After watching the clip of Jon Stewart focusing on the reaction of the Dow to President Obama (see video clip in this diary), I have a modest proposal for important and timely change in the U.S. political system.
I call it Let the Dow Decide.
This, I believe, is change we can believe in.
Follow me over the orange text line for more.
As Jon Stewart -- a.k.a. the de facto leader of the left wing internet blogosphere and its political arm, the Democratic Party -- has correctly pointed out, we need to look to the Dow to tell us how President Obama is doing and by extension, how the whole country is doing. Mr. Stewart also correctly points out that attention to what voters and citizens are thinking is misplaced attention. We need to stay focused on the Dow to assess what is going on.
The Dow gives votes of confidence and votes of no confidence in the President and in his policies.
I say it's time for a new social movement. This great nation has a long and proud history of movements for change through which those who are unfairly denied the right to vote in political elections win the franchise.
The time has come to give the Dow the vote. In fact, the time has come to do more than that.
The time has come to Let the Dow Decide
Needed change is never easy, so I propose that we take this necessary change in steps. I call them Phase A, Phase B and Phase C.
Phase A
First things first. Right now the Dow doesn't even directly have a vote in who gets elected to office. That is just wrong!
Phase A will rectify that and will not alarm the populace unduly. Let's get the Dow the right to vote. Just one vote. Nothing to worry about, nothing to see here.
Phase B
Phase A should take something like 10 minutes, so we don't even need to break for lunch before going to Phase B (though if anyone needs a pee break please go right ahead, we don't really need your input right now anyway).
In Phase B, we rescind the vote from all of these pesky people and give the Dow the sole say in who gets elected to office. Phase B-2 may be a special election to clean up the mess that the people-voters have created and get some really good leaders in there who the Dow approves of, but we'll let the Dow decide if that is needed.
Once the Dow has approved of this nation's political leadership, they can begin to propose policy, tweaking it in response to movements of the Dow until they get it right. Then it can be passed and signed into law.
(note: we will need to commission and disseminate new versions fo Schoolhouse Rock's "How a Bill Becomes a Law" during this phase. Let's assign that task to the people who are taking pee breaks right now).
Phase C
Once everyone gets accustomed to Phase B and once the necessary computer programs can be written and tested (job creation for programmers!), we can move to Phase C.
In Phase C, we dispense with the politicians entirely. Sophisticated computer programs generate policy proposals which are immediately and directly linked with a Dow-tracking program. Faster than we puny humans are capable of seeing, the interaction between proposals and Dow numbers fine-tunes the policy until the Dow has approved the final version. The bill becomes law immediately, to be revised over time if the Dow has new input.
Let the Dow Decide has many advantages over our current political system. It is efficient, effective and streamlined.
One possible problem with this plan is that dailykos bloggers will have to find new hobbies to fill all the extra time this system will afford us.
My suggest is Whist. I don't even know what it is but it sounds exciting!