Today, an article appeared on Yahoo News (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100717/ts_nm/us_obama_republicans_3#mwpphu-post-form) which has to be one of the flagrant examples of yellow journalism written by a pair of partisan hacks I’ve seen in quite some time. I had to respond to it, because the lies and misinformation had to be countered with facts, and so I wrote what you are about to read below.
It is time to verify if the manner in which this article addresses this topic was correctly presented to the public. Let's take it almost line by line: "President Barack Obama stepped up criticism of Republicans on Saturday for blocking jobless aid, hammering home a Democratic election year attack line that casts the opposition as the party of the rich." NOT: the public is aware that he and the DNC have raked in tens of millions of dollars by the large corporations, trade unions, multinational conglomerates, and far Left pressure groups. Talk about the rich, the SEIU, the Apollo Project, the Tides Foundation, GE, the NEA and NFT, and many others are but a small sampling of the dollars that flow into the coffers of the DNC. No one can compete with that kind of funding. One writer commenting on the lie that the Democratic Party is for the common man and the Republican Party is for the rich, wrote:
“It determined that the Biden campaign accepted an illegal corporate contribution in the form of a round-trip flight between New Hampshire and Iowa in June 2007 for three people. The Biden campaign paid GEH Air Transportation $7,911 for the first-class airfare, but regulators say the campaign should have paid the charter rate of $34,800. The FEC also found that the Biden campaign received at least $106,000 in donations that were over the limit, and the campaign was ordered to pay the U.S. Treasury more than $85,000 for stale-dated checks. The Biden campaign also failed to disclose more than $3.7 million in payments and roughly $870,000 in debts.”
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100717/ts_nm/us_obama_republicans_3#mwpphu-container)
Let's take the next line: "Senate Republicans have blocked at least three Democratic initiatives to extend unemployment insurance," Not true. They said they would support unemployment extensions as long as the funds would come from the stimulus money, much of which has yet to be used. They feel that with the deficit as high as it is, it would be prudent fto use the money from the unused portion of the stimulus already signed into law. "Obama has made job creation his top domestic priority and has traveled repeatedly to the U.S. heartland to tout policies that lift hiring," NO HE HAS NOT, He spent the better part of the last eighteen traveling the nation to promote OamaCare, not jobs or job creation. "U.S. growth has resumed after the worst recession in decades, thanks in part to a $862 billion stimulus plan Obama signed last year." No it has not. Since signed into law, ARRA, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has failed to produce a single job. Remember when the White House claimed that it had created X numbers of jobs, and it was discovered that these jobs were a figment of this administration's imagination? Then they tried to spin the jobs numbers using the census workers' temporary numbers to boost their job creation report? Across every sector but technology, the economy has flatlined, and with the Bush tax cuts scheduled to end next year, the uncertainty of how ObamaCare will impact costs and overhead on investment and procurement, Cap and Trade, the Value Added Tax, and a plethora of other business killing initiatives, no one is hiring right now, and the numbers of the unemployed stand at 31 million, with an additional sixty million among the ranks of the underemployed - that is, those who are holding two or more jobs to make ends meet. And these numbers do not count the roster of the 99ers, the long termed unemployed who are no longer counted by the Department of Labor in their statistics, and whose number is believed to be in at least six to ten million as of this writing. And it is understood that for each unemployed, underemployed, and long term unemployed person there are at least two to three others who are members of their immediate family. Oh let US not go down that road right now. There is a whole lot that can be written about this, but for the fact that the writers of the article I cite are nothing more than shrills of this White House.
I recall when Reagan was president, and the unemployment numbers were almost as high as they are today during his first term in office,; there was not a day when the alphabet soup channels failed to report how devastated the unemployed were and their families. Every night, day in and day out for almost four years, yet today, the same press uses the Internet, television and radio to ignore the plight of these people because it has the potential to damage Obama's reelection.
The next line is even more openly partisan and untrue: "Obama's Republican predecessor George W. Bush inherited a surplus from Democratic President Bill Clinton, but handed Obama a $1.3 trillion deficit eight years later, which his White House blames on Bush-era tax cuts and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that were funded by deficits." When Bill Clinton lost the House during the off year elections, the Republicans made a CONTRACT WITH AMERICA, which they kept. One of the promises was that they would balance the federal budget within four years. They were the ones instrumental in keeping Bill Clinton's feet to the fire when he faced reelection, and he signed their budget into law. Bill Clinton is not to be thanked for this, but those intrepid leaders who made that promise to the American electorate to balance the budget within a specific time period, but he and his press allies prefer to re-write history, since think that there are not enough of US around who remembered that era, and who know who it was who Clinton the politician to sign into law a balanced budget. Commenting on this lie, another writer wrote:
“Yes President Bush handed Obama a 1.3 trillion deficit, but let's remember why shall we. We had an event called " 911 " , what exactly did 911 cost ? We may never know, but a majority of the deficit is a safe bet. If Bill Clinton would have taken Sudan's offer to hand over Osama Bin Laden we wouldn't have this mess today but Clinton was more concerned about his poll numbers. The mess we have from the real estate bubble was from the Democrats giving the people who couldn't afford a hot dog " the steak, 125% financing on homes, liberals want the have not's to have... this led to the housing bust. The Democrats own that but blame Bush.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100717/ts_nm/us_obama_republicans_3#mwpphu-container
Another was so correct in his numbers on the deficits run before Obama came to the Oval Office, that I must post them here.
