1. The crazy right-wing types insist Mr. Obama is a commie, a Kenyan, a tyrant in black sheep’s clothing (emphasis on “black”) and warn he wants to destroy America with gay marriage licenses and crippling taxation.
2. The grumbling types, including a few disgruntled liberals, complain that President Obama hasn’t carried out all his promises and say it makes no difference whether he or Mitt Romney is elected.
In the end, most Americans choose the candidates they support based in part on fact, in part on opinion. So let’s start with a fact in his support. Osama bin Laden, the man responsible for the death of 3,000 innocent Americans, sleeps with the fishes. The nutjob right-wing types sneer, saying: “Obama didn’t kill Osama, the Navy Seals did.” But they’re lying through the right side of their teeth if they try to say they wouldn’t have gone loco if the nighttime raid into Pakistan, ordered by Mr. Obama, had failed.
It’s also a fact that the previous administration, headed up by a rock-ribbed conservative crew, didn’t kill Osama, either. They got us involved in the wrong war, at the wrong time, in the wrong place.
Not convinced? Say what you will about flaws in the Affordable Health Care Act. It may be like having watched legislative sausage being made. But it’s a start. It’s at least an attempt to address serious problems that beset our current health care system. And right now–this very day–if you have a type-1 diabetic in your family, an uncle with lupus, or a wife with multiple sclerosis, your loved ones can no longer be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions. That’s not all, as they say. If your family has an adult son or daughter, age 19-25, without their own health care coverage, they can now be covered on your family health plan.
Millions of young Americans are better off, as a result.
In fact, if Mr. Obama is a communist, business leaders haven’t noticed. Corporate profits in 2011 reached all-time highs, even as wages stalled or declined. (More on that later.) When the U. S. economy crashed in 2008, the Dow-Jones began a long plunge from 14,164 (October 9, 2007) down to 6,440 (March 9, 2009). Trillions of dollars in investments were wiped off books before the “with-out” a valid birth certificate could recite the first line of the oath of office. Since then, whatever the nutjobs say about the “communist” in the White House, stock market valuations have doubled and the retirement plans of many an angry Tea Partier have been saved.
Remember when Mitt Romney and Republican leaders made fun of “Government Motors” and said it would be a far better thing to “let the U. S. auto industry die?” Talk to a GM or Chrysler worker today, men and women with families and bills to pay, just like you, are still collecting their paychecks and now earning a bit of overtime. How are those “bailed out” companies faring? June 2012 sales figures for General Motors were up 15.5% over 2011, and with 248,750 vehicles sold the company had its best month since the 2008 collapse. Chrysler did even better with sales gains of 20.3%, and its best June figures since 2007.
Speaking of the auto industry, what about howls from the right, blaming Mr. Obama for rising gas prices? As recently as March, Rush Limbaugh was almost apoplectic. Other right-wing types went to great pains to point out that on the day Obama took office a gallon of gas sold for $1.81. Of course, they ignored the fact it was selling cheap in January 2009 because the world economy looked like it was about to go bust.
So, let’s go back to 2008 for a broader perspective. On May 28, 2008, crude oil sold for $135 a barrel and the average price of a gallon of gas was $3.94. Four years later, under Mr. Obama, the average cost of a gallon of regular unleaded has dropped to $3.50 and a barrel of crude is selling for $84. So, congratulations, President Obama.
Really, all you right-wing nutjobs. Go look it up.
NO PRESIDENT, DOMESTICALLY OR IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS, can put up a perfect record. Unemployment is too high and Obama has struggled to bring it down (just like President Reagan during his first term.) He hasn’t closed the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Nor has he managed to push through the Dream Act. Unlike Mitt Romney, however, he hasn’t emphatically stated that he’ll veto it if it should ever pass. Meanwhile, he has pushed hard to deport illegal immigrants with criminal records; but he has decided not to deport young Latinos, who came to this country as children, who grew up here, who look in their mirrors and see themselves as Americans. Mr. Obama supports gay marriage, too, a far cry from haters on the right who want to put gay people behind barbed-wire fences. And in Libya, we helped take out Moammar Gaddafi, a dictator responsible for an array of terrorist attacks on Americans, including the Lockerbee bombing (December 21, 1988), which numbered 189 U. S. citizens among its victims, and occurred while Ronald Reagan, the patron saint of conservative thinkers, was still in office. President Obama rallied NATO behind him and won the full support of our allies for military action and not ONE American serviceman or servicewoman died in Libya as a result.
In addition, all U. S. troops are out of Iraq.
