Archie Kobain

Also, farewell to President Obama.

I remained silent during the most ridiculous election cycle in American history – mostly because I took a year off to follow Guns ‘n Roses around the country, much like Deadheads used to follow the Grateful Dead around. Of course, it’s no secret that I was never a big fan of Obama One Kenobe but you never heard me outright bad mouthing him.  This was because he was the President of the United States. Our President …and while I think we need to keep a watchful eye on our Presidents and be demanding of them, I still think we need to respect the office.

Now back to the most ridiculous election, ever…  I would have liked to have seen a contest between John Kasich and Joe Biden.  I know – they’re both flawed in their unique ways. It turns out that they are people – just like everyone else. No one is perfect. But I think that could have been a win-win election. Instead, each of the major political parties put up their most asinine candidate.  Well, then… there you go.  Now your President is Donald Trump and soon, all those readers who were sure I was a Republican will soon start thinking that I’m a Democrat, as I keep my watchful eye on The Donald… Why doesn’t anyone call him that anymore?  I like it.

All that said, we shall now go back to talking about Obama.  First, he should be congratulated for being elected as America’s first black President but I think an even bigger accomplishment is that he was, potentially, the best politician of all time.  Everything that he said, he said with such conviction and, if you weren’t careful, he made every listener feel as if he was on their side. Right through to his farewell speech, he always told America that he didn’t do anything but that “we” did everything together. He included each and every one of us in the process. Brilliant!   …but I still felt left out.

As far as doing good for our country, I think he did right in passing The New GI Bill. He let about 800 federal prisoners out for having committed only non-violent, victimless crimes – mostly drug possession related. And finally, he got embryonic stem cell research going again, which dumb-ass George Dubya had banned.

But now let’s discuss why I’m so glad that he’s out of the office…

1. Banking Reform – it’s absolutely true that Wall Street needed to be “roped in” but Dodd-Frank and all the banking regulations that followed almost seem designed to hurt American businesses. In 2008, Obama ran for President saying that he understood that small businesses needed banks who could lend them money to grow. Then he put in place the strictest banking regulations that the US has ever seen and, today, banks can only lend money to business that don’t need it.  If your business needs the money, you can’t get any.  Don’t believe me?  Ask any honest banker.  When they say, “we are lending”, they are probably not talking about lending to you.  Unless, of course, you don’t need money.  In that case, you can get cheap money thus allowing the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer.

2. Alienation of Allies – for some reason, President Obama almost always chose to side with the not-so-friendlies, instead of our friends.  Our closest allies have always included Britain and Israel.  However, under Obama, we sided with Argentina (against Britain) in the Falkland Islands dispute, which made absolutely no sense, and we’re now siding with the Palestinians (against Israel) with regards to Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Why is this?  The most puzzling of all was probably when Obama ignored the advice of every senior member of his national security team and instead supported the removal of Mubarak in Egypt, which put Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in command of Egypt. Fortunately, that was short-lived.

BTW, every country that participated in “the Arab Spring”, except for Tunisia, has taken a significant economic downturn and Tunisia’s economy is now on the decline – but this is a discussion for another time.

3. Ended the Space Program – I have no words.

OK, maybe I have a few.  Yes, several private American companies are now trying to launch vehicles into space but, currently, we are depending on the ESA (European Space Agency) to get either our astronauts or our “other stuff” – like satellites, into space.

You know who else is up there?  The Russians and the Chinese.  China now basically owns space.  These are the same Chinese who we have now caught building superior navigation capabilities into their space vehicles – capabilities designed to spy on (and possibly disable) our satellites.

Basically, if the Chinese so decided, they could take out our communication satellites, the entire GPS system – the GPS system that you, me and our military depends on.  No one realizes how scary this is until you do a little research on GPS and how dependent we are on it.  Tons of things now use GPS for timing and positioning.  Thousands of ships and other vessels use a “skyhook” or digital anchor to keep them in place and separated from other ships and vessels. The list is endless and if attacked, we have no way of defending it.

They could even take out our entertainment satellites. Ya, even DirecTV, so say good-bye to Game Day.  What can we do?  That’s right.  Nothing.  We don’t have a space program. Maybe Trump can borrow a spaceship from Putin, if the Chinese start messing with our stuff and we need to send Arnold Schwarzenegger up there to do some terminating?

