Time to piss some more people off

It’s time for another bitchy blog post about the president.

I’ve been watching to see what President Obama says or doesn’t say about the Occupy Wall Street protests sweeping the landscape. I’m still a little miffed that he promised to “put on some comfortable shoes” and defend labor if it were attacked and then was a no-show when exactly that happened in Madison, Wisconsin. So I’ve been interested in his reaction to the anti-class warfare, anti-greed, anti-politics-as-usual rallies that have been drawing diverse crowds to the Big Apple and elsewhere for over a month now.

I haven’t heard anything.

A Facebook friend claimed that yes, indeed, Obama expressed his support for the protesters. Another told me the president would be a fool to align himself with the “hippies and anarchists” at Zuccotti Park. Still another advised me not to hold my breath since the POTUS and the Dems rely on the same campaign cash from Wall Street and corporate America that the GOP enjoys. And someone else told me, “The movement transcends any one politician, man. No one cares what the prez says because he’s part of the problem.”

But that’s what Barack Obama does best. He says things. Like when he said this:

“It is wrong that in the United States of America a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker who earns $50,000 should pay higher tax rates than somebody pulling in $50 million.”

Or this:

“Anybody who says we can't change the tax code to correct that, anyone who has signed some pledge to protect every single tax loophole so long as they live, they should be called out.”

Or this:

“…we can have an argument about how much regulation we should have. We can have an argument if you want about health care; I think we did the right thing. But don’t pretend…that creating dirtier air and water for our kids and fewer people on healthcare and less accountability on Wall Street is a jobs plan. I think more teachers in the classroom is a jobs plan. More construction workers rebuilding our schools is a jobs plan. Tax cuts for small business owners and working families is a jobs plan. That’s the choice we face.”

Or this:

"I’m not the Democratic President or Republican President – I’m the President. And I don’t care if you’re a Republican or a Democrat – because we're all Americans and we are in this together. We don’t need a Republican jobs act, or a Democratic jobs act; we need a jobs act. We need to put people back to work right now."

The guy really knows how to burn a barn when he speaks. I’ll give him that.

I take exception to him speaking as if Democrats and Republicans are equal in their desire to see our country’s problems fixed and the 14 million who are unemployed put back to work – it’s clear that the GOP’s goal is to end the Obama presidency by any means necessary – but I know what he’s saying. The thing is, “everybody” means people on the left, too. It includes the thousands sleeping in tents by choice or necessity all over the country. It includes those camping out on Wall Street as well as those working there.

Now Obama defenders are using Facebook to promote a study that just found he’s a victim of “unrelentingly negative” media coverage. Yeah, that’s why progressives feel deflated and defeated: because Obama’s not treated fairly by Faux “News” et al. It has nothing to do with his extending the Bush tax cuts for the richest one percent, or reneging on more campaign promises than I can enumerate here, or pulling the plug on a long-term home care program included in his 2010 health care “reform” law, as was just announced. (The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports, or CLASS program, co-authored by the late Senator Ted Kennedy, was designed to give the disabled and elderly cash to receive care at home instead of usually more expensive institutional care.) It has nothing to do with him talking like a Democrat but acting like more of a Republican than some Republicans.

I receive fundraising e-mails from the POTUS, his campaign manager, Jim Messina, and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Director Robby Mook almost daily. I hope someone’s responding to these pleas because I’m not.