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You and 4 others like this.- R***** Butts R***** Butts
Victor Sherrick
Yeah, Manny what has Obama ever done for this country.... Aside from repealling DADT, restoring solvency to the auto industry, ending the War in Iraq, killing Anwar al-Awlaki, extending health coverage to millions of American children who w...ould have been rejected for prior medical conditions, aided relatively peaceful revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, supported the revolutionary forces in Lybia with the military and financial support of the UN, extended unemployment bennefits to millions of out of work Americans whose only income would have beenhalted last year during the holidays, seen the execution of Muammar Gaddafi, offered comprimise to the obstructionist House Republicans during their manufactured Debt Ceilling crisis, Won the Nobel Peace Prize, ended torture and "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" by the US and our Allies, overseen the Federal Response to natural disasters across the US restoring the reputation of FEMA, AND brought Osama Bin Laden to justice...See more
13 hours ago ·
- R**** Butts R***** Butts
Increased unemployment to levels not seen since the great depression, has provided the opportunity for 1 of 7 Americans’ to be on food stamps, has a special number for his illegal resident family members to get out of jail free, has managed... to make government even bigger than any of his predecessors but still can't do anything for the legal taxpayers, has bailed out everybody that should have failed and still has an economy that basically sux. Restoring solvency? Ended a war? healthcare to illegals? hummm Yep, where is the "you must be as nuts as manny button"? Left Wing ID 10 T SSee more
4 hours ago ·
Victor Sherrick
Well, Mr. Butts, I certainly wouldn't repudiate the claim that I'm anything less than an idiot. But, I don't embrace the left-winger tag, and I'll explain that in a bit.
But first I should, in the interest of truth and honesty, address some of your assumptions. I will grant you the benefit of the doubt that you are reporting fair and factual information as far as you believe it to be true and the result of honest, accurate and well-vetted reporting. It isn't, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you believe it is.
Unemployment or I'm so Broke I Can't Even Pay Attention
You mention the increased unemployment numbers. These do not reflect the number of Americans without work, but those who have received unemployment benefits in the last year. For example, if the President had not reached a deal with House Republicans to extend these benefits, over a million citizens would have been dropped from the roles and would have actually lowered the mythical 9.0% of Americans unemployed to a more palatable number.
But the result would have been worse for the economy and the nation, not to mention the families that count on those benefits to survive. The number of Americans who are under-employed is no doubt vast, but difficult to specify since it requires a judgment placed on every single member of the collected data (to wit, if I have a four-year degree but work as an insurance salesman I would be listed as under-employed even if I were making more money than I would teaching elementary school).
http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z1ebjpgk2654c1_&met_y=unemployment_rate&tdim=true&fdim_y=seasonality:S&dl=en&hl=en&q=current+unemployment+rate
Nutritional Philately or Can I Have the Elvis Food Stamp Please?
Just the same, while a larger section of Americans are on food assistance now, more would have qualified under previous administrations using the current guidelines, particularly the George W. Bush Administration, but also Bush Sr. and even Ronald Reagan had a larger percentage of eligible families under the current guidelines (As did Clinton when he first took office).
http://www.carseyinstitute.unh.edu/publications/PB_foodstamps_05.pdfWe're So Sorry Uncle Albert, But If Anything Should Happen We'll Be Sure To Give A Ring
The report that I believe you're referencing about Obama's illegal alien relatives having their own number set up to call him when they get arrested stems from a report by The Australian (a Newscorp publication) stating that Obama's uncle Onyango was arrested after nearly hitting a police car in Framingham Massachusetts and that he tried to call the White House. It also snidely reported that Onyango retained the same lawyer that his sister used to avoid deportation for being in the country illegally.
What's interesting here is that in the follow-up report that was done by the Washington Times (A conservative paper NOT owned by Murdoch) it was revealed that these relatives of the President came to the country 25 years ago, and Barrack Obama had no clue about them until he traveled to Kenya years later.
So yes, Obama had two close relatives in the country illegally, but they came to the country when the President was in school. Also the notion the President had set up a hotline for his various ne'er-do-well relatives is not true (And Onyango did NOT successfully contact the President while in custody.)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2011/aug/28/picket-obamas-illegal-uncle-arrested-uncle-omar-hi/Is Smaller Really Better? (Insert your own joke here...)
As for the government growing to unprecedented size is true, but highly contextualized to presuppose that this is the wrong eventuality for the Nation today, and that it is all his fault.
In fact only one of Obama's predecessors has successfully shrunk the Federal government, which has grown in every administration in American history except one. Excluding Lincoln, who had his nation effectively cut in half, increased the total Federal government under his stewardship.
Who reduced the Government then? It wasn't George W. Bush, who reneged on his core campaign promises to reign in government and greatly increased the size of the Federal body. It wasn't Reagan, who used expanded government as a key combator of the 1980's recession he oversaw, and in opposition to the Soviet Union.
No, it was Herbert Hoover who reduced government. He did so at the outset of the Great Depression in an attempt to remove “job-killing deficits”. By essentially rolling up the Federal Government Hoover took what was a financial calamity and made it an unprecedented catastrophe.
http://www.creditwritedowns.com/2011/01/britains-austerity-obama-as-herbert-hoover.htmlThat's not my opinion. That's the findings of Liberal darling (actually appointed during the Bush Administration and while not a Bush appointee, he had W's blessing) Ben Bernanke in over three decades of writings he did on the great depression. That Benny, what a communist!
