Obamaville - June 14, 2013 - Midterm Check Up

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 Obamaville - June 14, 2013 - The Midterm Check Up

 

Halfway through the first year of his second term as President of these United States, just what have we realized of the Obama Dream we were given when he first ran to be chief executive, commander in chief, the husband of the First Lady or maybe biggest spender in our history?

 

Is writing this story a journalist's "dream" ticket to a Pulitzer, or a "nightmare" demotion to writing those dreaded obituaries?

 

My a lot can happen by the 5th year of a presidency --- or not.

 

First you have to get elected, and then elected again.  It means the people might have been fooled once, but they presumably knew what they were doing when they re-elected you.  Now what happens really is the fault of the people who voted for Obama.

 

Ages ago a newly elected Barack Obama promised a lot and did some pretty serious Bushwhacking in the process.  In his first year as the first minority to ever be elected president he promised to deliver things like comprehensive Immigration Reform and closing Guantanamo Prison in Cuba.

 

 

Of course the Iraq and Afghanistan wars would be ended immediately with a high degree of success.  The dastardly Bush recession would be fixed and everyone will keep their homes and get back their lost jobs.  In the meantime he would give everyone in our country health insurance and lower the cost of healthcare.

 

There might have been some mention of a new concept of redistribution of wealth from the "elite" class to the middle class, which in Obamaese means anyone making less than a million or two million dollars a year.  Truth is very difficult to find in the fog in our nation's capitol.

 

Now where I come from about a hundred miles from where Mark Twain grew up, if someone told me the middle class was everyone except the rich, powerful and very few "elite", I might scratch my head in wonder.

 

 

So if the middle class is everyone else, how many "elite's" are there?  Of course the wealthy "elites" have mastered hiding their money from detection by IRS or any other criminal or social tax deductible organization.  The truth is no one really knows this answer, including the All Omnipotent NSA since they REALLY are watching you all the time.

 

So it is a guess by anyone that 1-5% of Americans belong to the so called "elite".  Yet these people control all the wealth of America and much of the world according to those who know and speak the truth.

 

 

 

Now, back to my most recent line of thought, if no more than 5% are "elite" and we are going to redistribute their wealth so we all get what we deserve, then everyone becomes a card carrying member of the "elite".

 

Guess we might need all those illegal immigrants since none of the "elite" work like the middle class has been doing ever since we first drove out the British.  That's one way to drive down the unemployment rate, just eliminate the middle class.  Won't be any jobless if everyone is home managing their money instead of making it.

 

One other big Obama promise was to throw those crooks on Wall Street or Main Street, where ever they might be carrying out their predatory practices, in jail.

 

Then reality set in.  Suddenly, when he was elected president, he was expected to do what he said he would do.  Like nothing counted when he was just a presidential candidate.  Only if you were the final one elected would your promises have to be honest, truthful and delivered.

 

No first year Immigration reform or prison closings.  Five years later they are both just as he found them when he became responsible for all Americans as president.

 

 

 

As for ending the two wars being fought to end the bigger war on terror, our president's words of peace and cooperation for all Earthlings got him the coveted Nobel Peace prize a couple of weeks later as the one person in the world who did more than everyone else to bring about peace.

 

Clearly words speak louder than actions for a few weeks later he ordered tens of thousands of more American troops and billions of dollars in military expenditures in Afghanistan.  What a difference a few weeks can make.

 

Eventually, long after he had promised, we are pretty much out of Iraq.  Now that the war on terror between the US and Al-Qaeda is over the people of Iraq can finish their Civil Separatist war which is far more brutal and deadly than our Geneva Convention based efforts.

 

One thing the Obama administration did learn from all the war efforts is the value of drones, those unmanned airplanes that can successfully kill terrorists without risking the lives of American soldiers.  Any deaths of innocent civilians including children are just collateral damage to the mission.

 

Afghanistan, after billions in bribes, is just now winding down.  Both wars cost far too many lives of the brave American soldiers, men and women, sent to the war zones.

 

 

Fixing Bush's financial recession has been a little bit more complicated than Obama might have suspected since it seemed to take several years to find everything that could be blamed on Bush.

 

In Detroit he saved the world auto industry by transforming General Motors Corporation into the Government Motors Corporation.  His AIG bailout gave billions of dollars to those barons of Wall Street like Goldman Sachs.

 

Millions of Americans lost their jobs and millions of Americans lost their homes since Obama was elected.  The economy is declared to be stable and safe.

 

But people have not found new jobs or replaced foreclosed homes.  And those who have suffered most are the very middle class he promised to save.

