Tonight, the President of The United States will give his third official State Of The Union speech, and his fourth annual address to the combined Congress of the United States. In light of that pivotal moment, we think it's a good time to take stock of what's happened over the last few years - and what our next steps should be.
Four years ago, when Barack Obama took over the Presidency from George W. Bush, this is what Mr. Obama found waiting for him at the entrance door to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The American economy was in a freefall. America lost close to three-quarters of a million jobs that January, most before Mr. Obama set one foot inside the White House. This was after the worst year for jobs since 1945. The housing market collapse was in full roar as well. Our nation was also deeply entrenched in two wars, one in the heart of the Middle East, and one in Afghanistan. Osama Bin Laden was still alive, and Wall Street titans were still highly unregulated. On top of all of that, the worst drag on our Federal budget into the future was the ever increasing cost of health care - and there were no legitimate plans in Congress to staunch that fiscal wound.
This is the job that Barack Obama was handed that cold January four years ago.
He was also given to work with, to help govern our nation out of the mess he'd been handed, a Congress full of weak-kneed Democrats, along with many angry and arrogant Republicans. The latter had a single goal, clearly stated by one of their leaders, Mitch McConnell: to make Obama a one-term President, above all else. To top it all off, Mr. Obama was also "gifted" with a conservative-leaning, activist Supreme Court, where the members most likely to retire were those on the political left.
To say that the task set before him was monumental is probably one of the greatest political understatements ever.
Fast forward four years, to now.
Even Mitt Romney agrees the economy is now getting better. Unemployment is going down, with some of the best numbers in years - though it's still not getting better as fast as we'd like. Even so, America has seen twenty-two months of private sector job creation. If extremist Republicans wouldn't continue to insist on gutting our public services without ethically and legitimately collecting more revenue, the private sector jobs level might be further into recovery than it is now. That many legislators - mostly Republican, though some Democratic - still keep trying to rob cities, counties, and states to pay for tax cut proposals we can't afford is a problem that voters no longer seem blind to.
The housing market is showing positive - though shaky - signs, for the first time in years, Wall Street has begun to be put under control again, and the insurance and medical cost curve appears to be bending lower. Osama Bin Laden is dead, and thousands of Americans are already home from one war and beginning plans to get out of the other.
All of this has been done with a Congress made up of a large number of Republicans who did not want ANY of this this done as much as they wanted to see President Obama fail.
If he had failed, our nation would also have failed. As evidenced by the difference between four years ago, and now, President Obama did not fail, and we did not fail him or our nation - but that does not mean our nation is healthy.
Unemployment is still far too high. We are not yet out of Afghanistan. The foreclosure crisis is a long way from over. Wall Street needs more regulation - and the big banks must be made to pay for their own "gambling" debts, instead of expecting taxpayers to bail them out. Corporations and the rich need to pay the amount in taxes they're supposed to. Lastly, the poisonous levels of hate and fear that have been evident in many of the recent GOP debates and candidate rallies still infect far too much of this nation, and must not be allowed to determine the future for the rest of us.
There are a great many Americans who believe that regardless of what our challenges are, we can, we should, and we have - RECENTLY - worked together to solve some of America's worst problems in generations, regardless of our class, race, age, sexual preferences - or even political affiliation.
The state of what America CAN be is still strong, but to keep improving our collective health, we will need a leader like the one we already have, who has proven over the last few years that he is the President of ALL of us - not just the President of those who agree with his ideology.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Monday, January 23, 2012
Swing And A Miss
After a weekend filled with football, politics, some REAL winter weather in our Northern locations, and little bit of fried fair food for our South Florida staff [They have regional fairs in winter in South Florida; who knew?], we still have yet to process everything that happened over the last two days.
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has announced she'll resign her Arizona House seat sometime this week to focus on her recovery, and Arizona's extremist Republican Governor Jan Brewer is already preparing to set the special election for Giffords' seat. Former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno died of cancer over the weekend - a fate we wish on nobody, no matter what they did or did not do in life. The NFL playoffs also finished up over the weekend, with the New England Patriots and the New York Giants set to play a rematch in this year's Super Bowl.
