Welcome to the big time Pres Obama - Quik note

Not to be part of the wall to wall coverage of the events of my nation's transition of power, as you can't get away from it if you try, I want to get out some very quick and brief points before the Chinese New Year break and while my daughter is soundly sleeping and I am between business meetings

President Obama, welcome to that desk, now here are the things that are going to cross it in the next 100 days:

• Israel and Gaza strip situation, its your call - Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Iraq are all watching, better balance it well
• EU Gas shortages, you have to issue a response to send a message to Moscow, they need to know the US and NATO care about the EU and its members
• North Korea, the drums are being beaten and with a conservative government in the South, Japan in trouble, and China preoccupied you have to be the rock of which the progress of getting the North to the table are not undone and North Korea feeling emboldened or rewarded for obtaining nuclear weaponry, see #1 above
• Columbia, FARC is on the run, Hugo Chavez is on the hunt to spread leftist regimes, don't abandon our allies in the hemisphere and send a message to the region that the political center of the area is Caracas and Bogotá
• China, they are the largest holder of US currency, debt, and foreign trade, they want more military openness and to recapture all its rogue territories, take a Bill Clinton position and having a downed spy plane will be the least of optimistic outcomes possible, its a Chinese chess game here and you can't fake it
• India, the largest outsourced labor market on the planet protectionalist policies will create a massive human rights crisis if unemployment takes hold in India, and an unstable India will destabilize the hinge between Asia and the Middle East, an area we can't afford to see that area unhinge
• Iran, everyone knows what they are doing and what their end game is, don't underestimate the opposition, its goals, and its intentions here, they don't like our policies and will do anything to undermine it, and don't forget their funding of terrorists and regional destabilizing groups in Pakistan, Syria, and Palestine
• You hold the keys to the national nuclear arsenal, remember that, but also remember this - our nuclear capabilities are diminishing and our readiness is also, we have to re-examine our conventional and unconventional forces and doctrines and upgrade them to the current and future threats now, not in 4 years as the threats we face are real and closer then those who don't see the daily national security briefs could even imagine, and this whole don't ask don't tell thing of yours is too disruptive for the addressing in the next 2 years, wait until the Afghanistan war is won and our troops are home first!
  

This is just on the international side. This has to be focused on to ensure we have secure borders, security at home, and don't end up like our allies with attacks on our soil and in our borders when we need the breathing room to fix our domestic mess and get our country standing on both feet again, you can't do our own house keeping first and then the international ones later. Also we have to ensure our direct and regional neighbors are economically viable and strong enough to resist the wave of socialists policies running through the region, least we fall victim to their destabilizing effects here at home, international policies will directly shape and color our domestic reality.

So domestically we have to address the below:

• NAFTA, its good to have free trade with our neighbors. If the philosophy of "spread it around" is good enough to tax the hell out of our own citizens to redistribute the wealth to the poor of our country then why not do the same to Central America and Canada. Cross border trade is good for us and our neighbors as it will keep our borders safe and secure as democracies with healthy economies will be across the fence and not a economical wasteland of poverty and desperation that invites terrorism and illegal policies
• Immigration, America is still the most immigrated to nation on Earth, but we need to have a fair and practical approach to it, we need to have a way to deal with undocumented workers, legal immigrants, and those applying for immigrant status. Our southern border is a huge problem that has the best opportunity to be fixed now while the draw to the flow of illegal workers has waned to a trickle of what it was a year ago, take advantage now while you can
• Mexican drug lords, help Mexico NOW or you will have a mess that is worse then you can imagine on the border to our most populous state and access to our interior by drug cartels looking for their own free trade zone
• Carbon credits are a disaster, leave it on the campaign trail, carbon credits will kill our utility industry, auto industry, heavy manufacturing industry, all the places jobs are that you pledged to protect and keep, let the free market dictate what products to buy, else you will send jobs to overseas as people will buy what they want, not what the government mandates our industries produce
• You can't spend your way out of debt. This is a market correction and a natural process of sucess and failure. Those that emerge will be healthy and better able to succeed in the future, if you mess with the balance now you only postpone the natural process of natural selection of the business world, spend the stimulus package by putting the money into the citizen's hands to spur spending and savings recouping from the losses of last year otherwise you have set up millions of communities for tax increases to continue your programs after the national spikot of stimulus monies dries up
• Push education harder, take the NCLB act to the next level, put real teeth into it and get rid of the influence of the teacher's unions. Without world class education fundamentals you are only hamstringing the future of our country and dooming us to a third world future as developing nations are exceeding our primary educations scores at such a fevorish rate that we can't afford to play politics any longer
• Stand up to your party and lead the nation, don't let Nancy and Harry run the country, lead them or be lead by them and with their past approval ratings, lower then Bush's and the worst in our history, you will be another Jimmy Carter in that you will in a 4 and out man
• Don't let the politics of the past color your present, in other words don't toe the line and play the uber liberal the far left is lauding all over the air waves and media. You are already elected and if you govern from the moderate position you will gain the support of the moderate middle of the nation and there are far more of them then the far left and they will re-elect you, betray them and play to the Chicago far left you came from and stand by for the backlash and ousting

These are the immediate and tasks you have to address before the ice thaws from the woods around the capital. Then you can begin to tackle all those campaign issues of things like medical care, education access, economic policy, treaties, healing our international reputation, taxes, deficit spending and control, military revamping, etc., ect., ect. The Dems can't keep blaming Bush now, its all on you and them. I have been biting my tongue in order to give you and them a fighting chance to prove yourselves and thus far it ain't looking good and all that venom used against Bush will come back to you all, with interest. While I am a nobody small fry out in a communist country who is blogging on a platform that prohibits sharing and expanding views and ideas of which few will see, I am not alone and there are tens of millions who share my views. You were barely elected, by a margin of less then 6% of the voting population so you are on a short leash and so is your party.