If the birth certificate controversy had not existed, Obama's supporters would have had to invent it. The main pro-Obama sites fixate on the birthers because otherwise the bots would be forced to defend their Messiah's record.
Which ain't none too good, overall.
I must admit that he has done some excellent things. I'll name ten.
1. He has lifted some very silly restrictions on stem-cell research.
2. Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
3. He has ended restrictions on providing funds to pro-abortion family planning groups
4. He has extended federal benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees.
5. The administration has substantially reversed Bush's war on the unions.
6. He has expanded hate crime laws to cover gays.
7. He has agreed (in principle, at least) to reduce the nuclear stockpile.
8. Sotomayor was a decent choice. I think.
9. America's standing in the world has improved.
10. Obama seems to be inching toward a more balanced stance on the Israeli/Palestinian issue.
But when we turn our attention to the larger issues -- the issues that everyone was talking about during the campaign -- Obama has compiled a troubling record. I'll name 21 issues.
1. He has sent more troops to Afghanistan. What we need is an exit.
2. He has instituted a massive economic stimulus program that has provided little true stimulus. Unemployment remains horrible -- far worse than his economic team had predicted. Governor Phil Bredesen of Tennessee, one of the few remaining true Democrats, is directing money toward the creation of a new WPA, albeit on a very limited scale. Why isn't Obama doing the same thing nationwide?
3. The TARP funds were supposed to keep credit flowing. Well?
4. We've seen no true re-regulation of Wall Street. No way the O-team will regulate High-Frequency trading. (If he would tax stock transactions as other countries do, our problems would be solved.)
5. The perpetrators of the financial meltdown should have been tossed into the pokey. Instead, they continue to make obscene profits.
6. The insolvent banks should have been put into receivership. They weren't. We now have corporate socialism -- or maybe "gambler's insurance" -- for the too-big-to-fail banks. If things go well, the fat cats get fatter. If things go poorly, you cover their bets.
7. There was no real help for people suffering from foreclosure. Obama's much-ballyhooed plan failed.
8. Larry Summers and Tim Geithner. What more do I need to say?
9. Everyone now pretty much has to admit that Obama utterly screwed up health care reform by taking single payer off the table. His current plan amounts to a hand-out to the insurance racketeers.
10. Obama proved to be as bad as Bush on the question of government transparency. Maybe even worse. He has broken his promise to post bills online for five days before signing them.
11. Closing the Gitmo gulag keeps getting pushed off into the future.
12. The Obama administration has expanded upon Bush's reliance on the "state secrets" privilege.
13. He has squelched evidence detailing rape and abuse of detainees.
14. FISA. Again, what more do I need to say?
15. Credit card reform did some good things, but did not address the real issues.
16. The Patriot Act has been worsened.
17. We're still in Iraq. In fact, we're going to be there another decade.
18. The military is being expanded and the Pentagon's budget raised, even though no other nation directly threatens us at present.
19. Obama is continuing Bush's "faith-based" initiatives.
20. He is rattling sabers at Iran.
21. Signing statements. Just like Dubya.
One could go on, but the point is made. The Obots need the birthers for the same reason a dental patient in the 1700s needed whiskey. You always need something to take your mind off the pain.
11 comments:
I agree with your post except for the title and the last paragraph. The BC crap is as silly as the Socialist lable.
However, if people that did not vote for Obama could criticize his policies based on actual end results as you have done in this post, then the one's that voted for him could defend his policies using the same tactic. But all bets are off when it comes to Obots and Pumas.
beeta
I like your balance in this post. Few if any critics of Obama as thorough-going as yourself from jump street could ever muster up the integrity and intellectual honesty to mention any extended list of Obama's actions that can be characterized as good ones, let alone excellent ones, as you have here.
I'll add one to the top list: reversal of Bush's EO that overturned the effect of the Presidential Records Act. Obama reversed Bush's EO coverup of the Reagan/Bush years by his own EO on day 1, as I recall, and thereby returned the history and documents of presidencies to the public domain, as that law properly provided.
For the demerits list, while I agree that the 'doubling down' policy on Afghanistan is a gross error, it stands apart from most of the rest since it is not a reversal of Obama's campaign promises, but instead a fulfilling of a campaign promise.
