Category Archives: President Obama

Why President Obama Can’t Fix The Economy.

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It’s not his fault. And it’s not for lack of trying. But he’s dealing with a stacked deck.

For decades, the cornerstone of the US economy has been durable goods, driven primarily by housing starts. In other words, our economy has depended mostly on housing construction.

For example, in 2004, more than 2 million home-building permits were authorized nationwide. In 2005, the number had risen to more than 2.1 million. Then in 2007, the number dropped to less than 1.4 million. By 2009, the number was just 583,000. And even though the number increased to more than 604,000 last year, you can see that it’s only slightly more than a third of the annual building permits from just prior to the Great Recession!  And half the number in 1959!

Now think of what those numbers mean. Each of those permits requires building contractors, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, roofers, sheet rockers, flooring contractors and more. In addition, the homes need new appliances, furnaces, air conditioners, cabinets, light fixtures, plumbing fixtures, garage doors, etc.

Get the picture?

When the financial giants swindled billions from American homeowners, they destroyed confidence in homeownership. And, as the same crooks are now disposing of their inventory of foreclosed homes, they are driving down home prices which puts more homeowners in foreclosure and prices drop even farther. The end result is massive unemployment. And, if you’re unemployed, what’s the last thing you’re going to do? That’s right. The last thing you want to do is buy a home.

So what’s a President to do after the real estate industry has been driven off a cliff? The problem certainly wasn’t of President Obama’s making. Indeed, his administration has done Herculean work getting things moving back in the right direction. But he needs to do more. He needs to push for additional stimulus that will create more jobs which will encourage more people to buy homes which will create even more jobs.

But don’t hold your breath. Because, in addition to the GOP (Grand Obstructionist Party) in the Senate, he’s now faced with a Republican/Teabagger majority in the House. And all of them are determined to deny him another term in office.

If you think you hear the faint strains of Nero fiddling, you can be certain that he’s now a Republican.

What Happened To Journalism?

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No recent event has better exemplified the utter collapse of journalism in the U.S. than coverage of President Obama’s speech on the Middle East. The headlines following the speech all reported the “outrage” of Republicans, the Jewish community, etc. as the result of the President’s statement that a return to the pre-1967 borders is a condition for peace.

There was only problem with those news stories. The President’s statement wasn’t news. The U.S. position on peace talks has always been based on the pre-1967 borders!

Now you may ask, how could the media be so wrong? In a word, laziness. A few minutes searching for the truth would have yielded information that would have led to a more accurate interpretation. But none of the media seem concerned with reporting the truth. They seem much more interested in reporting controversy and reactions from the President’s political opponents. In other words, they’re willing to sacrifice the truth for a bunch of irrelevant “facts.”

However, one news source did report the story correctly – Real Time with Bill Maher.

So this is what journalism has come to? A comedian provided a more accurate report on a major policy speech than established news organizations! Small wonder that some surveys have listed another comedian, Jon Stewart of The Daily Show, as America’s most trusted newsman.

The growing hole in our economy.

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For the past two years, the Obama administration has been trying to reduce unemployment. And, given the challenges, it has been remarkably successful.

Following the Bush/Cheney administration, President Obama faced an economy that had jettisoned nearly 8 million jobs. Despite Republican opposition, the Obama administration has managed to turn things around. Certainly it has not happened as fast as most people would like, and the unemployment numbers are not as good as we would like to see, but the stock markets have recovered and the economy has added 854,000 private sector jobs in 2011 alone.

At the same time, state and local governments have cut 86,000 jobs this year alone.

As a result of the reduced revenue created by the Great Recession, the Bush tax cuts, and the out-of-control costs of health care for government workers, the loss of government jobs threatens to throw our economy back into the abyss. And the Teapublicans, who were elected in 2010 with the stated purpose of creating jobs, are doing everything in their power to push the economy over the cliff.

