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Obama's first 100 days
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I suppose it is true that time really flies when you’re…well, never mind. So it has been one hundred days of pep rallies, bi-partisan lectures, come-to-Jesus meetings, public floggings, glad-handing, pan-handling, and playing Santa Claus. I’m not sure just how much more of this I can take. But I was a good American, and I listened to the speech.
It started out nicely enough. I enjoyed hearing about the recovery act that has “already saved or created 150,000 jobs and provided a tax cut to 95 percent of all working families.” It is also nice to know that 11 million children will not have to worry about health insurance. The housing plan won’t do much good for us in Florida since the majority of foreclosures down here are on homes that were purchased either as vacation homes or investment property, but still it’s comforting to know that hundreds of families around the country won’t have to worry about homelessness anymore. But then the speech went on, and I started to feel a little uneasy.
The President started talking about investment in education, investment in renewable energy, investment in health care. All worthy causes, but whose money are we using? He stated that “we” have begun to end the war in Iraq. Just like that? I didn’t realize that “we” could do that so easily. Then there is the closing of Gitmo and the blanket “banning torture without exception”. Hasn’t anyone told the president that you should never say never? And by saying that we (he) have “renewed diplomatic efforts” I think he meant to say “sleeping with the enemy”. Of course, then Obama went on to say how far we’ve come but how far we have to go, and I lost interest because it just started sounding like every other speech he has ever made.
Naturally, the President’s supporters were euphoric. The Houston Chronicle remarked that Obama has “demonstrated his self-assurance and command of complex issues ranging from foreign affairs to the environment to human rights.” Command of complex issues? While you could say that a few of the things Obama has done lately are not bad, I wouldn’t say he really has a command over any complex issues at this point. More like a Jack-of-all-Trades, trying to be all things to all people and tackling several issues at one time. Putting out fires, I believe is the expression. I also read a few quotes about how he has done better in his first 100 days than any other president of our time. How can anyone say that? One hundred days is only three months. The only thing we can say for certain is that Obama has done a lot in 100 days, but as for whether or not the things he has done will actually be successful, we have years before that will become apparent.
So this country is in dire straits, and perhaps a little government assistance was warranted, but maybe it is time to step back a little and let these antidotes do their job. Maybe, just maybe, the government needs to stop throwing good money after bad and bailing out companies that are “too big to fail” (that’s something I missed in Economics class) and just give the market, and the American people, some time to fix our own problems. But instead, Obama is talking about more and more government involvement in our “free” market. It is for that reason I am worried that four years or eight years down the road we will start paying for all these “investments”, and it will be more than we can afford, much the same way people cannot afford their mortgages and their credit card bills right now. Are we investing in our future or are we just spending money we don’t have?
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