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In all of the speeches that I heard in Charlotte last week, I didn’t hear anyone praise President Obama for what might be his greatest accomplishment – getting us through almost four years, without some terrible national tragedy.
Consider some of the things that happened during the previous Administration:
(1) The 9/11 attacks.
(2) The destruction of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
(3) The global financial crisis.
(4) Instigation of the war in Iraq.
(5) The bailouts.
(6) $4-a-gallon gasoline.
(7) The collapse of the real estate market.
(8) The collapse of Enron.
(9) The collapse of Arthur Andersen.
(10) The first mass-missile attack by a non-governmental organization (Hezbollah against Israel).
(11) The London and Mumbai terrorist attacks.
(12) North Korea developing a nuclear weapon.
(13) The SARS epidemic.
(14) The August 14, 2003 blackout, with 60 million people losing power.
(15) Anthrax-tainted letters in the mail.
Now, tell me what similar disasters occurred during the Obama Administration:
(0) None.
The Democratic Convention lauded President Obama for his achievements. The Republican Convention flailed President Obama for not achieving enough – or, in the case of universal healthcare, achieving too much. But maybe both perspectives are wrong. Maybe President Obama’s greatest triumph is giving us respite, some small measure of peace, from the steady drumbeat of utter disaster, trauma and carnage that preceded his Administration. President Obama has successfully avoided all the bad things that could have happened, but didn’t.
Naomi Klein’s 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine, explained what a corrosive effect that one crisis after another was having on people and society. And now, under President Obama, the shocks – even the aftershocks — are subsiding. That is a quite a feat, no?
Let us give credit where credit is due. Here is my suggestion for a winning slogan for President Obama in 2012, just as it was a winning slogan for President Harding in 1920: “A Return to Normalcy.” Or Normality. Whatever — you get the point.
Courage,
Alan Grayson
31 Comments
Your definition of a national tragedy is interesting with items like 10, 11, and 12 on your first list. Not only that, but the conditions that set the stage for many of the other items have remained unchanged, or have gotten worse.
And BTW, you left a few things off your second list.
I can’t think of a single Bush policy that is not still in place, or in most cases strengthened and enhanced and plenty of people are still being killed across the globe at the US’s behest and approval and with the US’s financial help.
Obama has started a bunch of covert wars, in fact he has shown that he loves war, as long as it is covert.
And don’t forget:
The BP oil spill disaster.
No banksters went to jail.
The Health Insurance Welfare Act.
Executive murder made official policy.
Indefinite detentions off even US citizens made official policy.
Dissenters are being persecuted and prosecuted more than ever.
Government secrecy has increased.
Fracking has become epidemic.
Food safety issues continue to rise.
There’s more, of course, but I have to move onto other things.
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/about/overview/index.html
•The official poverty rate in 2010 was 15.1 percent — up from 14.3 percent in 2009. This was the third consecutive annual increase in the poverty rate. Since 2007, the poverty rate has increased by 2.6 percentage points, from 12.5 percent to 15.1 percent.
•In 2010, 46.2 million people were in poverty, up from 43.6 million in 2009—the fourth consecutive annual increase in the number of people in poverty.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/18-million-u-households-struggling-feed-families-212702600.html
You and I apparently have different opinions on what “nothing horrible” constitutes. Millions of Americans have lost their homes. Millions remain jobless. 1 in 5 Americans are reliant on food stamps. Wages, in real dollar value are lower than they were in the 60s and the President is talking about cutting the safety net(and let me make this clear INCREASING the age is CUTTING, changing the formula for COLA is CUTTING, you can talk about “saving” until the cows come home but those of us with working brains that entered the workforce with INCREASED taxes that paid for the surplus that Congress spent, know better.) Young people have to enter adulthood with piles of debt or their parents have to forgo retirement so they can attend school in hopes that they won’t have to work two minimum wage jobs to get ahead. This is in one of the richest countries in the world and if you don’t consider the above tragedies a “national tragedy” then I guess we can safely assume you are one of the insular 1% who doesn’t have the same concerns as the rest of the country.
