2008 November

Sidebar Up: Goals and More.

November 30, 2008 By chris

December 1st is tomorrow. And that’s makes tonight my “new years.” For 7 years I was in the real estate business. I watched people piss away the time between Halloween and Christmas in a stupor, going to title company luncheons, builder opens, and other nonsense. See–there’s a decoupling in Real Estate. You get paid NOW for the work that you did 2 months ago. So often, inertia carrys Realtors/LOs through the winter and they coast.

Then January hits and they do 0-1 deals, and the deeals that they do are carryover from December–fallout.

Then Feburary hits and they start to panic.

Well, I’m not in that boat–i’m not a full time practitioner anymore, I still am in the RE cycle. And i still need business both now and in January. So, I decided to do something fun:

I’m counting December 1, 2008 as my ‘fiscal year.’ I want to start a month early, while I’m focused and motivated so I hit my goals….starting this month, not wanting to dig a hole is a kludge to make sure I get what I want to get done, done. I created something in Google Docs to hold myself publicly accountable. Since I switched from being a Realtor->mortgage broker->freelancer…I needed to do this to make sure I do what I say I’m doing.

I made this scorecard to make sure that I stay on task & on target:

I’ve got 21 planned work days so that generates the calculations that are going to show what pace I’m going to be on/etc. The workouts that I do will either be ahead or behind because I do one at a time, and that’s OK. The rest of it tracks me.

It has some oddball goals: to lose 4.5#/week through the holidays is to be fun, and much easier this year…but the way it usually works is that suddenly I find myself 3# lighter, after staying the same weight for 2-3 days. Anyway, that’s produced the idea that I’ll be losing 63# in December based on the fact that I weighed in on a ‘high’ weight day. it’ll normalize when time passes and I don’t have extra days. Still, kind of fun.

In 2009–which starts tomorrow–I’m going to have a good year. My primary goal is to get myself to 160#. That’s not going to be easy by any means, but it will certainly happen–of this I have no doubt. The next goals are to finish the rewrite of Subprime, to get F–therapy up and out, and to have a practice that rakes in $225-250k in consulting fees. All while continuing to enhance my character and work out my relationship with the Nazerene. I’ll codify a little bit better tomorrow, at some point.

Right now, I’m overdue on about 400 deadlines cause I was fighting a war maiahost.com (great company for 1-5 blogs, needs help for more than that). So extricating 25++ blogs I manage for people to my new host is a PITA. I can thank Laura for that stuff.

Anyway, as is always the case, more to come.

Filed Under: Achieving Goals, Products, Projects and Process Tagged With: kludge, realtor

Tools: Google Keyword Tool.

November 25, 2008 By chris

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Just creating a resository of tools in my toolbox–this way if I get blocked I can look at thE tools I use to know what sites, etc, has worked in the past.

Filed Under: Products, Projects and Process

Big Damn 2009 Goal Post, part 3, Inputs.

November 23, 2008 By chris

I’m declaring December 1st, 2008, January First 2009. Stay with me here. I want 2009 to be a blast, an incredible year. And I know that things are going to be difficult, but I still want this to be the best possible year for me. So I’m starting early. I’m not going to have a listless december and watch ANYTHING happen. I’ll take new business, I’ll wrap up outstanding stuff.

I now have a budget that matters–I’ll make my own peak experiences. That will come easily enough–getting through this year. I don’t have an ‘income goal’ per se–I must have money to make my life right, and I’ll simply have it. $43k left to retire my debt is necessary and definitely useful.

You can’t have a life of splendor without intensity, and you can’t have a life of splendor if you permit the cancer of mediocrity to be in any part of your life. I need to focus.

That puts my total income need at…$110k for 2009. I won’t settle for a penny less. But there’s good news: I love what I’m doing. Love it. I don’t get tired. I wake up at 5 with bursts of energy. So, I can do this. IF I make just under $10k/month…I get to live something damn close to DreamLife. (9166.67) to take out of the business. I can do that–that could be 6 blogs a month, which I could certainly do. I know I’ll have income from several sources. Having $9166.67/month to hit EVERYTHING (budget + taxes + debt retirement) is pretty slick. I need to have a WAY better cash position. I guess I need about $25k/cash to play right at this table.

