My Republican Friends

My Republican friends e-mail me almost every day with some new “old” complaint about the President. He is so different from their model, so different from what they expect an obedient, “do what we tell you” President ought to be. They just can’t understand this guy. Here is a President who actually thinks before he answers a question, who actually listens to others, who believes in the true separation of powers, and in using all three branches of government to govern. It’s just a bit much for them to get their brains around.

They do not yet see that the auto industry WILL be entirely something else in eight years; they do not see that America WILL be a whole lot less dependent on fossil fuels to drive its cars in eight years; they do not yet see that financial markets WILL have new supervision and oversight; they do not see that health care WILL be reformed and universal health care WILL be accepted, indeed, embraced even by Republicans.

I advise them to get ready for an economy that will grow at a healthy rate for at least another 25 years. This is the kind of paradigm shift that impacts all facets of our lives. (Wait until nanotechnology hits computers in your office and automobiles in your garage with its full potential. You will be witness to real growth!)

Our President is just getting started. The credit card bill – a measure we have sorely needed for 30 years – is just the beginning. I tell my Republican friends, “If you can’t understand what is happening, if you think it is too much for us to handle as Americans, if you think we can’t or shouldn’t do any of these ambitious things, you best stand back because you will be run over by people who see ‘yes’ where you see only ‘no.’”

PS Keep you Blackberry fully charged if you want even a slim chance of keeping up.

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.

Aptera? Absolutely!

It seems to me that the new Aptera (300 mpg!) automobile is to American capitalism as Barack Obama is to representative government. Both are breathtakingly refreshing in their approach to solving pressing problems.

The Aptera is a light-weight, high tech, vehicle that, according to the website of the manufacturer, will be available to residents of California only (darn it) in about a year as an electric car or a plug-in hybrid.

This is not an ad for the car. It is a message for all the Nellie Naysayers out there who believe America’s best days are behind her. Don’t you believe it! Since 1973, we have known there was a finite amount of oil left in the world and, as demand increased and supplies shrank, the price was bound to go up. It did. And while market forces will make the price fluctuate, even pushing it down from time to time, the long term view calls for higher and higher gas prices.

Enter American ingenuity…again. While our elected leadership has mostly slept, American entrepreneurs have been hard at work, and we are beginning to see the fruits of their labors. To paraphrase Captain John Paul Jones, we have not yet begun to invent!

The thought of the Aptera and similar new technology should bring a smile to your face. It must surely be Saudi Arabia’s worst nightmare. It must give Iran's President Ahmadinejad and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez very bad heartburn. Soon…very soon, we may not need so much of their black gold.

Yes, I know China is ready to buy what we don’t…but that is just a temporary salve for the oil producing nations. Their time, as dictators of price for the one of the world’s most valued commodities, is almost up.

And isn't it nice to see the price of oil back to below $60 a barrel again!