I’m slow on the “Jimmy Obama” thing. I assume that’s a reference to Carter and the economic troubles attributed to his administration — especially inflation and interest rates. The latter was a function of the former. The inflation didn’t start in his administration. It was the cumulative affect of LBJ’s “Guns and Butter” policies, OPEC and oil price shocks dating to the Nixon administration; and Nixon’s price controls and the subsequent lifting of same (letting inflationary steam build in the pot and then lifting the lid). Remember WIN (Whip Inflation Now) buttons in Ford’s administration? It was Carter who hired Paul Volker, the guy who broke the inflationary cycle, beginning late in Carter’s one term and continuing under Reagan. But Carter got the blame for everything. Goes with the territory. If we had listened to Carter on energy conservation, we would not be hostage to Middle East oil, at least not to the extent we are today.

The only observable effect of the “stimulus” so far is to completely debase our currency. ($1200 gold, 80$ oil, $l.50 euro.) And yet, Jimmy Obama continues to spend money like a drunken sailor.

Perhaps Jimmy Obama can be consoled by Secretary Hillary whose health plan was also flushed down the crapper of history.

It’s Obama’s war. Which one? Iraq, the one we are withdrawing from? Or Afghanistan, the one we abandoned so Jr. could show up his old man in Iraq? If a kid pukes on the floor at school, do we attribute the mess to the custodian who has to clean it up?

It’s Obama’s depression. You mean the one that started at the end of 2007, kicked into total meltdown in Sept. 08 and was bleeding 600 thousand jobs a month with 6.5% negative GDP growth when Obama took office? When the current technical recovery (GDP growth) turns into human recovery (job growth), will it be Obama’s recovery? Or will we find a way to credit it to Ronald Reagan? Just what is it that Obama did to cause the depression? Hate the bailouts and the stimulus, if you will. But most economists, including some conservative ones, say that, without them, the world would have fallen into the abyss, economically speaking.

It’s Obama’s failed health care plan. Because the current health care system is in such great shape. With as much as we spend on health care in this country, we should be able to give everyone Cadillac health care plus a free MRI and facelift every year just for the fun of it.

I look forward to the rest of Obama’s turn. If the voters want to turn things over to Sarah in 2013, so be it. For now, Obama should just concentrate on doing the right thing, even though there will never be consensus on what that is.

I think you’re on the right path with regards to the timetable. It is a signal to Karzai, though I doubt he’ll give much meaning to it until we draw down in Iraq. When it comes to the Taliban, unless they delusionally believed we were annexing Afghanistan and turning it into the 51st state, they must have always known we would not make a home in land half way across the world occupied by people who speak a ‘foreign language’.

As to your ‘wars with no victory’, I think the real problem is our policy makers are going to have to re-evaluate what 18-23 yr old soldiers with no language/history training can do in a place like Afghanistan, what 30-50 yr old seasoned diplomats can do, how the two might compliment each other (heres a hint: determine which are law enforcement and which are commerce/nation builders. We don’t task our domestic Police with providing us water, electricity, housing, agriculture, etc, etc like we’ve come to expect the Military/Private Security firms to take care of abroad). Basically it comes down to what is the proper balance of responsibility/funding between Dept Defense to Dept State. I think it’s pretty clear that what we currently have — $600+ billion and 2million military at Defense versus $35 billion and just 12,000 Foreign Service officers — suggests at minimum that the State Dept is dangerously underfunded.

I hope this plan of 30k more troops succeeds, but at a cost of another $25-35billion per year I can’t help but wonder if we wouldn’t be better off by putting even just 50% that money behind expanding the Foreign Service and, at whatever cost, training officers in Arabic, Pashto, Urdu, Farsi/Dari to the point that we have 2,000 speakers in each language (I think we have just 400 arabic speakers right now and the others combined is probably smaller than the amount of Arabic speakers). I just have difficulty seeing how we win over the support and the trust of the ordinary people so that they identity with us, want to emulate ‘American idealism’/etc when our deployed personal abroad can’t relate to them linguistically or culturally (do we know enough of their history, the folklore and ‘figures of speech’, etc? probably not).

It’s Obama’s war.

It’s Obama’s depression.

It’s Obama’s failed health plan.

All this after only ten months!

Can you imagine what the next three years and two months hold?