Hope! Change! Transparency! Yes, we Can! and Yes, We did!! That is what I voted for – as much as I voted against “My Friends” McCain and Scary Sarah.
The latest “deal” – more accurately yet another cave in – has erased all I had left for Obama. I’m all out of, “he’s got a strategy…” and any other excuses. I mean, really, if he is not willing to fight for us, then what use is he? Yeah, he has accomplished some pretty good things – health care reform, pulling the economy out of a nose dive and into recovery. But he is not fighting to maintain those accomplishments. He is not fighting the lies from the Right – he is caving in to everything.
The Republicans are fighting to get all the breaks, benefits and bonuses for the top .10% (tenth of a percent) of our Citizens – while kicking 98% of us in the teeth – and they are winning. Who has the guts and fortitude to stand up for the 98% of the Citizens??
Maybe I am just not hearing it or reading it. The Republicans say that the rich create jobs – a lie. They say the tax rates going back up will hurt small businesses – a lie. They say they want to cut the deficit – obviously a lie. So far, we, as a nation, are still coddling the rich and kicking the middle class in the stomach.
Don’t get me wrong – personally I am happy that I would be getting a bit more back on my tax return this year and that I would be getting a bit more in my paycheck thanks to the drop in social security tax rate packaged in the deal. But I’d prefer to not get any of that, to have my tax rate go back up to Clinton-era tax rates, than to have this treachery of a deal.
I suppose that I will have to console myself with the idea that this deal will make the heads of all Tea Party people explode in anger – $1 trillion dollars of un-paid for tax cuts hyper-inflating the deficit…. wait, no… all they care about is paying less taxes and to heck with the deficit. Oh, well…
Somewhere, somehow, I am still clinging to hope. Maybe he has a big gun coming up! Maybe, just maybe, my expectations were too high. Maybe this deal was the best we could get. Maybe he is playing to win and we just can’t see his cards. But it sure would have made me feel better if there was at least some show of a political fight for what would have been best for the country as a whole. Still… he is probably doing what is really best and possible. He is the kind of President that we need – now we just need the kind of Congress that compliments him.