My Beauty Best Teacher

Today on the Ed Schultz show Ed was interviewing some expert, and the two liberal Democrats agreed with one another that the problem with our current political system was not the fact that our national government is exceeding its limited powers and spending too much money, but rather the problem with our current political system is that our national government is not efficiently and effectively systematically looting the wealth from productive members of our society and giving that wealth to those who are politically favored.

Is this what modern day liberalism is? Is this what the modern day Democratic Party has become? Is this the goal of President Obama and the new-Democrats in Congress? Is this what their policies and laws and orders are attempting to achieve?

Oh, I know that Schultz and the expert (I didn't catch his name) don't 'represent' the Democratic Party any more than Rush or Sean do the Republican Party. But even still, it is a sign of what I am fighting against and what I am pushing back against, and it is distressing to hear that these people support what President Obama and the Pelosi-led Democrats in Congress are trying to do- they are pushing for the United States government to put in place laws and policies that more efficiently and effectively loot the wealth from those people who have earned it in order to transfer that wealth to those people whom it favors.

That's tyranny and corruption and despotism, boys and girls, plain and simple, and I mean to fight it, just like my forefathers did before me. Although the Republican Party is not perfect- far from it- it is the only party in our system that serves as a means of blocking the attempts by Democrats and liberals of turning me into a slave of the state- voting Republican in the upcoming elections is the only real way today of making it so that my labor and time and effort and energies are my own and serve my purposes and that the fruits of my labor and the product of my time and effort and the wealth that my energies produce are not taken from me to be given to someone else.

Let's dress up this pig here and put some lipstick on it- the election of 2012 is a going to be a key one, an election that will determine the future of our nation, and it is not simply enough for President Obama and the Democrats to lose- no, the Democrats must suffer historic losses such that they learn that the purpose of the United States government is not to systematically loot the wealth of others in order to give it to those who did not earn it, but rather the purpose of the United States government is to protect my life, liberty, and property so that I may achieve the fullest of my God-given abilities.

This two party system has run its course, and the modern day Democratic Party must be destroyed, to be replaced by a Tea Party dominated conservative party that will battle for offices and power with a moderate Republican Party. No longer can our nation tolerate people on the radio who advocate for higher taxes so that older people can live comfortably on wealth they did not earn; no longer can our nation tolerate politicians who advocate for more land regulations and environmental policies so that property ownership becomes more costly; no longer can our nation support people who want corporations and businesses to pay so that they can collect money in the form of unemployment insurance and welfare even when they did not pay for these things; and no longer can the debate be about how tyrannical and despotic the government should be but rather why we should allow people who dodge taxes to create our very tax policies.

Liberals and the party that they have seized control of might believe and argue that the United States government should systematically loot those who have property and transfer it to others- but I don't, and I ask you to support me in 2012 by rejecting Democrats up and down the ballot by voting Republican.

• The 2012 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Presence Rankings

  The Rankings of university based academics who are contributing "most substantially to public debates about school and schooling." My friend Curt Bonk is on the list.From Edweek. "The rubric reflects both a scholar's body of academic work--encompassing books, articles, and the degree to which these are cited--and their 2011 footprint on the public discourse."

  tags: education news

• New website allows you to discover if your grandfather fought with the Black and Tans | Irish News | IrishCentral

  If your family has a heritage from Ireland, they've posted their entire military history online in a fascinating project.
  
  Now is your chance to solve that old mystery – was your grandfather a hero of the 1916 Rising? Did your grandmother stand up to the Black and Tans? Did your family suffer a Civil War split?

  tags: education history news

• Duncan Quirk: A Brave New Fahrenheit 2012

  Scroll down in this article to get a great overview of SOPA along with the convoluted ways that this could cause problems in education.
  
