Obama
To give you some idea of how biased the reporting is right now, let me quote what happened last week when the president gave his first speech to Congress. The tradition is that the other party gets a few minutes to broadcast a rebuttal. This time, the rebuttal was given by Bobby Jindal, Republican governor of Louisiana. As he walked into view, someone from the MSNBC news team said live, on the air and sounding disgusted, "Oh God." It was not edited out, and afterwards they seemed very pleased with all the publicity.
I can tell you what locals around here appear to think. Bear in mind, though, that the people of Georgia did not vote for the new president.
- People were hoping he would be different. Especially with his first few appointments, they thought (and were really hoping) that he'd rule from the centre. Now they see that he's very extreme, and those hopes are dashed.
- There's a genuine sense of concern. The president is rushing through some huge and very expensive bills without proper debate. It's fair to say that the rush has been so great that no one in government has had time to really read them through. For example, senators from Florida (from both parties) recently discovered that the budget bill - supposedly a routine bill to keep the government running - does away with some of the restrictions on Cuba. These guys were furious that the president is trying to push through controversial issues without any debate.
- There's also a sense of being deceived. For example, last week the president called together an impressive list of economic advisers from all parties to discuss fiscal responsibility. The very next day, he pushed through his record spending bill. In other words, the forum was a publicity sham. The same happened yesterday for healthcare. The same will happen next week with energy. The president is pretending he's listening, but his team wrote these bills months ago.
Have you ever seen the movie 'Brassed Off'? At one point, the main female character complains that she's writing a report just to be seen to write it and that the real agenda was approved "months ago". What was the pit owner's response? "Wrong. It was decided years ago." The same thing is happening here.
- Another concern is with foreign policy and this whole stink with Gordon Brown. The new president never refers to any "war on terror". Now, the previous regime took too many liberties under that name, but it's foolhardy in the extreme to just pretend there is no such war. That is beginning to put some Americans rather on edge. Playing politics is one thing because it has little impact on everyday life. Playing with security is something else entirely.
I'm sure plenty of people will disagree with these comments, but I've tried to summarise the sense I get from friends and neighbours. The level of nervousness is increasing daily.