In the course of my life I have learned to be very careful when I'm drawn to use that terminology---after all, I have lived through the fall of the Soviet Union, and even the election of Reagan himself, among other remarkable and shocking developments.

However, I can't escape the conclusion that we currently face the most severe and numerous set of crises ever. There is a real chance the human race, as we know it, won't survive until 2100. Is that a probability, maybe, most likely, but certainly, a real possibility.

We, the United States, the most powerful nation on earth, started the first eight years of this deciding century, with an unbelievable dumb ass as our leader. Who would have predicted that he'd be as ineffective and harmful as he was? Very few. But, we've just about run out of room for surprises----our chances for survival increase substantially with predictability.

Thus, in an effort to both predict and control the future let me offer the following: if Obama (liberalism) should fail in this country then there will probably be a return to power of the hard-core conservatives. And we have no time at all for 4 or 8 more years of garbage.

I am fully aware that earnest political differences are as old as the ages but, just when we can't tolerate it, and can't afford it, we are faced with what I will call the "absurdists". I won't dwell on it here, but what exactly is Sarah Palin? I follow current events and political developments quite closely and the truth is that I didn't see a scintilla of evidence that she knows anything. And yet she is being hailed by many as the future of the Republican Party. She is popular. Other possible "leaders" of the right include Huckebee of Arkansas (certainly a potential member of the American Taliban, if we had one, or maybe we do), Romney (who will clearly say anything at anytime and comb his hair, to try to get elected), and Jindal (somone who would rather watch his fellow Louisiana citizens suffer with no income than to risk his own personal political outlook): a real "leader" at a time that the situation mandates just that. Can you imagine if McCain had won? What would that old, stupid man be doing now? Continuing the exercise of fairy tales over science? Or is Limbaugh their "leader", a rascist, opiate-addicted, fat and filthy, blowhard? I won't even mention Guiliani and Fred Thompson. Better to leave it unsaid.

They have no real leader, and yet we must be led. I never would have imagined that we'd yearn for the days of the Rockefellars or their ilk, the so-called Liberal Republican who, although they were clearly wrong and misquided, at least appeared to be sincerely intellectual in their approach.

Yes, a relapse to the control of today's "conservative" is to rejoin a doctrine of sheer stupidity, of fable over science, of bigotry over real equality, of greed over generosity, and, yes, of pure hard-core capitalism over shared, spread the risk and reward, socialism. We can't afford to go there, to go back, to choose ignorance over intelligence. If we do, we will lose and be destroyed for sure.

So, out of necessity, Obama must be made to succeed. He's there now, he is president, and he must succeed. There is no choice if we are to survive as a species. And the more that one hears talk of the "stimulus" as not being large enough, and of the banks really "owning" Obama, etc., the more unlikely it appears that he is on target on his own to succeed.

Therefore, logic dictates only one possible solution: activism, with a real sense of urgency, rarely achieved before in America. Yes, this is life and death. It's up to the people. The time is now!!