Quick! Somebody please pinch me. Did Obama just derail the giant notorious Neocon money machine? Could it be that the American voter is not as helpless as he himself had thought? Can we Americans now believe that a simple get-your-ass-out-to-vote mentality can topple the black hats who rigged past elections in Florida, Ohio, and all points of the compass? You mean that we voters are not as impotent as we thought after Bush II’s hand that pulled the puppet strings got the US Supreme Court to stop a Florida recount, eventually that cost Al Gore the 2004 election? Is this grand election of 2012 proof enough that if enough voters get out to vote that their power can topple the $300 million deep pockets of Karl Rove and all the Neocon dirty tricks funded by the Koch Brothers and other such ilk? In short, can we look forward to just getting out the vote and honest elections to determine the will of the people even when we were losing hope and getting nowhere fast in preserving basic freedoms? Are we becoming a government of the people all of a sudden? Time will tell, but Obama did effectively get the vote out in many battleground states up for grab: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Florida, and Virginia, all among the delightful surprises of honest voters to know that their vote counted for something. Like, uh, victory. Credit given where credit is due.
Not everybody was jubilant. Karl Rove might top the list of sore-tailed elephants what with over $300 million in his chubby hand for years to create as much destruction as possible as to Obama’s credibility, achievements, and electability prospects that would give Obama a second term as president. Rove tried his dirtiest, but no cigar. The House gained some Democratic seats, and the president, well, old Romney took his best shot, but his long face and supercilious characterizations of female voters, for instance, as Rolodex files to flip about seemed a bit flip to women. Did Romney really care about women? Probably not. But it was fun to see Rove blustering before the FOX camera on election night by telling FOX that the count in Ohio was not in yet and that FOX News should refrain from calling the election for Obama to win because, just because. It seemed to many viewers like Rove knew something that no one else could know, like maybe Ohio had been rigged in advance for Romney and everyone just needed to wait until the software bore him out. It never happened. Ohio went for Obama, period.
One aspect of the drubbing Romney got I have to believe had to be that Obama was truly responsible for getting more of his voters to get up and vote. Another and most important aspect of the 2012 Election was that the common man was sick and tired of seeing Obama catch all the blame and hell for what George Bush caused in the ongoing demise of America. Exit polls showed that more than half of all voters polled blamed Bush II for the financial collapse of our country beginning in 2008 when Bush was still president. Oh, I know, I know, the Republicans are big on telling us all how passé that thinking is, that it is the job of the president in power in the White House to take the heat, not the past president who was in office when the shit hit the fan, whether he caused it or not. Well, I got to tell you the American voter did not buy that crock! Huzzah! My shirt buttons all busted off with pride. And here I thought we were goners who would believe any of the rot fed to us with TV bucks from those with means who want all the money while sentencing the working men and women to a life of slavery at starvation, non-union wages.
In addition, I think the American voter became more aware that Obama had been misused and abused as to the truth when it came to who caused what when the stock market crashed, and one scandal after another followed one giant icon after another falling down dead, e.g., Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, you know the long list by memory by now, most likely. Though Romney and Sarah Palin and Boehner blamed Obama, the American people stood up like a stiff rod of rebar and called bullshit on them all, including Karl Rove. Obama was left to hold the bag. And the American voter would not hear of it. No wonder George W. Bush kept such a low profile for the last 4 years and didn’t even attend the Republican Convention. He would be satisfied with having no attention drawn to him in any way or fashion. And why not lay low? Turn off them damned spotlights! After all he borrowed and spent over $4 trillion to attack Afghanistan and Iraq and to occupy them until the bitter end of his presidency. He knew he might just get some flak for showing his smiling face after all the misery he created. Over 1.4 million Iraqis killed and over 4800 US deaths, for what? Iraqi freedom? Weapons of Mass Destruction pointed at US cities?
If Ronald Reagan were still alive I got to wonder how he would answer his old question of, “Are we better off for having invaded and occupied Iraq?”
So are we as Americans better off for Bush borrowing and spending $4 trillion from the Chinese to finance these wars? I think most Americans would answer, no, and blame Bush for being the biggest dumbass president in history. So he stays out of sight. Doesn’t travel much. Especially overseas, ya know? Looks like the Decider has made the decision to cool his jets in his home state of Texas. Where a couple of hundred thousand Texans just signed a petition to secede from the Union. Figures.
