I'm back in school again!

After a year, I started taking another college course at Moorpark Community College. Since I want to write, I thought it might be a good idea to learn the basics. This time around I signed up for an on-line course. I love it. But man, I've never done so much work. I'm on the computer every night so far and have just been in class since last Monday, January 12th. I did some work over the weekend before hand. I just wanted to share one of my first assignments. It is a journal entry in which we were asked to interview a family members about the upcoming change in the presidency. So I chose Tim, my husband. (Now don't get too riled up!)I choose to interview not a blood relative, but my husband about the upcoming change in the presidency. My husband has very strong moral, ethical and political beliefs as do I, but is not one to speak out. To begin with, I asked him how he felt about the upcoming change. He said that a lot of people are happy. (He was trying to be evasive.) After five minutes of trying to get him to spell out how he felt about the change, he told me this, "I believe that Mr. Obama and Hillary will be the force behind a new world order. They will establish a more solid base of socialism than in the days of F.D.R." I concurred on that point. What Franklin Delano Roosevelt did in his term of office was to create the "New Deal" or in my words, "A Raw Deal", as social security was never meant to be more than a temporary fix. But a lass another socialist president made sure that the "have's" would fund the "have not's" ad infinitum with "The Great Society". Tim concurred.

I asked him if he thought Obama could change the country. Tim said, "I'm not sure that any president, even Mr. Obama, can do what needs to be done to overcome the years and years of bad financial mismanagement by the government." He went on to say, "sometimes presidents are just dangling puppets for the actual law makers in the House and Senate, policy wonks with boat loads of money and those unseen power brokers in smoke filled back rooms."When asked if Bush acted like a puppet. Tim said that "sometimes Bush was a naive puppet by listening and kowtowing to the opposition in many decisions that have affected the country badly. For instance, in 2001, he told congress to watch out for Freddie Mac and Fannie May stating that allowing excessive loans to people who wouldn't normally qualify for them would spell disaster for the mortgage industry. He wanted congress to put tighter restrictions and governmental controls on their loaning practices." Well that didn't happen. And why you might ask? Because Bush went along with the congressman who swore before a session of congress, that every working person in America should own a home. Tim said "that man was Congressman Barney Frankwho said in effect that everybody was entitled to own a home. Now it didn't matter that those same home buyers couldn't pay for those houses after getting a 100% loan, but that's just another in-your-face affirmation that congress cannot be trusted to do what's in the best interest of the country."

Tim had strong sentiments about government spending that will increase under Obama’s promised fixes. He said, "I'm also concerned by Obama's promises to increase the huge amount of governmental bailouts by at least triple. Who is going to be accountable, who's keep track and who's going to enforce the payback and when, or is it a gift from you and me? No doubt the tax payer, or the ‘have's’, will be responsible for bailing out the car companies, the mortgage companies and anybody else with a legitimate complaint about their business going south. Even Larry Flint asked for money to supplement the failing porn industry.” As if?

Another thing that frightens Tim is Obama's promise to close Guantamo the day after he comes into power.“What in the world will he do with those terrorists? Or in his mind are they really terrorists or just misunderstood religious reformers with viable complaints about the American devils who just acted out irrationally and just need to sit down and talk.”

Yes, in the upcoming change of at the top level of our government, Mr. Obama has promised change and Tim fears change. But my friends, as Tim states, "he didn't promise a good change. Is then change for change's sake really a good change? Or is it a lot of political drool." Tim went on to paraphrase Mr. Obama himself when he told the media the other day that he must put aside his campaign promises because the current situation calls for desperate measures. Isn't that convenient? He intimated that we're all going to have to experience a lot of pain before the crisis is over. Where's my Tylenol?

I'm just glad I wasn't asked how I felt about the upcoming presidential shift in power.