It is a ground breaking day in the US

[Tybae]

On January 20, 2009 at noon EST (GMT-5), Barack Hussein Obama became the first African American to be elected as President of the United States.  If you have not watched the inauguration speech, you can watch it here http://www.msnbc.msn.com/ .  It was a good speech.  Today I am proud to be a citizen of the United States.  President Obama has high expectations and a lot to live up to in his speech.  He is right about our schools.  I live in California, the 7th strongest economy in the world, yet our public schools are ranked next to last in education amongst the rest of the states.  I would gladly take a 2-3% hike in sales tax in California so that our children can have a better education than I did.  Children are our future and to take their school programs away is hurting that future.  A lot of public schools have taken away art programs, music programs and sports programs away from schools in light of the financial situation we are currently facing.  My Alma Mater has eliminated all sports in light of the budget crisis we face in California, yet or governor insists on cutting back education dollars even further so that our politicians can have their cherry wood desks, their thousand dollar suits and their trust funds for their families while the people like me get screwed. 

I hope this is a dawn of a new time in the United States.  That President Obama can help create change in our country.  His campaign slogan was change.  Change is what we so desperately need in the United States and it is only change that can help us get out from under the dark cloud and back into the light.  When the United States economy went down, the rest of the world followed suit.  Now we can only hope that we can start a new lead to follow, the one that gets us out of the situation we are currently in and into brighter times and a brighter future.  I hope that all this can happen.  I hope it all will happen.  We will see. 

[kookoo]

I am proud of the fact that our country is evolving and becoming better and more aware.  It is a slow process but there are good signs if one can look past the hard times.

I am concerned with the direction our governments are going though.  I think California's government is stalling the vital decisions they need to make in the hopes that the new stimulous package will give aid to states.  In this way they can avoid fixing the serious issues they have.  The debts of our governments are skyrocketing and getting out of control.  It is as though we are taking all the bubbles that have burst and making a national super bubble that will create a serious mess if it breaks.

That said, regardless of any politics or other issues that exist in our world, I think that today is truly a momentous day in history.  I also believe that Martin Luther King Jr. would be very proud of us as a nation for taking a step toward his dream.

I know that Barack has said that he will fix the problems that exist.  I truly hope that he is able to make his promises good.  I really do like him in any case.  It's actually very exciting to see him as our president and to be a part of this history. 

[Andarian]

It's always dangerous to venture into politics on non-political discussion forum. But since the topic's been broached I'll take the risk and offer some brief comments, since I do disagree with my esteemed colleagues on a couple of points. I'll try to make my remarks brief, but I can elaborate on them privately with anyone who's interested in further discussion. 

Regarding education: I don't think that the very real problems that we have with it in America are because of insufficient money being spent. In my view the real problem is in educational philosophy, particularly the progressive education movement. Spending more money to keep implementing bad ideas won't help improve education or help our children. It's those ideas that need to be re-evaluated if we're going to make progress on that front.

The budget crisis that we are now facing is the long overdue result of adopting a culture of debt, and trying to live beyond our means. And we aren't going to get out of it by trying to spend even more of other peoples' money with "economic stimulus packages," financed through even more deficit financing or taxation. That was tried during the Great Depression, and the result was to extend what should have been a severe but short-lived economic downturn into something that lasted for more than a decade.

While I wish him well, I have no confidence that our new president will be able to do anything positive about our current problems. That's not something that I think is unique to him, because it frankly describes almost everyone in Washington today (including his opponent and his predecessor). These problems are the predictable result of accepting and acting on certain basic (and false) ideas -- and until those ideas are challenged and re-thought, I don't see much in the way of prospects for positive change.

[Qkrch]

You're all wrong  , because you're all americans

give him some time and let's see what he can do for good or if it's shoted in two months....