Bowser, I totally understand your frustration but no matter the rhetoric, change is a slow and prodding process. Forcing it too fast creates rioting and civil wars.

The Republicans have had a few decades now to entrench themselves into our lives. Bush leaving doesn't change that a great deal. The conservative and often neo-con mindset is firmly ingrained in huge portions of the public arena and controls a huge portion of industry.

Those leaders of industry have managed to garner a larger percentage of the financial assets of our nation than at any time during our lifetime and, like it or not, that money is required to push the changes we want along. That bunch can ride out financial unrest and civil breakdown better than any other demographic as well. If they feel to threatened by rapid change they can sit on their billions behind their fortress walls and allow the country to burn.

The trick is not to upset the apple cart but instead to be the master chess player and convince these cretins that it's in their own best interest to make some compromise.

Let's take the CEO's of our major industries. To a rational individual universal single-payer health care should be an easy sell to these leaders since it will unburden their businesses from having to provide workers with those debilitating benefits and make them more competitive. The fight will be with the health insurance companies and drug manufacturers but it's a fight that's winnable if the other industries come on board. You don't get them to play along by beating them with a stick. It's a slow and deliberate process of give and take. They have to feel part of the process or the financial assets they can throw against you are insurmountable.

I'm curious. Just what steps would you take in your first 6 months as President?

Art