Well, it took me a full day to recuperate from my grief. LOL
Tuesday night as I watched the street parties on the news I was so furious I wanted to crawl through the screen and slap a few people. By Wednesday evening, I was envious of all those people who were so happy. I wished I could share in their euphoria. Now it’s Thursday and this post is mostly for me. A means of moving on, so to speak.
Before I go any farther, let me state for the record that I voted for Gore in 2000. Although I naturally felt disappointed that the person I voted for didn’t win that election, I wasn’t angry and I didn’t feel like he was robbed. As a matter of fact, I got angry with those who did feel that way. I was like, “Get over it, move on and get back to work already!” There just wasn’t such a disconnect between me and W for me to have any doubt that he could do the job just as well as Gore. There were simply a few nit-picky platform issues that determined my vote. As a matter of fact, on September 11, 2001, I was glad Gore had lost. He would have been the wrong person for the immediate task at hand.
Also for the record, the problem that “real Republicans” have with George W. Bush is that they voted for a Republican but got a Democrat! What makes me say that? Let me count the ways… No, let’s not, we don’t have time for it, nor is that the point of this post. Let’s just suffice it to say that Republicans are supposed to be conservative. They’re supposed to stand for smaller government, smaller budgets, and penny-pinching spending. Under George W., we ended up with much bigger government that intrudes into our private lives (not just from the creation of Homeland Security), much bigger budgets (from the necessity of the really hot war on terror), more spending (from the necessity of Katrina and subsequent natural disasters), more entitlement programs, AND a TRILLION DOLLAR bail out bill packed full of pork with no real specific guidelines about how those funds were to be used to help the economy, and are already being misused. The self-proclaimed “Compassionate Conservative” was way too compassionate and not at all conservative.
Ok, let’s get off history and back to the present and the future…
It’s not that I don’t appreciate the historic moment. Believe me, if the only real issue in this race was race, I’d have voted for Obama myself!
I grew up in the segregated South. I was in public school during Desegregation. At the end of the school year preceding the year of desegregation of our County school system, on the last day of school, at the end of that school day, my teacher brought all of her students in, and sat us down on the floor in front of her for a little “talking to.” We were in for some big changes for the coming school year and she wanted to help us with that transition. We would be attending a newly built school the next year. And she wanted us to be aware that there would also be “more little black children” at our new school. She didn’t say anything disparaging about the new students who’d be attending our new school with us. But I remember wondering, “So?” The adult version of that though would be, “And your point is?” I didn’t get it and I’m sure most of my classmates didn’t get it either. It made no difference to us. We already had black children in our school and it didn’t matter to us if there would be more. As a matter of fact I have more memories of playing with them than I do of playing with the white children… Leap frog, kick pen, jump rope, that little clapping game… (All skills I’ve since lost! LOL)
It wasn’t until I got older that I started picking up on the fact that it was the adults, parents in particular, who took issue with it. And the older I got, the more I witnessed actual prejudice. Hey, you can’t grow up in the South and NOT see it, so I won’t belabor that point.
So, had race been the only issue in this Race for the Oval Office, I would have voted for Obama, too. I’d love to have partaken of the privilege of having a hand in putting the first black man in the Office of the President of the United States. As a matter of fact, there are several black persons I’d vote for if they were running for the office. Herman Cain, Condoleezza Rice, Michael Steele.
So this victory alone is definitely a reason for celebration. But that wasn’t the only issue in the 2008 Presidential Election.
To me, the consequences are no reason for celebration. For me it’s a matter of ideology, of platform, of policies… Of the SKILLS and experience that are needed by the person who moves into that position at this time in our international as well as domestic political and economic status. And Barack Obama ain’t the man for the job.
I keep hearing that in the exit polls, the issue of most concern to those who voted for Obama was the economy. And my thought is, “Well, you sure voted for the wrong person in that case! So now you get what you deserve.” The problem is that those who voted for him, who are getting what they deserve, are pulling the rest of the nation down with them.
What were those real issues that are now looming over us? Well… just why do you think Wall Street has been crashing every day since Obama won the Presidency?
In my earlier posts on this topic I talked about Socialism and Capitalism. This country has slowly but surely adopted Socialist policies and habits over the past 240 years of its existence. Here again, George W. Bush has manned the helm from the Oval Office as he sailed us right into some of them! With the Democrat-dominated Congress and Treasury Secretary Paulson, we’ve put this nation into another trillion dollars of debt (that will take our children and grandchildren to pay off if mishandled), by taking from it’s citizens and giving to the banks and the auto and insurance industries. We’ve essentially socialized these institutions. What really worries me about this is the socialization of the banks!
