Obama publicly stated that extraordinary renditions will continue under his administrations. He also announced that the NSA can continue with their FISA-ignoring wiretapping of Americans. I'm glad that Seattle is in-sync with the continued assault on our civil liberties. Let's not even talk about the lobbyists and insiders filling his cabinet. Finally, Obama is really a bad public speaker. His so-called “soaring rhetoric” is filled with awkward pauses and inflections. He can't even utter a simple sentence that doesn't sounds like he is back pontificating in the Senate.

Now that's change you can believe in!

"Now there’s hope that in the next decade we’ll move ahead feeling a little saner, knowing that we share a common reality with the majority of America. "

Nope. The majority of Americans are neither as stupid nor as unkempt. When you start seeing multiple facial piercings in the suburbs of Omaha, then you should worry. Until then the city will just slob on spending what money remains to it on wind-powered flatulence generators.

I've already sent for my "Who is John Galt?" bumper sticker. We survived Jimmy Carter. We should be able to survive this.

I don't. I really hope Seattle crashes and burns and that all these greeniacs wake up in the rubble thinking, "I can't believe I forget to stock up on guns, canned goods, and ammo."

Wow, who let these misfits writing the comments in? It's probably the same person, at least 2 of them are.

I don't agree with Mayor Nichols on a lot of things, but when he took a leadership position on supporting the Kyoto Accords, and took his opinions to the National Conference of Mayors I was proud of him. He generated a lot of agreement, and exposed the glaring and irresponsible absence of leadership from the Bush administration.

So far Obama hasn't been perfect, and I'm not happy with several of his appointments, but the country is in a hangover mode from eight years of rule by Ivy League troglodytes.

Obama has said many times he wants to change the Washington "culture", but that will be no easy or simple task, it will involve many political risks he may not be anxious to take after only a few weeks in office.

Cheney/Bush reveled in the corruption of Washington culture and contributed to it without caring about any consequences for the country. Now corruption and conflict of interest are endemic to the system.

The stars are aligned for this country to undergo many positive changes and innovations in technology and infrastructure that many developed countries around the world are already well ahead of us on. After a period of about thirty years when the Republican Party gave us three presidents who were the first in American history to actively discourage and undermine innovation we are no longer in the same leadership position we were in before 1980.

The times they are a changin'. And the sooner the better.

It's amazing how the liberals (like DavidT) stopped worrying about NSA spying on Americans as soon as a Demolib was doing the spying. Even the ACLU is silent on the issue. More proof that left-liberals are instinctive totalitarians. They don't mind an oppressive government apparatus as long as the boot on our necks belongs to a liberal Democrat.

There could be no better investment in America than to invest in America becoming energy independent! We need to utilize everything in out power to reduce our dependence on foreign oil including using our own natural resources. Create cheap clean energy, new badly needed green jobs, and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. The high cost of fuel this past year seriously damaged our economy and society. The cost of fuel effects every facet of consumer goods from production to shipping costs. After a brief reprieve gas is inching back up. OPEC will continue to cut production until they achieve their desired 80-100. per barrel. If all gasoline cars, trucks, and SUV's instead had plug-in electric drive trains, the amount of electricity needed to replace gasoline is about equal to the estimated wind energy potential of the state of North Dakota. There is a really good new book out by Jeff Wilson called The Manhattan Project of 2009 Energy Independence Now.

No country is energy independent. Not even Saudi Arabia. You're chasing a mirage. When a plug-in electric vehicle can go 200 miles, not 40 miles, it might make sense. In the meantime, each of these primitive electric vehicles and hybrids does more damage to the environment, from extracting the raw materials to disposal of the scrap, than a Chevrolet Suburban. Here's a tip: Don't be heavily invested in green technology companies when that bubble bursts. I give it five years - seven, tops. Sorry to be the bearer of Inconvenient Truths.

"There could be no better investment in America than to invest in America becoming energy independent! We need to utilize everything in out power to reduce our dependence on foreign oil including using our own natural resources."

Obama calls Alaska gas pipeline promising
ENERGY RESOURCE: President plans to discuss it with Canadians.

http://www.adn.com/money/industries/oil/pipeline/story/687588.html

dbreneman,

You are 100% correct. Of course, the Al Gore fans who are emotionally invested in green technology as a means to assuage their liberal guilt stubbornly refuse to pull their heads out of the sand. Eventually, however, realty will bite them in the arse.

Oh, please, Crosscut editors, consider moderating the comments. I love the interplay of differing opinions and responses, but the contemptuous name-calling is so boring and rude, it's no fun. Commenters: would you please try to make your point without dragging in a stereotype to support it?

About the article--I'm hopeful about this national political realignment in the way that someone on a shipwreck might be hopeful about a sail in the distance. Which means, I know it might be a pirate but am still going to be standing right here on the sinking deck cheering for that sail with all my energy because hope seems saner to me right now, more constructive and useful, than the alternative. And I also see reason to hope. Of course we all need freedom to watchdog Obama's policies, and there are ugly political realities and big disappointments in store--as there always are with any human administration--but what's the point in being bitter, devaluing, or overly cynical about him or his administration? Or in denying what's good?

I see Berger's finally given into the latest brand of revivalism. Unfortunately, this is not the confirmation of cosmopolitan liberalism, but the faltering of American Exceptionalism and the accompanying liberal project. Recent claims to ascendancy pivot solely on the denunciation of liberal brethren as heretics; brethren that have carried the torch of liberalism as outcasts. Namely, those disaffected, and subsequently militarized liberals born out of the schism on the 60's: the neo-conservatives and their neo-liberal project. That they did so under the cloak of Protestant revivalism, rather than the current revival of Scientism, is the primary source of tension between the two strains of Liberalism. Make no mistake, Obama pursues the same ends as Bush: securing the material trappings of American-style freedom and liberty to the exclusion of most the worlds inhabitants and future generations. Obama's embrace of Carter's rejected vision only testifies to the diminished nature of American Exceptionalism--a vision that increases mechanization at the expense of the natural world.

'We’ve lost some of that during boom times as Seattle has become less affordable and the divide between rich and poor has widened.'

Were we out of step with the rest of the country? You bet. Since the mid-nineties Seattle has gotten more and more overdue for a bit of deflation. When you see people you know who grew up here and work two jobs end up homeless, something is really wrong with how we measure success.

I've seen cities where the wealthy leaders actually perform for the benefit of the city, because they have values that are not about things like Paul Allen's urban removal scheme or creation of Seattle as the bedroom community for Microsoft hipsters, all in the name of creating a 'world class city'. Let's focus on being world class for the people who actually live and work here.

Maybe the politics will actually meet right-side-up economics and folks will take a deep breath and prioritize the right stuff.