Obama, the Republican Darling

I have been combing the news outlets and political blogs recently, trying to gauge the likelihood of Obama winning a second term as President.  I have been convinced for a while that he probably won't win, mostly because I don't think he can be victorious running as a Republican - which, if we are all honest with ourselves, is the only way he could be considered true to his first term record.

When he won in 2008 on the ridiculous "Hope and Change" platform, he grandstanded spectacularly on all the things he would do different than the previous administration.  He had press conferences vilifying the Bush administration while posturing his own as the antidote to it.  And everything was Bush's fault - he inherited all this.  And it was easy enough to dismiss - the inevitable lowering of the bar before any of his decisions and policies have taken hold.  But now that he's in full campaign mode again, the "lay-it-all-at-the-feet-of-Bush" tactic is really grating on me.  He's three and a half years in - when does this become his responsibility?  Bush has been gone for quite a while now.  He has no vote in Congress.  He has no say in anything anymore.  But Obama and the DNC seriously want us to believe that his hands are completely tied by Bush.  Just how far do they think they can extend this blame?

• Bush broke Obama’s promise to put all bills on the White House web site for five days before signing them.
• He broke Obama’s promise to have the congressional health care negotiations broadcast live on C-SPAN.
• He broke Obama’s promise to end earmarks.
• He broke Obama’s promise to keep unemployment under 8 percent - that's why he needed his stimulus bill passed, like, tomorrow - or we're all doomed.
• He broke Obama’s promise to close the detention center at Guantanamo in the first year.
• He broke Obama’s promise to make peace with direct, no pre-condition talks with America ’s most hate-filled enemies during his first year in office, ushering in a new era of global cooperation.
• He broke Obama’s promise to end the hiring of former lobbyists into high White House jobs.
• He broke Obama’s promise to end no-compete contracts with the government.
• He broke Obama’s promise to disclose the names of all attendees at closed White House meetings.
• He broke Obama’s promise for a new era of bipartisan cooperation in all matters.

Yes, it’s all George Bush’s fault. President Obama is nothing more than a puppet in the never-ending, failed Bush administration.  Clearly Bush's hand was the reason Obama disengaged himself from the debt ceiling negotiations.  Bush's hand was the reason Obama disengaged himself from even commenting, let alone doing anything, during the Gulf oil spill crisis.  Bush's hand was the reason Obama disengaged himself from the crisis in Libya and went to South America, only to finally make a decision to act when the UN left him with no other choice.  If only George Bush wasn’t still in charge, all of President Obama’s problems would be solved. His promises would have been kept, the economy would be back on track, Iran would have stopped its work on developing a nuclear bomb and would be negotiating a peace treaty with Israel.  North Korea would have ended its tyrannical regime, and integrity would have been restored to the federal government.  Oh, and let's not forget what it would be like if the Democrats, under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, if they didn’t have the heavy yoke of George Bush around their necks.  There would be no earmarks, no closed-door drafting of bills, no increase in deficit spending, no special-interest influence (unions).  If only George Bush wasn’t still in charge, we’d have real change by now.  All the broken promises, all the failed legislation and delay (health care reform, immigration reform) is not President Obama’s fault or the fault of the Democrat-controlled Senate or Republican-controlled House.  It’s all George Bush’s fault. 

You might recall that when Scott Brown won election to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts , capturing Ted Kennedy's seat, President Obama said that Brown’s victory was the result of the same voter anger that propelled Obama into office in 2008.  People were still angry about George Bush and the policies of the past 10 years, and they wanted change.  Yes - according to the president, the argument could be made that the voter rebellion in Massachusetts was George Bush’s fault (it couldn't possibly be that even the Democrat voters were getting a little tired of the Dems legislating against the will of the people).  Therefore, in obvious retaliation, they elected a Republican to the Ted Kennedy seat, ending a half-century of domination by Democrats.  It is all George Bush’s fault.  Will the failed administration of George Bush ever end, and the time for hope and change ever arrive?  Will President Obama ever accept responsibility for something - anything, besides killing Bin Laden and a health care bill he considers a major victory, but likely to be dismantled by the Supremes next month?

The debt crisis is looming over our heads, and the DNC loves to point out that Bush "doubled" the debt from $5 trillion to almost $10 trillion, while Obama has only increased the debt by half, from $10 trillion to almost $16 trillion by the end of the year.  Yet, they miss the point.  Percentagesaside, Bush added $5 trillion to the debt (a huge chunk of which is the wars and the rebuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan) over 8 years.  Obama has added almost $6 trillion in half the time.  By the end of a second term, Obama's administration will have at least doubled the debt to $20 trillion, if not more, at the current rate.

I'm not advising anyone to not vote for Obama.  Just see the forest from the trees, please.  Years back, I joined an electrical contracting firm as a project manager.  I spent my first week going from job site to job site, being brought up to speed with all the projects going on.  Part of my job was to ensure all inspections were passed (several jobs were having problems).  It was pointed out on a particular job that helpers were doing to majority of the work (for those who don't know, helpers usually assist journeyman electricians in completing their work, but it's the journeymen who actually perform the work).  For every failed inspection, there were journeymen blaming sub-par work or unmet electrical code requirements on the helpers.  The owner would visit job sites once every three weeks to a month as a matter of course.  On the Friday of my first week, he brings out paychecks to this particular job site, who had failed yet another inspection two days before (this job was one of the ones I was appointed to, to help bring them up to spec to pass inspections on the next round).  The owner says hello to everyone and has the job foreman hand out the paychecks.  He then informs the job site that the foreman and all the journeymen were fired - right then, right there - done.  Everyone was shocked, including me.  He states that in seven failed inspections, he's heard all the blame has been put on the helpers - which leads him to assume that the helpers are the only ones doing any work.  So why is he paying journeymen $20+/hour to not work, and a foreman $65,000/year + bonuses to oversee them not working?  So everyone was fired, except the helpers.  Ballsiest thing I've ever seen an owner do.

