National

From: GeminiSent: Saturday, July 5, 2008 10:03 AM "Problems are created when people see problems instead of opportunities."
Very true.

Problems are solved by those willing to first acknowledge them and then seek solutions. No problem is ever solved by ignoring it. Only those conveniently on the sidelines by privileged circumstances or ignorance can afford such a position.

Hey folks, here's some more doom and gloom from the liberal left. Well, we can either accept our fate or decide as a nation to do something about it. Ignoring it or painting roses on it won't make it go away, so let's role up our sleeves and restore this nation to it's former glory. The first thing we need to do is get the Repuglicans out and put in some progressive Democrats who truly believe in this country and it's potential. That seems to me to be a good place to start.

Cause for Alarm

Saturday 05 July 2008

by: Bob Herbert, The New York Times

Beaches, barbecues and flags as big as baseball fields. Fireworks as loud as thunder lighting the nighttime sky. Hot fun, as Sly & the Family Stone would say, in the summertime.

Friday was the 232nd anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Celebrations were ubiquitous. HBO offered a marathon telecast of its John Adams series. Bands of wildly varying quality, from one coast to the other, let loose with "The Star-Spangled Banner," "America the Beautiful" and "The Stars and Stripes Forever."

It was a July Fourth like many others. There was nothing overt to signal anything was wrong. The Red Sox had traveled from Boston to play a weekend series against the Yankees in the Bronx. In Washington, the National Independence Day Parade made its way along Constitution Avenue.

And yet, there was an undercurrent of anxiety in the land. Vacations have been curtailed because of the price of fuel. Since the holiday fell on a Friday, the monthly unemployment numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics were released a day early, on Thursday. They weren't good. The Times summed things up with a Page 1 headline:
"Outlook Darker as Jobs Are Lost and Wages Stall."

The high and the low were being buffeted. The bad news bears were loose on Wall Street, and the prospects for the summer employment of teenagers were abysmal. The national employment rate for teens in June was the lowest in 60 years.

But the anxiety seems more intense than the usual concern for a cyclical economic downturn. Something fundamental seems to have gone haywire. David Boren, a former U.S. senator who is now president of the University of Oklahoma, has written a short book that he called, "A Letter to America."

His sense of alarm in the opening paragraph could not have been clearer. "The country we love is in trouble," he said. "In truth, we are in grave danger of declining as a nation. If we do not act quickly, that decline will become dramatic."

I couldn't agree more. The symbols of patriotism - bumper stickers and those flags the size of baseball fields - have taken the place of the hard work and sacrifice required to keep a great nation great.

You know that matters have gotten out of hand when, as we learned this week, American instructors at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, gave classes on torture techniques used by the Communists to extract false testimony from American prisoners during the Korean War.

Talk about defining deviancy down! As Al Gore reminds us, this is the first time in American history that "the executive branch of the government has not only condoned but actively promoted the treatment of captives in wartime that clearly involves torture, thus overturning a prohibition established by Gen. George Washington during the Revolutionary War."

There are signs galore of the nation's turn for the worse. We are fighting a debilitating war in Iraq without any idea of how to pay for it - or how to end it. No one has any real idea about how to cope with the devastating energy crisis, or how to turn the economy around.

The airline industry is a first-class mess and the knees of the General Motors colossus have buckled. Locks are being changed on foreclosed homes across the country and working families lucky enough to meet their mortgages are watching the value of their homes decline.

We can build spectacula
r new stadiums for football and baseball teams (the Yanks, the Mets, the Giants and the Jets are all getting ready to move into staggeringly expensive new homes) but we can't rebuild New Orleans or reconstruct the World Trade Center site destroyed almost seven years ago.
This year's presidential election is the perfect opportunity to place the truth before the American public in the form of a realistic examination of the state of the nation, and an honest consideration of creative ideas for moving forward. Instead, we're getting hour after hour and day after day of trivia: Who's up? Who's down? Who's patriotic? Who's not?

Mr. Boren believes that the combination of unrestrained partisanship and the corrosive influence of big money have all but paralyzed the political process. He worries about the neglect of the nation's infrastructure, about the growing divide between the very wealthy and everyone else, and about "the catastrophic drop in the way the rest of the world views us."

The U.S., with its enormous economic and military power, is still better-positioned than any other country to set the standards for the 21st century. But that power and leadership potential were not granted by divine right and cannot be wasted indefinitely.

