I have no opinion one way or another about whether the stimulus bill will help or further damage the economy, Doug. I just don't know at this point. I mean, seriously...I don't know! How could I?

Your puzzlement over Barry's being so moved by Obama is because you yourself don't believe in Obama, so you don't get it. However, I remember you saying some years back how tremendously moved you were by George W. Bush when he was campaigning in his first run for the presidency. That made sense to you (and not to many here) because you believed in George Bush. Barry believes in Obama. It's that simple, and that's really all there is to it. People are deeply emotionally moved by hearing a leader whom they really believe in. He may be right. He may be wrong. They are, in any case, moved...and they believe him. Look at how the Germans believed in Hitler, for gosh sakes! They were ready to move mountains for him in 1939.

You'll probably never feel that tingle or thrill when you hear Obama. After all, your entire sympathetic nervous system says "Ack! I don't like him." when it detects Obama...sort of like the body encountering an allergen...so you don't get those good feelings tingling through you, and I expect you never will.

People don't realize how automatic their responses are once they have made their mind up about anything. Anything at all. You name it. They make up their minds, and from then on it's basically automatic response....barring some complete and utter catastrophe or terrible disappointment which causes them to change their minds (as many Germans eventually did about Hitler...).

We're all like that, Doug, me included, we go by mostly automatic response, and I know it. We experience a programmed response, based on past assumptions that have gone deep into our subconscious, and THEN we summon up all kinds of logic and "evidence" to defend that programmed response. We might be right. We might be half-right. We might be wholly in error. Time will tell.

And so it goes...

That's why none of the persistent political wrangles that occur between specific people here will ever reach a positive resolution and a meeting of minds. Trust me. ;-) I know this. I've been watching it ever since I was knee-high to a beagle. When I was younger I was so completely submerged in the unquestioning faith of my own automatic responses to anything I had a strong opinion on that I didn't even know it was happening (in me, I mean...). I only saw it happening in others.

Now I see it happening in everybody. It's like the dream the entire world is lost in, and nothing takes people deeper into that mad, divisive dream than politics does.

Well...and religion (or atheism), coupled with politics.

Of course Obama can't walk on water. He'll be very lucky to survive the next four years without becoming wornout and jaded and quite disappointed by the entire experience. That's why I wish him luck.