All right, let's get down to brass tacks here. I do not dispute that Barack Obama has signed into law a considerable amount of landmark legislation over his first two years in office. Clearly most are laws that would not have been enacted by a Republican president. However, these are laws by and large pertaining to social issues, which again certainly should not be discounted. Yet the bills that addressed (or in my estimation 'attempted' to address) two of our most pressing issues, health care and financial regulation, were watered down to the degree that it is highly debatable whether they will prove to be at all effective. In turn, these are the issues that will most likely be looked back on in history as the ones that could have potentially saved our country from the abyss, the others are comparative window dressing. Not coincidentally, these are the two industries that so lobby congress and contribute so considerably to their and the president's campaign coffers that of course we are not going to see 'change we can believe in' when it comes to these entities. If/when campaign finance laws are entirely overhauled, then might we finally see said change, but I fear at that point in time it will have already been too late.