Patriotism has its place. But waving a flag is never a good substitute for serious thought and rolling up one's sleeves.

Another good article Popguy. This is so true. It is like we as a nation have lost our way. The first best solution? Bring an end to lobbyist handing out money.

If you would just bury your head deeply in the ever shifting sands... this would be no problem-- actually nothing would be a problem. AND your head would be SAFE from terrorist attack!

All you lefties crack me up. I knew you would come out and try to shred this well written piece. America is going through some difficulties right now, we all know it, but IS NOT THE END OF THE WORLD!!! Like I said before, if you put things in perspective, is NOT that bad. Once McCain gets elected, he will start turning things around. I can't wait!

Even the Optimist are not all the optimistic these days.

Americans' unhappy birthday: 'Too much wrong' By PAULINE ARRILLAGA, AP National Writer

Even folks in the Optimist Club are having a tough time toeing an upbeat line these days. Eighteen members of the volunteer organization's Gilbert, Ariz., chapter have gathered, a few days before this nation's 232nd birthday, to focus on the positive: Their book drive for schoolchildren and an Independence Day project to place American flags along the streets of one neighborhood.

They beam through the Pledge of Allegiance, applaud each other's good news — a house that recently sold despite Arizona's down market, and one member's valiant battle with cancer. "I didn't die," she says as the others cheer.

But then talk turns to the state of the Union, and the Optimists become decidedly bleak.

They use words such as "terrified," "disgusted" and "scary" to describe what one calls "this mess" we Americans find ourselves in. Then comes the list of problems constituting the mess: a protracted war, $4-a-gallon gas, soaring food prices, uncertainty about jobs, an erratic stock market, a tougher housing market, and so on and so forth.

One member's son is serving his second tour in Iraq. Another speaks of a daughter who's lost her job in the mortgage industry and a son in construction whose salary was slashed. Still another mentions a friend who can barely afford gas.

Joanne Kontak, 60, an elementary school lunch aide inducted just this day as an Optimist, sums things up like this: "There's just entirely too much wrong right now."

Happy birthday, America? This year, we're not so sure.

The nation's psyche is battered and bruised, the sense of pessimism palpable. Young or old, Republican or Democrat, economically stable or struggling, Americans are questioning where they are and where they are going. And they wonder who or what might ride to their rescue.

These are more than mere gripes, but rather an expression of fears — concerns reflected not only in the many recent polls that show consumer confidence plummeting, personal happiness waning and more folks worrying that the country is headed in the wrong direction, but also in conversations happening all across the land.

"There are so many things you have to do to survive now," says Larue Lawson of Forest Park, Ill. "It used to be just clothes on your back, food on the table and a roof over your head. Now, it's everything.

"I wish it was just simpler."

Lawson, mind you, is all of 16 years old.

Then there's this from Sherry White in Orlando, Fla., who has a half-century in years and experience on the teenager:

"There is a sense of helplessness everywhere you look. It's like you're stuck in one spot, and you can't do anything about it."

In 1931, when the historian James Truslow Adams coined the phrase "The American Dream," he wrote of "a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement."

In 2008, using history as a yardstick, life actually is better and richer and fuller, with more opportunities than ever before.

"Objectively things are going real well," says author Gregg Easterbrook, who discusses the disconnect in his book "The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse."

He ticks off supporting statistics: A relatively low unemployment rate, 5.5 percent in June. (Employers did, indeed, cut payrolls last month by 62,000 jobs, but consider the 10.1 rate of June 1983 or the 7.8 rate of June 1992.) Declining rates of violent crimes, property crimes and big-city murders. Declining rates of disease. Higher standards of living for the middle class and the working poor. And incomes that, for many, are rising above the rate of inflation.

So why has the pursuit of happiness — a fundamental right, the Declaration of Independence assures us — become such a challenging undertaking?

Some of the gloom and doom may simply reflect a society that demands more and expects to have it yesterday, but in many cases there's nothing imaginary about the problems.

Just listen to farmer Ricardo Vallot, who is clinging tight to his livelihood.

Vallot expects to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on diesel fuel to plant and harvest his family's sugar cane crop in Vermilion Parish, La. His two combines burn up to 150 gallons a day, and with diesel running an average of $4.68 a gallon in the region, he sees his profits burning away, too.

