The Incredible, Shrinking Presidency of Barack Obama

An even higher percentage of people are upset at the way the president is implementing his signature health care system dubbed "Obamacare."  When asked "Do you approve or disapprove of the way Obama is handling "implementation of the new health care law?" A full 62% said they disapprove, although I suspect that the anger has less to do with the plan's "implementation" than it does with the fact that Obamacare is widely seen as a profit-delivery system for the voracious insurance industry. Notwithstanding the administration's impressive public relations campaign, a clear majority of people have seen through Obama's health care ruse and given the program a big thumb's down.

Of course, Obamacare is just the straw that broke the camel's back. The list of policy disasters that preceded this latest fiasco is nearly endless, including everything from blanket pardons for the Wall Street big-wigs who took down the global financial system, to re-upping the Bush tax cuts, to appointing a commission of deficit hawks to slash Social Security and Medicare (Bowles-Simpson), to breaking his word on Gitmo, to reneging on his promise to pass Card Check, to expanding wars in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, to droning four-times as many civilians as the homicidal maniac he replaced as president in 2008.

Obama's treatment of undocumented immigrants has been particularly shocking although the details have been kept out of the media, presumably because the news giants don't want to expose the Dear Leader as a heartless scoundrel who has no problem separating mothers from their children, locking them up in privately-owned concentration camps and booting them out of the country with nothing more than the shirts on their backs. Check out this blurb which sums up Obama's "progressive" immigration policy in one paragraph:

"Obama is on track to deport 3 million immigrants without papers by the end of his second term, more than any other president. George W. Bush deported about 2 million over two terms. Obama will likely hit that mark this month... The average daily count of immigrants in detention now is about 33,000. In 2001, it was 19,000. In 1994, it was 5,000, according to the Detention Watch Network. Almost all of the detainees and deportees are Latino. True, the population of illegal immigrants has also doubled in that time to more than 11 million. But the detainee and deportee counts have escalated more than twice as fast.

"'He could go down as the worst president in history toward immigrants,' said Arturo Carmona, executive director of the liberal activist group Presente.org."

Hooray for the Deporter in Chief! You're Numero Uno, buddy. You even beat Bush! Is it any wonder why the man's ratings are in freefall?

All told, Obama has been bad for the economy, bad for civil liberties, bad for minorities, bad for foreign wars, and bad for health care. He has, however, been a very effective lackey-sock puppet for Wall Street, Big Pharma, the oil magnates, and the other 1% -- vermin Kleptocrats who run the country and who will undoubtedly attend his $100,000-per-plate speaking engagements when he finally retires in comfort to some gated community where he'll work on his memoirs and cash in on his eight years of faithful service to the racketeer class.

But, let's face it; no one really gives a rip about "drone attacks in Waziristan" or "hunger strikes in Gitmo." What they care about is keeping their jobs, paying off their student loans, putting the food on the table or avoiding the fate of next-door-neighbor, Andy, who got his pink slip two months ago and now finds himself living in a cardboard box by the river. That's what the average working stiff worries about; just scraping by enough to stay out of the homeless shelter. But it's getting harder all the time, mainly because everything's gotten worse under Obama. It's crazy. It's like the whole middle class is being dismantled in a 10-year period. Wages are flat,  jobs are scarce, incomes are dropping like a stone, and everyone's broke. (Everyone I know, at least.)  Did you know that 76% of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck. Check it out:

"Roughly three-quarters of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck, with little to no emergency savings, according to a survey released by Bankrate.com Monday.

"Fewer than one in four Americans have enough money in their savings account to cover at least six months of expenses, enough to help cushion the blow of a job loss, medical emergency or some other unexpected event, according to the survey of 1,000 adults.

"Meanwhile, 50% of those surveyed have less than a three-month cushion and 27% had no savings at all.

"Last week, online lender CashNetUSA said 22% of the 1,000 people it recently surveyed had less than $100 in savings to cover an emergency, while 46% had less than $800. After paying debts and taking care of housing, car and child care-related expenses, the respondents said there just isn't enough money left over for saving more."

Savings?!?

Are you kidding me? What's that? Who do you know that's able to save money in this economy? Maybe rich uncle Johnny who's lived on canned sardines and Akmak for the last 50 years, but nobody else can live like that. Subtract the rent, the groceries, the doctor bills etc., and there's barely enough left over to fill the tank to get to work on Monday. Saving just isn't an option, not in the Obamaworld, that is.

Now check this out from Business Insider:

"Thousands of Americans aged 55 and older are going back to school and reinventing themselves to get an edge in a difficult labor market, hoping to rebuild retirement nest eggs that were almost destroyed by the recession.