I am happy with the election-- especially with Congress and the House. Republicans retained enough seats that they can filibuster. The Democrats may have swept the elections, but 46% of the population still voted Republican. The ability to filibuster should ensure that their voice is heard.

I like checks and balances. Especially against people who want to govern me.

As for Obama himself-- we'll see. In some ways he has been handed a stacked deck. Due to the timing of the market crash, any improvement to the economy will be attributed to him. O's bar for success is low-- make the economy suck less. Compare that to W. who was handed peace, soaring markets and a strong economy. W's bar for success was "Make the worlds best country even better." A very tall order for anyone.

My biggest beef with W-- he was too reactive. Yes a lot of shit happened on his watch; shit that he had no control over-- 9/11. the market crash of 2002, Katrina, terrorism, but he didn't handle these situations in a way that inspired confidence.

He's also made it very hard for any new president to control the debt. When you use over a trillion dollars in debt to finance the war on terrorism and another $700 billion for a bank bail out, you create the impression that you can solve any problem by throwing money at it. That is not responsible. It ignores the future-- the inevitable inflation that too much money creates and the interest that must be paid on the debt, forcing taxes to rise in the long run.

It will now be impossible to fix Social Security by cutting costs or boosting revenues. After you use $700 billion in debt for a bank bail out, refusing to go in debt for an additional $500 billion to fix social security would get you booted out at the next election.

Thanks to this charge-it mentality, there will now be no debate on fixing Social Security. We will silently add its costs to the national debt.

So, I'm not expecting Obama to return to the smaller government, fiscally conservative polices of the 90's . His hands are tied.

In any event, I still have to run my business like no one cares for it but me. I don't get to generate debt on demand. Every month we survive it's because we earned enough to pay the bills. That's the most regretable part of this election and of politics right now. We may be in historic times, but I can't waiste time thinging about it, dwelling on it. Keeping the store open and running it profitably is the thing that matters most to me.