THEORETICALLY, it is a mainstream Democratic Party position. Standard bearers of the party including and since Gore (Kerry, Edwards, Howard Dean, Hillary) all pointed to Afghanistan as the war we should have concentrated on, as a legitimate national security matter to get 'the folks' who attacked us on 9/11 (and contrasted it most favorably compared to the misbegotten Iraq war). There is broad party and national support for the position the Afghan effort was/(is still?) necessary and worthwhile.
Part of this bias in favor of that war is logical on the surface (Osama Bin Laden DID hq there), and part is political. Big time Democrats do not want to be characterized as pacifists unwilling to defend the country with military force. (Obama: I'm not against all wars, just stupid ones.) Problem here is that, since the Afghanistan war is unwinnable, it is also a stupid war that is best ended forthwith. (If the Soviets couldn't prevail with twice the manpower and no restrictions on brutality after a 10 year effort...)
XI
As usual, a post that includes a breath of fresh air, sanity, and facts in a blogworld gone wild!!
Thank you for posting this!! Every real democrat should tape it to their refrigerator.
He's also pissed off the gay community with his awkward and insulting handling of our issues. Defending DOMA in court by after promising to repeal it by comparing gay relationships to incest? Backtracking on "Don't Ask Don't Tell" and removing his civil rights promises to the gay community from the WH website.
I still maintain that he's an opportunistic sociopath who cares for nothing but promoting himself. I can't kiss his butt for a few decent actions. He's a huge disappointment. I didn't vote for him, but he's way worse than I expected.
He didn't expand hate crime laws-he just signed it. He didn't expend any capital making it happen so not sure he should get the credit for more than signing.
The partner benefits was a ploy to assuage the gay community which was quite angry with his DOJ court brief on DOMA. It didn't include any big benefits like health care and was just a formalization of small benefits that were already being given by various depts. Hillary had already said she would do more for State employees.It was the least he could do and still say he did something for gays. Pure PR.
Wish I could think of some concrete positives to add but no luck. I had to give him the benefit of the doubt on some of the others as it was!
Joan
"1. He has lifted some very silly restrictions on stem-cell research."
Actually, he didn't. He lifted Bush's executive order, but two days later he signed a budget bill containing the Dickey-Wicker amendment. That amendment put the Bush-era restrictions into *law*. They're still in force, and in fact they're now harder to get rid of. Nothing has changed on that front.
Yes, he did #4...after Hillary shamed him into it.
If #5 were true, then why were layoffs and reductions in benefits a condition for the auto bailouts?
#6: Are you sure this has been signed into law? The last I saw it had gone to conference, but I wasn't aware the bill had actually passed.
As for #7, he's done exactly what every President since Nixon has done: pay lip service to strategic arms reduction. He has not "agreed to reductions" - he has agreed to TALK about reductions. It remains to be seen whether he'll actually implement anything. Bill Clinton did more than talk about this - he achieved substantial reductions.
As for #9, it would've been really difficult for him to make things worse.
10. I'm not entirely sure about this one, either.
So, I'll spot him 5 out of 10. A 50% is still an "F" where I come from.
Does anyone else remember that during the campaign when asked how he would pay for health care reform, Obama said it would come from savings which would arise when he withdrew our troops from unnecessay wars?
Quick comment on A-6:
I read (and in the local progressive weekly, no less) that hate crime laws are much more often used against the groups they are supposed to protect (e.g.whites use the law to make claims against blacks much more often than the reverse). So I'm not sure that #6 is a good thing.
Sergei Rostov
I'll disagree with the Iran and signing statement complaints.
Obama said in the campaign that he would reach out to and engage Iran. Not only did he start it with the Narooz (New Year holiday) greeting, but he also committed explicitly that Iran did enjoy the right to civilian nuclear energy under the NNPT protocol. And, not only did HE say Iran had that right, he got a probably VERY reluctant Bibi Netanyahu to also use modified language to that effect, that Israel was now opposing (only, was the subtext) the acquisition of nuclear WEAPONS. Bibi and prior Israeli officials never made such a distinction until seeing Obama.
Additionally, under Obama's leadership, the military spoke most frankly with their Israeli counterparts, stating ahead of time that they must be sure between them to have no such 'accident' (synthesized 'enemy' attack) as (wait for it...)-- the USS Liberty (!!!). That is, we signaled not to try a false flag attempt at gaining our entry into a war with Iran, telling them we were on to such tricks.
