by scott

"presidential power... continued to approve when the Soviet threat and the broader Cold War led to permanent and still underappreciated expansions in the constitutional powers of the president. Rather than fully demobilize, as in past wars, the government maintained a multimillion-person peacetime standing army for the remainder of the Cold War, and in 1947 it established new institutions--including the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council--to manage the peacetime military bureaucracy. These and similar institutions concentrated unprecedented authority in the president, which Harry Truman was quick to exercise. Most momentously, in 1950, without congressional authorization or consultation, he dispatched American troops to defend South Korea from North Korean attack and announced his intention to send four divisions (about 100,000 men) to a NATO force in Europe."

Interesting concept. That the power of the president in modern times is linked to the rise of military strength. Had the US demobilized like other wars, would Truman have had the power to move to South Korea? Who Johnson have the power to go into Vietnam? Would Bush had the power to go to Iraq?
Military force, which under the constitution is given to the president from congress. However, this check and balance no longer is needed since the military is at all times "ready for duty" at the call of the president.

Need of a leader by Scott

I was reading this article, by Todd Purdum from Vanity Fair, looking for something else, when I came across this paragraph

"Sure, Obama has made his share of mistakes, rookie and otherwise. But don’t count him out—not just yet. For the fault, dear readers, lies not in our stars, nor even in our rock-star president, but in ourselves: in our impatience, our intemperance, our lack of perspective, our susceptibility to the easy untruth and the quick fix. Barack Obama only rarely falls victim to any of these vices, and, with luck, he may yet save us from ourselves."

Is this worship of a governmental leader healthy for a democratic/republic style government?

I have overheard people say things such as, "if congress just got out of Obama's way then he could fix everything." or "it's Nancy and Harry that are messing things up and making Obama look bad, they should just get out of the way."

Is this article and others attacking the very foundation of our government or am I over-reacting?

Here is the article. It is very amazing on how he believes Obama can do no wrong.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2010/01/purdum-on-obama-201001

What do elections tell us? by Scott

As the people the real only voice they have is in an election. So what did the election of Scott Brown tell us?

Jacob S. Hacker and Daniel Hopkins wrote in the Washington Post "If there is a lesson in the Massachusetts vote, it is this: pass a [health-care] bill. The nation needs reform. Democrats need an accomplishment. And Democratic activists and voters need a new cause: fixing reform, not abandoning it."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/19/AR2010011902846.html

Fred Barnes from the Weekly Standard, "The health care bill, ObamaCare, is dead with not the slightest prospect of resurrection. Brown ran to be the 41st vote for filibuster and now he is just that. Democrats have talked up clever strategies to pass the bill in the Senate despite Brown, but they won’t fly. It’s one thing for ObamaCare to be rejected by the American public in poll after poll. But it becomes a matter of considerably greater political magnitude when ObamaCare causes the loss of a Senate race in the blue state of Massachusetts."
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/health-care-bill-dead

Todd Purdum writes this from Vanity Fair, "If a wildly popular new president, with sizable majorities in both houses of Congress, couldn't bend the system to his will already, the fate of a single Massachusetts Senate candidate should hardly matter a damn."

Obama: Bank Tax

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100114/ap_on_bi_ge/us_obama_bank_fees

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/15/us/15tax.html?ref=business

"I think it is entirely reasonable to say that the industry that, A, caused these problems more than any other and, B, benefited from the activity, should be contributing," said Democratic Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

"Politics have overtaken the economics," said Scott Talbott, the chief lobbyist for the Financial Services Roundtable, a group representing large Wall Street institutions. "This is a punitive tax on companies that repaid TARP in full or never took TARP."

Even before details came out, Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase & Co., said: "Using tax policy to punish people is a bad idea."

What do you think?

diplomacy

Here is a question. Obama recently visited Japan and bowed down to the emperor there. while our First Diplomat is visiting other countries, how far should he/she go in respecting the other country's customers at the expense of our own?

Post from Nathan

I would have posted this for open post monday but this will have to due. Its a politically related sort of hypothetical: if we remove the issue of slavery (so that ethical considerations don't play as much of a role here) would you rather live under the USA or the Confederacy?

CA v. TX

This artilce is long but it is worth the read. Please read it and tell me what you think. It is comparing CA to TX, but more importantly it is comparing high-tax states to low-tax states.
I'm very interested in your thoughts.

http://www.city-journal.org/printable.php?id=5433