As I’ve mentioned before, I really feel a bit uneasy giving President Obama “advice” which could be construed as me “pulling” my support from him. The reason I’m so uneasy about this is I don’t see another alternative besides the Republican party – which is really in a pathetic state right now. That being said, there is no doubt that I am leaning toward pulling my support from the President. I’ve been watching politics closely for over 40 years – waiting for someone to FINALLY come along who is not either afraid of or bought off by the huge corporations who have essentially taken control of our system of government. It kind of reminds me of what was called the “Jordan Rules” in the NBA a few years ago when the referrees were clearly tilted toward helping the success of the “Main man” of their league. Michael Jordan was fueling the resurgence in popularity of professional basketball and everyone basically seemed to go along with it because they all profited from the revenue generated through Jordan’s success. Just as we Americans have gone along with the “pampering” of Wall Street because its success seemed to indicate that our economy was “strong.”
We have evolved to the point where the large corporations are generating so much revenue that buying off congress persons is a cheap way to protect their respective places in whatever market they are in. In the process we have propped up corporations which have now been determined to be “too big to fail.” I’m watching the resultant “bailouts,” “rescues,” “bridge loans,” and who knows what will be next as we try to save our system which is essentially a huge bubble that is bursting. I fully understand that President Obama has assumed the highest office in the land in the absolute worst of times to be President. I believe history will determine that his challenges far exceed those of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s challenges in the 1930’s. Not only does Obama have the challenge of trying to figure out how to “fix” the problems he inherited, but he has to do so with an opposition party that has no desire whatsoever to participate in the process. To make matters worse, he feels that now is the time to find a way to bridge the chasm that has developed between the two major political parties in this great nation – which, as I’ve stated several times before on this site, I believe to be his major problem.
The part that bothers me the most about what is driving my potential “defection” is that it’s due to issues that shouldn’t even come into play here. The issues of torture, illegal wiretapping, politicization of the Justice Department, lying us into war, and outing a CIA agent among others are legal issues that Obama’s Justice Department should be quietly handling in a way that clearly demonstrates to our own citizens and to the rest of the world that we are a nation of laws. Obama could discreetly direct his Attorney General (he shouldn’t even have to do that – Eric Holder should just investigate fully the allegations of wrongdoing and follow the law regardless of the results with no hesitancy to the question of prosecutions) to treat the investigation of the Bush administration in a “fair and balanced” manner and then focus totally on the “fixing” that needs to be done. He need not make any other statements than those he made during the campaign – that no one is above the law and his Justice Department will enforce our laws fairly and impartially. THAT IS NOT HAPPENING. PRESIDENT OBAMA IS LEAVING THE IMPRESSION THAT THE LAWS DON’T APPLY TO HIGH GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS. THIS IS VERY BAD!
The real reason I wish he wasn’t coming up short in this regard is that he’s doing some difficult things RIGHT! HE WILL NEED THE SUPPORT OF ALL “PROGRESSIVES” TO COMPLETE SOME OF THESE TASKS! I’m a sixth grade teacher and I believe Obama should be treating these Republicans like sixth graders, which is the way they are acting. For starters, Dick Cheney should be in indefinite “lunch detention.” One of the main reasons the Justice department needs to do its job is to SHUT CHENEY UP! This guy is like the basketball coach who’s playing the refs during the game in order to sway people into thinking the gustapo type actions he was “championing” while Vice President were needed, effective, and legal. We’re all suffering from the actions of Cheney and the others in Bush’s administration and it will continue until we can get some leaders to put them where they belong – in the Prison cell next to Lindy England and the other “grunts” who took the fall for America’s torture policy. It makes me sick to my stomach that President Obama would even allow anyone to think that we will continue this policy in America that our leaders are above the law and just finding scapegoats for all their poor decisions “makes things right.” IT’S TIME FOR CHANGE – THE CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN!
By even allowing the question of whether or not Bush et al will face acccountability the fracture in support will possibly sidetrack other important legislation. Let me give you an example. A few days ago President Obama announced a plan to stop the offshore tax havens that many of the largest corporations in this country – with the backing of most Republican members of Congress and, I’m sure, a fair number of Democrats – have allowed and almost encouraged. The worst one that I’m aware of in supporting this – now we’re talking about a place where American corporations can shield BILLIONS of dollars in profit from taxes – was Tom Delay. Why Tom Delay is not in jail is a mystery to me and it would not surprise me if he resurfaced as a leader among Republicans (for all their “principles” they tend to support people like Delay, Gingrich, Limbaugh, and others who have terrible records both publicly and privately regarding their own personal “morals”) – I have read in several places how he was a leader in setting up the Cayman Islands as a place for corporations to create “subsidiaries” which would not be subject to American taxes. Some of the companies really abusing this would be GE, Microsoft, many of the drug companies, and probably most companies which do business overseas. I read the other day that one corporation had almost 300 subsidiaries which allowed them to shield something like 75 Billion dollars in profit from taxes! OUCHEEEE!
Cheney’s former corporation Halliburton had the audacity to bilk American taxpayers for hundreds of Billions through no-bid contracts in Iraq and Afganistan and then move its headquarters to Dubai so that it could avoid American taxes. And, of course, Limbaugh and Hannity and the other Republican water carriers will be hammering away at the “socialism” or some other ridiculous false argument to all their “sheep” as the President tries to get these companies to pay their fair share of the tax burden required for our government to function (and of course these companies receive a disproportionate share of the benefits despite their reluctance to pay for them) and it will be very difficult for President Obama to pass this legislation which should be a no-brainer – just like us citizens, corporations should share in the tax burden of this country. I’ve mentioned on this site that I have a couple friends who listen to Limbaugh and watch Fox “News” and it is unbelievable to me the words that come out of their mouths. I work with a guy who has a master’s degree and I just shake my head when I hear the exact words that have become the recent “talking points” of the Republicans as hammered home by the right wing “talkers.” It’s like they have some kind of mysterious hold on otherwise good people – who actually think they’re being informed by these guys. I mean, I listened to Rush Limbaugh the other day talking about the Chrysler auto bailout for a few minutes (that was all I could stomach – I just wanted to hear what he was saying that day) and I heard at least a half a dozen bold faced lies in less than five minutes. And, of course, at this point I couldn’t remember specifically what they were, but in the past I’ve even given proof to one of my friends about some topic we were disagreeing on and he threw it (the proof – an article that I found on the internet in less than a minute) on the ground and started making disparaging remarks about “liberals” – so I’ve just learned to not say anything to them. These people have been BRAINWASHED!
This is what President Obama is up against on everything he tries to do. People like Limbaugh, Hannity, and many others on the Republican side are not too subtle about their distaste regarding having an African descendant as our commander in chief. Remember Bill Clinton – these guys will not let up as long as Obama is President. He’s never going to be the right color for them. That is why it is so important for him to recognize that he should be trying to keep people like me “on board” before expanding the party to Republcans. I’m even OK with the reaching out to them and giving them an opportunity to compromise over legislation – IT’S JUST THAT I’VE SEEN DEMOCRATS TURN THEIR BACKS ON REPUBLICAN LAWBREAKING OVER AND OVER IN MY LIFETIME AND I WILL NOT SUPPORT THIS! I EXPECTED MORE FROM OBAMA! For all of President Obama’s intelligence and seeming wisdom he is wrong to “look forward instead of backward.” The economy will recover eventually from this crisis, but this nation may never recover if we don’t do the right thing regarding the issues of torture and illegal wiretapping. If we sacrifice our principals because of 9/11 the terrorists will have “won.”