Address to Congress

If you needed some hope in these hard times maybe you got it. Tonight President Obama came before congress to address them on his plans for the future.

“Now is the time to jump-start job creation, re-start lending, and invest in areas like energy, health care, and education that will grow our economy, even as we make hard choices to bring our deficit down. That is what my economic agenda is designed to do, and that is what I'd like to talk to you about tonight.” When the president says lending does he mean people taking out loans to buy houses, like houses they can’t afford?

“Over -- over the next two years, this plan will save or create 3.5 million jobs.” Well which is it? If you save 3.5 million jobs good for you, only downside is there are still millions without jobs.

“And Americans -- and Americans who have lost their jobs in this recession will be able to receive extended unemployment benefits and continued health care coverage to help them weather this storm.” So I won’t have to go everyday looking for work because my neighbor has my back? I mean who’s paying for these extended benefits?

“I know there are some in this chamber and watching at home who are skeptical of whether this plan will work, and I understand that skepticism. Here in Washington, we've all seen how quickly good intentions can turn into broken promises and wasteful spending. And with a plan of this scale comes enormous responsibility to get it right. And that's why I've asked Vice President Biden to lead a tough, unprecedented oversight effort, because nobody messes with Joe.” Well I feel better. Very-Positive (VP) Joe is in charge so everything is going to be alright?

“I have told each of my cabinet…that they will be held accountable by me and the American people for every dollar they spend.” Well that’s good, but I’d also like some of them pay their taxes first.

“When there's no lending, families can't afford to buy homes or cars, so businesses are forced to make layoffs. Our economy suffers even more, and credit dries up even further.” Yet I feel a certain someone is still no getting it.

“…we have launched a housing plan that will help responsible families facing the threat of foreclosure lower their monthly payments and refinance their mortgages.” Hello I’m we’re Mr. and Mrs. Responsible, is that good enough for ya?

“History reminds us that, at every moment of economic upheaval and transformation, this nation has responded with bold action and big ideas.” Yeah and one of them prolonged the Depression.

Hopefully you were able to listen closely to the president’s words and weren’t distracted by Speaker of the House Nancy “Tigger” Pelosi. Now if you are feeling reassured I hope you aren’t doing it blindly. Here’s what I mean; if you start questioning the actions of President Obama and his administration but he gives you a positive talk, do your problem really go away? Or are you simply allowing yourself to go along with his agenda simply because he’s supposed to be this great agent of change and he isn’t George W. Bush? You need to realize that this is your future and your children’s futures we’re talking about here. While I wish this president success I have the right to voice my opinion. This is my country too – government of the people, by the people, for the people. And if people have a problem they can have their own little address to congress.

Big Enough to Take Away Everything You Have - Part 2

As of January 15, the stimulus package was $825 billion in total. So how do you gain support for such a high priced package? First if you’re in the media you paint the candidate of your choice to be a Godsend, they did that; second, you paint the opposing side as the guilty party responsible for your problems, and help get your candidate elected. Now if you are a member of the elected party you tell the people what they want to hear and ask them to bear with you during these hard times. Once you have hypnotized the people into fear and gotten them to believe your way is the only way, the blank check handed to the government becomes a sacrifice that just has to be made, and big government suddenly becomes a good thing.

President Obama said, “…you get the argument, "Well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill." What do you think a stimulus is? That's the whole point.  Don't come to the table with the same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped to create this crisis.” “Same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped to create the crisis,” said the Democratic president. Does President Obama recall that the head of the Federal Reserve in 1979 (you know when the groundwork for our problems started) contributed to the significant recession the U.S. economy experienced in the early 1980s, which included the highest unemployment levels since the Great Depression? Paul Volcker is that man, and he is also the reason for the strongest political attacks and most wide-spread protests in the history of the Federal Reserve. Today Paul Volcker has been appointed by President Obama and named chairman of the newly formed Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

Republican governors say this deal is needed, as Florida Gov. Charlie Crist told MSNBC, “It comes at a time when we need it. People need jobs. It's about jobs, jobs, jobs.” But of course governors want it, it means money for their state because they don’t have any or just want more to add to what they’re not using.

NBC’s Brian Williams says if it saves jobs let’s do it, but does it really? The President talks a lot about rebuilding highways, bridges, schools, hospitals, as well as creating new ones. But as RNC Chairman Michael Steele pointed out on ABC’s This Week, “this administration is talking about…making work. It is creating work…it's not a job. A job is something that a business owner creates. It's going to be long term.  If you got a government contract…there's no guarantee that there's going to be more work when you're done with that job.”

Sen. John McCain said a similar thing, “We've got to stimulate the economy and jobs. We're losing sight of what the stimulus is all about, and that is job creation. If it doesn't create jobs, then it's just another spending project.”

No matter what Democrats our Republicans say, the package does not ensure a permanent job; it’s not a career, its paid work that is temporary. Now at least being paid might sound good to someone who is unemployed, but it would only be a matter of time before you were out looking for work again. And if all the roads have been repaved, all the bridges repaired, and all the new hospitals and schools created or rebuilt, what work is there? So what is the government going to do when Americans find themselves out of work again? And on top of all of this you have to first believe that you will even receive work to do, not to mention that just because this package is signed into motion doesn’t means you will suddenly have a job tomorrow.

