Facts can be hard to find but here are a few. Tax rates for the wealthy are much lower than when the patron-saint of the Republican party, Ronald Reagan, was president. Letting the Bush tax cuts expire as Obama has suggested, would only return tax rates to what they were during the financial boom years of the Clinton administration, and it would do a lot to reduce the federal budget deficit.
Most Americans don't know the difference between the "bailout" and the "stimulus" and don't realize, or choose not to, that the "bailout" happened during the final days of the Bush administration.
Listening to much of the rhetoric on "lame-stream" media you'd think that Social Security was on the verge of collapse. In fact it has enough money to pay out 100% of all payments for the next 24 years.
In some ways, the Obama administration very much looks like the Reagan administration. Reagan's approval rating was at 42% when the Republicans lost 26 seats in the House in the mid-term elections of 1982. Amazingly, they gained one in the Senate. Clinton's approval rating was 48% when he lost 52 seats in the House in his first mid-term election.
You hear many complain about our gridlocked do-nothing government, and yet no first-term president has been able to pass so much landmark legislation in memory -- namely health care reform, credit card reform, and Wall Street reform. You may not like what they're doing but they have been busy.
Civil debate and truth has been a casualty of a well-financed, well-organized propaganda machine wanting to gain power at any cost. Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert proclaimed on the floor of the House that 20% of Americans would die if health care reform were passed. Sadly, their tactics have worked and it appears the Democrats will lose control of the House of Representatives. The Senate may stay in the hands of the Democrats but it will be close.
Obama's biggest failure has been his inability to launch his own propaganda machine to discredit the lies and to tell the truth. By trying to play the middle, he has disappointed many who voted for him and he realized too late that no matter what he did his opponents would oppose him, even condemning ideas that they once supported.
No matter what we desire in the size of government or budget deficits, we all want America to succeed. May those who are elected one week from today have more sense and integrity than what we've seen in the past two years. Hopefully, they will set about reducing unemployment, AND hatred, in America.
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