OBAMA AT HALF-TIME

As the Reichstag starts what it says will be 20 days of undoing the achievements of President Obama,it is useful to consider what our President has achieved in his two short years in office. It is almost a cliche, which no one believes anymore, that he took office in the greatest economic crisis since the Depression (some even say it's worst than the Great Depression), two wars going on, the United States at the lowest approval rating in world public opinion and with the mess left over from an Administration which broke international and national law by torturing people and keeping them sequestered away from any due process or law.

Oh and yes, President Obama entered office with an almost insurmontable debt left by his predecessor. At least $11 trillion of the American national debt can be directly attributed to the Bush-Cheney regime. America was teetering on the edge and could have imploded like the old Soviet Union.

Moreover, the Republican Party met one month before President Obama's inaugural to pledge not to cooperate with the new president, the first time an opposition party has ever done this in modern America. Mitch McConnell explained that "bipartisanship" would validate the Obama administration and by withholding this support his programs and ideas would be rendered illegitimate, even if he incorporated Republican ideas. The Catfood Commission was a Republican idea that had to be implemented through Executive Order because its GOP sponsors would not vote for it.

The Republican Party also used the filibuster in the 111th Congress more times than it had been used in the history of the United States. Several hundred amendments to the Stimulus Bill were engineered by Republicans, even though only the Maine Senators voted for it. It was only at the end of the lameduck Congress that Republicans broke discipline and voted for the Obama tax deal because it preserved the tax breaks for the wealthy.

So with that as the backdrop, how did Barack Hussein Obama do? He is already an historic president but will he become the transformation president he desires? If the imperial corporations and the owners of the American plantation stop him from winning a second term, he will certainly go down as a great one-term President. The best in American history was James K. Polk and Obama is certain to top him.

The List of Obama's accomplishments is not exhaustive or in any priority.

*The Repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell--which ends official discrimination against LGBT Americans who wish to serve their country in the military.

*federal Benefits for Same-Sex Partners--issued as a Presidential memorandum extending federal benefits for same-sex partners to all employees of the Executive Branch and the Foreign Service.

*Equal Hospital Visitation Rights--issued a Presidential memorandum requiring that all hospitals accepting Medicare or Medicaid funding to provide equal hospital visitation rights for LGBT patients.

*Matthew Sheppard and James Byrd,jr Hate DCrimes Prevention Act--authorizes the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute hate crimes and to aid state and local law enforcement in doing so.

*Appointed more LGBT Americans to positions in the executive branch than any other President.

*Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act--helps ensure equal pay for equal work by enabling people to challenge unequal pay in court even if the fact that their pay is unequal is not discovered by the employee for a long time.

* Nominated and got two women Supreme Court justices confirmed. Sonya Sotomayor, the first Hispanic on the Court, and Elena Kagan.

*Issued an Executive Order prohibiting the torture of prisoners of war, requiring compliance with the Geneva Conventions, and rescinding any previous inconsistent Executive Orders.

* Won Nobel Prize for Peace.

*Ended major combat operations in Iraq, and began to bring our troops home from the Iraq war more quickly than his own campaign promises.

*Developed plans for the Afghanistan war where there had been known and escalated our fighting there. Has made the summer of 2011 the first drawdown date and final presence in 2014.

*Settled the lawsuit brought by African American farmers against discriminatory loan practices in 1980s by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The $1.5 billion will settle the 80,000 claims by the farmers.

*Settled the Indian Trust case, which provides $1.9 billion in federal funding to settle the claims regarding the mismanagement of trust funds and water rights for Native Americans.

*Through the stimulus package provided stimulus funds to Indian reservartions, enhanced their access to broadband communication and strengtened the Indian College Fund.

*Enhanced the powers of Native American police forces.

*Ended President Bush's restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

*Passed the Weapon Systems Acquisition Reform Act--reforms Pentagon procurement policies to prevent billions of dollars in wasteful spending over the next decade.

*Ended the unnecessary F-22 fighter plane project, saying taxpayers $5billion.

*Started plan to trim $100 billion in wasteful military spending over the next five years.

*Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act--expands health care services, including mental health services and counseling, available to our veterans. Ordered all Vietnam Vets to be eligible to health care for Agent Orange.

*Saved the auto industry despite total opposition of Republicans through an emergency auto industry rescue package. Without it 16% of the American economy would have vanished.

*Repeated extensions of unemployment benefits, the most recent of which will prevent 7 million Americans from losing their safety net. All were passed over GOP filibusters.

*The Global Nuclear Summit--organized and hosted global meeting to prevent nuclear proliferation. As a consequence, secured Kazakstan's plutonium supplies, the transfer of Russia's enriched plutonium to the United States,the transfer of the Ukraine's nuclear materials to Russia for reprocessing and the nuclear disarming of Belarus.

*The New Start Treaty Ratification--reduces deployed nuclear weapons by 1.3 and ensures we are able to continue nuclear weapons inspections in Russia in order to verify reductions and help keep nuclear materials out of the hands of rogue nations or terrorists.

