One Year Later: Ten Things President Obama HAS Done Since He’s Been in Office
One year ago, the United States witnessed the people take its government back from ideological tyranny, greed, and anti-intellectualism. The election of President Barack Obama was a worldwide event — a signal to the world that America, at last, had overcome it’s last taboo (at least publicly), race. Graveyards all over America with generations of three centuries of racialized pasts either roared, “Finally,” or rolled over in amazement that this could happen here of all places.
One year later, the nation is a lot more sober with the reality of what change really is, and what was necessary to bring change about. The most amazing thing about the past year is the short memories everybody seems to have about how bad things really were. People seem to have forgotten that the economy was in a freefall, two misguided wars were draining the U.S. treasury ,and we had little goodwill to be found anywhere around the globe.
All guns were pointed at us with no calvary in sight. Everybody thought Barack Obama was the better candidate. Everybody agreed that Barack Obama should be elected President. But NOBODY was going to call it, bet the farm on it, or even say it, above a whisper, that Barack Obama would be the next President — until they saw it with their own eyes. The reality of the Americ’s situation, however, is that no matter who was elected President, the country was in trouble. And that’s exactly how it’s gone down.
The ignorant (who are not really ignorant, just still mad), the foolish, and the partisans all want to suggest that President Obama hasn’t done anything in the 10 months since he’s been President. They even want to blame the outcomes of this month’s elections in Virginia and New Jersey as a referendum on the job Obama is doing. Like things were just going to turn around because Barack showed up. It’s simple-minded and disingenuous to suggest nothing has been done. So, let’s look at (at least) ten things President Obama has managed to achieve within his first year (that’s not over yet):
- Ten: President Obama has slowed down the recession. Nobody is talking depression anymore, and some are talking recovery. Trying to catch this economy from crashing was like trying to catch a 100 ton boulder dropped off a 70-story building. The nertia alone is going to push you backwards until you can slow the force. Most wouldn’t even step in front of a boulder coming at them like this. Obama stepped in the gap and stuck to a measured recovery plan of stimulus dollars and labor force transition.
- Nine: President Obama saved Wall Street. And Wall Street tried to punk him by paying itself first. He exposed the absence of regulatory oversight on Wall Street, and economic and financial investment reform is being discussed like never before.
- Eight: President Obama saved the collapse of the American automotive industry. By making GM restructure before bailing them out, and putting incentive money to help the industry, he saved the industry. People want to make jokes about “cash for clunkers” but the automakers aren’t laughing. They’re thanking him.
- Seven: President Obama shifted the focus of the war from Iraq to Aftghanistan, and putting the emphasis on reducing terrorism where it should have been all along-but now they want to say he’s making war, not peace. Well, at least he didn’t destabilize a whole region on a false premise. It’s better than what we had.
- Six: President Obama relaxed Anti-American tensions throughout the world. This was more serious than the previous administration was willing to let on. The President made good on his promise to make a major address on American-Muslim relations and he did it in a Muslim country, showing a good faith that America hadn’t shown in a while.
- Five: President Obama closed the prisoner “torture camp” at Guantanamo Bay. Holding prisoners for eight years without charging them was acceptable under the previous administration. It is not acceptable under this administration. Obama’s next challenge is what to do with the detainees.
- Four: President Obama has made the environment a national priority, and a primary source for job creation. The era of polluting industrialists is over, and with a President that understands the benefits of green conversion, America can become a leader in the industry of the future.
- Three: President Obama has made education a national priority by putting emphasis and money behind new ideas like charter schools, but speaking directly to school children in telling them they have to do their part. It’s what any President should be encouraging but Obama’s so popular, he was accused of trying to “socialize” or “prothelitize” the children. It’s a sad day when the President of the United States can’t speak to school children because their parent’s views conflict.
- Two: President Obama is on the verge of passing universal health care, with a public option, to insure everybody in America has care when they are sick. He’s doing it, despite villification of ideologues and while in the midst of an H1N1 epidemic where millions could get sick this winter. The people feel him on this.
