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Barack Obama Sworn In As 44th President of the US
Just before noon today, Eastern time, Barack Obama was sworn in before the US Capitol building as the 44th President of the United States (Whitehouse.gov has already been updated to reflect the new President), and offered an inaugural address which outlined some of the challenges that the country currently faces, both within the country's borders and abroad. Obama's election has been called "a civil rights triumph," and his candidacy has inspired perhaps the most visible political involvement of young voters of any candidate since John Kennedy. Here's your chance to discuss the newest occupant of the White House and what you'd like to see happen over the course of his presidency.
He was actually sworn in shortly after noon, although he was President at exactly noon anyway.
FUCK YEAH!
...not going to happen, under this or any administration I fear.
Hear hear!
Black people have too long been denied the disappointment white people have known for decades.
How soon are you going to see it?
... but when you're talking about a journey (of a committee, mind you, since it's not just the president running the country), it's going to be so easy for steps in the wrong direction to occur.
... what, really, can he do? What will he do? And in the end, will most of us be happier about it?
What exactly do you think is going to change?
For better or for worse?
I don't know. I'm just suddenly very pessimistic about the whole thing. Guantanamo is probably a step in the right direction
Don't get me wrong. I'm an American. Proudly so. I voted for Obama. But I just wonder
I talk about stuff.
As the media orgasms all over itself.
After first cutting off Obama, he forgets to say "faithfully" in the pledge, then tacks it onto the end of the clause. Obama clearly recognizes the screwup and pauses where "faithfully" is supposed to go, letting Roberts correct himself. Roberts stumbles, realizing his mistake. Corrects it, sort of. Then Obama continues with Roberts' original phrasing.
To anyone not overly familiar with Article II, Section 1, Clause 8 of the Constitution, it looked like Obama was confused- or stumbled, but he was just in shock to hear Roberts put things out of order.
Nice one there, Roberts.
"After a time, you may find that 'having' is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as 'wanting.' It is not logical, but it is often true."
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
welcome our new African American overlords.
Otherwise, he's a party to discarding the rule of law.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You know, as a geek and an American who's concerned with his personal privacy, there was a single issue which I really took to heart during GWB's presidency and that was telecom immunity (a retroactive law mind you). When Obama went back and ended up supporting it and then continued to support it even into his presidency, I really had to take the whole "Change" mantra with a big grain of salt.
While I have been watching my Twitter log scroll by with people saying they are in tears over this historic moment and the supposed changing of the guard as President Bush left office, I just have to wonder how much really will "Change". And obviously, at least one very important issue, which should be a priority of all Americans, is being overlooked because someone is promising a whole bunch of shit which probably doesn't matter much.
Yet, something which goes against the Constitution is going to be swept under the rug as not all that important because we have a great speaker who appeals to the masses with his great voice, speeches that blow the out-going fool's away, and his supposed "fit" chest as was shown round the world via the media's obsession with the man.
I'm all for a new leader, God knows we needed someone better than GWB 4+ years ago. But man, "Change" is relative I guess. YMMV.
He used the words "data" and "statistics" in his inaugural address in a positive tone, without being the slightest bit derisive. He said that he would, "restore science to its rightful place." There is hope for the US.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
He acknowledged that nonbelievers are American citizens, and reaffirmed the separation of church/state and science.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
We can't have a perfect union. But we can still try to make it a more perfect one, right?
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
da weed!
#1 voted change.gov issue
I'll take those, thank you very much.
My blog
I did the the old fashion way, and went home for a bit and watched on my TV. It's times like this where the internet just isn't setup to handle. TV is great at distributing the same stream to million and millions of people. While the Internet is built around the concept of everyone having a unique connection to services.
Its not what it is, its something else.
Will this affect the date of Singularity? Is Obama pro-singularity? Anybody see him with a bluetooth headset :) ?
Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. Immediately upon taking office, Obama will give his Secretary of Defense and military commanders a new mission in Iraq: ending the war. The removal of our troops will be responsible and phased, directed by military commanders on the ground and done in consultation with the Iraqi government. Military experts believe we can safely redeploy combat brigades from Iraq at a pace of 1 to 2 brigades a month that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 â" more than 7 years after the war began.
