Ideologies are wonderful, but they don't feed the bulldog, as feeding the dog requires practical effort versus over-the-rainbow idealism.

We all suffer from some form of idealism, mellowed somewhat with the pragmatism of fiscal shock that accompanies our retirement funds balance.

We can do the blame game for infinity, but no single Presidential administration can be tagged as demonistic. The "last one was the worst" has been the political battle cry for eons, and will also be said about the current one when he eventually leaves the government housiing facility on PA Ave, DC. Even George Wahington was slammed by those who sought to replace him, as many back then thought he may have been a half-decent general, but were cooled on his domestic and foreign policies. "Yeah, but..." just doesn't cut it, and sure won't make tomorrow any better.

VK - you and I definitely disagree on the performance of Pres. Obama so far. If the choices for the majority of the Cabinet Secretary posts are truly his (and not DNC-directed), then nominating tax scofflaws, persons with no technical insight on agency operations, and folk with imputed ethical questionability is to me "performance" as much as signing a bill which has cleared the Congress. Whipsawing Congressional action via fearmongering is scurrilous, especially when such action does indeed concern itself with a pork-stuffed billl, and pulpiting that "there is no pork" does not make it so. We may have lost a lot of our talents in our senior years, but we still can read and cipher.

In the end, this "stimulus package" will be paid by less than one-third of the population, as these are the people who actually have a federal tax consequence. Being one of the "lucky 1/3rd," I just don't see the stimulus package as a thought-driven program, but a rush-to-spend. In other words, there is no true cost-benefit analysis to back up the claims of XX-million new jobs or anything else - just some rhetoric and hypotheses based on unknown data. If I took such a risk-loaded and special-payments plan to a venture capitalist or other lending institution for funding - and said you have no time to review or critique it, just pony up the money NOW - I'd be laughed out of the building.

The past - including the Clinton, Bush-42, Carter, Reagan, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, and so on years - is now the past. They all were both good and lousy, depending on the issue(s). Let's now look at today and tomorrow, so the day-after-tomorrow isn't worse than today.