- One: President Obama has restored credibility to the American Presidency where the world is looking to him to lead America out of unilateralism and back into multilateral global cooperation. The Nobel Peace Prize was an acknowledgment that Obama had led and is leading a non-violent cultural revolution in America. Everybody, except for a few in America, can see the change. Still, the world understands what happened one year ago, and they thought they’d never see such a shift occur. The election of Obama helped the world see the light that America wasn’t ready to self-destruct.
Not bad, for less than a year in office. People need to stop complaining that he hasn’t done enough. Obama was elected President. He wasn’t elected Jesus. Like Al Sharpton said on Meet The Press, “we now realize that Obama doesn’t walk on water, but he’s still the fastest swimmer in America.”
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I agree that significant changes have happened in the last year. But this top 10 list is rather general and misses some impoprtant key changes. I give a couple of examples:
(1) re-engaging in negotiations with North Korea rather than just ignoring them or taunting them;
(2) relaxing the embargo on Cuba, including on travel and remitances;
(3) changes in federal guidelines to federal prosecutors about bringing medical marajuana indictmentsa;
(4) appointment of Dr Chu as Energy secretary, and new emphasis on renewable energy R&D;
(5) Chris Dodd’s bill on regulatory reform of the banking industry (a much better approach than Obama’s proposal to put the Fed in charge of all regulatory aspects).
A better analysis would have more specifics and less generalizations.
== Robert Frampton (Pasadena)
As progressive democrat reading this article, I feel that without the push from progressives things would not look as good as they do. We were at the forefront of getting him elected. I have been a Democrat as long as I could vote. We need to watch very closely that we maintain our liberal positions and remember that we are the party of the people.
Anthony Asadullah Samad:
The L.A. Progressive should be very proud of you.
I never would have thought any Newspaper in the United States would have printed the truth about Barack Obama.
You, Anthony, have done a marvelous job. Kudos to you!!! I believe Barack Obama has done a “fantastic” job in ten (10) months. It takes a “woman” and a “man” less time to consumate to have a child and less than ten (10) months to have one and after it is born, it still needs “years” of care. Barack Obama has embraced America as his “baby” and is nurturing it as he would have done for his own two babies. You have to feed (stimulus bill), rock it (move it until it is comfortable with changes), change the diapers (get rid of the mess that was globally left by negligent Presidents (parents). His baby is just getting used to him “bonding” because of such drastic changes since it was in the womb. The baby is reaching out with Barack Obama for attainable “peace”. Peace to the World, peace to live a good, clean, functional life. Peace to share good things from America with all other Nations. To learn to share technology and to pacify all the other good Nations of the World. God Bless You,Anthony for an article I will share with family and friends.
The following comment was sent to us by a long time LA Progressive reader named Val. She sent this comment directly to our email address but gave us permission to repost it here.
Here’s what Val had to say:
Sorry, but most of this editorial about Obama is a crock! Particularly about the recovery and healthcare. With millions of workers unemployed and an unemployment rate which will permanently now be 10% Please! And so is the article about Ft. Hood creating PSTD. Hasan hadn’t even served overseas.
Send your newsletter to President Zelaya where the coup d-etat has him hiding out in the Brazilizn embassy. Tell it to President Chavez whose preparing his country now for the war Obama is getting ready to wage against Latin America from the bases we are preparing in Colombia. And tell it to the Palestians who are still being starved en masse in Gaza and cannot rebuild their homes while the Obama administration equivocates over settlement building but cannot send in a ship full of medical supplies and food.
Tell it to the people who homes have been foreclosed while taxpayer funds were being shoveled to the shareholders of investment firms like Goldmach Sachs and the rest of the banks.
Tell it to the students who are being denied the ability to enter state college in California and the students preparing to strike at UC Berkeley.
But please don’t come and tell it to Oakland where Jerry Brown sucked out more than his share of public monies for his private charter arts school in Oakland in a public building that he shoveled public subsidies of $60 million dollars to restore, yes the Fox Theater which is now being auctioned off. And this charter arts school mainly had children from Walnut Creek and SF enrolled.
