Welcome Back

I feel like I have stuff to say about politics again.

This is "silly season" in presidential politics - most voters, who are quite reasonably involved in more important things, won't focus on the presidential campaign until after Labor Day, giving them about two full months to analyze the candidates.  This is smart and gives voters more than enough time to come to a reasoned voting decision.  (In fact, well over 90% of voters have, whether they know it or not, already made up their minds, even if they haven't started paying attention yet.)  Still the newsrooms and cable shows of America need something to report on, so we'll have oodles of absolutely meaningless stories about trivialities (i.e., Romney's dog's diarrhea and Obama eating a dog as a little guy).  I won't be talking about that stuff.

But.  There are tons of interesting things going on, both looking forward and backwards.  Looking forward, there are huge domestic and international issues that will be resolved, one way or another, in the very near future.  A nuclear Iran.  The expiration of a number of tax cuts at the end of the year (Bush tax-cuts, Obama payroll tax-cuts).  And yes, the looming presidential election.  Looking backwards, we are reaching the point where there is enough balanced reporting on the past three years - contrasted with valuable but flawed versions that appear in the daily news - to start to evaluate how the Obama administration has fared, what it has learned, and how it will function if reelected for a second term.

These are the things I'll talk about.