I hope to finish these before I leave for France on December 31. They are all in various states of read-ness.

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Here begins the era of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.

The Democrats did not win the trifecta and so conservative’s predictions of doom will not come to pass. Federal policy will drift leftwards, but we will end the next Congress a far cry from a European welfare state.

Nonetheless, it seems likely that we will be closer to it then we were before. We should learn from the mistakes the Europeans have made as we set up ours; I doubt however, that we will.

Once the country goes left in its politics, it will never come back. In several countries in Europe, most , if not all, the institutions have been co-opted by the system. This means that no one will ever really vote for change, and if they do, the entire system rises up. This is why opera tickets are subsidized in Sweden. This is why the Belgian Pentecostal church I visited bragged that they paid their own pastor. This is why there are strikes and riots in France when they attempt to change the labor laws. Once American institutions have been co-opted, only menial change will be possible.

One set of special interests goes out; another goes in.

What is Obama going to do with all that campaign money he did not spend? I vote he gives it to the Wikimedia project.

Socialist policies will accelerate the decline of cultural institutions like marriage and family and will break apart communities. It is supreme irony that socialism enables radical individualism.

Almost no one wanted McCain to be president. They did not want Obama to be president.

There are many Obama supporters who will be sorely disappointed to find out that Obama really is just a man, and just another politician.

After the presidential election in 2000, a good portion of the Left sank into an overriding, irrational hatred of George Bush. There is the potential for the Right to go the same way. Fortunately, this looks less likely today then it did three days ago.

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Next year we are to bring all the soldiers home
For lack of money, and it is all right.
Places they guarded, or kept orderly,
We want the money for ourselves at home
Instead of working. And this is all right.

It’s hard to say who wanted it to happen,
But now it’s been decided nobody minds.
The places are a long way off, not here,
Which is all right, and from what we hear
The soldiers there only made trouble happen.
Next year we shall be easier in our minds.

Next year we shall be living in a country
That brought its soldiers home for lack of money.
The statues will be standing in the same
Tree-muffled squares, and look nearly the same.
Our children will not know it’s a different country.
All we can hope to leave them now is money.

Philip Larkin

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…looks uncannily like Tina Fey.

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Bolivian (socialist) President Evo Morales has some interesting things to say about the capitalist system. From the BBC:

Speaking through an interpreter at the UN headquarters in New York, he had this uncompromising message: “If we want to save our planet earth, to save life, to save mankind, we have a duty to put an end to the capitalist system.”

Mr Morales also argued against biofuels, crops which are used to produce alternative energy rather than food.

Biofuels resulted in poverty and hunger he said, and were very harmful to the poorest people in the world.

Funny thing about that is, it’s not the capitalists who put those regulations about biofuels in place.

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