We Democrats need to tell it as it is. There are no neat and tidy solutions for most our major problems. Our jobs have been shipped overseas. We have inherited huge debts from at least one pointless war — Iraq — which distracted us from fixing Afghanistan which now is in a mess, thanks to our Iraq diversion. We have spent a fortune on these ‘wars’ that diverted monies from where we really needed them — rebuilding our infrastructures — bridges, sewers, etc. We let the Republicans run wild with our national wealth through the sabotage of the restrictions needed to protect us from our bank and Wall St. fiascoes. We have let the rich become incredibly wealthy both by these failures and cutting their fair share of taxes.

The one good thing we can do now is fix our medical system so as to keep our people alive, let alone healthy — bringing us into line with all those other systems that work in the rest of the democratic world — at half the costs. Enough of profiteering by our drug and medical insurance companies!

No president except possibly FDR has inherited such incredible messes and his Depression and WW2 were separated by a decade.

Sadly we in NY have had to watch some of our own marching towards what may turn out to be criminal conclusions to their political careers. And it was stupid of our party to allow the Republicans to block action after action with the threat of a filibuster when we should have moved directly to majority rule in our Senate.

Obama has been learning, but what burdens for a regime barely getting settled into office!

Let us hope we can pull things into some sort of order before the Republicans go back to the business as usual that has created the messes in the first place.

At the very least we must get the health reform bill done ASAP. From there on we can try to fix whatever we can — some things nevertheless being beyond our control — particularly recalling our jobs from overseas.

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“A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope.” (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
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Ed Kent [blind copies]