The importance of yesterday's post

Yesterday I took a few minutes to laud safe spinach and, more importantly, the ability of Congress to find common ground on an issue that affects the well-being of Americans.

Today I want to reiterate how important that cooperation is, but I'm going to let Thomas Friedman be my mouthpiece, like Hall Mark, he always says it best.

For quite a while I've been harping on certain issues, especially green and alternative energy. It doesn't take a genius...check that...it doesn't take a mildly aware person to figure out that America faces a mountain of problems and that other countries - particularly China - are not just sitting around waiting for us to get things fixed.

While Americans get mad about invasive airport screenings - I went through one over the Thanksgiving Holiday and felt about as UNviolated as I could imagine - China continues to invest in its future.

Now, not all of China's success is tied to American problems. China manipulates its currency and still has more people living in poverty than America has people. But there is a serious and scary difference between our two countries. Americans like to talk about our greatness, the Chinese apparently want to invest in becoming great.

America is the world's greatest country, and I like to say that as much as anyone. But knowing you're great doesn't excuse you from fixing your problems and it certainly doesn't mean that failing to address an issue is going to make that issue disappear. If you love your grandmother and she's sick, you take her to the hospital, you don't pretend that she's healthy, and you certainly don't use her well-being decades ago to justify her current status.

America faces competition, serious competition. Other countries know what made America great and they're taking the steps to make their countries great. They're educating their workforces to create both innovators and skilled workers; they're investing in the technology of today and tomorrow and not the oil and coal of yesterday; they're creating countries that people want to travel to and want to stay in, not scaring people away with archaic, xenophobic laws.

So for the sake of tomorrow's America, I'm reiterating the importance of yesterday's post. Our elected officials, and for that matter, our electorate have got to find some common ground in being Americans. I'm no Republican, and while I'd prefer that Democrats still controlled the House of Representatives, I'd rather live in a world in which America is the greatest country than a world in which America is controlled by the political party I support.

If Americans can't begin to work together and compromise to make difficult but imperative political decisions then we'll be stuck listening to Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin talk about how great we are on the airwaves while watching China zoom by us in real life.

I can only hope that if our politicians can make our spinach safe, they can keep us great.