  The fundamental flaw of SOPA is making the website solely responsible for its users' actions. Instead of allowing sites to act in good faith with the copyright holder, it will punish the site rather than the user. This is akin to issuing speeding tickets to GM for drivers going too fast.

  tags: education news sopa copyright

• David Truss :: Pair-a-dimes for Your Thoughts » A Conversation Starter

  So, you want to start conversations. Watch this 3 minute video by David Truss including such thinkers as Alan November, Diana Laufenberg, Adora Svitak, Chris Lehmann, Chris Kennedy, Tom Grant, Stephen Heppell, Mitchel Resnick. Nice work. 

  tags: education news

• Mobile Learning Reflections

  Mobile Learning in the classroom. 80 page free ebook from Jackie Gerstein. (This is a compilation of blog posts written about mobile learning.)

  tags: education mlearning news

• San Diego Prosecutors Charge 5 School Officials For Corruption, Bribery

  Bribes in San Diegofor construction contracts. I think if some looked deeper, they may find technology has some things happening as well. Be honest and you don't have to lose sleep.

  tags: education news

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The President of the United States should be clerk, and nothing more. Conservatives and Tea Party people should not be looking for the President to be a 'king' who commands us to go forth and do his bidding, they should not be looking for the President to be the source of ideas about how government should run, and they should not be looking for the President to be an outsider who will shake up Washington.

The office, as designed by our Founding Fathers and illustrated in Article II of the Constitution, is an office that empowers the President of the United States to execute the laws passed by Congress in the most efficient manner, act as Commander-in-Chief of our military, act as the dignified ceremonial chief of state, handle foreign policy with other nations, and discharge effectively the various other duties of the office. A true conservative or someone who wants our nation to return to its Founding Principles should be pushing for the person who is best able to act as a clerk, a manager, and a CEO for America Inc.

You see, in reality the presidency is essentially a glorified clerk in our system, and is not actually a game-changing all-powerful King. The power of the President stems from his ability to use his office to trade favors or the promise of favors to accomplish the goal of efficiently managing the affairs of the state; his power does not (nor should it) from his ability to order others to do his bidding and his ability to issue executive orders and put in place policies. The legislative branch is better and more powerfully designed for those purposes, and so all decisions about the laws and policies of our nation should be generated from that branch, and then the President implements them in an efficient and able manner.

The President is able to implement these policies in an able and efficient manner because he has lots of little pieces of power spread through out nation's political system- he is able to send troops abroad, deliver the state of the union address, control various executive departments, play a vital role in the budgeting process, issues pardons and grant reprieves, etc, and he can also use his informal power and influence to invite policy leaders to the White House, go on national TV, lobby for legislation, etc. His power- both real and perceived- gets others to re-appraise what is in their best interest, and they are then persuaded that it is better to get along with the President and what he wants to do rather than fight against his able and methodical and efficient powers.

Look, I know this isn't exciting to you guys- you all want a President who will blow your socks off, light up the system, ride in on a horse of hope and change and remake the world. You want a king to rule you and control other people who you disagree with. You wish that someone who will go into the White House and then start just shutting down executive departments, slashing spending on programs, and ignoring the Judicial and Legislative Branches to bring you closer to our Founding Fathers. The problem is, that isn't how our Founding Fathers designed the office of the President and it is not how our Founding Fathers would have wanted the system to work, and once you go down the path to making our President a King, he can be a liberal King too in a short 4 to 8 years.

As I wrote in Calvin Coolidge, One of the Best Presidents?:

The best Presidents are those who did very little, ran the executive office smoothly and without problems or corruption, and conformed to the Constitution as closely as possible. Jefferson was President for two terms, and other then the Louisiana Purchase, his administration happily has little to note other than peace and prosperity. James Madison had to respond to the War of 1812, yes- but other than that, peace and prosperity. Calvin Coolidge was like this too- nothing to note during his time in office other than nothing to note- peoples lives were protected, the nation was prosperous, and property was well protected.

