Here is a quick look at total debt as accumulated by each US President.

This chart below is for the Austerians of today:

Learning that President Obama has authorized 100 Special Operations soldiers into Uganda to supervise the very necessary round up and termination/imprisonment of the murderous Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army inserted a sense of righteousness into U.S. foreign policy towards Africa that is very encouraging.

Congress passed The Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act in May 2010 and was signed into law by President Obama shortly thereafter. The deployment of U.S. soldiers to the region in order to bring Kony to justice is a concrete action that will hopefully produce a permanent change in a region that has been on the receiving end of the most horrifying crimes against humanity in recent history. I understand the temptation to argue that inserting troops into an area as unstable as the Eastern Congo/Northern Uganda could lead to an unpredictable entanglement. However, staying focused on the goal at hand and immediately withdrawing after Kony is gone justifies seeing this through.

When I lived in Rwanda in 2005 I travelled overland from Rwanda’s capital city Kigali to Kampala, Uganda’s capital city. Even then, I recall hearing about Joseph Kony and what a madman he was.  Back then it was hard to me fathom the suffering he was responsible for in such a beautiful setting.

Northern Uganda is a gorgeous place. It has views that will take your breath away, leaving you speechless and transfixed by the scenes unfolding in front of you. I remember riding on the bus from Kigali and Kampala and being absolutely hypnotized by the vivid green hills that stretched into forever, all bathed in a warm yellow sun. As we passed into Uganda, we would pass tea farms alongside the road with women hunched over, some of them with babies affixed to their backs, working away in the fields. In retrospect it is hard to reconcile that so much abduction, enslavement, rape and murder was taking place only a short distance from where I was.

China’s Cyberposse (NYT)

US may be headed for long decline. You don’t have to follow (Christian Science Monitor)

Obama ramps up push for energy-efficiency program (CNN)

Obama’s new adversary (Fortune)

Happy Stuff…

50 Depressing Facts About The Healthcare System That Will Make You Beg For Reform (Business Insider)

Treasury Reiterates Commitment on Fannie, Freddie (WSJ)

Comparative Unemployment Graph during recessions courtesy of Clusterstock:

Plan Outlines Removal of Four Dams on Klamath River (NYT)

E.P.A. Moves to Curtail Greenhouse Gas Emissions (NYT)

Below, Larry Ellison’s take on “Cloud Computing” at recent conference:

Below, from Paul Kedrosky’s Infectious Greed @ www.kedrosky.com:

Let’s turn things around: Given peak oil, burbling trade skirmishes, debt immolation, a collapsing dollar, environmental degradation, a decline in U.S. standard of living, ballooning population, etc., … what are some non-trivial reasons to be optimistic about how this moment in economic/human history turns out?

I’m serious. Even if you don’t believe it — and NY Magazine recently labeled me a “doom enthusiast”, so I admittedly skew bearish — try to make an optimist’s arguments better than they can.

Here are some examples:

* As the developing world reaches first-world levels of per-capita wealth we will see more wealth creation – and profits — in the next two decades than in prior hundred years
* The forced transition to a post-carbon economy blows a hole in models of environmental degradation, as well as creating new opportunities
* Capital markets have shed more risk at a faster pace than at any time in recent history, setting them up to fund much more new growth than anyone expects
* Ideas are more fecund than even, with a network-driven accelerated pace of innovation and invention, much of which is focused on today’s most important problems, like energy, the environment, etc.
* Human health and lifespan continues to improve, making people more productive for longer periods than ever.
* Global population will plateau over the next decade and then begin to decline world-wide.
* Even if subprime nearly blew up the world, we have democratized credit, which means many people will be able to invest in and create products/services that they otherwise would not.

So, I think that President Obama and the Democrats have to be careful not to overreach as they move forward on key features of the new president’s agenda, namely comprehensive health care reform, (a single payer system is now possible) restructuring of the nation’s educational system, and of course, how we source and produce energy.

Many congressional democrats will be tempted to push further, pursuing an agenda that will not only exclude, of course, the Republicans, but also moderate Democrats. President Obama would be wise to remember what happened to President Bush when he pursued a purely Republican agenda. W’s flagship policy proposal, privatizing Social Security, fell entirely flat.

In my view, President Obama is smart enough to temper the immeidate power he now finds himself with long-term wisdom. It is in Obama’s personal interest and indeed that of the Democratic Party itself, not to abuse this current opportunity with frivolous initiatives, nonsensical pet projects and pork spending.

Much of what is on the Democrats’ agenda seeks to remedy much of the country’s long term problems: a dysfunctional healthcare system, a declining economy and an untenable foreign policy. All these issues must be addressed head on and President Obama will do just that. However, he must have the restraint to implement sensible policy, free of the backslapping and inside deals that brought down the Republicans when they were in the same position he finds himself now.