Attack the left because of Obama’s bankrupt strategy of inviting in the insurance company in a bogus plan for healthcare reform now renamed guaranteed insurance company profits. And tie the hands of the left behind them as well as a woman’s right to choose is almost annihilated now.
Val
P.S. Otherwise, I tend to like your newsletter
Yes, I’m with Val. I like your newsletter. However, I thought the article about Obama was a generalized whitewash — if it’s OK to use that term! There are a few things that do represent progress, but most are only part of what was promised. The only thing I really agreed with is the fact that he has indeed brought us back into the family of nations, and has brought us respect abroad.
The stimulus should have been a jobs program. He buckled under to the pressure to do just about everything EXCEPT have a jobs program. Look at what the Governor of Tennessee did with his stimulus money. He used it for a jobs program similar to what Roosevelt did. If he could do that with the money sent to his state, why couldn’t Obama, without even going to Congress, have started similar programs? Bush proved to us that presidents do have real power. There are programs out there already, with funds, that can be used by the administration. What if every young person who wanted a job last summer, and every out-of-work person who was willing, had been sent out to serve as classroom aides in summer schools across the country, to shelve books so librarians could hold story hours, or to paint and freshen up classrooms and park restrooms, and clear brush in fire areas? At $15 per hour, imagine the money that would have flowed into their home communities as they were able to pay their rents, buy groceries, and maybe have enough left over for a movie or a night out? Would these have been “real jobs?” I think the people who did the work, and the communities that benefited, would have thought they were real.
The same thing goes for the advances needed by gays. Obama could put a moritorium on firing gays in the military. Every week, an ad appears in the Los Angeles Times begging people who speak Arabic languages to volunteer. And yet, thousands of gays who were trained to speak Arabic have been fired! And here we had a psychiatrist who begged to be released from the Army, and offered to pay back his education — a man who was so repelled by the idea of fighting his co-religionists that he finally broke and went on a shooting spree — and yet he could not be discharged despite obvious psychological problems. But we keep on firing gays who want to serve!
Obama is losing the chance he has to appoint more liberal judges. By the time he gets around to it, congress will have changed, and there will no longer be a Democratic majority. Many other regulatory actions will probably lose out for the same reasons.
I’m very disappointed that Obama uses his personal born again Christian beliefs to influence his administrative and political decisions. It’s strange to me that an intelligent person cannot see the obvious parallels between the cries that mixed racial marriages were against God’s will, and the cries today that gay marriages are frowned upon by God. I thought there would be a reduction in the importance of official religious acts, and allowing religious institutions receiving federal funds to discriminate in their hiring practices, but, if anything, Obama has increased the importance of these programs and refused to tighten restrictions.
Many people chose Obama over Hillary Clinton because they thought Obama was anti-war. Now, it appears that he will send more troops to Afghanistan, even if he doesn’t send as many as his generals want. The wars are breaking our economy. Obama will never be able to accomplish what he says he wants, in health care, or in anything else, while paying for these wars.
I could go on — about the fact that we still have rendition of a sort, that we still have tribunals, that the health care program so far is too weak to do much good, and will now do harm to women’s health. I fear that for Obama, it was too much, too soon. Is it “better than Bush?” Of course! But that’s not enough.
Sharon Toji
War, someone has said, is hell. Neither the Bush nor Obama administration clarified and specified the purpose of NATO’s occupation of Afghanistan. How is this occupation an achievement? The Pentagon has now grown into a Leviathan that has control of U.S. foreign policy. Has anyone noticed the growing presence of Generals in discussions of foreign policy? Obama ignores or endorses this militarization. His wait-and-see policies in Honduras and Palestine, and his double standards on Middle East nuclear proliferation suggest that nonviolent conflict resolution and fairness are not part of his agenda.
I truly thought I voted for change last year. Shifting the focus from Iraq to Afghanistan I guess it can be argued as change But this is not the change I voted for. In addition, I have major problems with Larry Summer advising Obama on economic policies and having Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury . These two are disciples of Bob Rubin who was a key player as to why we are facing this economic crisis. Rather than finding things he has done right we should endeavor to force him to embrace not to reject progressive polices in the name of bipartisanship.