The President is a powerful person in our political system- but he has grown too powerful, and I don't want him to become even more powerful and active and arbitrary, even if for a while he would be doing so in a conservative or libertarian manner. Rather, our President should be good at working with the Congress to effect significant changes to our laws and policies, he should be good at closing doors and coming out of them with policy-leaders minds changed, he should know our political system inside and out and understand how to move various levers to get stuff done, and he should be able to judiciously use his public prestige to pressure leaders to voluntarily arrive at policy decisions that he supports. He should be a competent manager and efficient steward of taxpayer resources. At the end of his Presidency, we should not say that he brought hope and change to the American system, but rather we should say that when he left after eight quiet years as President, peoples lives had been protected from domestic and international threats, that the nation had remained prosperous and free of debts, and that private property had been well protected and preserved.

The description of a 'great' President that I have outlined above is most definitely not a description of our current President. President Barack Obama went into the White House without the skills needed to be an effective or even good President, and he has shown no desire to put in the hard work, the humility, and the intelligence to acquire these skills. Yes, I know that during his first two years much legislation was passed (which he now claims makes him the fourth best President ever)- but that was during a time period when one element of society- liberal Democrats- controlled almost all the national levers of policy-making (House, Senate, President, and bureaucracy)- and since that time, more elements of society are represented in our political system, and he has demonstrated that in these more pluralistic and typical circumstances that he is completely ineffective. You see, the earlier 'success' he had in driving the policy-agenda was really because it was being driven by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, who pushed their legislation and priorities in spite of what Obama desired or wanted- those who have been part of this legislation have written several times that the White House was remarkably passive during that time period and just went along with whatever Congress wanted (which in itself is not a bad thing, but in the context of demonstrating leadership it is). But once Obama's party lost control of the House, we were able to see truly just how bad a President he is and how bad he as at filling this office.

President Obama is poor at working with Congress, bad at working with others of different opinions than his own, too quick to attack in public those who he disagrees with (probably because he is so awful at convincing them to change policies behind closed doors), he does not know how to use all the various levers in policy-making that he has, and overuses the prestige of his office such that it the prestige has been watered down (I'm imaging him promoting Monday Night Football right now). He is an incompetent manager and a poor steward of taxpayer resources (his family is spending millions in taxpayer money on a vacation to Hawaii as I write this). At the end of his Presidency (hopefully next year), we'll look back at the last four years as being some of the most chaotic and partisan and rough years, and look at his record as our President- a nation that is less prosperous, less free, burdened with debts, with horribly destroyed foundations (crumbling roads, bridges, schools, and Social Security, Medicare, and other programs that have been bankrupted and unreformed), and with private property under attack (Occupy Wall Street, Dodd-Frank, the bankruptcy of GM, etc). President Obama is a bad President.

Could any of the Republican candidates for President be a 'great' President? I don't know- I'll let you make your own decisions on that for now. But much of what I wrote here I pulled from an earlier post I wrote called Ron Paul- Drop Out of the Race where I considered Congressman Paul's candidacy in light of these ideas. But do Romney, Perry, Gingrich, Bachmann, or Santorum meet the qualifications I laid out above better than Obama? They likely do- for example, look at Romney's experience as Governor of at blue-state or saving the Salt Lake City Olympics, or Perry's able Governorship of successful Texas, or Gingrich's record of balancing the budget with a Democratic President, but I surely must  revisit this concept and evaluate the GOP candidates accordingly in a later post- be sure to check back often on my blog for this post.

Oh, and in reply to the liberals and progressives and fascists who are emailing me trying to personally attack me- I do have several degrees from good universities in public policy, I teach government for a living, and my argument is based in part on professor Richard Neustadt's book Presidential Power (purchase the book today- Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan). My arguments are sound and hopefully well-reasoned, and as always, I'd love to defend them in print or on the radio, and I would love it if you would email this post or link to it on your blog so that our Presidential election in 2012 is that much more informed.

Solyndra’s chief executive warned the Energy Department on Oct. 25, 2010, that he intended to announce worker layoffs Oct. 28. Solyndra was bleeding cash and quickly going bankrupt, and the only thing that would possibly save the company, bring confidence to investors, and help protect taxpayers heavy investment in the company would be quick action in trimming its workforce and shutting down factories. It was an economic decision that needed to be made.