He better have a really good reason for not starting to redeploy brigades from Iraq with an end goal of 16 months. A really good reason.
For us tech minded geeks, his fact sheet--including:
Protect the Openness of the Internet
And if I don't see him take the steps he talks about in that plan, I'm going to quickly realize he's just another lying politician. Here's another point that needs to be reprinted all over:
Open Up Government to its Citizens: The Bush Administration has been one of the most secretive, closed administrations in American history. Our nation's progress has been stifled by a system corrupted by millions of lobbying dollars contributed to political campaigns, the revolving door between government and industry, and privileged access to inside information--all of which have led to policies that favor the few against the public interest. An Obama presidency will use cutting-edge technologies to reverse this dynamic, creating a new level of transparency, accountability and participation for America's citizens. Technology-enabled citizen participation has already produced ideas driving Obama's campaign and its vision for how technology can help connect government to its citizens and engage citizens in a democracy. Barack Obama will use the most current technological tools available to make government less beholden to special interest groups and lobbyists and promote citizen participation in government decision-making. Obama will integrate citizens into the actual business of government by:
My work here is dung.
If you let the last eight years hold you back from being a real human being how much of a difference can the change of a president make?
And, seriously, since what is essentially the same congress is in session under Obama as was under Bush do you really think there is going to be a heavy swing in policy? They had a chance to at least fight Bush but nothing was really done.
I'll let the man do what he wants, I have no recourse in that matter anyhow, but I'm not going to blame everything in the last eight years on one man. Putting every failure in a nation of 300 million on the shoulders of one man isn't a very progressive way of thinking. And sadly enough to think that another single person is going to turn everything around isn't a very realistic way of thinking either.
Maybe if "The People" (as in The Constitution) weren't so complacent as to wait for the government to hold our hands we wouldn't be facing what is really the build up of decades of neglect. Again, one man didn't make this mess and one man isn't going to turn it around. He can sure inspire some people but that's about as good as people holding to a new years resolution.
obama is a secret communist muslim!
What a relief; i thought he was an overt fundamentalist christian.
Most of We The People wouldn't know the Constitution from the holes in their asses, pick and choose the parts of it they want to pay attention to and modify the meaning of other parts to their liking, or simply don't care what it has to say in the first place.
This is my signature.
soid st egr.hyTa rsiugm usnin
Any questions?
The real question for Obama voters -- will he still respect us in the morning?
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
Do you believe that there is any difference between the best Presidents we've had and the worst?
If you say "yes", then change is possible.
If you say "no", then change is not possible.
I say that there is a HUGE difference between the best and the worst. But the problem is not just the Presidency. The best President can be hampered by the worst Congress. Obama may be a good President. He may even be a great President. But he's hampered by Congress. And I believe that this Congress is one of the worst.
congratulations from Ireland, I watched the address and beside the all the religious stuff it was quite interesting and I hope Obama brings yee change, hes certainly has more charisma than the shower of wankers who ran my country into the ground lately
anyways to stop ranting, well done, hope the door doesnt hit Bush on his way out
... of hearing "black this" and "Afro-American that" and he just became President. I just hope that the media (and America) can finally get over this whole "race" thing and let the guy do his job. For an election that wasn't supposed to be about race, we sure do hear a lot about it. To Obama: America and the world is watching - MAKE US PROUD!
Sounds rather like "You're either with us or against us... "
Meet the new boss.
Same as the old boss.
A Human Right
I disagree with your view. Why let people hype it all up, and let people 'believe', when all that's going to happen is a huge disappointment. Speculation is what gets the markets in huge trouble, because eventually a correction comes and reality hits, and hits hard. So by your very logic, we shouldn't have tried to do anything with all those speculators on the market, we should have let them keep dreaming of limitless profits... NOTHING BAD HAPPENED, right??? But I guess my example is flawed, since giving people who are drowning in debt, with shitty job prospects at best, a fantasy of everything changing for the better will not end up in even more heartache and suffering in the long run when reality sets back in...
