying to save some semblence of face in spite of the election outcome, and Obama et al can’t help but succumb to a whole lot of smug. Where will this end? 11,000…lots of money lost…and not much likelihood of any kind of collaboration in D.C. But that’s a topic for another post…

On August 14th of this year, I provided five suggestions for the President upon his inevitable re-election. As I had a one in two chance of being correct, I chose the right face of the coin. As such, I can now say the chickens have come home to roost, so it’s time to revisit the advice, one item at a time. Here was the first and, in my opinion, the most important of the five:

1). Let’s start with the big one: drone attacks. Stop them. You crossed the line by authorizing the killing of American citizens without trial or any other semblance of due process. This is wrong, by any measure. In your acceptance speech after the election, please confirm that these attacks will stop. Period.

I read the transcript of his acceptance speech from Chicago last Wednesday morning, but nowhere did I see anything even remotely like what I requested. So thus far I’m 0 for 1. But I remain undaunted. I still believe what I said above is so. And other voices are joining in. Here’s one from Barbara Lochbihler, Chair of the Subcommittee on Human Rights of the European Parliament. She is founder of the German Human Rights Institute in Berlin.

Here’s a link to an op-ed piece from a lady who – of course – agrees with me…

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/america-s-legally-questionable-drone-campaign-by-barbara-lochbihler

If you don’t care to read the whole thing, let me give you an excerpt from what she said:

every drone strike will not only undermine human rights and international humanitarian law, but will also further widen a legal loophole that other governments and armed groups will not hesitate to exploit.

And there’s the rub, as Shakespeare’s Hamlet pointed out to us a few centuries ago. Or in saucier language, what’s good for the goose is gonna be good for the Iranians, or Talib or angry Australian peaceniks.

How could we criticize the Assad regime for targeting civilians when we do the same thing with drones? The Air Force is now training more recruits to operate drones than to fly planes – a major step in this sanitized version of warfare?

The biggest challenge is this: are we foolish enough to believe that this relatively simple technology can’t be used against us? If we fear Al Qaeda getting a dirty bomb, it’s certainly easier to see how they could gain access to a drone and use it to kill innocent civilians (as we reportedly have been doing in Pakistan.)

So the next time you’re in your back yard, maybe enjoying a friendly barbecue or a children’s birthday party, look up into the sky and listen for a buzzing noise like a mosquito. And think about what it would be like to constantly have to live in fear of what falls from that buzzing noise.

OK, it’s been nearly a week since the election, and I know you all are waiting with baited breath for my detailed analysis of the results. Since everybody else and their cousin – on both sides – are indulging in that nonsense, thus far I have refrained.

Having said that, and having commented in the previous post that it’s better to look forward than analyze the whys of yesterday, I will say this about that – and pay attention, because this is really important – somebody had to win.

There you have it. With the exception of 1800, 1876 and 2000, there’s always a winner. And we wouldn’t have it any other way, because it’s too stressful when there isn’t a winner. Am I right here?

Every four years we have an election and generally somebody wins. They go on to be a good, average or bad chief executive, but the bottom line is: we go on. So save the gnashing of teeth, vows to fire employees or quit your job if you live in a state that went for the “wrong guy”…big waste of time!

Now that I’m done with that exhaustive analysis, I want to talk about trolls. Trolls? Creatures that live under bridges and make you answer a question if you want to pass? Ah, no…people who disguise themselves as normal human beings and then go to websites and get folks all hysterical with outrageous, disgusting and often borderline insane rhetoric. Do you know about this?