But Democratic President Barack Obama disregarded all of those things and made a political decision and urged officers of the struggling solar company Solyndra to postpone announcing planned layoffs until after the November 2010 midterm elections. He didn't want citizens to pick up on the fact that he used his clean energy initiatives to steer valuable taxpayer money to benefit his friends and donors, all under the oversight and supervision and approval of a Democratic Congress that was about to suffer historic losses to to their historic bad governance of the nation's finances.

President Obama made a political decision to bring pressure to bear on private companies to hide their financial position and continue to go further into debt until there was no hope left but bankruptcy and ruin. In many ways, Solyndra is a metaphor for his plan for America- cover up the true reality of the destruction that his policies are doing to our nation and put off crucial economic decisions in a desperate attempt to hold tight to political power.

From the Washington Post article "Solyndra: Energy Dept. pushed firm to keep layoffs quiet until after midterms":

The Obama administration urged officers of the struggling solar company Solyndra to postpone announcing planned layoffs until after the November 2010 midterm elections, newly released e-mails show.

Solyndra, the now-shuttered California company, had been a poster child of President Obama’s initiative to invest in clean energies and received the administration’s first energy loan of $535 million. But a year ago, in October 2010, the solar panel manufacturer was quickly running out of money and had warned the Energy Department it would need emergency cash to avoid having to shut down.

The new e-mails about the layoff announcement were released Tuesday morning as part of a House Energy and Commerce committee memo, provided in advance of Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s scheduled testimony before the investigative committee Thursday.

Solyndra’s chief executive warned the Energy Department on Oct. 25, 2010, that he intended to announce worker layoffs Oct. 28. He said he was spurred by numerous calls from reporters and potential investors about rumors the firm was in financial trouble and was planning to lay off workers and close one of its two plants.

But in an Oct. 30, 2010, e-mail, advisers to Solyndra’s primary investor, Argonaut Equity, explain that the Energy Department had strongly urged the company to put off the layoff announcement until Nov. 3. The midterm elections were held Nov. 2, and led to Republicans taking control of the U.S. House of Representatives....

I've written about Solyndra or related topics before- check out my posts Data Reveals that SunPower Employees Donated to Democrats, then Got Massive Loans or Executives as Investors-in-Chiefs: A Bad Idea?

For more information, check out Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies.

In July of 2010 in response to a Politico poll that showed how out of touch the elites in Washington DC were from the rest of the nation I wrote "while the countryside is being plundered, the Democratic lords and Emperor Obama are living in a different world based on luxury, hope, and change."

Turns out that I was right- while the rest of the nation has been battling unemployment, falling salaries, and a feeling that things are going in the wrong direction, Washington DC has become the wealthiest U.S. metropolitan area according to recent Census data. Whereas in years past wealthiest metropolitan areas were based on producing goods and services, Washington DC has become the nation's wealthiest area on the backs of booming salaries and employment for government workers and booming employment and a growing concentration of lawyers and lobbyists.

Unlike recently passed Silicon Valley which built its wealth on innovation and production of computers or historic wealthy areas like Oakland County Michigan which was built on money generated from automobile production, under President Barack Obama (Democrat, President since 2009) and the Democrats (control of House from 2006-2011 and Senate since 2006), Washington DC simply vacuums trillions of dollars from taxpayers and trillions more in debt in order to give high salaries to ever more inefficient government employees and to distribute gifts and favors and contracts to special interests.

With about 5.6 million residents, the Washington region has an aggregate household income of about $221.4 billion. The San Jose area (Silicon Valley) has about 1.8 million people and income of $67 billion, according to census figures gathered from the American Community Survey. Although there is considerable income disparity in Washington DC (in the District of Columbia almost 11 percent of the city’s population qualifies as “very poor"), total compensation for federal workers (including health care and other benefits) soared last year to an average of $126,369, compared with $122,697 in 2009 and even less than that in years before that. In addition to soaring federal pay, employment has been stable as well- the unemployment rate in the Washington metro area was 6.1 percent, compared with nationally joblessness at 9.1 percent (source).