…
I know I need to bid, finish and bill on gigs to make this happen, and I’ve covered how to do that before. I just know the number I need to hit.

And in December? I’m going to hit $12,000 net net net to me.

But really, enough money stuff. Money is oxygen. I need it to live, but it’s not the purpose of life. It’s on the hierarchy, but again, who

I’ll track it though…and make some basic things to track money stuf.
…

I have 4 planned ebooks in 2008/2009 that I’ve got in various stages:

The Loan Officer Bailout Plan:
1. Working with Realtors
2. Working with social media
3. Restoring Trust
The Compleat Sociopath:
F–ktherapy.Com (drops next week, kids, it’s a title shot)
white paper: Switching to FreeLance.

1,2 & 3 are for sale. #4 is going to be how I did & am it, free for all.

They are in basecamp, outlined and orgainized (except for #4, that’s my gift to the world…such as it is).
…
Additionally, I have to do rewrite Subprime. That’s 92,000 quality words due by 3/15/09. Not as big and nasty as it sounds becaue the bones are pretty good. It reads well, I just need to brighten up the colors.

As the rewrite takes place I need to secure the correct agent. That will take till June 1st, and I’ll make it happen. I know that if my submission merely waits in line, it won’t happen. I also know that I can annoy the hell out of those folks. But, I can take a middle path: I can give value first, & get noticed. Simple. I’m stalking 5 agents. I know what they’ve sold. I know who I want to represent me, and I know what THEY need. And I’m helping. If I have till 3/15/09 to do 92-94k words…then that means that I’ve got to write…94k words in 112 calendar days.

That’s going to be far fewer WORKING days–but still.
…

Right now, I’m working to get to 175 # (en route to 159). I have reason to believe that through all my flailing fits and starts I’ll get there this time. Why? Because of where I’ve already been. I’ve lost a ton of weight as it is. And by March 1, 09, I’ll be 175#.

My basic plan is to do about 450 minutes of cardio a week, and do an intense weight training schedule (lifting 5 days/week). Working so far, well enough at least. That goal is truly the most important to me–I could fail everywhere, and if I finish 09 @ 175#, I’ll probably be happy.
…

That’s pretty much it. Those are the big goals and dreams that matter to me, so Mark, there you have it. The big dream list.

To get there, I need to create a spreadsheet again. I talked about this once before, recently. I’m paring it down:
…

What I’ll Be Tracking:

% of weight lost vs. goal, what pace I should be on, etc. (LBS lost, % to goal). We’re gonna call it a 50# goal, baby…for now. I’ll need to lose more, but we’ll go with 50# in 98 days. That’ll get me friggin’ close. Again: this goal is it. If I don’t recreate my body, it’s a failed year. Really. That’s not overstating it at all, the way I look is a symbol. I don’t have any doubt–none–that this will be the easiest goal this year.

Weight (will do calculations automatically)
1. % to goal
2. On pace for
3. Should weigh:
Cardio Minutes Done:
Workouts Done:

Income earned (actual) % of pace, etc. I’m going to through December’s income in with 2009′s, because I want a head start on the new year. Consequently, I’m going to have till December 1, 09 to get to my goal.

Contacts Made
Database Adds
Bids Outstanding.
Bids Accepted
Bids Collected.
$ Earned.

Subprime Words ReWritten: There is a goal of 95k +/- 5k. The ending and beginning have to be perfected. (Subprime is mostly about men and women–the idiotic way we choose to pair off, simultaneously taking sex too seriously and too frivolously, making it a goal and a curse at the same time. The backdrop is the low rent folks that made up the industry). This will have a goal over a period of time.

Words Done:
Today/Total/YTD

F–ktherapy units: (10,000 = goal, which is 800/month). This is hard. I’ll be THRILLED with 200 units in December. THRILLED BEYOND BELIEF. Because that’ll make me know that I can get there. The progression would be 200, 300, 500, 800, 1000-1100-1000 etc. That’s what things like this do, and a verison of the pattern that http://losurvivalguide.com did. (That was weeks not months, and selling this @ 24/unit is going to be tough).

This has to grind out next week. HAS to. Cause holy hell has it taken forever.

That drops on December 1, 2009. I want to see if I can make e-junkie populate it so it all works automatically, if not I’ll do it a couple of times a day.