The biggest news over the weekend - or at least the story that received the most major media coverage - was the South Carolina GOP Primary contest. In a win that didn't really surprise us, noted hypocrite, adulterer, and former U.S. House Speaker from Georgia, Newt Gingrich, nominally defeated former Masssachusetts governor, Willard "Mitt" Romney, along with Rep. Ron Paul and former Pennsylvania Rep. Rick Santorum.
The truth is, the real winner this weekend may once again have been President Obama.
In extensive exit polling, it became starkly obvious that the kinds of voters who backed Newt Gingrich on Saturday were exactly the kind of voters the right-wing ideologues and media talking heads have been increasingly stoking for most of the last twenty years. We could have guessed their makeup, though the data confirms it: Older, angry, less educated extremists, who are also so-called evangelicals, who are scared about the economy - and most importantly, who want to beat President Obama in this election at ALL costs. That includes making the economy temporarily worse, and even increasing the debt.
It should be no surprise after looking at those exit polls, that those who claim to be conservative yet are hypocritical about their own beliefs, would push so heavily for the nomination of a man who is also a hypocrite and an extremist. That Republicans in MANY other areas of the country - including the Midwest - do not generally share South Carolinians' blind hatred of President Obama quite obviously meant nothing to the Republican primary voters there.
What the blindly ignorant in South Carolina don't seem to understand is that - no matter how angry they are - the fact is, Newt Gingrich will not likely be the GOP nominee. As journalist Josh Marshall pointed out over the weekend, Gingrich's unfavorables - the number of people who dislike him, for any reason - are around 60%. Nominating Gingrich would not only drive away moderates and independents - where much of the election could be won. As multiple Republican party members and supporters also pointed out over the weekend, Gingrich is so divisive that if he were the nominee, the GOP stands a significant chance of losing support down the entire rest of the ballot. That could cost Republicans the House, and chances at the Senate and the Presidency, as moderate, sane Republicans would also likely abandon the party.
That kind of logic doesn't seem to matter to the Tea Party extremists currently in control of the Republican Party, however. After wildly swinging at the President over tax cuts and the Keystone pipeline in December - and beating themselves silly in the process - the GOP extremists in Congress look to be trying another attempt at the same action. Even though they've just returned to DC, they're already threatening to hold the country hostage unless the President ties immediate approval of the Keystone pipeline to an extension of middle class tax cuts.
The President is on firm ground; the deadline on Keystone that the GOP wanted in December was a phony made-up time limit. The State department and the state of Nebraska have both said it would take about a year to gain environmental and planning approval for a new path for the pipeline. No amount of foot stomping, huffing in Congress, or bloviating in the media will change those facts, any more than the anger of the extremist Republicans will make Newt the GOP's eventual nominee.
There's a reason politics at this level is sometimes called "pro ball." The amateurs in the Republican Party need to learn when to put down their makeshift bats, before they hurt themselves any worse then they already have.
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has announced she'll resign her Arizona House seat sometime this week to focus on her recovery, and Arizona's extremist Republican Governor Jan Brewer is already preparing to set the special election for Giffords' seat. Former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno died of cancer over the weekend - a fate we wish on nobody, no matter what they did or did not do in life. The NFL playoffs also finished up over the weekend, with the New England Patriots and the New York Giants set to play a rematch in this year's Super Bowl.
The biggest news over the weekend - or at least the story that received the most major media coverage - was the South Carolina GOP Primary contest. In a win that didn't really surprise us, noted hypocrite, adulterer, and former U.S. House Speaker from Georgia, Newt Gingrich, nominally defeated former Masssachusetts governor, Willard "Mitt" Romney, along with Rep. Ron Paul and former Pennsylvania Rep. Rick Santorum.
The truth is, the real winner this weekend may once again have been President Obama.