In addition to booming salary and jobs for federal workers during this recession, there has also been a stunning rise in the number of lobbyists and lawyers working over the federal government- spending on lobbying efforts reached a new record of $3.51 billion last year and in 2010 there were a new record number of registered lobbyists (12,964), with most working in or around the nation’s capital. This is likely the result of the Democrats crony capitalism policies, which award contracts and business to those who are politically connected and make campaign donations to Democrats (see Solyndra or the bailout of General Motors for examples of this).

I personally saw this sort of corruption when I visited our nation's capitol last. After that visit, I was moved to write this:

Washington DC is booming. I think it is one of the few states in the nation to actually have increasingly employment, job growth, and GDP growth. There are signs everywhere of prosperity and building- roads are being repaired, monuments are being revamped, buildings are adding on, and fresh paint and plaster is in abundance. On a guidebook of DC I read that our capitol was designed to look like the capitols of the Emperors and despots of Europe, but it was okay because we lived in a free nation that celebrated liberty and property. Well, as our country becomes more despotic and tyrannical, it is going to look increasingly like those capitols of the old days, when the Emperor took money from the countryside to build himself new statues and bigger palaces.

There is no way to sugar-coat this sort of thing or make it appear to be some sort of sign of progress. President Obama campaigned on cleaning up Washington, and he has done the exact opposite, making Washington a rising cesspool of corruption and money while the rest of the nation struggles to make ends meet. There needs to be a house-cleaning in 2012 to get rid of the people who have been in charge there over the last couple years when the problem has gotten dramatically worse, and since Bush and the Republicans are not in charge any more, that means the Democrats (who control the bureaucracy, Presidency, and Senate) should be thrown out of their fancy palaces in DC so that they can find real jobs making goods and providing services in good old productive American cities.

Mark Levin probably agrees with me- check out his book Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America.

When putting together a list of the best Presidents in the history of our nation, that list would likely include Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, James Madison, Grover Cleveland, and Ronald Reagan. To that list I would like to also include Calvin Coolidge.

Most polls rank Coolidge somewhere in the middle, but this is because most people rank greatness by the number of actions that Presidents make and the number of policies that they as executives force on the nation that are usually contrary to our Constitution. For example, most lists put FDR at the top of the list, but he pushed through unconstitutional policies, dropped our nation into another Great Depression, didn't respond early enough to the rising fascism in the world, and then did the only thing I'll give him great credit for and won WWII. Oh, some great Presidents had to respond to crisis forced on them by others (like Lincoln), but most other so-called 'great' Presidents simply used the office of the President to jam policies on people that moved power and freedom away from them to the government and supervised a nation in crisis.

The best Presidents are those who did very little, ran the executive office smoothly and without problems or corruption, and conformed to the Constitution as closely as possible. Jefferson was President for two terms, and other then the Louisiana Purchase, his administration happily has little to note other than peace and prosperity. James Madison had to respond to the War of 1812, yes- but other than that, peace and prosperity. Calvin Coolidge was like this too- nothing to note during his time in office other than nothing to note- peoples lives were protected, the nation was prosperous, and property was well protected.

Here are some of the reasons that Calvin Coolidge should make the list of one of our greatest Presidents:

