I'll get "The Plan" at the library ... but it's good to see an optimistic, positive approach.

The "Plan"

My brother, Richard from Connecticut, sent me an email recommending that I mention the book shown above in a posting today or tomorrow. Obviously, I can't recommended the book until I've read it, but I gathered some thoughts on it both from Richard's email and from a number of blogs and websites.

First and foremost, there will be no surprises since the major five points (to the "Plan") are all over the web, as expected. Basically, Representative Rahm Emanuel and head of the Democratic Leadership Council, Bruce Reed, have excited those of us who are looking for anything and especially an agenda that includes the following five "ideas" (essentially, "the plan"):

1. Universal social contract that includes universal service, universal college access, universal child health and universal retirement savings;

2. No more corporate welfare (fiscal responsibility);

3. Tax reform -- undo all the crap that Bush handed us with his tax cuts for the wealthy;

4. A new strategy to take on the terrorists, etc. (more troops, more allies and better intelligence);

5. A new "hybrid-based" economy (cut gasoline usage in half).

Reviews are mixed -- no surprises: pragmatic and patriotic, but with a lot of fresh words coming from a couple of Democrats' mouths/pens.

Whatever, what could be worse than the plan that the neocons rolled in with six years ago? Let's see, there was the Social Security privatization plan that went into oblivion silently; there was/is the drug plan for Medicare that still has me, a math and engineering Ph.D. graduate totally confused; there are the record deficits ('nuff said); and worst in the "new neocon Plan" is the plan to scramble the entire Middle East in an attempt to turn centuries of Islamic theocracy upside down and inside out.

I'm not sure that the mismanagement of Katrina was in their plan (in fairness to the Republicans), but I half suspect that their attack on the Constitution and FISA (and other domestic and international laws, including the Geneva Conventions) were surely in the backs of their minds.

After reading this book, I will be back on this subject.