Today is also Martin Luther King Day. The Inauguration of course is headlining the news. I’ll be watching the hoopla on CNN off and on.
At the risk of provoking dire predictions of the country going down the road of communism, or something, I’d suggest that a second term indicates the country has found a direction and mainstream Americans are satisfied with it.
Yet, talking heads—some with impressive credentials—have reminded us that second terms are historically filled with hindrances and derailments of what the president wants to accomplish in so little time. Reagan had his Contra affair, Bush had the economy, Nixon had Watergate, Bubba had the Monica affair—second terms are akin to walking across a cow pasture at night.
Just because we can take a measure of stability from a second term, the rest of the world abounds with on-going game changers.
One historian said that he doesn’t expect Obama to have a sex scandal. Don’t be so sure. There was Secret Service agents involved with prostitutes in South America.
But for today, I’m going to try to take a break from usual rancor and keep JFK’s opening line of his Inaugural Address in mind:
“We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom.”

Be that as it may, the runner-up could have come up with a more convincing alternative. Obviously, the party didn’t. Maybe four years from now….

“Marco Rubio candidate”

Or Chris Christie. The sad part is that while Christie could win a General Election, but is not far enough to the right to survive the GOP Primary.Centrism is a dirty word with the GOP voting base. Anybody willing to shake hands with a democratic president automatically becomes ‘the enemy’.

Mach-the raise in SSDI cannot be placed squarely on Obama.That was the result of the cliff. You can blame a ‘do nothing’ congress for that one.

One of the issues too is that the dems and repubs have slightly different definitions of ‘middle class’.

That’s somewhat relative to where you live. Between 30K and 80K yearly gross. Most repubs I’ve spoken to consider 200K to be middle class. I think that’s laughable. Sort of in the same way Romney considers WalMart to be a ‘small business’. Perhaps, another class deserves national discussion. Its called the WORKING class-those that are a paycheck away from government dependence. And they are definately not in the hearts and minds of the GOP. The GOP have a habit of shooting down job bills, extended unemployment, and financial aid. Here’s where the GOP has been short sighted. Being pro business is just half of the equation. Unless there is a skilled labor pool to hire from, you’re going to have a tough time meeting demand. There has to be a balance between being pro business and being pro labor. We can’t afford NOT to provide more funding for education and job training.

Between 30K and 80K yearly gross.

RIGHT, that leaves you with less than 20K to 60K Net,NOT counting all the other taxes you have to pay and if you think that is middle class in California, and that’s enough to raise a family and send kids to college and everything else the middle class USED to be able to do, then you need to reflect on the cost of living today

T4Y, I am FROM a family, where the parents send their kids to college when it was affordable, not today, it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better T4Y, between California going broke and Obama raising healthcare costs and taxes, we are in for a hard next 10 years.

Good news: The Obama presidency is now more than half over.