[ute4ever]

I didn't vote for Obama, but I don't dislike his presidency so far, speaking generally, speaking as a whole. He's had his brutal moments and questionable decisions, but I don't look at his every move through a GOP smokescreen; I try to look at politics objectively. I initially liked that he wanted universal health care, and liked that he at least tried to establish it, but I don't like the end result.

I initially liked that he wanted to close Gitmo, didn't like that he waffled on it, but now I like that it still exists. Too bad Osama bin Laden wasn't buried somewhere in-between the helicopter landing pad and the walkway to the prison.

I liked that he invested $$$$ in bailouts and stimuli, but the long-term success or failure of such acts can't be measured this soon. It's like when the Dallas Cowboys fired Tom Landry after a 3-13 season and hired Jimmy Johnson, who cleaned house, installed a new system and they went only 1-15 during his first year. They would eventually win Super Bowls, but it took time. We don't know if Obama's policies will win Super Bowls, or merely make the playoffs, or merely pull even at 8-8. But he inherited a team that went 3-13 and it's too soon to judge his impact on the economy. GOP apologists are howling at his record while they can.

What I don't like are the GOP apologists who attack his every move, even when he sides and agrees with GOP policy; they show that they are so loyally opposed to everything he does that they up and abandon their own policies. Creation of universal health care. Foreign policy. Afghanistan.

Like I already said, I didn't vote for Obama, but the actions of Boehner and Co. over these past two years have largely swung me away from their party due to their stupid, hypocritical, dumbed-down attacks on anything the Executive Office does. The GOP has shown a great lack of character over these past two years. I believe the contemporary slang is "bunch of bitter, whiny zoobs." I understand that circumstances change, so sometimes policies and goals change. But what is sickening is when their only reasoning for changing a position is because it has become something that the POTUS now agrees with.

Some days I have to drive through rural stretches and the only stations that come through are playing Rush Limbaugh. It makes me wonder what type of person can listen to his rants and actually soak it up? People who don't follow politics, for one. People who solely rely on the Sean Hannitys and Glenn Becks of the world for their information. People who see nothing wrong with the line "let me tell you what the left believes." Elder Oaks once said that the quickest way to lose your testimony of the BOM is to fail to give it equal time with the ways of the world. Rather than balancing scripture time with learning new philosophies, they abandon one side altogether and end up lost.

It's ironic to hear Obama being criticized as having swung much further right than the person he presented himself as during the campaign. The very emergence of the Tea Party shows that there's a significant portion of the right who feels the GOP has become too liberal....the very GOP that blasts Obama for shifting to the middle. So where exactly do you fit in, GOP? It's not next to the Tea Party. You are closer to the very Executive Office that you so claim to despise, but are too blinded by bitterness to see it. You are upset that your party isn't the one in charge, your party isn't the one that would be largely making the exact same decisions, largely promoting the same policies. I kind of feel bad for the clowns who soak up all of their nonsensical propaganda, such as the straw-grasping statement that Bin Laden has been dead for years and Obama hid it from the American people to win an election. An election that's 18 months away. For this idea to work, first of all a person must kindly overlook the fact that the "dead for years" scenario meant that the cover up began with their very own GEORGE W. BUSH.