Posted: 3/10/2009 7:31:57 PM EDT
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So these are some statements Obama has made, and my thoughts on them. This is just a sampling of what I have heard in the news or read online, I didn't target anything in particular. E-mailed it to my state Representative, too, which is why I kept the language polite.
"This is America. We don't do what’s easy, we do what’s necessary." - President Barack Obama What happened to doing what’s right? Doing what’s necessary...Hitler did what was necessary to conquer most of Europe. China does what is necessary to suppress free speech. Ahmadinejad of Iran does what’s necessary to provoke the West. If it is necessary to begin euthanasia of anyone over the age of 60 to fix Social Security, will we do that? America has achieved greatness by giving empowered citizens liberty and freedom of choice, and we have elected officials who do what is right, not what is necessary. The difficulties and criticisms that our country faces by making the morally correct choices over the politically expedient choices are the sacrifices we make as Americans to preserve our great country’s integrity. The failure of our elected leader to understand that key difference gives me grave misgivings about the direction the nation is taking. "It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda –– and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology." - President Barack Obama, regarding embryonic stem cell research It is our ideology that defines us, because human existence is based not only on fact, but perception as well. While we must not allow ideology to distort science, we must not pursue sciences which violate our ideology. If we do, we are no better than Dr. Aribert Heim, the Nazi's Dr. Death, Japan's Shirō Ishii, or the members of the Tuskegee study from our own United States. I believe that life begins at conception, and so I must oppose embryonic stem cell research that uses stem cells from aborted fetuses. "It's a consensus between a majority of Americans who say, "You know what, maybe some of us are comfortable with gay marriage right now and some of us are not. But most of us do believe that gay couples should be able to visit each other in the hospital and share health care benefits; most of us do believe that they should be treated with dignity and have their privacy respected by the federal government." - President Barack Obama I agree with the President, but I'd like to state my reasoning more clearly. Marriage is a religious bond, and has been for thousands of years, long before the founding of this country. The recognition of marriage by any level of government therefore violates the First Amendment. If, for any reason, the government wants to provide advantages to any two people who choose to associate themselves, then that association should not discriminate based on race, gender, age, or religion. It should be open to everyone as a civil union. "But because we haven't updated technology in the rest of the health care industry, a single transaction still costs up to twenty-five dollars - not one dime of which goes toward improving the quality of our health care. This is simply inexcusable, and if we brought our entire health care system online, something everyone from Ted Kennedy to Newt Gingrich believes we should do, we'd already be saving over $600 million a year on health care costs." - President Barack Obama I agree with this to a degree, but I do not place the blame entirely on the health or insurance industries. All too often the medical industry fails to take advantage of simple office technologies because HIPAA requirements make their use cost prohibitive. If the government built, on its own, a secure online records repository that was privately managed and controlled, then medical facilities would simply have to interface with the central repository. Records could be encrypted in such a way that only the patient could release them, protecting privacy even in the event of a data theft. The government would have oversight and responsibility, without having direct access to the records (which could lead to abuse by the government). Only by accepting liability and enforcing its own rules can the government make something of this magnitude work. "We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things." - President Barack Obama I find this highly offensive, on a personal level, a religious level, and a national level. Our country was founded by men whose maturity level will never be approached, much less achieved, by President Barack Obama. Throughout the two centuries of our existence, brave and courageous men have demonstrated their maturity with their own blood. Although our Constitution is young, it was based on the philosophies and beliefs of the greatest minds of human history. Since the founding of our nation, we have stood strongly for what we believe, for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. To take this Biblical verse, meant to be applied on a personal level, out of context and apply it to our country should deeply shame any politician, most of all our elected President, who just called his country childish. "... and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you." - President Barack Obama President George W. Bush said it first, and better: "Our nation, this generation, will lift the dark threat of violence from our people and our future. We will rally the world to this cause by our efforts, by our courage. We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail." I think the Democratic Party has an unspoken line after either: '...but not if it won't win us enough votes.' Statements by both Presidents speak of unwavering determination, but only President Bush was strong enough to persevere in the face of a plummeting approval rating, and seemed to understand that the right course was not necessarily the easiest. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, the Greatest Generation drafted 10 million men and sacrificed over 400,000 lives to see justice done and to achieve peace. The death tolls from Pearl Harbor and the World Trade Center attack are eerily similar, and yet many politicians are crying out that the death toll from the completely volunteer military is too high at just over 4,000...and they have said that since the toll was fewer than 1,000. Has justice been devalued so much? Is true peace really so cheap? With death tolls dropping for both our military and the Iraqi people, I do believe that we are ready to begin slowly withdrawing troops from Iraq, but it has been the result of years of hard work and dedication by the military. Pullout dates were already established prior to the inauguration of President Obama, and I sincerely hope that history recognizes that the Bush administration did win this war. I believe that the war in Afghanistan will play out similarly once we return our focus there, thanks to the hard work of our Armed Forces. "Despite resources that are unmatched anywhere in the world, we have let our grades slip, our schools crumble, our teacher quality fall short and other nations outpace us," - President Barack Obama What President Obama omits in this speech is the fact that we enable high school dropouts, through welfare and social programs which he claims are necessary, to live a life in this country that any third-word citizen would gladly work hard for. It is not the schools or the teachers that fail; it is the ambition of the students to climb to greater heights that is lacking. Benjamin Franklin said "I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it." President Obama wants it both ways, but that simply will not work. Deny all federal benefits to people who are capable of receiving a high school diploma but refuse to get one. Include material on the benefit of continued education, and what a person needs to do to get into a college, as part of the middle school and high school curriculum. You will see dropout rates plummet and college enrollment skyrocket. While I'm on the subject of education, as long as he is reforming health care technology, how about using a system similar to the Kindle from Amazon to replace the highway robbery that is the textbook industry? A Kindle costs about $400, and can store every textbook a student will ever need. It is better for the environment, and it would allow students access to the latest and most accurate educational material. Over the course of a student's life it could save a school millions of dollars. It would also mean the students would always have the resource to return to if they need a refresher. The federal government could sponsor free curriculum for teachers at all levels to use. The textbook publishing industry might take a hit, but for far too long they have been preying on the obligation of students to buy their material, and with technology advancing as quickly as it is, there is no excuse for them not to be prepared. Hope you enjoyed the read, just my opinion. 12 |
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May I add my favorite?
"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them....So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." |
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Nice one!
Keep the favorites coming, I'm looking for more good lines to call him out on in my letters to Congress. I've just sent the one so far, but I plan on keeping it up until my ideology gets his factual self removed from office. I'm focusing on statements he has made since his term in office started, I'm avoiding using campaign lies. Cheers, 12 |