Monday, June 6, 2011

Week of 06/06/2011

Obama Must Own This Albatross
– by David Matthews 2

News Flash: The economy sucks!

Okay, that’s not really a news flash for most people…unless you live and work in Pennsylvania Avenue.

For most people, the announcement that the economy sucks isn’t really news. For us, the news is this:

The economy STILL sucks!

There is no “double-dip recession”. This is the SAME recession from 2008! It never ended. It didn’t “go away”. All of the conditions that existed in 2008 are STILL in place today. Unemployment is STILL a problem. Foreclosures are STILL a problem. Bank failures are STILL a problem. The only difference is the level of DELUSION that has been spun by the White House and the media. They wanted to convince people that the “threat” has gone away so they wouldn’t have to deal with it.

But it didn’t. They lied to us and they lied to themselves. The economy didn’t “get better” and the problem didn’t just “go away”. The economy doesn’t just suck. It STILL sucks! The only difference is that most Americans are a lot POORER than 2008, and Wall Street has gotten a lot RICHER.

Maybe that explains why a handful of Wall Street’s “masters of the universe” are only now starting to face criminal charges for their actions. Maybe that explains why Goldman Sachs is only now facing scrutiny over their role in the Recession. Maybe. But that still doesn’t solve the problem.

Maybe that explains why, one by one, all of President Barack Obma’s “Economic Dream Team” have been slowly going away, leaving only Treasury Secretary Tim “Tax Dodge” Geithner. Maybe because they know what the rest of the Obama Fail doesn’t WANT to know…

THE ECONOMY STILL SUCKS!!!

But President Obama can’t stick his head in the sand about it anymore. He wants to keep his job for a few more years and no president since Franklin Roosevelt has ever been re-elected when unemployment is this high. That’s a historical fact.

The wannabes in the GOP are certainly hanging the economy over Obama’s neck like the albatross that it is. Or at least the more popular wannabes are… the others still can’t get past their John Burch tinfoil hats and are fumbling about trying to remember which state they’re in and spouting off fractured history tales that make even high school students look smart. (Here’s a little tip: if you’re a member of Congress and you’re getting schooled by a high-schooler, then it’s time for you to re-evaluate your situation.)

But in order for Obama to keep his job, he’s going to have to do something that he so far has not been willing to do…

He’s going to have to OWN the economic albatross.

Yes, this recession started under George W. Bush, and Obama has been very clear on that, even if the GOP refuses to accept it. And it was easy for him in those early years to claim that he was just continuing the fixes that Bush started. If the recession was a mild one, then the tread-water approach that Obama’s people have taken would have made sense. But it’s not, and the fact that Obama’s people are still TREATING this like a mild recession instead of being the malicious economic disaster that it has been since day one is truly unacceptable, if not intentional negligence.

Let’s get brutally honest here… it is long since overdue that Obama takes OWNERSHIP of this recession and deals with it as the MALICIOUS THREAT that it truly is. He can no longer sit back and say “This is George Bush’s recession; we just have to wait it out.” That excuse ENDED the minute he announced he was running for re-election. This is now BARACK OBAMA’S ECONOMY, and he needs to take OWNERSHIP of it and to ADDRESS the problem.

That means he needs to STOP pandering to Wall Street and STOP pandering to Goldman Sachs and STOP pandering to the “Too Big To Fail” banks. That means getting rid of the LAST of his “economic dream team” by showing Geithner the door. That means putting someone like Elizabeth Warren in charge of that new “Consumer Protection” department and have it REALLY work for the consumers instead of for Wall Street and “Too Big To Fail”. That means abandoning the “Create or Save” justification and work on actually CREATING NEW JOBS. That means STOP trying to negotiate with “Too Big To Fail” when it comes to their abuses with foreclosures and robo-signers and to start ARRESTING the executives! Stop talking “settlement” and start talking PRISON and you’ll see a pretty fast turnaround.

You want to increase tax revenue? Stop the malicious predatory attacks on consumers and work on creating JOBS. You want people SPENDING money again? They need to MAKE money first. That means JOBS. NOT unemployment checks. NOT tax cuts for Big Corporate. It means ACTUAL JOBS. Stop expecting the party that DROVE us into a recession to be able to fix things. They simply do not know how, and if they did, they certainly wouldn’t want to HELP YOU.

This is the chief reason why the Obama White House has been dubbed the Obama FAIL, because so far it has done nothing but FAIL to lead and FAIL to govern and instead has been cleaning up Bush Junior’s messes. But now Obama needs to wake up and start DOING what he was elected to do, and he needs to do so NOW before the voters show him the door next year.

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