By PHILLIP MASLAK Sr.
What has President Barack Obama done for us? He blames all of his problems on the past administration. It's about time he stepped up and took some responsibility.
He pushed a health-care plan through before anyone ever read it to see what was in it. He's borrowed over a trillion dollars from China, and is still trying to spend, print or borrow money. He boasts about saving General Motors, or is it Government Motors. They are trying to sell the Chevrolet Volt as the answer to energy independence. The problem is it costs more than $80,000 to produce one car that sells for around $40,000. Doesn't make much sense does it?
His stimulus packages failed miserably. He invested billions in Solyndra to produce solar panels which went bankrupt. Where is the transparency and reduction of government he promised? We have people losing their homes, 23 million people unemployed. More people on public assistance than ever before. Our president is against drilling for oil, refused to let a pipeline come down from Canada and wants all of our coal fired power plants closed down, putting all our coal miners out of work.
He's all for giving college loans to children of illegal immigrants. This president will do anything it takes to get re-elected, lies and smear campaigns against his opponents. He talks about a strong military and at the same time is reducing the size of our armed forces and the military budget.
Our president is completely out of touch with the American people. He talks about people making $200,000 a year, but never mentions the people struggling to pay their bills, buy groceries or trying to decide if they have enough money to put four or five gallons of gas in their vehicles. President Obama's speech at the Democratic Convention was almost identical to the one he made four years ago. He wanted to close Guantanamo Bay and bring the terrorists to New York City to put them on trial. Great idea right? He's all against enhanced interrogation, calling waterboarding extreme and cruel punishment. If it wasn't for the CIA and their methods, we never would have gotten Osama bin Laden when we did.
Just to set the record straight, it was President Bush who formed Homeland Security and set all of these plans to get bin Laden into operation. Why is Obama taking all the credit for it? Give credit to our military and to the Navy SEALS that risked their lives to take him out.
This whole election boils down to do you want to turn this mess around and live in a democracy where free enterprise is rewarded or live in a country where the government controls everything you do? You can see what's happening in Greece with their economic collapse, so you should be able to understand what's happening to us.
Our embassies in Syria, Cairo, Yemen are under attack by radical Muslims and al-Qaeda, but our president is out on the campaign trail in Colorado. He has managed to avoid meeting with the Prime Minister of Israel who has been a long time ally of ours, but yet he's invited the leader of the Muslim brotherhood to come to the United States next week for a little chat. We're spending billions of dollars in aide to these middle east countries while they're burning our flags, killing our people and chanting death to the Americans.
Is this what our president calls moving forward? I don't think our country can withstand another four years of this kind of leadership. We are in real trouble my friends. It's all up to you the voters in November when everyone wants your vote to decide who you want to lead our country.
Ask yourself, are you better off now than you were four years ago?
Phillip Maslak Sr. is a Dunkirk resident.