*The South Korea Free Trade Agreement--which benefits the export of American agricultural products and acrs to South Korea. The largest Free Trade Agreement snce NAFTA.

*Trade Agreement with India to purchase multiple Boeing jets, which will ensure over 10,000 American jobs.

*Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act--Increases student aid by at least $65 billion over the next decade by shifting funding from private student loan companies to students who need assistance afforing college.

*American Opportunity Tax Credit--$2,500 tax credit for working families and students attending college--included in stimulus bill and extended trhough the recent unemployment benefits/ tax cuts compromise.

*Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act--raises nutritional standards for school lunches and increases school lunch program funding by $4.5 billion over thenext 10 years--expands school lunch program for at least 115,000.

*Children's Health Insurance Program ("CHIP"--reauthorized and expanded CHIP from providing health insurance for 7 million children to providing health insurance for 11 million children, and allows states to extend benefits to legal immigrants.

*Family Smoking Prevention and tobacco Control Act--gives the Food and Drug Administration regulatory authority over the production and marketing of tobacco products. Also limits advertising that targets children, requires the disclosure of ingredients in cigarettes, and requires larger warning labels on tobacco products.

*FDA Food Safety Modernization Act--upgaded food safety procedures in the United States for the first time since the 1930s.

*Fair Sentencing Act--reduced the sentencing disparity between crack and cocaine, which has a significant disparate impact on African Americans, from 100-1 to 18-1. Eliminates mandatory five-year prison sentences for first time crack possession convictions.

*Serve America Act--reauthorizes and expands federally-funded national service programs, such as AmeriCorps and VISTA. This was the program the Rught claimed was creating Obama's private security forces.

*Credit Card Accountability,Responsibility, and Disclosure Act--restricts credit card companies from raising interest rates or charging penalty fees and requires increased disclosure of credit card terms and conditions.

*Established meaningful llimits and oversight for the use of Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds thereby ensuring that virtually all of the $700 billion in TARP Funds were repaid to the U.S.Treasury. These funds were called by Darrell Issa Obama's "walking around money".

*Increased automobile fuel efficiency standards to 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016.

*Established by Executive Order pollution reduction and efficiency standards for federal government buildings, vehicle fleets and purchasing.

*Established by Executive Order strict new sthics standards for federal employees or those seeking federal employment to help end the revolving door between lobbying shops and government agencies.

*Started the process of closing the entire Medicare prescription drug coverage doughnut hole by 2020.

*The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (The Stimulus)--A $787 billion economic package that stabilized our economy, prevented a Second Depression, created 3.3 million jobs (yes, Virginia, remember the number), and avoided greater declines in our GDP. The legislation included:

1. The largest middle-class tax cut in history.
2. $14 billion in funding for energy efficiency programs, including weatherization of low-income housing, state and local governments, and federal building energy efficient retrofits.
3. $25.8 billion in funding for health information technology development.
4. a 65% subsidy for the cosat of continuation of health insurances under the COBRA program for individuals who lost their jobs.
5. $2 billion for Community Health Centers
6. $15.6 billion increase in Pell Grants.
7. $2.1 billion for Head Start.
8. $19.9 billion for the Food Stamp Program, now known as the Supplemental Nurtition Assistance Program.
9. $8 billion for high-speed rail development.
10.$6 billion for development of energy smart-grid.

*Affordable Care Act (health care reform)--expands access to affordable health insurance to 32 million more Americans, ends abuses of health insurance industry, provides significant tax credits to make health insurance affordable for families earning less than $88,000 per year and for small businesses, and creates health insurance exchanges overseen by the government or non-profit entities.

*9-11 Responders Health Bill--covers the medical expenses of rescue personnel from 9-11 who came down with chronic illnesses.

*Wall Street Reform--enables the government to step in to liquidate financial institutions in order to prevent additional future bailouts,creates a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to curb abusive lending practices by credit card companies and payday lenders, and regulates derivative trading.

*By Executive order created bipartisan Defict Commission to make recommendations to slowly eradicate our national debt.

*Also created the HAMP program to modify mortgages of people under economic distress. So far hasn't been a great success.

SO WHAT DID YOU DO FOR YOUR COUNTRY THE LAST TWO YEARS? If Obama only believed more in American exceptionalism, then maybe he wouldn't work so hard on implementing change because we're perfect as we are.

The list above is not exhaustive. But when was the last time you heard anyone, except Rachel Maddow ("Bless her"), talk about the President's accomplishments?Certainly in Washington, you would think nothing has happened. He can put his two-year record up against any living President in the last century--and, yes, even FDR, who also had a tough start. He might want to get a better group of communicators to talk to the American people.

Keep the list handy as the Republican House tries to dismantle each of these in the next two years. Also it's handy when you hear the constant whine of the punditry talk about the Administration.

Just a thought--Of everything on that list, the absolutely only thing the Republicans cared about was the continuation of the tax cuts for the rich. It is the only thing--nothing else. Incredible!