The Disgrace that is Obama

Barack Obama put his foot in it, some are saying intentionally, after he commented on the Gates arrest during yesterday's press conference on health care. For those who don't know, here's a little background. Henry Louis Gates, a professor of African American Studies at Harvard in Cambridge Mass. locked himself out of his own house and and attempted to break in. A passerby who did not live in the neighbourhood and did not know the professor, phoned police to report suspicious activity. Gates' house had been broken into earlier this month. Two officers responded, a Sgt. James Crowley and his African American partner (who was not named in the news reports I read). They asked for Gates' ID, which he produced, which was confirmed by university police. Just as Crowley and the other officer were leaving, Gates went on a tirade, calling Crowley a racist and saying that the Cambridge police were racial profiling. Screaming and making a scene in front of the whole neighbourhood, the two officers arrested him for disturbing the peace. Yet he had been burgled before. I'd be happy knowing the police were protecting my property. Of course Mr. Gates just happens to be a friend of Obama's. During the conference, Obama admitted he did not know the details of the case, but when on to say that the Cambridge police force had acted "stupidly" and said that racial profiling was still a major issue in America.

The one of the most critical rules of politics is that you should never get involved in active cases when you're in such a position of power, especially if you just admitted you didn't know all the facts. Everyone in America is innocent until proven guilty. Obama's comments on TV Wednesday effectively reversed that; assuming that Crowley was guilty of racial profiling. Another ironic twist was that Crowley had taught a course in how to prevent racial profiling at the police academy. The Cambridge police force has so far stood by their Sargent and Crowley himself has refused to apologize to Gates despite calls from Boston area African American leaders to do so. Obama has now backtracked and has offered his own apology to Crowley after the media got wind of the gaffe. After listening to some talk shows on satellite radio, it seems that many Americans feel Obama made the comments intentionally to detract attention away from his controversial health care bill. Instead of the media picking that apart, they instead jumped on the racial profiling story. I wouldn't put it past him as this is a vary common political tactic that is studied in political science circles.

Barack Obama is shaping up to be a failure of a president. His current approval rating stands at 55%, much lower than the 70%+ he had just after he entered office. In fact, this is actually lower than George W. Bush's approval rating over the same first six months time period. If his health care plan is passed, from what I'm hearing it is estimated that Obama would be responsible for adding $1 trillion to America's national debt. It already stands at $11.6 trillion as of July 24th. To put this in perspective, Canada's annual gross domestic product, the total value of all goods and services produced per year in this country, is $1.5 trillion. It would take Canadians almost eight years worth of production to pay of America's debt assuming we didn't spend our money on anything else. The number is mind boggling. So far Obama has risked trade wars with his NAFTA neighbours over Buy America, has enacted a disastrous cap & trade system to combat climate change, and has generally done little to help alleviate the recession in that country, or address Iraq and Afghanistan. The costs of his two tier health system that he hopes to enact are already spiralling out of control even before the bill has been passed. It has Republicans and moderate Democrats worried. To cover the costs, Obama has suggested that America's top 1% earners may have to pay extra fees, read taxes, to pay for the program. Estimates peg that tax rate to rise to well over 50% of their incomes, higher than even Canada and France. Average Americans worry about this because many still hold onto the belief in the American Dream. More likely, they fear it will filter down as costs go even higher until middle Americans are paying tax rates equal to or higher than Canada and many European nations. Studies have shown that of the 15% of Americans who lack health care, only a small number of those are people who do not qualify for insurance. Many question the value of such a program, paying so much to take care of a few really needy and the rest who are lazy or have too much bravado to think that they don't need to be insured; while on top of that paying for their own private insurance. Interestingly, this is starting to sound like that whole "premium" thing we have to pay on top of regular income taxes to boost health funding. Obama is the black version of Dalton McGuinty after all. Many thought Obama would provide change to America but all he has proven to many is that he's just another silver tongued tax & spend liberal. Still, the media coddles him. In fact, the Gates affair has been one of the rare events where the media has actually come out critical of something Obama has done. Even notable liberal current affairs comedian John Stewart railed against the president on the Daily Show. Obama is still gambling on his race to prop him up but that is starting to erode away as people realize how disastrous his policies have been. Others still choose to blame Bush, who did create a lot of the problems. However, Obama has only aggravated them through his policies rather than bring the "change" he promised. I haven't even touched on the weakness of his near non-existent foreign policy. Will America's first half-black president be it's first one termer as well? Hopefully yes if Americans want to walk away with something left in their wallets.