At a glance, we can see, from the ascertainable, non-conjecture records of Obama and Romney that there is no contest between their predictable effectiveness.
A path can reasonably be projected, as the "past is prologue". There are no "miraculous" super-shifts in philosopy that I've ever seen.
QuikGlance:
He taught Alinsky's Rules For Radicals,
Used them in community organizing and as a candidate and President (check them out),
A rights advocate,
20 years with Jeremiah Wright (must be some agreement, wouldn't y'think?),
Main focus was benefits for the poor and declaring would redistribute the wealth,
No experience running an organization (other than 13 people in community organizing),
Financially not literate,
Anti-business/rich - Attacks business and the rich, class warfare, 1%, fat cats, greed, Occupy
Divisiveness and no difference in Washington politics
Advocates redistribution,
Ignores biggest financial issues
His budgets are rejected 100%,
Record deficits at twice the rate of any past President, promised to cut in half.
Summary: Civil rights advocate
Redistribution of wealth advocate
Attacks business and the rich
Doesn't confront biggest financial issues
"Brilliant amateur" and bluffer/speaker, but clearly an amateur
Projection: Guaranteed big increase in middle class taxes, not enough rich people to cover it all!
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DETAILED RECORD
High school: Basketball (the Rat-Ballers): in his own words: goofing off, used drugs, especially pot. A bully?
Occidental, Harvard: Undisclosed grades, Law Review editor; looked for radicals and socialists to hang around with (see his book)
Teaching: Constitional Law; Alinsky's Rules For Radicals (see the picture of him writing then on the board)
Community Organizer:
Trained ACORN members for campaigns around the country, voter registration drives
1995 Training ACORN staff how to piCket and blockade bank headquarters to "get them" to write
mortgages for poor people; ACORN earned fees to place, major part of subprime problem.
He helped set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights
organization in Altgeld Gardens.
Obama also worked as a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, a community organizing i
institute.
Lawyer: Civil rights lawyer, associate for 3 years, then "of counsel"
Church: Reverend Wright ("God damn America") 20 years - Though he said he never caught on...
Student loan: Paid off 8 years ago
State Senator, 6 years :
ACORN became his precinct organization, identifying and turning out the vote.
Helped pass sweeping law that banned most gifts from lobbyists and personal use of campaign funds by state legislators.
Co-sponsor of a bill that re-structured the Illinois welfare program into the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.
Helped get various pieces of legislation that established a $100 million Earned Income Tax Credit for working families, increased child care subsidies for low-income families, and required advance notice before mass layoffs and plant closings.
getting money for churches and community groups in his district.
January 2003, Obama became chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee
He sponsored successful efforts to expand children's health care, create a plan to provide equal health care access for all Illinois residents, and create a "Hospital Report Card" system, and worker's rights laws that protected whistleblowers, domestic violence victims, equal pay for women, and overtime pay.[28] His most public accomplishment was a bill requiring police to videotape interrogations and confessions in potential death penalty cases.
US Senator, 2 years before became a candidate: In 2004 ACORN operates as Obama’s precinct organization in his run for the U.S. Senate.
He was considered to be among the most liberal by various analyses.
Nonpartisan analyses of bill sponsorship and voting records placed him as a "rank-and-file Democrat" and "Democratic Party loyalist."
Candidate for President:
In 2007 ACORN’s national political arm endorsed Obama for president, and its “nonpartisan” voter registration affiliate starts registering hundreds of thousands of voters for Obama
Approved TARP financial rescue plan
President:
Facilitates managed bankruptcy of GM with loan, right idea (and let GM going without having to contribute
to the in arrears pension, makes it highly in debt)
Stimulus package of about $800 billion, right idea, execution questionable
Health Care Act - "Financed" from $500 billion of Medicare, cutting doctor reimbursements, 6 years of
expenses with 10 years of taxes so "revenue neutral". His own party says it took away from time
needed to address jobs.
Deficits record breaking by about double
Tax the rich theme, tax oil companies, fairness, fat cats, redistribute the wealth, Repubs want dirty air and dirty water, called for cilvility in Tucson speech
His last two budgets voted down unanimously (97-0 in Senate). No specific plans to reduce deficit (CBO - we can't score a speech), handle social security or Medicare huge unfunded liabilities problems, has avoided things that might be political, including the generally acknowledged political motivation for the delay in the Keystone Pipeline until after the election...
