THE FIRST 50 DAYS
Barack Obama has been President for 50 days now so I though we should review how it has gone. My original thought was to wait for 100 days but so much has happened I thought we should do it now. Approval ratings remain high but W's ratings were very similar at this point of his Presidency and with an inept media I would expect nothing else. I will admit I concentrate on the negatives mainly because I fear what the social agenda will do to this nation.

Let's take a look at at the first priorities of the new President. His first order was to close Gitmo to protect the rights of the terrorists. Reports of torture were too much for Americans to stomach so, without another plan, he ordered the Guantanamo prison to be closed within one year, although a lawyer for the prisoners has claimed the abuse has "sharply" risen under the new President. The next executive order was to reverse President Bush's ban of funding international abortions. (Here's my bias spin) He took awa the right of the unborn and gave it to the terrorists. In addition to all this, when it was time to grant his first interview he choose a muslim media. Not sure this means anything but it is at least interesting.

One of the first tasks a new President must undertake is to choose his staff. This is the first opprotunity the President had to prove he meant he was going to change the way Washington worked. How many have been disqualified or removed their names because they did not pay their taxes? The Illinois Govenor was removed from office for his "pay to play" method of choosing the replacement for the President's vacant senate seat. I am not sure the Dems method of choosing cabinet positions is any different except Blago was a little more obvious about it. Under the President's plan, you have to clean your closet and pay the taxes you have cheated the American people of before you can be nominated. Believe it or not, one of those tax cheats is now the Treasury Secretary!

CAMPAIGN PROMISES: When choosing our leaders we go through a campaigning process to learn more about the candidates. The promises made during this process and their past accomplishments is all we have to make our decision. Since Mr. Obama had accomplished very little in public life we only had his words to go by.

- The public has become disenfanchised with our elected officials a lot because all the backroom deals so this President promised no backroom deals "the most transparent administration." Well, it took all but his first piece of legislation to break that promise.

- Also in the name of transparency, he promised a 5 day period between when a bill was introduced and voted on so eveyone could see what they were voting for, nothing hidden. Championing a theme of urgency, the Democrats did not even allow 24 hours for the Congress to read the 1071 page bill. 0 for 2.

- The public has also become disenchanted over the abuse of "earmarks", special projects for individual congressional districts, so he promised no earmarks. It has been reported that the same simulus bill included over 9,000 earmarks. (On this he pulled a Bill Clinton, if the facts don't support you just change a definition which is what he did to "earmarks.") 0-3 on the first bill.

- The thought of lobbyists buying votes has rubbed the American electorate wrong and has been pinned as a major problem of the Republican Party so Obama vowed no lobbyists on his staff. Guess what, he now has lobbyists on his staff and calls them "exceptions". Don't get me wrong, lobbyists have expertise so the use of lobbyists on his staff is probably good but still a broken promise.

- Candidate Obama was going to go through each bill "line by line" and weed out wasteful spending but after it was obvious the new spending bill was loaded with pork he admitted that the bill was not perfect. President Obama's first real opportunity to bring real change to Washington resulted in failure. Wasn't "Change" pretty much the entire theme of his campaign?

A lot of campaign promises are broken eventually. Those are little white lies but how do you defend standing in front of the American public and saying they passed a stimulus bill with no earmarks and will soon pass a budget the same. What about saying they have already identified $2 trillion in savings over the next 10 years and then later having to admit the savings were projecting the surge out long after President Bush had already scheduled the soldiers return and calling it a savings. The balance of the "savings" was actually a tax increase. Those are out and out lies and trickery.

The worse deception of all is his attempt to sell his liberal plans. "Our economy did not decline overnight." True enough but he claims we are paying for our sins of the past in the areas of energy, health care and education. The basis of this crisis is the housing market. Leading economists around, even democratic leaders in Congress have stated this but by redefining the problem he can conjure support for his radical plans. The time is to deal with the crisis at hand and not hurt the economy more by making drastic and costly changes. Even some of his strongest supporters, like billionaire Warren Buffet, have stated this.

Let's talk economy. Yes, the economy was bad and geting worse. I contend that the election of Obama was all but written back in August 2008 after the primaries were over and since then the market has been cut in half. Every time the White House has told the public of their plan to help with the stimulus plan, the banks, housing the market immediately took a deep drop. Bottom line: the ones whose job it is to predict the economic future do not like the way the President plans to manage the economy. President Obama has spent so much time and effort reflecting blame for the problem that his doom and gloom rhetoric has amounted to little confidence for investors.

As discussed earlier, the stimulus plan was more about initiating liberal policies than it was about stimulating the economy. We need to have people spending money to get the economy moving but the difference between the Democrat plan and the Republican plan is who is spending the money. Reps. think the American people should decide how their money is spent and the Dems. believe that government should. My biggest problem with this is that the government gets to decide who will succeed and who will fail not the free market and that, my friends, is just wrong.

The theme of this administration so far has been "never waste a crisis". The Democrats credit President Bush with originating this theme but the Dems perfected it. As I have stated in previous posts, this is the perfect liberal storm. Blame everything on the previous administration and use the crisis to make all the socialist changes they want. Waste not want not is exactly what they have done so far. So far this administration has used it power to pay back supporters and initiate moves that will ensure the Democrats power for a long time to come, and to distract the media, the White House targeted Rush Limbaugh.

Recently, the proud socialist President of Venezuelan, Hugo Chavez offered a bit of advice to President Obama on how to solve all the country's economic problems. He urged him to continue what he is doing and follow the path of socialism. (You can't make this stuff up.) I think Obama's response was something like, "I'm way ahead of you, comrad."