You see, instead of focusing on job creation, Teapublicans have focused, instead, on social issues such as gay marriage, abortion and collective bargaining. They are determined to eliminate funding for NPR, Public TV, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Dept. of Education, the EPA and Planned Parenthood. They want to end or dramatically change “entitlements” such as Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. And they want to cut government spending by the trillions.

If successful, they will push tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands more people into unemployment, eliminating government jobs at a rate faster than the private sector can create them. And who will receive the blame for their actions? Certainly not Teapublicans themselves. No, the conservative media will focus the blame on President Obama. You know, the foreign-born black Muslim who was only able to gain office thanks to voter fraud and “lame stream” media.

Does that mean I’m accusing Teapublicans of sabotaging our economy for political purposes? In a word, yes. Republicans have done it before, why should we expect a different approach this time?

The Truth About President Obama And Congress.

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Out of more than 500 promises made by President Obama during the 2008 campaign, Politifact.com finds that 122 have been kept, 39 have been compromised, 238 are in the works, 82 are stalled (primarily in the Senate), and 3 have not yet been rated. A mere 22 promises have been broken and many of those were casualties of the economic disaster created by his predecessor.

The promises kept include a credit card bill of rights, expanded loan programs for small business, full funding of the Veterans Administration, removing combat troops from Iraq, closing the donut hole in Medicare prescriptions, requiring health insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions, providing tax credits for those who need help paying health insurance premiums, requiring large employers to contribute to a national health insurance plan, and many other issues covered by the new health reform act.

In addition, he helped save the U.S. auto industry. And his policies have stemmed the bleeding of 750,000 jobs per month prior to his taking office, and led to the creation of millions of jobs in the private sector. 

That’s a lot of progress for less than two years in office. It’s even more impressive given the GOP’s record-setting use of the fillibuster to oppose his initiatives.

The inescapable conclusion is that when you voted for Obama, you got almost exactly the President you voted for. That begs the question of why there is so much voter anger and Democratic apathy this year. Likely, it’s a combination of impatience, misunderstanding and frustration.

For the past two years, Republicans, using their Fox Noise megaphone, have whined, complained and lied about every single Presidential initiative. They ginned up mock outrage over the lowest Federal taxes in 50 years. They labeled as “bailouts” loans to automakers that saved 10 million high-paying U.S. jobs. They labeled as “socialism” health care reform designed to provide health care access to 33 million Americans. They blocked and delayed legislation that would create jobs, help small businesses, improve the environment and take away tax incentives for large corporations that exported jobs overseas. And their corporate masters have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to attack Democratic Senators and Congressional Representatives who have dared to fulfill their own campaign promises.

Of course most Americans want to see an improved economy, reduced unemployment and reduced deficits! But voting for Republican teabaggers and the GOP’s disingenuous “Pledge to America” will not help. It will only make matters worse!

And if frustrated progressives fail to vote this November, they will only be contributing to the fiasco!

The Politics of Fear.

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Following World War II, Gustave Gilbert, a German-speaking intelligence officer and psychologist, was granted access to all of the prisoners held in the Nuremberg jail. During one of his conversations with Nazi leader, Hermann Goering, Gustave said, “I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.”

“Why, of course, the people don’t want war,” Goering responded. “Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? It is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.”

Gustave countered, “There is one difference. In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.” “Oh, that is all well and good,” said Goering, “But, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

You could easily see this philosophy at work in Bush’s run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq when those opposed to the war were questioned for their patriotism, and our long-time ally, France, was vilified for not participating in the war.

And today, in the midst of mid-term elections, we can see Goering’s principle at work again. Despite much evidence to the contrary, Republicans like John “McNasty” McCain and Jan “Clueless” Brewer have focused anger on Mexican immigrants, blaming them for everything from crime to unemployment to our budget woes.

Led by Fox Noise Channel, Republicans have created a similar right wing outcry against Muslims for daring to propose a community center near Ground Zero. The ensuing “debate” has fueled anti-Muslim fervor across the nation, resulting in the arson of a Tennessee mosque and wingnuts calling for an “exception” to our Constitutional right to freedom of religion.

