Tuesday, July 21, 2009

HISTORY LESSON

According to a recent poll, the percentage of Americans who favor President Obama's job performance in his first 5 months have dropped down to 57%. The poor man has barely gotten his feet wet in the position, and the spoiled, lazy American electorate are ready to start throwing in the towel on Obama because he couldn't fix things in his first 5 months. Because things got worse before they get better. Because he had to spend money on the right things, because of the direction the economy was going, having spent a fortune on the wrong things. Maybe, it is time for a little history lesson, my friends.
Here is what this poor man got elected into. An administration, and eight years of Congress that spent money like drunken sailors. Practically cornered the market on pork. Wasted tons of cash and got nothing...literally nothing to show for it. Squandered vast sums of money fighting a war we never should have engaged in, and to this day we still can't get an accurate accounting of where it all went.
But here is what we do know...what they told us. "We won't need a lot of troops.....Iraqi oil will pay for the war....After the first year, they will welcome us as liberators.....Things will get better after we get Saddam.....then when we get Saddam's kids......then things would get better after we got Zarkawi......And after a while, the whole mess wouldn't turn into a brutal civil war....and oh, yes...the classic....Mission Accomplished." This is what the Clinton surplus was squandered on, and by who.
But that is not all. Everyone thought the bubble would never burst. Let's keep financing to the hilt, and flip homes, they'll always go up. You can't lose in real estate. It isn't the price, it's the terms. So, real estate and escrow companies flourished...selling new mortgages they knew the buyers couldn't afford, and talking people into crazy loans like no down, interest only........five year adjustables...........just keep writing paper guys, because we make money everything we write paper. Real estate over-valued? Re-finance and pull out equity......your house will never go down. Pull out the equity, finance it at 5% and invest the money in the market, you'll make money. No one makes money off the equity in your home.....it's the worst place to put your money...a very poor investment. Let's get greedy.
So, the loans go south. AIG, the largest corporation around, an absolute financial octopus with its tentacles in every financial sector, starts to go belly up. Banks default. The auto dealers start to whine because as the price of gas goes up, so do their inventories of F-150's, SUV's and Hummers. Investment houses go under, or are propped up.
Health care costs continue to rise, medicaid is choking us, social security is getting closer and closer to a baby boomer bust, unemployement is around 8%, productivity is way down, our borrowing is at record highs, our education system is a mess and our infrastructure is literally crumbling. So, let's keep sending our money to the desert. And give a tax cut to the top 3% of American earners...in the hopes the money will "trickle down." Did you feel it? The only "trickle" I felt was getting urinated on by the previous administration. And the Clinton surplus is now a record Bush deficit.
So here comes the "Messiah." to fix all our troubles in his first 5 months in office. What an unrealistic and ignorant expectation. 43% actually are unhappy with his performance so far. Like he wasn't catapulted into a world of hurt. So, before his job approval rating slides anymore, can we please give him, and the country a break, take a deep breath and remember where we were just 5 short months ago? Seems to me, this poor man has more people against him, than with him right now. And at a time when the country we claim to love is at stake.