Which Way America?
Mitt’s looking backward…..Barack’s eyes are fixed on the future
A GOP Victory Would be a Giant Step Backward
This week the Grand Obstructionist Party will hold their quadrennial convention in Tampa Florida, a glittering city on the Gulf of Mexico. Symbolically it is a fitting venue, because the ostentatious affluence of its downtown area where the conventioneers will frolic masks the rotten underbelly of dark ghettoes and red neck trailer parks that litter the landscape of Florida.
It also camouflages a backward state government that passes laws like “Stand Your Ground,” which has created a Dodge City like atmosphere where self-styled vigilantes gun down innocent children and are allowed to walk away without detention. And if you listen to the governor of the state – a political Neanderthal who adheres to a free market theology which is about as factually based as astrology – all that government need do to solve the unemployment crisis is scrap regulations on business and cut taxes to the rich. This is also the economic program of the national Republican party that wrecked the economy under Bush. Hence Florida is the perfect place for a convention of ignorant gun loving yahoos and heartless plutocrats.
We can rest assured that all the major themes of the convention will be based on lies and the promotion of mass ignorance, because this is the basic strategy of the Romney Campaign. Of the three main themes of the Romney /Ryan campaign ads, upon which their talking points are based, all are transparent lies. Which raises a fundamental question: If President Obama’s record is as bad as they say it is why don’t they just attack his record?
The answer is simple: Barack Obama has a sterling record of accomplishment. Some are obvious to any fairly intelligent observer who has not been hiding in a cave fleeing the Bush horrors the last four years. Among these are: saving the world financial system from collapse and preventing another “Great Depression,” rescuing the auto industry, providing millions of Americans with affordable healthcare, signing the Lillie Ledbetter equal pay law making it a crime to pay women less than men for comparable work, authorizing the daring raid that killed Osama bin Laden, instituting a new regulatory regime for Wall Street, etc. But there are many other outstanding accomplishments of which the public is largely unaware.
Hence they are confused by the hysterical prattle emanating from the twin towers of babble anchored on the right and left of the American political spectrum proclaiming the Obama administration a failure. Fortunately, the earnest seeker of wisdom and truth does not have to rely on the ideologues and mindless fanatics for a final assessment of the Obama presidency.
There are two serious books that annihilate the preachment of misinformed ideologues: “The New New Deal” and “It’s worse than it Looks.” The first book was written by the award winning Time Magazine reporter Michael Grunwald. It is a richly detailed account of the brilliant way President Obama’s 800 billion dollar stimulus was invested to create the basis for a new American economy based on technological innovations like a green manufacturing sector, which can sustain the working class by providing a living wage, and restore vertical mobility into a revitalized middle class.
After tracking where the money went like an intrepid financial detective Grunwald concludes:
“The stimulus has launched a transition to a clean-energy economy, doubled our renewable power, and financed unprecedented investments in energy efficiency, a smarter grid, electric cars, advanced biofuels, and green manufacturing. It is computerizing America’s pen-and-paper medical system. Its Race to the Top is the boldest education reform in U.S. history. It has put in place the biggest middle-class tax cuts in a generation, the largest research investments ever, and the most extensive infrastructure investments since Eisenhower’s interstate highway system. It includes the largest expansion of antipoverty programs since the Great Society, lifting millions of Americans above the poverty line, reducing homelessness, and modernizing unemployment insurance. Like the first New Deal, Obama’s stimulus has created legacies that last: the world’s largest wind and solar projects, a new battery industry, a fledgling high-speed rail network, and the world’s highest-speed Internet network. “
The second book is written by Norman Orenstein, the reigning authority on the US Congress, and it details why the Congress has become immobilized by gridlock and is making it impossible for the President to implement many of his ideas. Some of which Dr. Paul Krugman – a Princeton Professor and Nobel Laureate in Economics – says are tried and true methods from the Great Depression of the 1930’s, which is the only example of economic collapse in American history of the magnitude of the Bush crash.
Dr. Orenstein contemptuously dismisses the argument that both parties are equally guilty and places the blame squarely on rightwing zealots in the Republican Party. He contemptuously denounces the press for not making this distinction clear when discussing Congressional gridlock – calling them unindicted co-conspirators with the Republicans in confusing people.
Orenstein’s assessment is given added credibility by the fact that he is a resident scholar at the conservative, pro-Republican, American Enterprise Institute. Arm with these seminal text it will be easy to demolish the hail of lies coming from the Obama bashers on the left and right, and convincingly demonstrate that a vote for the Grand Obstructionist Party will be a giant step backward!