We do get your point, Mr. Grayson. Others are bringing some tragedies you don’t acknowledge, many of which are down to things Obomba didn’t do, as opposed to ‘did’. The lists are too long to bother with, but suffice it to say…the view from where we live must be significantly different than where you live (not just Florida, but privileged milieu.
‘Normalcy’: guffaw, chortle, snort!
Please read some of the Obomba slogans suggested here over the past two days. Yours…didn’t seem to make the list, somehow.
I considered the assassination of U.S. citizens minus due process pretty terrible news…but gee, what do I know? I’m not Alan Grayson.
Great list, timesthree.
But Alan front-loaded the idea of ‘domestic not-happenings’, of course.
Soooo… we might want to think about what his foreign policies vis a vis: drone assassinations, extending wars far past their past-due dates, still exporting toxic financial instruments through no fraud prosecutions, soon, the hideous TPP assault on the 99% for the signatory nations…fast-tracking meds, fast-tracking GMOs…ya know…stuff being done in *our names* to our brothers and sisters around the planet.
If Alan Grayson was, on principle, the lone hold out on the abominable Health Insurance
ReformFraud with no Public Option…He might have grandstanded on that principled stand and kept his seat in Congress.
Betcha he wishes for a do over on that vote.
Also: Israel and America have an irrevocable bond.
Which other foreign nations are irrevocably bonded with the USA?
If there are no others, why not?
Most of those would have happened under Gore too.
And a hearty thank yee, wendydavis, and also, more good remarks from thyself.
For some reason, when I see the “Courage” byline, I think of the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz.
I think this is just a silly article. Just because nothing bad happened doesn’t mean it’s because Obama did or did not do something; it means nothing happened. It has to do with luck more than anything else.
No Bush-Cheney indictments. Phew! That’s another national tragedy the hero in Whitehouse avoided hey Alan?
How about “The normality of letting torturers run free amongst us” Alan?
Time is short so the dem handlers are using the old Good Cop-Bad Cop ploy.
Tbogg launches Hellfire from his beloved Drones and then Alan dusts us with Sparkle Ponies.
How can we resist such persuasive puffery.
I’m surprised that grayson still keeps coming here to tout o’s “accomplishments. This must be from a template that he sends out to many blogs because he never seems to have the courage to come back to see what people are saying and respond to them. I don’t think that o or grayson has many friends here. I think that he should be posting on tbogg or Pam’s threads.
Anyone remember the 2010 “shellacking” (Obama’s term) of Democrats? The one that cost Alan Grayson his seat? The one that Obama did everything in his power to bring about?
One more question: did Mr. Grayson suddenly disappear for a few days after leaving Washington? Because this dismaying article makes me wonder about mind control…
Wasn’t the Foreclosure Fraud epidemic of 2009 on Obama’s watch? Or did I misunderstand and he wasn’t actually President that year?
Sad to see Alan, once thought a man of principle, now reduced to regurgitating the thinnest of Dem-propaganda gruel.
You have got to be kidding me with this bullshit, Grayson. Ye gods, what a tissue of horseshit. This is one of the weakest posts on FDL in a long while. To say this Rep-Dem comparison is simplistic is too kind.
“Maybe President Obama’s greatest triumph is giving us respite, some small measure of peace, from the steady drumbeat of utter disaster, trauma and carnage that preceded his Administration.”
Too bad he hasn’t done the same for millions of Middle Easterners.
“President Obama has successfully avoided all the bad things that could have happened, but didn’t.”
This angle was covered more successfully and accurately by Larry David on a recent Daily Show. However, David’s treatment was far more honest because it was parody.
And then there is the utter illogical construction that because some natural disaster, act of God, or similar catastrophe that is beyond the control of the President didn’t happen that he should then get the credit for averting that non-event. Cheney played up this bullshit for George W’s second term: Not another 9/11 means W prevented it. Grayson, I was not struck by lightening these last four years. Please send me a medal for my diligent efforts.
