In April 2008, after 20 years in the church, candidate Obama made public statements poised to set him at odds with the man who conducted his wedding and baptized his children. With the negative publicity persisting, a month later Obama ended the friendship, left Wright’s church, and blamed the media. Obama claimed “It’s not fair to the other members of the church who seek to worship in peace…”, and distanced himself from Wright’s sermons as “a bunch of rants that aren’t grounded in the truth.”

(This was fakery on Obama’s part to win the election – to with draw from the church.)

Result

Obama made an effort to portray John McCain as similar to George W. Bush, drawing attention to McCain’s refusal to criticize the unpopular president. McCain was particularly criticized for saying of how many years we should be willing to stay in Iraq, “Make it a hundred.”

“ “John McCain went on television and said that there has been great progress economically over the last seven-and-a-half years. John McCain thinks our economy has made great progress under George W. Bush? How could somebody who has been traveling across this country, somebody who came to Erie, Pennsylvania, say we’ve made great progress?”
-Barack Obama
”
On August 22, Obama selected Joe Biden as his running mate for the vice presidency, which would be contrasted one week later with John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin.
On November 2, 2008, Barack Obama won the presidential election with 365 electoral votes to John McCain’s 173.[134] Obama received 53% of the popular vote to John McCain’s 46%.

2009-: U.S. Presidency
Main article: Obama administration
President Barack Obama meets with former President George H. W. Bush in the Oval Office, Feb. 15, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza).
Five years into Obama’s presidency the number of people holding jobs still was 3 million below the all-time high of 138 million[136] workers – despite an increase of 10 million people in population over the same period of time.   Under Obama and Senate Democrats budget management, the United States suffered its largest deficits[139] in history and its credit-worthiness downgraded from Standard and Poor’s. Obama assured Americans that unemployment would not rise above 8% if his economic stimulus program was adopted, however it rose and stagnated in the 8-10% range for the entirety of his first month.

Patrick H. Caddell and Douglas E. Schoen, writing in the Wall Street Journal, noted, “Rather than being a unifier, Mr. Obama has divided America on the basis of race, class and partisanship.” The commentators also note Obama’s approach to governance has encouraged radical leftists to pursue a similar strategy on his behalf. Mary Frances Berry, former head of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, acknowledged that the Obama administration has taken to polarizing America around the issue of race as a means of diverting attention from other issues, saying, “Having one’s opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness.”    Caddell and Schoen, who worked for President Carter and Clinton, respectively, further stated, “Mr. Obama has also cynically divided the country on class lines. He has taken to playing the populist card time and time again. He bashes Wall Street and insurance companies whenever convenient to advance his programs, yet he has been eager to accept campaign contributions and negotiate with these very same banks and corporations behind closed doors in order to advance his political agenda… President Obama’s divisive approach to governance has weakened us as a people and paralyzed our political culture.”

Domestic policy

Economic policy
Barack Obama advocates the use of discredited Keynesian economic concepts  See also: Obamunism and American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
Critics of the Obama administration have coined the word “Obamunism” to describe Barack Obama’s socialistic and “fascism light” economic planning policies.   Obamunism can also refer to Obama’s ruinous fiscal policies and reckless monetary policies.   As seen in his own actions, Barack Obama instructed his advisors to find loopholes that would enable the president to act as a dictator by pushing through legislation and increases in spending without congressional authority.

Nevertheless, budgets passed under President Obama have included the smallest average annualized growth of federal spending (1.4%) since before President Reagan. Federal spending grew an average of 8.7% per year during Reagan’s first term and an average of 8.1% per year during George W. Bush’s second term.

Wall Street firms and banks that were bailed out were among Obama’s biggest campaign supporters.   Therefore, the Obama administration bailouts of corrupt, unproductive, and reckless Wall Street firms was hardly surprising, and many argue that it was not helpful in making the United States economy more productive and prosperous by encouraging more risk taking through letting banks off with a slap on the wrist. Others argue that bailing out the banks kept credit flowing and prevented a much deeper recession and a total collapse of the financial system. The government will recoup some though not all of its capital infusions over time. A 2005 study found that government corporate bailouts are often done for mere political considerations and the economic resources allocated exhibit significantly worse economic performance than resources allocated using purely business considerations. Proponents of free market capitalism said Bernanke should not have bailed out failing firms and instead should have allowed free market capitalism to quickly recover as it did in the depression of 1920 without government intervention (free market capitalists assert that government intervention drags out economic recessions and depressions).