In its current form the plan gives $43 billion for increased unemployment benefits and job training. Well what good is improving job training when businesses can’t afford to hire? The government would be spending billions to prepare you for a job you can’t get.

In 1993 unemployment was around the same rate as today, but President Bill Clinton’s stimulus plan only cost $16 billion in spending. So say $16-30 billion could help this country, and you take $16-30 billion out of at least $825 billion, you would have $809 billion or less left. And whatever isn’t going to “job creation” or helping the unemployed is going to fulfill the wish list Democrats have been putting together for quite some time. The spending the Democrats want to do could indeed help this country but shouldn’t be on the list right now - there is no money for it!

To sound less selfish or sneaky, Democrats say tax cuts. And tax cuts are a good thing, because than Americans keep more of their hard earned money and can spend. Tax cuts to small or big businesses mean they have more money and they build up and can even take on more workers. But tax cuts are not a good thing when you’re government adds a an extra trillion to the national debt, the same government that criticized the last one for the huge deficit – hypocrites. The government needs money and they’re going to come to you.

President Obama says he wants to help give money back to the American taxpayers. Well right now this bill will cost each and every household $6,700+ in additional debt, paid for by our children and grandchildren. So any money given now would have to be taken out in taxes, because the government just signed an $800+ billion into law. And if businesses can’t afford to hire, and people can’t find work, and the government increases unemployment benefits, we will eventually find ourselves in a hole that we can not get out of. This is the only shovel ready project that is ready to go and it’s not one of the good ones.

The current form(s) of this bill pleases the majority of only one party. We can not spend our way out of this one. This bill does nothing that puts more money into the pockets of Americans. They may tell us it does, but first they have to believe that Americans aren’t going to put that money aside and save it.

If anything this recovery package makes us more dependent on the government, because the government will be giving us money they don’t have. And how can we pay off our debt when we have to borrow more than a trillion dollars?

During the election season Barack Obama said he wanted to reduce the deficit, and last October it was reported that the deficit would reach $455 billion. Obama has certainly not reduced it. And to top it all off during the final presidential debate he said, “I don’t mind paying a little more (taxes).” That’s easy to say when you’re running for president, how can he expect more out of us when we have a hard enough time paying them ourselves? Maybe he should first get the members of his own administration to pay theirs’.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel said on NBC’s Meet the Press, “…we have got to…get banks again lending to both consumers and businesses.” Again, its money we don’t have, not to mention that fact that lending to people who shouldn’t be taking out loans from banks, who are receiving money from a government in debt, is not a good thing. And it is what got us into this mess in the first place.

So, can we accept this deal? Unemployment would increase, businesses would continue to fail, and future generations would be stuck paying off our debt.  So far the only change from this adminstration is the change in Americans' pockets and accounts going to the government. President Thomas Jefferson said, “A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.” 

Big Enough to Take Away Everything You Have - Part 1

It is no secret that we are in a recession; that the economy is in bad shape. Businesses and corporations are closing; Mrs. Fields and Circuit City are gone. Others are suffering, and people are losing their jobs. There’s a problem, and the Democratic rule in Washington tell us they have the answer, but what their plan does is take one crisis and set it up as the starting point for another. The current Stimulus package won’t help in the way it’s being showcased; it will not help the American people.

But first, when did our current economic crisis begin? Scott Powell of Barron’s Magazine, an American financial magazine, writes on this very issue in an editorial entitled The Culprit Is All of Us. Powell writes how it was during the Carter administration that our crisis began with the “passage of the Community Reinvestment Act to stem bank redlining and liberalize lending in order to extend home ownership in lower-income communities.” Then in the 1990s, “the Department of Housing and Urban Development took a fateful step by getting the GSEs to accept subprime mortgages.”

Contrary to what the media has made you believe, Powell points out the Bush administration “made many mistakes, but deregulation was not one of them,” in fact the Bush administration and a Republican Congress “approved the most sweeping financial-market regulations in decades.” During the first three months of their first term, the Bush administration warned that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac posed a potential problem, and even after those scandals were made aware “regulators sent Fannie and Freddie back into the market to continue buying subprime loans, lending and borrowing with implied taxpayer backing”. The poor and middle class were encouraged to buy houses they couldn't afford, and as Powell adds, “speculators were lured into excessive risk-taking; banks were rewarded for lowering their loan standards; and Wall Street found new windfall profits from securitizing and reselling bad loans in bulk.”

Freddie and Fannie didn’t fail eight years ago; they didn’t fail four years ago. Freddie and Fannie failed in the late summer of 2008 with a Democratic congress. So what did the government do? They took control of Freddie and Fannie. Just a short time later Wall Street crashed. What did the government do then? They gave the surviving banks a bailout, which was a failure. Later there was a similar act when GM, Ford, and Chrysler began to fail.

