The Ten O'Clock Scholar: And the Planet Began to Heal

Obama said you can all now tell your children,

this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.

I, too, hope a bright future and a successful Presidency emerges.

Unfortunately hope, rather than evidence, is all I have to go on at this point.

The President doesn't write laws and events will likely dictate foreign policy. My biggest disappointment is in the (apparently)
lost chance to moderate the composition of the Supreme and lower courts away from judicial activists, who will continue to plague us for another generation.

Let's hope he didn't really mean it when he spoke of supporting higher energy prices, higher taxes, redistribution of wealth to non-taxpayers, and loss of secret ballots in unionization.

The stock market sold off today, with coal stocks down -10.5%, as he's said his policy will be to "bankrupt" coal-fired electricity plants, which will hurt the coal industry (i.e. Pennsylvania and Ohio, that's you!). His view is the only "clean" coal that's acceptable is one with zero emission of carbon dioxide -- but CO2 is not a pollutant and does not drive global warming!

The "good" news is it will no longer be possible to hide behind "hope" rhetoric and a shockingly fauning press -- expectations for results are enormously high.

The other good news is now maybe half the country can get over its Bush hatred and its unwillingness to do anything but obstruct; now try governing for a change, ha ha ha.

One-party rule ruined the Republicans; it will do so to the Democrats in short order as well.

Noted ex-blogger Steven Den Beste has some chilling predictions. Read it all:

I think this election is going to be a "coming of age" moment for a lot of people. They say, "Be careful what you wish for" and a lot of people got their wish yesterday.

And now they're bound to be disappointed. Not even Jesus could satisfy all the expectations of Obama's most vocal supporters, or fulfill all the promises Obama has made.

I think Obama is going to turn out to be the worst president since Carter, and for the same reason: good intentions do not guarantee good results. Idealists often stub their toes on the wayward rocks of reality, and fall on their faces. And the world doesn't respond to benign behavior benignly.

But there's another reason why: Obama has been hiding his light under a basket. A lot of people bought a pig in a poke today, and now they're going to find out what they bought. Obama isn't what most of them think he is. The intoxication of the cult will wear off, leaving a monumental hangover.

And four years from now they'll be older and much wiser.
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I would have enjoyed watching lefty heads explode if McCain had won. But we're going to see lefty heads exploding anyway; it's just going to take longer.

I would have enjoyed that too.

Now, a few predictions for the next four years:

1. Obama's "hold out your hand to everyone" foreign policy is going to be a catastrophe. They'll love it in Europe. They're probably laughing their heads off about it in the middle east already.

2. The US hasn't suffered a terrorist attack by al Qaeda since 9/11, but we'll get at least one during Obama's term.

3. We're going to lose in Afghanistan.

4. Iran will get nuclear weapons. There will be nuclear war between Iran and Israel. (This is the only irreversibly terrible thing I see upcoming, and it's very bad indeed.)

5. There will eventually be a press backlash against Obama which will make their treatment of Bush look mild. Partly that's going to be because Obama is going to disappoint them just as much as all his other supporters. Partly it will be the MSM desperately trying to regain its own credibility, by trying to show that they're not in his tank any longer. And because of that they are eventually going to do the reporting they should have done during this campaign, about Obama's less-than-savory friends, and about voter fraud, and about illegal fund-raising, and about a lot of other things.

and 6. Obama will not be re-elected in 2012. He may even end up doing an LBJ and not even running again.