I first heard about it from the little Slumdog Millionaire guy on The Newsroom. Since then, every time I look at comments on an other-wise intelligent site like The Atlantic or The New Republic, there they are! After a little practice, you recognize them. Here’s some tips:

They almost always post a picture to accompany a fake name – like a young, white girl with an inocuous sounding name who spews racist comments like there’s no tomorrow. Or a sweet young white couple in an innocent embrace, doing the whole conspiracy theory thing (regardless of the topic at hand). That always brings out the responders, first saying “what has that to do with the topic”? Then telling the troll how awful they are. Quite predictable…

So the next time you’re tempted to push that “Send a Comment” button and scream at someone you think is racist, sexist, crazy or otherwise repugnant, ask yourself the question: is this likely a troll? Did I just get spoofed or punk’d or whatever kids call it? I also recommend you consider any statement coming from the mouth of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, or Ann Coulter in exactly the same context. If only the national media would do the same … maybe they would just go away…OK had to indulge a little bit!

It’s 11:24 AM on Wednesday, November 7th. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is currently down 323 points, or 2.44%. The headline banner for the on-line Marketwatch: “Street gets slammed…Dow below 13K as fiscal-cliff fear spikes.” Gosh – why didn’t I predict that? Oh – I did! Refer to prognostications in day before the election post…

I guess you get to a certain point in life and it all just gets too obvious…but not being one to get stuck in dwelling on the here and now negative, this is where we go from here!

Y’all have to trust me that we’re going to have a rather bumpy ride from 11/7 to 12/31. We will continue to have a serious decline in market fundamentals and there will be a fair amount of – as we used to say in Georgia – “jaw-jackin'” about it all, but one must make hay while it’s raining cats & dogs.

Now is the time to take that cash you accumulated over the past six months (you did accumulate cash, didn’t you?) and start looking for value securities to invest in. I’m talking the stock market, dear, not the bond market. The bond market is beyond my comprehension, as it seems so counterintuitive.

If you’ve really got guts, start doing options…I myself am fairly ignorant on this ground, so I will spend the next month or so looking for assistance in using what I believe are called “covered calls” and “puts” to learn about options and try to make some money out of all this uncertainty. Otherwise, stick to your knitting, and just look for good stocks whose prices are depressed because of all this brouhaha…love that word!

Interest rates aren’t going anywhere, so there’s no issue there…no inflation, no looming disasters other than New York and New Jersey being punished by the weather Gods…so fasten your seat belt, and ride it out!

It’s 10 til 7 and the polls will begin to close in ten minutes. The pundits are doing the yackety yak…razor thin … photo finish … neck & neck…cliff hanger … then there’s little Nate Silver, who gives Mittens a 9% likelihood of winning the election. Why? Because it ain’t the popular vote that counts…it’s the electoral college…

Five ’til and we’re tuned to CNN, versus the networks with their emphasis on the local and the other cable networks with their clear biases…minimize the histrionics and maximize the information quickly and efficiently…

Candy Crowley is in Boston with Mittens, in spite of the comments at the debate on Candy’s part. OK, John King, be quiet and let’s start looking at results, as it’s 7 PM.

Vermont for Obama! Kentucky for Mittens-no surprise..

Let’s compare numbers with Nate’s numbers…supposedly Virginia exit polls have it a tie – Nate says 79% likelihood of Obama win..we’ll see..

More blah blah…let’s get some results at 7 after 7..

Obama ahead in Florida so far 55/45 at 4%…Indiana will go to Mittens

Nelson/Mack with 4% in it’s 60/40…no surprise with that…

Indiana Senate tied with 6% of the vote…come on Joe Donnelly…

Carville speaketh…dealing with the numbers where the R guy is the baloney stuffer…

Give us data! Eighteen after..need data..

50/50 in Florida with 5% of the vote…

Indiana for Mittens — again, no surprise..

Donnelly pulls ahead of Mourdock..

W. Va for Mittens-no surprise

Exit polls tied in N.C where Mittens gotta win

Barry exit polls winner in Ohio..

Analyzing Virginia still don’t know what Fairfax County is doing…

Romney S. Carolina – Mittens-no surprise

Florida 28% of vote – Obama ahead 51/48

Now its 51/49 Romney in FL

Now bama ahead in Fl – oh good grief!

With 1% in Ohio Obama 54/45..