Although I still feel a flush of pride (for my country) every time I see President Obama’s face on the TV, I half wonder if he isn’t the political equivalent of Bernie Madoff and if he hasn’t pulled off on liberal Americans an most artful and cynical scam. Or maybe he’s just not up to the job–serving on the Harvard Law Review doesn’t really amount to all that much in the “real world”, and Obama seems to be proving it.
The Afgan and Iraq wars are no small issues. In fact, arguably they are crimes against humanity. Further, as an earlier writer commented, in a major way, they are pushing America toward financial bankruptcy (some might argue that, where the wars, in particular, and our policy in that part of the world, in general, are concerned, we’re already morally bankrupt–have been for decades). Who’s in charge of now?
We cannot go on expecting things to change from one day to the next, you forget who Obama is up against, you need to acknowledge that changes have occurred and ask how can we band together to create the environment to cause more changes to take place.
One important thing that people fail to remember is that Obama said ” I am not the change you are waiting for I am only the opportunity” He also said “make me do it” he fully understands that change in this country has always come from the grassroots, not from one or two politicians that want to make good.
So if he is not moving fast enough, then we ask ourselves where can we focus our efforts so that it creates the momentum to make him do it, because criticizing him only fuels the right, it does not help any of the things you cited.
* Ten: President Obama has slowed down the recession….
(What’s the Black unemployment rate? Got a racial breakdown of foreclosure stats handy?)
* Nine: ….and financial investment reform is being discussed like never before.
(We used to *have* regulations, which might be why they weren’t discussed so much before.)
* Seven: President Obama shifted the focus of the war from Iraq to Aftghanistan…
(Exit strategy. What’s the exit strategy? Hello? Hello? EXIT STRATEGY, are you there?)
* Six: President Obama relaxed Anti-American tensions throughout the world.
(Continuing AFRICOM is not relaxing. Pandering to ZIONISM is not relaxing. Bombing PAKISTAN is not relaxing. Threatening IRAN is not relaxing…)
* Five: President Obama closed the prisoner “torture camp” at Guantanamo Bay. Holding prisoners for eight years without charging them was acceptable under the previous administration. It is not acceptable under this administration. Obama’s next challenge is what to do with the detainees.
(If it’s not acceptable, why are they still there? What exactly is the accomplishment? Gitmo and all the other black sites are still there, the prisoners are still in them. How does that constitute something BO has “done”?)
* Four: President Obama has made the environment a national priority…
(He just gutted Copenhagen while holding hands with China.)
* Three: President Obama has made education a national priority by putting emphasis and money behind new ideas like charter schools…
(PUBLIC schools are PUBLIC. PUBLIC. That’s why they’re called PUBLIC schools.)
* Two: President Obama is on the verge of passing universal health care, with a public option, to insure everybody in America has care when they are sick. He’s doing it, despite vilification of ideologues and while in the midst of an H1N1 epidemic where millions could get sick this winter. The people feel him on this.
(Unless of course, one is a member of that tiny minority of half the population, woman, and therefore, not fitting of the term “people” or “everyone.” That’s setting aside the fact that “on the verge of” does not mean “done”.)
* One: President Obama has restored credibility to the American Presidency where the world is looking to him to lead America out of unilateralism and back into multilateral global cooperation. The Nobel Peace Prize was an acknowledgment that Obama had led and is leading a non-violent cultural revolution in America. Everybody, except for a few in America, can see the change. Still, the world understands what happened one year ago, and they thought they’d never see such a shift occur. The election of Obama helped the world see the light that America wasn’t ready to self-destruct.
(Ask a PALESTINIAN to carefully describe the “shift” that’s occurred. You can do it over the phone and just play it back, as the Obama govt is tapping and taping it, legally.)
