There are legitimate reasons for Blacks, other minorities and others who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 to be unhappy with the president.
Obama supporters are jaded because of the scarcity of jobs, failure to restore the civil liberties mangled by the Patriot Act and other Bush-administration security fixes and, most of all, the refusal to stand firm against obstructionist Republicans.
Even so, just a peek at last Wednesday night’s GOP presidential primary debate should have left anybody who had considered a protest vote for a Green Party candidate or just staying home on Election Day 2012 with a renewed sense of urgency.
The U.S. would be dragged back into the early 20th Century by 2020 if any of those candidates on that stage—perhaps except for Mitt Romney—were to be elected president.
Consider that the greatest applause was given when Texas Gov. Rick Perry proudly announced that he never struggled with his conscience while signing 234 death warrants.
Never mind that Perry refused to stay the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham in 2004 after four arson experts determined that the original investigation of a fire, which killed Willingham’s three children, was flawed and the fire probably was accidental.
Perry doubled down on his assessment that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, and the rest of the candidates—including Romney, who tried to use the phrase to criticize Perry—all want to privatize the Trust Fund.
Can you imagine with Wall Street handling Social Security what would have happened to grandpa’s and grandma’s money when the stock market lost 45 percent of its value in 2008?
Just about all of the GOP candidates lied or twisted the facts about either the amount of jobs they had created or the amount of jobs Obama had destroyed.
Perhaps the most odious lie came from Michele Bachmann, when she claimed, “Obamacare is killing jobs.”
First, most of the Affordable Health Care Act won’t go into effect until 2014. Secondly, her claim supposedly came from the Congressional Budget Office, but the CBO made no such statement.
Bachmann said just a few days ago she would eliminate the minimum wage to create jobs.
Then there’s Herman Cain, pizza magnate, who has a 9-9-9 Plan. Corporations would only pay 9 percent income tax, individuals would only pay 9 percent and everybody would pay a 9 percent sales tax. In other words, a guy earning minimum wage would have to pay nearly $4.40 for a gallon of gas priced at $4.
Still mad enough at Obama to stay home?
(Reprinted from the Philadelphia Tribune)