Being the Change I Wish to See

Sometimes doing your job the best you can is what makes a huge difference in many people’s lives. Flight 1549 that landed in the Hudson River in January this year demonstrates the importance of doing your job well. The crew of 1549, including Captain Sully Sullenberger, saved all 155 people aboard that plane by keeping a cool head and performing a water landing perfectly. Then his crew performed their jobs flawlessly to get everyone off the plane and onto rescue vessels.

Here’s a recreation of the what happened as it happened, synced with the cockpit voice recorder:

Loving your job and being one of the best at it is really important in the overall productivity of this country and the world, let alone that it might save lives.

Even in this down economy and horrible job market, if you don’t like your job, maybe it’s time to look for a new career. There are a lot of things you can do while working at what you don’t like paying the bills to find the career you can’t wait to get up to every morning. You can do research and reading in your off hours, take a class, or work with a placement firm that will assist you in figuring out what you want to do as well as finding a job where you get to do it. You can volunteer in fields you may find interesting or you can get a part-time job doing something you think you might like but are unsure about.

Whatever it takes, you owe it to yourself and to society to love your job. Not only will you look forward to work and be a far happier person, you might end up doing something above and beyond the call of duty. You may save people’s lives, catch the next Bernie Madoff before he gets away with a Ponzi scheme, find the cure for HIV or diabetes, or break up the next AIG or Citi Group so they aren’t too big to fail and cost taxpayers billions of dollars. You may help troubled teens graduate from high school instead of becoming gang members and thugs. You may invent the solution to our energy crisis or you may find the best answer to our health care problems. You may find the best solution to poverty and end it for good all over the world.

So take a long, hard look at what you really love and start figuring out ways to make a living doing it.

Technorati Tags: flight 1549, love your job, sullenberger, video synced with voice recorder

written by joubess \\ tags: flight 1549, love your job, sullenberger, video synced with voice recorder

On Monday, March 9, Congressman Patrick McHenry said the GOP plan is to bring down the Democrats as much as possible before the 2010 mid-term elections:

We will lose on legislation. But we will win the message war every day, and every week, until November 2010. Our goal is to bring down approval numbers for [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and for House Democrats. That will take repetition. This is a marathon not, a sprint.

Congressman Patrick McHenry
(R) North Carolina

Source: National Journal

This country’s economy is in serious trouble and its people are in serious trouble. The economic problems we face must be dealt with head on and now. In the midst of this crisis the Republicans decided their agenda and party are more important than we the people, more important than the United States of America, and more important than the world economy.

The conservatives and GOP are showing themselves to be unconscionably selfish and self-centered at a time when this country needs Congress to work together to find solutions for the huge problems we face. So far, they are the party of “no” and no new ideas.

Conservative and GOP policies won’t work and it’s been proven in history. They want to freeze spending, balance the budget, cut taxes and reign in monetary policy. President Herbert Hoover’s policies of cutting taxes, freezing government spending, balancing the federal budget and monetary policy that didn’t provide a sufficient money supply are what made the recession that started in 1929 the Great Depression of the 1930’s. These idiots are dumb enough to ignore history, or worse, take part in revisionist history that actually blames President Franklin Roosevelt for creating the Great Depression so he could have his New Deal!

The recession that turned into the Great Depression started in 1929, 4 years before FDR was sworn into office in 1933. It took seven years of substantial government spending on public works projects and social programs to help the people who were suffering, and the massive government spending needed for World War II to get out of the Great Depression. By World War II, FDR reduced unemployment from 25% to 15%. The build-up to the war took that unemployment figure down to 1-2%. It took so long because President Hoover refused to do anything about the recession for 4 years, not because FDR’s programs didn’t work. They worked and brought us out of that horrible time in our history. Had FDR’s policies been implemented within the first year of the recession, it might not have been so bad and so long.

The GOP and conservatives are delusional enough to believe that by obstructing the House and Senate Democrats and federal spending that there will be a country and an economy left in 2010 to win back. They fail to realize that if our economy fails, so does the world’s economy.

What would a post-modern world look like? I don’t know, but I feel like it would be really bad and there would be lots of wars over dwindling supplies of everything we need to live a modern life. The worst could be that since there isn’t really anything to live for anyway, why not destroy a lot of the world using nuclear weapons?

By using this strategy, the GOP will insure it is marginalized for a long time to come. It may take the party decades to rebuild if another party doesn’t spring up in its place, and there are a lot of contenders out there. One thing is certain. We can’t have a major political party that doesn’t know when to work and when to play politics. We sure can’t survive with a party that is dumb enough to fail to learn from history. And we definitely don’t need a party with hubris enough to put itself before the very country it is meant to lead.

Technorati Tags: Franklin Roosevelt, GOP, GOP in Exile, GOP obstructs on purpose, grand obstructionist party, Great Depression, Herbert Hoover, recession

written by joubess \\ tags: Franklin Roosevelt, GOP, GOP in Exile, GOP obstructs on purpose, grand obstructionist party, Great Depression, Herbert Hoover, recession