So that’s how the page looks, looks slick.

Filed Under: Achieving Goals Tagged With: dreams, ebooks, hierarchy, splendor

Big Damn Goal Post. Part 2, a Budget

November 23, 2008 By chris

In my last post, I talked about establishing what my expenses were and having an income goal.

The income goal comes from what matters to me–it’s not some arbitrary number. Let’s think about a budget and some debt service/debt retirement:

It’s not natural for me to do a few things: be organized, do a budget. I’ve had to build all sorts of things to do both. GTD works–my version (of which I’m off the wagon currently, and climbing on). But, I need to really know what I’m doing with my dough. See, I’ve pulled myself far out of a deep hole with well-over-six-figures in unsecured debt. Now, I’ve got to get the rest of the way out so I’m able to take another title shot and eff it up again.

I’m organizing a budget, and the first thing I’m going to do is try to establish my minimum ‘burn rate,’ or the number that exists WITHOUT regard to debt service. A car payment can be put off for some months without consequence. Not so much a rent payment (folks, because I wanted to knock out my debt, I radically downsized a while ago. The plan is working, and when our tiny place is clean, it’s fun, and we’re radically decluttering and making each of our possessions fight to stay owned by us.)

The goal is to know–first–what I’m spending. No clue. No clue at all. I know I’m wasting a bunch of money that we can stop wasting.

Rent Payment    $800
Gas Bill    $120
Electric Bill    $140
Internet    $36
Verizon Cell Phone    $133
Health Insurance    $240
Food:    $420
Car Insurance    $40
Health Club    $32
Gas:    $200
Total: $2146

Now–I can prbably get the food down a little bit, if I had to, and if I was real disciplined about it, but that’s been close lately. Let’s gross that up for taxes–assuming I’ll have a tax rate at this level of 35%, and we’re at $2897, * 12 = $34,765 gone before anything else happens. That’s pretty low, and that’s promising.

Most freelance budgets don’t account for taxes. I’m using 35% to make up for state and federal taxes up to $100k, and 45% on income earned after that. Arbitrary to a point but it gives me some cushion. I’ll get a lot of offsets, but I have to pay both sides of the effing payroll tax.

Now, I still have a car payment of $204, and student loan payments of about $175. I also owe about $650/month to repay my “let’s stay out of jail” loans from 2005-2007. The car payment is really nothing. My student loans went berserk when I was faced with going to jail or letting ‘em go. Easy choice, kids, easy friggin choice.

So, my debt service is looking at $1029. That’s 50% of my budget, really. Ouch. Still, manageable. So, let’s gross that up again:

$1389.

Add this to $2897, and we have: $4286/month. $51,432/year. $989 per week.

This doesn’t include a lot of ‘misc’ things currently, like doctor copays and car maintenance. So, let’s gross this thing up yet again, by 25% to cover those things that I missed. Let’s then bring this up to $1236/week. ~$64k a year. That’s simple enough to hit. ~$247/work day for everything, including debt service.

That’s seriously thinking small, but it is a number I know I can do, and easily. The next step is to take the number and subtract 8 weeks vacation (three weeks to move, five weeks for the rest of the year). 52- 8 = 44. = $1454, which brings me close to $300/day.

Remember, kids, this is without ‘savings.’ Debt reduction or debt service is savings. I need to build my cash position to about $15-18k in new money quickly so I have maximum operational flexibility. That won’t be that hard.

I can fine tune this as I go along, as MINT is helping me do that (though the annoyance with MINT is that they don’t letcha put other bills that a bank doesn’t know about into the account–so they can make sure the information is really, really accurate.). We’re also tentatively planning a move to Portland, OR, which is more and more likely to happen as time passes, and that move will cost $4500 bucks. Still, the budget is what it is, requiring that I earn $989 per week, minimum. That’s not that rough, as I’ve certainly been averaging more than that lately. I have some business expenses which break down as follows:

Basecamp: $25/month
HEAP: $9/month
Aweber: $20/month
Hosting: $25/month (i see this getting to be higher next year).
Misc. Software: $35/month. (buying say, photoshop elements)
E-Junkie- $5/month.
Skype: $3/month.

