American Blog

Written by Michael Vass

You know you have to admire President Obama. It’s not every President that can stand in front of America, make a promise, describe a partial plan, and then do something completely different. President Obama seems to be a master at such action.

Not only did President Obama promise that he would resolve the mortgage crisis, and the recession, but he took on pork barrel earmarks, healthcare reform, education, and international policies. So far, the actual answers the American public has received are anything but the rose-colored glasses view of our future.

The Obama Administration charged forward, with the help of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Harry Reid, and passed a stimulus package so useless that it has cost people the ability to feed their families while completely failing to stimulate the economy in even the slightest manner. Not to mention that the mortgage and financial crisis are still as active as 9 months ago. It’s such a screwed up piece of legislation that there are already plans to create another waste of taxpayers money to actually try to do the job that the first Obama Stimulus was supposed to do.

Add to that the waste of $50 billion dollars for the auto industry. And this one is not completely the Obama Administrations fault. Though the intrusion of the Obama Administration in firing a CEO, spending money on a second round of bailouts, and the creation of larger less regulated Government oversight (the Administration calls them Czars) are all on him. Which net resulted in 2 bailouts that eliminated over 100,000 jobs in a conservative estimate.

Then there are the overseas actions. Pleas with North Korea to stop being such bad guys and to play nicely have resulted in more missile launches, and continued development of nuclear weapons, than I can recall in several of the past years combined. This says nothing of the moves by Iran to build nuclear weapons. And their efforts to crush any attempt at real elections or moving towards democracy (which is funny as the U.S. is moving away from that too under President Obama).

There is his move out of Iraq, which remains inconclusive as to how effective that was. There is the move into Afghanistan, creating new losses of American troops that the nation was not prepared for. Plus questions of what exactly our role will be, how long will it take, and how much will it cost. Which says nothing of our relationship with Pakistan. Or if/when Guantanamo Bay will close, and what will happen to over 200 of the people being held there that are considered too dangerous to release.

But while all this is going on, President Obama has decided to make his move on healthcare. Not that he has a plan; just that he wants to make a change. A change that he expects to only cost $1 trillion dollars. Which is separate of the $3.5 trillion for his budget, separate of the $787 billion for the Stimulus plan no one read, or the $410 billion spent to continue funding the Government that contained no less than 9,000 earmarks – which President Obama chose not to challenge as he promised he would before he was elected.

This new healthcare plan has more holes than Swiss Cheese. There is no agreement on how it will be funded. It might be taxed. It might create new taxes on the “wealthy”. It might tax businesses.

The new “reform” should cover most of the 47 million without healthcare today. It might increase costs on the people that already have healthcare coverage. It might force millions to take the Government plan even if they don’t want it. And no one knows what it will actually do. Or how it will be run. Or how much it will actually cost to implement. There isn’t even a guess at when it might all happen. Thus I envision a VA-like establishment that is about as useful as the healthcare that people in Canada and England come to America to avoid.

But I know that President Obama plans to pass a healthcare bill, with the help of Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid by the end of this month. Kind of like how Democrats passed the Stimulus plan without reading a page of the 4000 pages in the Stimulus Bill. And we can see how well that worked out.

Yes President Obama has to be admired. He promised change and we have gotten it. He promised to close Guantanamo, and it will even if it results in greater problems than keeping it. He promised to have a Stimulus lest we fall into a depression, and we got it even though it has triggered more job losses and hurt more people than when it was envisioned. He promised to cut earmarks, and ignored the very first blatant display of them he was presented with. He promised to make America safer, yet North Korea and Iran have ensured we have more missiles and nuclear weapons to worry about than ever before. He promised to cut costs and keep the Government the size it was, and we now have a larger Government spending more money than even the next generation will be able to afford.

Only a President with huge brass balls could do all of this. Because he believes that he is right. He believes that this is the best path for America, no matter what his detractors say. He is steadfast in his efforts to pass every single bill that he wants, no matter if laws and the Constitution have been broken.

In fact, President Obama sounds like he is following in the footsteps of another President. A President that had the news media question every action and claimed he was a hard-headed ego-driven fanatic that would doom the nation. That President was George W. Bush.

Since no one else is bringing up all these facts about President Obama, his Administration, and the supporters he has in the Congress, they must already admire him. Imagine that.