Back Again

It's been so long and so much has happened, personally, professionally, emotionally, and in the world since I last posted here. Where do I start. As is always best...at the beginning.

Personally, I want to just be with me. Just me. I know it appears outwardly that is where I have always been. Not so. I have been me attached to someone or something or me reaching for someone or something. Now, there is no one but me and my relationship with God. It is not always easy. I have days when I say want to say, forget it. You know what to do. Get back in the game. But somehow I stop myself and hang out with me for just another day.

Melissa Etheridge's song "Heal Me" has a line that says it best. . .you know what, I just realized her song says all that I am trying to say here. This is an excerpt from that song, the part that describes where I am now:

Heal me lift me
Take me to the waterside
Drop me in let me swim
Let everyone know
I'll be coming home again

Make no mistake
I'm wide-awake
Ain't it crazy

Heal me lift me
Take me to the other side
I'll take what I've earned
These lessons I've learned
I'm ready for the ride
Heal me lift me
Take me and my soul will fly
My battered heart will make a new start
Let everyone know
I'll be coming home again
Heal me lift me
Take me to the waterside
Drop me in
Come on and watch me swim
Let everyone know
I'll be coming home again
---Melissa Etheridge

The Macro & Micro of American Economy

I haven't been here in awhile, I know. I have to be truly moved. Count on my old ally the NY Times to do just that. Gretchen Morgenson revealed a story common to many Americans on the front page of the Sunday, July 20, 2008 issue that reveals the micro of our economy. Her article, "Another Day Older and Deeper in Debt" is an old song title that keeps on hitting home. Peter S. Goodman gives us the macro on front page of Week in Review section of the same issue by asking that age old question, "Too Big to Fail?"

Morgenson describes a woman's present plight from her ponderous plunge into unmanageable debt. Many of us are there or have been there. Most of that debt is anchored by a mortgage we can no longer or never could afford. We were seduced by the ever present American dream of home ownership and fell into the unforgiving hands of the mortgage mavens. Then we stacked our school loans (don't forget we MUST be educated), auto loans, and credit card debts on top, only to watch it all start to build into a wobbly tower that we attempt to hold up with monthly interest payments. This, my friends, is the basis of the micro economic woes. Of course, it is more complicated and varies from individual to individual. But if you drilled down to the core of all the stories, you would likely find some version of this model.

What I found even more fascinating was Goodman's piece about the government's plan to bail out the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Because mortgage backing agencies like Fannie and Freddie have supported the mortgages that banks and mortgage lending agencies have provided to homeowners, the world has been comfortable lending to the U.S. Countries like China and Japan see us as viable risks because our Freddie and Fannie are doing well. If they crash, the world gets nervous, sells its dollars for euros and the global economy. . .

When I started this post, my thinking was the global economy suffers. But maybe suffers is the wrong word. The global economy might be "reordered". Meaning the economy would be fixed on the euro, not the dollar. That has the been fear all along. That, rather we will admit or discuss it or not, was at the basis of the invasion of Iraq. Saddam Hussein had threatened to base the oil reserves in Iraq on the euro and not the dollar. The oil and energy industry in the U.S. had to gain control to stop that.

So Goodman's article and the mortgage crisis has brought us full circle back to what has been the fear all along. However, I am afraid it is our destiny.

(See my previous post "Waving Goodbye to Hegemony" which is a link to article by PARAG KHANNA Published: January 27, 2008)

Wake up America. We are there.

Waving Goodbye to Hegemony: No More Superpower

What follows here is an excellent treatise on the new world order. No more superpower for the US. We are heading toward a triumvirate of power: the USA, the European Union, and China.

Parag Khanna, senior research fellow in the American Strategy Program of the New America Foundation introduces his essay on the new world order this way:

"Just a few years ago, America's hold on globalpower seemed unshakable. But a lot has changed while we've been in Iraq [emphasis mine]-- and the next president is going to be dealing with not only a triumphant China and a retooled Europe but also the quiet rise of a second world." Khanna goes on to say:

Turn on the TV today, and you could be forgiven for thinking it’s 1999. Democrats and Republicans are bickering about where and how to intervene, whether to do it alone or with allies and what kind of world America should lead. Democrats believe they can hit a reset button, and Republicans believe muscular moralism is the way to go. It’s as if the first decade of the 21st century didn’t happen — and almost as if history itself doesn’t happen. But the distribution of power in the world has fundamentally altered over the two presidential terms of George W. Bush, both because of his policies and, more significant, despite them. Maybe the best way to understand how quickly history happens is to look just a bit ahead.