And this just in…  In the last two days ESA satellites have been experiencing “odd problems”.
It’s part of Europe’s Galileo system that is supposed to provide more accurate information than GPS.  Hey wait, the US invented GPS.  Now we’re being replaced?  I miss the days when American innovation led the world.  Today we have Obama-led Globalization.  That would be empowering the rest of the world, at our expense. No wonder so many people voted for some nut bag wearing a red baseball cap.

By the way – people have said to me, “Obama did not single-handedly end the space program. How can you just blame him?”  Well, he didn’t save the space program and it ended during his watch. That’s just like him taking credit for capturing Bin Laden.  He did not single-handedly capture Bin Laden.  That effort started long before he became President, yet he takes credit for it.  OK – if it happens on your watch, you own it.  Welcome to the world of being our country’s CEO.  He caught Bin Laden and ended our space program.

4. Cuba – the small communist run country 90 miles off the South Florida coast used to get money from the USSR.  When that dried up, they were getting support from Venezuela. Then they ran out of cash. So what does the Castro regime do?  Well, they reach out to the most communist-friendly president that the US has ever had and we decide that we should be friends.  Really?  This is a seriously huge slap in the face to every exiled Cuban who had their country taken away from them by this communist regime.

The right thing to do was to tell the Castros to step down and have free elections. Then, the United States would be happy to help the Cuban people in rebuilding their country.  Instead, talk to any Cuban who is still in Cuba and they will tell you – we are just empowering them again. “Money has started to flow in to the communist again.” “It looks like they can afford gas for their cars and bullets for their guns …again.”  Is any of this helping the Cuban people?  You can tell yourself whatever you want but it is NOT. I’ve spoken to Cubans still in living in Cuba. They will tell you that things there are “getting bad again”.

Yes… Fidel Castro died. That’s great but he still won. He took over Cuba, ruled via fear over the Cuban people and died having never been displaced.  And what has changed since then? Nothing.  The communists remain in command and we’re scheduling daily flights there so that we can put money in their pockets.  Un-fucking-believable. Shame on us. Shame on Obama.

But he couldn’t stop there…  Just last week, during his final days in office, Obama ended our “wet foot, dry foot” policy.  This was put in place by, liberal but not communist, Bill Clinton. It said that if a Cuban citizen left Cuba and set foot on dry American soil, they could stay.   Since that time, many Cubans have risked their lives at sea in make-shift boats or defected through Central American and traversed Mexico to reach the US.

Now, however, the guy who thinks we should open our arms to Syrian and other Middle East refugees, has just closed the door on Cubans who choose to escape their country’s poor conditions and human rights violations to seeks a better life in the US.  I’m sure that with daily flights and more tourism on the way to Cuba, the communist are concerned that more of their people will be trying to leave.  After all, we are re-empowering the communist and things are, once again, getting bad for the Cuban people.

No problem – friend of communism, Obama, will deliver. Wet Foot, Dry Foot is no more.

5. Energy & Energy Independence – My first question is why are we still subsidizing the production of ethanol?   The Obama administration had us continuing to pour billions of dollars into corn ethanol subsidies, even after it has been proven that ethanol is, overall, not good for the environment.  Look it up!  More wasteful spending on useless items, as if he were trying to bankrupt America.

Next, Obama likes to say, as he did in his farewell speech, that America is at an all time low for dependency on foreign oil.  This is probably true, mostly due to fracking – but it’s not like he came up with fracking.  I’m surprised that he didn’t try to stop fracking.

He did, however, reject the Keystone XL pipeline, that would have brought us something like 800,000 barrels of oil per day from Canada and created thousands of jobs here.  He banned oil drilling in numerous locations, while we helped other countries to drill for oil… and he lifted the sanctions on Iran, thus allowing Iranian oil to flow into the open markets. After all, Iran would never use oil money to sponsor terrorism, right?

So now, Iran is flooding the market with cheap oil and pissing off our friends, the Saudis. Sure, we like cheap oil – but it’s still helping Iran and hurting everyone else.

