Not to minimize the characterization of Cardinal Sins as they are the most serious of sins that can be committed in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church, but for purposes of this article our Cardinal Sins are the most serious political sins that can be committed by a politician. Since taking office Obama has seen his favorable ratings collapse from 65% to 48% or less in his first year in office since being elected and tenth month of running the nation.
1. Double crossing his political base.
Case in point, the SEIU International Union, one of the two most important sources of money and support for the Obama political campaign. White House records indicated that SEIU leader Andy Stern was in the White House 22 times since Obama took office. These meetings between Stern, Obama and Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, might explain who coordinated the SEIU involvement in trying to control health care town hall meetings or how SEIU will get their payback for sinking $60.7 million into the Obama campaign.
Unfortunately, there was one group Obama clearly owed more to than the SEIU and it was Goldman Sachs, the multi-billion dollar beneficiary of the Obama presidency. So many billions of government dollars went into Goldman that they are able to pay over $22 billion just this year in executive bonuses in spite of doing little in the way of banking. Even SEIU is outraged and Stern started demonstrating outside Goldman Sachs offices bringing to a head the conflict of interest between these two Obama backers and powerful political forces.
Many other groups of Obama supporters have been trampled on as well since the election ranging from the Democratic governors, two Obama states have already been lost, to the auto unions where the auto bailout has only resulted in protecting executives while eliminating workers. People caught in the housing mortgage scandal which was a product of Goldman and other banks have lost their homes while the banks got bailed out. All the Congressional Democrats are at risk for reelection in 2010 thanks to the refusal of the Obama gang to look out for their interests.
For more information on the Obama/Goldman relationship check out the following:
http://coltonspointtimes.blogspot.com/2009_09_01_archive.html
More on Obama/SEIU:
http://coltonspointtimes.blogspot.com/2009/09/obama-caught-between-two-masters.html
2. Assuming he had an overwhelming mandate to push his own agenda.
Those of you who paid attention at the end of the campaign for president realized Obama outspent McCain by over 4-1, the economy was a disaster, Bush had the lowest approval ratings ever recorded, and still Obama only won the vote by 6%. He should have won by a landslide, but just won by 3% more than half of the vote. That means 47% of all American voters voted against him.
Yet the adoring media made the world think Obama won by the greatest landslide in history and Obama believed the media. He surrounded himself with ideologues committed to taking what everyone else had and gave them the power to do it. Was it arrogance? Why did the cap and trade bill Obama proposed guarantee Goldman Sachs and Al Gore untold wealth? He bailed out AIG and $13 billion went straight to Goldman. He bailed out the banks and Goldman took the no interest federal money and started manipulating the unregulated derivatives, swaps, futures and hedge markets, and kept making billions while doing nothing to help the American taxpayer who gave them the money.
First Goldman said they were doing "God's business". Does that mean Obama is God? Who else gave them the keys to the Treasury and a license to steal? Who decided it was time to regulate the financial markets then turned the effort over to his top aide, who was from Goldman? It has now been a year since the economic crash and no regulatory reform has even been proposed.
Obama spent his first days attacking every aspect of the federal government from the war in Afghanistan to Health Care reform, stimulus spending to saying there is no war on terror. He followed the advice of his top aides on the economy with stimulus, bailouts and massive deficit spending. These were the very same aides who worked for Clinton and ten years ago made the legislative and regulatory changes needed to allow the greatest theft in the history of America.
As the Obama poll numbers crashed they could care less. As people demanded that the economy, jobs and credit be our first priority they ignored the masses. They send Obama on hopeless foreign missions that almost seemed designed to fail in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East, Iran and North Korea, while alienating our fragile relations with Japan, China and Russia.
They cranked up the biggest deficit spending in history, added more to the national debt than any president in history, left over 10.2% of Americans without jobs, 2 million Americans are still facing foreclosure after all the billions spent to save the housing market, and the list goes on and on.
The Chicago and Goldman gang ruling the White House and programming the president live for special interests, defend the special interests over the public interest, continue unabated everything that got us into this mess in the first place, and have no regard for the American public. In their opinion, they act as if it is their time to control the White House, not Obama's, and they intend to leave a permanent legacy even if it destroys the country in the process. Arrogance at this level has never been seen in our history.
3. Using political expediency to ignore his own campaign promises.
During the campaign Obama made a lot of promises to a lot of people in the context of his promise to do things different in Washington, change the way politicians did business, be open and honest about government business, eliminate lobbyists and special interests from dictating legislation, and a bunch of other great sounding things.