 

Seniors saw their retirement savings vanish away.  Minorities by the millions lost their jobs and homes.  So did the Caucasians.  Ironically, many were the very special interest groups who overwhelmingly elected Obama to office.  I guess you can't bite the hand that feeds you when you are the one doing the feeding.

 

No major crooks have been sent to jail.

 

 

As for health care and costs, after a brutal couple of  years Obama Care did get approved but all the tough promises to keep were delayed until after the re-election campaign.  Now we are beginning to see that much of it is impossible to implement.

 

Neither health insurance or medical treatment costs have gone down but continue their upward trajectory.  Americans spend more being sicker than nearly all other developed countries.  We also spend far more on legal drugs than anyone else meaning we are either much sicker or love being legally "stoned".

 

 

Obama might have another first to his credit, not having a budget approved the entire time he has been president.

 

On the other hand, he has had a few trouble spots he did not expect.  The Benghazi attack in Libya left four Americans including the Ambassador dead.

 

The IRS (Internal Revenue Service) targeted Tea Party conservatives for harassment while the NSA (National Security Agency) targeted just plain people for about everything with their cell phone and internet tapping and hacking initiatives.

 

 

The Office of the Chief Executive and Commander in chief (the White House) of course knew nothing of such actions by their own agencies and people.

 

Then there is the Mexican drug war and Syrian civil war in which the big news is we have done nothing in either case.  As a result of our inaction or intellectual constipation 93,000 people have died in Syria and between 60,000 and 90,000 have died in Mexico.

 

Need we say more about the state of affairs of the nation?  To be perfectly honest there are a lot more good, inspiring or entertaining stories we need to cover.

.

Obamaville - June 14, 2013

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 Obamaville - June 14, 2013 - The Midterm Check Up

 

Halfway through the first year of his second term as President of these United States, just what have we realized of the Obama Dream we were given when he first ran to be chief executive, commander in chief, the husband of the First Lady or maybe biggest spender in our history?

 

Is writing this story a journalist's "dream" ticket to a Pulitzer, or a "nightmare" demotion to writing those dreaded obituaries?

 

My a lot can happen by the 5th year of a presidency --- or not.

 

First you have to get elected, and then elected again.  It means the people might have been fooled once, but they presumably knew what they were doing when they re-elected you.  Now what happens really is the fault of the people who voted for Obama.

 

Ages ago a newly elected Barack Obama promised a lot and did some pretty serious Bushwhacking in the process.  In his first year as the first minority to ever be elected president he promised to deliver things like comprehensive Immigration Reform and closing Guantanamo Prison in Cuba.

 

 

Of course the Iraq and Afghanistan wars would be ended immediately with a high degree of success.  The dastardly Bush recession would be fixed and everyone will keep their homes and get back their lost jobs.  In the meantime he would give everyone in our country health insurance and lower the cost of healthcare.

 

There might have been some mention of a new concept of redistribution of wealth from the "elite" class to the middle class, which in Obamaese means anyone making less than a million or two million dollars a year.  Truth is very difficult to find in the fog in our nation's capitol.

 

Now where I come from about a hundred miles from where Mark Twain grew up, if someone told me the middle class was everyone except the rich, powerful and very few "elite", I might scratch my head in wonder.

 

 

So if the middle class is everyone else, how many "elite's" are there?  Of course the wealthy "elites" have mastered hiding their money from detection by IRS or any other criminal or social tax deductible organization.  The truth is no one really knows this answer, including the All Omnipotent NSA since they REALLY are watching you all the time.

 

So it is a guess by anyone that 1-5% of Americans belong to the so called "elite".  Yet these people control all the wealth of America and much of the world according to those who know and speak the truth.

 

 

 

Now, back to my most recent line of thought, if no more than 5% are "elite" and we are going to redistribute their wealth so we all get what we deserve, then everyone becomes a card carrying member of the "elite".

 

Guess we might need all those illegal immigrants since none of the "elite" work like the middle class has been doing ever since we first drove out the British.  That's one way to drive down the unemployment rate, just eliminate the middle class.  Won't be any jobless if everyone is home managing their money instead of making it.

 

One other big Obama promise was to throw those crooks on Wall Street or Main Street, where ever they might be carrying out their predatory practices, in jail.

 

Then reality set in.  Suddenly, when he was elected president, he was expected to do what he said he would do.  Like nothing counted when he was just a presidential candidate.  Only if you were the final one elected would your promises have to be honest, truthful and delivered.

 

No first year Immigration reform or prison closings.  Five years later they are both just as he found them when he became responsible for all Americans as president.

 

 

 

As for ending the two wars being fought to end the bigger war on terror, our president's words of peace and cooperation for all Earthlings got him the coveted Nobel Peace prize a couple of weeks later as the one person in the world who did more than everyone else to bring about peace.

