Cynical Nation

I'm looking forward to a shining city on a hill. Reaganesque is the word that comes most often to mind when I contemplate The One.

The president who most disappointed me was Bill Clinton whom I believed was ideally positioned by intellect, temperment and history to do great things in the Oval Office. Instead he did a chubby intern in the Oval Office.

Bush is only my second greatest disappointment because all he had to do was be a conservative and instead he decided make history and spend taxpayer money.

All the rest (except Ronaldus Magnas) pretty much gave me what I expected, so I couldn't really say they were disappointments.

It's OK with me if the true son of Reagan turns out to be a Democrat -- well, I mean except for his creepy real son, Ron junior.

Perhaps the Obamacons were onto something after all. Granted, if you take the prevailing, operative definition of "conservatism" in practice today as defined by (say) Sean Hannity, it means that if you're not torturing terrorists and deporting Mexicans 24/7, then you're not a conservative. Obama doesn't look very conservative by this standard, but neither did John McCain, much to talk radio's chagrin.

I think it's pretty clear to everyone that talk radio is little more than entertainment for crazy people.

In short, O and the Dems are double standard bearers.

Wait a second: We were supposed to be torturing terrorists and deporting Mexicans? I got that one a little backwards.

Looks like I owe the landscape crew at our apartment complex one big appology!

Barry,
You are missing the point. Obama has already changed something big. He has signaled that the foreign policy of the US is changing. He made clear that he considers what Bush did illegal. He reconnected the country with the world. We are no longer a rogue nation, and he will be able to maintain that.

As for what he will actually do here. Wait and see. My guess is that 8 years from now the country will be more to the left and better.

How could that stupid Roberts gum up the oath? A couple dozen words that everyone knows by heart! Thanks for ruining the highlight forever, Mr Chief Justice!

Well, Obama seemed a bit too eager to get it over with. He was rushing. But who the H&*( cares? When the unemployment rate rises to 8% by the summertime (just a guess) no one will care if they spoke the oath in Finnish.

and blue wind, stop rationalizing.

Barry, if O keeps following W in terms of stem-cell research ban, doesn't that make you mad?

"and blue wind, stop rationalizing."

Huh? You changed your mind? He is not socialist any longer? As for Obama following what Bush did in stem cell research, the chance of that happening is 0%. The ban of Bush on SCR and the damage he did to other research areas as well, will be reversed. SCR ban will be reversed within first 100 days.

>Barry, if O keeps following W in terms of stem-cell research ban, doesn't that make you mad?

Yes and no. It makes me mad because I think the Bush EO was a mistake. And I may not have expected much from Obama but I did expect at the very least that he would rescind said EO. Now it looks as if he might not, preferring to fob the issue off onto Congress instead.

OTOH, even though I disagree with Bush and Obama on this one, I like what it signals in a broader sense -- his overarching "don't rock the boat" hypercaution trumps all -- the same reticence to decisive action that led to his racking up all those "present" votes in the Illinois statehouse. All of this signals to me that he is not some left-wing activist or progressive who's setting out to remake government from the ground up, and I like that.

All of this signals to me that he is not some left-wing activist or progressive who's setting out to remake government from the ground up, and I like that.

You have it wrong. If you believe that not rescinding Bush' stem cell policy is "not rocking the boat", you are misinterpreting what is going on. Obama's approach is to change things, but in a way that it will not create controversy. He knows the congress would pass the change hands down, so he sees no reason to invest any capital on this. He is holding it for other things.

I know you will think that I am out of my mind. But Obama resembles Gorbachev in many ways. The same way the Soviet Union was collapsing when he took over, our economy is at the edge of destruction. The country needs major change and Obama's role will be more dramatic than it looks. When Gorbachev was changing the Soviet system, the Moskow bureaucrats thought that he was a committed communist who was trying to improve the system. See where that got them. I think we need radical change both in foreign policy and economic policies. We need to evolve to some sort of social-democracy like the rest of the civilized countries on the planet (europe, Canada). Obama will do that, but in a way that it will take time for some to realize it is happening.