By these actions, Obama has very significantly ratcheted DOWN the tension with Iran, and not taken the bait provided by the western-influenced civil disturbances concerning their elections. So, rattled sabers? Not so much, and more the opposite (and this should be in the list of EXCELLENT things he's done, not the troubling list of things).
As for signing statements?
I put them in a category with earmarks as not inherently a problem unless the practice runs amok. All recent presidents have done them. The excess and extremes to which George W. pushed the practice was the problem, not the practice itself. I cannot recall anyone ever thinking any president's prior use of these was a problem until George W. signed more than all other recent presidents put together.
What IS a president to do, lacking a line item veto, when a legitimate potential legal concern is raised as to the Constitutionality of a given small provision of an otherwise unobjectionable bill? I suggest it is reasonable to state in plain language why such a provision may violate the Constitution, providing a reason why the president may order the executive branch to not follow the provision, with an eye to prompting a court challenge prior to engaging in that potentially dubious action.
It's either that, or he must veto the whole thing. Taking the 99-1/2% of the entirely legal bill, and carving out the 1/2% that is troublesome, seems a reasonable position, and that technique was used without much issue raised for all of its history of use.
For example, as much as the right attacked Clinton, they never raised any issue of the perhaps several dozen times he promulgated such signing documents.
XI
Acutally, XI, the problem with signing statements (which, by the way, have as of yet no legal force whatsoever), is not how often they are used, but why. Bill Clinton, for example, used them to voice a clarifying opinion as to what the laws in question meant, while Bush used them to nullify them with respect to him, a huge difference.
What IS a president to do, lacking a line item veto, when a legitimate potential legal concern is raised as to the Constitutionality of a given small provision of an otherwise unobjectionable bill?
He lets such issues be clarifed/decided by the courts, as the Constitution both allows for and requires. Further, if he uses signing statements as a form of "line-item" veto (again, this is if they had any legal standing), he throws off the system of checks and balances outlined in the Constitution.
Even further, in Obama's case:
1) [from the article]
"...Obama has irked close allies in Congress by declaring he has the right to ignore legislation on constitutional grounds..."
This is just what Bush did. Obama lambasted him for it during the campaign...but for the unethical, things are different when it's THEY who are in power. It is not within the power of the Executive Branch to declare a law unconstitutional, in whole OR in part; that power belongs solely to the Judicial Branch. By doing what he's doing (with respect to those laws) Obama is saying with other words what Nixon said: "When the President does it, it's not illegal." I am saddened to say it doesn't shock me in the least that you agree.
2)He has already demonstrated by his actions that he wants to expand executive power (increased use of "secrecy" arguments, for example).
3)He promised to change the way Washington does things, not perpetuate what its worst denizens advocate.
For these reasons, with respect to Obama, signing statements are a bad thing, so they should stay on the list.
Sergei Rostov
Oh, also, on Iran:
3/04/09
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/obama-pulls-us-out-un-conference-racism-congressional-black-caucus-should-attend-anyway
"For the record, President Obama is also pursuing Bush policies on Iran and Israel. As recently as yesterday, President Obama's Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, responded when asked whether Iran was capable of building an atom bomb. Admiral Mullen replied, 'We think they do, quite frankly.'
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/freedom-rider-obama-insults-muslims
6/10/09
[in comments]
"Quit the propaganda campaign about threat of Iran's nuclear program. Credible intel agencies have refuted claims of Iran as nuclear threat. Iran (unlike US puppetmaster Israel) signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Obama knows full well the Iran hype is WMD II and if he was truly committed to changing US foreign policy for the better, he'd stop repeating the lies about Iran."
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/freedom-rider-selective-sympathy-iran
6/24/09
"The greatest risk to the Iranian people comes from the American president, who had already proclaimed that military action against Iran should not be 'taken off the table.'"
4/08/09
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/freedom-rider-phony-nuclear-disarmament
"he [Obama, in Europe] repeated almost word for word Bush administration policy on the need for missiles in Europe. 'As long as the threat from Iran persists, we will go forward with a missile defense system that is cost-effective and proven.'
-snip-
"It was once left to Condoleezza Rice, queen of the bizarre, semi-insane statement, to insist that Poland and the Czech Republic were threatened by the prospect of a nuclear Iran. Now Barack Obama repeats the worst, most untruthful and belligerent policies of the Bush administration."
Sounds like "saber-rattling" to me.
Sergei Rostov
Post a Comment