Election 2008 - What Exactly Did We Do?

The beauty of having your own blog is you can do what ever you want. The following has nothing to do with Indian gaming issues or the like but I felt like commenting on the election process… so I will.

I’m so glad it’s over. It became like fingernails on a chalkboard to listen to all of the candidates, from the presidential race down to the local contests, talk and promise and accuse and then talk some more. We all know, or should know, that it is just words coming out of a politician’s mouth. Words meant to do one thing and one thing only… get them elected.

Both presidential candidates told us the same thing.. they will take our country in a new direction and get us back on the right track, they will reform the government and they will both cut taxes, they will both go through he budget and cut out stuff that isn’t working or stuff we can do with out and blah blah blah… hope, change, and future.. same old rhetoric.

It’s the same thing that politicians with different faces and voices have been saying every four years since I can remember…. hope, change, and future. Blah blah blah. Its like the adult voices on the Charlie Brown cartoons.

With our economy in the tank along with the struggling global economy and combined with war against the terrorist factions, we still have these politicians telling us about all of their great plans and promises which will cost billions of dollars.

I checked the US national debt this morning and it is at $10.5 Trillion. It has been increasing on an average of about $4 Billion per day since September 2007.

$4 BILLION PER DAY.

The deficit is at $1 Trillion. So where in the world is all this money for these wonderful plans going to come from and how in the world can one man or woman tell us, in all honesty, what they alone are going to do to get us going in the right direction.

Last I heard we didn’t have a military dictatorship controlling us. We still have a democracy with three branches of government where congress holds the purse strings and makes the laws.. not the president.

Is the American public just that gullible or ignorant? Perhaps it just boils down to us not really caring that much about what the candidates say, recognizing the rhetoric for what it is… instructions from page 45 in the book "Political Sound Bites for Dummies"… but more about who they are and how much money they have to spend on marketing and advertising.

There were millions of dollars spent on timeless political sound bites that we’ve heard over and over year after year after year.. new direction.. change.. hope... brighter future.. blah blah blah..

The Center for Responsive Politics predicted that, in the end, the 2008 presidential and congressional races would cost $5.3 billion with the presidential race alone costing nearly $2.4 billion… nearly double what it was in 2004 and triple from 2000.

$2.4 billion and what did we get? It was basically a TV reality show. I wouldn’t be surprised if Hollywood had more to do with running the campaigns than the respective parties did. Besides both parties telling us the same thing politically and the emptying of the closets, we enjoyed lipstick on pigs episodes, wife bashing, flag pin issues, along with numerous other great moments that had absolutely nothing to do with solving the nations problems. Bridges and pregnancies and clothes and houses and … well it was all the “he said, she said” goopy drama you would hear in a San Fernando Valley high school cafeteria.

$2.4 billion spent and in one little conversation with Joe the Plumber I heard all I needed to hear… “We need to share the wealth”. Not that I was going to vote for him anyway but after denying it all along Obama burped it up and Joe the Plumber’s life changed forever. Those six little words ignited a movement in this country never seen before. Suddenly it was Mary the Heavy Equipment Operator and John the Seamstress. It was Harry the Waiter and Sally the Forensic Sculptor. Joan the Chicken Sexer came out as did Fred the Furniture Tester. It was great!! A regular who’s who of “We the People”

Kinda a shines a nice new fresh light on that phrase “We the People”. Brings us right back to where it all started and the initial intention of our government. After all, isn’t that what our government was intended to do? To serve “we the people” and not the professional politicians who just seem to be covering there own ass these days.

It could be the beginning of a whole new political party. “We the People” I nominate Joe the Plumber as its first Presidential Candidate. I think Sarah Palin the Hockey Mom/Governor would join our party in a wink and perhaps run herself. “You betcha!!” We would enlist millions very quickly and be ready for 2012 within a year.

