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June 4th / 6th
"George W. Obama"
Citizens of Metropolis didn't realize that Clark Kent and Superman were
the same guy because the two never appeared together. And were it not for
some photos taken at the last Presidential inauguration, I'd swear that
George Bush and Barack Obama were one in the same. After all, the similarities
in their administrations bear more than a passing resemblance.
George Bush attacked the wrong country, and invaded another, killing
nearly a million innocent civilians in the process. Barack Obama pledged to
bring our troops home, but thus far has escalated those wars while innocent
people continue to die.
Both Bush and Obama pledged to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden, yet
despite having technology at their disposal that can identify and blow up an
Iraqi coat closet from a thousand miles away, neither man can find one lone nut
who distributes regular videotape messages to the media.
Bush endorsed torture of terror suspects, as well as their detention at
Gitmo and other venues without trial or representation. Obama signed an order
to close Gitmo by January of this year, yet prisoners still reside there.
Bush trampled on our civil rights by authorizing illegal wiretaps, and
obtaining phone records of U.S. citizens. Obama now wants to revamp Miranda so
that authorities can have their way with terror suspects who are American
citizens.
Bush gave the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries a free hand to
raise rates and grow profits on the backs of sick people. Obama's so called
healthcare reform package did nothing to cap premiums, and was preceded by a
back room deal with Big Pharma to keep affordable import drugs out of the
hands of Americans.
Bush allowed U.S. based corporations to decimate their workforces here at
home and restart new plants in foreign countries where they could pay slave
wages and increase profits. Despite campaign promises to stop giving
breaks to greedy companies who export jobs, Obama has done nothing to end tax
breaks for those companies, or close loopholes in bad trade agreements that have
facilitated their bad behavior.
Under Bush, the flow of illegal aliens into our country grew by the
millions. Under Obama, there is still no plan in place to stop that flow and
secure our borders.
It's not surprising then, that a growing number of Americans believe Obama
is no different than Bush, and that Democrats are no different from
Republicans. That sentiment has been particularly validated with the government's
handling of the BP oil spill, which is now the largest in our nation's
history.
Under Bush, oil companies were free to drill without fear of regulatory
enforcement or proper inspections from the now besieged Mineral Management
System agency. Those abuses continued under Obama, who will now clean up MMS
in short order. The problem is his failure to clean up the Gulf in short
order. And that brings me to one of the most disturbing similarities between
Bush and Obama. The former President was widely criticized for his slow
response in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, but the lessons we should have
learned from that debacle make Obama's foot dragging in the aftermath of
the BP disaster even more perplexing and unforgivable.
Only last week, a full month into the spill, White House officials finally
began to question BP's competence. Said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar
"(I'm not) completely confident that BP knows what it's doing". But Salazar
and Obama didn't need to wait four weeks to come to that conclusion. David
Gergen, normally an Obama cheerleader, told CNN's Anderson Cooper, "If our
government had fought World War II the way we're fighting the oil spill,
there's a good chance many of us would be speaking German today". Gergen's
wartime analogy wasn't misplaced. Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley
criticized the President for not making the Gulf clean-up a military operation
from the start. Said Brinkley,"The White House needs to understand that a
whole region is in peril". Added Gergen,"President Obama cares. But it's
not enough to care. You've got to take charge".
After taking time out to joke around with the Duke basketball team last
week, Mr. Obama finally visited the Gulf region, and seemed to take charge,
as he pledged to hold BP's feet to the fire. But talk is cheap, especially
from a man who only weeks earlier had authorized more off shore drilling
sites.
Indeed, the evidence is mounting that Barack Obama and George W. Bush are
the same person. In fact, the current Commander in Chief is even starting
to articulate ambiguous thoughts like his predecessor. During his Louisiana
press conference, the President remarked, "This is a man-made catastrophe
that is still evolving". One might say the same thing about the Obama
administration.
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