In recent months a parade of conservatives has marched across the screens on Fox News, spluttering with indignation, because Mr. Obama won’t stick Uncle Sam’s red, white and blue nose into Syrian affairs; but now that country is spiraling toward civil war–and if we are saddened by the loss of life, at least we aren’t stuck in the middle. And these same conservatives, who said we could easily march into Iraq, find weapons of mass destruction, and march right back out again, fault President Obama for not taking a stronger line regarding Iran.
They might tell you President Obama wants to destroy our nation. But Obama is careful not to involve our nation in wars we can avoid. Since January, the U. S. and it’s allies have ramped up diplomatic and economic pressures on Iran and even Iranian leaders admit that the international sanctions are biting. We’re also building up naval and air assets in the Persian Gulf region, sending Iran and our ally Israel signals that we have not ruled out military intervention to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Iran’s oil exports, which support 80% of it’s national budget, have dropped from 2.5 million barrels daily to 1.5 million. The Iranian banking system has been cut off from all electronic connection with the rest of the world and the Iranian currency has lost half it’s value.
SURE, SENSIBLE PEOPLE MIGHT VOTE AGAINST President Obama; and let them all vote openly, fairly, by all rights. But there are good reasons for most Americans to vote for a second term for Obama and here are a final few for the day. The decision of the U. S. Supreme Court in the case of Citizens’ United, with five conservative U. S. Supreme Court judges holding for the first time in history that corporations are “people” and can pour unlimited funds into political campaigns, means that those same corporation “persons” will soon be in position to buy up politicians in bulk. It’s a decision as bad as any since Plessy v. Feguson, with the potential to corrupt our entire democratic system; and it proves that it is imperative to keep Mitt Romney from having the chance to fill the next high court vacancy. Last but not least, if you’re a union worker in this country, you should be clear by now, and should understand that the GOP won’t rest until it breaks all unions, public and private sector alike.
And if you’re a non-union, blue-collar worker today, you should think twice about which party you’re supporting and keep in mind that the average union worker makes $10,000 more every year than you do, and ask yourself, what do the Republicans ever really say or do to help you get any increase in wages?
Think Bain Capital.
Picture Mitt Romney and friends, pioneering the outsourcing of good American jobs, left and right.
Share 4 T
Nothing wrong with Bain Capital....Romney 2012! And I'm not a billionaire. Hum, Bain Capital...built up Staples....From where has the Obama re-election campaign purchased campaign materals from....STAPLES!
Hum...outsourcing....Who's actively outsourcing now? Where are 80% of GM auto parts made...CHINA!
FYI: this conversation has already been going on in Current Events.
Today in OH, after the jobs number was released, Obama said it was "a step in the right direction."
What direction does he want to go in?
Thank you for this. I know I should have took it upon myself to learn this stuff, but this will be the first election I vote in and I don't want to be some stupid kid voting for someone because my parents or friends pressure me into it. I don't support the Affordable Health Care Act in it's current state, but if some of the problem areas were smoothed out I can imagine it would be successful. As for unions... They're completely corrupt from their original purpose. They were created so mine/labor workers weren't treated unfairly, and in many cases now, it's another way of supporting a political party. Unions use dues from their members to support only one party (generally a liberal), and if you don't have a choice in being in a union or not for your career, your money is being used in a way that doesn't represent you.
The direction that is NOT happening in Europe. As Americans, we have a tendency to think about ourselves..However, we can no longer separate ourselves from the global economy..While the growth that is happening is too slow for most Americans, if you look at the bigger picture of what is happening in the Western World, ANY growth is good, if not downright amazing.
Quoting rocketracer:Today in OH, after the jobs number was released, Obama said it was "a step in the right direction."
What direction does he want to go in?
nwp.org
Quoting katiehopson:Thank you for this. I know I should have took it upon myself to learn this stuff, but this will be the first election I vote in and I don't want to be some stupid kid voting for someone because my parents or friends pressure me into it. I don't support the Affordable Health Care Act in it's current state, but if some of the problem areas were smoothed out I can imagine it would be successful. As for unions... They're completely corrupt from their original purpose. They were created so mine/labor workers weren't treated unfairly, and in many cases now, it's another way of supporting a political party. Unions use dues from their members to support only one party (generally a liberal), and if you don't have a choice in being in a union or not for your career, your money is being used in a way that doesn't represent you.
This is a good read for you “Hope & Change…or Bait & Switch”
...continuing and increasing gov't subsidies will lead the US down the European path. Enjoy that ride!
