Sosbee.com

Your February 9, 2015, headline: “Obama gets his mojo back” was very misleading. Obama never had any mojo, period! If he had any in 2009, America would have had a second stimulus, a moratorium on foreclosures, an infrastructure bank, a public option, Guantánamo would be closed, the elections of 2010 and 2014 would not have been such a disaster for Democrats, and there would not be so many good people still looking for work. Obama’s enabling of the Republican strategy of obstruction set the country up for two years of Republican shenanigans the likes of which we can only imagine…and shudder.
P. S. Why don’t you pull up some of the best stories of your earliest, beginning years for today’s readers to enjoy?

Twelve gauge, pump action shotgun with 36 inch, full choke barrel. Magnum load, size 6 chilled shot.

One phrase, being uttered by Republican campaigners for public office can be wholeheartedly supported on both sides of the aisle: “grow the economy.” It is a phrase you are likely to hear over and over from Republican candidates. However, based on experience of the past six years, it would be nice if at least one candidate would tell us just what they propose to do to accomplish it.

With all of the fussing and fighting about the Keystone XL, it is remarkable how little has been said about the environmental risk involved. When the issue is raised, the proponents of the project point to the millions of miles of pipeline already in use in America and the number of years they have been operating. You will notice they do not add the words: “without incident.” Google “oil pipeline leaks”, and be ready for a lot of information. But you will probably not hear about the recent pipeline leak into the Yellowstone River, nor a status report on the Kalamazoo River leak, an old one that demonstrated the additional difficulty of trying to clean up tar sands oil in particular, which, being heavier than clear sweet crude, sinks to the bottom of the river. Do you think a reporter who dared to research and write a comprehensive report on this subject would have very good job security in today’s corporate –controlled media?

Headline, main news section, Santa Cruz Sentinel, January 14, 2015 : “ GOP presses attack on Obama agenda”. Wouldn’t you think, after years of doing absolutely nothing except attacking Obama’s agenda, and seeing nothing constructive come of it, and now with the world watching, couldn’t Republicans come up with some kind of a plan to address the country’s ills?

Those of you who thought something might change as a result of the 2014 elections can now disabuse yourselves of that notion. The last six years have seen all the blame for all the world’s troubles laid squarely at the feet of Pres. Obama. Now that he is no longer running for office, shouldn’t the opposition’s barbs be aimed elsewhere? You might think so, but the leading opposition candidate just stated otherwise. According to Mitt Romney, just about everything wrong in the US (and the world, for that matter) were caused by the policies of “this president”. Not a word about relentless obstruction, or the campaign to hate Obama, or a Congress that simply refused to govern.

“And it shall follow as the night the day…” Whatever else we may see on the TV news every morning, one story will always be there: death by gunshot. As long as the country is awash with murder weapons, handguns and assault rifles, there is no way we can alter this scenario.

The other morning (Tuesday, November 18, 2014) a Republican representative from Congress came on television and stated, with a straight face mind you, that shale oil from Canada flowing through the Keystone XL pipeline will “relieve the United States of dependence on oil imported from people who don’t like us”. Yes, he said that as though the US had not already achieved energy independence on its own, and as though Americans don’t know that every drop of that oil is going, not to the US for consumption but to the world market. Not to mention the risk of catastrophic environmental damage when Keystone springs a leak, as all pipelines do, especially since it will be carrying a particularly toxic type of petroleum at very high pressure. Do Republicans really believe that Americans are so uninformed that they will accept any baloney served to them by some politician?

If you want irony, check out the editorial cartoon by Mike Lester in the November 7 issue of the Sentinel. It shows Uncle Sam telling the GOP to “take away his (exploitive) hammer!!” While a cartoon version of Obama smashes away at “America”. This, mind you, follows six years of Republican obstruction which, by any measure, has caused more misery and destruction to America’s economy and well-being than any comparable period in history. Now that’s real irony. Or is it hutzpah?

Have we any idea what the Republicans will do now that they own both houses of Congress? Looking at what they have already done in states they control, does not elicit much in the way of warm fuzzy feelings.