Put aside partisan politics. Translation: Do it my way now!

This preznit is the eternal campaigner. But he is robbing the country blind and leaving it unprotected. His organizations are ineffective. His friends plunder the treasury.

He had a great line in his speech tonight about proving the pessimists wrong. I heard a wonderful program on optimism and pessimism several years ago on "The Infinite Mind." It's on National Public Radio and is often led by doctors from the National Institute of Health. I've found that I land in the pessimistic camp often. That seems to put me in the minority. I listened ruefully about the optimists, how they won elections, how they were better liked. The whole program glowed about optimists. The pessimists were losers. Near the end of the program, the worm turned. In a survey of leaders who had been optimistic and leaders who had been pessimistic, someone asked THE question, which was "Who turned out to be correct in their thinking, the O's or the P's? There was no beating around the bush. The answer was clear and unassailable. The pessimists, despised, rejected, turned out of office, and considered losers, were right in almost every case. While we like optimism better, the optimists are usually wrong.

You know I have been wondering for years about the rise of educated workforces overseas. How long could we keep jobs in the United States? Our standard of living has been high. Our unions have negotiated a fair portion of the profits of industry for our workers. But in today's international markets, American companies increasingly have made an end run around unions by closing American plants and opening plants in no minimum wage economies. The bottom line of these companies has grown to the advantage of equity owners, but American workers are losing their jobs by the hundreds of thousands.

This has led to the dissolution of American dreams like health care, pension plans, and a living wage. The government is supporting companies who default on contributions to pension plans, and businesses are transferring health care costs to employees. We have not yet seen across the board decline in wages, but is that on the horizon? Passing along health care costs is in fact a decline in wages. Eliminating pension plans is a decline in wages. Is there any doubt that the American standard of living is under assault and may in fact be declining? The American dream realized by many, may be increasingly at a distance for workers in the future.

As China rises as an economic power are American workers the ones who will suffer?