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argue the point he makes, but I have no ammunition, kind of like that wind up toy President Obama has for a "press secretary."
Two years (give or take) into what may be his only term, there is still too much "Bush" in the Obama White House and policies.
What I genuinely can't stomach is that we gave tens of millions of dollars to Wall Street, because we "Had to", and yet average, everyday people,
who don't give a hoot in hell how the Dow Jones is doing, are STILL losing their homes. The Administration bankrolled Wall Street and then let the Party of NO water down "reform" the same way they "broke" the Health care bill that hardly anyone in the White House talks about anymore. Billions for Wall Street. Billions for two wars, and what does the average "underwater" mortgage holder get? A roll of dimes and a cement life ring. They continue to sink, while others (the ones with money) swim.
And two years later, the brutal truth is that it could all happen again.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I voted and campaigned for Barack Obama believing that, like any Democrat, he would use the power of his office to put right some of what is STILL wrong with the country after eight years of the Village Idiot and his posse of looters and pillagers.
It's the 10th Anniversary of (dun-dun-dun) 9-11. As I write this the media deluge hasn't started yet, but before the end of the day, there won't be anyone anyplace, (unless you stay locked in a sealed vault all day long) who won't be up to their earlobes in maudlin, and mostly political "sentimentality" over this tragic "anniversary".
There are plenty of other things this Administration is "ducking." Things that were or are being done bass ackwackwards, all because the President "has so much to do." Barak Obama has things aplenty to do and to undo, if and when he and the people around him can spare some guts for some of the real, honest change that he campaigned on.
Besides putting an immediate end to DADT, (which he could do with a "stop loss" order) let me focus on just a few out of a bakers dozen or so.
In keeping with this day, let's start with:
-The Patriot Act
Parts of this, one of the worst "knee jerk" (with accent on the "jerk") laws ever passed have been struck down. There is too much of it left, and it's being used in all the wrong ways, even with the change of rug in the Oval Office. it's ten years since a real "jerk" made a political decision to treat an act of barbarous criminality as an act of war rather than what it was, and still is-- an unsolved crime. The great national cringe on 9-12 was used as an excuse to get the excesses of The Patriot Act shoved thru Congress and down the throats of the American people. Most of it is still there. Most people with any sort of mental capacity can and heve looked back on it and said it's a bad bunch of laws. Now that the Great National Scare Tactic (and it's champion Vice-President crash cart) are relics of (bad) history, Isn't it time that we stopped "over-reacting" and took a serious look at what (if anything) the USA Patriot Act has done, in real terms, to make anyone feel "safer." Ask yourself how much "safer" you feel when someone makes you take your shoes off before you get on a plane the next time.
-The Space Program
President Obama wrested the keys to the White House from the Village Idiot January 20, 2009. He "inherited" an economic nightmare left over from the Village Idiot and a group of "economic advisers" who had more on common with the Three Stooges than the CEA. The economic mess has been and continues to be a "smoke screen" excuse for lots of stuff not getting done. First among then is what used to be a Crown Jewell of pride and accomplishment.-NASA went a long time without an Administrator, and for all his high sounding words on the campaign trail, you don't hear anyone "selling" any sort of direction for US manned Spaceflight policy.
The reason I say this is as much economic as it is political.
This Nation is looking under rocks for something, anything "High tech" to get back a piece of what we had once before weak leadership and lack of vision from other people in the Oval Office squandered it. Hay, President Obama!! Looking to create lots of good paying high tech jobs?? Kick start the space program rather than kicking it under the oval office rug, and this time SPEND THE MONEY TO FUND IT FULLY!
Yes, I know. Congress "spends" the money, and with the Party of NO, leaving their footprints on President Obama's backside, this is another in the long "Obama list" of things that were on tap before the economic "Melt down." Well, guess what? Wall Street didn't "Melt down" and to hear the White House talk about it, the "Melt down" is over..SO....
Don't hand me that old soft shoe dance entitled "We can't afford it." We went to the moon in July 1969 for $30 billion (1969 dollars) while we still had a war going on, and a nation divided by it. That's pennies on the 2010 billions that even the most conservative figures say were flushed down a black hole in Iraq.
Astronauts don't go to the Moon, Mars, Low Earth Orbit, or even to asteroids with bags of money in their space craft. Every nut, bolt, and screw that goes to the ISS or to the Moon, Mars, or anyplace else was built right here on good old Earth. And it raised kids, and gave their parents jobs that they are still proud of 40 plus years later.
Right this minute, the Administration, NASA, and Congress are having a knock down drag out cat fight over flying just *ONE* more Space Shuttle mission, while a whole generation of good people who made the shuttle and the ISS fly are being pink slipped by the hundreds every month, as the Shuttle ends, and there's nothing to replace it with.
From President Obama, there was some response. Some extra money (a few cents on the dollar, again.) to help laid off NASA people find all those "other jobs" out there that don't hardly exist. All the grandiose plans are for sometime in the future (mostly post second term Obama) while we have to buy (as in purchase with the tax money everyone says we have so little of) seats for our astronauts from other countries who can still get into space anytime they want. And this is What President Obama calls "The right stuff?"
If this is his vision of "The Right Stuff" then I campaigned and voted for the wrong stuff.
-Where's the fight?
Ever since the national embarrassment on the "Health Care" Bill, the White House has been overly quiet. They have allowed the minority party to walk all over them, as if they have forgotten who and what Democrats are and whom we are supposed to fight for. Maybe someone figured to make political hay over the fact the Party of NO is being obstructionist. If that's the plan, I'd sure as shooting like to know when they are fixing to start, because the numbers say it's our party who's going to get kicked to the gutter the first week of November. If this has all been part of some "double secret" political plan, I'd have to say it isn't working well, if at all. And people who can least afford it are being set up to pay for this if and when it goes bust, because it's going to explode in the faces of the poor, sick, handicapped, and elderly first. Yep, all the people the Party of NO are circling like the vultures that they are, and all because this White House can't seem to win a fight even when they do find the "testicular fortitude" to start one.
We think it's going to be bad and bloody this November. What will it be like in two years time if we allow that to come to pass.
Right now, as far as I can tell, it works something like this:
-The Party of NO wins big in November 2010
-The Party of NO cannot govern, anymore than it could while Gingrich was Speaker and Clinton was President. They screw it up big time again (as I'm sure they will)
-The country is in such bad shape (again) come 2012 that people beg for the Democrats again, just like 2008
-The Party of NO obliges by running a Palin-whoever (another nightmare) ticket
-Bang! The Democrats win in 2012 the same way they did in 2008
- The Democrat's problem is "solved." As long as anyone with a (D) after their name gets the keys to the White House at noon January 20, 2013. Who that someone is doesn't really matter at this moment.
(Has anyone at the DNC thought yet about the genuine nightmare that will ensue if President Obama pulls an LBJ and decides "suddenly" not to run in 2012? Just asking.)
But there's just one little, tinny-weeny thing "wrong" with the aforesaid political "Master plan." What's "wrong" is the numbers of people who will have to suffer in the meantime to make it all work.
"We're not the Party of NO" isn't any better idea for a campaign than "I'm not Bush" ever was.
The point is stark and scary. If the Democrats want to win in 2012, even with all the "help" they'll get from the Party of NO, we'd better start standing up for something when the chips are down (as they might be after November) because for the life of me, I can't seem to remember anything this Administration has "stood up for" without eventually "bending over" (or being bent over) by someone with money or by politics while the people whom they seem least willing to fight for get stuck with the bills, fiscal, political and otherwise.
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