And, although Barry likes to say that “we stopped Iran from building nuclear weapons without ever firing a single shot”, all we did was slow them down.  Trust me.  I, painstakingly, read the entire Iran nuclear agreement. So we’re letting them sell their oil, which gets them lots of cash, and in exchange, they won’t be able to build a bomb for a while.  Of course, in the near future, that agreement will expire and they will have the money to do whatever they want.

Don’t even get me started on the airplane full of cash to Iran.  I know it’s supposedly all legit, well…  “An airplane full of cash is totally on the up and up”, believed no one, ever.  And why are we even doing business with Iran while there are still inexplicably missing Americans in Iran – like Bob Levinson, who (in March) will have been missing for 10 years and we know that, at least at one time, the Iranian government had knowledge of his whereabouts.

6. Reduction of Nuclear Weapons – why?  I once heard it said, that there were enough nuclear weapons in existence to destroy the entire planet several times over.  At the time I thought, “destroying it twice over seems like plenty”.

So, I get that we probably can’t be trusted. After all, we are the only country on Earth to have ever used a nuclear weapon against another country – and we did that twice – but didn’t you rest just a little easier at night knowing that we had more nuclear weapons than anyone?

Well, that’s no longer true. Russia now has more nuclear weapons than we do – about 400 more.  But nuclear weapons aren’t really a military thing.  They aren’t designed to take out the other guy’s army or navy. They are designed to cause mass destruction and death. So, ideally, no one should have them.  Until that happens, however, I still think the United States should have more than anyone – certainly more than the Russians.  Why did Obama decide that we had too many and decided to reduce our number of nuclear weapons?  No one knows.  It’s not like we’re close to having zero and everyone said, “OK…  if you disable your last one, we’ll disable our last one”.

There is that theory that Obama didn’t like superpowers or, at least, he didn;t like America being one of them.  Hmmm…?

7. No Fiscal Responsibility – as of this posting, our nation debt is approximately $20T. That’s 20 trillion dollars.  We haven’t had a balance budget since Bill Clinton.  As far as setting records, however, Barack Obama wins as having spent more money than any previous presidency and for hitting the biggest numbers in deficit spending, having hit $1T, several times.  I actually believe that this president was trying to bankrupt us. It’s insane and irresponsible …and where’s the money we saved by killing the space program?

This is one of my biggest gripes.  I don’t think enough people understand the consequences of continuing to drive up our national debt at accelerated speeds. It’s probably best that we all learn Mandarin so that when we eventually default, at very minimum, we can communicate with the repo man when he comes to take our country.

8. Obamacare – OK, so… In general, I’m not completely against Obamacare.  I’m glad that Obamacare has shown the insurance companies that they can cover pre-existing conditions and still rape us for huge profits. My guess is that pre-existing conditions will not be returning.

That said, I think Obama was hoping this would be his legacy and he pushed it through, doing whatever he could do.  In his farewell speech, however, he said that if someone had a better plan, he would support it. Well, I think better plans should be easy to come by.

Fits of all, it was called The Affordable Care Act.  That, in itself, was deceiving. It should have been called The Forced Insurance Act because that’s what it actually did.  Now the law says that you MUST have heath insurance or pay a penalty and I’ve met several people who have chosen to pay the penalty because it’s less expensive than taking part in Obama’s “affordable care”.

As far as a better plan, why not look at other countries?  Panama, for example, the latest Central American success story – behind Costa Rica, actually has affordable care.  They did this, primarily, by limiting what healthcare providers can be sued for and by forcing the system to use realistic numbers.  Here in America, you’ll see a doctor’s bill that says $800.  Then you’ll see that the insurance company only allowed and paid $150 of that $800.  So shouldn’t that just be a $150 procedure?  Medicare has a list of every medical procedure possible and how much they are willing to pay a doctor to perform that procedure.  It’s a menu.  The Affordable Restaurant Act would have said, “let’s review the prices on your menu” – not passed a law requiring that everyone eat out.  Problem is that so much of healthcare costs are legal costs. Unfortunately, like most politicians, Obama is a lawyer and he would have been highly unpopular in the legal community if he started limiting how much lawyers could make.  So, instead of lowering the cost of healthcare, he forced everyone to buy health insurance and better lined the pockets of the insurance companies with cash. My cash. Your cash.