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Obama's Blueprint for Change

Full text of Barack Obama's platform and plans to change this country into the democratic roots of its past. This is a full text of Obama's plan, not just the overview from his web site.

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Health Insurance - Clinton or Obama

Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist has a very clear, succinct explanation of the Obama and Clinton health care plans. Just when I thought it was safe to get Obama bumper stickers...again, I have to a pause. Read it Mr. Krugman's column here:

The difference between the health care plans of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama could well be the difference between achieving universal health coverage and falling far short.

But as I’ve tried to explain in previous columns, there really is a big difference between the candidates’ approaches. And new research, just released, confirms what I’ve been saying: the difference between the plans could well be the difference between achieving universal health coverage — a key progressive goal — and falling far short.

Specifically, new estimates say that a plan resembling Mrs. Clinton’s would cover almost twice as many of those now uninsured as a plan resembling Mr. Obama’s — at only slightly higher cost.

Let’s talk about how the plans compare.

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A President Like My Father by Caroline Kennedy

We need a change in the leadership of this country; just as we did in 1960. We have that kind of opportunity with Senator Barack Obama. OVER the years, I’ve been deeply moved by the people who’ve told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president. This sense is even more profound today. That is why I am supporting a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama.My reasons are patriotic, political and personal, and the three are intertwined. All my life, people have told me that my father changed their lives, that they got involved in public service or politics because he asked them to. And the generation he inspired has passed that spirit on to its children. I meet young people who were born long after John F. Kennedy was president, yet who ask me how to live out his ideals.

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The Kennedy/Obama Mystique by David Brooks

Something fundamental has shifted in the Democratic Party, now that a throng of Kennedys has endorsed Barack Obama. Last week there was the widespread revulsion at the Clintons’ toxic attempts to ghettoize Barack Obama. In private and occasionally in public, leading Democrats lost patience with the hyperpartisan style of politics — the distortion of facts, the demonizing of foes, the secret admiration for brass-knuckle brawling, and the ever-present assumption that it’s necessary to pollute the public sphere to win. All the suppressed suspicions of Clintonian narcissism came back to the fore. Are these people really serving the larger cause of the Democratic Party, or are they using the party as a vehicle for themselves? And then Monday, something equally astonishing happened.

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Making a Turn

Anyone following my political entreaties here will know that I supported Hillary Clinton. Hillary and Bill, always a safe bet in my book. Well...I am making a turn. I finally picked up Obama's The Audacity of Hope. The more I read, the more I heard my own voice. He did not just speak to me, he spoke for me, more eloquently and with more knowledge than I could have ever imparted. As I write this, I try to extrapolate, in my mind, the most powerful, most influential section of the book. I can't. It would be like separating my mind from my soul. Actually, that's it. In reading this powerful collection of thoughts and experiences of Obama, he emerged as a man that encapsulates both in his approach to politics and life. Granted Hillary trumps him big time in experience and ability to withstand a Republican onslaught, but for anyone that believes in God we know that leading with soul and conviction and applying those to your actions will win out. Why? Because then you are living as, I believe, God intended.

When I use the phrase "win out" here, I am alluding not just to the Presidential primaries or even the general election. I have no predictions or certainties about that. We are all much too fickle and the winds of circumstances are much too lubricious for anyone to predict the outcome of this election. But Obama will win. He will win because he is who he is and actually strives to remain so. I believe this to be true because no one can lose, in the long run of life, if he remains true to himself and that self is good, true, and cares for his fellow man. Obama will win in life, whether or not he wins the Presidency.

"To thine own self be true, for it must follow as dost the night the day, that canst not then be false to any man." ...William Shakespeare, "Hamlet"