To the liberals and socialists he promised the redistribution of wealth and to punish the Wall Street executives who brought about the near destruction of America. He promised to close Guantanamo prison, make peace with our enemies, get better deals from our allies, and who knows what else. Once elected a few bones were thrown to his people but they were soon forgotten in the avalanche of special interest money that the Obama gang and Congress starting collecting from special interests no sooner than they had been elected.
The campaign promises disappeared in a sea of cash that flowed into Washington when the rest of America was going broke, losing their jobs, losing their pensions and losing all faith in our government. The net result is the Chicago and Goldman gang in the White House has preserved the Wall Street Special Interest Control of our nation's capitol.
4. Surrounding himself with the Chicago gang, Goldman Sachs alumni and old time political hacks.
Much has already been written about the gang of old pros surrounding the president and dictating his every move. Every day their handiwork becomes more obvious whether it is Israel ignoring the president's warnings on settlements (Emmanuel), Wall Street continuing to get away with pillaging the US Treasury (Emmanuel, Geithner and Summers) or the host of other former Goldman and Clinton people surrounding our president who promised to drive out the demons.
For more information about the palace guard and the amazing control they maintain over the president check out the following articles from the Coltons Point Times.
http://coltonspointtimes.blogspot.com/2009/11/presidents-palace-guard-nixon-had.html
http://coltonspointtimes.blogspot.com/2009/10/bet-on-obama-turns-to-gold-for-goldman.html
http://coltonspointtimes.blogspot.com/2009/10/will-new-jersey-be-fooled-again-goldman.html
5. Failing to achieve any foreign policy breakthroughs.
Obama said he had the experience to turn around our foreign policy debacles starting with the day he took office. Yet another promise lost to political expediency. The rest of the world refused to be dictated to on how to fix the economies. We dropped the missile defense shield for Poland on the day of the anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland.
Russia and China refuse to be parties to punishing nuclear renegade Iran. No one is helping out with North Korea. The International Olympic Committee tossed out the Chicago bid sought by Obama. Europe waits to see what will happen in Afghanistan. We are still in Iraq at full strength, still fighting in Afghanistan with a request for 40,000 more troops on the table.
Israel builds more settlements in spite of Obama's harsh warning not to. The Palestinians are not even attending peace meetings. Gore's global warming initiative has been rejected by the major powers of the world. The G8, G20 and every other world economic group has turned on the US as the cause of the world economic collapse, and impatiently waits for us to do something, anything, to fix it.
6. Protecting the rich while ignoring Main Street.
Thanks to Obama we have provided directly and through the Federal Reserve about $24 trillion to six major banks to cover their losses in the derivative, swaps, futures, commodities, hedge fund and other unregulated speculative ventures.
The same banks now are setting records in profits. The same banks are scheduled to give their executives $162 billion in bonuses this year. The same banks are not providing credit to businesses and consumers and not repaying any of the excess and speculative profits they made while destroying the savings, pensions and jobs of those they are licensed to help.
7. Allowing his ego to get in the way on precarious rights issues.
Obama and Eric Holden, his attorney general, both said they were holding criminal trials of five terrorists including the leader of the World Trade Center bombing in New York. They also promised they were doing this to show the world how they can try and then carry out the execution of these criminals under our civilian legal system. Now that would make Obama and Holden the prosecutor, judge and jury for these terrorists who, thanks to Obama, now have to be considered innocent until proven guilty. The action by our leaders may very well result in damaging the government case to convict these guys.
When he criticized the cop who arrested one of his friends without hearing any of the circumstances he also jumped the gun. Furthermore, his spending of well over $18 million to create a White House web site then refusal to release any contract details on why it cost so much when other government offices offered to do it for about $600,000 seems like a slap in the face of people who want openness, transparency and higher ethics in government.
So, where do we go from here? Mistakes are normal in the first year of a new Administration. Sometimes the people hired are too caught up in their own agenda to realize they serve all the people. When that happens the new leader must take action to fix the problems. These Cardinal Sins are mostly the result of poor policy, poor reading of the public, and arrogance on the part of the president's staff. He can fix those problems and still have a successful reign as president.
Transition administrations, those that take over from an opposing force like Obama replacing Bush take one year to learn the system and a second year to get the right people in place to do their work. The last two years they try and implement the policies that make sense. Obama has plenty of time to correct the problems. It will take leadership, patience, firm action to replace the people not serving the public interest, and a bit of humility. When he finally takes up the fight for the people rather than the special interests he can gain that support like Reagan did.
Most people like Obama and believe that when he starts listening to the right people he will get it right. He should start by listening to himself, his campaign promises, and the hope he instilled in people to give him a chance in the first place. People did not give up on the promise, the Obama gang did. Straighten out the gang and the people can be served. That is the difference between a politician and a leader, between a shooting star and a reliable sun. People want to see the sun rise every day. They want something they can count on. They want to be heard.
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