Those are reasonably trivial expenses. Some (Internet/Verizon) have some household overlap–and can be addressed however we want to.

Edit: The actual budget raised a little bit: it trends up to a $69,000 cash need before savings. I added some prescription copays, etc, to it so when the sidebar shows up, please realize that there are some differences. I might circle back to this, but I have a hard target for my income.

All managable.

Filed Under: Achieving Goals Tagged With: business expenses, debt service, GTD, Health, shot, six figures, student, student loans

Big Damn 2009 Goal Post, Part 1.

November 22, 2008 By chris

A lot of times, I’ve written down goals. It’s a big step, and it’s important. It’s not something that you do lightly, but in my case, my goals never mattered to me. Not one day that I was a full time real estate agent did I give a shit. Not one day that I was a lender did I care. Oh–let’s be honest. I’m great at generating leads. I’m reasonably personable, and reasonably honest (by reasonably honest, that means I’d never let anyone get screwed over).

I set goals–sell x units, do y in volume. But I never felt it. The big ‘so what’ was always behind that. I couldn’t make myself give a crap about any of it. Sell another commodity house here in CMH? Sure. Happy to serve. No, really.

I got jazzed about the marketing: doing something that generated leads. And I had a tsunami of leads. But I saw myself as a (just) six figure guy, and that’s what I did. Oh, I sustained a bunch more in ’05, but we all did. I had the gig from 01 to March of this year.

If I felt I had enough listing appointments, I’d flake out on people, cancelling them. I only wanted so much work, and I didn’t realize that. Since I was great at generating leads, I could always pick from the easiest and nicest people to work with.

Each quarter, there I was, netting out what I needed as a Realtor, letting leads and deals rot on the vine. When leads are abundant, I didn’t value them. (Hey, kids, they are still abundant). Rather than work with an asshole it was, “Here, here’s your listing back, sign this mutual release, and I’m out of there.” I didn’t care, couldn’t care, and still don’t see the anxious need to produce the nothing that makes up a lot of the Real Estate Practice.

Still. Still there are good reasons to love the business. The reason I still orbit it is this: if someone is willing to take a 100% commission job, they value freedom over security. That must be nurtured, period. That spark is sacred, and part of the best within the American spirit. If you can do your job better for them,

Life went on. I would then pretend I loved the business after being geeked by a MFO event or something like it. And in lieu of creating what I wanted to (leads), I got stuck as a practitioner. And I would set goals I couldn’t care about each year.

60 houses.
$350k average price
$550 GCI.
$350k net.
1000 hours prospected.
Etc.

Yawn. Possible? Sure. But money doesn’t lead, it follows. You don’t start with an income and then build a life around it. To maintain it, I had to ingest so much poison I almost became that guy. And I didn’t have the right ethos then to really get after it. I didn’t have acute needs, till the IRS gave me the Rodney King treatment, I was coasting, if that. I didn’t love what I was doing. And that’s a way to waste your life.

Not saying you can’t. Not saying it’s not possible, but I ratcheted it all down to mere numbers. Numbers do matter, but only when you’re chasing something that also drives you. Right now, i’m driven to write, driven to lose weight, driven to help people get efficient, and I’m driven to get out of debt. I’m carrying a net worth of roughly -$65,000 that I want GONE. Money comes easily enough for me. I don’t need to make that the end all/be all. I want to make Right Right now into a practice of some sort. A couple people asked what my BIG DAMN GOALS were:

I will weigh in at 175# before March 1st 2009. My ultimate goal is 159#, but I won’t be thinking about that for a bit. I want to think about all the milestones I need to pass through first. Friends, that’ll put the total weight loss at 97#. That’s a gymnast. I’ve already lost a bunch. Only standard is to get to 175#.
Next E-book, f-therapy, does 10,000 units. I’m getting it started (this is the first time I’ve talked about it) at http://f–ktherapy.com It’s a strident treatise about uncluttering your life, your mind, and ignoring the toxicity of our society.
I will get “subprime” published and collect an advance of $50,000 or more. Again, I’m already stacking the deck in my favor. The quality of the writing & insight matters, but I’m making it such that I’ll get the most receptive audience possible. I don’t know if it’s a meritocracy or not, but if it’s not, that benefits me as I like to win, and I’m competing to win right now. I stack the deck with stuff that makes it hard to ignore me. Just watch.
To be debt free in 500 days. I have my debt pegged at $65,000, most of it being the IRS’s suff. It might be a little less, and I’ll tabulate it next weekend. My budget/burn rate is something like $2500/month. Gross THAT up for taxes, and I’m at an income need of $4,000. 365/500 =73%. 73% of $65,000 = ~47,450. Gross THAT up by 30% for taxes = $62k. Divide that by 12, and we’re at: 5200 month for debt retirement. Add that to $4,000 and we have a need (without savings) of 9200/month. This puts me at 108,000 for the year, a number I can hit in my sleep, doing this stuff.