"My God, it's horrible, it really is," the 33-year-old says, adding: "If diesel goes north of five, it will be really difficult at the price we're getting to stay in farming."

Stay-at-home-mom Heather Hammack grapples with tough decisions daily about how to spend her family's dwindling income in the face of rising food costs. One day, she priced strawberries at $1.75. The next day, they were $2.28.

"I could cry," she responds when asked how things are.

"We used to have more money than we knew what to do with. Now, I have to decide: Do I pay the electric this week? Do I pay for gas? Do I get groceries?" says Hammack, 24, who lives with her boyfriend, a window installer, and their 5-year-old son in a rented home in rural Rowlesburg, W.Va. "You can't get ahead. You can't save money. You can't buy a house. It just stinks."

Those "right direction, wrong direction" polls — the latest of which, in June, had only 14 to 17 percent of Americans saying the country is going the right way — show a general level of pessimism that is the worst in almost 30 years. Those feelings, coupled with government corruption scandals, lingering doubts over whether the Iraq war was justified, even memories of the chaotic response to Hurricane Katrina, have culminated in an erosion of our customary faith that elected leaders can get us out of a jam.

Says Arizona retiree Dian Kinsman: "You have no faith in anybody at the top. I don't trust anybody, and I'm really disgusted about it."

Stoking the furor is that Americans seem to feel helpless. After all, how can the average Joe or Jane control the price of gas or end the war?

"How am I, a little old West Virginia girl, going to go out and change the world?" asks Hammack.

Still, others suggest a lack of perspective and a sense of entitlement among Americans today may make these times feel worse than they are.

At 82, Ruth Townsend has experienced her share of downturns — in her own life and that of the country. She suffered a stroke years ago that left her in a wheelchair, and lives now in an assisted-living center in Orlando, Fla. Townsend recalls World War II and having to ration almost everything: sugar, leather shoes, tires, gas.

"You made do with the little you had because you had to. You shopped in the same stores over and over because you HAD to. We had coupon books and stamps to figure out what we could have," Townsend says. Americans have gotten so used to "things," she says, "that we can't take it when we hit a bad patch."

Allison Alvin condemns an "out of style" values system, in which even kids have cell phones, credit card debt is out of control and families purchase four-bedroom homes they can't afford instead of the two-bedroom ones they could.

"I'm mad at us ... all of my fellow Americans. Maybe a little hardship would be good for us," says Alvin, who at 36 has a job as a freight exporter in Cincinnati, a husband with a factory job, two healthy children, her own home and four cars, all paid off.

At the same time, she acknowledges feeling that "things are getting worse."

"When you're my age, you feel like you should be improving — more financially stable, instead of hand-to-mouth. It doesn't matter that we're better off than (others). It still hurts. It's still painful."

Easterbrook ascribes some of this to the media, noting that talk of "crisis" has become almost trendy — especially in an election year when politicians and pundits alike seem to feed on discontent as a catalyst for change, or ratings.

Round-the-clock saturation, shouting commentators and ceaseless images of "whatever's burning or exploding," he says, "give you the impression that the whole world is falling apart." Media reports noting that the world isn't rallying around U.S. policies also build frustration.

Perhaps that's why one of the Arizona Optimists, Marilyn Pell, couldn't help but raise her voice when referencing something she'd heard on the news: That gas prices might rise to $7 a gallon by 2010.

"What do you mean I've gotta pay $7 a gallon?" she exclaimed, even though it was just a prediction.

Such anxieties have concrete implications — affecting how we spend, how we vote and whether we are willing to take risks. These collective "bad moods" matter because they help steer the country's direction just as the country's direction shapes our mood. Franklin D. Roosevelt expressed this when he said in the depths of the Depression: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Perspective also varies between the haves and have-nots.

In California's Silicon Valley, one of the wealthiest places, the nation's housing crash can be seen as a healthy correction and a buying opportunity, and high gas prices are unpleasant, yes, but not unbearable.

Maybe it's no surprise that at Ferrari Maserati of Silicon Valley, where $200,000 models are still being snapped up, sales manager Larry Raphael says, "We really haven't been affected by what the media says is a low mood in the country."

Yet in these rarefied ZIP codes, others are affected — even if they feel personally secure. "I worry about my gardeners and how they're dealing with the cost of fuel, for example. Floods, fires, there are so many things going on that are going to cost everyone money," says Suzanne Legallet of Atherton, Calif.