If Grayson and TBogg’s efforts are any indication, the Dems are as hollow and bankrupt as the Reps. What paucity of self reflection is required to keep thinking the Red Team and the Blue Team are different?
x2
Gasoline was $3.50 a gallon on the commodities market in 2011, and 2012; that translates to over $4.00 at the pump. Corn broke a record in 2011, before the drought, that means food was at a record high.
If you go to this website http://wp.me/p2vRlu-4 you will discover that the “same” commodity market manipulators who went into operation during the Bush Administration, went back into operation the day after Obama took office.
I’m shocked – SHOCKED!! – That Mr. Grayson has not been back to defend his pointless little points.
Another Dem drive-by – and we’re the victims.
What should Bush have done to prevent Hezbollah from attacking Israel? Invade Lebanon?
Just one little problem with Mr. Grayson’s line of argument: Barack Obama has ratified, either expressly or though inaction, most of the worst constitutional abuses of George W. Bush’s administration. And he can’t even claim that the GOP meanies on Capitol Hill made him do that.
Abrogation of the Constitution of the United States and the
rule of law. And I don’t mean only by not prosecuting Bush or members of the Bush administration.
Being the first Democratic President to initiate discussions of cutting Social Security and cutting fuel subsidies to the poor in the very first budget he submitted to Congress.
Selling out Americans to health insurers, big PHRMA and big health care providers.
Honoring George H.W. Bush with a medal and George W. Bush, by making him unofficial ambassador to Haiti.
Not only failing to prosecute anyone in the Bush administration, even to the point of sending letters to the bar associations of Yee and Bybee, but intervening when other nations wanted to prosecute them.
The Obama tax cuts.
Being the most secretive administration ever, and the hardest ever on whistleblowers.
Being the first Democratic President to initiate discussions of cutting Social Security and cutting fuel subsidies to the poor in the very first budget he submitted to Congress. Almost single handedly changing cuts to Social Security from the third rail of American politics to something all “reasonable” people support, and, in any event, an inevitablity. This is something no Republican could have done.
Publicly denigrating the left and allowing members of his white house to show the left contempt repeatedly.
Glorifying nationalism and militarism.
Throwing the peace movement under the bus repeatedly.
I’m sure many of us have a list. Those are some of the highlights on mine.
He was no better with the BP spill than Bush was with Katrina, but the nature of the two tragedies were different.
Wasted opportunity.
Wasted opportunity.
Wasted opportunity.
Credit where it is due indeed.
Can we please finally leave imaginary Presidencies and zombie Presidencies out of it?
I don’t know what would have happened if I had been President, let alone someone I never met. And neither does anyone else.
Ineed.
A couple of hightlights not yet mentioned in our responses: Bradley Manning (especially publicly declaring him “guilty”) and Julian Assange; Iran; harsher treatment of undocumented immigrants.
And for comparisons re the status quo, Obama did exactly the same thing for health insurers and Pharma as Cheney did for energy producers. The difference was that Obama got a pass, which is precisely the value of being the “good cop.”
Ratified Bush’s crimes? If only passive ratifications were Obama’s only faults! +
Obama has committed plenty of his own crimes.
And Bush may have been dolt enough and insensitive enough to joke at a White House Press dinner about no WMD, but Obama was dolt enough and insensitive enough to joke at a White House Press dinner about drone assassinations.
Hope and change, my ass.
Well, there is one upside. Obama has so discredited those terms by making them empty and hollow that no one else will be able to run on them without getting ridiculed.
Assange and Manning would come be part of “most secretive administration ever” and treatment of whistleblowers–and they are not the only two who have suffered under Obama because of whistleblowing.
We could also add the highly cynical, self serving treatment of gays in the military and a host of other things.
As I said, we each have our own lists and I gave only some highlights of mine.
I would, however, like to thank former Rep. Grayson for giving us another opportunity to recall why many of us may never vote Democratic again, barring a drastic change in the Party, let alone vote for Obama again.
See, most other posters think he came here as a shill, but maybe he was really just playing some of that three dimensional chess we’ve heard so much about. After all, he was supposedly a liberal, no?
Grayson posted this at Huffpo.
From member of Congress to blog spammer for Obama.
Perhaps you are right. :)