In 2012 voters got to where they could separate the illusion from reality, it seems. Like the Birthers crock who contend that Obama does not possess a valid birth certificate. Or who is a Muslim Socialist all in the same mouthful! What Rove did not count on was a revolution of spirit amongst the American workers and Middle Class who got tired of Republican PAC money kicking the president around and showing contempt for him, the leader of our country. Like when the stupid-ass Congressman Joe Wilson, R-South Carolina interrupted President Obama in the middle of his speech to a joint session of Congress on September 9, 2009, and yelled out, “You lie!” I can only imagine that such abuse and derision might have caused many thousand voters to rise up and register who might not have got off the couch to bother. Americans were mad. And no one really knew this until the exit polls taken from Obama suporters who made it known that they had had enough. They showed it in the best American tradition by voting strong Obama at the ballot box. Backlash at ballot box show voters are fed up with those disrespecting the president.
So President Obama, the American people have once again shown that they back you and look to you to finish what you started. We look to you to fulfill those promises you made to us all back in 2008 when we elected you to be our first black president of the United States. You have nothing to lose by doing it all right the second time around and completing and adding to the good you have done for Americans during your first term.
Yes, you killed Osama bin Laden, alright, and it was a stunning achievement, no doubt about it. The plan and execution was simply brilliant. And so unlike George W. Bush who said he didn’t think about him much anymore. Bush not that concerned about Osama bin Laden anymore.
You created the first National Healthcare coverage for all Americans, bravo. But we know that single payer needs to be put on the table again instead of your telling us that was not the top priority. It is. It is the very point of National Healthcare for all Americans.
So is closing down Guantanamo detention center in Cuba where we render captured prisoners and holding them as enemy combatants without the right of habeas corpus before they merit a fair trial, not by a military tribunal but by the laws given all human beings under the Constitution. Many may scoff and become enraged at this idea, yet if a person is guilty of a crime and we believe our laws to be just and true then such guilt can and will be found out in a short time to where the accused is no longer in limbo and we do not toss him about without a clue as to how to try him. It’s called due process. It works. Let us reinstate our laws in full force and trust them to serve the best interests of the American people. The figures on convictions are deplorable. That we released over 600 out of 776 of the prisoners says that we are holding many people in bondage without a right to a lawyer or a trial. Let us stop acting like a lawless lynch mob country and prove that we really do believe in justice and trust our own laws. Close Guantanamo as you promised. Try those accused of a crime in US Courts and let the chips fall where they may.
Restore Habeas Corpus. You promised to do this when you ran back in 2008. Keep your word. Do it.
Stop with the Bush signing statements already. You said you would end the problematic pieces of
lint back in 2008. You know how these extra comments with a presidential signature confuses things. GAO won’t even fund many laws that have a signing statement attached. Bush needed them because the Decider needed to elaborate with his 92 IQ just how important the president is so he could feel adequate and important. You don’t need that. You are smarter and should start acting it instead of emulating the big dumbass who preceded you. You don’t need to copy Bush’s adding signing statements to duly passed laws in Congress. Let Congress do their job. Move on. Just sign or veto the bill. You got bigger fish to fry.
Patriot Act. See that it is repealed. We believe that you and the American system of government are far more important than having every edge you can imagine to fight terrorists. See, you make it legal to look at our emails and bank accounts when you know there is no need. You are not a paranoid president. Bush was. He needed the Patriot Act to illegally search the private records of over 1.5 million Americans when he was president. He needed it, the illegal edge, and he did not care that it burned the Constitution. You don’t need it. See that it is repealed. We trust you and your expertise to fight terrorism. You proved you can do it when you routed out the whereabouts of in Laden and closed the books on that chapter of terrorism forever. Don’t be recorded in the annals of infamy like George W. Bush as he aspired to the Unitary Executive, short for King of America.
In Part II I will attempt to continue the long list of things you promised to do, the things that got you elected the first time. You owe it to the American people to complete the list to the best of your ability. And for the record that means diluting the Patriot Act, not strengthening it. Better still, deep six it. Poof. It goes against the Bill of Rights in our Constitution at almost every twist and turn of the thousands of words within. We trust you to do it the right way without changing the Constitution or our laws. Show that you trust yourself as much as we do. Count yourself as one of the US presidents who stuck to his oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. You need to restore that honor for yourself. And we Americans need it in order to restore our unalienable rights given to us by the Founding Fathers.