bluescribbler
bluescribbler's JournalWho remembers the "Millineum Bug"?
People the world over were panicking because the folks at Microsoft hadn't thought far enough ahead, hadn't planned for what would happen to computers when 1999 became 2000. It would be catastrophic, experts told us. Airplanes would crash. Highways would become gridlocked. Patients hooked up to life saving machines, including premature infants in incubators, would die.
Of course, none of these dire predictions came true. Why not? Because governments and industry spent many person hours and millions of dollars to avert those catastrophes. It was considered to be too urgent to ignore.
How I wish we saw the same urgency in dealing with global climate change. The consequences will be far more dire than anything the "Millineum Bug" alarmists could imagine. And yet, our government does nothing.
I have not yet chosen a candidate, but
Richard North Patterson makes a compelling case.
"Warren stands virtually alone in the field by offering comprehensive, and specific, proposals for reanimating American democracy by reforming capitalism to reconcile its long-term interests with the needs of Americans writ large. She is, in substantive terms, by far the most important Democrat seeking the presidency.
Whether one tends right or left, Warren’s importance to the political dialogue transcends the eventual fate of her campaign. That’s because she is asking an essential question: Can we repair our deepening economic and social fissures by making large corporations more responsive participants in a revitalized democracy which expands economic opportunity, reinvigorates competition, and redefines corporate citizenship. Her candidacy is an attempt to rescue contemporary capitalism from its potentially fatal excesses.
To attempt this, Warren takes two broad pathways. The first reimagines the traditional Democrats’ curative of aggressive federal spending to equalize opportunity by lowering the barriers to advancement facing average Americans. The second would recast Warren as Teddy Roosevelt reincarnate: a rigorous regulator who would make the marketplace more accessible, and democracy more inclusive, by curbing the accretion of corporate power.
In contrast to the array of candidates who propose to banish Donald Trump by channeling outrage or inspiring hope—or, in the case of Bernie Sanders, conjuring a fantastical “political revolution”—Warren offers specific proposals to define our future. Says David Brooks: “I might agree or disagree with some of Elizabeth Warren’s zillions of policy proposals, but at least they’re proposals. At least they are attempts to ground our politics in real situations with actual plans, not just overwrought bellowing about the monster in the closet.”
More at the link
https://thebulwark.com/why-elizabeth-warren-matters/?fbclid=IwAR3pFLPhUVo_PV_OdfyTVNU3gzKPmvg2oiL5qIAxHY9zAUKQ6DgjrKz99tY
For those of us who love slide guitar
Check out the long solo at the end of this song:
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=mark+knopfler+just+a+boy+away+from+home&docid=608039158928248008&mid=A171A9CBBCC93F03FC8EA171A9CBBCC93F03FC8E&view=detail&FORM=VIRE
Profile Information
Gender: MaleHometown: Massachusetts
Home country: USA
Current location: Massachusetts
Member since: 2002
Number of posts: 2,114
