I don’t usually put much faith in political popularity polls but one of them caught my eye the other day. It showed that some segment of the American public, probably the Palin and Cruz families, thought that Barak Obama was a worst president than Richard Nixon of George Bush. Really? A felon and a punk that lied us into two wars?
So I decided to do a little accounting on the Obama concept and see just how bad Barry really had been for this country. Now don’t forget, he still has over two years in office so there is a chance he could still substantially change any position he currently holds- for better or worse.
So the first thing I did was go back to the country when he took office. Interestingly enough no president since Franklin Roosevelt had inherited anything like the mess that Obama did. The market had crashed, the housing bubble had burst and unemployment was the highest since 1929, the deficit which had been a plus when Clinton left office was not a multi trillion debt. In other words, Bush and the Republicans had done a sterling job in the previous eight years of putting this country in the toilet. In addition we were engaged in two wars that had sucked the money and the life out of the country. The VA, a problem that would surface later in Obama’s second term was already a disaster, as it had been for forty years and we had what was probably the most dysfunctional immigration policy of any nation on earth. It was taking up to twenty years for a person to struggle through the naturalization process or even to get a green card.
Republican policies or lack of them had removed most regulation from fraudulent business practices, and any kind of on-the-job or environmental safety.
Practically every nation in the world except possibly England hated and feared our warlike policies and we had actually been invaded by terrorists with a cost of over 3000 lives and the destruction of downtown New York, even though the information was there for Bush to see, if only he hadn’t been too lazy and stupid to look.
That’s pretty much the picture of the country when Obama took office. Oh yeah. Mitch McConnell had sworn that his only function from that point forward would not be to help the nation recover but to get Obama out of office, a truly patriotic stance by a functioning idiot. He was, of course, joined in this position by a serious segment of the other Republican losers.
It’s imperative to understand here that these punks who had decided to work not for the country but against the duly elected president were just petulant losers and they had become that, not because Obama had run such a great campaign but because in their panic to win, they had nominated the Nut from the North, a brain dead quitter from Alaska whose most significant achievement was that she had a pregnant daughter with a very unhappy boyfriend. Palin immediately opened mouth, inserted both feet and shit canned John McCain’s campaign. Having this bimbo one step from the button even terrified the Sherpas on Mt. Everest.
So against almost insurmountable odds Obama took office and immediately saved the auto industry, preserving over a million jobs against heavy GOP opposition. We were saving private business with taxpayer money. But the money got paid back- with interest- and the jobs continued to pay salaries and benefits.
Almost immediately after that, with the benefit of a Democratic Senate and House, he passed the ACA, otherwise know as Obamacare to the losers who must now swallow it whole. It was vilified, lied about and the GOP wasted taxpayers money and the congress’ time with over 50 unsuccessful, attempts to get it rescinded.
But the Democrats lost the House in 2010 and that pretty much ended Obama’s ability to get anything of value passed. It, in fact, ended anyone at all, getting anything at all, done in congress.
But that didn’t stop the progress. Obama got us out of Iraq. And bizarrely enough it is the people who put us into Iraq, like Dick Cheney who are now making the most noise about how he is causing the mess that is currently that unfortunate nation. Of course Cheney is too senile to understand that there wouldn’t be a mess if he and his butt boy Bush hadn’t lied us into that one in the fist place.
And, oh yes. The economy seems to have rebounded in many different ways. It has taken time but as any honest economist will tell you, a crash like the one we underwent should have taken ten years for recovery. This recovery is now in its sixth. The stock market is at the highest it has ever been. We are adding a quarter of a million jobs each month as the unemployment rate has dropped to 6.1%. The housing market is on a huge rebound, but not all is perfect. Jobs pay less. Many jobs go unfilled because we are not educating our students to fill the jobs that are available in the 21st Century and our immigration system is such a mess that we can’t get and keep qualified people from other countries here. The lack of cooperation from congress on infrastructure projects keeps the remaining unemployed out of work when there is actually much to do, but congress won’t get off its ass and allocate money for infrastructure because they don’t want Obama to get credit for it.
The one big piece of legislation that Obama did pass, the one that the Republicans hoped would destroy him is now a huge success. The uninsured rate is down to 13% an all time low. 73% of those who bought healthcare are satisfied with it as are 87% of those who signed on for Medicare. 84% of new signees for Obamacare like their plans and 77% of those who had insurance before , including those who lost their plans and had them replaced by new ones are also satisfied, especially with the lower rates. Of the Republicans who have enrolled in the new healthcare, 74% like it. What more needs to be said.
8.4 million people have signed up and 7.5 million have already paid their first premium, many of them younger people on whom the plan pricing depends. Cost is on track to get lower and Medicaid enrollment is up 11.4% despite the fact that over 5 million people are locked out by Republican governors of 24 states who refuse to take the federal money offered that would cover their constituents enrollment at no cost to the states, thereby making it unavailable to their citizens. Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania account for 59% of those 5 million who can’t get this coverage simply because their governors don’t want to get free money for a plan they didn’t vote for. The other 41% come from the other 19 states are in the same fix. If I lived in one of those state I’d vote these suckers out so fast their eyes would cross. They are costing their states money because they are passing of free Federal money, just to spite the President. That is pure stupidity.
Aside from Obamacare, the Federal Deficit is shrinking fast. From 2013 to June 2014 it fell $366 billion or 38% from the year before. The deficit peaked in 2009 driven by the Bush’s twin wars and the money needed to keep the Republican crash from drowning the American people.
The two big scandals of the Obama administration, both of which are actually phony Right Wing baloney are Benghazi and the IRS. Both have undergone numerous congressional investigative committees and all of the investigations have come up with the same conclusions. The IRS has investigated both Republicans and Democrats equally with regards to political money raising organizations that seek tax exemption. Testimony on this is rock solid and backed up by multiple testimony.
Benghazi is the big fake. Many investigations and thousands of pages of testimony come to only one conclusion. Neither the White House nor the State Department had anything to do with any decision of how to protect or evacuate Benghazi. Those decisions were made, as they should have been, by the Pentagon and the CIA. I realize that this is a crushing blow to Ted Cruz and Daryl Issa but they will just have to learn to live with the truth for a change. These are the facts. Their lies and mis-statements are just the usual right wing bullshit.
Obama failed to get an immigration bill passed mainly because the House would never consider one and still won’t. The problem we are now having on the border is not an immigration problem but a human crisis, a refugee problem. It should not be dealt with like an immigration problem and the Neanderthal brutes who intimidate children and their mothers should be treated like lepers or the sub-human reptiles that they are.
Look, I think that Obama’s policy with respect to NSA and privacy stinks. I think that his branding of Snowden a traitor sucks. I think that he just wasn’t up to fighting with the GOP or making nice with them or taking them out, to get his way, but I do understand his not wanting to smile hypocritically at that bunch of traitors when he knew that they never had the country’s best interests at heart and that they only cared about the fact hat he was black and that he had beaten the crap out of them at the polls.
Obama won’t go down as our best president but fifty years from now the people will see that he isn’t too far from the top. Every president we have had in my lifetime and that goes pretty far back has had warts and candy. In some like Nixon, Bush and Carter the warts pretty much obliterated everything else. In some like Roosevelt, Truman and Clinton the good work dominated. In others like Reagan, Johnson and Kennedy there were highlights and bitter mistakes. Where will Obama end up? I don’t know yet but considering his unreasoning opposition and the problems he faced I would think that he will end of someplace in the top 30%. Only time- and the next two years- will tell