We must be willing to change.

Atul Gawande is one of the best writers in the medical field. He has written 3 books so far and published articles such as this one in the New Yorker magazine. His second book, entitled  Better  is an analysis of how excellence is achieved in medical practice, and conversely what interferes with highest quality practice. One thought that comes to mind when I read this book is how obscene our culture is, that we reward vicious clowns and buffoons such as Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck with boundless wealth and attention. Yet how many people have ever heard the name of Pankaj Bhatnagar, who is engaged in the exhausting and endless war to eliminate polio from the planet?
In a nutshell here is Gawande's prescription for excellence.
1. Ask unscripted questions. (hear that Fox "news"? )
2. Don't complain.
3 Count something. (in other words generate actual data)
4. Write something. Share your information, your ideas. This is what makes science such a powerful force for improving human lives.
5. Change. Be willing to give up your biases, alter your behavior. Don't be afraid to experiment.
It's a very good book. He is an excellent writer and thinker. I recommend it.

Meet your real rulers

Imagine one hundred people and one hundred dollars. Every year one of those people gets 27 dollars to spend. The other 99 people must divide 73 dollars among them to live on. That is roughly the picture of the overall distribution of income in 2007 as shown in the report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. I suspect the divide has grown even wider in the past 3 years. This concentration of wealth and power in a few families presents the greatest danger that our democracy has faced since the great depression.
That one percent, or more realistically, the one tenth of a percent who have seen their wealth grow at an astronomical rate in the past decade, are the real government of our country. We never elected them, we never see what they are doing, but they are controlling our lives behind the scenes. Thomas Paine told us that wealth is often the presumptive evidence of dishonesty.
It's time to redistribute that wealth. There is nothing wrong with taxing the people who have benefited the most from living in America.

What can a country do with 3 trillion dollars?

We have spent over 3 trillion dollars on the war in Iraq so far.

We have spent over 3 trillion dollars to invade and occupy a country on the other side of the planet in order to gain control of its oilfields. The human cost to us has been over 4 thousand dead, over 30,000 severely injured and countless family tragedies. The human cost to the Iraqi's has been estimated at anywhere from 95,000 dead to over half a billion dead.
If we were to invest 3 trillion dollars in research and development of alternate, sustainable, and clean energy sources.....
Can you imagine?
No more worries about global climate change.
No more worries about mining accidents or oil well blowouts.
No more worries about our ancient energy grid collapsing or being attacked by terrorists.
All of the countries who are powerful players on the world stage just because they have oil (Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Russia, etc) would lose their influence over our government.
Iran would have no justifiable reason to develop nuclear power because our solar technology would make nuclear power obsolete.
We would lead the world in clean energy and become unbelievably wealthy by exporting our technology to the rest of the world.
No more deaths from war over oil.
Wow. Just imagine it.

Which do we like more, feeding people or killing them?

You might think that we put our money where our values lie. In that case we seem to like killing people more than feeding them. According to this Washington Post article we have invested over 3 trillion dollars in showing off George W. Bush's manhood to the rest of the world. The bulk of the money was spent in Iraq which of course had not threatened us in any way. Mr. Bush's explanation (besides the utterly bogus WMD theme) was that " he tried to kill my daddy" . 

The social security deficit is projected to be 41 billion dollars this year. According to my calculations ( check me on this if you like) we could run this deficit for over 73 years before we approach the cost of the Iraq war. 

It seems that Americans are OK with preserving the wealth of the very rich, OK with spending unimaginable fortunes on war, but not OK with caring for the elderly and sick. 

What does that say about us? Are we really that mean, or are we just hypnotized by the flow of propaganda emanating from the cleavage baring bleached blonde Fox news pundits? 

Reagan proved deficits don't matter.

So the big hoorah about the national debt is trending toward taking the food out of old people's mouths. Because after all Social Security is "a cow with 310 million tits". Never mind that it is the most successful insurance program in our history and we and our parents, and our grandparents have paid in to it for our entire lives. Now that financial solvency seems to matter (Dick Cheney and Reagan  nothwithstanding) we must throw the old and weak among us to the wolves. Where was Alan Simpson when Bush was starting two wars and cutting taxes? Does he remember per chance, that it was the previous administration that pushed this rock off the mountain? It was President Bush who took over an economy running well into the black for the first time in who knows how long, and kicked off the policies that may yet lead us into the great economic collapse of the 21st century. The freaks in the current Republican party are just dying to name this the Obama recession. And if people don't turn off their televisions and start using their brains again, it just might work. George Orwell was more prescient than he knew perhaps.

Those dern "socialists"

Theirs is  a small country, a tiny homogeneous population, and a commitment to social justice.  Their  North Sea oil wealth  is used to support their social programs, making tiny, cold, Norway at the very top of the list of countries in terms of health, education, and welfare. They do  have a strong capitalist ethic but realize that human capital is the best investment. Being a tiny island nation, they are truly conservative with their resources. And they are leaders in the development of alternative sustainable energy. Yay Norway!

What will it take to get us off fossil fuels?

There are so many reasons to kick our addiction to fossil fuels that it's hard to figure out why we Americans are so lackadaisical about solving the problem. Peak oil will bring about a profound change in the way we live. By many accounts we have crossed the line already. The fact that we are fighting wars, and drilling in extreme and dangerous environments supports that contention. Will we allow our civilization to be destroyed by greedy oil barons? I'm afraid it's entirely too possible.