Taking an Holistic Approach

Come with me to a date not so far in our future – January 1, 2012. President Obama has completed three years of his first term and is now entering an election year.

If his policies have failed, we know very well what Republicans will say, incredulously, “On top of everything else Obama has done wrong, he tripled the national debt!” And if the economy is doing well and moving along briskly, we also know they will say, with great lamentations, “But he tripled the national debt!”

OK, now that we know, in essence, their criticism will not change, indeed, will be the same as it is today, why pay any attention to them today or listen for ideas we know will not be forthcoming.

President Obama has as full a plate as any President has been presented since President Washington – and just as many unknowns. How and when will we capture bin Laden and his lieutenants, the real perpetrators of 9/11; how and when will General Motors become a solvent manufacturer of automobiles again; how and when will health care reform be initiated; how and when will credibility be restored to the American banking system; how and when will proper oversight be restored to investment markets; how and when will America begin to make serious strides toward true energy independence?

And those are just the questions I can think of this morning. No telling how many more he has on his mind, starting with our porous Southern border, and the possibility of terrorists getting their hands on a “dirty bomb.”

We hear the voices of critics who believe our President is “taking on too much.” In my view, he has no choice. We have lost 8 full years in searching for the perpetrators of 9/11; we went to sleep while Wall Street fiddled; we complained but kept paying the bills while health costs soared out of control; we insisted on driving those road hogs GM was selling even though we knew a day of reckoning was just one oil embargo or Middle East conflict away. How foolish can a people be?

Now some of us complain because we have a President who is taking a holistic approach, attempting to solve a broad range of urgent problems virtually simultaneously. Wouldn’t it be a better use of our energy to help him?

I’m one of those who believes he may be successful in jump starting our national push toward energy independence. His ideas for controlling energy use, putting limits on emissions, stimulating renewable energy technologies, increasing grid reliability by making the grid “smarter” as well as more efficient are all part of his vision for using technology to bring change across the entire spectrum of energy use – from generation, transmission, distribution, to consumption. Microsoft and Google are already partnering with energy companies around the globe and here at home to bring some of these ideas to fruition.

I don’t know where we will be as a nation on January 1, 2012, but I do know we have a President who may exhaust us by then with his energy, his initiative, his ideas, his proposed solutions – and together we may emerge on election day, November 6, 2012, a much stronger nation, having reclaimed our role as world leader of free people and unfettered opportunity.

Can GOP Keep Up?

Republicans are acting like a drowning man, flailing about, wildly attempting to grab on to anything that will lift them up and keep them from sinking into total irrelevance, as a large rock must surely feel as it falls to the bottom of an ocean. It was sad to see Rep. John Boehner, Senator Jon Kyl and others gathered around a microphone yesterday complaining about President Obama’s trip to the west coast where he held two town hall meetings and appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. President Obama’s effective use of all media to communicate with the people and most importantly, listen to the people, has the GOP spinning like a top. They act like they have never met a President who could handle more than one issue at a time.

Wait, and there’s more.

Today, President Obama has sent some of the biggest names in U.S. foreign policy to meet with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev in an effort to improve frosty relations. Included in the group are former Secretaries of State, Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, James Baker and former US Senator Sam Nunn. No doubt, the results of that meeting will help set the stage for a private meeting of the current heads of state next month (G-20 meeting in London).

All Americans need to give President Obama some room to lead. Be slow to judge, slower still to anger, and resolute in our support of the only President we have. But I recognize that is probably too much to ask of what’s left of GOP leadership, and I am under no illusion that the right wing media voices will give him anything short of hell every day he is in office. So be it. They will soon find there are few ears for their partisan side show.

The Great Transition

The Great Transition has begun. We stand at the threshold of a marvelous new era, the content of which is being prepared as you read this in the imaginations of a new generation of entrepreneurs and scientific explorers who recognize the possible within the realm of the unknown.

Tom Friedman touched on it in his NYT’s column (3/15/09, “The Next Really Cool Thing”). Ready or not, that great new "cool thing" is coming. Indeed, it may already be here; we just don’t see it and couldn’t comprehend its potential if we did. I’m talking about the laser-powered fusion energy project being developed at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, located about 50 miles east of San Francisco.

The NIF facility has the potential of enabling generators of electricity to deliver power that has “all the reliability of coal, without the carbon dioxide, all the cleanliness of wind and solar, without having to worry about the sun not shining or the wind not blowing, and all the scale of nuclear, without all the waste." They are close to success…and if they succeed, this could be that gee-whiz moment that becomes a game changer for our economy and indeed, for the economy of the world.

And what about the potential of nanotechnology? Some are predicting carbon nanotubes will replace silicon-based chips in our computers by 2015, providing an exponential increase in speed and storage capacity.

And anyone who doesn’t believe the cars we drive will change – are changing – hasn’t looked under the hood lately. About the only thing that hasn’t changed on your car in the past ten years is the fact that four tires still touch the ground. My neighbor’s new car is so smart it unlocks the driver’s door as he approaches and tunes the radio to his favorite station before he buckles up. The car you and I drive is about to change again -- big time.