In extensive exit polling, it became starkly obvious that the kinds of voters who backed Newt Gingrich on Saturday were exactly the kind of voters the right-wing ideologues and media talking heads have been increasingly stoking for most of the last twenty years. We could have guessed their makeup, though the data confirms it: Older, angry, less educated extremists, who are also so-called evangelicals, who are scared about the economy - and most importantly, who want to beat President Obama in this election at ALL costs. That includes making the economy temporarily worse, and even increasing the debt.
It should be no surprise after looking at those exit polls, that those who claim to be conservative yet are hypocritical about their own beliefs, would push so heavily for the nomination of a man who is also a hypocrite and an extremist. That Republicans in MANY other areas of the country - including the Midwest - do not generally share South Carolinians' blind hatred of President Obama quite obviously meant nothing to the Republican primary voters there.
What the blindly ignorant in South Carolina don't seem to understand is that - no matter how angry they are - the fact is, Newt Gingrich will not likely be the GOP nominee. As journalist Josh Marshall pointed out over the weekend, Gingrich's unfavorables - the number of people who dislike him, for any reason - are around 60%. Nominating Gingrich would not only drive away moderates and independents - where much of the election could be won. As multiple Republican party members and supporters also pointed out over the weekend, Gingrich is so divisive that if he were the nominee, the GOP stands a significant chance of losing support down the entire rest of the ballot. That could cost Republicans the House, and chances at the Senate and the Presidency, as moderate, sane Republicans would also likely abandon the party.
That kind of logic doesn't seem to matter to the Tea Party extremists currently in control of the Republican Party, however. After wildly swinging at the President over tax cuts and the Keystone pipeline in December - and beating themselves silly in the process - the GOP extremists in Congress look to be trying another attempt at the same action. Even though they've just returned to DC, they're already threatening to hold the country hostage unless the President ties immediate approval of the Keystone pipeline to an extension of middle class tax cuts.
The President is on firm ground; the deadline on Keystone that the GOP wanted in December was a phony made-up time limit. The State department and the state of Nebraska have both said it would take about a year to gain environmental and planning approval for a new path for the pipeline. No amount of foot stomping, huffing in Congress, or bloviating in the media will change those facts, any more than the anger of the extremist Republicans will make Newt the GOP's eventual nominee.
There's a reason politics at this level is sometimes called "pro ball." The amateurs in the Republican Party need to learn when to put down their makeshift bats, before they hurt themselves any worse then they already have.
Friday, January 20, 2012
Friday Funday: Going Bananas
It's been an incredibly busy week for our staff this week, both in performing our duties here, and in handling our duties elsewhere. From communicating about meetings, to getting raw content, to sending finished documents and images where they need to be, we use the internet for nearly some part of every job, club, or organization we're a part of.
Our collective knowledge and understanding of how complex the Internet is made us chuckle a bit this week, when the fight dealing with the overly broad proposals of SOPA and PIPA spilled onto the front pages, television screens, and radio newscasts around the country.
In case you missed it, a group of large companies - primarily large media companies - have been pushing several pieces of legislation this past year in Congress. The supporters of the two biggest bills - SOPA and PIPA - continued insisting right up until Wednesday that both bills only have one main purpose: to prevent copyrighted works from being stolen.
When Wednesday came, however, the old media companies ran into a few hard truths - chief among them, that the old media companies are not as important or as powerful as they've led millions of Americans to believe.
The day of protest online this past Wednesday, by huge Internet entities like Wikipedia, Google, Wordpress, and Mozilla (the company behind the Firefox web browser some of you are using right now), along with an online petition drive that collected over 7 million signatures in a single day, pushed more than a handful of Representatives and Senators to run away from both the SOPA and PIPA bills like the poison they are.
We agree that protecting original online content is important. Paul works hard to draw his cartoons, and we know more than a few other cartoonists, photographers, and other media pros who do the same.
That said, neither of these bills would have truly solved the problem that the big old media companies wanted it to: stopping overseas web users from stealing the content - music, movies, pictures, graphics, and words - of websites based in the U.S. On the contrary, both bills would have made even daily life online nearly impossible.