Are you kidding? Really!!! Obama has made Wall Street safe for Wall Street, not the working class. He has instituted no reforms- last year they got bonuses for doing a poor job, this year the same firms are scheduled to get bonuses. The big banks and insurance companies have become bigger due to the fact that over 120 banks have failed. You cannot judge the end of the economic crisis by how well Wall Street does, the double digit inflation is not going down, in fact small business make a killing by laying off workers and forcing those who stay to do twice the job for less pay. Instead of creating a WPA or other program like Pres. Roosevelt did, or increasing the Federal Minimum wage to $10 an hour, Obama has let the credit card companies jack up their rates and rip off the consumers. In foreign affairs, show me where there has been a change of attitude from the Bush administration. Just because American soldiers are not getting killed in any real numbers in Iraq doesn’t mean that the people of Iraq are not suffering,their infrastructure has not been rebuilt. In Falluja, thousands of children and newborns are born with horrible birth deformities, due to the unspent radioactive shells left in that city. In Palestine, Sec. of State Clinton has boldly let Israel do do whatever it wants with the Palestinians- depriving them now of water and land. Instead of strengthening the democratic forces in Pakistan, our drones and military aid continues to kill innocent civilians
Obama leads a nation with racialized, chauvinistic, commercialized, and militarized mind-sets that destroy any disposition to empathize with (1) those who cannot find jobs; (2) those who cannot afford health care; (3) victims of the Pentagon’s, Israeli, and NATO’s bombs and bullets, and (4)victims of states’ cutbacks on education. Obama’s central concern is to be re-elected in 2012, and he appears convinced that to do so he must play ball with the forces for maintaining the status quo in domestic and foreign policies. Thus his key appointments are from the old guard of the Bush and Clinton administrations. He, he thinks, will carry out his “change we can believe in” during his second term. This is poor reasoning. The forces he is trying to appease–and they can make or break his image– will abandon him in 2011. He will not have a second term, given his policies of appeasement toward status quo advocates. If the economy dramatically improves, by some fluke, and he is re-elected, he will face a possibly Republican controlled Congress that will make him a lame duck President throughout 2012-2016. He should, therefore, take his eyes off 2012, curb the Pentagon’s usurpation of foreign policy, talk sternly to Israel, terminate the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, cease the military build-up in Columbia, stop equating Wall Street’s health with the health of the nation’s economy, and let the chips fall where they may in 2012.
Everyone here agrees that Obama has done some things and not done others that would make equal or better sense.
Is he better than GW Bush? It shows how low the bar was set and then accepted during the last 8 years that with relief we can all turn to this question, as the one thing that we can all agree on. Yes, gee whiz – overall he is a tad better than GW Bush.
But even in that, not consistently so.
Apparently he’s OK with going slow on replacing Bush’s vindictive DoJ attorneys, the ones who put outspoken opponents in jail, where some of them languish.
Despite clear warnings by environmentalists, he chose a Sec of Interior schooled by Reagan’s James Watt. Now the Obushma administration is trying to race Palin to see how many endangered wolves – brought back from extinction over decades of dedication -can be quickly shot in one season. His current nomination for Ag Trade czar is the chief lobbiest for big oil-&-chem agrobiz – the guy who drafted the first ‘USDA organic’ label plan, whereby the label was to apply to farming using industrial chemical sludge. His confirmation will ensure that US Ag policy worldwide favors big corporate farming, featuring dependence on oil, chemicals and uncontrolled and unlabeled genetic mods. Obama’s Sec of State Clinton rubberstamped piping in ruinous Canadian tar sands oil. Even some of his EPA folks, not to mention Interior and Ag people, continue to approve mountaintop destruction coal mining, clear-cutting of virgin irreplaceable forest, and poisoning of public lands so as to eliminate prairie dogs and ferrets and other wildlife. Meanwhile, of course climate can wait a year or two or …
I guess Obama is quite comfy being simply a city boy with no real feeling for nature – and indeed not even a sheerly intellectual understanding of what is natural or long-run sustainable even in sheer economic-plunder terms – other than PC noises suggested by some of his advisors. He talks good talk about green jobs, but even as he calls for specific cuts in weapons programs he advances no specific plans for employing the weapons-employed workers instead in any of these green jobs – or indeed any jobs – public or even private. Instead, so far as he seems able to plan, workers leaving weapons labor must head for the unemployment rolls.