Whether things are going well or not, it is part of human nature to be dissatisfied with the present state of things, says Arthur Brooks, professor of business and government policy at Syracuse University and the author of "Gross National Happiness: Why Happiness Matters for America — And How We Can Get More of It."

"Very few Americans wake up in the morning and say, 'This is an unbelievable country. I'm going to go to the supermarket, and there's going to be food. When I go and vote, nobody's going to beat me up,'" he says. "We're horrible at appreciating the status quo. We're really good at appreciating positive changes."

With that in mind, then, Americans might take heart. Throughout our history, tough times have proved to be learning moments that provoked course corrections. The Civil War brought an end to slavery. Sit-ins and mass demonstrations prompted anti-segregation laws. Sept. 11 led to new anti-terrorism vigilance.

As Bob Dylan once said, "Chaos is a friend of mine."

At least it can be.

Perhaps, out of these trying days, we may see a more comprehensive energy policy, a sooner-than-later resolution of the war and, even, a more profound sense of personal responsibility — the motivation we needed to spend within our means, or make use of car-pool lanes and mass transit.

It's happening already, in big ways and small.

Hammack planted a garden of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots. "If I can save a few bucks," she says, "I'm going to."

In Louisiana, Vallot buys fuel in bulk now and is looking at ways other farmers might pool together to bring the cost of diesel down further. "We have to take matters into our own hands," he says.

Many have, and that certainly erases some of the helplessness that begets despair. But Americans also must recognize that happiness — the stuff that truly fulfills and gratifies — comes not from what we own but who we are, says Dr. David Burns, a psychiatrist at Stanford University's School of Medicine.

"We tend to base our self-esteem on certain things that we think we need to be worthwhile as human beings. A lot of us base it on achievement, intelligence, productivity. Our sense of self-esteem gets tied up with our career, our income. So when things start reversing, you begin to feel like less of a person."

Nevertheless, says Burns, "Where joy comes from is a completely different place."

For Ernestine Leach, it's keeping the faith that this, too, shall pass.

"I think that it's so deeply rooted in us," the 59-year-old substitute teacher says on a recent Sunday as sunlight filters through a stained-glass window at First Baptist Church in Raleigh, N.C. "It's all that most Americans ... have ever known: That things did get better."

Her minister, the Rev. Dumas Harshaw Jr., has noticed some new faces in his pews as troubles deepen. He senses that more Americans are "in a wilderness, psychologically and spiritually," and "are trying to find grounding."

As Harshaw tells his congregation, we Americans are in a "season of testing."

Katy Neild, the Arizona Optimist whose son fights on in Iraq, understands that better than most. She worries about her child, and about the many other dilemmas confronting Americans.

"Did I cringe when I filled my car last week? Yes," she says. "But 100 years from now, if I were still alive, would I really care that I paid $4 a gallon for gas? No. I care my grandbaby is safe and she's well and she has a good place to live.

"Your joy can't be about your circumstances."

As she says this, the other Optimists nod in agreement. Then their president, Susan Kruse, begins reciting one of the 10 tenets of the "Optimist Creed," and the others soon join in, their smiles returning.

"Forget the mistakes of the past," they chime in unison, "and press on to the greater achievements of the future."

In the end, that's what the Optimists do. They get their troubles off their chests, debate possible solutions — and then move on to doing what they can to make some positive changes in their communities, and in their own lives.

A birthday lesson for all Americans, perhaps.

___

Contributing to this report were AP Writers Allen G. Breed, Martha Irvine, Todd Lewan, Martha Mendoza, Vicki Smith and Becky Bohrer.

BARACK OBAMA IS GOING TO BE THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, GET USED TO IT.

The only thing McCain is likely to turn around are todays positions. Gemini: you truly are in a bubble over there in your retirement if you think the problems we currently face are trivial or routine. Things are much worse than any time since Republicans started trying to create their PERMANENT MAJORITY and they have demonstrated why they cannot be trusted to turn it around. They allowed Bush and the neocons to run roughshod over the constitution, bankrupt the treasury and put us in hock to the Chinese. And you say, "let them eat cake"?

Corporate Cum Bai Yah is hardly a solution. Nerds who are assigned to conduct seminars for midlevel management spout that opportunity in adversity bullshit because it justifies their niche on the payroll.