Under SOPA and PIPA, if your Mom posted the cute video of your neighbor's kid where everyone stands around and sings "Happy Birthday," Warner Brothers - the current owner of the disputed copyright for "Happy Birthday" - would be able to sue the hell out of both you and YouTube, unless you were able to get rid of all copies online. Until you did, you and YouTube would both continue to rack up fines. This drastic threat would be enough to push most people offline altogether, as well as completely shutting down companies like Google and YouTube. Such extremism is exactly why we oppose both bills; we don't feel that either one is salvageable in its current form.
Something good was salvaged from the conflict, however.
According to at least two Capitol Hill sources, many members of Congress actually read both bills for the first time, for themselves, as the protest caught fire Wednesday, of rather than merely taking as gospel the lies the wealthy media companies had been feeding them. After reading the bills, these members realized the potential chilling effect of this legislation - and changed their position on the bills to "oppose" immediately.
If millions of individual Americans joining a protest, while temporarily and voluntarily shutting down large chunks of the Internet, is what it took to get Congress to actually read the legislation and listen to their constituents - instead of listening to the hordes of lobbyists - then we're at least glad our legislative branch finally did their jobs properly.
We can slide into the weekend happy, knowing that - at least on this issue - Congress doesn't appear to be monkeying around anymore.
Our collective knowledge and understanding of how complex the Internet is made us chuckle a bit this week, when the fight dealing with the overly broad proposals of SOPA and PIPA spilled onto the front pages, television screens, and radio newscasts around the country.
In case you missed it, a group of large companies - primarily large media companies - have been pushing several pieces of legislation this past year in Congress. The supporters of the two biggest bills - SOPA and PIPA - continued insisting right up until Wednesday that both bills only have one main purpose: to prevent copyrighted works from being stolen.
When Wednesday came, however, the old media companies ran into a few hard truths - chief among them, that the old media companies are not as important or as powerful as they've led millions of Americans to believe.
The day of protest online this past Wednesday, by huge Internet entities like Wikipedia, Google, Wordpress, and Mozilla (the company behind the Firefox web browser some of you are using right now), along with an online petition drive that collected over 7 million signatures in a single day, pushed more than a handful of Representatives and Senators to run away from both the SOPA and PIPA bills like the poison they are.
We agree that protecting original online content is important. Paul works hard to draw his cartoons, and we know more than a few other cartoonists, photographers, and other media pros who do the same.
That said, neither of these bills would have truly solved the problem that the big old media companies wanted it to: stopping overseas web users from stealing the content - music, movies, pictures, graphics, and words - of websites based in the U.S. On the contrary, both bills would have made even daily life online nearly impossible.
Under SOPA and PIPA, if your Mom posted the cute video of your neighbor's kid where everyone stands around and sings "Happy Birthday," Warner Brothers - the current owner of the disputed copyright for "Happy Birthday" - would be able to sue the hell out of both you and YouTube, unless you were able to get rid of all copies online. Until you did, you and YouTube would both continue to rack up fines. This drastic threat would be enough to push most people offline altogether, as well as completely shutting down companies like Google and YouTube. Such extremism is exactly why we oppose both bills; we don't feel that either one is salvageable in its current form.
Something good was salvaged from the conflict, however.
According to at least two Capitol Hill sources, many members of Congress actually read both bills for the first time, for themselves, as the protest caught fire Wednesday, of rather than merely taking as gospel the lies the wealthy media companies had been feeding them. After reading the bills, these members realized the potential chilling effect of this legislation - and changed their position on the bills to "oppose" immediately.
If millions of individual Americans joining a protest, while temporarily and voluntarily shutting down large chunks of the Internet, is what it took to get Congress to actually read the legislation and listen to their constituents - instead of listening to the hordes of lobbyists - then we're at least glad our legislative branch finally did their jobs properly.
We can slide into the weekend happy, knowing that - at least on this issue - Congress doesn't appear to be monkeying around anymore.
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