Conservatives have fueled anti-Obama hatred with vile emails accusing him of being an un-American-Socialist-Communist-Nazi-racist-Muslim. They have falsely accused him of banning prayer in military academies, of forcing the removal of crosses from military cemetaries, of promoting Muslim holidays…the list is too lengthy to continue.

As a result of this nonsense, it appears that Republicans are poised to win many more seats in Congress despite policies that led to two wars, an economic collapse and the raping of the middle class by the wealthiest two percent of this nation. I guess the lesson is that it’s easy to win elections by creating hatred toward minorities. It’s much more difficult to win elections on ideas and relevant issues.

More Email Lies About Obama.

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I know. This is sort of like announcing “dog bites man.” But the concerted effort by the right to discredit President Obama needs to be addressed. For more than two years, emails have circulated blaming Obama for a variety of unpatriotic and even sacreligious acts. Of course, they’re not true. But that’s never stopped the wingnuts.

The real problem is that intelligent, well-meaning individuals receive the emails, read them and, like sheep, follow the email instructions to pass the email along to everyone they know.

The most recent example I’ve received is an email entitled “Snopes Confirms.” It contains a message that President Obama has directed the U.S. Postal Service to remember and honor the EID Muslim holiday season with a new commemorative 44 cent first class holiday postage stamp.” And it encourages readers to boycott the stamp and to “pass this along to every patriotic American you know to get the word out.” Of course, some of my friends did just that.

The problem with the email is that it is only partially true. There is a stamp honoring the Muslim holidays but President Obama had absolutely nothing to do with it. If any of the readers had been curious enough to check Snopes or FactCheck.org, they would have discovered that the stamp was first issued in 2001, and that President Bush encouraged Americans to purchase the stamp in order to reach out to the patriotic American Muslim community and let them know that we don’t hold them responsible for the actions of a few extremists.

Of course, that didn’t make news.

But the mere fact that the stamp was re-issued while President Obama is in office is used by the right as “proof” that Obama is a Christian-hating, anti-American Muslim. This sort of thing has to stop. Americans who receive this trash must take the time to check the validity of such emails and respond to the sender with the truth as I did. Now doing so may have cost me a friend. But if so, I don’t care. After all, what kind of friends mindlessly pass along information that isn’t true? Or worse yet, what kind of friends assume you believe as they do and share such evil, hate-filled messages as this?

BOO (Blame it On Obama).

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Even before President Obama took the oath of office, Republicans and racists were making absurd claims about him. Never in my lifetime (and I’ve lived through 12 administrations), have I seen so many false and unsubstantiated charges against a President. Yes, there were many accusations about George W. Bush, but the vast majority of them were based on policies and facts. On the other hand, most of the charges against Obama defy logic. So, with the mid-term Congressional elections on the horizon, I thought it might be interesting to take stock of the Republican charges:

Obama was not born in the U.S., therefore his presidency is illegitimate.
Obama stole the election with the help of ACORN.
Obama is embracing our enemies.
Obama pals around with terrorists.
Obama’s fist bump with Michelle is a terrorist greeting.
Obama takes orders from his racist black Christian minister.
Obama is a Muslim.
Obama hates Christians.
Obama hates America.
Obama is an elitist.
Obama is a Facist.
Obama is a Communist.
Obama is a Socialist.
Obama is a racist.
Obama is responsible for the Great Recession.
Obama bailed out Wall Street.
Obama favors Wall Street over Main Street.
Obama is responsible for the national deficit.
Obama is trying to indoctrinate your children.
Obama’s health care reform is socialized medicine.
Obama wants to “kill Granny”.
Obama is going to take away your MediCare.
Obama refuses to talk with Republicans.
Obama wants to take away your guns.
The Census is an Obama plot to place conservatives in internment camps.
Obama is weak on terrorism.
Obama has refused to help create jobs.
Obama wants to raise your taxes.
Afghanistan is Obama’s war.
Obama is anti-Israel and anti-Jew.
Obama refuses to overturn Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
Obama wants to ruin our military with openly gay soldiers.
Obama is not doing enough to contain BP’s gusher.
Obama has refused to protect our borders from illegal immigrants.
Obama doesn’t want to stop illegal immigration because he wants their votes.
Obama refused to indict members of the new Black Panthers.
Obama is anti-business.