NBC’s David Gregory of Meet the Press broke the government bailouts and stimulus packages down. “The first stimulus, $168 billion; the money allocated for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, 200 billion, only about 14 billion of that has been drawn down by Freddie Mac; the bailout of AIG…122.8 billion; the bailout money known as the TARP, you've now got the second half of that authorized, that's $700 billion, some of that for the auto, Bank of America, Citigroup; the proposed stimulus--or recovery plan, as you put it, $825 billion.  That is $2 trillion from February of '08 and, if it's passed in the middle of February, to February of '09.”

So we have one bailout that was a failure to failed banks, another went to failing auto corporations, and President Obama is pushing for a package that he says would save the economy and the American people, because something has to be done now! No good news has come from any of these bailouts, all you have is the receivers asking for more money, but apparently this pattern isn’t enough to get Washington to reconsider this form of the package.

Strike One for Joe

So Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr. put the word “faithfully” in the wrong place when swearing in now President Obama. It could’ve been nerves, and/or it could have been because he was saying it by memory. Whatever the case it was a little slip up and Barack Obama was indeed already president at noon.

Well during a swearing in for White House senior staff, Vice-President Joe Biden made the remark, “My memory is not as good as Chief Justice Roberts'." President Obama can be clearly seen placing his hand on Biden’s arm as if to say, “That’s enough Joe,” or, “Don’t go there Joe.”

Now Biden has apologized, whether it came from the heart or President Obama we don’t know. But I think the new VP should now more than ever be careful about what he says. Remember when he said, “The presidency does not lend itself to on the job training,” or how there would be a great international disaster within the first six months of the Obama presidency. I think VP should stand for Very Positive, because Biden needs to be positive and not keep putting his foot in his mouth, and worrying or offending others.

In any case, strike one for Joe.

President Barack Obama

Barack Obama became America’s 44th president today, while also becoming the first Black President. The next four years are in his hands, as well as those of the Senate and Congress. Back in November the majority of American citizens voted these officials into office, believing they are the best for the job. But America is watching, for behind this historic even lie the great challenges.

Said President Obama, “Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America — they will be met. On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.”

This part “the challenges…will not be met easily or in a short span of time” is something to remember. There is no doubt that much is expected of Barack Obama, but this country has to be careful, for they have placed him on a very high pedestal. For there to be success Americans have to bear with President Obama. Such cooperation was lost or came too late with President Bush, but now this country must seriously open its eyes to the problems before us, for now they want to come together.

So let your voice be heard, and if it isn’t you can express your feelings in November of 2012. But for now, let us pray for the best. And for now we look to President Barack Obama.

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

“In citizens like these, we see the best of our country - resilient and hopeful, caring and strong. These virtues give me an unshakable faith in America. We have faced danger and trial, and there's more ahead. But with the courage of our people and confidence in our ideals, this great nation will never tire, never falter, and never fail.

It has been the privilege of a lifetime to serve as your President. There have been good days and tough days. But every day I have been inspired by the greatness of our country, and uplifted by the goodness of our people.”

These words were of course spoken by the current President of the United States, the man who has led our nation for the past eight years. Those years are now yesterday, and the volume in American History begins tomorrow with Barack Obama.

You might remember that it was these past eight years that really helped the president-elect during his campaign - throw in a corrupt media as well. We’ll never know what the past eight years would’ve been if it hadn’t been for that tragic day in 2001.

The current administration has faced many challenges since that day, with Bush’s number one priority being the safety of American people. But of course to achieve such action you have to do things that some may not agree with, but doesn’t every presidency face moments like that? I mean have you ever stopped to think that when you or someone else is trashing the current president there is someone fighting for your freedom, your freedom of speech that allows you to say such terrible things. Now I when I say your freedom I mean this, if we hadn’t gone to war how safe would this country be today?

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Back at the 2004 Democratic Convention for Sen. John Kerry, Barack Obama stated how there is no conservative or liberal America, only the United States of America. You hear a similar thing today when it’s said how the country is coming together and getting behind the next president due to “nightmare” of the past several years.  So why is it that this country is only willing to come together with President-elect Obama? Such unity has not been seen since the days and year following 9/11. President Bush has stated mistakes have been made, and we’ve been told we can expect to follow the same rough path in the days and years ahead. So if the time comes where Barack Obama comes before the country and says mistakes have been made but bear with us, will we because Obama asks? Why couldn’t we come together four years ago?

It’s said we’ve come so far, I don’t know, I think there’s something we’re still not getting. But anyway, this is an important time for America, some sort of change is coming, the Bush legacy has yet to be finalized, and Barack Obama will be our president. But now is the time where we welcome the next commander-in-chief, we learn from past mistakes, and we look to the future. There is indeed something to learn from yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Farewell from President Bush

Tonight for the final time, President Bush spoke to the American people from the White House. He leaves the office in a much different manner than he ever expected before the unfortunate events of 9/11. If you were watching the address live tonight I’m sure network anchors, like NBC’s, reminded you of how the president is exiting with low approval ratings. So maybe the president isn’t leaving on a high note tonight, perhaps the years to come will paint a better picture for the 43^rd commander-in-chief. But for now it’s farewell from President Bush.