Quoting NWP:The direction that is NOT happening in Europe. As Americans, we have a tendency to think about ourselves..However, we can no longer separate ourselves from the global economy..While the growth that is happening is too slow for most Americans, if you look at the bigger picture of what is happening in the Western World, ANY growth is good, if not downright amazing.
Quoting rocketracer:Today in OH, after the jobs number was released, Obama said it was "a step in the right direction."
What direction does he want to go in?
We need to find balance between reforms, removing gov't favoritism to corporations, and keeping our internal support measures working. Our problems are complex, as is Europe's.. However, Austerity is NOT the answer.
Austerity measures are something that the GOP seem to be obsessed with as a solution to our problems...It is a short sighted idea that could make our problems MUCH worse. We would know that if we could look across the pond to see how it is working there. Austerity measures have already made Europe's problem much worse.
But hey, what do I know? It isn't like some Nobel Prize winning economist would agree with me...Yeah, right...
Austerity undermining Europe’s grand vision
Economic policy is triggering disaffection among countries — the very thing the pioneers of unity hoped to erase
The dream of the unification of Europe goes back at least to the 15th century, but it is the nastiness of the world wars in the 20th century that established its urgent need in our time. The challenge was well described by W.H. Auden in early 1939: In the nightmare of the dark /All the dogs of Europe bark, /And the living nations wait, /Each sequestered in its hate.
It is important to appreciate that the movement for European unification began as a crusade for cross-border amity and political unity, combined with freer movement of people and goods. Giving priority to financial unification, with a common currency, came much later, and it has, to some extent, started to derail the original aspiration of European unity.
The so-called “rescue” packets for the troubled economies of Europe have involved insistence on draconian cuts in public services and living standards. The hardship and inequality of the process have frayed tempers in austerity-hit countries and generated resistance — and partial non-compliance — which in turn have irritated the leaders of countries offering the “rescue.” The very thing that the pioneers of European unity wanted to eliminate, namely disaffection among European nations, has been fomented by these deeply divisive policies (now reflected in such rhetoric as “lazy Greeks” or “domineering Germans“,” depending on where you live).
As a result, the costs of failed economic policies extend well beyond economic lives (important as they are). There is no danger of a return to 1939, but it does not help Europe to have dogs barking, sequestered in resentment and contempt — if not hate. On the economic side, too, the policies have been seriously counterproductive, with falling incomes, high unemployment and disappearing services, without the expected curative effect of deficit reduction.
Two issues
So what has gone wrong? Two issues need to be separated out: one, the counterproductive nature of the policy of austerity imposed on (or, as in Britain, chosen voluntarily by) governments; and two, a reasoned suspicion about the lack of viability of the shared euro.
The moral appeal of austerity is deceptively high (“if it hurts, it must be doing some good”), but its economic ineffectiveness has been clear at least since Keynes’s debunking of “the remedy of austerity” in the Great Depression of the 1930s, with unemployment and idle capacity due to a lack of effective demand. It is also self-defeating in reducing public deficits, because austerity tends to depress economic growth, so reducing a government’s revenue. Much of the eurozone has been shrinking rather than expanding since the inception of these policies.
However, we have to go well beyond Keynes in understanding the harm done by the ill-chosen cult of austerity. We have to ask what public expenditure is for — other than just strengthening effective demand (on which Keynes concentrated, focusing on the expenditure itself, rather than on the services it supported). Savage cuts in important public services undermine what had emerged as a social commitment in Europe by the 1940s, and which led to the birth of the welfare state and the national health services, setting a great example of public responsibility from which the entire world would learn.
Turning to the second problem — the euro, with fixed exchange rates for all countries in the zone — economies that fall behind in the productivity race tend to develop lack of competitiveness in exports, as countries such as Greece, Spain or Portugal have been experiencing already. Competitiveness can, of course, at least partly be recovered through slashing wages and living standards, but this would lead to great suffering (much of it unnecessary), and generate understandable popular resistance. Sharp increases in inequality between regions can be remedied, to be sure, by large-scale migration within Europe (for example, from Greece to Germany). But it is hard to assume that persistent population inflow to the same countries would not generate political resistance there.
The inflexibility of fixed exchange rates of the euro is inherently problematic when the economic performance of countries continues to differ. A unified currency in a politically united federal country (such as in the U.S.) survives through adjustment mechanisms (including large internal migration and substantial transfers) that cannot yet be a norm in a politically disunited Europe.
If European economic policies have been economically unsound, socially disruptive and normatively contrary to the commitments that emerged in Europe after the Second World War, they have been politically naive as well. The policies have been chosen by financial leaders with little attempt to have serious public discussion on the subject.