1. Coolidge was (for the most part) an opponent of government regulations. “I am in favor of reducing, rather than expanding, government bureaus which seek to regulate and control the business activities of the people,” he explained in the same State of the Union address. During his time in office, he attempted to allow private development of Muscle Shoals, made conservative appointments to federal offices over the objections of liberal Democrats and Progressive Republicans, was opposed to a veterans' bonus, and blocked and to the proposed McNary-Haugen farm legislation.
2. Coolidge criticized the left for its money-spending habits, stating, “Nothing is easier than spending the public money. It doesn’t appear to belong to anyone.” His policies led to a booming economy and increased tax revenues, but Coolidge knew that these additional 'revenues' wasn't the government's money- it was the peoples. So instead of bowing to progressives and liberals and using the surplus funds to create new programs, he put in place tax cuts. His tax cuts targeted largely the wealthy (he believed that the rich would invest their extra funds in ways that would increase production and therefore jobs and wealth at home, and also that American trade would expand abroad which would benefit the domestic economy and help stabilize the world economically and politically), but taxes were also cut on all taxpayers as well, the gift tax was repealed, and the death tax cut in half. These tax cuts led to increasing economic growth in America (and more tax revenues).
3. Coolidge believed that the role of the government was to step out of the way and allow the market and business to prosper. “The business of America is business,” Coolidge famously declared. But unlike many Republicans and almost all liberals, he did not believe the business of government was to control and direct and subsidize business- he believed in the free market and that removing regulations would encourage business more so than subsidies and targeted tax code help.

Coolidge’s tax cuts and deregulations resulted in a budget surplus and the economically booming “Roaring Twenties,” which came to an end during the progressive regulatory administration of his successor President Herbert Hoover. Coolidge said after leaving the White House, "Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business"- but this is the very thing that I love about Coolidge, that as President he minded his own business, operated the machinery of the White House with cool and competent handling, and minded his own business as President. No crisis, no television appearances, no major policy changes, no crazy plans, no wild new ideas- simply doing his job, doing it well, and leaving when he was done with the nation in a better place than it was before.

President Calvin Coolidge may be the first U.S. president appeared to also appear in a "talkie" -- a movie with sound.In this four-minute clip (viewable on YouTube), Coolidge says that he wants to

"cut down public expense. I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves. I want them to have the rewards of their own industry. This is the chief meaning of freedom. Until we can re-establish a condition under which the earnings of the people can be kept by the people, we are bound to suffer a very severe and distinct curtailment of our liberty."

Before we go to the polls in 2012 to pick nominees for political parties and for President, I just want everyone to re-examine Calvin Coolidge and his Presidency and decide for themselves what exactly makes a President great.

UPDATE: The Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation contacted and reminded me of another reason why Coolidge is possibly one of the better Presidents that we've ever had- his views on education. Coolidge believed strongly in education and he often commented on the subject throughout the course of his political career, believing in the importance of having an educated citizenry and impressing on young people the importance of lifelong learning. Here is one of his quotes from a newspaper column in 1930:

"While it is easy to waste money on education, it is the one thing which we cannot afford to curtail. The true ideal would seem to be a system that supplies those in the lower grades with certain basic information and those in the upper grades with the power to think… The school is not the end but only the beginning of an education. Yet its place cannot be filled in any other way. The best thing the millions of our youth can do to assure their future success is to work faithfully at their studies. That opportunity for improvement and discipline will never return.”

For your next vacation, take a trip to Plymouth Notch, VT to see the President Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site for yourself and experience the world in which President Coolidge was born and raised.

For good books about President Calvin Coolidge, check out Silent Cal's Almanack: The Homespun Wit and Wisdom of Vermont's Calvin Coolidge, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, or Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge, The.

Today as I drove home I saw a bumper sticker on the car in front of me that read "Don't Blame Me- I Voted for the Other Guy". It was amusing, but got me thinking- should people be blamed for voting for Obama in 2008? The answer is no- if you or any of your family voted for President Obama in 2008, it was a mistake, but I believe it was an understandable mistake.

Let's look back on President Obama circa 2008 see just what sort of a candidate he was and what sort of campaign he ran using a great resource called Living Room Candidate. Here is how candidate Barack Obama's campaign is described there:

Barack Obama’s campaign created a number of positive ads that emphasize such words as “values” and “work,” portraying him as someone whom working-class voters can feel comfortable with. While Obama’s ads tended to be more positive in tone than McCain’s, there were also a large number of attack ads. Just as President Clinton’s 1996 ads linked Bob Dole with Newt Gingrich, nearly all of Obama’s attack ads linked John McCain with President Bush, whose approval ratings are extremely low. By linking McCain to Bush, the Obama campaign successfully undercut McCain’s image as an independent maverick.