Unable to fulfill the duties of his office. "Policies drifting without direction." (Confidence Men, Suskind.)
There was little follow through. Decisions were left undecided., He couldn't make tough decisions, which is
is a huge problem since that is what a president is paid to do.
An often leaderless White House
Successes
Two books, best sellers
Convention speech a big hit
And above items
Summary
Basically, he appears to be a community cause type of person, an activist, with no experience or exposure in financial, economic, business areas. Excellent speaker and writer.
Most detailed account of his Presidency: Confidence Men, Ron Suskind. "Home alone. No adult in the White House." "Brilliant amateur."
ON DRUGS
Obama, by all accounts, was a habitual drug user in high school. He tried cocaine, he admits in Dreams From My Father; he “tried drugs enthusiastically.” The Chicago Tribune reported back in 2007 that Obama thanked the “Choom Gang” in his high school yearbook; “chooming” was Hawaiian slang for smoking pot. The Honolulu Advertiser reported that Obama’s senior portrait “prominently displayed … A package of ‘Zig-Zag’ rolling papers and a matchbook.” One of Obama’s close friends was arrested for drug possession during high school.
In his memoir, Obama talked about routinely getting high. “Junkie. Pothead,” he wrote. “That’s where I’d been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man.” But, according to Obama, he only got high because he was contemplating deep matters: drugs could “push questions of who I was out of my mind.”
Obama told students in 2007 that this activity constituted “goofing off” and “wasting time”:
"I will confess to you that I was kind of a goof off in high school as my mom reminded me," Obama said. "I went to high school in Hawaii, so there's a lot of opportunity to goof off because the weather is really good all the time …
"You know, I made some bad decisions …. You know, got into drinking and experimenting with drugs. There was a whole stretch of time where I didn't apply myself. It wasn't until I got out of … high school, and went to college that I started realizing, man, I wasted a lot of time.”
ON REDISTRIBUTION, TAX THE RICH
Promised to increase the tax burden on the rich to redistribute wealth to the poor.
Hugo Chavez, 2009: “I recommend to Obama — they’re criticizing him because they say he’s moving towards socialism — come Obama, ally with us on the path to socialism, it’s the only road.”
“Imagine a socialist revolution in the U.S. Nothing is impossible.”
During his high school years, Obama hung out with communist radical Frank Marshall Davis; in 2007, the Los Angeles Times reported that during his high school days, “he felt the first stirrings of anger toward whites. He says he also delved into black nationalism.” He was “offended or even enraged when white classmates adopted black street slang or revealed their underlying consciousness of his race by going out of their way to tell him how much they admired a black musician or athlete.”
ACORN
Obama claims he has no ties to “a group he once did some legal work for.”
In July 2008 the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, along with NoQuarter researchers, uncovered $832,598.29 that the Obama campaign funneled through a front company called Citizens Services, Inc.
ACORN, which receives partial taxpayer funding, used those funds to conduct solicitations for contributions to and raised over $800,000 for Obama in Philadelphia alone.
"I come out of a grass roots organizing background. That's what I did for three and half years before I went to law school. That's the reason I moved to Chicago was to organize. So this is something that I know personally, the work you do, the importance of it. I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran the Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work."
The Obama campaign also paid Citizens Services Inc., a group affiliated with ACORN, more than $800,000 for get-out-the-vote (not voter registration) efforts during the primary election. The nature of CSI’s services was initially misrepresented on the Obama campaign’s disclosures to the Federal Election Commission, which the campaign describes as an oversight. The Obama campaign says it has not been involved with ACORN during the general election.
LAW PRACTICE
Obama graduated from law school in 1991, worked on the book that would become his memoir Dreams From My Father , and directed a voter registration drive in 1992. After that, Obama went to work for a civil rights law firm then named Davis, Miner, Barnhill and Galland. (It is now known only as Miner, Barnhill and Galland.) The firm's specialty is civil rights litigation and neighborhood economic development work.
HIGH SCHOOL ANTICS
“I’m not her boyfriend!” I shouted. I ran up to Coretta and gave her a slight shove, she staggered back and looked up at me, but still said nothing. “Leave me alone!” I shouted again. And suddenly Coretta was running, faster and faster, until she disappeared from sight. Appreciative laughs rose around me. Then the bell rang and the teachers appeared to round us back into class."