Meanwhile climate will wait for the sake of ‘health’ reform. Reform that turns out to be little more than guaranteed subsidies for big insurers’ bureaucracies and sickness-treatment pre-pay plans (which is most of what so-called ‘health’ insurance is these days).
Sure, he’s facing Republicans whose only consistent ideology is a triple ‘NO’: No-problems, No-solutions, No-alternatives. No problems can be admitted to exist; if they do exist they are the fault of the Dems and therefore should not and indeed must not be solved; and if the Dems advance solutions it is the Republican job only to resist them, not to offer alternatives.
So how has he responded? As if the Republicans actually don’t mean it: the nastier they are, the more he tries to conciliate them and reward them in advance for hopefully in future being slightly less nasty.
We could give him credit for being consistent with this in his foreign policy. He’s tried and succeeded in – and has been Nobel-prized for – being the world’s messiah – in the super-Christian (definitely NOT Muslim) milquetoast sense of turning the ‘other cheek’ to our enemies – and the world’s enemies of democracy. He has so far thereby betrayed just as much as ever did GW Bush the embattled people of Tehran and Darfur and Zimbabwe – not to mention Syria, Libya, Tibet, and other less prominent places. (Note: one minor glitch in this messianic turn-the-cheek approach is that your first few enemies will get almost all your cheeks and other goods, leaving little for your other enemies, let alone anything for your friends and yourself.)
For the Obama guys, ‘engagement’ with enemies takes place not along with, as a tactic for – but instead of, and at the expense of – helping democratic friends and American democratic values. When GW Bush did this, he was properly denounced by all progressives as either a friend or an appeaser of exploiters and dictators. When Obama does it, ‘progressive’ apologists laud him for being a ‘realist’ who has allegedly restored the USA’s world ’standing’ – whatever that means.
Let’s say it loud and clear: even if they do praise us (they don’t: most of the time privately and even at times publicly they mock Obama and then the rest of us contemptuously for being such easy marks), there is no value to us in ‘engagement’ that is mere time-waste talk with the likes of Ahmadinejad, Kim, Gaddaffi, Assad, Bashir, Mugabe. ‘Engagement’ which so far has served only to confirm to these guys that the USA (in the name of course of high-minded Nobel-prize-winning sentiments about equality and brotherhood of states) is committed to giving them all the time they need to suppress their own people and as desired develop nukes and missiles.
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If he wants to help the environment and create jobs he needs to legalize industrial Hemp. The Hemp plant will open more jobs than any other stimulus plan could.
Obama reminds me of the Scottish Nobles in the movie “Braveheart”.
They said they would fight with Wallace and the Scottish peasants, but then rode off when the battle started.
It seems like the British Crown gilded their cages.
Obama, likewise.
Ten: President Obama has slowed down the recession.
-Uemployment continues to rise and has reached a historical high of 10%(this is out of any president in history since our founding). He is spending money at a faster rate than any other president, getting us into even more debt than we were already in and putting our national finances on shaky ground. He spends tax payer money as if there is no end to it. Budgets and Balance sheets are unessecary, its only money right?
Nine: President Obama saved Wall Street
-They bailed out a lot of companies which is good and bad. If failed it would have hurt our country bad, but by supporting them on the other hand I dont believe anyone learned a lesson for the long run and he temporarily fixed the problem but a bigger storm is coming.
Eight: President Obama saved the collapse of the American automotive industry
Why was the cash for clunkers program not designed specifically to benefit GM so we can sell them and have one less thing to manage saving taxpayers money and helping out General Motors, instead he made the program for all car manufacturers which I feel was a poor descision.
Seven: President Obama shifted the focus of the war from Iraq to Aftghanistan
-When running for president I distinctly remember Obama saying, he would end the war and bring all of the troops back. It is turning out to be a complete lie, because he just committed more troops not, less to the effort. I also believe he should not have committed to what he said while running for president, because he has no idea how bad it was in Afganistan and Iraq, and now that he does he is sending more troops. I know big bad Bush had many troops over there, but now Obama is sending more, there must be some serious problems over there to have a conservative continuing the effort and then a liberal adding on to it. Al Quida top operatives are being taken out which I am happy with, one less person with blind hate for Americans makes me feel safer.
