The Ice Flow

Can you hear that sound?

Teeth gnashing, heavy sighs, furtive e-mails...on one side.

Hands rubbing furiously together, strategy sessions, veiled threats...on the other?

Is it Pre-School?

Nope. It's the American Media, the American Electorate and the American Congress (both Houses).

It's the sound of insta-analysis, wherein all parties observe events through the prism of personal position.

In this reading, from the Left - Obama is our 'hope', and his travails with RIchardson, Daschle et al and unwillingness to confront those evil-right-wingers may indicate they are going to be MEAN to him and he might be damaged. Where are the ethics? Where is the change? Where is the subjugated Right?

On the RIght, it's 'rev up the machine - we're still in business', cue Rush, tune in Fox, begin the impossible (but achieved many, many times by the same folks...) task of selling fiction as truth, even to a few Billion worldwide that saw the lie put to the fiction WITH THEIR OWN EYES.

What is happening is none of the above.

Obama is a good man, an earnest, intellectually and emotionally gifted President. That has ALWAYS been evident. He is also a first-time Manager, first-time commander-of-any-kind (let alone in-CHIEF), first-time decision maker on senior-level hires....

The points, obviously valid, that were made in Campaign season...that he would, BY DEFINITION, have a steep learning curve 'on day one' and, as Joe Biden made clear in the campaIgn - that he would 'be tested early in his Presidency' are coming true. The fervent belief of a campaign forces dismissal of one's weaknesses in the minds of one's supporters. Stay POSITIVE - we'll deal with that when we get there. Doesn't work that way. He needs time to sort this out and cannot be judged on the weight of his supporters expectations, which were NEVER grounded to the reality of his resume or the National circumstance, but are pure Cult of Personality.

As for his Campaign assertion 'Judge me as a manager upon my campaign', as we wrote back then - this is a FALSE comparison and he did not appear to realize that. Campaign's are places where everybody who works for you is, or should be, on the same page - fighting for the same purpose. Governance, on the other hand, is a completely different arena - everyone is fighting for their own perception of solutions, their own conception of their interest and the interests of THEIR constituents.

Obama pleading for a removal of 'partisan politics' has no meaning, in the real world. Partisan politics that benefit Oklahomans, in their estimation, will continue to be reflected in their representatives. While Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma makes Guru PHYSICALLY ILL, I understand why his constituents vote him into the Senate. He aggressively prosecutes their world view. There are hundreds of such individuals in this process, Media organizations with their own take/spin/agenda, cabinet members jockeying for influence...

It's maddening. Carter never learned how to deal with it. Obama is a former Senator, he WILL get it, he still has to transition from what he 'wishes' would be the climate to what the climate IS.

He's the President, we need him to get it and we need Congress to keep things steady as he does so.

That is why it is nothing short of disgraceful to see this American Auto Purchase Tax Break passed,
76-21, in the Senate. Are they kidding?

Got to bring up Joe Biden's Convention speech - again.

'That's not change, that's MORE OF THE SAME'.

These stimulus packages and 'bailouts' are paid for by TAXES.

Providing a tax CUT as an incentive, is an accounting trick, at best and, more to the point - a LIE.

We'll give you back this money that you owe anyway.

In this case, we're going to do this so you can futilely prop up a dead business, with a major purchase at a time when your cash is likely to be under duress for a product that will only exacerbate our issues environmentally and economically.

No. No. No.

D-U-M-B.

We need to STOP making cars that nobody needs (and few want) made by businesses that ran out of ideas a generation ago and exist solely:

1.) To fulfill a fantasy that Americans have about their products, and their corporations.

2.) To acknowledge a nostalgic debt to a bygone era, and the contributions of these companies to past war efforts and economic growth periods.

3.) To keep tens of thousands of Americans employed.

Items Number 1 and 2 are not to be encouraged, for goodness sakes - that is what Reagan and Dubya did and that is why this business never transitioned itself to the 21st Century when it could have. Why exurban areas are dotted with houses, hundreds of miles from services, population density and sustainable commerce while ready-to-rock, modern cities like Cleveland, Buffalo and Providence sit underutilized. Vanity. Fantasy. No longer able to be facilitated.

Why?

'The undue influence of Custom'

Opus Majus - The Four Causes of Ignorance (Google for the other three and reflect that Ol' Rog was hip to this eight centuries ago, and we are arguing about creationism, extraction industries, homophobia and celebrity relationships.)

Roger Bacon, 1214-1294

This President is SMART.

This is the transitional time for these United States.

We must begin to move ALL of our population into the 21st Century and along with it, discard those ideas and tools made for another time and another circumstance

Those workers MUST be saved and the Manufacturing capability MUST be maintained. But not to make Domestic Cars.

Not anymore.

We can run three shifts of manufacturing in retrofitted factories and have those workers churn out things we DO need.

Wind Turbines. Put one everywhere the wind blows.

Solar Panels. Put one everywhere the sun shines.

Hi-Speed Public Transportation - not 19th Century Trains - 21st Century, cutting edge transportation.

Bridge Parts.

Levee Fixtures.

Electrical Grid Overhaul.

Permanent energy gathering devices that HELP the problem of employment, the environment and prepare people for the way they will live and work in the Future, not the way their Grandparents lived - because the rest of the world isn't going to subsidize that anymore.

Americans need S-T-U-F-F made. We can't pay retail anymore. We need blue-collar workers making good stuff at good jobs. We need to move PAST the Auto/Oil era and run towards a future built upon Science. The rest of the world is going there, and they won't wait on us and aren't beholden to our fantasies.

The corporate, auto-making capacity we DO need can be taken up, in the short term, by unwinding inventory of designs that NEED to come offline. There is a tremendous amount of inventory, it should be used, just not added to. Future auto needs in the short-term, will be met by foreign companies, as most of the global demand already is. We used to make radios and calculators too, we'll survive this.

The companies, as they exist - should die. They had their day, they blew up the cash and will be fondly remembered. Executives who have the chops to transition the manufacturing/design capabilities to the actual needs of the American people, can be retained for FAIR market value. Workers who work should all be retained and those benefits? National Health Care will be BUILT on the type of large thinking, future forward, budget savvy constructs like this one.

Health care paid for. Real, necessary work, a living wage. Access to affordable housing and transit. Access to solid education for their kids. An improving environment and an idea-based economy made POSSIBLE by the manufacturing base efforts.

That is change we can, most certainly, use.

Groups in the lead-dog position believe their own bullshit. Happens to teams, beautiful women, businesses and countries. It is SPECIFICALLY the root of decline in places that have known Empire or relative dominance. Some, like Islam, literally become so beholden to their 'glory days', that they legislate against the interests of their people and the entire world, simply to maintain a fantasy of what used to be or, tragically, what SHOULD be.

Those days done been gone.

Get over it.

The British had their empire bombed out from under them. We do not want to go there.

We have to work to defeat this bill and the message it contains.

We have to take 'Yes we Can' - to 'Yes we Are' and hand off the baton when we can say 'Yes we Did'.