also, the sun will continue to rise and set, birs will still fly and Adam Sandler will still not be funny.

The big wheel will keep on turnin'.

Proud Mary will keep on burnin'.

Man, what a stupid, shrill article.

Or, to add my own aphorism: Rome wasn't built in a day.

I'm not saying it was Pulitzer-worthy stuff - it's just a short blog post - but I thought it was a good list of prominent issues which the president won't have much practical control over, so you should therefore pretty much ignore whatever their policies on those issues are. Voting for Romney because he's promised to 'fight for every job' in Michigan would be a stupid idea, for instance.

As ridiculous as it sounds, sometimes the promise of change interpreted as the holding of stasis is better than its converse.

But, yah. Building expectations based on a campaign is probably (and unfortunately) naive.

I'm glad we all hate ethanol now, though.

I don't hate ethanol at all. I'm having a beer. I also work for a brewery, and we have distillation columns that turn waste which ordinarily would have gone down the drain (literally and essentially) into an energy source. I don't think farming corn for ethanol is the answer, but it is an important step in the development of the resource. The waste stream is full of opportunities, and we're just beginning to tap into them. There's a lot more opportunity where I work to make even more. For example, the spent grain from brewing could be fermented even more instead of just being sold as cattle feed, and the result would be ethanol, and something even better suited for cattle feed. Essentially it's driving the efficiency of a business. Look at the waste fry oil being used for diesel. Something that once cost a business to dispose of, is now something that has value. Look to more of this happening as people take advantage of new developing technologies. It goes back to the no control for change that the original post is pointing out.

The President really has little absolute control over most things. However, the Republicans have chosen someone who espouses the status quo. (My how Mr McCain has changed in 8 years). What a President can do is provide leadership and direction. It's easy to say it just doesn't matter who is president, they can't do anything anyways, but I think looking at the last almost 8 years, it's pretty important whom we have in there. Choose wisely please.

I guess what I'm saying above is while the new President won't be able to come in and wave a magic wand and change everything, he certainly can have a huge influence on the direction all those 10 issues take. While not a god, the President is still influential.