In advertisement after advertisement in 2008, Barack Obama pounded a steady theme- that he was an agent of change that would bring our nation back towards hope by rising above partisanship and embracing every good idea that was proposed. He talked about how he would pull us out of Iraq and that he would sit down an engage in smart diplomacy with our enemies. He pounded on the fact that he would be a smart and savvy leader who would have the sound judgement and wisdom to make the right decisions facing our nation. He linked his opponents in the Democratic Party and in the Republican Party to corruption and special interests and vowed that not only would he be the cleanest, least corrupt politician in the White House, that he would root out special interests and make the White House open and clean and transparent. And he promised to cut the deficit in half and leave our nation with a balanced budget. These were all great goals and promises that a lot of American people could get behind in 2008.

Watch how in this speech he hammers Congress for 'failing to ask the hard questions'- questions about why contracts were awarded to certain groups, why policies were undertaken when the nation clearly didn't have to money to engage on them, and he ripped the Congress a new one for 'giving the President open-ended authority' to make actions and spend money. Obama was right- America doesn't want a President that is unrestricted and making rules up as he goes, playing around with slush funds of cash, and using executive orders to get around the authority of Congress and the people, and he was right to hammer Congress on it.

Take a look at this speech he gave where he laid out his reasons for running for office. In it, he says that we need a new President for 3 reasons- first reason, that we need someone who can bring our nation together and rise above the divisions and partisanship that is dividing our nation, second reason, that we need someone who can 'take on the special interests and win', and third reason, 'telling the truth to the American people even when it's tough.' Back in 2008, and today too, these are good reasons to vote for him and it is understandable that people would support that.

Or watch this one, where Obama lays out the argument to vote for him in the primary in Iowa back in 2008. In it, Obama says that the reasons to vote for him is that he has a track record for reducing the power of lobbyists in DC, that he was opposed to the war in Iraq from the start and will immediately bring our troops home, that he would help out working families and raise their pay and lower the costs of healthcare, that he wouldn't push national programs in education without properly funding those programs, and that we can be 'assured' that he will be who he says he is. He pounds the point that we can trust him- that he is who he says he is and that he isn't going to change once he gets in the White House.

Don't blame yourself for voting for Obama in 2008- in campaign advertisement after campaign ad, he said the right things and talked about doing a lot of good things for our nation. It was understandable if you voted for him based on these ads, and since there was very little background or track record of him, that was pretty much all you had to go on. And McCain wasn't the best choice and ran one of the worst campaigns ever, so don't blame yourself for voting for Obama in 2008.

But look back at all that he ran on in 2008 and compare it to what the results were and who he is today. He did the opposite of everything that he said, he ruined everything he wanted to help, he has presided over divisive and protests like no other- both Tea Parties on the right and Occupiers on the left-, he has piled up debt and put in place structural deficits that will bankrupt America, he took many years to take our troops out of Iraq while expanding troops in Afghanistan and committing our military to many more countries, he has made the White House more opaque, corruption is rampant and massive contracts were awarded to companies with few questions asked- likely due to campaign donations those companies gave him personally-, he throws around his authority without limit, signs executive orders to go around Congress, has blocked fundamental and tough reforms from being put in place, has increased unemployment and the number of people on food stamps, and has made foolish decision and statement after foolish statement and decision.

Most importantly, you shouldn't blame yourself for voting for Obama in 2008 because you trusted him- but if you vote for him in 2012 everyone should blame you because you still trust him. He lied to you- he lied to all of us- he promised us things and pounded on the themes of trust and believing him him, and he did not do those things. He lied, and in 2012, America should hold him accountable for his lies, which are all public record and easily found (follow this link yourself), and he should be thrown out of office and the Republican nominee- whether it is Romney, Perry, Cain, or someone else- should be our next President of the United States.