 

Clearly words speak louder than actions for a few weeks later he ordered tens of thousands of more American troops and billions of dollars in military expenditures in Afghanistan.  What a difference a few weeks can make.

 

Eventually, long after he had promised, we are pretty much out of Iraq.  Now that the war on terror between the US and Al-Qaeda is over the people of Iraq can finish their Civil Separatist war which is far more brutal and deadly than our Geneva Convention based efforts.

 

One thing the Obama administration did learn from all the war efforts is the value of drones, those unmanned airplanes that can successfully kill terrorists without risking the lives of American soldiers.  Any deaths of innocent civilians including children are just collateral damage to the mission.

 

Afghanistan, after billions in bribes, is just now winding down.  Both wars cost far too many lives of the brave American soldiers, men and women, sent to the war zones.

 

 

Fixing Bush's financial recession has been a little bit more complicated than Obama might have suspected since it seemed to take several years to find everything that could be blamed on Bush.

 

In Detroit he saved the world auto industry by transforming General Motors Corporation into the Government Motors Corporation.  His AIG bailout gave billions of dollars to those barons of Wall Street like Goldman Sachs.

 

Millions of Americans lost their jobs and millions of Americans lost their homes since Obama was elected.  The economy is declared to be stable and safe.

 

But people have not found new jobs or replaced foreclosed homes.  And those who have suffered most are the very middle class he promised to save.

 

Seniors saw their retirement savings vanish away.  Minorities by the millions lost their jobs and homes.  So did the Caucasians.  Ironically, many were the very special interest groups who overwhelmingly elected Obama to office.  I guess you can't bite the hand that feeds you when you are the one doing the feeding.

 

No major crooks have been sent to jail.

 

 

As for health care and costs, after a brutal couple of  years Obama Care did get approved but all the tough promises to keep were delayed until after the re-election campaign.  Now we are beginning to see that much of it is impossible to implement.

 

Neither health insurance or medical treatment costs have gone down but continue their upward trajectory.  Americans spend more being sicker than nearly all other developed countries.  We also spend far more on legal drugs than anyone else meaning we are either much sicker or love being legally "stoned".

 

 

Obama might have another first to his credit, not having a budget approved the entire time he has been president.

 

On the other hand, he has had a few trouble spots he did not expect.  The Benghazi attack in Libya left four Americans including the Ambassador dead.

 

The IRS (Internal Revenue Service) targeted Tea Party conservatives for harassment while the NSA (National Security Agency) targeted just plain people for about everything with their cell phone and internet tapping and hacking initiatives.

 

 

The Office of the Chief Executive and Commander in chief (the White House) of course knew nothing of such actions by their own agencies and people.

 

Then there is the Mexican drug war and Syrian civil war in which the big news is we have done nothing in either case.  As a result of our inaction or intellectual constipation 93,000 people have died in Syria and between 60,000 and 90,000 have died in Mexico.

 

Need we say more about the state of affairs of the nation?  To be perfectly honest there are a lot more good, inspiring or entertaining stories we need to cover.

.

 

The Second End to Combat in Iraq Celebration Featuring VP Joe Biden

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As the carefully staged White House theatrical play of The End to Combat in Iraq continues it's road show this time the second team took center stage as Joe Biden filled in for the vacationing President Obama to declare, according to the Los Angeles Times Joe Biden update:

No 'Mission Accomplished' claim on Iraq, but no 'victory' either.
 

Andrew Malcolm went on to report:

Fortunately, Sen. Barack Obama was about as wrong as he could possibly be opposing President Bush's 2007 troop surge in this news video from the former state senator's favorite TV channel.

As one result, the vacationing president and, this week, the peripatetic vice president are busy celebrating the U.S. military's success in Iraq with the withdrawal this month of the last American combat brigade.

Of course, the Democrats are not dumb enough to repeat the notorious "Mission Accomplished" banner of the previous administration. Nor is the White House No. 2 going to repeat his notorious claim from a February "Larry King Live" show that Iraq represents one of Obama's "great achievements."

Today, in an Indianapolis speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Joe "Let's Divide Iraq Into Three Parts" Biden did not mention his opposition to the Bush troop surge either. But he was naturally effusive in his praise of American service personnel, present and past.

Two other things to note in this administration's public relations war wind-down:

A) The administration's third commander in Afghanistan in 19 months, Gen. David Petraeus, as JB so carefully put it today in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Indianapolis, "now has all the resources that the strategy calls for." (Full text below.)

B) What's missing from Biden's remarks about all the sacrifices being made as it was missing from Obama's 4,582-word West Point speech announcing his second Afghan troop surge and outlining a strategy there (including a pre-announced withdrawal starting next July), is the key word: "Victory."

