President Barack Obama! - Page 32

Pressing-On · #**311** 03-07-2008, 02:33 PM

Excellent article. I read Obama's book and have been wondering the same as Mona on this. So happy to find an article that expressed my thoughts, as well as, my concerns.

How Does Obama Feel About America?
By Mona Charen
Friday, March 7, 2008

Barack Obama's words are often attractive but oddly concealing. His speeches are all balm and mood. It's all very well to seek, as Obama claims, to transcend old categories, to reject the "old politics." But then what? This graceful rhetorician leaves you wondering: Who is he really? What does he want for himself and for his country?

In search of answers that go deeper than the Congressional Record, I read his first book, "Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance." Once you get past the happy surprise of finding a politician who can actually write, the book contains some disquieting elements.

Obama is the product of a union between a white Kansan and a black Kenyan who met in Hawaii. I had assumed, before reading his memoir, that Obama viewed himself as a natural bridge between the races and that his message of unity sprang in part from his biology. That was wrong. From his earliest years, Obama engaged in a preoccupying internal struggle to make himself a fully authentic black man.

Young Barack hardly knew his father because the elder Obama left when he was 2. One meeting when Barack was 10 and a few letters were all he had. Only much later would Obama discover that his father had many wives and many children -- all of whom wound up disappointed in him. Barack's mother, Ann, went on to marry another non-American, an Indonesian named Lolo, and took the young Barack to live in Jakarta. Perhaps she was hoping to live some sort of Third World idyll. Obama never reveals her political views nor her feelings about America. But we get one glimpse in this passage:

"Looking back, I'm not sure Lolo ever fully understood what my mother was going through ... why the things he was working so hard to provide for her seemed only to increase the distance between them ... He landed a job in the government relations department of an American oil company. ... Sometimes I would overhear him and my mother arguing in their bedroom, usually about her refusal to attend his company dinner parties, where American businessmen from Texas and Louisiana would slap Lolo's back and boast about the palms they had greased to obtain the new offshore drilling rights, while their wives complained to my mother about the quality of Indonesian help. He would ask her how it would look for him to go alone, and remind her that these were her own people, and my mother's voice would rise to almost a shout.

'They are not my people.'"

Grasping, insensitive Americans? Businesspeople? Or just Americans? Whom did she reject?

Whom does he reject -- or what? Left-wing ideas are not so much articulated in this memoir as presumed. Obama has claimed that his experience living abroad gives him a valuable perspective for a chief executive. Yet his reflections on the effect Western capitalism has had on Jakarta and Chicago's south side sound like warmed over Herbert Marcuse. "How could we go about stitching a culture back together after it was torn? How long might it take in this land of dollars? The very existence of the factories, the timber interests, the plastics manufacturer, will have rendered their [Indonesian] culture obsolete; the values of hard work and individual initiative turn out to have depended on a system of belief that's been scrambled by migration and urbanization and imported TV reruns."

Obama's self-portrait in this book is that of a searching, nonjudgmental young man attempting to find his rightful place after a confusing start in life. But he is attracted by the harshly ideological Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose church he joins. Wright peddles racial grievance religion. Following 9/11, he said, "[W]hite America got a wake-up call ... White America and the Western world came to realize that people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just 'disappeared' as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns."

Obama says he doesn't agree with Wright about everything. Fine. And maybe he doesn't agree with his wife when she (twice) said that she'd never been proud of her country until its people began to support her husband. But then, what did he mean when he said on March 4 that making a little girl proud to say she is an American is the "change we are calling for"?

One suspects that beneath the soothing talk, there is bitterness in the man that we'd best learn more about before voting.

Mona Charen is a syndicated columnist, political analyst and author of Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help .

#**312** 03-07-2008, 02:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChristopherHall

You obviously don’t live in Ohio. Look at it this way…if everything is beautiful and going great the American people will want to praise and hold on to this awesomely successful Bush strategies! But if the majority of American people are struggling and wanting to change direction they’ll vote Democratic. So if things are going so great…hey, sit back and just enjoy. But down in your heart you know things aren’t going well.

Bush cut established budgets and funding for projects like roads, highways, bridges, you know… infrastructure. This was among much of the funding he cut for the “tax cuts”. Much of this is in need of attention. By repealing much of the Bush tax cut they can go back to the old budget and there will be little need to increase the budget for these programs. Please note, these programs will be contracted out to private companies. So it will not only provide jobs, but it will give companies more income. When companies have more income, they stimulate the economy. Bro…you really need to stop listening to the Right Wing and learn about how things are done.