Give me your tried, your poor.... I mean your European tired and your European poor... I mean your Western European tired...
You also claim that Obama has given illegal aliens health care. Actually, if you read the story printed by your good friends at the Washington Times again, you'll see that he said in a speech in 2009 that illegals WON'T get healthcare under this plan, and said that made it more essential that illegals strive to become legal residents and eventual citizens.
That's a pretty complex answer to the question he was posed, so I can understand why it was misconstrued. But let the record show, illegal aliens do not receive free healthcare. And while the notion of ever giving anyone here in the country illegally eventual citizenship is anathema to the staunchest conservatives, it's been the policy of the Republic since the tests began being given for citizenship over a century ago.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/18/obama-ties-immigration-to-health-care-battle/?feat=home_cube_position1
Manic Depression is Touching My Soul
Now the real sticking points in your post Ralph are about the President's handling of the economy. Yes, it isn't great (unless you have a bachelor's degree or better in which the Unemployment rate is now under 4.5% the lowest in American history). And it's fair to say that the President deserves ownership of that economy. The Vice President has said so himself. But it lacks any context. How bad is the economy compared to how bad it WOULD have been without the Government's intervention in 2009.
To answer that, let's look at a report by two leading economists Alan S. Binder and Mark Zandi. Both political conservatives, Binder is a Princeton professor and former Fed Vice Chair and Zandi is the Chief economist for Moody's Analytics (you know, the guys who just down-graded the country's credit rating, THOSE hippies!) have used the vast data accumulated over the history of the country and reported that the government's response to the crisis was “Highly effective” which is policy wonkspeak for “Effin' A, Man!” This report was also vetted and peer-reviewed at over a hundred University and financial institutions. None of them could discredit it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/business/economy/28bailout.htmlAnd now the reason I called you all together...
Now Ralph, a man I truly believe to be intelligent and patriotic (but I'm an idiot so I could be wrong about that) all these reports you have clung to stem from news agencies deeply imbedded with Right Wing ideology. That wouldn't be so bad, but they also all failed to achieve muster by journalistic ethical standards, which have been in place since prior to World War I. To make a report in an ethical publication as anything but opinion/editorial you need at least two independent sources. Newscorp has long had a single source policy that has been heavily criticized. But in the last decade the company (particularly Foxnews here in the US) has a single source policy allowing the reporter to be that sole source. Since then literally hundreds or stories that Fox has broadcast have been debunked.
But it's easy to just say Foxnews and everyone knows the reporting is fake. The Washington Times is ultra conservative, but even they contradicted Newscorp in one of these reports.
Watch MSNBC, or CurrentTV or even Real Time With Bill Mahr, and sources will be quoted all the time. It's easy to check things out then. But to get to the bottom of a Newscorp story you have to really dig because they rarely list sources, and in their political shows they NEVER do. They just go the air and give talking points over and over again.
So I'm not calling you names for believing these things Ralph. But if you are able to find real, quotable, peer reviewed and properly vetted reports to contradict me (and once again, none of these are my opinions. These are all factually based reports from nationally recognized sources) on any of these points please do. You'll become a right-wing media darling if you can, because with all the resources of the Conservative media, none of them have been able to do it.
And I'm not a liberal. I'm a conservative. I always have been. I believe in a strong country and fiscal responsibility. In my American Dream we leave this wonderful land to our children in better shape than we received it. I believe in fighting for democracy and standing up to fascism, communism and terror around the globe not simply because it threatens us (it threatens us all) but because it's the right thing to do, and because it's our responsibility as free men under the aegis of a higher moral authority.
I never left the Republican Party, it left me. It stopped being about creating a brighter, better world (Reagan's shining city on the hill) and became obsessed with maintaining an unfair status quo. It focused on tax breaks for the rich, environmental, economic and media deregulation. It bowed at the alter of globalization and the false god that is goddamn trickle down economics! It stopped caring about the world I was leaving my step-kids and worried insistently about the privileged class and keeping all they possessed free from everyone else, everyone not them, everyone not a “real American”.
It stopped being the Party or Reagan and Eisenhower, or Keynes and Buckley and became the perverse tool of Cheney and Scalia, and Limbaugh and O'Reilly and the Koch Brothers, two traitorous black marketeers who sold arms and gave succor to our enemies.
It stopped being the Party of ideas and became the Party of NO. No to Obama, no to Health Care for all, no to jobs for the struggling, the starving and those just too damn tired to take care of their families after working two, or three part-time service sector jobs that undervalue and humiliate them.
I am not and will never be a left winger. I will never join another political party again for I have seen the what happens when partisan fervor replaces real patriotism and a lofty political ideal can be co-opted. One born in the years leading up to the militarily forced abolition of slavery, one that believed that ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL and was willing to fight and die for that belief while preserving our beloved Republic, forcing those who wished to leave and live in race based feudalism to stay and live under the same laws, the same statutes and the SAME CONSTITUTION that our founders bequeathed to us.
Where is Lincoln today? Where would we even look for him? A small-time lawyer from Illinois, who never held executive office and who's alleged beliefs and back-ground divided the nation nearly in two.
Where can we find anyone like that today.
You're right Mr Butts, I am an idiot. Only a fool would still have an once of hero worship left in him in this sad, cynical world.
And you're right Manny. Today is a great day to support President Obama.
From one fool to another, good night, and god bless.
Victor Sherrick
