Obama says US economy "poised to take off".

POTUS has been making claims that the US economy is poised to take off.  Meantime, Michelle Malkin of Twitchy.com and others on Twitter are calling the statement laughable.

While the economy may not take off, it seems it is indeed poised to do so if the deficit is any indication.  The deficit is shrinking at the fastest rate since WWII.

I am not attributing this fact to Obama or the WH.  Nevertheless, this seems like a good position from which to take off.  I have no doubt that Congress and POTUS can find a way to screw this up, but calling the statement laughable is a little disingenuous.

(Incidentally, consumer confidence and business spending are both up).

That's Democracy! (or not).

When I talk to students about democracy (the history of the institution in ancient Greece), I like to remind them that the word does not mean, as we are always taught, power to the people.  Deme is a Greek word which originally referred to the smallest geo-political unit within a polis (think: municipality).  In this sense, democracy means power to the municipalities (the word eventually comes to refer to the people living in those municipalities, and then simply people).  Kleisthenes saw that self governance was more easily accomplished on the local level--after all, who knows the local issues and problems better than those immediately affected?  For this reason, I've always been sympathetic to the notion of secession (at least in principle).  However, I cannot help but laugh at this:

Here is the full story.

The issue is not that secession is bad in principle, but that the petitioners seem to be driven by the fact of Obama's reelection.  In other words, this is a slightly different version of the classic, "if Obama/Bush/Gore wins, I'm moving to Canada".  The possibility that your candidate may lose is a part of any democracy which relies on voting.  Seceding from the union will not change that--unless your intention is to secede so that you can establish a dictatorship.

Protesting... like... stuff... and all.

The right to assembly (and protest) is fundamental to the democratic process.  Voting is not (and should not be) the only way the people can make their voices heard.  Further, one cannot support the right to assemble (and protest) only when he agrees with the cause of the protesters--otherwise, you are not talking about a right in any technical sense.  Nevertheless, your right to protest doesn't prevent you from being criticized for the views you express in the context of your protest.  Apparently some 400 students at Ole Miss (University of Mississippi) protested the reelection of President Obama earlier this week.  Protest all you want, I say.  But what exactly are you protesting?  Elections?  Democracy?  Voting?  If you don't like the president or his policies, perhaps what you don't like should be made more specific (protest tax hikes, protest Obamacare, protest the alleged mishandling of the Benghazi affair).  Otherwise you appear to be protesting the very system of rights which legitimize your protest.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/11/08/2-arrested-as-anti-obama-protests-escalate-at-ole-miss/
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57547048-504083/election-protest-at-ole-miss-had-racial-overtones-prompts-unity-vigil-in-response/
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/us/anti-obama-protest-at-university-of-mississippi-turns-unruly.html?_r=0
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/election-protest-ole-miss-escalates-arrested-17666000

Watch out for that CLIFF!

Tuesday night brought with it several changes--no, there was no change in the White House; the House is still Republican and the Senate still Democrat.  But the congressional elections were a huge win for women and for doctors.  So now it's time for the legislature to get to work.  First on the agenda is avoiding a natural disaster--not Sandy, not the Nor'easter, but the Fiscal Cliff.  If you're like me, you've seen this phrase in the news often lately and wondered what this proposed precipice problem is all about.  As it turns out, the phrase is only half accurate: the problem is fiscal, but it is not a cliff at all (as Matthew Yglesias explains here).  Indeed, the so-called cliff is simply the expiration of certain fiscal policies including the Bush tax cuts, and which will affect the economic recovery of and slow growth in the US.  How do we avoid such a burden at a time when the US is already suffering a slow recovery in a terrible recession?  Well, congress and the White House need to work together to replace the existing-but-getting-ready-to-expire policies with new ones--or as I like to put it: Speaker Boehner and President Obama need to do their jobs.  In other words, all this fiscal cliff talk is simply the professional politician's version of waiting to write your essay until the night before it is due when you've known about the deadline since the beginning of the semester.