Says Blue Wind: "Huh? You changed your mind? He is not socialist any longer? As for Obama following what Bush did in stem cell research, the chance of that happening is 0%. The ban of Bush on SCR and the damage he did to other research areas as well, will be reversed. SCR ban will be reversed within first 100 days."

There's no ban on stem cell research and never has been. There's no ban on human Embryonic Stem Cell (generally abreviated as: hESC) either -- and never has been.

In 1998, citing the Dickey Amendment, President William Jefferson Clinton denied federal funding for hESC. In 2001 President George Walker Bush reversed the Clinton ban and approved about $289M in funds for hESC. Roughly that amount of federal funding has been available every year since.

There are no restrictions whatsoever on private funding of the research but, apparently, very few individuals and organization sees enough potential to put their own money at risk.

>He knows the congress would pass the change hands down, so he sees no reason to invest any capital on this.

Yeah, which was pretty much my point.

>But Obama resembles Gorbachev in many ways.

I'm glad you said that and not me. :-)

I'm glad you said that and not me. :-)

lol, it is true though. I think America will undergo dramatic change over the next 8 years. It is not just a coincidence that someone like Barack is now president.

"...Obama resembles Gorbachev in many ways. The same way the Soviet Union was collapsing when he took over, our economy is at the edge of destruction. The country needs major change and Obama's role will be more dramatic than it looks. When Gorbachev was changing the Soviet system, the Moskow bureaucrats thought that he was a committed communist who was trying to improve the system. See where that got them. I think we need radical change both in foreign policy and economic policies." (BW)


In an odd way that analogy is a decent one, though NOT at all in the way you've intended.

The USSR's Left-wing, who expected Gorbachev to reform and make viable their failed socialist economic system, instead, got to witness a fast-track to the market-economy, a path that made way for Yeltsin and today Putin, who instituted a flat tax and cut Russia's Corporate Tax)!

Today Russia has a 13% FLAT RATE income tax and a LOWER Corporate tax (24%) then even the USA (32%).

Of course, Ireland slashed its Corporate tax to 12% over that same period and saw a huge economic boom that lasted until the recent global credit crunch, though Ireland remains a far more hospitable and targeted nation for outside investment and business ventures.

ALL market-economies are predicated on private property (individual ownership of both real estate AND businesses) and so long as that exists, so will the huge disparities in both income and real wealth that are the norm in all market-based economies.

To date, there have been NO/ZERO calls among Americans to move away from the market-based economy and away from private property rights....only some minor quibbling over which investments get "government favor" and who gets to benefit from the inside information available (aside from big investors, that's ONLY government officials and politicians).

I must say that I DID very much enjoy all the religiosity of the inaugeration (an ALL Protestant affair, no less) and even though I've practiced no religion myself for many, many years and remain, like Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, even Steve Hawking among others, a non-denominational deist.

The one faux pas, in my view, was Reverend Lowery's ham-handed NON post-racial benediction, in which many sensed an excoriation of white America and a blaming of racism on one group (something to be attributed to the man's advanced age and earlier experiences, in my view), but on the whole, I thought this blatant disavowal of the radical Left's "Newdowism" (after radical atheist Michael Newdow who sued trying to exclude all religious ceremonies from the inaugural), including TODAY'S nationally televised post-inaugural prayer service is a good way to start his Presidency.

In fact, I believe that Barack Obama is off to a better start than John McCain would've gotten. This, demonstrated by his initial acts; (1) naming Rahm (architect of the 2006 Blue Dog uprising, that brought to about 25%, the number of Blue Dog-Conservative Dems in Congress, now threatening to join with Republicans to block much of the Pelosi-Reid-Frank-Dodd-Rangel agenda) as Chief-of Staff, (2) keeping Robert Gates on as SoD, (3) choosing a very market-oriented economics team.

As for "foreign policy changes?"

Where?

