Posts Tagged ‘change’
The Arab Spring, which once raised hopes of freedom and dignity, has diverged onto the dark path of Islamist authoritarian rule.
CHANGE.
In Syria, tens of thousands of people have died in a bitter civil war that might have recently seen its first use of chemical weapons.
CHANGE.
Iran continues its march toward nuclear weapons capability, heedless of international condemnation.
source: USA Today
And of course, CHANGE also came in the form of Obama’s support of the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, which led to an even more dangerous Lybia where radical extremists assassinated four embassy workers, including the first assassination of a serving American ambassador since 1979, going all the way back to the worst days of the Carter presidency and what had been the previous height of anti-Americanism in the Middle East.
Obama began his campaign for president by making public speeches that besmirched America’s place in history, undermining our moral standing by constantly running through litanies of our mistakes, rehashing the dark periods in American history to audiences everywhere and decrying our nation’s “arrogance” in world affairs.
So it was no surprise that once elected, as Obama began meeting with leaders around the world, he become the first American president ever to bow down to the leaders of other nations.
Obama also made it no secret where his allegiances lie in making the first stop on his World Apology Tour in Cairo in 2009 and that it hasn’t been until just now, in the fifth year of his presidency, that President Obama has bestowed upon Israel his very first presidential visit.
(And no, there were no bows for any of the leaders of Israel.)
Israel gave away Gaza and the West Bank as a gesture of goodwill, and how were they repaid? With even more rockets fired indiscriminately into civilian areas of Isreal and even more harsh rhetoric from groups like Hamas and Hezbollah calling for death to Israel.
Seemingly oblivious to this fact that the Israelis have only emboldened their enemies by giving land away, Obama has chosen istead to step up the pressure on Israel, demanding they return to the 1967 borders.
No surprise then that Obama’s approval rating in Israel ranks just about as low as as any terrorist leader vowing for Israel’s destruction:
A poll released last week showed [Obama] had a scant 10% approval rating in Israel, with an additional 32% saying they respect but don’t like him.
Since the very creation of the tiny Jewish state, America’s position as Israel’s greatest ally has been faithfully adhered to by every president both Republican and Democrat alike, that is until CHANGE came along the arrival of Barack Obama. The great irony, of course, is that Obama’s policy of having the US walk away from it’s position as Israel’s greatest friend in the world has only served to crush the standing of the more moderate forces working for peace through appeasement in Israel and ensure that the hawks in Israel will keep an even firmer hold on power.
Great powers of peace negotiation there, Mr. President. Not only are you starting from a position of demanding the Palestinians get their wildest dreams right from the starting point (what the heck kind of negotiation strategy is that?) but you’ve also just made sure all the moderate elements in Israel lose all respectability with your heavy-handed demands of Israel.
So it’s no surprise that 90% of Israel stands in disapproval of the kind of CHANGE Obama has brought, but what’s most amazing is that America’s standing has plummeted even amongst his Muslim kin in the Middle East.
From the Pew Research Global Attitudes Report:
There is little support for Obama in the predominantly Muslim nations surveyed. Fewer than three-in-ten express confidence in him in Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey and Jordan and just 7% of Pakistanis have a positive view of Obama, the same percentage that voiced confidence in President George W. Bush during the final year of his administration.
The median approval rating of Obama’s policies in Muslim countries has declined from 34% in his first term to 15% now.
Barack Obama may have failed miserably to make any progress for peace between the Jews and the Arabs in the Middle East, but at least he’s the first American president to have the Jews and Arabs equally united in their opposition to his policies.
“[T]here are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America.” – Barack Obama, DNC Keynote Speech, July 27, 2004.
Remember that speech? I sure do, and that electrifying seventeen-minute speech was the spark that ignited Obama’s rocket rise to political stardom. He was a breath of fresh air, a voice that rose above the petty politics of our day.
Most of us remember that speech, but it’s hard for most of us to remember the guy who made that speech. The president we’ve gotten to know is a man who urges his supporters to seek “revenge” and to “punish our enemies.”
Eager to propel his rocket rise, within days of being elected to the U.S. Senate, reporters from his adoring media were already asking Obama if he had any plans to run for president in 2008:
“You know, I am a believer in knowing what you’re doing when you apply for a job. And I think that if I were to seriously consider running on a national ticket, I would essentially have to start now, before having served a day in the Senate. Now, there are some people who might be comfortable doing that, but I’m not one of those people.” – Barack Obama, November 8, 2004.
Ultimately, Obama’s own HOPE for the presidency won out over his repeated assertions that he wouldn’t have the experience to run in the next election, but even though he had reversed himself, there was still something refreshing about the way this guy who had already wooed so many managed to remain humble and aware of his deficiencies and lack of experience.
In 2006, Obama released his book, The Audacity of Hope. There was a good deal of candor when Obama shared this in the prologue:
“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views. As such, I am bound to disappoint some, if not all, of them.” – Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, published October 17, 2006.
