We watched Obama's prime time news conference last night. It was great to listen to and watch a president who actually acted "presidential" and was articulate. I could hardly swallow one more Bush, the "cowboy" president (not to cast aspersions on cowboys), news conference. Well, thankfully, he never did hold too many. He just never liked to be accountable to anyone.

Obama did paint a bleak picture. But, at least we have someone who doesn't seem to be ready to just sit by and let the system squeeze all of the working people completely dry. Chuck Todd, NBC's new white house correspondent, and someone that I think is pretty smart, said that it was a good performance, but that it was a week late. What's a week in a presidency that is so new that it's full term served thus far is still measured in weeks? I think that is a "weak" analysis. But, it is true, as I noted previously, that he did let the republicans push too far forward (in the spirit of reaching out) and got in a bit of a political bind before he figured out what was going on. If you are going to say that there is an emergency, then you have to do what has to be done right now - you can't sit and argue with the ambulance driver over what's the fastest way to get to the scene too long or the patient is going to die waiting.

But I do have some concerns about the "stimulus package." One is that I still wonder whether or not accumulating more debt is the solution the problem of too much debt. But, then again, if money can get shifted from those parties with large amounts to those with lesser amounts, it sort of serves the same purpose. But, the federal deficit cannot just grow forever.

The republicans are really coming off bad I think. They just don't want to agree with any ideas of Obama or the other dems. That's a mistake. Those that ascribe to the survival of the fittest - just let the money situation play itself out - are calloused about the impacts of that on humans. And there's fewer of them than those that will be impacted. That's why their kind got voted out of power in the last two elections. But I'm still not sure that Obama is thinking out of the box enough. Even as late as this afternoon, the system didn't like Geitner's presentation today about saving the financial system, and they sold off their stocks in large numbers.

A lot of this is about confidence. I certainly have more confidence in Obama than Bush, but, he is not a miracle worker. He is, however, trying, and putting the lower income people higher on the scale than Bush ever thought about doing. But, he needs to be very creative - have some artists around him - not just surround himself with the same old bureacratic types.