As president, Obama signed economic stimulus legislation in the form of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in February 2009 and the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 in December 2010. Other domestic policy initiatives include the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act of 2010.

In foreign policy, Obama gradually withdrew combat troops from Iraq, increased troop levels in Afghanistan, signed an arms control treaty with Russia, and ordered enforcement of the United Nations-sanctioned no-fly zone over Libya in early 2011. On May 1, 2011, Obama announced that a small team of American military forces, acting on his direct order, killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. (CC Wikipedia – 05/11/2011)

A proponent of Realpolitik, Kissinger played a dominant role in United States foreign policy between 1969 and 1977. During this period, he pioneered the policy of détente with the Soviet Union, orchestrated the opening of relations with the People’s Republic of China, and negotiated the Paris Peace Accords, ending American involvement in the Vietnam War. His role in the bombing of Cambodia and other American interventions abroad during this period remains controversial.

Kissinger is still a controversial figure today. He remains a regular participant in meetings of the annual invitation-only Bilderberg Group. He was honored as the first recipient of the Ewald von Kleist Award of the Munich Conference on Security Policy and currently serves as the chairman of Kissinger Associates, an international consulting firm. (CC Wikipedia 12/03/2010)

DePudyt, a proponent of laissez-faire economics, wrote that “governmental competition” would allow “as many regularly competing governments as have ever been conceived and will ever be invented” to exist simultaneously and detailed how such a system would be implemented. As David M. Hart writes: “Governments would become political churches, only having jurisdiction over their congregations who had elected to become members.” (CC Wikipedia 05/03/2010)

There are several varieties of democracy, some of which provide better representation and more freedoms for their citizens than others. However, if any democracy is not carefully legislated – through the use of balances – to avoid an uneven distribution of political power, such as the separation of powers, then a branch of the system of rule could accumulate power and become harmful to the democracy itself. (CC Wikipedia 04/25/2010)

Socialists generally share the view that capitalism unfairly concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital and derives its wealth through a system of exploitation. This in turn creates an unequal society, that fails to provide equal opportunities for everyone to maximise their potential, and does not utilise technology and resources to their maximum potential nor in the interests of the public. (CC Wikipedia 04/23/2010)