Obama tried to finesse his response to the housing crash, rejecting a bailout of homeowners facing foreclosure in favor of a limited aid program and a bet that a recovering economy would take care of the rest. Millions of people lost their homes and the recovery never materialized. The economy is now the primary threat to Mr. Obamaâs bid for a second term, and economists and political allies say the Obama’s non-response to the housing crisis was the administrationâs most significant mistake.
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Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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I keep searching with disappointment and disillusion: Did he fulfill even *ONE* of his campaign promises????
Such delicious and appropriate irony. Clearly a significant mistake on an obviously critical issue – the security of the family and, especially for the compassionless, a profound blow to property/ownership rights.
Apparently this “strategy” was an extension of Bush’s clever “jobless recovery.” Obama expected the economy, the major part of which is driven by consumer spending, to recover based on spending of those fraudulently thrown out of their homes but (inexplicably) still willing/able to spend more – now based comfortably in their cars or heavy-duty cardboard boxes.
On this issue Obama chose not to play chess but Russian roulette – with one chamber empty.
President Obama is now centre right, which would have been extreme right-wingnut in Eisenhower’s day. As Obamabot Nobel Laureate Prof. Krugman recently pointed out, President Obama did a lot for the working class in Michigan. Elsewhere, not so much. President Obama fought for strip searches for any reason or for no reason, and the President’s absolute right to order the slaughter a dozen or so persons every day, anywhere, for any reason or for no reason Not much for a leftist to like. Except that President Obama has been frugal in his use of the military, killing as cheaply as possible. Osama, Qadhaffi, and the others killed by President Obama all proved to be soft, cheap targets from a military and fiscal perspective, although with huge diplomatic costs. It’s very difficult for a leftist, even a centre left voter, to justify voting for such a candidate.
But the alternative is a rabid far-right wingnut pair promising to end Medicare (of course, they might fail: Bush, Jr promised to end Social Security and failed); promising massive increases in military expenditures–having an Army or Marine infantry brigade march all the way to the goatherd’s hut and kill the occupants with rifles and flame-throwers, rather than using a single, inexpensive drone??? And promising to pay for all this by eliminating all support for the poor. You might have paid for your unemployment insurance, but get off your backside and go sell apples on the streetcorner, they need all those insurance premiums for other, more important projects (e.g., to pay for tax cuts of approximately 99% for the 1%).
I fear, in this case, Whimsical might possibly be right: distasteful as it is to vote to re-elect President Obama, the alternative seems far, far worse. Whimsical says that the hope that the election of R&R might finally incite a revolution is just the idle wishing of those who will, when their revolution fails to appear, only see years of far greater suffering than a second term of President Obama would have entailed.
So I have no answers at all. I don’t think there ARE any answers.
But I appreciate Mr Rall asking the right questions.
Face it, our federal level politicians will never ever care about the rest of us, because they are nothing like us.
Although I think Ted’s cartoon is a clever send-up of the situation faced by millions of Americans, he makes one mistake: Obama is not being evicted like you or I would be evicted. I don’t know what each reader’s situation is, but If I get kicked out of where I live, that’s it. I have nowhere to go. I will lose all the possessions I cannot carry in my hands or on my back. If given the courtesy of a couple days to prepare, I might be able to rent a storage locker and a van and tuck it all away, but that solution would only work for a couple of months. Because I’ve been unemployed for so long (with occasional temp assignments) I have pretty much no chance of finding another place to live.
Obama, on the other hand, will retire on a pension. He will receive free health care for the rest of his life. His children will never lack for anything because daddy’s name will open doors for them that 40 years of backbreaking effort by any of us wouldn’t manage.
For Obama, much like Shrub, the notion of eviction, the notion of being constantly in a state of panic over whether your job will disappear tomorrow, the notion of wondering how you’ll manage to retire when you become too old and weak to continue to work, etc., are simply not real. It’s like one of us today trying to comprehend the impact of polio. It just doesn’t register.
Obviously Obama won’t be evicted into poverty! I think most people understand that.
Ted,
Yes. Most people get it. Obama, Romney, etc. don’t. That’s the problem.
I wonder who the mystery guest at the RNC is gonna be. Perhaps Papa Bush?