I have shared my concerns regarding President Obama, the position he inherited, and my take on some of the decisions he’s apparently making. I VERY MUCH want President Obama to succeed – just as I wanted President Bush to succeed. And I will be watching carefully as Obama’s administration unfolds – giving my “take” on things – and trying to base my perspective on what I consider to be “the right thing” regarding his decisions. As I’ve stated on this “blog” several times, Obama does not get the free pass from me that the Republicans gave George W Bush during his presidency (and to listen to them now – I think they might be re-thinking the idea that if the President is from your party you just rubber stamp anything he proposes). I was for Obama and I have a vote Democratic bumper sticker on my car – but the bumper sticker was because I was disgusted with Republicans for “rubber stamping” the President. However, I have always been an “Independent” voter and, despite the fact that I find several of Obama’s positions appropriate, I have a lot of questions – and the strength of my support for him was very much influenced by my disgust with Republicans and especially their ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin.

John McCain proved to be about as two-faced as any politician I have witnessed in my 41 years as a voter. I found it to be a real indictment of our media that he wasn’t “called” more on the incredible number of “flip-flops” he made during his campaign, and worse yet, the “foopahs” where he demonstrated an alarming lack of knowledge regarding the major issues facing this nation. Not knowing the difference between Sunni and Shia got my attention (he made this mistake on several occasions), not knowing that Czechoslovakia is no longer a country, referring to the non-existent Iraqi/Packistani border, and giving himself (as president) powers that don’t exist as he would fire the head of the SEC – all of this demonstrated an incompetence that conceivably could have surpassed that of George W Bush himself. This was really brought to light when McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. The more I discovered about her, the more ridiculous this choice was. Now, for my Republican friends who care only about the Right to Life issue (and only as it has been “used” by the Republican Party to gain a “base” of Conservative Christians) Palin was a great choice. These people are quick to buy into the arguments made by people such as Rush Limbaugh (that in itself really puzzles me – how can devout Christians listen to someone as vile as Limbaugh – someone who in his own life has been shown to be morally corrupt?) explaining away the troubles we face as a nation to everything but their own bad ideas – which have been in the “mainstream” for the past 30+ years. I, myself, would be –  actually, now that I think about it, I can’t even imagine where I’d be mentally – if I had to rely on John McCain and Sarah Palin to solve the enormous problems inflicted on this nation by eight years of George W Bush and company.

We are seeing the results of this over and over as the Obama administration is into its 3rd month in office. Many people understand the situation is dire and they can see we are all depending on Obama to make the “right” decisions – but, from my perspective, things evidently haven’t gotten bad enough for the general public to really “get” how bad it really is. I try to picture the challenges facing Obama and it just seems approaching impossible. Pulling together is our best chance, but that doesn’t seem to be happening just yet. For example, we still have the Republican party saying “No” to everything President Obama proposes. Many of them have openly said they hope he fails. This, in itself, should be enough to put them in their proper place, which in my opinion is oblivion. I guess, many of them don’t see the same consequences of Obama “failing” that I see. And, I guess it’s hard for me to comprehend that Obama’s mission is to “fix” the problems created by the Republicans and GW Bush, so if he “succeeds” it will prove that their ideas are “bankrupt” which many people such as myself have been saying for years. Additionally, the only way I can conceptualize them wanting Obama to “fail” is that they believe if he can’t pull us out of the mess created by Bush et al it will all be Obama’s fault – and then they can regain the power they lost in the 2008 election and revitalize their mission to control every aspect of our government (Karl Rove’s “permanent Republican majority”) – they obviously think the American public is stupid and all I can say about that is I hope they are wrong.  (Their big mistake here, in my opinion, is that acting in opposition to every move he makes will make them the “problem” if he “fails.”)