So I’m counting on your support for a better plan, Barry.  You promised.

9. The Racial Divide.  In Obama’s farewell speech, he talked about “Post Racial America” and how it was “never realistic”.  Well, I don’t think America is that racist.  To start with, we elected a Black president four years ago and four years before that… and I never, ever, ever heard a single racial remark about President Obama.  So if there’s racism in America, it’s not the kind of racism that would prevent a first generation black American from being elected President …more than once!

So… I get it – there is still some racism and there always will be but I had high hopes that this president was going to help bridge the racial divide and I don’t think that he did.  Instead, political correctness was taken to ridiculous heights.  Not too long ago I heard that it was racist to ask a black man if he played basketball.  Seriously?  Why is that racist?  Where I grew up, all the black guys played basketball and they were good – much better than us white boys. Everyone knows that many black communities embraced the game and kids grew up playing basketball.  Is recognizing that someone is black, racist?  What if a black man asks another black man if he plays basketball, is that racist?  Why didn’t I get asked?  What if a black man asks me if I play golf?  None of this is racist.  Pretty soon, if a man is attracted to a woman, that will just be sexist.  Why wasn’t he equally attracted to that guy?  Because he’s not gay… oh, so he’s homophobic?  Uh, no.  If I didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton, was that sexist?  You’d like to think so but then I guess half-the country is sexist.  This is all ridiculous.

Then there was Black Lives Matter. Just as Obama refused to say the words, “Radical Islam”, he could have maintained that “all lives matter” but he decided to support the Black Lives Matter movement.  I too support the right for citizens to protest and stand up for what they want to convey but these were not peaceful protests and I absolutely think that they helped to fuel the racial divide. Bad move, Mr. President.  You had a chance to do some bridging but I really think you divided us even more.  At the end on the presidency, I will argue that we are no closer than we were before – maybe we’re further apart.

10. Dividing Washington – Although I somewhat ranked my gripes about Obama, I wanted the last one to be a big one because, folks remember what they last read the most.  Hmmm… How about Immigration Reform, the much needed topic which he never even began to address or how about his Failure to Act so many times in the Middle East and allowing things to fester and our allies abandoned.  It’s no wonder they hate us over there.  There’s the side that always hates us, then there’s the side that we frequently abandon.

One Iraqi cab driver in Austin, Texas said to me, “I was OK under Saddam Hussein.  I could have lived well in Baghdad my whole life. Then the Americans came and, for a little while, things looked like they would be getting even better. Then the Americans left and the terrorist moved in.  Everyone was scared.  That’s when I had to take my family and leave my country.”

Hey…  Shit Happens (and God knows, we cause a lot of shit).

so, it’s very popular for everyone to blame the Republicans for a divided Washington DC, after all, Obama was President and it was easy for him to control the narrative…  “We’re trying to do good things here but the Republicans keep blocking us.”  But how did that start?  This division in Washington has never looked as it does right now.

Well, at the beginning of Obama’s presidency, he liked to visit The Hill trying to win bipartisan support for the bills that he wanted to push through and, for a few weeks there, it looked like this was going to be a well functioning administration and congress – similar to those before him.  Then, President Obama was quoted as saying to various Republicans, “Look… Elections have consequences and I won”.  The continuation of that private conversation went something like, “so we’re going to compromise by doing things my way.”

Call it naive in the ways of Washington or call it what you will… This was followed by his refusal to bend on the issues and that was followed by push-back from the other side. But it didn’t stop there… The two sides just went nuts and the division grew wider until we got the gridlock that you saw in Washington over the past few years.

Today it’s the Dems vs the Reps and the left vs. the right, while nothing gets done.
Well, the pendulum has swung.  So long, Barry.

— —

I hate to come across as a conspiracy theorist, but not too long ago, I set out to discover what this president was up to and why he was doing the things that he was doing.  Things that, in many ways, seemed so un-American.  Of course, in this online world of misinformation, fake news and click-bait headline, it was easy to find all sorts of crazy “proof” of things like: Obama is a Muslim, which he is not – but his grandfather was.  Obama is a communist, which I don’t really think that he is but he was absolutely influenced by a communist.

