Can you feel it?

Something is sweeping across the country that is absolutely palpable. It could be a paradigm shift as significant as the one that occurred in the late 18^th century when a new nation was born in the wilderness of North America and modern science was born through discovery of the essential elements that make up all of life. It feels to me as if we are entering a new phase in the American Experiment when the problems that vex us are again demanding we look outside conventional boundaries.

And that brings me to “far right wing” thought. Many who call themselves conservatives today want to go back to the days of our founders, a time when things were known, certain, and immutable. The only problem with that: all those descriptions are the opposite of our founders’ goals. They wanted change! They wanted nothing of the past. They wanted nothing of religious constriction, governmental tyranny, or suffocating conventional wisdom in the exploration of science, theology, art and politics. They were focused like today’s laser beam on the future. They were enthralled with the potential that existed in the human mind.

The world was ripe for the embracing of radical change in the era of Jefferson, Adams and Franklin. And radical it was. For the leaders so frequently cited by today’s right wing conservatives, tomorrow was always likely to be a better day for the radical change it would bring in previously “proper and accepted” thought.

The Internet has already changed our political process by making it possible for a veritable unknown community organizer from Illinois to demonstrate to a majority of the electorate that he can be trusted with their government. Indeed, the Internet has changed our entire world through a diffusion of knowledge that has touched and stimulated people on every square foot of this planet.

Who knows what secrets will be revealed through continued DNA research, or stem cell research? What products and technologies will be made possible by the exploitation of nanotechnology, products and technologies that surely will change our lives and our institutions? Who knows if we will be able to “feed” excess CO2 in our environment to algae and turn the rapidly growing algae into a petroleum product that will drive vehicles and grease wheels of machinery?

And we haven’t even had a chance to see the atom smashing capabilities of the super collider soon to be tested in Europe. What a marvelous world awaits our children!

There have always been people uncomfortable with change. King George was uncomfortable when the colonists decided they didn’t want to be told anymore where to send their tax money. There were many in colonial America who were uncomfortable with the prospect of a war with England and would have been more comfortable with seeking an accommodation with the Crown, but it was not to be. Not at all.

The founding fathers would most likely dismiss the babbling unenlightened on the far right today as incapable of rational inquiry of their own. [These people actually believe President Obama wants to take up their guns and ammunition!] Thankfully, the voters have seen fit to ignore them thus far. The voters, God bless ‘em, bought their Obama tickets, jumped on his train, and filled with hope and trust they set out for a destination unknown, confident they will arrive at a far better world when the whistle blows at the next stop.

The founders believed the world could change, and be improved if we who have inherited their ingenious creation could find the mettle to be worthy stewards of the radical government they bequeathed to us.

The new paradigm shift will require more than a single term of one President, or for that matter, a full eight years. It is likely to require the better part of a full generation. But isn’t it reassuring to know we have a President who understands and indeed, embraces the changes in the offing.

Can YOU feel the change?

Rescuing the Economy, Reinventing the Automobile

If you wonder why President Obama is focused on saving the American automobile industry, if you wonder why he is trying to upgrade and expand the electric grid, if you wonder why he wants government to invest in cutting edge technology in every field, look no further than the test facilities of dozens of auto manufacturers – here and abroad.

I count no less than 9 strictly electric cars heading to market right now, e.g., Aptera 2e, with 8 Plug-In Hybrids, e.g., Chevy Volt, right behind, and another 8 “normal” Hybrids, e.g., Toyota Prius, being improved and prepared for market today.

Big companies like BMW, Mitsubishi and Toyota are getting ready to roll out a slew of electrics. There’s a Mini Cooper available this month, all electric. Other electrics are lining up for introduction over the next four years.

Plug-In Hybrids will be led by the Volt that will do the bulk of its moving on electric power. It’s scheduled for November 2010. Ford, Chrysler and Toyota as well as new companies in China, Europe and here at home all have next generation hybrids in development. There’s a hybrid sports car known as Fisker Karma, and that airplane look alike, the Aptera 2h, set for 2010. Made in California, the only state where it is available right now, the Aptera gets about 300 mpg!! It’s a three-wheeler so technically not classified as a car, but who cares. Bring on that 300 mpg!

Look, it is not only the “green jeans” who will be buying these cars. It is ordinary people like you and me who want to help clean up the environment even as they drive a spiffy car their children won’t make fun of.

I love cars, always have, and that’s why I see an exciting future for America and a strong economy to support that future.

But, boy, have we lost a lot of time! I will not digress into a discussion of what the misadventure in Iraq cost us except to say it cost us something none can retrieve: time. Those who criticize President Obama’s haste on so many fronts should understand he is a man seeking to make up lost time. He is getting a lot of help from inventors in the auto industry who obviously have not been sleeping these past 8 years. President Obama and those in pursuit of scientific discovery are demonstrating a laser-like focus on the great potential remaining to be tapped in a nation of 315 million citizens. His focus is on health care, energy, and transportation.

Obama knows we have a unique opportunity to chart a new path in the way we get around. The answer, when it comes, is likely to have a positive impact on global warming by reducing our contribution to greenhouse gases. But most importantly, increased productivity, resulting from anticipated innovations, will feed real growth that, in turn, will diminish the role of inflation. And that is, unquestionably, our most worthy goal.

If you like the status quo, if you like cars that roar along antiquated roadways, burning a depleting carbon based resource, belching an ever increasing amount of noxious fumes, then you probably can’t see a future that has anything but higher taxes and bigger government in store for you. There are some, however, who see an America whose best days are ahead….and those days are unlike anything we have seen in our entire history.

Don’t you have a feeling the 21^st century began on January 20, 2009?

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."

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