The bare truth
I just have to say that I'm pretty tired of hearing the same ol' BS from the Republicans that we've heard for most of the last decade. That our Republican senators are so partisan, so politically motivated, and so full of their own sense of power and worth that they'd allow their own country to fall apart, literally and figuratively, just for the satisfaction of having thwarted the opposing political party, disgusts me.
Fortunately, since Jan. 20, my fellow Americans and I have someone on our side:
"In the last few days, we've seen proposals arise from some in Congress that you may not have read but you'd be very familiar with because you've been hearing them for the last 10 years, maybe longer. They're rooted in the idea that tax cuts alone can solve all our problems; that government doesn't have a role to play; that half-measures and tinkering are somehow enough; that we can afford to ignore our most fundamental economic challenges -- the crushing cost of health care, the inadequate state of so many of our schools, our dangerous dependence on foreign oil.
"So let me be clear: Those ideas have been tested, and they have failed. They've taken us from surpluses to an annual deficit of over a trillion dollars, and they've brought our economy to a halt. And that's precisely what the election we just had was all about. The American people have rendered their judgment. And now is the time to move forward, not back. Now is the time for action."
-- President Barack Obama,
speaking at the Energy Dept., Feb. 5, 2009
Thanks, Mr. President. Most of the Republicans are not going to listen, but we are. America is. And we'll remember who was working for who in the end.
4 comments:
I've been reading a number of books on FDR and he had such a similar plight of reactionaries and conservatives fighting everything he wanted to do to get the Country out of the Great Depression.
His Fireside Chats were unparalleled and some of his success was because he connected with people.... I certainly hope President Obama does the same - connect.
It really is what Obama seems the best at, Bill. Connecting with people. Inspiring people. Making them feel good about themselves and hopeful about the future. I'd like him to do more of it, but before I get impatient, I have to remind myself that he really has been a little busy these last two weeks. He's an admirer of FDR too, so I have a feeling we'll be hearing a lot more from him very, very soon.
He really is quite good at speaking plainly and bluntly, and that dose of hard, tough-love reality is what America - and the rest of the world - needs now. We've lived in a hazy, false dreamland for far too long, and ignored the creeping shadows that turned it from happy dream to nightmare. We've come to depend on the desperate ideal of ignorance being bliss, not wanting to think about the fact that even if we turn our faces away from something we don't like, it's still there and the longer we ignore it the bigger and nastier it gets.
We've needed a wake up call for a long time now, and we're finally getting it. And Obama is the one shaking and smacking the ones who just don't want to wake up.
Smack 'em harder, Obama! You'll get through to 'em, or the nightmares finally will. Either way, they're waking. Slowly, but we're waking.
It sounds like leadership, doesn't it? I feel as though I've been letting out eight years worth of an exhale for the past couple of weeks. The inspirational quality of Pres. Obama's (God, I love typing that) leadership is so terrifying to the others that they accuse us of falling for pretty words, and yet, it seems to me that I'm seeing some action to back them up.
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