A Good War August 11, 2011March 24, 2017 The sun, as previously suggested, will come out tomorrow. (If not literally tomorrow.) One reminder of that was the yesterday’s news of a possible cancer cure. So, yes, maybe your 401(k) is in the toilet; but maybe you’ll get to enjoy life with your spouse or your folks or your child for an extra 20 years. (So keep contributing all you can to that retirement plan.) We still have a load of problems to work through – including Europe’s banking problems which are interconnected with our own. (In case you hadn’t noticed, the global financial system is by now, like it or not, pretty well one financial system.) Our biggest problem may be an opposition party intent on the President’s failure – which, of necessity, pretty much requires national failure, at least until the next election. If that sounds excessively partisan, remember that this is the crowd that cheered when Chicago lost its bid for the 2016 Olympics; the crowd that killed its own proposal for a bipartisan budget deficit commission once the President agreed it was a good idea (he had to establish the Bowles-Simpson Commission by executive order, instead); the crowd that wanted to let GM and Chrysler go under; the crowd that needlessly brought the nation to the brink of default, dealing a body blow to business confidence and investor confidence – and S&P’s confidence in our ability to solve our problems. Yet I have to think we will begin to solve those problems, sooner rather than later, and surely a year from November when, I hope, the House Tea Party members are thanked for their enthusiasm and good intentions but retired for their intransigence and narrow focus. INFRASTRUCTURE Stephen Gilbert: “Remember when the Mississippi River bridge collapsed in Minnesota? We cared about the infrastructure for a few weeks; there was video. And, by the way, we have been spending a fortune on infrastructure – in Iraq.” Chris Hubbard: “From a twitter post by Paul Myers (@pulmyears), making your point from yesterday: ‘The USA should invade the USA and win the hearts and mind of the population by building roads, bridges, and putting locals to work.’ ” Indeed. WE NEED A WAR Like the one that got us out of the Depression – but a war that builds things rather than blows them up. Namely, a war on our crumbling infrastructure and our dependence on foreign oil. I think the nation could rally around that war.