BY DON NELSON
Don’t you just love how the Republican spin tries to marginalize improvement?
The jobless rate did not change – but jobs were added. The economy is in the tank – but the investors are returning to the market. To the GOP there is nothing but gloom in the country.
We are just a little over three quarters of the way through the first term of President Obama. Progress has been experienced. Looking back to the previous eight years of “W” Bush the lessor – what had been a surplus was spent, in what can only be seen as a reckless misuse of the nation’s bank account. Bush took us from a surplus to the brink of financial ruin.
What sort of success is it to have destroyed the economic base of this nation, the base which it depended on – and moved the dependency to China and foreign investors?
In 2008 a new president was elected and a different political perspective approved. At the moment of assuming office he knew that the road ahead was going to be a challenge.
We were told, repeatedly, that it was going to take time to recover from the damage that had been done by the previous Republican administration.
With less than four months before the general election, our economy has improved, jobs have been reclaimed and the huge drain on our economic future of foreign warfare is being reduced. The health of our economy has improved, we are not yet where we need to be – but we are not where we were. The hemorrhage that threatened to bleed the life out of our economy – job loss – has been abated.
The Republican pretender has said that one of his goals is to balance the budget. He also said it would not happen overnight. It will, in his estimation, require eight to 10 years.
Really?!?!
In fewer than four years we have seen the economy improve. We have escaped the turmoil of the European near collapse. The stock markets have rallied. The number of jobs that people have been able to find has turned around, albeit slowly. There are jobs and people are getting back to work.
Can it be that the GOP pretender has such low expectations for this nation that he does not see improvement happening within, he hopes, the maximum time law permits in the president’s office.
Oh, wait, he even added an extra two years as a bumper.
If ones expectations are low, one can expect low performance.
All of the mainstream media talking heads are spreading doom and gloom, as if to add fuel to the fire. We are hearing this is a discussion about the nature of the country. A discussion about what the political identity will be, going forward.
That is exactly where we are – deciding how we will be governed. What the principles of governance will be. There is a very clear choice before us. Being controlled by the extremely wealthy and being told what to do, no participation for the working class. Opposed to that sort of Republican Fascism is a promise of a more balanced, more equal sharing of governance within which the people actually have a voice.
– Don Nelson lives in Lawton, OK and is a frequent contributor to The Oklahoma Observer
