Subscribe Feed (RSS)Dissent is a good thing. At least that is what we heard for the last seven years of the George W. Bush presidency.
Throughout Bush’s two terms, beginning almost immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Americans heard charges that “Bush knew” when it came to the attacks or that he purposely had information planted that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction at the ready. True, the Bush administration had its problems, but not once did our nation’s 43rd president call on Americans to send notes to him when someone disagreed with his policies.
Whether done quietly or noised from a megaphone, dissent is part of the American way of life. However, the recent White House campaign to "flag" emails sharing "disinformation" runs contrary to the first amendment.
Our current president, Barack Obama, was supposed to have been our nation’s first post partisan president, our country’s Healer In Chief. Obama ran a campaign based on change and managed to pull in most independents and plenty of Republicans as he swept to victory last November. People were glad that neither a Bush nor a Clinton would occupy the White House, believing that the first president of African ancestry would be the best hope for a new generation.
Quite frankly, the day that Barack Obama was sworn into office, he had his plate full. America was winding down a war in Iraq, but spooling up its conflict in Afghanistan. The economy was in tatters, having gone through a major market meltdown the previous September. Clearly, the young president had a lot on his plate, which meant that many Americans were more than willing to cut him some slack regardless of their political affiliation.
Even when a huge bail out was proposed, most of America stood fast with Obama. Following interventions for both Chrysler and General Motors and the continued aid to our big financial institutions, the president’s support remain strong. After all, many people believed that this “once in a lifetime” financial crisis required extraordinary intercession on the part of the federal government and were willing to give the president some much needed room in order to take action.
The president’s fast move to reshape the economy isn’t without its perils, however. While Bush seemed to spend like no Republican before him, Obama has abandoned all restraint and has driven the deficit up to record levels. Worse, his proposed health care plan has Americans worried, a 1017-page mostly unread bill that isn’t getting the scrutiny it deserves from members of Congress. It was only when Americans began to read the bill themselves, and object, did the president begin to see widespread opposition sprout.
Instead of seeing opposition for what it is – Americans showing concern about the program’s cost and interference in our personal lives – the president’s staff has decided to launch a campaign to discredit the opposition. Specifically, in an amazingly poor way of handling dissent, the White House website is asking supporters to report when they receive “an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems “fishy” to an official e-mail address: flag@whitehouse.gov.
Yes, the Obama administration has launched a snitch campaign and had this been President Bush doing the very same thing, he would have been excoriated by the media and rightly so. Instead, most of the liberal media lapdogs have kept silent or have joined the chorus.
The Obama administration would love to believe that this opposition is part of some sort of vast right wing conspiracy, but it isn’t. Instead, Americans of every political stripe and background are coming to the conclusion that our federal government is on a spending spree, one that could ultimately destroy our economy.
Most Americans believe that health care reform is the right way to go, but snitching on Americans who object to what is being proposed smacks of totalitarianism. It is time for the President Obama to hit the reset button in his quest for unbridled national health care and begin listening to the Americans he has promised to serve.
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Tags: Barack Obama, government policy, health care, health insurance, politics, President Obama, snitch campaign
Is The Obama Administration Fighting Against Americans?
August 17th, 2009 by Matthew C. Keegan | 3 Comments | Filed in CommentarySupporters of the president seem to be defensive over dissent.
Dissent is the American way of life. For more than two centuries, Americans have spoken out about what they believe, have challenged others in their beliefs and have accepted (though not always agreed with) the various points of views being espoused. Even when the battle is heated, most Americans acknowledge that the First Amendment found in the Constitution of the United States means that people can say pretty much what is on their minds, with very few exceptions to that rule.
President Barack Hussein Obama
One of the champions of the constitution is the executive branch, which consists of the president and vice-president of the United States of America. This branch, along with the judicial (U.S. Supreme Court) and legislative (Congress which includes the House of Representatives and the Senate), oversee our way of lives no matter how imperfect they are lived.
This past January, when Barack Hussein Obama ascended to the presidency and Joe Biden to the vice-presidency, the executive branch changed with some of the legislative branch changing too. A much more liberal group of politicians took over, people who were given a mandate to change the status quo by introducing new ideas which Americans were told would improve our way of life.
Some of what the Obama administration has had to deal with were inherited by the Bush administration including a recession, conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, financial woes and more. Clearly, a new administration had a lot on its plate, but with a vision the future, Congress and the president began to implement new policies which have driven our national debt into unchartered territory.
Indeed, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner recently petitioned Congress to lift the cap on our debt which currently stands at 12.1 trillion dollars. The debt ceiling is a discipline that Congress puts on the Treasury to hold back spending. But with both the legislative and executive branches planning to spend trillions of dollars more, that ceiling is likely to be pushed ever higher, putting a tremendous burden on taxpayers as well as leaving an awful legacy to our children and grandchildren to handle.
Americans, who have been largely silent about the rapid run up in national debt, are beginning to respond and their reactions have been swift, loud and confident. But it is this emerging group of informed citizenry that has the Obama administration unglued, who thought that they could push their agenda through without opposition. That reaction from Americans, people whom the president is sworn to protect and represent, has brought about several unpresidential responses from the White House including:
When the White House learned that some Americans were distributing what they have called “fishy” information about the planned national health care bill, White House staff asked people to finger their fellow Americans by forwarding these details to flag@whitehouse.gov. Unfortunately, that request evoked cries of “spying” by opponents and remarks by legal analysts who determined that the campaign was not only wrong, but possibly illegal.
The White House appears to be behind another campaign to discredit people who oppose Congress’ national health care bill, a 1017 page document that few of our political representatives had read. Terms such as “astro turf” have emerged to describe what some politicians consider to be an “artificial” campaign against national health care, something that the insurance companies or the GOP is behind, so they claim.
A top White House advisor, Van Jones, is behind a move to discredit Fox News’ Glenn Beck, an outspoken critic of the Obama administration. Jones, who is Obama’s green jobs czar (now thats a bit of controversy all by itself), has put pressure on Fox News advertisers to drop Beck. Geico is the first company who decided to withdraw their ads from Beck’s program. Oh, by the way, Jones is an avowed communist – not the best person to uphold our constitution!
Had former president George W. Bush even hinted at doing what the Obama administration has been doing against his fellow Americans, there would have been an uproar like never seen before with calls for Bush to apologize while Congress launched an investigation. But, with a man in office whose background includes Chicago-style thug politics, most of the media is silent, even complacent.
It is time for President Barack Hussein Obama to hit the reset button on his presidency by ordering his staff to cease and desist their attacks against Americans. Dissent, which is something that community organizer Obama was familiar with, is as American as apple pie. Now that his is our president, Mr. Obama needs to accept the will of the people even when then their viewpoints may run contrary to his own.
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Tags: Barack Hussein Obama, Congress, dissent, George W. Bush, Glenn Beck, Obama Administration, politics, U.S. Constitution, U.S. Supreme Court, United States of America, Van Jones, White House