Actually the bulk of the budget will not be established by “raising taxes”, it will be established by repealing the tax cuts and closing loopholes that allow companies to get out of paying taxes they’re already supposed to be paying. There will be some targeted tax hikes but nothing massive across the board. Dude, you need to study their plans.

To keep companies here we cut the tax breaks we give them for going overseas and participating in these global market schemes. Trust me...even with paying their fair share here they'll stay because unless they relocate to some godawful third world country they won't make any savings. In addition to cutting the tax breaks given to those who leave, you offer generous tax breaks to those who STAY. The breaks have to benefit the American people and the companies... not just the companies. Then you target heavier taxes on goods made overseas in the markets and cut the taxes on items made here. Tax breaks must benefit the home front. You make it more expensive to send jobs to China, Mexico, or India. If they want to participate in the largest market on earth...that's those are the rules.

Not really. Think about it. Your taxes haven’t increased anywhere near the rate that the cost of living is increasing. Gasoline costs have nearly tripled; health care premiums have almost doubled. The extra cost in fuel is causing the cost of food and commodities, goods & services to rise. It’s not taxes making life tight on you…it’s an unmanaged market with out of control inflation, rising debt, and devaluation on property and the dollar. At this rate they could cut your taxes significantly this year and in two years you’ll still be at a net loss. Anything you want to bet, unless your house is paid off or about to be paid off, you have negative equity. Meaning what you owe on your home loan is far more than what your house is actually worth. The bank is getting a windfall profit off the devaluation of your loan! A financial planner I was talking to said that at the current rate of increase in the cost of living, if sustained, in five years I’d be still at a net loss…if I didn’t pay taxes at all. Dude, you’re not being taxed out of the country…you’re being swept out of the country on a wave of ever increasing costs.

Just with health care…if the government increased our taxes $100 and negotiated our premiums down to $90 dollars a month in a universal health insurance plan…the average American family would save around $200 a month!

Nope. The plan on the table repeals the federal tax cuts and restores the cut block grants that were taking care of infrastructures, state, and local issues. This funding will be used to higher contractors to restore roads, bridges, community centers, parks, down town areas, etc. This will generate jobs, pump more money into local industries, and these industries will operate in the local market and stimulate the local economy. So those on unemployment will have opportunities to get off unemployment and they too will be spending their livelihood in the local economy, thereby stimulating it and reducing the cost of unemployment, generating market forces creating more competition, and thereby reducing costs. It’s an economic stimulus package. If you’ve studied economics, bro you know how these work. They do quite well to get things moving again. Then when the market is moving nice and steady the government initiatives recede like the tide heading back out to sea. Then the markets coast until we begin to see it slow down again. If market forces don’t naturally generate a boost, taxes get cut. If that doesn’t generate the boost needed then the government launches another stimulus package to get it alive and kicking again. America’s most prosperous time of industry and manufacturing was after the depression, in the wake of the stimulus package.

Only a nitwit would believe navigating us out of Iraq means leaving like we did in Vietnam. We need staged withdraws as we hand over power to the provisional Iraqi authorities.

Have you been following the reports out of the Pentagon? The effort is currently unsustainable at current funding and troop levels.

The Iraqi’s are just going to have to come together and work on preserving their freedoms and their democracy…we did. As long as we do their fighting and dying for them they’ll never feel that they own this new freedom we’ve fought to provide them. We will still help fund and train security operations. We will also have maintained regional presence prepared to respond to anything that endangers our interests. Most likely these US forces will be maintained in Saudi Arabia.

It’s time for Iraq to learn to walk on it’s own.

One thing to remember when looking at governmental policies: it generally takes about 5 years before the impact is felt by the general public.
The downturn economically is a result of many democratic policies that were put in place during the terrible Clinton years.
Seems he was so busy chasing interns that he would sign anything just to get back to his philandering ways.

DividedThigh · #**313** 03-07-2008, 02:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BrotherEastman

LOL! Chris......er uumm...Brother Hall does a pretty snazzy job of that as well.

yeah bro e, that was my point poor scotty is wasting his time on this so called republican, a demo in sheeps clothing, god bless you bro, i dont talk to him, not worth it, lol

scotty · #**314** 03-07-2008, 03:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BrotherEastman

LOL! Chris......er uumm...Brother Hall does a pretty snazzy job of that as well.

Since my full name is Chris Scott, i would prefer you refer to him as Bro Hall so there is no confusion....

thank you for your cooporation

Pressing-On · #**315** 03-07-2008, 03:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by scotty

Since my full name is Chris Scott, i would prefer you refer to him as Bro Hall so there is no confusion....

thank you for your cooporation

What's your social security number?