Thomas Friedman’s Sunday NY Times article, which informed readers have already seen, raises this question. Why does the US continue to ignore innovation, particularly of the scientific kind, as a national priority? Why do the political conversations in the US continue to fall back on backwater cultural issues and divisive policy? Why does the war economy seem to be the most reliably financed of the innovation engines that Federal US taxes support? While we still have enormous innovative energy bubbling up from the American people, it is not being supported and nurtured as needed in today’s supercompetitive world. Right now, we feel like a country in a very slow decline — in infrastructure, basic research and education — just slow enough to lull us into thinking that we have all the time and money to play around in Tbilisi, Georgia, more than Atlanta, Georgia. How important is this issue? A …