The Obama administration has been sharply criticized for its massive deficit spending and its reckless monetary policy via vast increases in the money supply, although inflation under Bernanke has been below the historic mean.   Celente predicts that if a “second American Revolution” occurs in a peaceful and productive manner, it may include a third party movement of governance that will advocate a more free market capitalism approach to the American economy and a more strict interpretation of the United States constitution as far as the authors’ original intent.

During what the White House billed as Recovery Summer, one half million workers per week continued losing their jobs. His signature legislative achievement, ObamaCare,has been found to be unconstitutional[160] by several judges and constitutional by others, and is credited as a major cause of uncertainty, high unemployment, lagging job creation, and risk of a credit default crisis.

His 2012 Budget plan has been roundly criticized in the mainstream and liberal press as not a serious effort to deal with the nation’s economic crisis

Jeffrey Tucker wrote, “President Obama’s economic policy has been catastrophic for liberty, enterprise, and the American dream—the very archetype of what not to do to end recession.”

Stimulus
See also: Recovery Summer
In early 2009, Obama lobbied Congress and the public to pass a sweeping Stimulus package known as The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (H.R. 1).   The report of the Congressional Budget Office mandated by law stated that the legislation would ultimately harm the economy.  Contrary to his promise of bipartisanship, the bill passed the House 244-188 on January 28, 2009 with 11 Democrats voting with the entire Republican caucus against, and received just 3 Republican votes when passing the Senate 61-37. One third of the massive $838 billion bill consisted of backdoor tax expenditures and the rest direct new spending on “just about every pent-up Democratic proposal of the last 40 years.”  In responding to criticism of the broken bipartisanship promise at the time, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously quipped, “We won the election. We wrote the bill.”   On February 18, 2009, the Stimulus was signed into law by Obama.   In August 2009, Republicans and Democratic Senator David Obey drew attention to mistakes on the Recovery.gov site claiming millions of Stimulus jobs created that didn’t exist. Obama responded by saying the errors just indicate his accounting is an “inexact science”.

Sequestration  according to Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, Obama misled the American people in a Presidential debate only two weeks before the 2012 election when he said, “The sequester is not something that I’ve proposed,” when in fact his chief budget negotiator and current Chief of Staff, Jack Lew, made a call to Democrat Harry Reid at 2:30 pm on July 27, 2011 with the proposal after clearing it with Obama, as fully documented in Woodward’s book, The Price of Politics. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned of immediate jobloss of about 750,000 jobs – about the same level as under George W. Bush – if Obama’s budget and economic plans were allowed to take effect.

Woodward, who’s reporting on Watergate is credited with toppling the administration of Richard Nixon, told Wolf Blitzer of CNN he was told by a senior White House official he’d regret talking about the President Obama’s positions on the sequester.

Spreading the poverty

Following the 2011 debt ceiling standoff between Obama and House Republicans, the United States Government’s credit rating was, for the first time in its history, downgraded from AAA to AA+, and poverty  increased markedly. By and large his programs, said to combat the recession, unemployment, slow growth, and deficits, have failed leaving the country saddled with an $18 trillion national debt and climbing.  One of his most well known tactics is blaming someone else, such as George W. Bush, for all his failures instead of taking responsibility. Also on the domestic front, Obama passed an expensive health care bill in 2010 with no national consensus or bipartisan support and 34 Democrats dissenting. Recently, the Congressional Budget Office wrote an open letter to John Boehner, the Speaker of the House, outlining the effects of repealing Obamacare and explaining why net loss of over 100 billion dollars would occur from the repeal.

Healthcare mandates
Main article: Obamacare
On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the unpopular Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). The act originated in the Democrat-controlled House and was amended and passed the Senate just prior to Sen. Ted Kennedy’s death largely along party lines with a significant number of Democrats voting to oppose. In what was construed as a de facto rejection of the bill, Massachusetts voters elected a Republican candidate, Scott Brown, who promised to vote against the bill if given the chance.  After Obama made a promise to issue an executive order that would ultimately prohibit the use of taxpayer subsidies to pay for abortion services, the Democratic House of Representatives would pass the bill as it left the Senate 219-212, with 34 Democrats and all other parties dissenting.

