How Badly Are Things Going For Obama?

By Tom Kando

I just returned from vacation. Although I did keep up with the news, I refrained from commenting on it. This was healthy, but frustrating. Now, it’s time for me to get back into politics. There is so much bad news. Where do I even begin?

A warning to conservative readers: I am as pro-Obama as ever. Let me just touch upon a few random recent events:

1. June 7: Another mass shooting, this one in Santa Monica: More blood on the hands of the NRA and all those opposed to stricter gun control. Meanwhile, the president’s gun control legislation is going nowhere.

By the way: the murderer was shot dead, as often happens in such cases. But here is my stance on this, as well as on capital punishment: Death - whether it’s suicide-by-cop or the gas chamber later on - is way too soft a punishment. To be sure, whenever the safety of law enforcement and of the public dictates killing the mass murderer, there is no choice. However, it would be better to keep these animals alive. They should be forced to suffer, deprived of freedom, living in a stinking cell for the rest of their days, constantly aware of and confronted by their monstrous actions. That would be true punishment.


2. June 6: The California High-Speed Authority approves the first $1 billion appropriation to start building the bullet train: America is joining the ranks of other modern countries and moving into the 21st century. Once they experience the benefits of high-speed rail, Californians will not regret doing this. But for now, the president’s calls for New Deal-type infrastructure projects are mere whistling in the wind.

3. Much of the country is gearing up for Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act - ACA). The naysayers are in the majority - and they are wrong. Already, California shows that most insurance companies are on board and that premiums will not rise dramatically. The 26 reactionary states ( mostly in the South, the Midwest and the Rocky Mountains) that refuse to establish health exchanges do this purely out of spite: 100% of their cost would be born by the federal government for the first three years, and 90% after that. If they could, these mostly Republican states would deny Medicaid to millions of poor people. So in those states, the federal government will have to take over health insurance. That’s fine with me. After the dust settles, in a couple of decades, Obamacare will join Social Security, Medicare and progressive taxation as one of the pillars of a civilized society. It will be part and parcel of the American way of life, providing a safety net for the entire population, as universal health insurance does in all other modern countries. The naysayers will either be dead, or they will have to admit that they were as wrong as the luddites and the flat earth believers.

4. The avalanche of Obama administration pseudo-scandals: Benghazi: As I have been writing for many months, (see my October 20, 2012 post,http://european-americanblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-benghazi-pseudo-issue.html) there IS NO scandal here. There was confusion, disagreement among the State Department and the CIA as to what exactly happened, that’s all. The bottom line is that American diplomats were killed by radical Muslims. It turns out that it was an organized terrorist cell rather than a spontaneous anti-American riot. Big deal. No one lied, certainly not Hillary Clinton, the White House, or Susan Rice (the Republicans’ fall guy). Shit happens. Congress didn’t “investigate” an alleged scandal when 241 Americans were killed in Beirut during President Reagan’s presidency. Scandal schmandal.

5. Spying on Associated Press journalists and the “PRISM” scandal (the NSA acquiring telephone and Internet data on us): Whatever the merits of these accusations are, Republican criticism is pure partisan posturing. Only when Obama engages in “Big Brotherism” do they become holier-than-thou protectors of the Bill of Rights. In fact, they favor the surveillance state more than anybody. They happily trample on the First Amendment in order to combat perceived threats ranging from terrorism to unconventional lifestyles. Conservatives favor torture at Guantanamo, the indiscriminate use of drones, censorship, denial of habeas corpus, and the criminalization of various lifestyle choices. This is a case of the pot calling the kettle.

It IS true, however, that our society’s drift towards “Big Brotherism” and a surveillance-type society is worrisome.

6. The IRS scandal: The IRS discriminated against the political Right by raising the bar higher for conservative groups such as the Tea Party when it comes to granting them tax exempt status: This is probably the most damaging accusation of all. It therefore requires a separate post, coming up tomorrow.

All in all, the public’s confidence in Obama and the credibility of his administration are taking severe hits. This is bad. It’s bad not in the ways in which Republicans are enjoying it, as they salivate at the prospect of regaining power during the next elections. It is bad for the country in ways which I will explain in my next post. leave comment here