As I predicted, the Presidential campaigns have degenerated into name calling and the true issues seem of little importance. Now the focus is Barack Obama paling around with a domestic terrorist and McCain supporting the murderer of an abortion doctor.

"Drill Baby, Drill," even though it will have no real impact on oil supply.

"We must stop sending $700 billion a year to the extremist Middle East," even though the majority of our oil import dollars go to Canada, Mexico and Venezuela. Thank you so much for your caustic mediocracy, Gov. Palin.

Thank you so much, Karl Rove, for returning with your deceitful tactics to the backrooms of the McCain campaign (Rolling Stone, Oct 16, 08).

We might as well call in the dogs and have the election tomorrow, as there will be no further meaningful debate.

It is also time for me to retire this blog as I have run out of themes.

Over the last year I have tried to question the reasons why this country has encountered so many problems and fails to address even greater looming challenges. I have concluded the underlying causes are always the same—lack of comprehensive thinking, failure to take appropriate action, failure to compromise and accept difficult choices and selfishness.

The solutions are not difficult to understand. In general, it is a matter of returning to the tried-and-true answers and methods. For example: the mortgage crisis will not reoccur if home mortgages return to requiring a 20 percent downpayment, monthly payments of no more than 33 percent of gross income and no balloons.

Require balanced budgets and we will not be hostage to debt. It will mean more money for education than weapons, more civility than lawsuits. On and on, we know the answers, but we forgot to ask the questions.

The answers are not difficult, but when we fail to recognize or fail to act the impact compounds exponentially. Soon we have the current downward spiral of Wall Street wit... [Read More]

Our founding fathers believed that government was necessary because mankind could not always be trusted to make the right choices and some reasonable structured supervision was therefore required. How right they were as we watch the current megacrisis on Wall Street unfold.

Underregulated last year, the five largest financial banks, such as now defunct Lehman Brothers, took bonuses totaling $39 billion while shareholders received $74 billion in losses.

Combined with Wall Street greed and insufficient governmental regulation encouraged by President George W. Bush and Republicans like John McCain who supported his decisions 90 percent of the time, a financial perfect storm has occurred unlike any since the 1929 crash.

When the tickertape calms down the taxpayers will be left with at least a $700 billion bailout for their own money. Pathetic, but at least Bush spared us a sappy fireside chat and tell us "just to go out shopping.”

Unfortunately, under Bush we have witnessed other perfect storms where an unavoidable event, such as 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina, has been made markedly worse by bad government action. Both of these stories are well known. While no president would have likely averted 9/11, most presidents would have made the assessment that the heart of terrorism was in Afghanistan and not in Iraq and concentrated our resources accordingly.

Katrina was another unavoidable disaster compounded by ineffectual government action from insufficient levees and an unprepared FEMA led by an unequipped Bush crony. I will never forget the surrealistic sight of Bush standing alone in a generator-lit church yard assuring New Orleans that all would be built better than ever. Deja vu the "Mission Accomplished" he prematurely pronounced on the Iraq war. Now, three years later, New Orleans still awaits restoration.

Are we doomed to perfect storms of unavoidable events, greed and corruption and ineffective government? Was Karl Marx right that... [Read More]

Political scientists believe that a slim majority of Americans are just to the conservative side of center in their political beliefs.

As the Republicans have been cast as conservative and the Democrats as liberal, it is therefore not surprising that since 1952 Republicans have been in the White House 36 years and the Democrats 20 years.

Even though no Republican could define what a is a liberal, the pejorative use of the term has been an effective negative branding tool for the Republicans (Talk of the Party, by Sharon Jarvis).

It is likewise quite difficult to define what is a conservative. Despite the fact that the English language has the most words of any language (more than five million, compared to 50,000 Chinese characters) we still have difficulty defining ourselves and objectively stating our beliefs.

It is remarkable that since 1952 we have gone to the moon, carry around Blackberries, do heart transplants, boil water in microwaves and blog on the Internet, yet we can not fully state who we are!

In an attempt to understand what is a Repbulican and a Democrat, I watched with fascination the recent CSPAN airing of the presidential nominee acceptance speeches since 1956.

I was able to watch Johnson, Humphrey, Ford, Bush I and Reagan. Unfortunately, I missed Eisenhower, but I pretty much know what Kennedy, Nixon, Carter, Clinton and Bush II have said in their speeches.

It is amazing how constant the Party themes are. Barack Obama's acceptance speech was almost word for word from Lyndon Johnson, and John McCain's paralleled Gerald Ford's speech.

The constancy of messages was so striking that I recorded the most commonly words for both parties and compared them to the words employed by Obama/McCain in their speeches. Amazingly, the same words appeared time after time and although they may be difficult to define, these words must actually represent the  beliefs and goals of the respective parties.<... [Read More]

I watched most of the Republican National Convention intent on learning what John McCain would do if he and Gov. Sarah Palin were elected.

Unfortunately it was what was not said that was the most telling and predictive.

In order to be a successful president, John McCain will have to address and correct the actions of the Bush presidency. Yet, only once during his acceptance speech did John McCain mention President George W. Bush and even then the name Bush was not stated. Vice President Dick Cheney was never mentioned.

Amazing! It was as if the last eight years did not exist.

There was no mention of his inheriting the additional $3 trillion dollar debt incurred by Bush (yes, one "conservative"-minded Republican accounts for one-third of our entire national debt).

There was no mention of the nearly $700 billion spent on the war in Iraq and the fact that most Americans believe the war was a mistake. There was no mention of the fact that with our distraction in Iraq, al Queda now is in 60 countries, whereas on 9/11 they were only in four countries.

There was no mention of all the manufacturing jobs America has lost and left our economy in shambles under the unmentionable Republican president and Congress.

There was no mention of the $700 billion per year we send overseas for imported oil and the fact that Bush did nothing to curb energy use or help develop new energy sources. But one of McCain's responses now is to drill, drill, drill—which experts agree will result in a drop in the bucket.

Apart from what was not said at the Republican convention, it was equally important as to what could be seen at the convention. There was a sea of white faces—only 2 percent blacks this year.

By 2050 white people will be a minority. Because of the Republicans’ current policies and lack of inclusiveness, the Republican Party will not exist in 2050.

The outfit of Cindy McCain itself was pretty telling. She was well-bedec... [Read More]