Actually I’m surprised there are people out there still reading this stuff… I’ve been… well… a bit neglectful of my blog(ing) lately.

Let’s hope Obama can repair the Bush administrations damages

I hear this frequently… I wonder if anyone could really specifically articulate those damages caused by Bush that Obama might repair… I’m no huge Bush fan. Actually, I’m quite critical of him and I agree we needed change… problem is we got change in the wrong direction.

The way I see it, here’s my list of Bush’s damages:
– He increased Federal spending to unprecedented levels.
– He bloated the size, scope, role and reach of the Government through various acts and agencies including the Patriot act and Dept of Homeland Security.
– He eroded the fundamentals of Capitalism by opening the door to the nationalization of private industry (eg. banks, brokerages, automakers, etc)
– He undermined the free market system of rewarding success by rewarding failure with taxpayer funded bailouts.
– He ignored the foreign policy examples of great conservatives like Reagan and Bush Sr and adopted a policy of Nation Building though occupation in Iraq.

Obama plans to:
– Engage in huge amounts of deficit spending to “spend our way out” of a recession.
– Will increase the size of Government even further in an attempt to create millions of artificial taxpayer funded jobs.
– Will walk through the door opened by Bush to further nationalize private industry including healthcare.
– Will continue to reward the unsuccessful through an extended welfare program guised as tax cuts for people who don’t pay taxes and punish the successful by taxing the very businesses which might create real jobs.
– Will move troops out of Iraq not to bring them home, but to shift them into a nation building role in Afghanistan and threaten the border of a nuclear armed Pakistan.

So the problem I have with Bush is that he acted like a Democrat and got blamed as a Republican. We got change, but America looked only at the “Republican” label rather than the policy. We only got a change in label, but the policy is change in the wrong direction.

I don’t think that you have ever actually read National Review. In fact your whole statement is, well, very you.

Today was not about the man or the messiah. It’s all about our first black president. That in and of itself is well worth celebrating.

Let’s see how the first 100 goes… expectations are high.

Market didn’t seem to care for it too much… me and my 401K hope they get over it soon. No worries though, the messiah will fix it all soon.