
{"id":2138,"date":"2009-01-20T06:00:32","date_gmt":"2009-01-20T13:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/?p=2138"},"modified":"2009-01-19T20:53:23","modified_gmt":"2009-01-20T03:53:23","slug":"hello-mr-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/20\/hello-mr-obama\/","title":{"rendered":"Hello Mr. Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"float: right; margin: 10px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-content\/2009\/01\/obama-inauguration.jpg\" alt=\"Bleachers the day before the Obama inauguration\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Well, it&#8217;s here. The inauguration. And while I&#8217;m very excited to have regime change at home (of the orderly sort) I fear this entry will rain on many people&#8217;s parade (so to speak.)<br \/>\n<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s clear our new President is bright, driven, and capable. He has admirable views and challenges us to be better people. I like that, very much. However, I think that many are losing sight of three vital facts about the man and the situation:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><b>He&#8217;s just one human<\/b> &#8211; You can&#8217;t expect just one human to do super-human things. He&#8217;s not a god. He&#8217;s not a super-hero. He&#8217;s a smart guy who can hopefully help lead us out of the myriad messes we find ourselves in.<\/li>\n<li><b>He&#8217;s a politician<\/b> &#8211; Even in the short time we&#8217;ve seen him on the national stage, there are signs of it all over. FISA, Rick Warren, you name it. To be a good politician means compromise. For those thinking we&#8217;ve got a new ballgame in town, just wait, he&#8217;ll be more moderate and centered than you think. Even so, the rabid dogs on the right won&#8217;t acknowledge that.<\/li>\n<li><b>The country is in big trouble<\/b> &#8211; Arguably, no President has taken over a bigger mess since FDR inherited the Depression from Hoover. In fact, in our household we characterize it as a &#8220;shit sandwich.&#8221; The actions required to recover from this set of problems may well serve to make Mr. Obama a very unpopular President. However, seeing items #1 and #2, he may compromise on what really needs to be done to secure his second term.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>\nWhat to take away from all this? Mr. Obama&#8217;s inauguration along with the seating of the new Congress gives us a chance. Let&#8217;s hope we don&#8217;t see it frittered away. Hope was the platform that got you into office, let&#8217;s see it translated into meaningful and pragmatic action in foreign policy (end the wars,) energy policy (let&#8217;s give up foreign oil,) and economic policy (fix the basic problems of overspending on things with zero benefit.)<br \/>\n<br \/>\nNow that you&#8217;re taking the mantle, I will be every bit as hard on you Mr. Obama as I have been on your predecessors. The free ride is over. Now, convince me that we really need to spend $825B more&#8230;..I wish you well selfishly, because I&#8217;d like to wish us all well. Good luck, you&#8217;ll need it.<br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, it&#8217;s here. The inauguration. And while I&#8217;m very excited to have regime change at home (of the orderly sort) I fear this entry will rain on many people&#8217;s parade (so to speak.) It&#8217;s clear our new President is bright, driven, and capable. He has admirable views and challenges us to be better people. I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[618,152,619,33,617,620],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2138"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2138"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2142,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2138\/revisions\/2142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}