I honestly did not get to see the State of the Union address that President Obama gave last night. I just happen to be one of those displaced workers that is over the age of 40 with no insurance and one that has gone back to school to try to adapt to the world that has obviously changed. I missed the address because I was studying for a test. At any rate, I have to say that I think that the current administration really does not bear responsibility for my lack of a job or the state our current economy is in. It was due to a compounding of many issues, and I realise that. I count myself as fortunate because I do know what my options are and I am going to make the best of what I can with what I have.
I worked for Dow Jones for the last four years and I can say that if people had any idea how incredibly close we came to losing it all, as in it being a far worse economic situation than they realise, I don’t think that there would be nearly as much bitching going on as I have been hearing in every quarter. Given what has happened in the financial sector, and the outright rape and pillage that has been going on here and abroad for at least the last ten to fifteen years on Wall Street and via corporations and the super rich, blaming Obama is like blaming your doctor for you having gotten sick in the first place when you ate the junk food, smoked the cigarettes, and indulged in all the other bad behaviours. Come on! How realistic is that?
It’s far from realistic to expect one man to fix a situation that took more than a decade to create in his first year in office. He’s inherited two wars, a recession, record unemployment due to outsourcing, a real estate bubble that burst big time, trillions of dollars in deficit from Dubya and Dick Cheney. Not to mention how much the U.S. lost its face in the world at large under Bush. And yet, so many of the mis-informed or under-informed people in the U.S. just expect Obama to wave his hand and make all that disappear in the first year. I would like to see someone, ANYONE ELSE in the world go up against those sorts of challenges and do it in a fashion that has everyone having warm fuzzies.
I did vote for Obama this last time, and he was not my first choice. But given the choice between he and the other alternative, I voted for him and am happy that I did. I will most probably vote for him again – especially if Hillary continues with his Cabinet as Secretary of State.
I think people really need to get more informed outside of their own sphere what is going on and really try to understand WHY we are in the current state that we are as a Nation. In this era of constant instant communications and where everything is “on demand” people need to get realistic about what government can and cannot do, how fast it can happen and how much they should be involved and give a damn about the process outside of their own little self-created and self-contained little worlds.
Life Belongs to Sekhmet 
I totally agree with everything you’ve said. I voted for him and I’d vote for him again. He didn’t get us in this mess…and yet he’s taking the blame for it, which is a shame.
Initially, I was hoping for a Richardson /Obama ticket. Of course, we know how that played out. I just fail to see how Obama could do any better than what he’s done given all of the challenges that we faced. Henry Paulson’s book, “On the Brink” is due out in a few days and I have to say, I wish that more people would read it. We were so close to a global financial meltdown that would have rendered our society severely crippled in every way if things had not been handled as they were. All the derivatives and the securites that were backed by bad debt, it was like buildng a house of cards in an earthquake with no table!
Excellent response. Mind if I link this?
Umm…Sure! I don’t know that my insights are more clued in than anyone else’s. I just know what I’ve witnessed and it is sort of sad to see people just not trying to understand what has been going on for far longer than most of them can remember, apparently.
It really does seem like people were expecting him to just poof make all the problems go away.
Oh, I know. I have no idea why people would think that – especially after the last eight years of an apathetic Administration under Bush and his Criminal Band. Has anything ever instantly got better overnight at any time in their lives? No. Then why would they think it would be any different now?
Because…because…the media tells us it should!!
You know, the media is most of the problem! But they get their marching orders a great deal of the time from the powers that be. Manipulate the data, it sells stocks or keeps people from selling them too soon, etc.
The media sells crisis and solution. If you can convince Joe or Mary Bloggsthat the sky is indeed falling, and yet, just to buy that one more thing they can avert a crisis, then that’s how it tends to go. And no one is better at that than Uncle Rupie….erm Rupert Murdoch! 😉
One of the articles last year, and I think I wrote about it on my journal; was the headline, “If You Aren’t Out Spending Money, You’re a Part of the Problem!” 😉
I remember that article. 🙂
I’m not even sure they’re attempting to sell a solution, just the crisis. Or rather that ‘solution’ just turns out to be ‘who can we blame?’ And that always turns out to be the Dems or Republican depending on what channel you’re watching. Never ourselves. The heart of it is, we don’t have enough money to fund everything so that means one of two things, cuts or taxes…which Mr and Mrs Bloggs don’t want to hear. They want all these services for nothing.
I just retweeted a link to an interesting article on the state of journalism in Britain…why manipulate data when you can just make it up?