Six: President Obama relaxed Anti-American tensions throughout the world
-He did make a speech in Egypt I believe which was positive. Him having an Arabic name also helps. In retrospect though I have been to Egypt and they look at Americans as walking money, it strikes me that as long as were giving them monetary things they will be our friends, which is not always a great relationship to have with other countries.
Five: President Obama closed the prisoner “torture camp” at Guantanamo Bay
-He has not closed it and detainees are still there. Another campaign lie. I dont think he will have it taken care of by the end of his presidency, once again I think he had no idea what he was getting into and taking such a hard stance against. After fully investigating it I think he will do the same as the last president.
■Four: President Obama has made the environment a national priority, and a primary source for job creation
-Yes in theory, but not in actuality. He has made the environment a priority but no jobs have come of it, hence the 10% umeployment, right.
Three: President Obama has made education a national priority
-I have not seen this. I don’t think it was appropriate to address students either, the majority of people did not want this to happen and he needs to respect their wishes
Two: President Obama is on the verge of passing universal health care, with a public option, to insure everybody in America has care when they are sick.
-The bill he has passed is nothing like that. The coward from Nebraska took concessions from Obama that no other state is getting. This is beyond unfair. How is it that Nebraska will be able to spend as much as they want on medicare and the rest of the states have to pay for it getting nothing in return. Also, if you don’t get health insurance they will penalize you now in the future up to 2.5% of your income. Granted, it is important to have insurance, but the most important thing is the Freedom of choosing whether you would like it or not. I don’t feel that it is constitutional, it’s the same a making everyone say one nice thing about Barack Obama every day and if you don’t, taking 2.5% of your income (freedom of speech).
One: President Obama has restored credibility to the American Presidency where the world is looking to him to lead America out of unilateralism and back into multilateral global cooperation
-Obama winning the peace prize does not make any sense. Especially when critisizing the cop in Connecticut for “acting stupidly” for aresting the person that looked suspicious. Then issuing an apology. There is a legitimate reason every other Nobel prize winner has won. Such as splitting the atom, etc., but being the first african american president does not make sense, I know that the first woman president, or asian, or hispanic will not get the Nobel prize, and you know it too. Somehow that award got “rigged”. He has given special money to Acorn as well a predominately african american group that is totally corrupt. He may be getting approval international, but in America he is alienating everyone that is not african american. For the people by the people, not resented by the people.
Mr. Anthony Samad, it is important as a writer to examine both sides of every argument in detail and then forming an educated oponion, showing respect to both sides. You have expressed one side and blatantly backed it up with nothing but baseless generalizations. None the less, thank you for your article that you hastily threw together. Maybe we will see you hitting the hard subjects from both sides next time.
Whoever wrote this article is an idiot. Many if not all of the things mentioned above are things that are not actual accomplishments, but rather are mere things he mentioned. I too can mention I will become president and accomplish all of the aforementioned items stated in the article-but just because I say what I am going to do doesn’t mean I have or will accomplish them!
President Obama is not the problem here folks. The Senate and Congress have the power he is the one who can veto. Also from what I am reading you all think he is to save you or solve all the problems. Well that starts at home, which I believe he said many times. You are the change you need. You need to get off your butts, get to work, go vote. Vote all the incumbents out of office and show them that We the people are in charge. Start petitions in your area, comminicate with nearby cities, towns, etc. We the people have the power if we petetion the government to have a bill on the floor that would limit terms, pass healthcare etc. This president was passed the worst economics, the worst wars the worst of America. It will take longer than one term to clean up the mess of the Bushes, Cheney’s, Rumsfeld, Rice’s and the Supreme Court. All these people should have been prosecuted and should be serving time. VOTE, and make a difference, and if you don’t you have no one to blame for what happens but yourselves. If you do then vote to really make a difference.
Hey L.A.,
Here you’ve got a town that’s full of some of the best P.R. and writing talent in the world… couldn’t SOMEONE there lend some of it to the Obama White House? None of this is well known outside of the beltway, and it’s repressed from within.