The President of our country should be trustworthy. Unfortunately, Barack Obama has said many things and failed to stick to his word. To be honest, it seems to me that his word means very little to him as he has promised many things just to turn around and break those promises; we expect the President of the United States to give us the truth - misguided as our expectations may be - but when he gives false information does the media's trust in him waver? Nope. The media is just as infatuated as ever with headlines today, such as Obama grants 10 states leeway on education law, and Obama defends gay rights record. Singing the praises of a liar and a cheat... great.
Broken Campaign Promises
Top 10 (In no particular order)
1) End income tax for seniors making less than $50,000
2) Repeal the Bush tax cuts for higher incomes
3) Forbid companies in bankruptcy from giving executives bonuses
4) Negotiate health care reform in public sessions televised on C-SPAN
5) No family making less than $250,000 will see "any form of tax increase."
6) Close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center
7) Centralize ethics and lobbying information for voters
8) Increase the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour
9) Pay for the national service plan without increasing the deficit
10) Give annual "State of the World" address
The Rest
11) Require employers to provide seven paid sick days per year
12) Double federal funding for cancer research
13) Increase the capital gains and dividends taxes for higher-income taxpayers
14) Expand the child and dependent care credit
15) Create a foreclosure prevention fund for homeowners
16) End no-bid contracts above $25,000
17) Phase out exemptions and deductions for higher earners
18) Sign the Employee Free Choice Act, making it easier for workers to unionize
19) Allow workers to claim more in unpaid wages and benefits in bankruptcy court
20) Allow imported prescription drugs
21) Appoint federal-level coordinator to oversee all federal autism efforts
22) Direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services to conduct a comprehensive study of federal cancer initiatives
23) Provide the CDC $50 million in new funding to determine the most effective approaches for cancer patient care
24) Fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA
25) Create a National Commission on People with Disabilities, Employment, and Social Security
26) Change federal rules so small businesses owned by people with disabilities can get preferential treatment for federal contracts.
27) Reduce the threshhold for the Family and Medical Leave Act from companies with 50 employees to companies with 25 employees
28) Provide a $1.5 billion fund to help states launch programs for paid family and medical leave
29) Expand the Family Medical Leave Act to include leave for domestic violence or sexual assault
30) Form international group to help Iraq refugees
31) Work with Russia to move nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert
32) Develop an alternative to President Bush's Military Commissions Act on handling detainees
33) Secure ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT
34) Reinstate special envoy for the Americas
35) Double the Peace Corps
36) Create a public "Contracts and Influence" database
37) Allow five days of public comment before signing bills
38) Tougher rules against revolving door for lobbyists and former officials
39) Double funding for after school programs
40) Expand the Employment Non-Discrimination Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity
41) Urge states to treat same-sex couples with full equality in their family and adoption laws
42) Allow bankruptcy judges to modify terms of a home mortgage
43) Restore Superfund program so that polluters pay for clean-ups
44) Re-establish the National Aeronautics and Space Council
45) Support human mission to moon by 2020
46) Limit term of director of national intelligence
47) Reduce earmarks to 1994 levels
48) Enact windfall profits tax for oil companies
49) Create cap and trade system with interim goals to reduce global warming
50) Use revenue from cap and trade to support clean energy and environmental restoration
51) Require plug-in fleet at the White House
52) Require more flex-fuel cars for the federal government
53) Mandate flexible fuel vehicles by 2012
54) Provide an annual report on "state of our energy future"
55) Allow penalty-free hardship withdrawals from retirement accounts in 2008 and 2009
56) Recognize the Armenian genocide politically
57) Create a public option health plan for a new National Health Insurance Exchange
58) Introduce a comprehensive immigration bill in the first year
Sources and Text Here
Falsities
Flat-Out-Lies
1) "If you actually took the number of Muslims [sic] Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world" (Obama). “The CIA Factbook says that less than 1 percent — 0.6 percent to be precise — of the 307 million residents identify as Muslim. That means the United States has only 1.8 million Muslims. So, of the 60 most populous Muslim states, the United States ranks 58th” (Politifact)
2) "Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and Newt Gingrich all say they would cut foreign aid to Israel — and every other country — to zero” (Obama). None of the candidates said they would stop foreign aid to Israel or any other country. They said they would hold new negotiations with the countries to reassess their needs. (Politifact has the transcripts.)
3) "What I have done -- and this is unprecedented ... is I've said to each agency ... 'look at regulations that are already on the books and if they don't make sense, let's get rid of them'” (Obama). Clinton did it, Bush did it, “In fact, a U.S. Government Accountability Office report on July 16, 2007, states that, "Every president since President Carter has directed agencies to evaluate or reconsider existing regulations" (Politifact).
Just-Wrongs
4) "Thirty million Americans, including a lot of people in Florida, are going to be able to get healthcare next year because of that law."
5) "I made a bunch of these promises during the campaign. ... We've got about 60 percent done in three years."
6) Under President Barack Obama, the United States has "doubled our exports."
7) The president’s proposed budget "will help reduce the deficit by $400 billion over the next decade to the lowest level since Dwight Eisenhower was president."
8) Under the White House’s budget proposal, "we will not be adding more to the national debt" by the middle of the decade. (Interest? Really? What about that?)
9) "I didn't raise taxes once."
10) "When President Franklin D. Roosevelt started Social Security, 'it only affected widows and orphans," and when Medicare began, 'it was a small program.'"
11) The Bush administration had been "giving (auto companies) billions of dollars and just asking nothing in return."
12) "The vast majority of the money I got was from small donors all across the country.''
13) "We've excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs."
14) Health reform will "give every American the same opportunity" to buy health insurance the way members of Congress do.
15) Preventive care "saves money."
16) "If we went back to the obesity rates that existed back in the 1980s, the Medicare system over several years could save as much as a trillion dollars."
17) "I have not said that I was a single-payer supporter." Well he earlier said "I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program," Obama said. "I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its gross national product on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody." Obama on single payer health insurance.
Sources and Text Here
But who cares?!? He isn't a stuffy old protestant white guy! He's looking out for the little guy, the underprivileged, the minorities. He's looking out for our best interests. Oh.... and did I mention he's a communist (or at the very least a socialist)? As was his mother, father, and grandparents (who raised him).
"To avoid being mistaken for a sellout,I chose my friends carefully.The more politically active black students.The foreign students.The Chicanos.The Marxist Professors and the structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets.At night,in the dorms,we discussed neocolonialism,Franz Fanon,Eurocentrism,and patriarchy.When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake,we were resisting bourgeois society's stifling constraints.We weren't indifferent or careless or insecure.We were alienated."