I agree totally. Too few people seem to grasp that this situation with the economy, the war, and health care (especially health care!) took years to get as bad as it has, and that one year is no where near long enough to fix all the problems, let alone see results from them. A four year term isn’t long enough. The trouble is too many who voted for Obama saw him as this saviour and would wave a magic wand and have everything perfect in a matter of days of being sworn in. When in fact there is little a president can do when Congress is the body that has to enact all these policies, and they can’t/won’t do a damned thing.
It is about people getting informed, and one would think with all the access to the facts that there is today, they would…but no, they just swallow whatever the media feeds them (and yes, the left is as bad as the right and vice versa) in convenient sound bites that don’t tell you anything.
Yes, I did vote for Obama, like you he wasn’t my first choice…I would have preferred Hillary…but there was no way I was going to vote for the other side given the antics of Bush/Cheney and the Republicans foisting Palin on McCain (I was still willing to listen to him, until she became his running mate).
I agree completely.
and as a semi OT comment, it’s nice to know I’m not the only older displaced worker here. (well displaced homemaker anyways, approaching 35 in August :/)
We live in an era where people want instant gratification is why. Also The President has Congress and the Senate to contend with, so getting things done isn’t easy with a so many people having different opinions as to how things should be done. I like Obama just fine, the Speaker, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats really burn my biscuits with their election promise of “Elect us and we will put an end to the war”.
Still waiting.
Now it’s “I promise there will be a healthcare plan”. You mean one that is affordable to people of all incomes and not just the super-rich (who don’t need it) and the middle class who have way more money than I?
>.can say that if people had any idea how incredibly close we came to losing it all, as in it being a far worse economic situation than they realise…
P.S. This is why I hate the term “Obama’s trillion dollar deficit”. Um, no, nearly half of that deficit was run up during the Bush era, with Bush and Congress willing accomplices.
Oh, absolutely! As I mentioned to another responder to this post, I think the American People are going to look at the Bush Administration and hang its head in shame at how much they were duped – or that we thought he was even elected either time.
I agree that way too many people have very unrealistic expectations of what Obama’s team can do, and how fast.
But…Devil’s Advocate, here…he, himself, is partly to blame for this. Frankly, he did not have nearly enough experience or gravity to warrant election to the Presidency. He rode the rock star bus to the job, only to find out that the job was a lot harder than it looks. It’s one thing to get elected, it’s another thing to be a President, and frankly, I don’t think he’s either qualified or capable.
And, as much as I dislike Bush and his band of idiots, he didn’t get us into this mess, either. This goes way farther back. Bush Senior, Clinton and Dubya all promoted this attitude of open financials, everyone can own a home, unregulated student loan industry, every kid can go to college bullcrap. They all contributed to the massive problem that we have here.
Further, IMHO, the American PEOPLE are also to blame. We want it all, we want it now, CHARGE IT! People went out and sent their sub-level scholastic kids to college for Liberal Arts degrees, because they were told that every child should have a college degree. They bought houses they knew they couldn’t afford, cars they couldn’t afford and crap they couldn’t afford, all with dicey credit. Big business exploits cheap labor from illegals, while taxpayers support their WIC, state paid medical, education, welfare, housing and school lunches. Labor unions want more outrageous pensions that cannot support themselves, unlimited benefits and wage increases, but no accountability. Politicians appoint cronies to cushy jobs, while cutting the pay of the front line people who actually WORK.
In the meantime, our kids are obese, lazy, disrespectful and illiterate, and our elderly are dumped in nursing homes I wouldn’t put a dog in. Why? Because Mom and Dad are too busy putting in 60-80 hour workweeks so they can buy the new iPad or doo dad that’s hot, and don’t have time to parent the brats they brought into the world, or help the parents who brought them into the world. And, at the same time, we’re so paranoid about being “politically correct” that we can’t dare to tell the woman with six kids by five different daddies that maybe, just maybe, she needs to use some birth control if she wants the taxpayers to support her litter.
No, Obama can’t fix it alone, and he didn’t get us into this mess alone. But he is not the man who is going to get us out. He’s going to be a one term Carter president.
And the band played on…
I must apologise. I had a completely wonderful response for you yesterday and my browser ate my response and then after that, Emperor Trajan and Pliny the Younger ate my brain! So let me see if I can get the general gist of what I wanted to say to you. Providing Pliny and Trajan are now finished with my brain for the moment! 😉
Far be it from me to even have a remote notion that President Obama is perfect. He isn’t. I do believe, however, there were plenty of extremly liberal Democrats who thought he and the Democratic majority in Congress they would ride in, round up the posse and get those very liberal policies passed. What they failed to see is that Obama is a centrist, has always been a centrist and he does compromise really well. That may or may not end up being a good thing – in fact I think a good number of people see that sort of compromise as some sort of a weakness. It definitely can be if be if you abandon your principles. In Mass Media class, it even says in our textbook that Obama knows how to tell a story. Certainly his first book was much more angry with far more Afrocentrist type of notions with some language that made you know, growing up a black boy born of a white mother definitely had its challenges.
