Testing the Forum - We have serious issues in our country, mostly sourced through national leadership neglect over several adminstrations. Leaders who focused mostly on the near term results that affect immediate election outcomes in order to remain in power rather than driving agendas that looks to the best long term solutions to existing American and global problems and projected issues. This neglect has wroth a national health crisis, a global enironmental crisis, an energy crisis, a widening divide beteween the rich and poor, a declining educational system and infrastructure colmanating in broken financial system and a deepening recessionary economic environment. Where has this left us? what's different now? what does it mean? and where to from here?
The lack of strong leadership has left us with a national mess. Wars, recession, health care disaster,high unemployment, poorly educated populace, climate change, foreign oil depandency, a crashing banking system and a reliance of foreign credit. allof the above being national security isssues.
What is different now is the American electorate was fortunate enough to be offered a clear choice in a slate of candidates for the recent presidential elcection and made the best of it. They replaced in the past  two years the national leadership by elected a congress and now a President who gets it and it is about the people. Sharp, capable people who understand that what's good short term for big business is not always the best for the Amerian people.  
What it means is that we now have smart strong leadership who are deeply versed in our American founding principles, constitutional spcialists who are the least bit fearful about stepping up to the challenges and tackeling the difficult issues we face, doing the bold things that need to be  done. They have communicated effectly to the American people the need for their support in their legislating a child healthcare bill, funding a Mortgage forclosure package, release of the remaining TARP funding to save the banking system, passing $782,000,000,000 economic stimulus bill which will begin to fund the change to the affore mention national and global major crisis that are playing out today. 
Where to from here it seems is a rapid and deliberate pace to review ,secure,restructure through proper regulations our financial infrastructure in order to restore confidence in our credit system and capital markets. There an alarming lack of demand in this weak economy. By building a new renewable energy infrastructure will not only create new businesses and domestic jobs, but will significantly produce savings as we curently spend  $475 billion each year on oil imports. The stimulus package fills that void in demand. Building a new healthcare information system creats jobs,reduce the cost to businesses of providing coverage. retooling the American auto industry hasten the pace of getting to fuel efficent electric cars, thus solving the energy and envirommental issues as well as keeping Americans on the job. to be continued...