From most of the polls it appears that Obama will be elected. As Colin Powell said it will be a "transformational event". I has been eight long years since I said "anybody but Bush". I never envisioned that those years would be so terrible. How our country could be taken over by a pack of idiologues that ran it into the ground not only here but throughout the world is too sad to think about.

Our national psyche has some serious problems. We can't feel sorry for ourselves. We did it to ourselves. A large part of the blame goes to our hyper commercial system. It is Capitalism on steroids. Unquestionably capitalism in a democracy is a wonderful combination, but it has to be tempered by concience. There must be limits to the extent that unregulated business is permitted to go its merry way with disregard for moral restraints. I feel strongly that safeguards such as bond rating services, Standard and Poor and Moodys, were malfeasant in their mistaken ratings of AAA and AA for the mortgage bonds that turned out to be toxic. When money is leveraged 30 times there must be a red light that goes on somewhere.
It was also the total lack of restraint that drove millions to secure loans they could not possibly repay. Of course the brakes should have been applied by the gimlet eyed bankers who gleefully solicited and wrote up contracts that, though profitable, they knew would eventually be found fraudulent down the road. Stifling their conciences they hoped it would happen far from their doorstep. That it happend on such an enormous scale shows how fast and how vast the financial system extends. It not only contaminated the U.S. but a great portion of the world. Those other countries, greedy themselves, cannot feel kindly toward the U.S. for handing them such hot potatoes.
With the change in administrations dare I expect that the EPA and other governmental agencies will now do their jobs honestly and not at the beck and call of corporations? In 2000 I saw the corporations lining up behind Bush and feared the consequences. It all came to pass.
There are fundamental changes I am hopeful of. Health care has to be reformed. Eventually there needs be a single payor system if we are ever to control costs. The tremendous overhead and paperwork stagnation of the present mess can't be tolerated. Then our infrastructure is in bad shape from years of neglect. Putting money into this program is a super job creator with a useful payback. Next we must upgrade the educational program and fund it. Not just hyperbole but real action and follow-up. The environment is sadly deteriorated from too many years of not only neglect but depredations and exploitation.
The tax structure must be changed to dissuade manuacturers from exporting jobs to other countries. Disallow offshore addresses that allow corporations to escape properly owed taxes.

The Iraq war and the increasing involvement in Afghanistan is looming over everything and how that is resolved remains to be seen. At least now we will have a rational head as commander-in-chief so I am hopeful that a reasonable solution will be found.

That is entirely beyond the ability of any administration to accomplish in one session. Let's hope our legislators will kick their oppositional habits and cooperate for the good of the country -- for once.

Now that the conservative socialists have become socialist conservatives there may be a glimmer of hope that there is an opportunity to get some things straight.