1. On Energy: He should have approved the Keystone pipeline, at least not made it harder for coal plants to operate in the US (since we have enough coal to power the US for at least 500 years), allowed more drilling if he's concerned about long-term energy diversification, made nuclear easier to encourage and, with his pipe dream hopes for solar, wind, etc., instead of just dumping government money into sketchy enterprises like Solyndra, should have ONLY invested Federal money into programs as matching funds if private investors had already funded the remainder of the amount.

2. On Jobs: Allowing small businesses with fewer than 50 employees and no affiliates to hire up to 10 new workers with a 2-year grace period on Social Security would have been a great way to kill unemployment. Another great thing would have been to NOT implement a huge health care plan that makes it harder for businesses to hire (for example, my brother-in-law has about 150 employees and his health care costs, which spiked after the "ObamaCare" law was passed, are forcing him to scale back on coverage, and he's a very generous guy who doesn't want to have to do that). I think that the "you didn't build that" comment, while obviously misinterpreted, does still betray a lack of respect by the President for the hard work and, more importantly, MASSIVE RISK, that business owners take on. Reducing regulations on smaller businesses would also encourage job growth.

3. On Banking and Finance: Repeal Dodd-Frank. Repeal Sarbanes Oxley. Reinstitute Glass-Steagall. We have a foreign investment group investing for its own account and they're having to jump through hoops to make sure they don't have to register under the 1940 IC Act because of Dodd-Frank. If something needs to be regulated, it's rating agencies, because they are the ones who rated crappy CDOs at the same level as Treasuries.

4. On Entitlements: Cap Medicare/Medicaid spending at a certain percent of GDP to rein it in, raise the retirement age, either make Social Security untouchable (the Al Gore lockbox idea) or privatize it.

5. On Taxes: keep the current rates and if you want to add something for class warfare reasons, start it at $1 million. You know that $250,000 in NYC is not "rich". Corporate taxes should be lowered and simplified, the same thing with personal taxes. I think the mortgage deduction needs to be kept (housing is in the toilet - oh, and don't forget that new tax that's going to kick in every time you sell a house after January 1, 2014 under ObamaCare; that's not going to help housing, either) but most other deductions can be eliminated, the Code simplified radically and rates lowered even a bit more from where they are if deductions are removed.

6. On Foreign Policy: This is actually where I have the fewest problems with Obama. My primary issue with the foreign policy is really that I worry that Obama is too timid to actually start a war even if necessary (the bin Laden raid and limited participation in Libya don't change my opinion on that one bit). Would Obama actually hit Iran if it came close to nuclear weapons? I don't think so, and I think that the danger is much broader than just one of the Iranian regime having them.

I could keep going on and on and on, but essentially my problem with Obama comes down to this: the man has not worked in the private sector (I don't consider political activities or academia "the private sector" because they are so divorced from the way that any business works that it should be obvious) and does not understand how it works. If his priority had been jobs, he should not have burdened the nation with regulations, restrictions and massive new entitlements that make the cost of doing business higher.