Day: July 10, 2009

As the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings for Sonia Sotomayor begin next week, a poll shows amazing levels of ignorance about our judicial branch among the American people.

A majority did not know that there were nine justices on the Supreme Court, and very few people in the poll could name even one Supreme Court Justice now sitting on the bench.

Considering how much the Supreme Court affects all Americans’ lives on a regular basis, it is shocking that there is so little knowledge of our judicial system, how it works, and who sits in judgment on constitutional cases.

Despite the fact that more Americans graduate high school and attend college than ever before,  it is clear that the educational curriculum continues to lack in so many areas, of which knowledge of our government is just one of the glaring weaknesses.

A new report indicates that the Obama Administration is considering extending bailout aid to large numbers of small businesses, taking the money from the $700 billion TARP program that was originally designed only for the banking system.

This is a welcome change, and will certainly add to the image that Obama is not just out to help the elite of the banking system, but the main backbone of the everyday economy–small businesses.

It is a politically smart move, hard for Republicans to criticize, and it will help to restore and revive the American economy in its greatest time of need since the Great Depression.

Hooray for Barack Obama!  🙂

President Obama has arrived in Ghana, his first stop in Sub Saharan Africa during his Presidency.

Many observers would have thought he would have chosen Kenya, the homeland of his father, to be the first African country he would visit.  But he decided he wanted to emphasize the flourishing democracy that is succeeding in Ghana, which was also the first African nation to become independent in the post World War II years.

There is a lot that crosses one’s mind when one realizes that here we have an African American president visiting a country from which the ancestors of his wife Michelle were transported against their will in the vicious slave trade that went on for centuries from West Africa, including Ghana, to the United States.

It makes one realize how far we have come, and yet, with all of the remaining racism still part of America, how far we have yet to travel!

Six months into the Obama Administration, his plans to upgrade US involvement in the Afghan War against the Taliban is unfortunately leading to growing casualties for the United States and its NATO partners.

Twenty seven Americans were killed in the month of June, the most ever since the war began in October 2001,  and more than half were due to roadside bombs or IED’s, Improvised Explosive Devices. 

It is clear that the cost to the American people will grow as time goes by, and I still wonder whether the plan to escalate will have any long lasting effect, or whether this war will become Barack Obama’s Vietnam!

President Obama’s administration has taken first steps toward promoting food safety by calling for tougher standards for production of poultry, beef, leafy greens, melons and tomatoes, an important move to insure that Americans have confidence in their food supply, which in the recent past has suffered from several health scares due to lack of regulation,  which started to be cut back during the Presidency of Ronald Reagan.

Also, Obama has introduced the idea of providing assistance for the growing number of elderly in this country who are or will be forced to live in nursing homes and assisted living facilities in their twilight years, or be required to have skilled nursing care at home.  With the growing number of baby boomers reaching the elderly stage of life over the next twenty years, this is indeed an important initiative to deal with what is a growing need.

Of course, these proposals will cost the government and the taxpayers over the long haul, but both are essential parts of improving life in America!

Almost six months in office,  Barack Obama is starting to come under growing criticism by many different groups.

The issue of gays in the military, and Obama’s lack of action regarding "don’t ask, don’t tell",  is one issue.  The fact that Obama seems unwilling to be as transparent as he claimed he would be–specifically refusal to allow records of the Secret Service log, that would show all visitors at the White House,  to be made public–angers many of his supporters. 

His inability to get the G-8 summit and emerging nations to agree to substantial global warming limits similar to what just barely passed recently in the House of Representatives is also seen as a goal that he has failed in, at least at this point.

Of course, there is great dissatisfaction that unemployment continues to rise, and that the economic stimulus plan has had only a minimal effect five months after the proposal passed both houses of Congress.  Obama is being called to account by House Republican leader John Boehner and others,  and can only offer in retort that the plan is starting to work, with most of the effects to take place in 2010.  But with the unemployment rate at 9.5 percent and certain to rise above 10 percent soon, this issue could have a deadening effect on the Democratic majority in Congress in 2010, particularly in the House of Representatives.

So Obama is discovering that disillusionment and anger is starting to grow among different constituencies, and it could have a long range effect on the image and the reality of his Presidency.

Vice President Joe Biden announced this week an agreement by the nation’s hospitals to forgo $155 billion in future Medicare and Medicaid payments to assist in lowering the cost of President Obama’s health care plan.

This development, on top of the backing of a national health care plan by the American Medical Association, and Walmart  (the largest employer in the country), are seen as hopeful steps toward the enactment of Obama’s ideas of a proposal to cover just about everyone in the nation. 

The problem is to appease the far left which wants a more vigorous plan,  and also the more difficult terrain for a health care plan in the Senate, where conservative Democrats and most Republicans are opposed to any public health care initiative.

So the battle goes on, but Obama has said failure is not an option, and that this initiative will mark the level of success or failure of his Presidency.  It will be the most significant single battle over this summer in Congress.