Already looking at a run for the White House, Obama was shrewd enough to realize that the factor of his being an unknown, a “blank screen” onto which many people could project many things would be one of his greatest strengths, at the same time, he was also smart enough to realize that those widespread hopes and great expectations could become his greatest liability were he to have to live up to them once elected.
So when he finally declared his candidacy and it became time for Obama to begin projecting his own images onto that blank screen, what did we get? We ended up with slogans such as
and 
And through four years of his presidency, what did we actually end up with?
and 
Barack Obama wants people to vote for him out of revenge? Revenge for what? Daring to challenge you? Daring to provide the American people with an alternative to your failed presidency and perpetual campaigning?
As he predicted might happen, I think Obama now knows that most of America did end up disappointed in his presidency and he realizes now that his time is done. Only a loser seeks revenge.
On his first day in office, President Barack Obama ordered federal officials to “usher in a new era of open government” and “act promptly” to make information public. The White House blog vowed that it would be “the most transparent administration in history.”
source: whitehouse.gov
It sounded like CHANGE was really coming with this new administration, but Obama wasted no time in completely abandoning all his lofty pledges of transparency.
The first promise broken was the Obama administration’s vow that the entire Obamacare debate in Congress would be broadcast on C-Span. The promise was abandoned completely, with the vast majority of the details of this legislation controlling 1/6 of our economy worked out in backroom deals with insurance companies, big pharma and the labor unions.
Obama also pledged that all legislation would be posted online for public review for five days before any votes would be made. It took the administration only five months to renege on that promise.
Then came the revelations that 19 out of 20 cabinet-level agencies under the Obama administration have failed to follow the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act, thereby disobeying the law that demands disclosure of public information. The Obama administration is now widely condemned as the worst administration on FOIA.
Under the Obama administration, we’ve also seen an unprecedented which hunt against whistle blowers, with Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department indicting six government workers under the act for leaking information. If that doesn’t sound like a lot, consider that until President Obama took office, there had been only three such cases in U.S. history.
All the more alarming is the cavalier way the law has been used to go after people who neither spied for other governments nor passed on classified information for financial gain. Previously, its harsh provisions were reserved for egregious crimes such as those of the double agents Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen. Five of the six recent cases the DOJ is involved in prosecuting involve leaks to the news media, most of which were by people who say they believed they were blowing the whistle on waste, fraud and abuse in government.
It’s just four of the many ways in which the Obama administration that promised to be “the most transparent in history” has become the most secretive and conniving government we’ve ever seen.
It’s yet another example of how the voters of America were sold a false bill of goods with all those lofty promises Obama made as a candidate. In reality, the campaign that marketed Obama in one-word slogans of HOPE and CHANGE turned out to be be and administration of FRAUD and SHAM.
I was thinking of that disgusting ad where Joe Soptic accused Mitt Romney of the death of his wife (an ad that ranged from disingenuous insinuations to flat-out lies in five different ways.)
< --- Click the thumbnail to get a good look at this man.
It got me to thinking, and I wondered what a Romney ad might look like if his surrogate super PACs were just reckless and dishonest as Team Obama’s.
When Barack Obama was elected, he warned America that if we didn’t rush through his $787 billion stimulus, unemployment could go as high as 6%. The Democrat-controlled Congress passed his stimulus, only to see unemployment rise as high as 10%. The HOPE and CHANGE we were promised became a reality of gloom and doom with 43-straight months of unemployment over 8%.
All of that is fact, of course, but here’s where the Obama-style sleaze comes in . . .
Perhpas it’s no surprise then, that as hopeless as the prospect of having to re-enter the job market is these days, we hear more and more stories of employees losing their jobs and snapping, like the employee who shot the employer who fired him and died in a hail of bullets right out on the city streets as happened in front of the Empire State Building yesterday. The hope is gone, the job market is abysmal, and yesterday we saw two more stark examples of victims of the Obama economy.
This ad paid for by Co-opting Obama’s Sleaze for the GOP.
As outraqeous as this bit of satire may be, it should be pointed out that it’s no worse than things that have actually been said by that lunatic vice president of ours who has numerous times suggested Republicans, by not supportings administration policies, were supporters of rape and murder.
Going by Joe’s standard’s, maybe my hyberbole wasn’t so over the top after all.
Here are two facts that everyone who aligns themselves with the Occupy Movement should know before voting in the 2012 election.
1. While the 99-percent suffer under unprecedented economic hardship, Wall Street firms have earned more in 2.5 years under Obama than all 8 years of the Bush presidency. Think about that, more corporate earnings in Obama’s 2.5 years than Bush’s entire 8! (Over 85 billion dollars compared to 77 billion.)
2. Barack Obama has raised more corporate donations than any president in 20 years.
Barack Obama is the king of corporate cash. He had two years of Democrat control of Congress to do something and things only got worse – much, much worse. He may talk a good game, paying a lot of lip service to reigning in the excesses of Wall Street, but Barack Obama is the all-time, undisputed king of corporate cash, both in raking it in and in letting the fat cats make it.
That’s the reality of the HOPE that most of OWS voted for and nothing is going to CHANGE if we make the same choice in 2012.
