Travel time………

Greetings from Tucson. Long day today as I had to get up early for some teleconferences, meetings, and get some reports out that should have been done yesterday. (Got to unpack and drag the S.O. to where she wanted to go yesterday). Then to home and have the S.O. take me to the airport for an afternoon flight to Tucson. Thanks to the time change, I am watching the Sox game and trying to figure out where to go for dinner. Anyone have any good nightlife recommendations for Tucson?

On the way out the door to the airport grabbed a book I have had sitting on my shelves for a long while. (More correctly sitting in boxes..). Thought it might be a timely read for the current times we live in:

Maybe I read it before-I don’t think so. It was probably a book of my fathers that I “borrowed” a long time ago. It is making for some interesting reading, and while the times now are different, there are some intersting similarities. Gave me something to do way back in the back of the plane in seat 18A-right next to the port engine. Thank you American Airlines.

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Here is a quote that sums up the McCain campaign for me right now:

Never has a national ticket been less equipped intellectually, temperamentally, and practically to confront America’s problems than this one. I also presume that Palin’s winks to America will prove to be the equivalent of the Cheshire Cat’s grin: the last expressions of an ideology disappearing from the scene.

The article points out that it may be time to bury “trickle down” economics once and for all. I’ve never been a fan of it -and I still believe that the growth of the 80’s was triggered by the drastic increases in defense spending, the IT revolution and the creation of 401K’s rather than tax cuts. In fact from a personal standpoint, most of Reagans reforms to the tax code did me little good-particularly the inability to deduct credit card interest. And of course the problem with tax cuts and increased spending was that at some point you had to cry uncle. Which is what happened in the 1987 and 1988 military budgets.

I do agree with this point:

It’s certainly not morning in America.

Yet it doesn’t have to be twilight either. America can pull through the current economic crisis with a dose of political maturity and a bit of luck. Success will mean the end of the Reagan era, of an ideology that has brought the country to its knees.

Ronald Reagan told us that government was the problem, and that low taxes and deregulation were the solutions. The result, even more than Americans recognize, is a government so shrunken in skill and mandate that our gravest problems – financial collapse, natural hazards like Hurricane Katrina, broken health care and education, unsustainable energy systems, and growing global instability – are left without a serious response.

Either we once again invest in our future, notably through an expanded public sector, or we will lose our future.

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One of the more interesting things I hear all the time at work is how voting for Obama may be cutting my own throat. Maybe-but the train is going to also wreck if McCain wins. (I’m also placing little faith in the polls-I think the race is a lot closer than the pollsters say it is.). I think Obama may be more tempted to spread cuts horizontally which is OK with me. Getting troops out of Iraq could save A LOT of money -as well as American lives.(Which is the only calculation that matters to me). McCain will cut big programs like the one I work in entirely. While at the same time prolonging a large occupation of Iraq. He’ll have to cut tomorrow to pay for today. There is a point where we have to realize that the problems we have to solve our own-not everyone elses.

I guess I should be worried, but I’m not. If there is one thing working here as taught me-never underestimate the power of inertia. And of those who are more dedicated to process than production.

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This time I am going to make it up to the boneyard. I booked an afternoon flight out of here so I could spend the morning there. Pictures to follow.
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I don’t think OJ will take the same way out:

Kazuyoshi Miura, a man sometimes called “Japan’s OJ” by the international press, committed suicide in his jail cell in L.A. over the weekend, shocking close friends and the media. Prior to his suicide, Miura had expressed confidence in his ability to beat the murder conspiracy charges he was facing, and apparently he had been finishing up a book about his experiences.

 

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Got to run. I’m hungry and there is a beer somewhere with my name on it. Wonder if there is one of these out there too?

 

Ja ne!