IT'S TIME FOR OBAMA TO BEGIN FULFILLING TWO YEARS OF PROMISES

Mr. Obama, bring on the change.

Bring on that new dawn of American leadership you say is at
hand.

Bring on your soaring rhetoric, your mandate from the media, your
party's near veto-proof legislative majority.

Get down to Washington in January and use your political superpowers
to begin solving what you say are "the greatest challenges of our
lifetime - two wars, a planet in peril and the greatest financial
crisis in a century."

Yes, you can try.

We, your people, understand, as you have said, that the road ahead
will be long, our climb will be steep and we may not get to wherever
very liberal place you're taking us to as a nation in one year or -
rather conveniently for you - even in one term.

But we know you and your cronies from the hard-left side of Chicago
are already working on where you'll find the money to pay for that
generous to-do list of neo-New Deal stuff you've been promising your
adoring fans for the last two years.

There's a recession on, but, yes, you can try.

Meanwhile, if you truly want to make America a better place and change
the cruddy way things have been done in Washington for the last 60
years by both major political parties, here are a couple of daring
ideas to get you warmed up and let you prove that you're more than
just talk:

First, you should fulfill your old promise to get us out of Iraq ASAP.
And you should do the same with the war in Afghanistan, an even more
hopeless quagmire. Despite the hawkish hallucinations you had during
the election campaign of winning the war in Afghanistan and capturing
Osama bin Laden, Afghanistan also does not deserve to have another
American drop of blood or dollar spent on it.

While you're at it, and if you're serious about bringing real change,
try ratcheting down the bloated warfare state that Republicans and
Democrats have built and abused for their political ends.

Good luck. But, yes, you can try.

On the homefront, there's another hugely important change you could
quickly bring America: Call off the federal government's bipartisan
war on drugs.

You could get on TV some Tuesday night and tell your fellow Americans
the truth most of them have known for decades: The dirty drug war
waged by government on its own people has failed by every measure.

Then reassert your forgotten call for America to start treating all
drug use as a health issue instead of a criminal justice issue. Then
give your presidential blessing to the decision by Massachusetts
voters last week to approve the country's first marijuana
decriminalization initiative.

Then make marijuana as legal as beer. Then pardon all nonviolent drug
offenders. Then decommission the DEA. Then, using your best oratorical
skills, declare a great victory in America's never-ending war against
too much government and too little personal freedom.

You might be impeached within 24 hours. But, yes, you can try.