My point is this:  if everything is Bush's fault, what the hell do we need Obama for?

Give the gays a break

Ugh… the argument of gay anything is getting so tired.  This week, the Supreme Court is hearing two cases (one of them about DOMA) that seems likely to be dropped altogether.  No one has the guts to make a decision on them, or wants a vote to occur, and the fools on the bench can not stop themselves from steering the debate into irrelevant asides.  North Carolina, a state that already banned same sex marriage, threw into their constitution a while back that “Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state.”  I love this statement, by the way, because the phrasing technically also bans unmarried heteros from living together.  Love it when the mouth breathers start thinkin’.  Didn’t anyone in politics and law creation ever take a Technical Writing class?  This is like the idiotic law in Florida that bans sex with “animals,” completely ignoring that human being are classified in the kingdom “Animalia,” making us all, indeed, animals.  So in Florida, they’ve technically outlawed sex altogether.  Absolutely love it.  And these are two great examples of why gay marriage shouldn't be left to the states.

But back to the gays.  I’m fed up with the notion that allowing gay marriage is somehow “forcing” the morals of a minority onto a majority.  Wrong.  It’s simply allowing that minority to be recognized as citizens of this country who have the right to love whomever they choose.  And let’s not kid ourselves that they are citizens.  They are citizens in name only, while treated by the majority as second-class.  The statement I hear a lot (especially when cameras are around) is, "Gays don't have the right to force their lifestyle on me."  What?  How is anyone forced to do anything?  They don’t invade our houses in the middle of the night to steal our children for their “cult.”  They don’t man the airports like hare krishnas, recruiting a gay army.  They don’t care what you do – just stop caring so much about what they do that you invade their private lives with your ideas, converted into legislation, to dictate their lives to them.  I'm still waiting for that one sob story that regales the gays forcing heteros against their will into a lifestyle they want no part of...

As for the religious roots (and they are all religious) of the argument…  you can quote Leviticus to me all you want, the simple fact of the matter is that Mosaic holy codes were given to the Judaic priests after the Jews left Canaan, to help them assist their flock in adjusting from the conformity to pagan ritualistic living the Jews had adopted to protect themselves from persecution, dating back to their days in Egypt (one of the rituals involved the penetration of young male temple prostitutes).  Heck, the text could even be interpreted to instruct against defiling the sanctity of a woman’s marriage bed.  Context makes a world of difference...   

It could also be argued that Christians live according to the direction and inspiration of Jesus Christ, through the New Testament.  While He affirmed older Mosaic law as valid, Jesus’ only two love commandments in Matthew 22:37-40 implies a way of life that had moved beyond older holy law.  We even affirm that implication ourselves today.  The Mosaic holiness codes have been largely ignored for centuries.  A view examples, excerpted from a great letter to Dr. Laura Schlesinger:

• When I burn a bull on the alter as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
• I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
• I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.
• Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchases from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?
• I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or can I delegate that out to a third party?
• A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than a man laying with a man as with a woman. I don't agree. Can you settle this?
• Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the alter of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room?
• Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?
• My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made by two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? (Lev. 24:10-16) Couldn't we just burn them to death in a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

This brings up the inevitable question:  Why have Christians generally disregarded these laws as “outdated,” yet kept the only one that allows us to be bigots against something we disagree with?  And by the by, a quick sidebar on the word “abomination”:  The Hebrew text uses the word toevah (translated as “impurity” or “unclean”), not zimah (translated as “injustice” or “sin”), which means anything referred to as an “abomination” in Leviticus is denotatively meant to mean “ritually impure” - not “immoral.”  An important distinction, one might say, yes?  "Abomination" is one of the most often quoted, and recklessly misapplied, terms to paint homosexuality as something even Moses himself wasn't addressing.  Mosaic laws had little to do with morality.  They were almost entirely ceremonial in nature, and meant to engender spiritual purity.  God, when He did regard morality, did so in a very clean and simple manner - they're called the Ten Commandments.  And the fact the He used Moses to present both only emphasizes the distinction between the two - one regards spiritual ceremonial purity, one regards moral living.

Speaking of reckless, people should scrap the farce that gays harm the sanctity of marriage and family.  Heteros divorce at a 50-55% clip all on their own, and adultery rates are the highest ever since statistics of such things began, so it's more than a little disingenuous to have heteros claiming sanctity of anything.  Conventional procreation in the family is out, obviously, but surrogacy and adoption (average of 130,000 waiting to be adopted in a given year – sanctity of family, huh?) easily fill the bill, so that argument really has nowhere to go.  The HIV/AIDS health argument is also weak.  Gays are the most health conscious of any of us in that regard – this isn’t the 70s/80s anymore.

There is simply no real logistical reason to ban gay marriage, other than contextually inaccurate interpretations of religion (and often basic, rudimentary bigotry),  against that which makes some of us uncomfortable.  But you are no more spiritually fulfilled if Joe and Bob down the street can’t get married than you are less spiritually fulfilled if they can.

And the public in general has grown so irrationally unforgiving on the subject that they have turned the Supreme Court into a bunch of cowards who want nothing to do with it, despite the pesky fact that it's their job.  So what say we all put on our big people pants and act like adults, rather than a bunch of whiny, puerile adolescents, hmm?  End of rant.