Over the past few months I have been in a back and forth banter with a women in her 60s, who is constantly telling me about Obama's agenda. These "agendas" range from ACORN being in his back pocket, the start of a civil army run by the President* and that he is a Socialist/Marxist/Muslim sympathizer  slowly and surely destroying America.

Update: I was asked by her to also add the radicals he surrounds himself with and all of the appointed "czars". Although I continue to inform her that the use of "czars", or better known as advisers, have no power nor are they precedent in numbers. Personally, the more people to better inform the President the better.

And because I am defending Obama against these outlandish attacks, I am now portrayed as a "Young Liberals that thinks our country sucks" and " one of those that thinks Obama is the Messiah and would never tell a lie". 

I don't understand why so much effort is used by the GOP and the far-right to create these outlandish claims when he is doing things RIGHT NOW with no speculation. I am going to outline my top five complaints about Obama and how, if these people really want to "save America", they should combat against things he is actually doing.


Extension of the PATRIOT Act and FISA law

This one is at the top of my list. The PATRIOT Act was a failed attempt to protect this country in a time of crisis. It's 1000+ pages were drawn up and presented to Congress in a month after September 11th (October 23, 2001) and passed with an amazing quickness (House: October 24, 2001 and Senate: October 25, 2001). Only one, Senator Feingold, voted against it in the Senate.

Now 8 years later, the Obama administration is going to renew it, without review.

This means a few things:

• Telecom companies are still untouchable
• Third party information about citizens does not require a warrant, or a loose interpretation of warrant is portrayed. 
• Infinite detention of immigrants with potential to cause a terrorist attack

Amongst others.

Where is the CHANGE, that was portrayed during his campaign? I argue that all the surveillance laws needed are in the FISA law, and an amendment to the FISA law would be sufficient to combat this "new threat". Not taking it to a whole new level.

I highly suggest siding with the ACLU and sign their petition.

Lobbyist and Congressional Oversight

Congress gets payed well for what they do, but the real perk of being in congress is the lobbyist benefits.

Lobbyists come from the right of the American people to assemble in groups and petition the Congress to "do the bidding of the people". The problem, is our single emails, petitions or youtube videos don't hold as much clout as the $50,000 donations given by companies. And you can see it when congress talks, they back money.

Obama was going to CHANGE this. I understand the problem, how do you get the people getting the benefits vote to remove the benefits.

Signing Statements and open Government

Signing statements have yet to be really tested in our court systems, but they are still there. They have been used all the way back to Jefferson, but it wasn't until Regan that they became footnotes to what the President is actually willing to do. Bush loved his signing statements, and went as far as saying in them that he doesn't have to follow certain things depending if we are "at war" or not. So would a candidate who promised more open government and oversight use signing statements? Yup.

His promise is to take a "modest approach". The problem I see, is if things that are "unconstitutional" are even in the bill, don't sign it. Remove them and have the Attorney General consult congress on the dangers. Signing it and saying, essentially, "when it becomes a problem contact the AG before not doing it" is completely unconstitutional in itself. Don't put it into law if it isn't complete, this leads to misinterpretations later.

"Too big to fail" bill

Our financial sector has been hanging by a thread for a few years now, it has only been in the last year that the threads began to snap. I understand the $700,000,000,000.00 bill to "save" our lenders was needed to avoid the domino effect, but we have to realize that poor business models deserve to be replaced. Instead of trying to figure out "who will be saved", remove the safety net and you will be surprised on how much extra money these companies would find to keep their jobs.

Iraq and Afghanistan

In the interest of national security, peace and our financial system: Get out of Iraq, Afghanistan and other bases around the world. Especially middle eastern countries. Deal with the U.N. when dealing with terrorism in those countries. We are breeding more terrorists every day we are in there.

The good question always comes up: "What if China, to protect their financial system, decided to occupy the United States?" Just think of how the common person must feel. They live in a war torn country because we keep tearing it up with war!

You got the Peace Prize now do something to deserve it. Remove all of our troops, remove sanctions and open up free-trade, use the U.N. to work with Iran and North Korea. All of the money we would be saving could go into building infrastructure for these war torn countries. Do the right thing, Obama is obviously thinking about Afghanistan strategies.   

Let's work together to make this country a better place, not divide us on speculation and untestable craziness. These are things Obama is DOING and they have a direct impact on our country's future.



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* Actual program at Change.gov