That’s pretty much what matters. I put a $$ on the advance because I want to have it taken reasonably seriously–I’m not necessarily going to just take the first person to write that check, I’m going to make it have the best chance at a real live widespread audience. I know times is hard. I don’t want to be in a ‘need the money,’ point in my life. And I won’t be.

A lot of other things are ‘nice to do’ next year: I wanna read about 100 books, 40 fiction/60 nonfiction. I want to run a 3:30 marathon. And to make $108k, I’ll need to divide my income somehow–ebooks aren’t a ‘guarantee’–I need to pursue the courses that I have taught, and the rest of the stuff that I regularly do. I think that if I rely on the consulting gigs for the income and make everything else ‘fun,’ we’ll be juuuuuuuust fine.

I have to rewrite it fully (or therabouts, there are great scenes) by Feb 1, 2009, choose the best representation by 6/1/09…and catch lightning in a bottle. I can do ll this stuff, things like this always happen quickly for me. Someone next year will sell a breakout debut novel, lose a ton of weight, and do a kicking e-book. Why not me?

Dashboard comes up tomorrow.

Filed Under: Achieving Goals Tagged With: audience, irs, marketing, net worth, realtor, sleep, VA

Moving Towards Splendor: Getting a Schedule That Helps You Do What You Do.

November 17, 2008 By chris

I needed to make sure that I was doing things the way that I wanted to, and I wanted to make sure that I had time to run my money projects as well as the rest of the stuff I was doing & trying to do. So, I created a schedule for myself. It’s pretty intense, but I get to do different things all the time. I can meet what obligations I have and really understand what’s what.

The color codes are semi self explanatory:

Red – family time,
blue = gym
green = writing
gold = money earning stuff (top line lead gen)
purple: straight on execution.
brown: whatever i need to gtd/etc.

You can see the whole thing if you like. I can set you up too, if you like. I’m in week 2 of this thing, and so far it works fine.

I need to be in bed by 11:30 to make 5:am not be a burden and that’s the hardest part of this splendor quest thing.

Filed Under: Achieving Goals, Products, Projects and Process Tagged With: GTD, splendor

Snapz Pro X.

November 14, 2008 By chris

I dig doing screen captures.

That’s one example. I didn’t edit anything there.

I like making them so that we can see what’s happening, and I’ve been using snapz pro x. That program is by Ambroisia, a company that I remember from the late 90′s–the last time I was a Mac user. They have a lot of little tools that seem to fill holes that nothing does, and snapzpro takes flawless screen caps in .mov or whatever format you want. It’s launched with a hotkey, and dismissed with the same.

It’s fast, you can edit the footage in imovie or final cut…and then put it up.

It’s the perfect screen capture solution, and while i’d like it if it would simultaneously record what’s on the video, I’m cool with it.

Filed Under: Products, Projects and Process Tagged With: last time, Mac, snapz

Have Big Damn Goals: Declare War On Mere “survival”

November 12, 2008 By chris

I’m not going to think ‘survival’ anymore as a goal. Being the near prison bitch of the IRS for a couple of years can (at the least) take some of the color and flavor out of your life which then bleeds into your dreams. When your dreams discolor, then we have problems. Big ones. I went from world conquest to paying the mortgage. Nobody would run through a wall to pay a mortgage. Sometimes dreams are fantasies, but you gotta get after ‘em, even so. You’ve gotta keep pretending, thinking, being, living, and sucking every drop of joy you can get out of whatever time we’re here.

