Obama - complete fuck up

Look here, a headline on the Huffington Post proclaims President Obamas home load program is a bust.

What I find fascinating about all the articles and commentaries on the failure of this presidency is that these same organizations were silent during most of the Bush administration. Where were the writers and journalists when we marched into Baghdad? I know, I know, it was a different time. The main difference is that way back then, if you were critical of anything the president did, you were labeled as unpatriotic. Now, if you go along with anything the president does, you are a socialist. Amazing how the tables turn.

I am far from an Obama diehard. What I like about Obama is that he radiates intelligence, which is exactly the opposite of the Bush camp. What I do not understand is how easily the press is manipulated, but I have a theory about that too. First, the press was as cowed and impacted as the rest of the country after 9-11, so there was a tendency to want to protect the homeland and the president during such a scary time. That part I get. But the aggressive, dog eat dog, aspect of journalism was lost for much of the 8 years of the Bush administration.

The dogs are back now and they seem willing to attack anything and everything. My theory continues with this too. First, one thing you have to understand about journalists in general, and reporters covering the corners of power in particular, it is this, they are people too, with egos and bank accounts and everything else that makes them human. It is their bank accounts that I think influences much of they partisan coverage. Some reporters, especially the blow dried TV types are flat our greedhead idiots. Their main job is too keep the checks coming and if that means trashing a new president and supporting a stupid one, they will happily read the scripts handed to them.

In general, TV reporters have to be stupid, it is a job requirement. Imagine telling your friends some earth shattering, hugely important detail of your life, and limiting every aspect of that story to about 90 seconds. TV reporters have to do that with anything and everything. Healthcare debates? They have 90 seconds, and for some reason, they always feel obligated to give some backwoods inbred senator who opposed every progressive move ever made, as much face time as someone who in knowledgeable about the issue and speaks with intelligence.

One of the problems with stupid people pretending to be journalists is that they think that "telling boths sides of the story" is enough. So, if you have a senator who strongly favors healthcare for everyone and can explain every aspect of how a government program could save the country billions and allow everyone to have a first class health insurance system, the idiot reporters find it necessary to give the semi-retarded gas bag from, say Mississippi, exactly as much time as they gave the bills sponsor, to speak out on why no one except the rich deserve anything. In the end, the sponsor, who understands the issue and the complexity, gets about 15 seconds to explain everything and the idiot who just hates everything, gets the exact amount of time to attack. For a bonehead journalist, this is fair and balanced. For the people watching at home, they find the arguments complex and almost impossible to understand, so they stick with the passionate idiot.

So goes almost all public debate, which saw its low point this summer, when the white trash and the racists among us went to every public forum to scream about socialism and Hitler and healthcare. These know-nothings brought a much needed debate on the nations priorities to a complete halt. Nothing can get accomplished in situation where the people who scream the loudest shuts down a debate. It is no way for adults to conduct any sort of business.

Of course, the press gave the windbags a forum because it was lively and colorful, no matter that is was empty and damaging. The press, always mindful of ratings before anything else, allowed the dangerous and stupid to control a debate that most people wanted to hear and understand. These out of control hooligans probably ruined any real opportunity for vast changes to a failing healthcare system.

The republican party has taken the Obama presidency as an opportunity to just say no to anything. Imagine if you worked with someone who, no matter what the task, would refuse. "Hey Joe, can you hand me that wrench while I am under this care changing the muffler?" "No."

Nothing would get done, and in about half an hour, you would either hit Joe with a wrench, or make sure he was fired. In politics, the republicans will run on a platform that for two years of the Obama presidency they were able to thwart all real reform, good or bad. And guess what? They will get elected.

So, Obama is failing all over the place, or at least he is if you listen to the talking headcases and the illiterate reporters. We remain at war, under attack as of Christmas Day when some loser lit his junk on fire on a jet bound of Detroit. What is most frustrating is to have witnessed how brilliant the Bush administration used moments like this as a way to shut up critics and jam through their terrible, anti-American policies, and watching now as the Obama administration continues to talk and glide and shuffle along, getting nothing of substance accomplished all the while allowing the right wing to attack daily with not a single counter punch.

Maybe democrats, as many of my friends have often said, are really just a bunch of spineless pussies. My sense is this, if they do not grow a backbone very quickly, most will be out of work either this year or in 2012, and that goes for the president.