Making Obama into some saviour is just asking for trouble. He can't deliver, not for lack of trying, I'll give you that, but he cannot deliver, the system can't let him. And when he doesn't, and Americans realize that there isn't some magical new president that's gonna make all their problems go away, there's gonna be major backlash.
Of course, please, don't take my word for it... just go to google, or wiki, and look up what happend to other countries who went through similar leadership changes, where the populous believed the new leader would fix all. Scary shit. So letting the delusions of idealism flourish without a reality check is simply going to result in way more sting when reality finally hits home... and it always hits home.
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Removing "dont ask don't tell" and changing it to "tell, who cares". Obama is pro-gay, but he isn't beholden to just the gay community either. He is beholden to every citizen in the country, regardless if they voted for him. If he picked some openly gay pastor, you'd be happy but Obama would have pissed off another segment of our country.
But seriously, I might not agree with Mr. Warren's views and I might not be of the same faith as he, but you have to admit he gave a hell of a prayer.
I think the thing I'd most like to see is a tempering of the utter insanity that is the TSA. We aren't safer because we have to take off our shoes to board an airplane. We aren't safer because we make pilots go through metal detectors. We aren't safer because we're now required to having a driver's license to fly. We aren't safer because we aren't allowed to take our toothpaste (except in teeny tiny tubes) with us. The TSA spends so much time and energy policing our shampoo container size that it can't help but detract from their ability to actually catch potential bombs. Obama has spoken about changing our foreign response to September 11th, but I'd like to see a change in our domestic response as well. I'd like to see more common sense.
That's what I want to see. Too long has the government attempted to fight the free market by throwing money at enforcement. We've spent too many billions on punishing otherwise nonviolent, law-abiding taxpayers. For all the time and treasure we've spent, is there any end in sight? Is there anyone who believes that drug enforcement is reducing the demand for drugs?
In Mexico right now, we've got drug cartels fighting a paramilitary war with the police and Mexican army; that's ongoing. In California, we have national parks and public water supplies being polluted by unregulated growing operations.
We have an out of control national debt, and an opportunity to create a domestic industry, tax it, and stop spending the billions on enforcing these out of date laws. Pretending what we're doing is working, or pretending the problem doesn't exist, doesn't change the facts of the situation. The longer we wait, the more powerful the organized crime syndicates get (just like the mob during alcohol prohibition).
Tax it, regulate it, don't sell it to minors, and bust people for driving under the influence of it. Just stop pretending you can beat it by cracking down on suppliers or users; supply exists where demand exists, and demand will always exist, because people are human.
Don't forget industrial hemp, too, because there's a lot that could be done with it. That would be a huge boon to the country, especially considering that we need new energy mediums and materials for various applications; hemp has one of the longest track records in human civilization as a useful industrial material, and prohibiting it because of marijuana is simply pointless.
That's why I want to see Prohibition 2.0 (hemp/marijuana) ended. I'd also like to see a complete end to the War on Drugs, because like the War on Terror, it's not a war we can ever win. But, that's another post for another time.
So Obama picked a popular yet controversial minister to give the prayer at his inauguration. That does not necessarily mean that Obama shares his views. Part of new administration that Obama has said he would bring would be inclusion especially to opposing viewpoints. That is vastly different from the "you're with us or you're with the terrorists" and the "you're not a patriot if you disagree with the administration" view that we've had the last 8 years.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Unfortunately, the constitution is VAGUE.
It doesn't even outline what the supreme court is supposed to do. What strict constitutionalists fail to realize is that the constitution is not a document written by a group of well meaning men with no political bias or agenda. Quite the opposite, it's the product of intense political bargaining. the 3/5ths Majority, the Missouri compromise, the commerce compromise... This document that we are governed by is meant to try to appease both federalists(with clauses stating that Congress has the power to provide for "general welfare" as well to do everything "necessary and proper" to do that. This is balanced by the 10th amendment placating antifederalists. The founding fathers did not have you in mind when they wrote the Constitution, they had their own interests and agendas in mind.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
We know what the constitution, read literally, says. We just disagree what it actually *means*.