You can’t dream when things aren’t working, when you’re negotiating with the electric company for one more day, when you’re anxious about everything that exists. You can’t dream and you seek the psuedosafety of a steady job. Nothing wrong with a job, but if you’re not pursuing the highest, most and best-est, you’re not doing yourself.

I was miserable as a lender. My generally upbeat demeanor hid the fact that doing that job was no fun for me. The income in the FIRE industries comes from being able to absorb other peoples’ money stresses. I got no problem with Lenders, just wasn’t my personality. Was a business guy, a creator, a provocateur, a writer, and other stuff. Like closing deals, making deals, floating proposals. Love cold calling. Love it with all my heart, and I love the predictability that it creates. But I felt like if I had a ridiculously steady job and a ridiculously steady income that lending provided. How can you leave? How can you take a flight of fancy? What do you do to exist in the mean time?

If you’re not into your job, baby, no steady paycheck’s gonna help. You can’t buy your soul back, you can’t do anything about it when you let it slip. My situation was made easier by the fact that the first X of each paycheck was sucked out. Talk futility? Talk about a guy that closed a lot of deals in the heart of the meltdown, and still had no money coming in. September of 07, I think I was 60% of the office revenue, and my net check was under $1900 bucks for the month, post beatdown. I needed somthing close to 1.5mm a month just to get a check.

The theft I was enduring killed my big dreams, and the really big dreams had been bought off by the promise and reality of the easy-money-in-the-housing boom. I wonder how much talent was bribed into douchebaggery by the subprime boom, and how much more is being bribed into douchebaggery by the rest. Nothing is going to make any of it work for you. Don’t dream small. The biggest mistake I made in life was not following what I was destined and supposed to be (a close 1a to that is taking life advice from muddle brained mediocrities).

Will smith said that creating a “plan b” creates the NEED for a “plan b.” He’s right. You have to cut the cord, and take a title shot.

Dream big. Create in your mind a perfect life, and make it happen. Impose your will on the world, and declare war on anyone that’s going to distract you or stop you. Make better friends, and pursue the highest course you can. Pursue splendor, and don’t allow anything to take you off course.

Filed Under: Achieving Goals Tagged With: dreams

Get To Vs. Have To/dreamLife

November 9, 2008 By chris

At the end of the day, two things are going to define this year for me. The first one is a coherent-for-me Dream Life, and a precice articulation of what I would want to do, how much tension exists between structure and spontinaety, how I include my friends, how I treat and deal with my family, my God, my commitments. I pissed away more than 8 years in chasing money in the RE business. The RE World is beautiful, but chasing mere money–rather han a standard of excellence is a poor idea. You gotta create and–as was said in the immortal film classic Rocky Balboa, you gotta let the beast out.

So how can you live a dream life if you can’t articulate it in every nuance. How can you do any of that, at all…? I’m going to take dreamLife and make it mine. (Tomororw’s post will ave more on that.) F### what people think, make your life your own, grab it and go. (See: To His Coy Mistress for details on how to live a life). It’s time to take it because nobody is giving it to me.

The second was this brief post by Seth Godin:

How much of your day is spent doing things you have to do (as opposed to the things you get to do.)

In my experience, as people become successful and happier (the subset that are both) I find that the percentage shifts. These folks end up spending more and more time on the get to tasks.

You’d think that this happens because their success permits them to skip or delegate the have to tasks. And to some extent, this is true. But far more than that, these people redefine what they do all day. They view the tasks as opportunities instead of drudge work.

That stunned me. Because there is a lot of stuff I don’t like. I do like my life right now, even though I’ve moved into a shitty and small apartment (to save money, recover from the IRS, etc). And there are drudging tasks that I don’t dig (configuring WP servers). But for the last 11 months, I’ve made a living…an honest to god LIVING as a writer. I had do do other stuff, too, to get that, but damn, I get to create for cash, and it’s been more than plenty to make ends meet.

That post is more important to me than anything in his other books. That idea sums up having a good attitude more succinctly than I would otherwise do it…and is truly a brief paradigm shift. May Seth Prosper for adding that to my life.

—

Filed Under: miscellany

A (Small-L) libertarian Case For Obama.

November 2, 2008 By chris

I am a libertarian. I stand in opposed to many or most of Obama’s policies. But, only marginally less than the rhetoric of McCain. And much less than the reality of Bush. Whodda thunk that Bush would initiate the Patriot Act, Department of Homeland Security

I don’t stand in contempt of the man, he has proven to be a good organizer. I don’t like the idea that wealth is to be redistributed, and I am fearful of some of the people that he might get. But I know that Bush and his NeoCronies are the Devil, National Socialists hungry for power at all costs, with a curious coopting of the Christians among us. Marc Andersen gave me a rundown of Obama, and Marc thinks like me, albeit on a higher level and with about 40 extra IQ points.

I digress. I’m voting Obama for a lot of reasons:

Obama can’t owe a lifetime of favors to people. He’s not been around, and people don’t have their hooks into him. I want less competent and less beholden administrators.
Through His Campaign, And Resume, O has proven he’s competent: Bush never proved this, Bush proved Rove was competent. Bush didn’t do much, was wheeled out of texas and got to be president. In the Al Gore Debate, he was way better than vs. John Kerry. But he was never good. He didn’t have the ability to synthesize information quickly enough.
He’s heroic and fearless. I believe he will be assassinated. I believe he knows this. I believe we will likely see Biden as president. I’m not happy about this, though I believe it to be true. I know he’s thought of it, and I don’t see him surviving. He’s doing it anyway.
Might put racism to rest: Black folks have GOT to know that a black man really CAN be president. The race baiting pieces of junk that are Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson will have one less thing to point to, and one less way of victimizing their people. (Note to new readers: Jesse and Al are the worst people on the planet, convincing a race of people that they can’t do it without them.)
It’s a vote against the Rovian Misuse of Christianity: The ‘bitterly clinging to guns and religion’ was a stupid thing to say. No doubt. And, Obama’s gun control preference sucks: the reason we bear arms of all types is to have a defense against our government, period. His anti gun stance is his worst policy. But I digress. The real reason is that the NeoCons misused the Christians. Abortion? Biggest issue? No. Strawman. We kill more people with less overt means. For the Catholics to say “vote life,” if that institution (you know, the one that covers up the widespread rape of children) has the audacity to try and take a moral stance, how much worse can they be.
The war Might End: We proved a point. We can topple a dictator. Let’s put our toys away and go home. We can effectively saber rattle, ok? Now, what we have to do is end this stupid war….and start spending that part of the budget on fixing stuff and not imperialism. (Oh, and Japan, Germany? You are big and healthy, we’ll go ahead and leave now).
NCLB, Bailout, Prescription Drug Act, Patriot ACT, Check 21, Online Gambling, Cronyism. There has been no bigger gain of power by the government at the expense of the people in this administration. FA HAYEK was right: economic freedom is freedom. But there’s the other kind, too, you know, freedom freedom. The GOP has proven worse than anything imagined out of a Gore/Kerry presidency from a libertarian perspective. A big wet kiss to the banking industry (of which I’m a part) was not what I had in mind when I think of Libertarians. It’s the worst possible outcome, and if the GOP doesn’t support us, then we’d be insane to patronize them anymore. It’s not a close part, despite the fact that Dr. Paul caucuses with them.

McCain is not a better alternative. Bush demonstrated through The PATRIOT act and the Bank Bailout that we can’t trust the Republican Party. I was set to vote for the Baldwin or Barr, and stand up to be counted with the Libertarians. And, I still think that might happen in the pole (I voted Libertarian in 2004, but came inches away from voting for Bush because Kerry was such a douchebag), but I’d srrongly prefer O to Mc. The War is the biggest issue. What does staying mean? It means that we can’t get the chance we need and start healing our nation. The troops were misused, and the noble grunts that fill the front lines should be working with their families right now, and home.

Now, because I’m voting O doesn’t mean that I intend to stand with him everywhere he goes. It doesn’t mean I’m voting for Ayers and for his Pastor-that-won’t-be-named. It means I’m voting against REAL socialism, that was brought to us by the Bush administration.

Any socialist moves O makes will be more fiercely opposed because of the mistrust of him that he’ll be experiencing. He’s no different. Change is good, kids.

Let’s try to:

Heal Racisim and show that this is the land of opportunity.
Restore Our Image of the Nation that Kicked the Nazis apart 60 short years ago.
Have competently admiistrated government instead of corrupt cronies.
Keep Hilary away from the government.