Priorities--From the Start

Jon Stewart asked Barack Obama just before the election whether he was sure he really wanted the job. Certainly things in America and the world have rapidly changed since Obama first stood on the steps of the Illinois State House in Springfield and announced his candidacy almost two years ago. And as we get closer to Inauguration Day, the Bush administration seems to be going a little wacko again: bombing civilians in Afghanistan, bombing into Pakistan, and getting too close to the borders with Syria for the health of the planet.

With just 76 days left, the Bush administration is capable of doing anything.

What should the new president's priorities be? We have millions more Americans about to be thrown out of their homes in foreclosure; we have a planet that is rapidly warming and disappearing resources, drinking water, and fossil fuels; we have an economy that has collapsed from deregulation, greed, and mismanagement; we have an educational system that is no longer serving the interests of either the families whose children attend, the teachers who earn a livelihood, or the nation which needs an educated workforce; our infrastructure of roads and bridges is deteriorating; our health care system is bankrupting families and small businesses while not making modern medicine accessible to the people who really need it; and our voting system is so flawed that it is inevitable to have another hanging chad, contested election like we had in Florida in 2000.

We can no longer afford to engage in an arms race, especially since the arms race is with Russia once again and China whose might we haven't even imagined as its economy expands. I often think about Star Wars and how the Rebellion beat the evil Empire despite its Death Star with small, targeted strikes. That is how our new renegade enemies will keep us alert, but the new president hopefully will not use fear as Bush and Cheney did.

Then there is the little matter of prosecuting the officials in the Bush administration responsible for the war on terror that includes such techniques as torture, rendition, and illegal surveillance. In the documentary "Boogie Man" about Lee Atwater, it is suggested that if Bill Clinton had prosecuted the Bush I administration for its role in Iran Contra, the architects of the Bush II administration would all have been in jail or disgraced. We might have avoided the last eight years.

We can't wait for President Obama to set his priorities. We have to set our own in our own communities. We saw a network of coalitions working together on the ground to elect this intelligent and composed man. We met neighbors and made new friends. We reached across labels. So why don't we start at home?

Why don't we start now?

Did You Say Regulation? You Don't Know From Regulation!

Every time I hear McCain or Palin putting down regulation as the cause of every working person's agony, like yours, Joe the Plumber, I think about: child labor laws, safer workplaces, anti-discrimination laws, minimum wage and maximum hours.

What's so wrong about those laws? They made every working person's life better.

As I mentioned before, I am reading Thomas Friedman's new book "Hot, Flat, and Crowded." During the eight years of Bush denial that global warming began with the industrial revolution when humans increased our burning of carbon-based fuels, (and not welcomed evidence of the "end of days"), we lost our leadership position to turn the coming environmental disaster around.

Al Gore tried to get our attention, but he was demonized by Republicans, and the entire subject of global warming became a political issue instead of a scientific one.

As the world's biggest consumer, we could have signed the Kyoto Protocols, voluntarily cut our own emissions, jump started some new green technologies, stopped producing SUVs and start building hybrids (instead of killing the electric car), thereby avoiding the export of all our money to the Middle East, especially to Saudi Arabia, that uses our money to keep women veiled, literally, and to export its weird and anti-modernistic brand of desert Islam throughout the Middle East and beyond so that there are more and more radical Islamists to hate us.

There once was a time when most Muslims were moderate, they ate dinner with their families at the same table, and their wives, daughters, and sisters were not forced to cover themselves, be escorted by male family members, and when they were free to go to school and work.

Unless we do something to reverse global warming, and this aggravates me about this presidential campaign, because no one is talking about it, we will be living in a very, very regulated state, the real scary kind that prevents riots, because of scarcity, famine, lack of fresh drinking water, and massive dislocation.

Global warming happens exponentially and faster than anticipated by scientists.

Like what we are seeing now in parts of Africa.

So let's understand that we are running out of time. America has to take a leadership role as the world's biggest consumer of everything, or else we will be the cause of the planet's demise.