My interpretation? The constitution is the framework in which we have debates in this country. It defines *how* we deal things, not *what* those things we deal with should be.
There is nothing in the constitution about stem cell research, but the constitution will tell us the proper way to resolve the controversies brought forward by its advances. The constitution tells us the president cannot write a law that bans it, the congress writes said law and passes it to the president for approval. The constitution doesn't say "no stem cell research". Same with gay marriage. Same with giving blacks and women the right to vote. The constitution only provides us a process to follow, not the solution.
Looks like they've already got a Technology Agenda posted. This is change I can stand behind. Believe in? When I see it in action. Don't let this make us any less vigilant in protecting our freedom to share information in an open and uninhibited manner.
Mod +1 Inspirational
Mod +4 Correct
That is how our system is supposed to work. We may never get perfection but we can always strive for it.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Stop trolling. We're all lawyers here.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
It really depends if you what view of the commerce and general welfare clauses, as well as the enumerated powers being exhaustive.
"Curious" isn't the view. They limited-government types are interested in a limited government. Too often, when society changed to the point that some people view government powers need expansion, necessitating a Constitutional amendment, they opt instead to ignore/reinterpret the founding document. This has two effect: that part of the document is neutered by the rerouting and the document becomes more distant to current realities instead of being amended in a sufficient manner - so that once it's proposed to follow it, the old interpretation seems "quaint" and out-of-touch.
I'm not sure about you, but I think government running a trillion dollar deficit, bailing out businesses/people left and right is hardly limited.
I don't need a government telling me I should wear a seat belt
But do you want a government who will make sure there's a hospital to fix your broken skull? And a government who will make sure there's quick transportation and trained EMTs?
Developers: We can use your help.
I was told dissent is patriotic.
I dissented with some things (rather vigorously) during the 43rd Presidency. I dissented with a lot of things during the 42nd Presidency.
The 44th President is going to get my dissent as well.
Welcome to the United States of America. I can see you just arrived.
Yes, I know it's a bold thing to liken Obama to Kennedy and King but, I'm sorry, I get flashes of both great men when I watch Obama speak. He possesses an enormous amount of charisma and motivates people and fills them with hope.
If you believe he's just another politician; if you believe he's going to be a big flop and disappoint and all that garbage, do yourself a favour and, more importantly, do everyone around you a favour and shut up. Keep your thoughts to yourself. You're allowed to have them and I won't take that away from you but, at a time when people are filled with hope and idealism, let them be. Don't try to shatter that hope.
Sure he inspires. Yes King inspired. Kennedy inspired. So did Mussolini and Jim Jones. They also filled people with hope.
The fact that he talks well doesn't imply good or evil. It merely makes him more capable of doing whichever he chooses to do. I hope you don't mind if I keep my eyes and mind open, and speak when I see things happening that disturb me. A failure to speak up can shatter hope too.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
He possesses an enormous amount of charisma and motivates people and fills them with hope.
So do faithhealers, used car salesmen, and other con artists. I purposely avoided listening to the speeches of Obama, McCain, and the man for whom I ultimately voted, Nader, so I was not swayed by their charisma. I read speeches the day after, and Obama's have just been vague ramblings about hope and change with absolutely no substance. When you remove his gazes, body language, and pauses-for-effect, there's just nothing left. There was even an article on here a while back about how researches measured "spin" (ie, lying) and found Obama to have the most in his speeches.
I have instead looked at their actions, or lack thereof in Obama's case. He's done little to nothing of significance in his career besides be black and has consistently supported the rights and interests of corporations over the interests of the American people. For those of you who think he's to going to make great changes, please point to ONE thing he has done, not said.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Most of We The People wouldn't know the Constitution from the holes in their asses, pick and choose the parts of it they want to pay attention to and modify the meaning of other parts to their liking, or simply don't care what it has to say in the first place.
Coincidentally, you could say the exact same thing about the Bible. Of course, many people seem to think the Bible is also a governing document of this nation, so I suppose it's fitting that they would treat the two the same way.
