"Liberal Socialist Agenda." I hear these words repeated over and over by conservatives. As a life-long FDR-style, liberal Democrat, I feel fairly qualified to recognize a liberal when I see one. Barack Obama is no liberal. Much to my disappointment he is a run-of-the-mill, center-right moderate. A realistic view at his record:
The United States is still embroiled in two unnecessary wars that continue to eat up billions of dollars. At present 98,000 troops still remain in Iraq. At the end of the draw down, 50,000 will be left as peacekeepers. President Obama has escalated the war in Afghanistan, apparently choosing to ignore the history of Afghanistan as the graveyard of empires.
Halliburton, KBR, DyneCorp, and the rest of the big defense contractors are still getting rich from death. Xe, aka Blackwater, is still killing civilians and inciting violence. A liberal would end this insanity.
The highly intrusive, personally invasive, Constitutionally questionable Patriot Act and FISA are still being perpetuated by the Obama administration. A liberal would end these violations of rights.
Medicare Part D, passed by the Bush administration and a Republican congress, is nearly identical to Obamacare. Both are huge windfalls for Big Pharma and Big Insurance. Both were passed using sleazy backroom deals, arm twisting and the bending of parliamentary rules. I am incensed that I will be forced to purchase insurance from the very companies that currently are quite content to let tens of thousands of people die each year. A liberal would have worked for a single-payer plan, or at least a public option.
Too big to fail continues to be the norm for Wall Street banksters. They are still unregulated, being coddled and continuing the very practices that led to disaster. No one has been or will be fined, held accountable or born any responsibility for their greed. Instead, my president hailed them as savvy businessmen. Savvy businessmen, indeed, as they drive around in their taxpayer-subsidized Feraris. A liberal would have broken up these monolithic institutions and put their CEOs in the unemployment lines.
Candidate Obama promised to renegotiate NAFTA and initiate fair trade practices. President Obama has given us the same old unregulated, laissez-faire free trade that multi-nation corporations love and destroy Main Street and working people.
Candidate Obama promised millions of green jobs and energy independence. President Obama has taken up the GOP mantra of "drill, baby, drill," nuclear power plants and the environmentally destructive mountaintop mining.
Candidate Obama promised sunshine, transparency and an absence of the stench of lobbyists in his administration. President Obama has at least 30 lobbyists employed in the White House and the lack of transparency is obvious to even the most politically naive.
Nausea began to set in when my newly elected president chose the thuggish, foul-mouthed Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff. The sickness worsened when Bush holdovers Gates and Bernanke were kept on the payroll. I knew I'd been had when the tax-evading, Wall Street coddling ex-Goldman Sachs wonder boy, Timothy Geithner, was named treasury secretary.
FDR welcomed and reveled in the hatred of his enemies. This young president seems to wither in the face of criticism and seeks to court support he will never receive, while turning his back of his base; resulting in his plummeting poll numbers. I'd hoped I was voting for the second coming of FDR. Sadly, I got the third term of George W. Bush.