Anyway, there’s a lot of bogus stuff out there.  So what to do?

Well, first, I read Obama’s book, “Dreams From My Father”.  This is the book that he wrote, I believe, at the end of his college years and at the beginning of his political career.  I seriously thought that I was going to hang myself.  The details in every description were over the top. The man is a great storyteller but his mantra seems to be: Never say something with three words, if a thousand words could work too.

Example:  It was a crisp winter’s morning in Washington, DC, as I sat down in my squeaky hotel room chair and started typing on my dimly lit tablet before I’d even had my morning shower. A huge noise from the room next door had awoken me suddenly, interrupting a much needed deep sleep.  I’d had too many beers and cigarettes the night before and my throat was scratchy.  “I hope I’m not getting sick”, I thought to myself as I poured the day’s first cup of coffee from Marriott’s single cup coffee maker and looked around my non-smoking room for my Bic lighter.

(That’s not from his book – I just made that up, as I sit typing in my DC hotel room.)

Yes.  Entire paragraphs that said nothing.  But here’s what I got from the book…

Obama was born in Hawaii, lived in Indonesia for a while and then was sent back to Hawaii by his mom.  I think she sent him back to Hawaii because his step father, Lolo, was becoming a bit of a capitalist.  I don’t think Obama’s mom liked that.  Hawaii is an interesting place. Many Hawaiians don’t see themselves as Americans. What they see is that the US occupied the Hawaiian Nation over 100 years ago.  They believe that we, essentially, colonized them, much the way that Britain colonized a lot of the world. So, in general, the Hawaiians tend to be an anti-colonial bunch, hoping to one day, once again, be a sovereign nation.
Don’t believe me?

Look it up or check out this site –  https://www.hawaiiankingdom.org/index.shtml

Obama’s Kenyan dad was also an anti-colonial, as was his mom.  This might explain why he’s so anti-Britain and in some cases so seemingly anti-American.  Then there was his dad’s friend, who Obama saw as a mentor, Communist, Frank Marshall Davis, once on the FBI’s communist watch list – or his college mentor, Palestinian, Edward Said.  Hmmm…  this is the guy we elected President.  Twice?  I guess his actions should come as no surprise.

Side note: If you listen to the audiobook of Dream From My Father, you will not hear any reference to Frank (Frank Marshall Davis).  It turns out that the Audiobook is only available in the “abridged version” of the book.  The difference between the original version and the abridged version is simply that, in the abridged version, all referenced to Frank have been removed.  Obviously, referencing Frank was a miscalculation for young Barry and it was not easy to cover up later in life but he did the best he could.

For anyone who doubts the Frank Marshall Davis connection…

Note: I am not endorsing whoever owns this clip.  I have no idea why they posted it and I don’t care.  I was just using it to backup my point.  That’s where it ends.

Nevertheless, America is a big girl and she survives attacks, even the subtle ones from within.

Now the big question is…  Why is he staying in DC?  I don’t like it. I think he’s staying in DC because he’s nowhere near done yet.  I think he was really counting on a Hillary Clinton presidency so that he could remain relevant and influential. I think he is interested in seeking a UN position, so that he can continue to pursue his anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian and, overall, anti-American agenda.

Like I said, best politician ever to play the game…  I listened to his farewell speech and, once again, he made us all feel as if he was on our side, each and every one of us, individually.  …but I know better.  I don’t think he was ever really on our side.

I know some people say that he wanted to help the world…  Maybe.  But have you ever been on a airplane and paid attention to the little flight attendance dance when they tell you about the oxygen mask?  They always say, “place your oxygen mask over your nose and mouth first, before helping others”.  The reason is that you cannot be expected to really help others, if you yourself become weak.  You need to be strong first – then help others.  This was not Obama’s plan. Much of what he did weakened America under the pretense of helping other. That’s not the way it’s done… but that’s OK. It’s time to give the next guy a shot.

Now, in the words of President Obama, “it’s time for change”.
I say again… I’m so glad that we have a new President.

Peace

– Arch