President Elect Obama has demonstrated some traits that allow us to get a reading on his character. One of those traits he demonstrated shows that he wants to form a government of conciliation. He has consistently picked people that he thought would heal the wounds in this country. It is admirable to see him picking from both parties. I personally can't remember the last time I saw anything like this on such a scale. What has this shown us, has it given us a peak into how he will handle international politics? I think that it has. Taking his policy of reconciliation to the international scene, I wouldn't be surprised to see him make overtures of peace to countries like Russia and China and maybe even enter into talks with Iran. I am not saying that we will instantly all get along, that is too much to hope for. What I am saying is that things will probably get better. I look for countries like Cuba to have some sort of diplomatic relations with us in the next four years or so, and things might even get better with so called enemy countries like North Korea.

What makes me say this? I say this because the American people don't know half of the things that we have done to cause friction with these countries. When we hear about these countries, it is always reported that they are performing acts against us and the world community, but anything we do to them is kept secret. I am not saying that we are always the bad guys, what I am saying is that if people realized the way we are tweaking their tails, they might feel different about the situation. Take Russia and China for example. We have treaties that ban weapons from space and yet, it is almost a certainty that we have worked very hard to get them there and probably have space bombers and other space weapons, even though we are treaty signatories. You can gleam a lot of this by reading articles on military requests, especially the US Air Force and reading up on what are believed to be some of our new space planes. Let me remind you that the SR-71, known as the Blackbird, was the most advanced plane in the world when it was retired without a replacement being known. It got close to space. You don't retire something like this unless you have something better.

The Russians announced a couple of years ago that they had lost the race to build a space plane and that the US now dominated orbital space. They must have known something, or they certainly wouldn't have come out with such a statement. Are we flying over other country's air space? I think that you can bet the farm on this. Other countries have configured their satellites to fly over us. There is a massive spying effort going on in orbit. This has led to huge underground projects in this country and in Russia. China is probably doing the same thing. Going underground is not only for protection from nukes, it is to hide our military projects. Another thing that I have mentioned in the past, was the placement of missiles in Poland near the Russian border and the placement of a powerful radar in the Czech Republic which has really angered the Russians. We could have put this stuff in a different place. At one point the Russians begged us not to do it and even offered to let us use their powerful radar, but we dismissed this out of hand. These types of missiles could have been put almost anywhere.

For years we have protected Taiwan from mainland China. This has been a complete about face from World War II where Mao was our ally. Why can't Taiwan protect itself, or even negotiate some sort of peace with China. Why must we be the ones to man the lines between them and the mainland? This might be an area where the new president may try and broker a deal between the two countries. By the way, Red China says that they are both the same country, so I guess it depends on how you look at this problem. As far as I know, the Polish missiles are not in place yet and maybe Obama will kill the project. We also upset the Russians very much when we told them that we were not letting them go back to the moon with us. Some of their scientists were very upset because they thought that they were part of the new moon mission and couldn't understand why we booted them out. They are not saints either and I am sure there is a lot going on in that country that would anger us if we knew about it.

It is being said that no person ever taking office as the President of the United States has ever faced the challenges that President Elect Obama is going to face. I am not saying that this is true or not. I know that Roosevelt had to help us recover from the depression and handle World War II, but he wasn't hit with them both at once. The war started after he was in office eight years already. This guy is being hit with an economy in ruins, high unemployment, unheard of national debt, international relations that are at an all time low and very low US prestige. Some of the countries that we consider our enemies are holding a good portion of our national debt and if they ever ask for payment, we are ruined. There can no longer be politics as usual in this country and I am glad to see a breath of fresh air.

The President Elect has promised a huge infrastructure improvement program that will create many jobs, something like the New Deal, which was created by Franklin D. Roosevelt. That program pulled this country out of the recession. He has also promised to go through the national budget with a fine tooth comb and eliminate unnecessary programs. That is not as easy as it sounds, because most of these things are some Senator's or Representative's pet program. Then there are those programs that are really covers for black ops programs, where the money is really going somewhere else. Some of these programs could even be unknown to the president. At this point I would like to make a suggestion to President Elect Obama. I believe that one of the areas that he must concentrate on is fraud. Many of these programs are riddled with it. Medicaid, Medicare, military contracts, civilian contracts and such are full of fraud. No one even knows the extent of it, it might account for as much as 50% of all costs. There are so many false doctor claims that it has become a national disgrace. As far as military contracts go, if it doesn't work, don't buy it with the promise that it will be fixed. Make these contractors responsible for cost overruns, instead of routinely allowing them to raise the price after they begin work. Jail time should be increased for anyone caught taking bribes and lobbying should be limited and gifts of ANY KIND, forbidden under the penalty of jail time. There will still be people taking bribes, but they will have to risk their freedom to do that.

Another area where new blood is needed is with regulators. They all missed the ball, or looked the other way while financial institutions just about did whatever they wanted to. Did you ever hear of a bank regulating itself? Well that was the deal during the Bush administration. The financial institutions promised to monitor themselves. Great idea wasn't it? This is like not hiring prison guards, because the prisoners have promised to stay in jail on their own. Criminal investigations might be in order here.

President Elect Obama sure has his work cut out for him. Will he cut down or discontinue military assistance to some countries? Will he end the war in Iraq and maybe Afghanistan? Will he mend a lot of broken bridges between us and some of our allies and will he be able to repair this country's economy and medical insurance programs? He needs mighty broad shoulders for each one of these projects and when we look at all of them, they seem daunting. What one project would have priority right now? I guess this is the what is known as the 64 million dollar question. I would think that the economy would be first, hospitalization next and foreign relations would come after that, but I certainly could be wrong.

It looks like Obama is really going to give things the old college try and that is all we can ask from a human being and that is more than anyone has done lately. Will the world look different in four years, probably not, but it could become a calmer place. Will we have more people working? Maybe, but it will take time to turn the economy around. Will we all have hospitalization? Things have to get better, there are about 45,000,000 people without it right now. Can America bounce back again as it did under Roosevelt? You betcha.