He possesses an enormous amount of charisma and motivates people and fills them with hope
So did Hitler.
Being a great public speaker doesn't make someone automagically a great person.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
I found the religious overtones of the ceremony quite disturbing. If he really wanted to reaffirm the separation of church and state he could have started there and then by doing away with the bibles, the preachers and the 'so help me Gods'.
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
Which is the greater benefit: saving 340 homes at $500,000 each, or giving 2 million attendees hope for the future with a big ceremony? Given the degree to which consumer spending props up American GDP, the inauguration may actually MAKE money.
You know, that's one of the funny things I see when looking at America from some thousands of kilometres away.
So supposedly, the sacred right to bear arms is there to keep the government in line, in case it oversteps its constitutional bounds. Lemme see, the Bushies did:
- effectively suspending habeas corpus,
- used torture,
- starting a war of aggression, and justified it by
- outright lying about the evidence, (plus, see two paragraphs above, it turns out that all the "witnesses" they had, had been waterboarded until they said what the Bushies wanted to hear,)
- massive surveillace of its own citizens, down to data-mining grocery bills,
- politicizing every branch of the government they could lay their hands on,
- trying to keep official emails from the _legal_ mandated openness, by using private accounts for government business, or by just making excuses (apparently they didn't make backups, ya know)
- saying out loud that the constitution is just a piece of paper and doesn't apply to them,
Etc.
Did I see the gun-loving right at least hinting about the possibility of a revolt over it? (Yes, at the end of the series of other boxes, but still.) Nah, they voted for him again.
But here comes a president which at least promises to undo some of that evil, and restore at least _some_ of those constitutional rights. (Whether he'll keep that promise, remains to be seen.) What does the gun-loving right immediately fear? "OMG, he might take our guns away."
It seems to me that the gun lovers care _only_ about exactly _one_ piece of the constitution: the second amendment. No more, no less. Wipe your ass with the rest constitution if you will, they sure won't mind it. So exactly how does that work as a constitutional safeguard, then?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Why should he be denied what the previous guy in office, who helped get us to this mess, got?
It's also paid for by private funds - not tax dollars.
It also generates revenue (tourism dollars, media ad buys, etc)
It also makes people happy to see the president they elect take the oath
It also lets the world know there is a new sheriff in town.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
(and a healthy one too). My opinion? We simply cannot be competitive as a nation with a "weak" federal government in concert with "strong" state governments. There has to be a balance, yes. But one must realize that our competition doesn't want to negotiate with 50 little states, they want to negotiate with a single big one. I suppose, though cannot back it up, that this was the logic behind the formation of the EU--each country just couln't compete in a modern global market so they had to unite.
The wording of this amendment is intentionally vague. If it was overly strict, the constitution would quickly become irrelevant as the times changed. For example, what if the constitution was formed when people thought radio was a novelty and they included "the federal government should not regulate radio". You and I might not agree with everything about the FCC, but you have to admit that it would be a mess if every state had it's one mini-FCC regulating our radio spectrum. And if the language in the constitution was as strong and strictly worded as "no radio", you'd need to re-amend the constitution to overturn such a ill-thought piece of legislation.
Hell, what if that amendment said "The federal government should not create nor regulate the roads used by horseless carriages"? No highway system would have been built.
The constitution is vague for a reason. Democrats vs Republicans vs Libertarians are not debates about "are you loyal to the constitution", but really debates carried out under the constitution about how to deal with modern issues. The constitution is what gives us the ability *to* debate the issues.
But the constitution did not explicitly say "whether you're a man or woman, black or white, gay or straight", did it? I mean, even read literally, it doesn't matter what the constitution says if you don't consider blacks to be humans.
The fourteen amendment was only created after the civil war, don't forget. We fought a war with ourselves to resolve that issue.
Who was that announcer? He sounded like the "Let's Get Ready To Rumble" guy. I half expected him to announce "In this corner, President Elect Barack H. Obama. In that corner, Chief Justice Roberts. Let's get ready to INAUGURAAAAAAAATE!"
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
We missed you.