41% in Florida still 51/48 for Obama

So far all states are as projected 64 electoral votes for Obama and 40 for Mitts

Pa exit polls 57 for Obama 43 for Mitts

42% FL 51/49

Ohio 62% for Obama

59/40 in Ohio with 9% of the vote in

Romney ahead in Fl 51/49 with 50% of the vote in

Mitty takes Ga – no surprise

It’s 8:25 and there has been no real trend that deviates from the polling and projections from the 538 blog…in other words, no surprises yet…

CNN called Nelson to win the Florida Senate race…no surprise

Ark & Tenn-no surprise..Mitty

5 to 9 and Ob is still slightly ahead in Fl – but people are still in line to vote in Miami. Geez..we are so lame…

Where are we in Ohio? Va? Fl? Sloppy work on the part of Supervisors of Elections..

To reiterate – there have been no differences between the polling and the results thus far…Va is looking the shakiest of the states that were slated to go to O but there’s more votes to tally..

Ob still comfortably ahead in Ohio and a comfortable lead in PA..even in Colorado…

It’s 10:46 and it’s clear that it’s all over for Mittens…Fla will go for O, and he’s ahead in Ohio. Claire McCaskill won. Joe Donnelly won.

Bottom line: new winners and losers.

Talking heads
Tealiban

When will CNN call it? That’s the last question…

Answer: 11:18 PM…

It’s the Saturday before Election Day on Tuesday. Granddaughter Emily’s school will close that day, as they fear violence, due to the close nature of the race. Oh puhleaz…

There has been an ongoing ‘debate’ (polite word) about the outcome for about 10 days now. Poor little Nate Silver, the statistician (NOT pollster) who blogs for the NY Times about the national elections has been on the hot seat with pundits whose living depends on it being a ‘tossup’.

Nate has indicated all along this is no toss up. Barack Obama’s odds of winning have exceeded Mitt Romney’s the entire time. Sometimes the odds heavily favored Obama – sometimes the odds were close…but they always favored Obama. So what’s left to say?

Yet every media outlet in the country is shouting that it’s a toss-up, “photo-finish” (implying the two candidates are horses, running down the track with their necks straining to cross the line first)…Yeah…

So, here are the Great Olsini’s lucky seven predictions for next week and beyond:

1. Barack Obama will win a second term as President of the United States. After he wins Ohio, the race will be called for him by Wolf Blitzer of CNN shortly after 10:30 PM, but only to allow time for the polls in California to close.

2. Claire McCaskill will be re-elected for a second term as a Senator from Missouri. Todd Akin will not run again.

3. Joe Donnelly will be elected a Senator from Indiana. Richard Mourdock will be divorced by his wife and will spend eternity bitterly try to explain what he REALLY meant about that ‘children of rape are a gift from God’ thing…

4. The House will remain in the hands of the Republicans, however the Tealiban will no longer hold sway over the Republicans in the House. Those fellows will recognize their vulnerability in 2014 unless some things change in Washington, and they really do want to elect Jeb Bush in 2016. Say goodbye to terror in the House…

5. The negotiating power will now be in the hands of the Democrats. I predict this fact will be lost on the Republicans, and Obama will play Brer Rabbit…oh please let’s not go over that fiscal cliff…oh please…oh, we went over that fiscal cliff. Now what? Maybe we really do need those tax increases for the wealthy…the clock is ticking big time on those defense cuts…let’s see what we can do together…

6. As we approach the deadline for the fiscal cliff and pass it, there will be a major correction in the stock market. This is inevitable as most commenters are suggesting that you sell your winning investments prior to the end of the year so you don’t have to pay a higher tax rate on capital gains. So my end of the year prediction for the Dow Jones Industrial Average? It’s currently at about 13,120. I predict the Dow will be at 11,000 at midnight on December 31st.

7. And I saved the best for last. I predict Emily and I will win the “Why Investing Is Important to Me” video contest sponsored by the Motley Fool next year. We’ll be prepared with a much better explanation of dividends next fall…