A black president!!!??? I feel like I'm in a modern day version of Blazing Saddles.

Now that I've had more time to reflect on things, it's pretty amazing. Obama is part of the democratic revolution that has been and is taking place all over the world. For a country with a population that is 75% white and a very racist history to elect a black man to the highest office is pretty cool. While it is pretty cool in racial terms what Obama has achieved, in terms of policy I still have many problems with him.

Here's an article by one of my favorite reporters Jeremy Scahill on the team that Obama has selected so far to surround himself with.

Here's the thing... if Obama really wants to change shit up then bring in some people that would actually be a sign of that. With regards to the wars, why not tap Barbara Lee to be the Secretary of War. My bad "Defense". Why not tap Bernie Sanders? John Lewis? Cynthia McKinney? Sheila Jackson Lee? Could you imagine Ralph Nader as Secretary of the Treasury? You can believe that there would be a lot more transparency and this bailout would play out a whole lot differently.

One of the most important pieces of political/economic advice I ever learned was, "Follow the money". With that in mind, here are the list of Obama and McCain's top campaign donors. Then compare this to the companies receiving money from the federal bailout. With this in mind, I'm not so confident about the financial system getting "fixed". Another thing with the Federal Bailout is that the process is already nontransparent. Dirty ass financial companies getting tons of money out of the American people and nothing being done to fix the problems that got us into this situation. Just give them more and more money.

During the election, a lot of friends asked me what would make me vote for a Democrat. There's actually something that someone could say to me that would make me want to vote for them. Tell me that you are going to cut the military budget. Just a little. Instead of 1 trillion dollars a year for the military... how's about 850 billion dollars instead. $900 billion? $950 billion? Something! Boys with their toys are dangerous.

People have been guzzling the Obama Kool-Aid and I'm worried that they won't pay attention to politics like they did under GWB. That's the thing with GWB... he got people involved! Obama gets points for being the first black president... but that's where it ends cuz his policies aren't so different from historic US foreign policy. Is the US going to stop being an imperialist power? That would be some change that I could get behind.