Obama Orders Full-scale Rightward Retreat

President Obama is in full scale retreat to the right now. He’d ordered the freeze of all discretionary federal spending which some say is an accounting trick because this spending only accounts for one sixth of all federal spending. But throwing the Republicans a bone is useless and you think Obama would have learned this. Now they are making remarks like, “It’s like someone going on a diet after just winning a pie eating contest”. Dr. Levy is so upset about the prospect of the Bush tax cuts ending next year. But like Joe the Plumber he’s worried about nothing. Because he is “hoping to be soon in the $250,000 bracket. But even if Dr. Levy earned $375,000 - - two thirds of all that money would be taxed at the old rate. We’re talking about one third of six percent, or two percent of your income. If I earned 35 times what I’m getting now, I wouldn’t be sweating the two percent. Dr. Levy says “I’m just worried that those higher taxes will cut into my giving to charities”. Well, I guess that’s a problem for the rich. But I think the rich, who are the most blessed by this country - -ought to be instrumental in cutting this looming federal deficit we have now. They say that if we just taxed FICA on the full income amount instead of just the first one hundred thousand, that Social Security imbalance would be a thing of the past. That’s what Tim said a few years back, and I believe he knew what he was talking about. You’re never going to make the right wing happy. When I hear someone get up and attack Governor Swartzenegger for being too liberal by raising taxes, I say, “That’s too right wing for my blood”. The Governor just one year in 2006 gave what I’d call a forward-looking progressive speech. And by 2007 the negativity was back. Now they are saying there will be no further stimulus to get out of this recession because we can’t afford it. So Obama has contracted “Less is more” disease, we used to hear so much about. It’s time to dust off those “The Era of Big Government” posters. Now they are saying that unemployment will not only not decline this coming month (pardon the double negative) but unemployment is expected to remain at or above ten percent for this entire year. That’s a little much to take if you are one of the many who is out of a job. Thom Hartman says that Roosevelt had the CCC people out planting trees, two weeks into his administration. In Dr. Levy’s class they were talking of dissecting the Obama speech sentence by sentence. If they do that, I will be there to stick up for Reality. John Kennedy and Harry Truman were great leaders- - first of all because they led. They “grew” in office. They looked at the way things could be and said “Why not”. We need to educate the American people, who at this point are so messed up they don’t know what they want and will vote for anyone who uses the C word, meaning “change”. Sometimes you in truth do have to “stay the course”. The stimulus measures we have done are working despite the howls of protests from the right. The problem is that we need more of that to really get the job done. “Watching the grass grow” can be boring if you obsess on it, but in the course of time you’ll see it..

People forget what a bad President George Bush actually was. We have forgotten that there were so many “off budget” items in the Bush economy. So naturally when you return to honist accounting things are going to look bad for a while. Just when a private householder is getting out from under debt things will look bad for a while, as he now comes to grips with all the “trifles” he didn’t really think “counted” as expenditures. Dr. Levy changed my remark when I talked about “jobs going overseas”. He said that it’s all because we have higher taxes here. Well, we have higher wages, too. But nobody is proposing we return to paying workers a dollar fifty a day for their labors. The fact is we can flat out make certain economic activities illegal if we want to. The President, for that matter, can do a lot of things by executive order, like the whole “Don’t ask; don’t tell” thing but the president is choosing not to do it. People say “The problem with Obama is that he’s still behaving like a senator rather than a President, who exists in a leadership capacity”. Randy Rhodes says she talked to President Obama before orientation and after orientation, and was amazed by the difference. It’s like that drug they inject you with in the movie “Harvey” or something. It transforms your personality into another man. But I am also getting tired of this notion of “The left has to put up with whatever the president shovels out because we don’t want repeats of other disasters like 1968, 1972, or 1980 when the Republicans were victorious because the democrats were divided. I have a saying too, and that is “Don’t fight the present war with battle plans best suited to a previous war”. This is not your father’s political landscape. The Republicans are so far to the right they are off the radar screen, and can easily be attacked and unmasked, if someone just has the guts to do it. You know what they say. Victory is five percent inspiration and 95% perspiration. Another adage of mine is that “If you see a problem and do nothing to remedy it, aren’t you in truth giving the problem License to exist?” If there are sins of inaction, then in truth- - are you not Sinning- - in a Biblical sense? A lot of people say they are spiritual, but the bigger question is, "Are they righteous".