Additionally, 50,000 heavily-armed American troops still remain in Iraq for....

... not always courteous counter-insurgency operations in coming months. So, "non-combat troops in Iraq" all depends on what your definition of "combat" is.

But with homefront approval of the nation's wars waning and an angry, frustrated electorate scheduled to vote in a midterm looming for Democrats on Nov. 2, we will be hearing much more on this from Obama post-Martha's Vineyard.

Now some might think after the NBC End of Iraq Combat staging last week this might be the end of the Administration efforts to capitalize on the public relations surrounding this ongoing historic event which is scheduled to really be completed August 31 but the President has now scheduled a major address for August 31 about, what else, the end of combat in Iraq in case you missed the first two events proclaiming the end of combat.

Apparently the hoopala is designed to make us overlook the fact about 50,000 combat ready troops will remain in Iraq after we have finished combat, that thousands of private contactors will be hired to fight in Iraq and that no one thinks the remaining 50,000 troops will be withdrawn by the end of next year as also promised.

I find the Administration reference to private contractors not being a combat force rather odd as long ago governments and kings hired such private contractors to fight their wars only they called them paid mercenaries and they were the fighting force.

One final note as I mentioned in my last article is that the real last remaining combat brigade in Iraq is the Stryker 2-25 brigade as reported by a soldier still in Iraq fighting after the NBC end of combat show. Perhaps Obama will acknowledge this truth as the 2-25 is from his home state of Hawaii and would make for more great theater.

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NBC Iraq Staging Drama - The Latest in News Media Reality Shows?

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Call it manufactured news, news manipulation or whatever the NBC extravaganza showing the last combat troops leaving Iraq was high in theater and low on truth. For a few hours yesterday even the Huffington Post, the liberal sanctuary, posted the Coltons Point Times article exposing the sham as nothing more than a public relations stunt by NBC and MSNBC to prop up sagging ratings.

However, the Huffington Post caters to the will of the White House and someone must have called for dropping the negative article about NBC because it disappeared soon after it appeared. However, since truth is so hard to find on the internet, here is a copy of the Google search that showed the Coltons Point Times article on the Huffington Post yesterday.

Now for more truth, the same day NBC was heralding an end to combat in Iraq Obama was speaking in Ohio and said the following:

“We are keeping the promise I made when I began my campaign for the presidency,” Obama said at a fundraiser at the Columbus Anthenaeum. “By the end of this month we will have removed 100,000 troops from Iraq and our combat mission will [end].”

No mention that all troops would be out that day and a reinforcement of his goal to be out by August 31. A military web site, Open Security contemporary conflict, reported the following in reaction to the NBC snow job:

"The last United States’ army combat brigade left Iraq early this morning, crossing the border into Kuwait in a carefully-planned, top-secret journey. The departure of the 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, will leave 6000 support troops in Iraq until end of August, when US combat operations will formally end.

US State Department Spokesman PJ Crowley said American involvement in Iraq is far from over, but would be less intrusive and more civilian-focused from now on. Crowley emphasised that the US remains committed to its trillion dollar investment in Iraq, and needed to honour the memory of almost 4,500 troops who lost their lives in the war. Crowley made no mention of the estimated 100,000 Iraqi civilians who also lost their lives in the conflict.

Despite White House reassurances that continued unrest and a six-month old political deadlock following indecisive elections in March will not “derail democracy” in Iraq, many commentators are sceptical that the end of combat operations can be as clear cut as the Obama administration would like it to be. Although 50,000 troops will remain in support of the Iraqi army until the end of 2011, current plans would see all US forces withdrawing from Iraq by the end of 2011, leaving only a small contingent of diplomats and civilians, protected by less than a few thousand troops."

Finally a serviceman blogging from Iraq wrote that "there is still a Stryker brigade" remaining in Iraq after the departure of the Stryker 4-2 brigade on NBC. He said the Stryker 2-25 brigade, the only combat brigade left in Iraq, will be the last to leave before the end of the month.

His response to NBC was "along the way you missed out on pointing out true facts that there is still a brigade here that is just as large and has the same if not more vehicles than 4-2 does. So look deeper and remember soldiers watch the news as well and the piece as a whole was nice but I hope you come see us since we are the last Strykers here and will be turning out the lights on this show."

You will get the truth if you are open to it. As for me, I really don't like network news using our brave American troops as props for their reality shows. It is a disgrace to journalism, it trivializes war, and makes the blood of over 4,400 Americans who died in Iraq seem more like a TV script than the reality it was to the families and loved ones of those we lost.

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