I heard way too much Kerry today. I know the man is smarter than he comes across but he really irritates me trying to separate everything when everything is, in reality, connected. He is losing to Bush on national security so he wants to talk economy. Well it looks like the economy is picking up a little so he starts in on outsourcing. If only each could be treated in a vacuum by itself, we could really solve some problems.

The problem is that all of these are connected. Outsourcing is a result of globalization. Our economy is global and three is really nothing we can do about that. That ship has sailed and can not be called back into the harbor. What is going to have happen is that people are going to have to change. We Americans are simply too expensive to do some jobs anymore. There is nothing wrong with that as we realize that we simply need to do something else, and do it better than anyone else. The problem comes when the guy working for GM wants to stay in the same spot on the assembly line. He can’t, and it is that simple.

We also can not divorce economics from national security. Second only to the devastating loss of life, the worst part of 9/11 was the shut down of the economy. A few letters of anthrax, some that just look like anthrax, and businesses slow down if not shut down all together. And a few months ago when a computer error caused power outages across the northeastern United States, the economy suffered.

The fact is that we can not have a viable economy without national security and Kerry knows that. The fact that we are a global economy also means that national security neither begins nor ends at the US border. Our national security does involve Iraq, Iran, Korea, China, Africa, and all the rest of the world. We are connected and our economy is intertwined with national security. I only hope the American public gets it before November.