The photograph today has little to do with my journaling... or perhaps it has everything to do with.  The scene is one of angst and frustration... surprisingly no anger.  I was on my bike on University Avenue when I came upon a strange scene.  A guy standing with arms outstretched in the middle of the street stopped a San Diego Police car; and when the car stopped in front of him, he sat on the bumper and waited. The officer got out of his car and, obviously without anger, went to talk with the guy.  I couldn't hear any of the conversation.  A second patrol car came, and a second officer stood by while the first officer talked with the guy on the bumper.  I stood for ten minutes and watched.  The guy on the bumper got up and left.  The police officers, clearly frustrated and obviously sympathetic, didn't hassle the guy. They tried to help.  

O.K., O.K., new job growth/unemployment figures were published today, and those of us who celebrate and support Barack Obama’s presidency are supposed to wither in angst or writhe in anguish, mope through the June elections, and steel ourselves for more misery between now and November.  Well, I’ve got another point of view.  The President came into an office that I can imagine John McCain covets still but secretly thanks Sarah Palin for screwing up whatever chance he had to win it four years ago.  

I am one-hundred-percent certain that voting for Barack Obama is the only sensible choice to make in November.  Anybody who knows me and/or reads what I write in this BLOG knows the way I see it.  Some people whom I love and who love me may suspect that my loyalty to Obama is more emotional than cerebral, but they would be wrong to believe it. Here’s some of what I’ve been thinking.

John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell and a big balcony of Tea Party folks are singing loudly that President Obama must be replaced because he is unable to fix a broken economic system... with the implication that it was President Obama and Democrats generally who broke it.  No matter who is saying it, that simply doesn’t make sense.  When the Democrat Bill Clinton left office, the country was balancing it’s budget and the budget showed a surplus.  Do these people not remember who was the president for eight years between the Democrats Clinton and Obama... and what kind of mess the country was mired in at the end of his eight years?  

During the eight Bush years of following the Republican Party’s philosophy and playbook, wealthiest Americans became even richer; and what was supposed to happen was a trickle down effect of all that ballooning wealth, and the middle and lower income classes were supposed to become more financially secure and generally happier... and the result of all that trickle down was supposed to create a more stable social fabric.  Well, we know that didn’t happen.  During those eight years many jobs that Americans had counted on keeping until they could retire were moved to other countries... because cheaper overseas labor costs coupled with deregulation of just about every sort of business enterprise in American during the Bush years made possible huge profits for corporations and obscene salaries and bonuses for CEOs and other top ranking executives in all major industries. 

Now the complaint from Republicans in Congress is that Obama won’t work with them, so they can’t get anything done.  They say that what they need is a businessman... someone from a company... maybe a company like Bain Capital Ventures, to lead us out of this economic wilderness... somebody who has done missionary work and knows something about how things work in foreign countries... somebody who...  You know the script. 

Another cry from Republicans is that government spending is a major problem. They seem not to know that what got us out of the deepest depression in our country’s history was government spending on jobs that needed to be done, jobs like building and repairing roads and securing infrastructure for what is surely the most beautiful country on earth.  We need jobs for American workers to make America work. Instead of laying off  teachers and fire fighters and police officers and county clerks and janitors in City Halls, we need to be making sure there are jobs for them, jobs that are government jobs paid for by governments and not by corporations whose primary motive is profit... profit for the company, not for the workers.  The Republican impulse is always to move government function to private companies.  Have they failed to noticed that transferring the management of jails and prisons to private companies hasn’t done anything but put more American workers out of work and increase the pay of executives of the companies that contract with cities and states to take care of their criminals. The list is long of corporations from Enron to Haliburton that have grown fat on government contracts.  Some of them imploded as much from leadership greed as anything else... whether those companies have survived or not is beside the point.  The point is that they have profited from contracts and concessions from government while putting ordinary workers out of jobs and enriching their executives.  

American government is still the best in the world... the American system of government.  I am tired of hearing politicians (Most of whom, by the way, are on government payroll) and ordinary citizens cursing American government.  Of course, there are constantly things in government that need to be addressed and fixed; but to damn the whole system is an absurd approach to making things better... better for all Americans.