Of all these charges, only one is partially true. (Obama does want to raise taxes on the wealthy by allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire for Americans making $250,000/year or more.) In fact, many of the charges contradict others. And, despite all of the rhetoric, Obama is no wild-eyed liberal. He is a centrist who has strived to bring the country together and end the divisiveness of political extremes. He even tried to appoint centrist Republicans to his cabinet.

On numerous occasions, he reached across the aisle for Republican input on his legislative agenda. Then, after Republicans were allowed to insert amendments into the legisation, they refused to vote for it. In most cases, Senate Republicans have refused to even allow a vote on the legislation. If the current trend continues, Republicans will set a record for the number of filibusters. But, according to Republicans, that’s not their fault. The blame belongs to … (wait for it) … Obama.

Why Do We Allow Republicans To Ignore Election Results?

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In 2008, voters repudiated conservative politics by electing Barack Obama as President and voting for overwhelming Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate. But, based on the actions of Republicans, it would appear that they have simply chosen to ignore the results. The House has passed bill after bill in order to live up to the campaign promises. The President has repeatedly reached out to Republicans. Yet the Senate Republicans have stonewalled virtually every initiative with parliamentarian tricks. They have placed secret holds on more than 100 Presidential appointees. They have threatened to block many more. And they have used filibusters a record number of times.

This level of obstructionism is unprecedented in U.S. history and voters should make Republican candiates pay for it this November. But according to early polls, it appears that the Republican strategy may work. Voters are angry at incumbents – all incumbents – not just those who have stalled reforms. And voters are angry at President Obama for not doing more about the unrelenting gusher of crude in the Gulf of BP. Never mind that the cozy relationship between Bush/Cheney appointees in the Minerals Management Service allowed BP to apparently cut corners with safety. And never mind that the best minds in science and in the oil industry seem stumped as to how to proceed.

It would seem that many in the public won’t be satisfied until the President dons a diving suit, descends a mile under the surface of the ocean and personally shuts off the wellhead himself.

Seriously, people, there are only four submersibles in the world capable of operating at that depth and none of them are owned by the U.S. Moreover, they are incapable of doing any more than the underwater robots. So the problem has spilled into the ocean and onto Obama’s lap.

Like the financial crisis, the unemployment crisis, the immigration crisis, the national debt and the two on-going wars, the oil gusher is a mess created by the Bush administration. And the Obama administration has been left with the job of cleaning it up. To make matters worse, the Republicans in Congress have done nothing to help.

If there’s any justice in American politics, the Republicans will pay at the polls. But I suspect an uninformed public will reward them for their antics. Republicans will then be able to obstruct even more reforms. And voters will continue to wonder why nothing ever seems to change in Washington.

© LaMaster Propaganda – All rights reserved.

What’s wrong with politics?

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Depending on your political affiliation (or should I say affliction?) you might quickly answer with Fox News Channel or MoveOn.org. But if we ignore partisanship for a moment, I think we can all agree that the real answer is Congressional representatives who spend more time trying to be re-elected than actually representing.

We have now reached a point in American politics where the election cycle lasts all year, every year. As a result, those who are elected are generally afraid to take a position or a stance for fear of alienating part of the electorate. They also must find and kowtow to donors – usually large corporations, corporate officers, political action groups and the wealthy. As a result, the powerful and wealthy are over-represented.

And the rest of us are under-represented.