I couldnt agree more about the current welfare state in this country and the absolutely abyssmal state of the notions of sex exucation and available birth control. My attitude all along is the issue in the US is not whether one is for or against abortion. To me it is a non-issue. The issue is safe, available and EFFECTIVE birth control along with EDUCATION. I am sick to death of Right Wing, Holier-Than-Thou parents who say they should be in charge of their children’s sexual education and then they don’t do anything about it and fight everyone else’s kids in school getting that education.
As for Immigration. The system in this country is broken. Period. I worked for a man from the UK and his wife for nearly five years. He did absolutely everything he had to do according to US and UK laws, and went through the system.. Why is it, with the “special relationship” between the US and the UK that it would take he and his wife over ten years to immigrate to this country? Is there any reason why someone from India, or Zimbabwe, or Poland would be able to get it done faster. Hell, all of my boss’ three children went to college and all married American spouses – therefore getting their citizenship before their parents. WHY is that?! I don’t get it. I don’t understand why those who cheat don’t get caught or if they do it’s no big thang – and those that play the game basically get miles and miles of red tape and bureaucratic bullshit. I would hope that Jaye did not have to contend with such nonsense being a military wife to a US Serviceman. God I HOPE the Department of Defense is a bit more on the ball than the Migra! 😉
No, Obama cannot get us out of this. I don’t even think if we had bipartisan cooperation all across the board we can get things done in a way that would satisfy everyone.
I agree completely.
Obama was my first choice and given his performance to date, I’d happily vote for him again.
OTOH, I’m thoroughly disgusted with Congress. Too many citizens don’t understand the role that Congress plays in national/international politics. People tend to think that the President is the be all/end all of government. Ever since Reagan started in with the ‘imperial presidency’ routine – which the Cheney/Bush government took to the extreme – it’s no wonder that so many people now expect the President to single-handedly make policy and fix problems.
Bush was a spectacular liar and he appealed to the absolute worst qualities in Americans. Obama, bless him, is trying to appeal to the best in Americans and I think he genuinely is trying to restore a measure of civility and cooperation to politics. Good luck to him.
Congress needs to understand that the People need healthcare and a government who cares about them. I honestly believe that we can all have affordable healthcare – but not being run by the very robber barrons who run the current for profit models. That is like asking the wolf to guard the flock of sheep.
I have always believed that Dubya was not elected either time. And that Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, all those guys with so much money being made while they were in power really need to be more closely scrutinised. I am an Amazon Vine reviewer and the latest thing I requested is a copy of the book “The People V. Bush: One Lawyer’s Campaign to Bring the President to Justice and the National Grassroots Movement She Encounters Along the Way” by Charlotte Dennett & Vincent Bugliosi. Apparently Dennett has tried to bring Bush Jr. to trial for murder. I will be very interested to read it and how it plays out. I think we will definitely look at that Administration and hang our heads in shame for a great many things that were simply either ignored or put past the American people.
Bush clearly wasn’t elected the first time. He was appointed by the Supreme Court. There was enough voter fraud in Ohio and possibly other states (I’m looking at you, Florida) to have swung that election, too.
I think that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and some others should be prosecuted on war crimes charges. They plunged the world into war with obviously faked ‘evidence’ and continued to lie and lie and lie about it. The consequences of this are tragic and long-lasting. We had a chance to go into Afghanistan and stop Al Qaeda back in 2001 with the support of the whole world, including the Islamic world. Instead, Bush and Cheney chose to invade Iraq thinking that they’d reap quick, vast oil profits while at the same time they attacked civil liberties inside the US. Horrifying. I felt like I was living in an Orwellian parody of the US for the last decade.
Of course it’s all blown up now and Obama is left to clean up the mess. Which he will,I have no doubt, because there really isn’t any alternative. I’m convinced that the Western world was on the brink of complete economic ruin that would have plunged the world into a depression unlike anything anyone has ever seen before. I don’t think that we’re out of danger even now. But the scariest thing is that all of the people who engineered and profited from this horrible mess, they’re all still out there biding their time. They were successful in outright stealing one, possibly two US elections. They were successful in scheming up wars for profit, and they were successful at eroding US civil liberty. These people aren’t patriots, though they like to beat the drum of jingoistic, conservative ‘patriotism’ because they know how easy it is to manipulate huge swathes of the population with that sort of talk. Their allegience is to $$$, nothing more. Given the chance, they’ll do it all again.