It's over.

I had such hope 1 year ago.

Obama gave me that hope….and now he has killed it.

I honestly thought that Obama would be a true progressive and, with a focus on health, education and energy, would help a moribund America reclaim its leadership role in the world.

Instead, it looks like, for the foreseeable future, the world's leadership role will belong to the dynamic and growing European Union, with China providing everyone cheap goods (...until its sex-selective abortion practices and skewed-to-the-male population imbalance results in the same thing you get every time a mammal population has more males than females; increased aggressiveness.  Look for a land war in Asia in the near future).

America has become the modern Rome…with excessive military commitments, high income disparity and economic stagnation.

It did not have to come to this.

IF Obama had used the bully-pulpit to decry the abuses of the last 8 years, and remind people that popular policies are not always good policies…

IF Obama had castigated the pre-Depression economic mentality of the Republicans and reminded people that the private sector can only thrive with sound rules, regulations and boundaries put in place by a strong yet cooperative public sector…

IF Obama had hired Paul Krugman or Paul Volcker for Treasury instead of Tim Geitner...

IF Obama had presented his stricter banking rules in January, 2009 instead of January, 2010…

IF Obama had offered a focused, progressive message on health care outlining the private sector economic benefits of a public sector health insurance program, instead of letting Congress perform its legislative sausage-making in public…

IF our political culture had not been so corrupt, with politicians running on fear and dollars...

IF the media had not surrendered its First Amendment duties in pursuit of profits...

…we might not still be the Second Rome.

A president has a brief window of opportunity at the beginning of his or her administration to spend political capital.  The ruthlessness of the corrupt American election cycle demands nothing less.

But Obama didn't.

I wonder if Obama can see the barbarians at the gate…like Marcus Aurelius before him...

Finally...here is a little something to make you laugh...before you start to cry.

(I am going on hiatus now, at the beginning of these Dark Ages...I shall return at the beginning of the Renaissance...which if history holds, will be in about 1200 years.)