JMO - My Political Observation

The pundits and everyone else does it. Give their view of the political climate and election, so why not me. It's not like I have anything important, critical or more so intelligent to say, just my view from here. So, with things beginning to heat up after October 1st and we're down to a month to the mid-term election, what are my observation of the Democrats in this Congressional session (2009-2010) and President Obama?

Well, for one, President Obama didn't really believe what he campaigned on in 2008, in the primaries and in the election. Not saying he lied, but saying it was campaign politics which itself is an automatic form of what they now call untruths. It's not what they say, it's what they will actually do, and Obama has shown he's no better and even worse than previous presidents as candidates and as President. Really?

Well for one, he's almost in bed with the energy companies as almost everyone one in Congress (remember he came from there). He got campaign money from the oil industry including BP. He wasn't about to come down hard on BP for their incompentence, they'd pull their money from him and the Democrats, and he needs their money for 2012.

He's as much as a miltiaristic president as GW Bush himself, only he won't start any war, yet anyway. But the Department of Defense is will embedded in the White House and his advisors. His Directors for National Intelligence have been and are military officers who favor an inflated view of the terrorsim threat and favor an expanded intelligence community out of control and costing too much.

While we're getting out of Iraq, but noting he hedged his bets there, he's escalating the war in Afghanistan under the guise of fighting terrorism. We won't get out of there for a long time. He wants to pass that war off to the next president so he doesn't appear to be less of a "war" president. All the words don't and won't disguise the favoritism for the military at the expense of everything else.

And he's escalated the war into Pakistan, shades of Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam War, all under the same type of guise Johnson used them, chasing the enemy where the enemy goes and lives. Nothing new, only we're smarter now to see through it. But Pakistan is playing their own game with our money.

While he promised to rein in the intelligence community and restore civil rights, he's done more to restrict our rights and done more to increase the intelligence community than Bush could ever think to do. He's discovered information is power and that information comes from intelligence, even if it's against American citizens. To him it's ok in the fight against an invisible enemy, the same one he criticized Bush for he's now using.

He promised the public option and a better healthcare plan, and while we got a good bill, it wasn't what he promised, minus the public option, minus women's reproductive healthcare rights, and so on, namely all the progessive issues. It wasn't the best he could have gotten. He pandered to the Republicans who kept moving the compromise line to where it was a center-right bill for corporations with some rights for people who really need affordable healthcare.

He sold out his own base to the Republicans, knowing he would have to jettison his promises. He didn't want a great win, he just wanted a pseudo-good win. And he got it at the expense of his own base and many of us.

As for the Democrats in the Senate, enough has been said, here and elsewhere. They're cowards, and worse, they're afraid of their own political shadow. They were verbally and politically pummelled under Bush and the Republicans in Congress (2001-2006) but they're worse now even after winning both houses. They've done less than previous Senate's.

I won't agree they deserve to lose control in the November election, because they'll just go back to being the minority afraid of their own shadow to even think to use the same tactics the Republicans have and are using against them. They want everyone to play nice knowing no one does, especially the Republicans. I will argue that Harry Reid, if he doesn't lose and the Democrats retain control of the Senate, needs to be replaced.

He's the epitome of their failures to push and do what they should to help Americans and America and damn the Republicans. He's a Washington insider when the Democrats need a passionate, outspoken leader to stand up and speak the truth and reality about the Republicans. He's not it. Americans who are democrats want a voice in the Senate, a loud, eloquent, honest one. He's not it.

The House is better and the Democrats should retain control. At least they have done a lot, only to be stopped by the Senate. But maybe it's time they challenged the Senate Democrats to step up. Americans want a functioning Congress with the party in control actually doing thing and passing bills, not playing polticial games with the media.

Sound bites don't pay the bills of the many Americans who need real help, not bills for corporations, but bills for jobs, debt management, housing relief, unemployment and education funds, and so on down the line. Democrats are the party for that, but with both parties in both houses in Congress owned, with few exceptions, by corporations, the Democrats are no different than the Republicans.

So, that's what I've observed to date.