IN A FAIRLY RECENT Political Theater section of the Washington Times, former Times Editor Joseph Curl unleashed what I consider to be one of the fiercest — if not the fiercest — political attacks on the Oval Office I have ever read in a major American new outlet. In this fairly short editorial, Curl began the first paragraph thusly: “President Obama came in with big promises. But he turned out to be a small man.”
Curl continued: “The 2012 campaign was the most disgusting display of this divisive president. ‘You didn’t build that,’ he said to anyone who built a company, opened a restaurant, worked hard to get ahead. ‘Make them pay their share,’ he said about Americans who pay 85 percent of the taxes in this country.”
It begs the question: Has America ever been more divided? White versus black, man versus woman, gay versus straight, wealthy versus middle class — everywhere, this president has sought to divide, and thus to conquer. “He never reaches to unite Americans, especially when there is a crisis,” Curl wrote. “Throughout the debate over health care reform, this president castigated Republicans as men and women who care not a whit about the average middle-class family. Forget that they love their spouses and children just as much as Democrats, those horrible Republicans, he said, really just want to see anyone but the rich die without proper health care.”
In the run-up to the midterm elections in 2010, the president urged Hispanics to “punish” their “enemies.” As to people who don’t think like him, he said simply, “Those aren’t the kinds of folks who represent our core American values.” Read: They aren’t American like you and me, because they don’t think like us. Don’t embrace our differences, hate them —and “punish” them at the polls. The smallness flowed right into the second term. In a petty news conference in January, the president claimed the Republicans were holding the economy for “ransom,” and that they plan on “crashing the economy.” He called them “absolutist” and charged they are “consumed with partisan brinkmanship.”
As he did in the famous Cairo speech in 2009, the president continuously launches into a serial castigation of this nation and the Republican Party. His disdain seems to have no end. Curl’s searing oped seems to have opened the door just a little to a media awakening, refreshing to see after nearly five years of total media protection of Barack Obama. I can relate personally to the fact that it takes a lot of professional bravery these days to take on this White House. Careers have been destroyed for far less than what Joe Curl wrote.
Yet certain things need to be highlighted. President Obama seems to be asking us to forget that for nearly five years, the unemployment rate has hovered at or above 7.5 percent; real wages for American workers are in steep decline; the national debt has grown to an unsustainable level of nearly $17 trillion; economic growth has been negligible; and we may be on the verge of another financial crisis and stock market collapse as the Federal Reserve attempts to wind $3 trillion of debt bought from ourselves. This not being enough, the president shows disdain for concerns over how four Americans were murdered in Libya, for why the Obama administration presented a false narrative of the Libya terrorist attack, for who in the Internal Revenue Service directed the policies of harassment against conservative groups, and for why the incompetent attorney general maintains his position after lying to Congress regarding surveillance of journalists.
Maybe some are foolish enough to ask why our enlightened president wants us to forget his dismal economic performance and his administration’s rampant corruption. The answer is simple: He has identified what he feels is the most important issue of our time: climate change. The president wants us to believe that destruction of the U.S. energy industry will make the world a better place in which to live. He makes no mention that since 2006 the United States has reduced carbon emissions more than any other country in the world — nor does he mention that current U.S. carbon emissions are now at 1992 levels. He claims to fight for the middle class but cares little that they will bear the burden of higher electricity and gas prices, as well as increased unemployment. This remains a war against fossil fuels that in the end will bolster the economies of China and India and weaken ours.
Despite obscene economic and foreign policy failures, a scandal-a-day administration and policies that result in a weaker America, this president remains the darling of the media. Unfortunately for the media and the president, history will surely reveal Mr. Obama as one of the most incompetent American leaders in recent history, and perhaps of all time. Joe Curl’s words may just be the alarm that awakens the media to that irrefutable fact.
Jim Pugh is a Benicia resident.
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Good commentary Jim. I couldn’t agree more. Can’t wait till we get that buffoon out of office so we can fix the damage he has done to America. Hope its not too late!
Four years of Hillary (at least) will nicely cement all the wonderful things our excellent president is accomplishing. Get used to the idea!
Jim you are right on as usual. Stay the course Jim. It is very important. We shall remove most of the nay sayers in 2014 in the Senate. We shall overcome all this agenda driven crowd that only cares about themselves and not the place that America belongs and has always been looked up to. At the TOP.
Obama didn’t say “You didn’t build that” in a simple statement – he said NONE of us can do much of anything without the support of many people and entities. It’s interesting that the guy who promoted that poster had received over $8 million in FEDERAL contracts. This is an example of real divisiveness – taking words out of context and repeating them often enough so that people think they are complete and true. And could SOMEONE please repeat the reminder that NO president can do much of anything in the economic sphere without the cooperation of the House of Representatives? It is in the US Constitution and maybe if someone repeats THAT enough, people will come to accept it. I’m not saying the current President is that successful. Indeed, I am disappointed in much he has not done; however, to blame him for the current slower-than-we’d-like economic recovery is bogus. At least he stopped the hemorhraging created by 2 unfunded wars, a “let’s get in bed with pharma” and “let’s bail out those wonderful big banks” that he was presented with in 2008.
Great comment J. Especially on the “You didn’t build that” rehash. Ever think of writing your own column? Seems that there may be at least one open slot available at the BH.
News flash: Obama’s been in bed with the rich “fat cats” since long before he was elected in 2008. They’re the ones who got him elected!
Don’t blame Obama, Herb. Blame our deteriorated, compromised and corrupted system wrongly called a “democratic republic” instead of the sickly, plutocratic oligarchy it is, ruled not by “the best” but by the most self-satisfied, uncaringly alienated but insecure worriers about their property and status that ever existed in history.
