Let's Talk Politics

Political Rant

For now, I am still reserving judgment on Obama's presidency. I expected him to take some learning time; plus I saw how he ran his campaign. He's not a rush to the finish type of leader. I also have no regrets for having supported him in 2008 given the alternative the Republicans provided. As for whether Obama will be a great president or one I won't even vote for in 2012, time will tell. This article in the New York Times by an Oregon Congressman, Earl Blumenauer, pretty well sums it up for me: Frustrated Liberal Lawmaker Balances Beliefs and Politics.

Maureen Dowd also had a good column on Sunday: Fie, Fatal Flaw! And there was Frank Rich's Goldman can you spare a dime? which concerns me as it did when I saw who Obama put into his Treasury Department. While I am reserving judgment, I won't blindly support whatever he does and end up like those who gave George W. Bush a blank check constantly defending him no matter what he does. There are things progressives want from Obama. We shall see how many he delivers on. Yes, you righties don't like any of it. Better luck with a candidate next time.

There are complaints from the right against Obama that I don't think are fair. What many Republicans claim they dislike most is that he is escalating our federal debt. They point to current numbers to prove what he's done in 9 short months. They ignore the actual facts about the budget, about what happened for the previous 8 years.

Here's the current situation: Debt Clock with some good articles right below it explaining some of how we got here. It didn't start with Obama's stimulus package to help the middle and lower classes. We've been on a collision course with financial disaster since Bush put through tax cuts (weighted toward the richest) in the middle of a war with escalating spending. None of that appeared to worry people from the right-- not enough anyway until a Democrat got in power (assuming anybody there has power).

Two extra reasons beyond current spending for the deficit's escalation this year is because of actually adding in the cost of war that had been kept off line and paying the increasing interest on that debt. I suspect if the real costs of that war had been added in earlier, we'd have had a lot less of the patriotic flag waving. Amazing how popular things are until someone gets the bill.

This year, with the stimulus package, the deficit jumped again because money was given to the states to try and put the brakes on a possible depression. Sure there was pork in it. Yes, Obama should have been more hands on and less turning it over to Congress (both parties) to figure out where to put it; but maybe he figured these legislators, from each state knew best where it could help right away. Unlike the bank bailout, which may or may not have been wise but didn't seem good to me at the time, and makes me even more angry right now with the big bonuses for the investment firms (who make what again to help the economy?) this one was weighted toward the people. Does that worry Republicans more somehow?

I would be far more tolerant of the right wingers complaining about Obama if they had demanded those tax cuts during the Bush years be connected to equal spending cuts; or if they had said, if we want this war, we have to raise sufficient taxes to pay for it. Instead people were told they could fight a war on the cheap and didn't worry that the difference between the rich and middle class was escalated by that tax cut.

Even today when I hear things from the right that Obama should send more troops to Afghanistan, I wonder and who pays for it? Never mind, to the tea partiers-- manna from heaven, I guess. Constantly I hear these anti-tax people say it was the right thing to fight a war of choice in Iraq as they also say they don't want to pay taxes. Talk about faith based wars.

Then there are those who claim Obama should do whatever General McCrystal demands about the war in Afghanistan (i.e. 40,000 more troops). Did a military junta take us over while I wasn't looking? Some hope Petraeus will run for president in 2012 and they might get their chance for for a war president (who knows what he actually supports). As for me, I hope Obama remembers something wise that he said while running for office that a general has the responsibility to determine how to 'win' one war but a president has to look at what is good for his overall country.

Anyone who reads anything at all about Afghanistan's history can see where increasing our troop levels there will lead. Currently it apparently has a corrupt government (that Bush's administration put in place) but more than that, it's been a sinkhole for lives and dollars for its entire history. What plan is in place to make this any different?

I think if Afghanistan had had any chance to work, it would have been finishing it before jumping to Iraq. We lost the window, allowed the Taliban to regroup (and fund themselves from the poppy fields) and now we are facing some pretty ugly choices including their ease of slipping back and forth between there and Pakistan who has the nuclear bomb. No easy options. Nor are there for other big problems.

What I see happening, unless there is a major change, is us heading to a Dickensian world where there are the rich and there are the poor. The right wing seems to only like to spend money on bombs. They are blocking anything that might help the middle class continue to exist. The left wing is so inefficient (or bought off) that they can't do anything they claim to want. How convenient as they continue raking in lobbyist bribes donations. That sucking sound you hear is Congress at the tit.

The middle class is being undermined in health care, education, and jobs. Does Congress not see itself as part of the middle class? I think it doesn't because when these guys leave office, they get jobs in those same big lobbying firms and make millions. They identify with the rich because it's where many of them expect to end up.

The way it's heading right now, our children's children will never know the world we did. I suppose some don't care so long as they don't live to see that day. They very well might.

The photos I chose for this blog illustrate a couple of my thoughts right now. The top one is a waning moon in the middle of the morning. The United States does not have to be a waning power. It can be like the moon, go through this down cycle and build again.

While the moon just does its thing, we have to put resources into changing our course. We can rebuild our cities, fix our health care system, accept that the stock market is not the main criteria we must use for what is right but rather do what is best for people's lives, and pay for what we say we want rather than be always borrowing. Money is not the only standard by which something must be measured, is it?

I believe we can still change things, but if we don't, we will be a waning power that stays down permanently because I believe our power has come through our strong middle class where real things have been made. A vital middle class has been the engine that made this country great. If that disappears, if the hope for the poor disappears with nowhere for them to move up, then it won't be good in the future for anybody but a few rich. If that's the world we want, then do nothing and it'll happen because there are those working to make it happen. Some think they can get more gold by killing the golden goose.


The other photo is a woolly bear caterpillar from last week-end, which if it completes its cycle will become an Isabella Tiger Moth. I grew up being told that you can predict the hardness of a winter by this little guy's bands. A wider brown one means a tough winter ahead (or some say it's just the opposite).

This was the first one I had seen this fall. When I find them on the road, they curl up into a little ball which I pick up and throw off, trying to help them toward the direction they were heading, but this one was in the pasture where its only danger would be the cattle stepping on it.

Its photo is here because it represents one way man looks to guess for what will happen. We can't really do that with life (not sure it works with winter predicting either) but it seems to me that if we keep going as we are, fighting wars elsewhere and forgetting the ones here, we are in big trouble.