Policy mistakes
Decision-making without public discussion — standard practice in the making of European financial policies — is not only undemocratic, but also inefficient in terms of generating reasoned practical solutions. For example, serious consideration of the kinds of institutional reforms badly needed in Europe — not just in Greece — has, in fact, been hampered, rather than aided, by the loss of clarity on the distinction between reform of bad administrative arrangements on the one hand (such as people evading taxes, government servants using favouritism, or unviably low retiring ages being preserved), and on the other, austerity in the form of ruthless cuts in public services and basic social security. The requirements for alleged financial discipline have tended to amalgamate the two in a compound package, even though any analysis of social justice would assess policies for necessary reform in an altogether different way from ruthless cuts in important public services.
The problems we are seeing in Europe today are mainly results of policy mistakes: punishments for bad sequencing (currency unity first, political unity later); for bad economic reasoning (including ignoring Keynesian economic lessons as well as neglecting the importance of public services to European people); for authoritarian decision-making; and for persistent intellectual confusion between reform and austerity. Nothing in Europe is as important today as a clear-headed recognition of what has gone so badly wrong in implementing the grand vision of a united Europe.
(Amartya Sen is a Nobel prize-winning economist.) — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2012
Quoting rocketracer:...continuing and increasing gov't subsidies will lead the US down the European path. Enjoy that ride!
Quoting NWP:The direction that is NOT happening in Europe. As Americans, we have a tendency to think about ourselves..However, we can no longer separate ourselves from the global economy..While the growth that is happening is too slow for most Americans, if you look at the bigger picture of what is happening in the Western World, ANY growth is good, if not downright amazing.
Quoting rocketracer:Today in OH, after the jobs number was released, Obama said it was "a step in the right direction."
What direction does he want to go in?
nwp.org
Quoting _Kissy_:
YOU MIGHT HAVE SENSIBLE REASONS not to vote for President Obama in 2012. You might be a billionaire, for example. But when you read a few blogs, check out the political pages on Facebook, and listen to nutjob right-wing news, you quickly realize there are two bizarre strains of thought when it comes to voting against Obama in November, or not bothering to vote for him.
1. The crazy right-wing types insist Mr. Obama is a commie, a Kenyan, a tyrant in black sheep’s clothing (emphasis on “black”) and warn he wants to destroy America with gay marriage licenses and crippling taxation.
2. The grumbling types, including a few disgruntled liberals, complain that President Obama hasn’t carried out all his promises and say it makes no difference whether he or Mitt Romney is elected.
In the end, most Americans choose the candidates they support based in part on fact, in part on opinion. So let’s start with a fact in his support. Osama bin Laden, the man responsible for the death of 3,000 innocent Americans, sleeps with the fishes. The nutjob right-wing types sneer, saying: “Obama didn’t kill Osama, the Navy Seals did.” But they’re lying through the right side of their teeth if they try to say they wouldn’t have gone loco if the nighttime raid into Pakistan, ordered by Mr. Obama, had failed.
It’s also a fact that the previous administration, headed up by a rock-ribbed conservative crew, didn’t kill Osama, either. They got us involved in the wrong war, at the wrong time, in the wrong place.
Not convinced? Say what you will about flaws in the Affordable Health Care Act. It may be like having watched legislative sausage being made. But it’s a start. It’s at least an attempt to address serious problems that beset our current health care system. And right now–this very day–if you have a type-1 diabetic in your family, an uncle with lupus, or a wife with multiple sclerosis, your loved ones can no longer be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions. That’s not all, as they say. If your family has an adult son or daughter, age 19-25, without their own health care coverage, they can now be covered on your family health plan.
Millions of young Americans are better off, as a result.
In fact, if Mr. Obama is a communist, business leaders haven’t noticed. Corporate profits in 2011 reached all-time highs, even as wages stalled or declined. (More on that later.) When the U. S. economy crashed in 2008, the Dow-Jones began a long plunge from 14,164 (October 9, 2007) down to 6,440 (March 9, 2009). Trillions of dollars in investments were wiped off books before the “with-out” a valid birth certificate could recite the first line of the oath of office. Since then, whatever the nutjobs say about the “communist” in the White House, stock market valuations have doubled and the retirement plans of many an angry Tea Partier have been saved.
Remember when Mitt Romney and Republican leaders made fun of “Government Motors” and said it would be a far better thing to “let the U. S. auto industry die?” Talk to a GM or Chrysler worker today, men and women with families and bills to pay, just like you, are still collecting their paychecks and now earning a bit of overtime. How are those “bailed out” companies faring? June 2012 sales figures for General Motors were up 15.5% over 2011, and with 248,750 vehicles sold the company had its best month since the 2008 collapse. Chrysler did even better with sales gains of 20.3%, and its best June figures since 2007.