Unfortunately, running for state or national office has become so expensive that few can raise enough money to run an effective campaign. And, perhaps due to that fact, politicians who are successful in getting elected don’t want to risk losing their offices in the next election. So they don’t always vote their conscience. Instead, they vote according to the polls. Or according to the party bosses. There can be no better examples (and warnings) than Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida and Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas. They are viewed as too moderate by activists in their respective parties, so they faced difficult primaries. So difficult, in fact, that Crist was forced to bow out of the Republican primary and run unaffiliated.

This backlash from the parties has a chilling effect on our political debate. For example, many Democrats wanted universal (single-payer) health care, but they voted for a watered-down, protect-the-insurance-companies health care reform bill, instead. Why? Because their political opponents and the media would have labeled them Socialists, Communists or worse.

During the George W. Bush administration, the White House introduced a plan for immigration reform. The bill attempted to address the complexity of the problem. But Congress refused to pass it because many Republicans and the conservative media were angered by what they considered “amnesty” for undocumented workers. And representatives of both parties were afraid to alienate potential Latino voters. So, instead of trying to fix the problem, they collectively kicked it down the road.

Of course, there are exceptions. If you visit www.PolitiFact.com you’ll discover that President Obama has lived up to the vast majority of his campaign promises. Indeed, he has repeatedly stated that he’d rather be “a good one-term President, than a bad two-term President.” I hope he’s rewarded for that stance. And I think he will be. You see, I sincerely believe the majority of voters on both sides of the political spectrum are sick and tired of politics as usual. Unfortunately, the political parties are more concerned with winning elections than principle.

It’s up to all of us to make the two parties care more about the well-being of the nation than their scorecards of political wins and losses. We can do that by pushing for campaign finance reform – especially now that the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations may spill their coffers into any candidate’s pocket or purse.

Obama’s Inheritance.

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Republican teabaggers are having a great deal of fun pointing fingers at President Obama for our current situation. They fumed over President Obama’s contribution to the national debt while ignoring Bush’s contributions. They proclaimed health care reform “Obama’s Waterloo.” And they have now labeled BP’s oil gusher as “Obama’s Katrina.”

Never in my lifetime have I seen people so anxious to see a President fail.

But before everyone joins in by jumping on the nincompoop wagon, let’s consider the situation President Obama inherited:

The worst economic meltdown in nearly 80 years. The collapse of the housing industry that has long fueled our economy, the collapse of our financial industry due to deregulation, and the worst job losses in nearly 80 years. Historic levels of national debt created by the banks and Bush’s unfunded wars, Bush’s unfunded Medicare expansion, and Bush’s unfunded tax cuts. The collapse of the auto industry due to imports, high oil prices and the financial meltdown. Two on-going wars (one which went neglected for 7-1/2 years) and an over-stretched military. The worst environmental disaster in history. Growing tensions in Israel and Gaza, Korea and oil-rich Iran complicated by nuclear weapons. A national infrastructure that has been decaying for decades. States and industries crippled by the sky-rocketing cost of health care and pharmaceuticals. A middle class that has been stressed by years of dwindling jobs and salaries. Millions of Americans who were (until the passage of health care reform) unable to afford access to health care. An illegal immigration problem that has been kicked down the road for decades. Social Security and Medicare trust funds that have long been raided by Congress, putting them on the edge of bankruptcy. And the most toxic political environment of my lifetime, fueled by right-wing political hacks posing as talk radio hosts and news commentators.

That’s an overwhelming array of crises, and I’ve probably even forgotten to list a few.

Never in our history has a new President been handed such a mess. Sure, Abraham Lincoln was handed a growing state’s rights crisis that led to the Civil War. And FDR was handed the Great Depression along with a growing conflict that became WWII.

But this?!!!

President Obama must feel like a Marine surrounded by ticking IEDs and wondering which one to disarm first. And these crises are made to seem all the worse by an impatient populace and media that have amazingly short attention spans.

© LaMaster Propaganda – All rights reserved.