Competence

By now everyone has heard the story of the courageous pilot who set his plane down on the Hudson River without crashing the plane and allowing all 150 passengers to get off with only one serious casualty, one woman broke both her legs. It struck me almost immediately that this is a clear sign of the changing of an era, the Bush Era of Incompetence. With Bush leaving office and Obama about to come in it's as if all America has suddenly found their inner competence once again. That suddenly we know once again that we are what we have always been, a courageous, resourceful and competent nation, a nation of heroes when it's been demanded of us. In the Bush Era we were reduced to sniveling cowards who couldn't do anything right but that day is gone.

Rachel Maddow has an interesting take on this, that it took training and preparation, time and tax dollars, for everything to be in place that morning on the Hudson. It was an investment in ourselves, in our ability to be resourceful, in our desire to have on hand what we need in an emergency. This is something the Republicans have never understood, that money and training must be spent if we are to be other than helpless victims of circumstances.

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