Speaking of the auto industry, what about howls from the right, blaming Mr. Obama for rising gas prices? As recently as March, Rush Limbaugh was almost apoplectic. Other right-wing types went to great pains to point out that on the day Obama took office a gallon of gas sold for $1.81. Of course, they ignored the fact it was selling cheap in January 2009 because the world economy looked like it was about to go bust.
So, let’s go back to 2008 for a broader perspective. On May 28, 2008, crude oil sold for $135 a barrel and the average price of a gallon of gas was $3.94. Four years later, under Mr. Obama, the average cost of a gallon of regular unleaded has dropped to $3.50 and a barrel of crude is selling for $84. So, congratulations, President Obama.
Really, all you right-wing nutjobs. Go look it up.
NO PRESIDENT, DOMESTICALLY OR IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS, can put up a perfect record. Unemployment is too high and Obama has struggled to bring it down (just like President Reagan during his first term.) He hasn’t closed the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Nor has he managed to push through the Dream Act. Unlike Mitt Romney, however, he hasn’t emphatically stated that he’ll veto it if it should ever pass. Meanwhile, he has pushed hard to deport illegal immigrants with criminal records; but he has decided not to deport young Latinos, who came to this country as children, who grew up here, who look in their mirrors and see themselves as Americans. Mr. Obama supports gay marriage, too, a far cry from haters on the right who want to put gay people behind barbed-wire fences. And in Libya, we helped take out Moammar Gaddafi, a dictator responsible for an array of terrorist attacks on Americans, including the Lockerbee bombing (December 21, 1988), which numbered 189 U. S. citizens among its victims, and occurred while Ronald Reagan, the patron saint of conservative thinkers, was still in office. President Obama rallied NATO behind him and won the full support of our allies for military action and not ONE American serviceman or servicewoman died in Libya as a result.
In addition, all U. S. troops are out of Iraq.
In recent months a parade of conservatives has marched across the screens on Fox News, spluttering with indignation, because Mr. Obama won’t stick Uncle Sam’s red, white and blue nose into Syrian affairs; but now that country is spiraling toward civil war–and if we are saddened by the loss of life, at least we aren’t stuck in the middle. And these same conservatives, who said we could easily march into Iraq, find weapons of mass destruction, and march right back out again, fault President Obama for not taking a stronger line regarding Iran.
They might tell you President Obama wants to destroy our nation. But Obama is careful not to involve our nation in wars we can avoid. Since January, the U. S. and it’s allies have ramped up diplomatic and economic pressures on Iran and even Iranian leaders admit that the international sanctions are biting. We’re also building up naval and air assets in the Persian Gulf region, sending Iran and our ally Israel signals that we have not ruled out military intervention to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Iran’s oil exports, which support 80% of it’s national budget, have dropped from 2.5 million barrels daily to 1.5 million. The Iranian banking system has been cut off from all electronic connection with the rest of the world and the Iranian currency has lost half it’s value.
SURE, SENSIBLE PEOPLE MIGHT VOTE AGAINST President Obama; and let them all vote openly, fairly, by all rights. But there are good reasons for most Americans to vote for a second term for Obama and here are a final few for the day. The decision of the U. S. Supreme Court in the case of Citizens’ United, with five conservative U. S. Supreme Court judges holding for the first time in history that corporations are “people” and can pour unlimited funds into political campaigns, means that those same corporation “persons” will soon be in position to buy up politicians in bulk. It’s a decision as bad as any since Plessy v. Feguson, with the potential to corrupt our entire democratic system; and it proves that it is imperative to keep Mitt Romney from having the chance to fill the next high court vacancy. Last but not least, if you’re a union worker in this country, you should be clear by now, and should understand that the GOP won’t rest until it breaks all unions, public and private sector alike.
And if you’re a non-union, blue-collar worker today, you should think twice about which party you’re supporting and keep in mind that the average union worker makes $10,000 more every year than you do, and ask yourself, what do the Republicans ever really say or do to help you get any increase in wages?
Think Bain Capital.
Picture Mitt Romney and friends, pioneering the outsourcing of good American jobs, left and right.
Share 4 T
Is there a credit somewhere for the author of this?
Bill Ayers: Obama Should Be Tried For War Crimes
Sarah Palin - love her, hate her, don't give a F***?
- _Kissy_
on Jul. 6, 2012 at 11:31 AM