This time around Mr. Obama won the sweeps and maybe it was because he had much more money to buy air time with but then again maybe the majority of Americans were just plain hungry for a leader that is actually pleasant to listen to. Mr. Obama speaks elequently and is nice to look at as well. Not since Clinton have we had a president that was a good orator. Maybe America just needed a break from the painful sounds coming from “W”. Never mind that 98% of the time, the president is out of sight of the public behind closed doors with no microphone making decisions that will effect yours, mine and our children’s lives, but, by God, on those few occasions when he does speak to us directly we will feel nice and warm and fuzzy because, wow, can he talk a nice talk.

It’s also a nice feather in our cap to be able to say we finally elected the first African-American in US history to be president. It took too long but we did it and America should feel good about it.

But did we really elect Mr. Obama for what he promised he would do as president or was it just that we didn’t want to listen to McCain for the next 4 years when he spoke to us? He’s not exactly a Ronald Reagan when it comes to speeches and charisma my friends.

They say the recent economic meltdown tilted the election towards an Obama win because it happened during a Republican presidency. But surely that can’t be it.

I don’t know if it is was the liberal media not reporting the facts or a case of the public so hell bent on electing a fresh young charismatic guy to the oval office that they didn’t want to find out the truth, but the current economic fiasco can be traced back to 1992 when a majority-Democratic Congress mandated that Fannie and Freddie increase their purchases of mortgages for low-income and medium-income borrowers.

Under the Clinton administration the entire federal government put massive pressure on banks to grant more mortgages to the poor and minorities. Clinton's secretary of housing and urban development, Andrew Cuomo, investigated Fannie Mae for racial discrimination and proposed that 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low- to moderate-income borrowers by the year 2001.

Instead of looking at what would serve as normal criteria, such as the mortgage applicant's credit history, employment record and ability to make a down payment, banks were encouraged to consider nontraditional measures of credit-worthiness. One example was having the applicant successfully participate in a credit counseling course.

Under Clinton, the Federal Reserve threatened lawsuits if the banks didn’t treat welfare payments and unemployment benefits as valid income sources to qualify for a mortgage.

This is the truth folks.

The countries economists soon began to sound the alarm that when the housing market slowed there would be hell to pay. They warned that the Democrats were forcing mortgage lenders to issue loans that would fail the moment the housing market slowed because unqualified borrowers who couldn't make the payments would not be able get out of their loans by selling their houses.

In George W’s first year in office his White House chief economist, N. Gregory Mankiw, warned that the government's "implicit subsidy" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, combined with loans to unqualified borrowers, was creating a huge risk for the entire financial system.

Democrat Barney Frank denounced Mankiw, saying he had no "concern about housing."

The New York Times reported that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were "under heavy assault by the Republicans," but these entities still had "important political allies" in the Democrats.

Why John McCain didn't say anything about this is beyond me.

Yet here we are today with a Democratic President Elect who’s main thrust at the end of the campaign was to blame the economic meltdown on the failed policies of the current Republican administration. His supporters claim this pretty much sealed the deal for him.

I wish Barack Obama the best and maybe he will turn out to be one of the best presidents we’ve ever had. I hope he is.

It’s just that I really don’t know why we elected him over McCain.

A real concern I have is when it comes to foreign policy and the naietivity and inexperience of Mr. Obama. The world is rather edgy right now and even the Vice President elect has warned us that Mr. Obama will be tested early. It didnt take long. Hours after Mr. Obama was declared the winner, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said that Moscow would place short-range missiles near the Polish border "to neutralize, if necessary" a planned U.S. antimissile system. And so begins Mr. Obama's on the job training. Wonderful.

The other concern I have is Mr. Obama's plans to drastically cut defense spending. Not a good time to let down our defenses. This hits me closer to home as my son is going into the Marines on December 1st. I don't want him out there with outdated equipment and minimal protection. The last place to cut spending should be the defense of this country and protection of our troops.

Mr. Obama says he is the candidate for real change. One of Obama's favorite books is Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin, which told of how Lincoln reached out to his adversaries.

If Barack Obama intends to stand behind what has been the foundation of his campaign.. change we can believe in….he must do as Lincoln did and try to end the political gridlock in Congress by truly crossing over political lines. A good start would be to appoint Republicans to his cabinet. Not just a token one, but two or even three. Unprecedented, sure, but it would certainly send a message to the American public that he is for real.