Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Obama's Deliberative and Thoughtful Progress

SNL’s supposedly satiric takeoff on Obama’s “lack of achievement” after eight months in office was a cheap shot. Distorting the situation by nicely neglecting to list what Obama has achieved while not quite noting that the list of “non-accomplishments” is not so simple is low. For example, Gitmo has not closed but an Executive Order for the closing was signed, but the major impediment, by the way, is that everyone who was for it and that was just about everyone, is suddenly against it. Strange turn of events, wouldn’t you say, particularly since even Bush was finally for it by the end of his term. Sounds to me like political exploitation with the "not in my backyard” bravado neglecting the facts. Such as the fact that we already have terrorists in our high security jails. As for accomplishments, the Ledbetter bill, getting many more children eligible for health care, even announcing to the world that “we do not torture” count as accomplishment. One of his greatest feats has been to get the country back into a working relationship with our allies and making us once more a working member of the world community, working toward nuclear nonproliferation, lowering green house gases and global warming (and yes, it take the global community to work on that and since we are the largest perpetrator, our participation was always vital). It is unrealistic to expect miracles in less than a year and yet his administration has averted a major depression and gotten us out of the recession. No, we are not in recovery yet, but this complicated matter is at least being worked on intelligently, for a change. Health care is the key for so many things, it can be understood if gay marriage and gays in the military and immigration are put on the back burner behind the economy and health care for now. Since both those subjects impact everyone in the country, that should be accepted as the right thing to do, and not mocked on SNL showing a president who does nothing. It seems we finally have a president who does a great deal, but does not rush into thoughtless acts that cost the country further misery. It’s time for us to back him in his efforts and work together in our country’s recovery.

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