It ain't Mittens!
Paulie Brading
Take a look. Obama was handed the great recession mess four years ago. Fast forward: housing is up, we've had 46 straight months of job increases, foreclosures and bankruptcies are down, soldiers are coming home, no new wars have been declared, the first ever healthcare bill was passed saving thousands of lives, regulations on big banks passed, the Equal Pay for Woman act passed, General Motors was saved, the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy is gone, Bin Lauden's death was ordered and accomplished, and Obama offered rational responses to international problems. Imagine what Obama could have accomplished with cooperation from the Republican Senate and House members.
We've grown tired of the disrespect, insulting talkshow hosts, radio hate speech, racism, lying, pandering and the Fox News "fair and balanced" nonsense. The poisonous fruit of self-righteousness and quixotic uncompromising messaging has gone off the rails.
Along comes Romney, chosen from a shallow pool of "would be" Republican presidential candidates. All of whom changed their positions during the R primary depending on the audience or issues, with the exception of Ron Paul. From Romney we hear that Chrysler intends to send Jeep manufacturing to China. Guess what, it is not true. The Republican platform states, no abortions, no exceptions. Vaginal ultra sounds at the women's expense were proposed in Virginia. Hundreds and hundreds of women in Virginia let their state politicians know the proposal was unacceptable.
Republicans have doubled their previous record number of filibusters in Congress. Senator Merkley is taking on this issue by asking for voice filibusters to be returned to the Senate.
We want President Obama to be our president for the next four years. We want his considered, thoughtful, competent, rational, steady leadership to continue to guide our country. We want civility and a bipartisan approach to governing our country and our state. Most of all we want princpled and truthful elected officials.
This time around it ain't Mittens who will lead our country.
Your take.
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11:07 a.m.
Nov 4, '12
I hope you are right because I completely share your critique of the Rs. However I disagree substantially about the praise of President Obama. He has created a new, undeclared war in Pakistan and generally expanded a dangerous and immoral use of drone weapons. His one clear broken promise from 2008 is a big one, that he has adopted and expanded Bush II's unconstitutional claims about presidential war powers, and expanded abuses of spying on citizens domestically, as well as developing an assassination list overseas. He repeatedly sided with the big banks against ordinary people in the economic crisis, due to the dominance of Wall Street financial interests in DP national economic policy-making, and missed the chance to use his leverage in the crisis to get much more powerful reforms.
Romney would be worse on all these scores, and a disaster for the country. But Obama will continue to be bad on them, aided by a sclerotic Democratic Party which focuses only on winning and not on finding ways to win that actually advance our values.
The next round will emerge shortly after the election when the president will lead the charge to impose austerity on us with a so-called "grand bargain" to cut Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and retain outsized military spending for the sake of continuing a foreign policy based on having a military bigger than the next 15 countries in the world, i.e. a policy of military domination and lack of accountability.
Having voted for the president, I am preparing to fight against him. If Romney were elected the fight would be over even worse ideas. But I will not back President Obama unconditionally.
11:55 a.m.
Nov 4, '12
good luck with that! Be prepared to be told that we must give him time, we have to understand that the Republicans won't let him do this or that, that he's President of all the people, that you're making it more difficult for him.
We can try to get his attention but it's not like he was a big supporter of OWS. He'll ignore the left again, as he has this whole term. The trick will be to somehow get a progressive nominated in 2016, someone who won't be committed to continuing the Obama legacy.
6:20 p.m.
Nov 5, '12
With respect to the national security state, it wasn't built by one president and it isn't likely to be dismantled by one president. I think before you hammer Obama on that you ought to say who could plausibly get elected and do better.
11:18 a.m.
Nov 4, '12
excerpted: America’s heart, soul, brains and muscle — the middle- and working-class people who make this nation great — have been beset for too long by sapping economic decline.
Paychecks are shrunken after more than a decade in which the workplace has asked more of wage earners and rewarded them less.
Four years ago, the Daily News endorsed Obama, seeing a historic figure whose intelligence, political skills and empathy with common folk positioned him to build on the small practical experience he would bring to the world’s toughest job. We valued Obama’s pledge to govern with bold pragmatism and bipartisanship.
The hopes of those days went unfulfilled.
The official unemployment rate stands at 7.9%, marking only the second month below 8% after 43 months above that level. Worse, add people who are working part-time because they have no better choice and the rate leaps to almost 15%. Still worse, add 8 million people who have given up looking for employment and the number who are out of jobs or who are cobbling together hours to scrape by hits some 23 million people. The regrettable truth is that Obama built a record of miscalculations and missed opportunities.
First came emergency economic stimulus. Because Obama gave free rein to House and Senate Democrats in deciding how to spend $800 billion, the legislation was heavily designed to satisfy the party’s constituencies and hunger for social programs After originally projecting that the program would produce 4 million more jobs than the country now has, along with a 5% jobless rate, Obama pleads that he saved Americans from more dire straits.
Next came Obamacare. While the country bled jobs, the President battled to establish universal health insurance — without first restraining soaring medical bills.
Romney has tailored his policies to create jobs, jobs, jobs.
Romney’s energy plan calls for reemphasizing oil and natural gas production, in a shift away from Obama’s tilt toward trying to develop wind and solar into workable alternatives.
His proposal for Medicare would permit future retirees to choose between tried-and-true health care and private insurance to produce savings through competition.
His immigration strategy entails markedly increasing visas for highly skilled workers, such as engineers and computer scientists, who are in short supply in the United States — and are proven jobs generators. Obama let economic energy go by the boards by declining to up these H1-B work permits.
The presidential imperative of the times is to energize the economy and get deficits under control to empower the working and middle classes to again enjoy the fruits of an ascendant America.
So The News is compelled to stand with Romney.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/choice-america-future-mitt-romney-article-1.1196299#ixzz2BHZlNZXz
12:06 p.m.
Nov 4, '12
I prefer to think in the positive. We have a 93% employmnet rate at the moment.
6:10 p.m.
Nov 4, '12
Thank you, Paulie, for affirming the good work of our President and the Dem. Party. Despite the lefty naysayers.
8:58 a.m.
Nov 5, '12
As good as this post may be it does not begin to address the systemic problems which we 99% folks face. Look at Truthout for an excellent comparison between the philosoophy of Ayn Rand and John Dewey on individualism. Seriously folks, we have a death squad candidate, Rawmoney, who is in total sympathy with an arrested case of human development; Rand was suspended in an adolescent funk of pure egoism.
If you do not know the problem you can not address a solution. Check out Democracy Now for a positive view of the occupy movement.