The founders of Google, the Internet’s most widely accepted search engine, recently made a sizeable investment in the development of the Plug-in-Hybrid Electric Vehicle. Google’s leadership, with no shortage of imagination, plans to stay on the cutting edge of all technological progress. Google, by the way, didn’t exist prior to 1998. Don’t try to tell them what is possible and what is not. Watch what they do and you’ll have some idea of where America is heading for the short term and, indeed, for the long term.

These are tough times, economically, but some very great days are ahead for America. President Obama and his team are making bets on lasting change through their daring stimulus and budget proposals. Daring greatly is not for the faint hearted, so for those who don’t have the stomach for standing in the front ranks, I say, “stand back, and let our leader, lead.”

Sanctimonious Republicans

Who are these people, the John Boehner’s and the Chuck Grassley’s of this world who claim to be outraged by the current level of spending proposed by the Obama Administration.

Where was their outrage when Ronald Reagan quadrupled the national debt during the eight years of his administration, when the common and accepted practice of the GOP was to “borrow and spend?”

Where was their outrage when George W. Bush was setting new spending records in virtually every category of federal spending during his eight years? Nearly $1 trillion (and possibly more) in direct outlays spent on “nation building” in Iraq, a record for our country; approval of a record cost for prescription drug benefit for seniors, exceeding $1 trillion (Bush, of course, miscalculated the cost at only $400 billion); Bush also proposed a record budget of $3.1 trillion for the U.S. in fiscal year 2009; finally, as Bush left office, the nation’s debt was rising at $2 billion per day! Where was the outrage of Grassley and Boehner then?

Hmmmmm……?????

Their silence was as deafening then as their hypocrisy is today.

And therefore, it should come as no surprise that their lamentations about President Obama’s initiatives to stabilize the economy and restore its strength have no credibility with the American people and are being roundly ignored – as they should be.

Cramer Crushed!

By now you have seen the video of the bone crushing interview Jon Stewart had with CNBC's Jim Cramer. I think Andrew Sullivan who writes The Dish blog sums it up best:
"I watched the Daily Show with growing shock last night. Did you expect that? I expected a jolly and ultimately congenial discussion, after some banter. What Cramer walked into was an ambush of anger. He crumbled from the beginning. From then on, with the almost cruel broadcasting of his earlier glorifying of financial high-jinks, you almost had to look away. This was, in my view, a real cultural moment. It was a storming of the Bastille."

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Unedited Interview Pt. 1

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer

Even if you saw the interview Jon Stewart did last night on his Comedy Central show with Jim Cramer of CNBC, you need to go the Comedy Central website and take the time to look at the entire three-part unedited interview.

http://blog.indecisionforever.com/2009/03/13/jon-stewart-and-jim-cramer-the-extended-daily-show-interview/

Unbelievable! A sad commentary on business reporting and the lack of curiosity by business reporters in searching for the truth. America deserves better, much better.

Newt, Rush -- and Obama: A Tuesday Potpourri

When Gingrich says as he did on one of the Sunday talk shows, “No one wants Obama to fail, we just want his policies to…uh, we just want him to change policies,” make no mistake about it, he wants Obama to fail. This comment is so sad…so clearly transparent and unworthy of the former leader of the OS.

I have almost concluded Gingrich should run for President in 2012 as he has suggested he might. Maybe that would be the best way for us to dismiss permanently this less than helpful individual from the body politic. I wonder if that teaching position is still open at West Georgia College at Carrollton from whence he came.

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President Obama has more on his plate…right now…than any human…ought to face…ever. I know there must be loyal opposition – everyone is entitled to a different opinion, if they have one – but all of us, those who voted for him and those who did not, should give Obama time to lead. He hits a couple of objections to his bold attempts to stabilize the economy and the media – all of them – collectively pounce and pronounce “The honeymoon’s over.” And that was just 10 days after the swearing-in. Today, he has been in office 50 days and TV business analysts are calling the market decline “Obama’s bear market.” Give me a break. If you expect to enjoy any measure of credibility with the American people, your comments must be found somewhere within the realm of reason, please. The American people deserve more thoughtful analysis.

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Every time the TV networks replay a tape of Rush Limbaugh pontificating on the major issues of the day, as he was recently at a meeting of right-wing conservatives in Washington, I think of a day many years ago when a lady called his radio show to challenge him on a couple of issues. She had her facts ready and in a few minutes it was obvious he had been wrong and she was right. He stopped her finally, chuckled his famous, “Hehehehe,” and added, “Madam, remember, this is just entertainment.”

And so we all should remember, “…this is just entertainment.” Got that, dittoheads? No, I guess not.

Rush, your dittoheads don’t get it, that what you do is just an act. To them, what you are telling them is nothing short of gospel. That you are willing to lead these followers into a land of perpetual ignorance where they are not encouraged to challenge all that they hear, including what they hear from you, is shameful. If you would start and end each show with “Remember, what you are about to hear during the next three hours is just entertainment,” that would be an appropriate way to bring your followers back into the land of reason, knowledge and understanding.