Love,
The Rest of The Modern World.
ps. Any chance you could have a word with Australia about internet censorship? That'd be swell.
Classical Liberalism: All your base are belong to you.
The real one seems lame. Now the Lego one though was what should have made slashdot.
Lego Obama Presidential Inauguration Brings Hope to Bricks Too
http://i.gizmodo.com/photogallery/legoobamainauguration/1006247332
No, republicans "borrow and spend". Democrats "tax and spend". The republican approach is even worse than the democratic approach.
Bush ran up even higher relative deficits than Reagan, and that is saying something!
BTW, I think that the time for dogmatic democrat vs. republican dogma is no longer appropriate.
And it should be clear *why* taking office should be time-based, not oath-based when you consider what might happen during wartime. Like, what if serious military shit was hitting the fan on the day of the inauguration? Under an oath-based system, the incoming president would probably have more pressing things to do then swear an oath on a bible. With a time-based system like we now have, it is very clear who is in power at all times. Oath-based, not so much.
Before that amendment was passed, the incoming president would have to drop everything and get sworn in before deal with whatever. Lets not even forget that if he or she did something requiring executive privilege and wasn't technically sworn in. During the aftermath, without the amendment, everything the new president did prior to taking the oath would fall into question (i.e. were they technically president)?
No, taking the the oath is more for show then a requirement. As it should be.
Left-wingers might have an irrational fear that a police officer will shoot them dead
There are more arrests for marijuana possession in this country than there are arrests for violent crimes. It is a fact that the police victimize more people than they protect. Fearing the police is not irrational at all.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
But do you want a government who will make sure there's a hospital to fix your broken skull? And a government who will make sure there's quick transportation and trained EMTs?
Hard to say. Some argue that such services wouldn't exist if the government weren't providing them, but that's not necessarily true. Firefighting services in the unincorporated county lands where my father lives in Arizona are largely subscription funded. You call the fire department because your house is on fire and you haven't paid for the service, they do show up... but only to make sure everyone's out of the house and your service-paying neighbor's house doesn't burn down. You can beg and throw cash at them, but they'll watch your house burn down. Hard to say to what degree this approach could be applied to emergency medical services. Actually, it already is that way, to some degree. Here in Los Angeles they'll haul you to the closest hospital, but if they find out you have no insurance, you'll be given the minimum medical attention necessary to stabilize you, then you'll be thrown in an ambulance and driven up to forty miles to County-USC hospital--- the only remaining public hospital--- to wait for hours in line next to all the other poor folks waiting to have their stabs, gunshots, and assorted poor-folk injuries taken care of on the county's dime.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Heterosexual people have the right to marry whoever they chose.
Homosexual people don't.
Homosexual people find themselves in exactly the same position "interracial" marriages found themselves decades ago: with state governments curtailing their freedoms to pursue happiness as they see fit.
The time will come when people will not understand how such barbaric impositions were in place.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Or that firing US Attorneys is something that only Bush did and it is unprecedented.
Nice try, Karl Rove. The way that Bush did it is unprecedented, because only certain Attorneys were fired. Clinton, for example, fired ALL 90-something of them. There's a fine line between sweeping out everyone, and sweeping out just the ones that aren't "loyal Bushies". That phrase in quotes alone ought to make you throw up in your mouth a little bit, if you have any respect for what these people are supposed to do.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
...on electing a president who can speak English.
Government run healthcare systems seem to work well enough for Britain, the UK, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Japan, Taiwan Switzerland, et cetera, et cetera. Government run power is why France gets 80% of its energy from nuclear plants and can tell the Middle East to get bent. Do you think a private corporation is ever going to invest in a nuclear plant, given the length of construction time and delay of ROI, when you can slap up a coal-burner and start raking in the bucks immediately? And airlines? FedGov has been bailing them out for decades - they might as well be nationalized, it's not like they could get any worse.
As an American I've come to the conclusion that the reason that these socialized programs work in other countries and not in the U.S. is not due to some fundamental problem of ideology, but that a majority of the American _people_ in both the public and private sector are myopic, mentally defective and terminally incompetent.