In Iraq?

Iraq is history.

That government is now stable. They've taken over the vast bulk of their own domestic security. The "surge" worked and the U.S. troops there, since the war against Saddam's Iraq ended (April of 2003) have largely been there rebuilding and training Iraqi forces. The American troops still in Iraq are today, little more than an advisory force.

IF the plug could've been pulled on Iraq when it was unstable, THAT would've bolstered the anti-Iraq position.

That's highly unlikely at this point.

So, that leaves Afghanistan as the locus of the "Bush strategy" of militarily engaging the jihadists.

A true anti-war President would also plan to stand down in Afghanistan.

President Obama plans to ramp up the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and fight that war with even more vigor.

For me, one of the best lines in his inaugural address (aside, of course, from his hat tip to America's fireman, "It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.") was, " We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense. And for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you."

That line alone, sounds a lot more "Bush-like" than McCain ever did.

Like Gorbachev presiding over the death of the political left in the former USSR, Barack Obama, may well very preside over the death of American political Leftism.

Hell, he's already turned his back on them.

Unless he has a change of heart and decides not to block the Left-wing Democrat's attempts to investigate and try Bush/Cheney for imagined "war crimes" (political suicide) and he HAS rebuffed that to date, with the line, "We're looking forward, not back," then you can pretty much pretty much start shoveling dirt on Leftism's bloated corpse.

I not only don't see that happening (the Obama administration supporting the Pelosi-Reid-Conyers Bush-trials), I don't see much of a honeymoon between the Obama administration and the Pelosi-Reid gang.

Well, it's been over 24 hours and the Republic still stands.

I'm wavering toward cautious optimism.

I think you summed up the situation brilliantly, JMK.

"I'm wavering toward cautious optimism." (WF)


I agree.

To date, there have been NO/ZERO calls among Americans (and CERTAINLY NOT from the Obama administration) to move away from the market-based economy and away from private property rights....only some minor quibbling over which investments get "government favor" and who gets to benefit from the inside information available.

I think Rahm Emanuel's Blue Dog allies are going to be that administration's best friends.

And I DID very much enjoy the slap at the far-left's "Newdowism," with all the rampant religiosity.


"I think you summed up the situation brilliantly, JMK." (WF)

Thanks WF, but that's because you get it, you understand that te market-based economy works and the government-run economy ALWAYS fails.

Keynesian policies begat Carter's STGFLATION (imagine THIS, Double Digit interest rates, UNEMPLOYMENT and INFLATION RATES) - That's what Jimmy Carter presided over, "the WORST U.S. economy since the Great Depression!"

Today, Obama takes office with a 7.5% Unemployment rate, an inflation rate of 3.85%, and interest rates UNDER 6% for 30 year fixed rate mortgages)....those numbers are higher than the average for the last eight and, in fact, the past 16 years, so he's inherited a pretty LOW BAR.

Where will we be in January 2010?

ALL the current profligate spending will weigh heavily on the economy going forward.

Increasing marginal income tax rates WILL only encourage more SAVINGS/DEFERRING income on the part of the top 10% of income earners and that's why that policy ALWAYS results in LOWER income tax revenues.

There'll also be a LOT of pressure on the Fed to increase the money supply (inflate, and thus devalue the currency) and that would increase the inflation rate.

By 2010, the economy will be ALL the Obama administration's (even though the Pelosi-Reid Congress will have far more control over the things that impact it)....if those economic indicators remain the same, I'd personally consider even that "acceptable" for the incoming administration given the challenges and the last six years of overspending, BUT, if those indicators rise much - and unemployment pushes 10%, the inflation rate ups toward 5% or above and interest rates inch over 6.5%, then THAT will be a "Cartereque failure."

WHY?

Because if those numbers rise over the next year and remain significantly worse a full year from now, the economic forecast for the election year of 2010 won't look good for the Keynesians.

That's why I'm cautiously optimisitic as well. I DON'T believe that the Obama administration will go down that road.