Obama has been trying to get legislation passed on various issues.. A couple of years ago he fought hard to get an immigration bill through congress. It got through the senate but it couldn’t even get a vote in the Republican House. It wasn’t that they had a better idea. They didn’t have any ideas at all. They just didn’t want anything that Obama was pushing to get into law. That’s the policy of Mitch McConnell, the clown who is now the majority leader in the Senate. Here’s an idiot that has had as his principal policy for eight years, to stop Obama from getting elected. He failed twice and then instead of giving up that moronic cause, and doing something constructive, he sat around and sulked. Now he heads up the Senate. Does anyone really expect this slug to cooperate with the President and try to help America? Of course not.
Mitch McConnell is the bottom of the political barrel and he is now the head of the Senate. That means that we can look forward to two more years of nothing getting done in congress. But Obama doesn’t have anything to lose anymore. As he mentioned in the State of the Union address, he won his two elections. He no longer has to protect the cowardly Democrats who tried to sell him out and still didn’t get elected. He is free to pursue his own policies regardless of what any other politician thinks and it seems that in doing that he has attracted, what had been, the lagging interest of the public. This week in a poll taken by The Washington Post his approval rating rose above 50%, over 70% among Democrats and it has even risen by over 10% among Republicans and during the State of the Union address, the running tote during the broadcast showed that the American public never fell below 86% agreement with what he was saying. Even the Republican’s never fell below 65% agreement. Maybe the GOP should take a gander at what the general public wants instead of just hewing to what the 1% wants. The reality is that 1% won’t get you elected, no matter how much you spend on lobbying.
How about the stuff he’s done since the election. In December he cut a deal with China to, at least, look at cleaning up the atmosphere. Right after that he pushed out his new rules on immigration helping over 5 million people breathe easier. Then he announced a new policy on Cuba. This did two things. It made the majority of the people in this country who have thought for years that our Cuba policy was bullshit, jump for joy and it made all the pundits on the Right have to come up with phony reasons why we shouldn’t deal with Cuba and in the process look like asses.
Now Obama is pushing a new issue which is free community college for all, followed by paid sick leave and a 6 week paid leave for parents of a newborn child; and finally this week his proposals for Middle Class tax help through added taxing of the top 1%. How much of this can he get done? It’s anybody’s guess; probably not too much considering the opposition in both houses but that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that he will show up the GOP as a bunch of slaves to the rich who don’t give a damn about the working class of this country, only about big oil and huge corporate interests that have been stealing from them for half a century.
When he first came into office and had congress on his side, Obama pushed through the Stimulus that saved the auto industry and kept the thieving banks alive so that their investors wouldn’t lose their savings. People objected to the government saving the banks but in doing so he secured the life savings of millions of Americans. Then he attacked and won the battle that every president in the last hundred years tried to fight, when he passed the ACA and gave millions of uninsured Americans affordable healthcare. Sure he had to mediate the bill in order to get Republican votes, he had to let the insurance industry write the bill and he had to allow the drug industry to keep their egregious profits, but he got he bill passed and if the GOP were a little less interested in keeping their rich donors dipping into the pockets of the poor and a little more interested in helping their constituents, Obama could have gotten rid of most of the bad stuff in the bill even before it passed.
After the Stimulus and the ACA and mostly without any other help from the Republicans, Obama dug in and attacked our most staggering problem, the depression that the Bush administration had created for us and the rest of the world. So how did that go?
A-Well, over the last five years American business has crated over 11 million jobs.
B-Every 3 weeks we now bring on line as much solar power as we did in all of 2008.
C- 2013 saw the most jobs created since 1999
D- The stock market has tripled since Obama took office
E- Healthcare costs are down to lowest, in history.
F- More Americans finished college this year than ever before
G-The deficit was cut by two thirds.
H-Romney campaigned to get the unemployment level below 6% by 2016. Obama beat that by two years.
I- The strongest GDP growth in a decade
J- Gas prices are down to $2 or less.
K- 58 straight months of increased jobs
L- 3 million jobs gained in this year.
M- Since 2010 we have had more people at work than all the other civilized countries combined.
It seems that Obama has achieved all the Republican goals called for during the last election debates in 2012, better and ahead of the Republican candidates schedule. I mentioned this to a right wing friend the other night and he started talking to me about the lack of income equality and low minimum wages. A Republican? Next thing he’s going to tell me is that this isn’t a Christian country and that blacks should be allowed to vote without registering.
Not satisfied with what he has accomplished despite constant opposition from a do nothing Congress, Obama took the opportunity at his State of the Union address to lay out an ambitious agenda for the last quarter of his time in office.
This included;
A-Free tuition for the first two years of college at community colleges, which now educate 40% of our college students.
B-Reduce payments on student loans. It’s a crime that this country feels it necessary to inflict usury interest rates on our kids as they try to get an education that is free in moist civilized countries.
C-Equal pay for women
D- Increase the minimum wage. He pointed out that any congressman who thinks that 15 thousand a year is a living wage should try living on it.
E- We must have 21st Century infrastructure, not just on roads and bridges but also airports and communications, which are sadly falling behind the technical revolution. He also spoke about the need for more medical research that will give the push to an initiative that will get us cures for the great diseases that threaten life in this era.
F- A free internet
G- A change in the tax code to remove protections for companies that invest in plant abroad.
H- Trade agreements that will favor our manufacturers and not allow foreign interests to protect their corporations that harm the environment.
I-paid vacations, paid sick leave and 6 week paid leave for new parents
It’s an ambitious agenda and most of it won’t get done in the next two years but it’s a road map and a significant start, which is a hell of a lot more than anyone else is attempting.
Look, this is a man who walked into the worst shit storm imaginable, A country, no, a world, buffeted by a financial disaster bred and built by the stupidity and incompetence of the Bush/Cheney cabal. He not only survived that and got us out of two unjust wars, but he pulled the country back by its ears, rebuilt the economy, made us into the most prosperous country on earth and did it with absolutely no help from the GOP. Not only didn’t the Republicans help, they stood firmly in his way on everything he attempted, and they did it with no concern for the damage they were doing to this country or its people.
Maybe it’s time for the useless, semi-senile losers like Boehner, McConnell, McCain, Graham, Huckabee, Santorum, the various Kings and their younger, no less confused protégés like Cruz, Rubio, Jindal and Ryan to just get out of the way, stop holding up the business of making this country work and watch the guy who knows how to set goals and meet them, do just that.