The only thing worse than a sore loser, is an ungracious winner.
Democrats are both, as they still whine about the 2000 election, when Bush and his side prevented the steal of the ages. They also still use the ‘Mission Accomplished’ slander (see Petr Bray’s comment last week). Point of fact: Bush never said that and in fact delivered the opposite mention to the heroic crew of the USS Lincoln, who the Demoncrats, as well as their supporters, willingly insult each time they parrot this comment like mindless lapdogs.
The ‘47%’ statement was pounded to death this past election, even though 47% do not pay federal income taxes.
Now this whine about ‘you didn’t build that’ is laughable.
DDL, you never built a deep-well pump by yourself, in your life. I at least worked on their brass impellers, back before you were born, debarring machined castings with hand-files at the Pomona Pump Company, owned then by Fairbanks-Morse. Willful misunderstanding of “you didn’t build that” by Republicans is dump-shoutable! Beneath laughable! It manifests the inflated egotism of fragmented “individualists.”
“deburring” not debarring.
DDL, you never built a deep-well pump by yourself, in your life
You have no idea what I have done Robert.
Did you ever work 12 hour days in Taft California, breaking apart horsehead pumps in 105 degree heat?
Have you ever worked a 30 day start-up installing 1500 HP submersible pumps in the gold country of Carlin, Nevada in the dead of winter?
Have you ever worked to install a 2000 HP PD pump in the hills outside of Lazaro Cardenas, Michioacan?
All of that means nothing though because, of course, no one ever does anything ‘all by themselves’. And all of that is pure BS when it comes to FDR’s line about ‘you didn’t build that’.
The line is meant to diminish, not unite.
The line is meant to promote dependence, while tearing down independence.
The line is meant to sucker in the dependers, while rejecting those who seek to achieve.
The line is crap and you fell for it. No surprise there.
You are exactly wrong about that line. That line means “We’re all in this together.” It’s about strengthening community. It’s a quintessentially Anerican sentiment.
Why would anyone choose to live in Taft? That’s where things go to die.
Well, we all make choices to live or NOT on a raft,
or go downstream and check out Taft…California that is.
Now I’ve never been there, but I’ve worked in a lot of places,
and had to share labor with a lot of strange faces…
Many as challenging as this here Slumber Party,
where the opinions are diverse and the laughs are always hearty…
And the overall weightiness is like a gnat’s bowel gas in outer space…
so I never get too confused that what we might say
will ever alter this earth from its orbit in that outer space either…
©Peter Bray 8/17/13 All rights reserved
It makes me very happy, Dennis, to hear you did some real work under tough conditions somewhere besides at a drawing board in a high-rise cubicle. But, that’s not what’s given you a reverse template on nearly everything good in the world.
Correction to the above:
I stated: And all of that is pure BS when it comes to FDR’s line about ‘you didn’t build that’.
FDR never specifically said: ‘You didn’t build that”
FDR did express similar sentiments, as did Elizabeth Warren. Obama then used their thoughts to diminish the importance of the individual.
Even the ‘fact checkers’ who cover for him state:
”There’s no question Obama inartfully phrased those two sentences”
Thomas, Simon, Petr, Benician;
Clearly none of you read what I said, as each of you missed this part:
All of that means nothing though because, of course, no one ever does anything ‘all by themselves’.
This is regarding……….?
Uh…I think that was just a mal-formed blip on his radar screen..he presumed somebody was listening in to his dolphin screams while sleeping…Sorry, I have other things to do…Good luck with this exciting chapter in Slumber Party Rhetoric…they usually wind down this way when the last cookies and milk are spilled or eaten…pb
DDL:
Yeah, to want to READ what you said it must have some importance other than right-wing tra-la-la–Good luck with that…this Public Service Announcement is coming to you from the bottom of your e-trash pile–Go figure the size of a pumphead on the outskirts of Taft, CA…Class dismissed: no Quiz, no Final, no Midterm, No Credit—pb
DDL:
Hey, you placed me on your SPAM list, so why do you care what I say to the public? Can’t have it both ways, Amiga!–pb
Hey, you placed me on your SPAM list,
No I did not. I placed you in my trash list. Spam is a step up from that.
Jim, when you’re researching a column, you’re best advised to stay away from the Washington Times…which is nothing more than a propaganda sheet for the GOP.
Naturally, Pugh takes the “you didn’t build it” quote entirely out of context. He knows he does, but runs with it anyway. And, he blames Obama for our nation’s divide…as if the explosion of hate talk radio, the GOP propaganda network (Faux) and a Republican party that put politics over country (#1 priority was making Obama a one-term president at a time when we were in an economic free fall) had anything to do with it.
Pugh longs for the days of a Republican in the White House which, last we saw, resulted in two unpaid for wars, two unpaid for tax cuts for the wealthy and the economic collapse since the Great Depression. The result…a spectacular increase in the budget deficit…suddenly became the anti-Obama rallying cry…as if the GOP, who were entirely responsible for it, had nothing to do with it (BTW, we’ve just seen the greatest ever reduction in the deficit…any righties gonna give Obama credit? Of course, not). We were losing 700,000 jobs a month when Obama took over. Remember that? Obama took us back off from the ledge. Unfortunately, an opposing party that rejects anything Obama supports, for the sole reason that it might help him politically…never mind what’s in the best interests of the nation…has prevented a more robust recovery.
If Obama had lost to either McCain or Romney, we’d likely be at war again…and the economy would revert back to its death spiral.