“Just a few facts for you liberals: Last budget passed by republican congress 2006, for physical year 2007 had a deficit of 165 billion; the following year democrate controled congress passed the budget for 2008 had a deficit if 459 billion, were are we now after 3 1/2 years of democrate (sic) control. Another fact about the border states, obama said they are increasing the number of agents on the border, correct however Bush signed into law in 2004 the Intellegence Reform and Terror Act witch requires the recruitment and training of 2000 additional agents a year. So obama is trying to take credit from bush on that one, and is still blaming (sic) him on the other hand. Also the national gaurd is there for admin support only.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100717/ts_nm/us_obama_republicans_3#mwpphu-container
Thus, this story is skewed and misleading, and those who do not remember these things will fall for its claims. I cannot let this happen. And this is the reason I am posting these comments. I cannot condone the profligate spending by the last congress, and this one, but I do know there was a time when a group of republicans made a contract with America which they meant to keep, and they were the ones who gave US our first blanced budget in decades.
Now we face greater challenges and threats our liberties. The press is relying on a misinformed public to continue the status quo in Washington, whereas the American people have had it with them. Call them what you may, tea baggers, racists, extremists, but this is the American electorate, and ther is nothing racist, bigoted, or extreme about wanting representative government, after all, this is precisely what our Founding Fathers strived and gave their all to support and to uphold in their day. They faced the tyranny of the crown, we face the potential for federal tyranny. Is it so extreme to want our elected officials to be accountable for their actions?
Of course not, There is nothing extreme or bigoted about this. But, if these wishes run counter to those which this White House and its press minions promote, then to them they are extreme, and must be resisted and fought against with every tool possible, even at the cost of our own freedoms. Next time some politician tells you that we are in a recovery, tell him/her to look around at the shuttered storefronts, the closed businesses, the laid off workers numbering the hundreds of thousands every month, and let him see how America hurts before he/she makes a callous statement about the unemployed, or make an unsubstantiated claim that this depression is over
This Depression is taking its toll on this nation, and on the economies of the industrialized nations of the world. As a result, and due to colossal bungling on the part of this White House and this congress, over eight million jobs have been lost, some eretreivably since Barack Obama was sworn into office, though by that time, there had already occurred a net loss of 1.4 million jobs. Now Congressman Jim McDermott, Democrat from the state of Washington, has petitioned President Obama to sign an Executive Order authorizing a Tier 5 Extension for the long termed unemployed. See the video here.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArxVt_bqXJ4&feature=player_embedded I recently wrote about the necessity for this Executive Order for the long term unemployed, the 99ers, who are no longer collecting, and have no job, and no source of income to pay their bills, buy food for themselves and their families, and pay their rent or mortgage anymore, and either face eviction or foreclosure.
While I respect and understand the Republicans’ claim that the long term unemployed need to find work, the reality they are not facing or choose to willfully ignore is the fact that there are five or six people applying for every job in the private sector, and depending on the market, in some cases there are as many as ten people competing for a single job, and many of these are part-time and three to four months in length. With a job market such as the one this nation currently faces, it is unfair to mischaracterize the long term unemployed as not wanting to return to work. Only the mentally ill, or someone who is handicapped in some way would prefer a life of hardship and financial ruin to earning a living and being able to pay one’s bills and live once again a normal way of life. They must realize this, though for many of these people who earn three hundred plus thousand dollars a year, all expenses paid, Gold Class Cadillac Health Insurance; not ObamaCare, Medicare, Medicaid, or the insurance you and I pay; their reality is quite different one than ours, especially than the unemployed, underemployed, and long term unemployed.
I’ll end my post here with the following cogent comment from a writer commenting on the above cited article. Except for the comment about America hating Obama, which I disagree with and find unnecessary, the rest of the statement does have a very valid point. The comment is simple, yet right to the point, expressing a very possible reality come 2012, when the nation once again will make history at the polls, .
“So what? 60% of America now hates Obama. He can talk, point fingers, blame, make jokes, appoint, bypass, sell more of our debt to China, and give out corporate bailouts all he wants because he's out of office come next election.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100717/ts_nm/us_obama_republicans_3#mwpphu-container
It is not Obama and the Democrats or Republicans who America hate, but the policies which have devastated our economy and way of life which members of both parties are responsible for, and for which they will give an account to the American electorate come this November and in 2012. They will meet their fate, and so will this nation at the ballot box, where we can still express ourselves most clearly to those who would govern over US.
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