Go back and look at how Hitler came into such power and ruined his nation – and the rest of the world with it. It was little, seemingly insignificant, supposedly temporary events and changes within Germany’s political structure and economy that he took advantage of to give himself more power.
I’m not saying Obama is Hitler! Such absurd, unfounded accusations serve no purpose other than inflaming passions and diverting attention from the real issues. So, that’s not what I’m saying at all!
What I am saying is that there are a BUNCH of little, seemingly insignificant, supposedly temporary changes that have occurred over our history – some more recent than others – that have set this country up at the top of a really tall, slippery sliding board that plunges right into classic Socialism.
Here are just a few examples:
- Our income tax system was created to fund the Civil War! It was supposed to be temporary! Yet here were are submerged in the deep end of a tax system that punishes success and forces American companies either into bankruptcy or over seas – and their jobs along with them.
- The Social Security System was created as a means to provide security for the aged and/or unemployed during the depression. The country had changed from an agriculturally self-sustained citizenry to that of a more industrially-dependent one. Then the depression hit and MASSIVE portions of the population lost both jobs and savings that were supposed to support entire families. Today we have a separate SSI system and an Unemployment system. The SSI system has been repeately robbed by those who put nothing into it, so now the funds that were supposed to go back to its contributors is gone! And Unemployment Insurance has proven to be inadequate in times of a poor economy. (I, myself, lost a job and got unemployment for a short time. But once those funds were exhausted and I still didn’t have a job, I was no longer counted in the Unemployment statistics, and had no means of bringing in much needed funds to support my family. It was up to me to find a Plan B! Which I did.)
- Now the Federal Government is part owner of our nations banks! This is supposed to be temporary, but what is the plan for untangling this strand of socialism? I understand clearly that as real properties are purchased, clearing out the debt owed on them, the government will recoup much of those funds (“borrowed” from its citizens in the form of tax revenues) with the bail out plan. But as the economy continues to deteriorate and those properties drop in value, that’s that much more debt remaining in our Federal Budget. That’s that much more debt sitting on the shoulders of our children and grand children as a result of poor decisions made by other individuals, banks, and the government. At what point does this enable the feds to disolve that ownership into the supposedly private banking institutions? And how? (Really, I hope someone understands this better and can explain it to me.)
Why do I assume that the economy will continue to deteriorate? Same reason Wall Street obviously does. Our president-elect has run on a platform chock full of entitlement programs, and a tax policy that transforms our income tax system in to a welfare system (instead of a system of obtaining the funds needed to run the NECESSARY functions of our government) AND will force more and more companies to either close shop or move over seas, taking their jobs with them. If he implements the plans he has, our economy is doomed.
For the record, I hope and pray that I am pleasantly surprised by the man. But I just don’t see how a leopard can change its spots just by changing his pay grade.
There are two things that he can do at this point that would please me, though:
Because I’m completely opposed to any entitlement programs and almost all welfare programs, he can help our economy by following the example of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR realized that in a bad economy, we couldn’t afford to just hand out welfare AND that what people really want is a job to earn their keep, not a hand out. So he put people to work and paid them for that work. (The unfortunate consequence was that it also increased the size, and thus the expense of the federal government.) In this economy, that’s a fantastic idea! There are way too many people out there who are perfectly capable of performing work, but are, or will be, on welfare. There are way too many jobs that need to be done but remain unfulfilled because of a lack of hands and/or the funds to pay them. FDR’s solution is just begging to be implemented again.
The other is that he can implement the Fair Tax. Anyone as intelligent as he obviously is, who takes the time to get the facts about the proposition, can see that it will help stimulate the economy BIG time; bring business, jobs, and capital back to the US; bring more revenues into the federal coffers; and be WAY less of a burden on the poor and working classes than our current income tax system. It can single-handedly (so to speak) save the Social Security System. And solve the major problem that undocumented workers (for the most part) pay no income taxes, yet mooch off the country’s tax payers by taking advantage of tax-funded education, health care, and and other programs. If those aren’t reason enough, I don’t know what is.
Ok, so that’s the economic issues. What about the International issues? President-elect Obama has repeatedly expressed his extreme willingness to pander to our enemies. Joe Biden himself recognized the trouble this would cause and warned the entire nation that the results would be that, once elected, he would soon be tested. Yes, that test worries me. But more than the test, what worries me more is in what direction he might lead our country where our relationships with other countries are concerned.
So while I understand the elation of our population during this historic moment, and while I share that sense of awe for just the privilege of living in this country as one of its citizens as witness to it, I have to reserve the celebration until he poves himself. I stand behind our new President, support him in his duties, and certainly hope that he serves successfully.
