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The Foothill Dragon Press

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Greg Oyan: Obama will be an one-term president

The 2012 Presidential election is approaching quickly. In my opinion, there is one priority that needs to be pursued by both Democrats and Republicans: get Barack Obama out of office.

Obama said he would bring hope and change to the United States, but it seems as though his Presidency has been full of unfulfilled promises, weak attempts at passing solid legislation, and little positive impact on the nation.

Unfortunately, none of the Republican candidates seem to have much of a chance of winning the election, and as November draws closer and closer, the GOP is digging themselves deeper and deeper into a hole that can’t be filled by the current President or any of his GOP contenders.

Obamacare and killing Osama Bin Laden are supposedly Obama’s two biggest Presidential achievements. Big deal. Obamacare increased national medical spending and helped us fall further and further into debt. Now, Medicare, Medicaid, and other health related spending accounts for about 20% of the country’s budget. That is ridiculous.

How can we afford to give health insurance to millions of previously uninsurable people? We can’t. I think everyone deserves health insurance, but we can’t go bankrupt in the health insurance reform process. We need to come up with a legitimate, working, healthcare reform, and Obamacare is not it.

The death of Osama Bin Laden was relatively meaningless compared to the entire War on Terror. The only real significance of the killing was the symbolism behind the action. Bin Laden symbolized the worst day in modern American history. His death isn’t going to draw very many tears in the U.S., but there were two problems with public perception regarding the issue.

First off, on national television Obama claimed responsibility for killing Osama Bin Laden, using, “I,” and “me,” far too many times. George W. Bush deserves just as much credit as Obama because the search for the notorious leader of Al Qaida took much longer than the two years that Obama had been in office to accomplish.

In the mission that killed Bin Laden, Navy SEALs pulled the trigger, military leaders came up with the battle plan, Guantanamo Bay interrogations yielded the valuable information as to the whereabouts of Bin Laden’s currier, and all Obama said was, “do it.”

Also, the War on Terror rages on without Bin Laden. What did his death do to affect the war as a whole? Almost nothing. Therefore, it seems as though Obama’s two biggest successes as President might not be as great as Democrats would like to think they are.

I think that most Democrats don’t want to admit that there isn’t a suitable Presidential candidate that is running this year, including Obama. No one in the GOP race is all that electable, and Obama is only mildly electable because he’s the incumbent, but that doesn’t mean we should re-elect him. The trouble is, who should we elect if not Obama? I don’t know, but here are more reasons why it just shouldn’t be him.

1. On June 23, 2011 Obama tapped the U.S. emergency oil reserves in hope of easing steadily increasing gas prices. Now, on February 28, 2012, gas prices are reaching their highest points in history. We will probably reach $5 per gallon in Ventura before summer. In Los Angeles, Hawaii, and many large cities, gas prices have already extended beyond the $5 per gallon mark. Not to mention, the economy is still in the dump and the stock market is still struggling. Although some stock market improvement and a few more taken jobs have been present in the last month, there is still a long road to recovery ahead for America.

2. In the 2012 election, the economy has been the most important consideration pertaining to the election of a Presidential candidate. The most recent Gallup poll for Presidential approval rating from February 28, 2012 is down 2% at 43%. The only time that percentage would be good is in horse racing and Las Vegas. If the economy were better, maybe at least a majority of Americans would approve of their leader.

3. As a country, we are spending more money than we are making and that simply doesn’t make sense. Obama’s proposed budget for 2012 called for billions of dollars being added to the national debt. That reminds me. Interest on the national debt is a huge percentage of our national budget. Hundreds of billions of dollars are spent on absolutely nothing other than paying interest on the debt to keep our credit scores at acceptable levels. If only we didn’t spend more than what we have, that national debt would go down; hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the national debt interest would also go down.

4. What about Iran and North Korea and all of the other foreign nightmares on Earth? The U.S. is the single most politically influential body in the world. The United Nations is powerful, but the U.S. gives the U.N. the backbone to get things done. We have not been harsh enough on Iran and their nuclear ambitions. We have not put North Korea in their place and halted their production of nuclear warheads. Our commander-in-chief left Iraq to fall into anarchy, and we have, “condemned,” Syria’s atrocious actions in the past few months without taking steps to prevent further carnage in the crumbling country.

No, we cannot involve ourselves in anymore costly wars, but like Collin Powell says with his Pottery Barn analogy, “You break it, you buy it.” We broke Iraq, and we broke Afghanistan. We helped break Libya and we should help break Syria. Now, we’re leaving Iraq broken, and pretending to fix Afghanistan before we leave them in shards as well. We shouldn’t put any troops on the ground in Syria, but like Libya, we should work with NATO and put a bomb down their dictator’s chimney and say that the world means business.

Interestingly enough, the United States is also the least generous country in the world in terms of healthcare spending in foreign nations. George Bush tripled the United States’ funding of AIDS and malaria prevention programs from $15 billion to $48 billion. Still, most developed nations give far more money than we do. Only 16 cents out of every $100 are contributed to our brothers and sisters in Africa, Asia, and South America. John F. Kennedy famously affirmed that we are all human beings and that is what binds us together. Politicians in Washington and our president need to reallocate poorly spent money in bureaucracy to more useful purposes including foreign healthcare aid.

Since his candidacy, Obama has been barraged on his foreign policy skills. It seems the criticism was well deserved. As for the vice president that was supposed to be Obama’s lifeline for international issue, let’s just say that is another column altogether. Biden falls asleep in meetings, uses expletives on national television, and claims that the economy is worse off than his party says it is. What a mess.

Lord help us in the coming election, I pray that an experienced leader can take the helm of our fine nation, and steer us to prosperity once more. Obama can’t do it, Biden can’t help him, and if the current executive regime is re-elected into office, I don’t see much of a bright and shiny future for America in the next five years.

What do you think?
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Greg Oyan: Obama will be an one-term president