All this being said, I still believe that our country functions best when there is rational dissent leading to an exchange of ideas with the purpose being to solve major problems. I, for one, am not comfortable with several of the decisions coming from Obama’s presidency. I’ve stated on several occasions that I’m concerned he’s continuing the warrantless wiretapping of the Bush administration – so far, that hasn’t hit the “mainstream media” and I hope I’m wrong about this – but that is a deal breaker for me as far as giving Obama any more financial support (I don’t think he’ll miss my occasional $25). I also don’t see any signs of troops coming home from Iraq and I’m afraid Obama is getting “played” by the military establishment – and for me even if he does what he “last” said, leaving 50,000 troops in Iraq for an additional year and a half (and I believe it’s going to be longer) is unacceptable – ALL THE TROOPS NEED TO COME HOME! and ASAP! At the same time he’s leaving the troops in Iraq he’s sending more troops into the quagmire known as Afganistan – In his campaign he talked about being able to make the “HARD” decisions – I’m really beginning to question this.

And then there’s the economy. Well, in America the economy rules when it comes to keeping your job as a politician – so it is understandable that most of the focus of this nation right now is on the economy. The Bush administration had essentially “bludgeoned” our economy – the best way for me to describe it would be an incredible reverse Robin Hood phenomenon – stealing from the poor and giving to the rich. I couldn’t believe it as it was happening – there was a lot of information “outing” the Bush administration as they were doing this – but the outrage never materialized into any significant numbers until the Wall Street “meltdown.” There were always pundits pointing out the damage of the “trickle down” economic theories put in place by Ronald Reagan – but they had managed to create this incredible false economy through the use of bogus credit schemes which tricked the middle class into thinking that their homes would go up in value forever.   They could then just use them as a bottomless debit card. The problem now is that the middle class is the place where the suffering is intensifying and all the “Reverse Robin Hoods” are situated with billions just waiting to further benefit from their accumulation of wealth as they pick up the pieces left from those who are losing everything – especially their homes. And I don’t believe the worst has happened yet.

All of this has gotten me to my main thoughts for today. I read this morning that the Obama administration has rejected the GM and Chrysler plans required for them to receive additional government “loans” while they try to survive this enormous downturn in their ability to do business. Yesterday the government forced the CEO of GM, Rick Wagoner, to “resign” or take an early “retirement.” Of course I’m not at all involved in the negotiations which have taken place, and, while I believe that these actions are probably very much warranted (I have for a long time felt GM couldn’t see the forest for the trees, so to speak, regarding their continued reliance on “gas hogs” as the main source of profit for each of their “brands”), based on what has transpired during the previous 6 months this action makes the bailouts on Wall Street look even worse. With GM and Chrysler we’re talking about 30 billion dollars (supporting 3 million “blue collar” jobs). Now, in my mind, that is a HUGE PILE OF MONEY! However, it pales in view of what the government has “given” to Wall Street. And, when I say given, that is literally what I mean. A couple trillion with no apparent “strings” attached and nobody getting rid of any CEO’s or anyone else who caused these problems in the first place (well, they did replace the CEO of AIG last fall). FOR WORKING FOLK LIKE MYSELF, THIS DOESN’T LOOK GOOD! A strong case can be made, in my view, that the problems at GM and Chrysler are largely the result of the failure of the banking system. I realize that the government can’t bailout every industry that is affected by the misdeeds of the banking system – but there needs to be some kind of, at least, appearance of fairness in dealing with this crisis.

When we look back on this disaster, and many surely will, I’m feeling that we are going to find a select few Americans’ greed the cause for millions of Americans’ grief. It is of paramount importance that the government provide transparent accountability for all that HAS HAPPENED and IS HAPPENING. I’m absolutely certain that there is and has been a lot of cheating going on by these wealthy Wall Street “moguls.” Bernie Madoff was discovered, but I don’t believe he’s the only one who has been cheating the average American citizen. And I’m very much worried that President Obama is not going to uncover all the wrongdoing. He’s shown a stubborn reluctance to encourage the investigation of his predecessor (despite widespread belief that major crimes were committed) and he’s showing a reluctance to let the Wall Street banks fail (which I believe would lead to investigations uncovering the wrongdoing they have been perpetrating for, in some cases, many years). What kind of message are we sending to the people of this nation (and the world) when we throw – literally – trillions of dollars at our financial institutions – letting them off the hook for their decisions which have been destructive to millions of middle class Americans – and then micro-manage GM before we will loan them the money they need to survive (much of this money would go to thousands of blue collar workers and retirees)? Personally, I believe restructuring Wall Street is far more important than restructuring General Motors!