Why Would You Vote for this guy? Volume 1

Dear Friends,

Last week, President Obama announced that he will run for re-election in 2012.  I decided that in fairness, I would try to list the reasons that I would vote for him and not vote for him.  So far the only reason that I have come up with to vote for him is that he will undoubtedly be less terrible than the Republican candidate.  To be honest, I am seriously considering dropping that as a reason to vote for somebody.

In any case, here is a first in what I am afraid will be a series of posts listing some reasons why I would not vote for President Obama.  This particular list comes from a review of the front section of The New York Times today.  It was frightening how many reasons just one day of news could produce.

1. "Pakistan Pushes for Drastic Cuts in C.I.A. Activity" (here)
President Obama has expanded the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  In the box in The New York Times that lists the dead American soldiers in the Afghanistan war, there were five more names today.
President Obama has continued the Bush policy of using contractors and C.I.A. personnel to fight wars that he wants to hide and pretend do not exist.
President Obama has continued the failed Bush policy that you can win the hearts and minds of people by killing them with drone attacks.

2. "Iraq Steps Back Onto the Regional Stage, and Away From the United States" (here)
Despite President Obama's promise to end the war in Iraq and get our troops out.  They are still there, and Secretary of Defense Gates has indicated out loud that they will likely be there after the deadline for withdrawal promised by President Obama.
President Obama has continued another failed Bush policy of lying to the American people both directly and by omission.
President Obama continues to increase the deficit by fighting two wars that cannot be won while he celebrates the largest single cut in the budget ever.  Of course the cutting like the fighting of the war falls on the poor.

3. "Switzerland: Access to Prisoner Sought" (here)
President Obama has defended the unconscionable treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of leaking documents to WikiLeaks.  Now President Obama has denied a United Nations torture investigator access to Pfc. Manning.  Denying respectable independent investigators access to prisoners is what dictators and despots do, not what the President of the United States should do.

4. "Dozens of Meltdowns Recorded" (here)
Here are a couple of quotes from the article:

nuclear reactors worldwide are suffering such accidents about eight times more frequently than the United States’ safety goal, an American physicist said.

 Given that in the history of nuclear energy, 582 reactors have operated for a total of 14,400 years (counting each year of operation by one reactor as a reactor-year), a core-damage accident has happened once every 1,309 years of operation. With 439 reactors now operating worldwide, the rate would yield an accident an average of once every three calendar years.

In contrast, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has set a goal of no more than one accident per 10,000 years of collective operation. A corollary goal was that no more than one in 10 of those should result in significant off-site releases of radioactive material.
The commission’s position is that all American reactors operating today meet that goal, but the conclusion is reached by calculating the probability of various failures and not by actual experience.

President Obama supports $8 billion of subsidies for building new nuclear power plants in the United States.
President Obama refuses to admit the reality that nuclear power plants are not safe and that we have no place to store the spent fuel.  If it can happen in Japan, it can happen in the United States.
President Obama has adopted the same arrogance about United States superiority that we experienced with President George W. Bush.

5. "Democrat in Missouri Breaks Ranks to Oppose Law's Insurance Mandate" (here)
President Obama has lost any kind of control over the party that he is suppose to lead.  A state attorney general argues to destroy President Obama's major accomplishment of finally getting some health insurance reform.
Members of his own party can attack his agenda because he will not support change by supporting challenges to incumbents.

6. "Democrats Allow Trims To Favored Programs" (here)
President Obama adopted the narrative of the Republicans that deficit reduction was critical now.  He is wrong.  History has shown us that government stimulus is what is needed to get us out of this recession.
Once President Obama adopted the Republican narrative, he let the Republicans frame the debate and celebrated cuts in spending that will further hurt the poor and increase the gap between the rich and the poor in this country.
President Obama made an immoral choice.
I will wait to see how bad President Obama's sellout of the poor was to get this terrible deal before I comment in detail.  But there is no doubt that President Obama's approach to the issues so far are bound to give the Republicans the upper hand when it comes to raising the debt limit and then passing a budget for next year.

7. "Senators Surprised by Obama's Entry Into Fiscal Debate" (here)
Of course it would be a surprise that President Obama is going to actually address an issue.  He has been way to silent on many issues.  Unfortunately, the debate that we should be having is the proper role of government and how the government will fund that role, but President Obama has probably lost the ability to focus the debate in that manner.  Even if he did, I have no idea if he would take a position on the role of government that is consistent with the tenets of the Democratic Party.

8. Letter to the Editor from Stephen F. Desmond (here)
The letter speaks for itself.

To the Editor:
Paul Krugman’s column about President Obama’s caving in to Republicans on budget cuts does not go far enough, though it is accurate in depicting Mr. Obama as missing a chance to distinguish himself as a man of the people. The House budget proposal presented by Representative Paul D. Ryan last week would largely privatize Medicare and make major cuts to Medicaid, while at the same time cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy.
It is clear, as Mr. Krugman says, that this could be a great political opportunity for leadership. But President Obama, concerned only about winning back independents, races up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to tout Friday’s last-minute budget deal to keep the government from shutting down.
Our president is not just missing — he has gone over to the other side.
STEPHEN F. DESMOND
Smithfield, R.I., April 11, 2011

The next reason did not come from The New York Times.  It comes from Word Savvy (here). 

I sure am disappointed in Obama for not only NOT reforming NCLB, but rather ramping it up with the stupid Race to the Top program. In fact, I'm so surprised that Obama turned out to be a republican. As a result of the realization that he actually doesn't believe in change, I've become more disillusioned with the political system.

Please submit your own reasons why one would vote for or against President Obama.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal