Tuesday, August 30, 2011

THEY SHOULD LOVE HIM - BUT THEY DON'T

In the interest of full disclosure, I voted for a republican for the first time when I was 19 years old, and continued to vote that way in all but two elections for the next 35 years.  I finally gave up on the Republican Party and became an Independent, two years ago when folks started showing up outside venues where the president was speaking carrying guns.  Please don’t get the wrong impression, I am all for gun ownership, I actually own a few myself.  I just could not see myself continuing in a political party in which people think it’s acceptable to express their displeasure with the president in way that by all appearances was designed to intimidate not just him, but anyone who supported him.    
As an Independent, I think that Republicans should love Obama after all, like every president before him he continues to do their bidding.  Before you decide that I’ve lost my mind, let me outline a few of the things that he’s done that conservatives should love.

1.        Wars – When Obama was elected, there were two wars in process, and although he campaigned against both, he has ultimately decided to continue to prosecute both.  Not only did Obama continue the war in Afghanistan, he sent an additional 40,000 troops into that war, and more than ten years into the war, we’re still there with seemingly no way out.  In addition, we’re still in Iraq with seemingly no way out of there either.  Never mind that we really had no good reason to go to Iraq in the first place.   Not only did Obama continue the two wars that he inherited, he actually decided it would be a good idea to follow the French into Libya.  But don’t worry now that the rebels are in charge, we have someone else to sell arms to, so that they can be used against us in some future war. 

2.       Taxes – Despite all of his talk about the poor and disenfranchised, Obama has not only done nothing to help those folks, he has continued to give tax breaks to the wealthiest among us.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ll take the tax break, but for a president who was elected on a platform to help the poor and middle class, Obama has failed miserably.  The extension of the Bush tax cuts is a direct subsidy to the richest Americans, at the expense of the poorest among us, yet the very people receiving those tax breaks hate him.  Can you say hypocrite?

3.       The Banks& Wall Street – Prior to leaving office, Bush 43 signed off on bailing out the banks and Wall Street, and yes once again, Obama went along with the program.  Not only did he bail out the Banks and Wall Street, he used tax payer funds to bail out the automotive industry as well.  Yep, this man who campaigned on helping those most in need of help, continued to help those who don’t really need it, while ordinary Americans continued to lose their homes, and stand in unemployment lines.  The very people in big business and the Wall Street crew are Obama’s chief critics, while taking advantage of his policies to line their pockets.   Obama’s policies all seem to be designed to help the wealthiest among us, to the exclusion of those who continue to support him despite the fact that he continues to fail them. 

4.       Entitlements – Let’s be clear, Social Security is not an Entitlement, most of us paid into it for 30 to 50 or in some cases 60 years.  It’s our money, the government was supposed to invest it in a way that earned interest for our retirement years.  Entitlements are subsidies to big oil companies, bailing out banks and other financial firms, entitlements are in my view things like farm subsidies, grants to the family members of congress people, disability to people who could work, but won’t.

5.       Stimulus – Every Republican running for president accuses Obama of running up the deficit, and criticizes his stimulus plan, yet every one of them live in a state that took stimulus money.  Rick Perry’s rails against the stimulus, yet Texas got over 24 million in stimulus funds, that’s second only to California.  Listen, I don’t care of states took Federal money, but if you did, just shut up, you have no right to complain when you’re stuffing your state coffers with the very money that you’re complaining about.

Those who hate Obama, blame him for the deficit and claim that he has increased the debt more than any other president, which is not only an outright lie, those who make those statements know it’s a lie, but they continue to say it because their audience is ignorant!   Did you know that when George W took office, he inherited a surplus from Clinton?  Yep, that’s right, a surplus.  When Obama took office, he inherited a deficit of 10.26 Trillion dollars. The deficit t is currently projected to be around 14 Trillion next year.  Now for those of you who can’t count, when Clinton left office, the surplus was approximately $236 Billion dollars, which means that not only did Bush blow the small surplus, he ran up over 10 Billion dollars in debt.   Fact is that 4 Trillion of that debt was for the two wars that Bush kept off budget during his administration, and Obama put on budget when he was elected. 

UNEMPLOYMENT - Did you know that when Clinton left office, the unemployment rate was 4.1%?  The day that Bush 43 left office, the unemployment rate was 7.5%, and our current unemployment rate is 9.1% which means that Obama s responsible for 1.6% of the current rate.  Yeah, I know, if Obama wasn’t president, somehow all of those businesses that he continues to give tax breaks to would move those jobs back from China, India and Pakistan, and our unemployment rate would instantly drop to 2%.  No one wants to face it, but the new full employment in this country will never be 5% again, unless the corporations can find a way to get us to work for the same wages as folks in Pakistan, India and China, and there is absolutely nothing that Obama or any other president can do about it.

You may not agree with my assessment, but facts are facts.  In my lifetime, only Carter was a worse president than Obama has been thus far, but given what he inherited, and the fact that he doesn’t seem to have much of a back bone, he’s doing the best that he can. 

“I’m Just Sayin”




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