Either or

Is Iran a country or a cause?
Is Lebanon a country or a dream?
Is Israel a country or an idea?
Is Syria a country or a man?
Is Saudi Arabia a country or a religion?
Is Kuwait a country or an estate?
Is Jordan a country or a suburb?
Is Egypt a country or a river?
Is the Middle East a region or an aberration?

Hero or Superstar?

I have been watching the President's trips abroad and how he's handling tough domestic issues, a quote from Henry Kissinger's memoirs comes to mind:

"The great statesmen of the past saw themselves as heroes who took on the burden of their societies' painful journey from the familiar to the as yet unknown. The modern politician is less interested in being a hero than a superstar. Heroes walk alone; stars derive their status from approbation. Heroes are defined by inner values; stars by consensus. When a candidate's views are forged in focus groups and ratified by television anchorpersons, insecurity and superficiality become congenital."

You draw your own conclusions.

Venus or Mars

As I headed out to a long vacation in Arizona, hoping for some solid reading time, I grabbed two old favorites “The Rise and Fall of Great Empires”, and “Atlas Shrugged”. I’ve been bouncing back and forth between them for a week now. Not a great way to read a book, I admit, but I have read them at least twice.
I cannot help but wonder what is around the corner for America. Where is this great country headed in the next few years? Will the place my kids will grow old in, resemble the place I’m growing old(er) in?
Will we look back at 2009 at the end of the American Century? The end of Pax Americana? The year America, the nation, grew old and started looking forward to retirement.
I sure hope not.
For the life-cycle of great empires can be correlated nicely with the cycle of life. Nations are young, growing and vibrant, then they get old stodgy and caution. Then they die.
In the first half of their lives, young nations are from Mars: they are growing, vital, aggressive, willing to take chances, focused on the individual, on improving and changing. Full of vinegar, hubris and testosterone, they are messy; they break things, make a lot of noise, and are willing to crack a few eggs to make the omelet.
Then they grow older, and somehow they move to Venus. They lose their edge and their vitality. They now must insure that nothing goes wrong, that nothing is left to chance, because something bad can happen to someone somewhere. They become tame, safe, secure, nurturing. Every bad thing that happens must be someone’s fault. They drown in regulation, in lawyers, in causes (célèbre and otherwise). Everyone has the right to be protected. They give up omelets because eggs have rights too.
Until, someone from Mars moves into the neighborhood.
Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars. France is from Venus, I’m sure of that. China and Russia are from Mars, I’m sure of that too.
America was Mars. Your move America.

AIG and Terri Schiavo

Conventional wisdom has it that the ‘culture of corruption’ undid the GOP’s hold on congress in 2006.

I disagree.

It was the Terri Schiavo fiasco that put the fear of god in many a moderate. It was the beginning of the end for the GOP’s hold on power in DC and across the country.

For what is scarier than congress passing laws to interfere with a family affair?

Well, it’s passing laws to confiscate private property. In this case AIG bonuses, scant weeks after passing a law permitting exactly those bonuses.

I expect this from a banana republic: Lebanon, Venezuela, Russia. But the U.S. of A.?
I'm scared, very very scared.

Or perhaps this is the Democrat’s Schiavo moment?

Cap-and-Tax

A couple of months ago I made a couple of cryptic posting regarding energy. Most people did not quite understand the point of titling them "He Gets it".

I had suspected what was going to happen, and Tuesday's speech confirmed it: The only way to make alternative energy viable is to artificially raise the cost of mainstream energy through a cap and trade system.

Though this will generate a fair amount of revenue for the government (at the expense of energy consumers) this approach will ultimately fail for the simple reason that oil is abundant, cheap to extract and package, and has a lower environmental footprint than ethanol, solar, or wind.

OPEC and other oil producing countries simply have to lower the price of oil temporarily to more than offset any tax burden and reshape the economic equation in favor of fossil fuel.

Alternative Energy will need to win on its own merit. No amount of government involvement will alter that.

Rookie?!?

It sure has been an inauspicious start to the Obama administration.

Instead of by-partisanship he gets 3 Republicans to vote for the Trillion Dollar Bill (for a better idea read this), his commerce secretary pulls out after being slapped in the face with the census issue, the market is back to its November lows, and most moderate are left wondering: Where’s the beef?

Obama might be too weak to affect any change in Washington. Or not, we still don’t know. The long election night continues, but I know one thing: I do not like what I see.

Mr. President, grow a backbone already.

He gets it.

Lessons NOT Learned

Tuesday was the first real cold morning in CT. I've been waiting for this day for six months now. Waiting for a bellwether of the potential viability of green technology.

Over my 4 miles drive I passed a BMW X5, a Hummer H2 and a couple of Ford Explorer. These vehicles where special. They, in no uncertain terms, spelled the death of many a green startup. It's wasn't so much the vehicles, but the owners that mattered: mothers from decidedly middle-class Shelton, not wanting to expose their young children to the 37 degree weather, bundled them up, stuffed them in their SUV, drove 50 feet to the end of their driveway and idled away awaiting the school bus.

Now, granted gas is back to about $2.50 a gallon, but if there is any indication that the country has learned nothing from the last year, it was evident to me in those idling cars. People are simply not interested in modifying their life styles. They are simply incapable of allowing long term concerns to influence short term behaviors.

Since alternative energy is by definition a long term undertaking, and since OPEC and the law of supply and demand can always influence the short term cost of oil and a 50% drop in oil price just rendered 50% of the green technology non-viable. It just follows that until we actually run out of oil (100 years from now), any attempt at alternative energy will fail.

These 4 mothers did not learn a thing from 2008, and neither did we

Longest Election Night in History

By midnight last night most major networks had called the presidential race for Barack Obama. John McCain conceded shortly thereafter.

It was a great moment for this country, a renewal of the American Dream on a scale never seen since Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America". Across the world millions of oppressed, ignored, marginalized minorities lifted their lonely eyes to the ray of hope from the shining city on the hill and said: "Only in America".

Yet we woke up this morning with an election as of yet undecided. Actually, it’s been decided, we just do not know the outcome.

It is so because for many of us, we still do not know what kind of a president got elected. Which man will move into the White House in January? Will a centrist, post-racial, uniter be the leader of the free world? Or will a weak-willed, go with the flow, I’ll sit-in-church-and-listen-to-vitriol and say-anything-to-get-elected politician be our commander in Chief?

The Economist wrote an editorial endorsing Obama entitled: "America Should Take a Chance on Obama".

We did.

In fact, we’re All-In.

It’s going to be a long night.

Voting "Present"

I’m not sold yet. And there’s less than a week to go.

So, I’m voting “Present” this year, and I’m doing it with a clear conscience. For I live in Connecticut, and my vote will not influence the outcome in any way, I can take the high road and simply abstain.

McCain lost me when he offered to buy everyone’s mortgage. If I wanted a liberal in office, I’ll vote for a real one.

Obama is still a question mark. I love his public persona and I love the idea of being able to move beyond our perceived racist bias. I’m comfortable that he will not change foreign policy that much just the world’s perception of our foreign policy.

I just don’t know what his economic policies will be if he is elected. Will he govern from the center or from the left?

Everything in his background screams “left”, yet he seems too smart for that. Will he learn from Clinton’s first two year in office, or are we destined to repeat them?

I’m just not sure. So I’m voting “present”, just as He did in the Illinois Senate. Thank you CT for making it easy for me!