Amongst other things, the act mandated that everyone purchase health care coverage or face punitive tax measures, and was upheld by the Supreme Court.

Regulatory reform

Obama criticized the “revolving door” of government and business.   After appointing Peter Orszag his first Budget Director to dole out the stimulus cash, Orszag resigned to become Citigroup’s Vice Chairman of Global Banking. Citigroup was the recipient of $476 billion in bailout money – more than any other bank – after the disastrous Financial crisis of 2008. Before the bailout, Orszag’s expert opinion of the chances of a mortgage meltdown were 1 in 500,000.

Environment and energy
Main article: Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster
President Obama authorized offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico stating, “oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills” and was widely criticized for his mishandling of the “worst environmental disaster in US history.”

Reverses Clinton’s ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ Policy
Main article: Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
Candidate Obama promised to repeal a policy that originated with President Clinton and passed by a Democrat-controlled Congress that prohibited inquiries into military personnel’s sexual orientation while barring openly gay homosexuals from serving in the military. Liberals expressed anger when time passed and no effort to repeal the law was seen;  in fact, Obama’s justice department, as part of their duty to defend all laws passed by any administration, filed a brief arguing against the Supreme Court granting a writ of certiorari to a gay soldier challenging the law (the writ was not granted). In response, the soldier, James Pietrangelo II, a former Army infantryman and lawyer, said, “(Obama’s) a coward, a bigot and a pathological liar. This is a guy who spent more time picking out his dog, Bo, and playing with him on the White House lawn than he has working for equality for gay people.”

On December 15, 2010, a bill was introduced in the House of Representatives to repeal the law – it passed a day later by a vote of 250-175; it passed the Senate three days later 65-31. Obama signed the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act of 2010 on December 22. The Pentagon itself could not immediately implement the repeal and questioned whether it would hurt combat readiness.

Labor law and compensation to 9/11 first responders

Obama’s first act of office was to sign the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act – effectively nullifying the Supreme Court case Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., which ruled that Ledbetter had to have filed a pay discrimination suit within 180 days of the first time Ledbetter was paid less than her male peers – the law made corporations subject to suit within 180 days of each time the employee was unfairly paid.

On January 2, 2011, Obama signed the James Zadroga 9/11 Healthcare and Compensation Act.   The act, which afforded 9/11 first responders who were sickened by the dust from the collapse of the World Trade Center health care and compensation, passed Congress after its sponsors agreed to scale down the pricing from 7.4 to 4.2 billion dollars.

Obama administration and the restriction of religious freedom for Christians
Phyllis Schlafly’s book No Higher Power: Obama’s War on Religious Freedom documents Obama’s attack on religious freedom.
When first running for office Obama angered religious conservatives with his comment about working-class voters in old industrial towns. Obama said, “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

The Obama administration has been widely criticized for his policies which encroach on religious freedom in areas such as: health care, freedom to dissent on matters relating to the homosexual agenda, religious freedom in the military and religious freedom in other spheres of American life.

In addition, the Obama administration has been criticized for promoting religious freedom for Muslims and restricting religious freedom for Christians.

Obama administration met with an atheist group

See also: Atheism and American politics

The Obama administration is the first administration to met with an atheist group. It meet with the Secular Coalition for America which is a coalition which represents the American Atheists, the American Humanist Association, and the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers.

According to the USA Today, the group met with the White House officials to “discuss problems that they believe are fueled by religion.” Among the issues the group discussed were the issues of “military proselytizing” by evangelical Christian members of the military and faith-based initiatives.

Foreign policy

Unlike Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, Barack Obama has shown scant concern about the revival of slavery which took place on his watch shortly after his “apology tour”, intended to diminish U.S. influence in the world.   Obama, who was raised a Muslim and is not a descendent of slaves, criticized Christians and the Crusades as reports of thousands of women and girls being captured, sold, and raped flooded in.

Commander-in-chief

As Senator, Obama was highly critical of President Bush and promised change. As President, Obama has tripled down in Afghanistan, widened the war into Pakistan, multiplied drone attacks, bombed Yemen and Somalia, and started an undeclared NATO war in Libya. On presidential war powers, surveillance questions, Guantanamo, detention policy and habeas corpus, Obama has similarly stayed the course, or expanded Bush’s precedents. In a speech on May 19, 2011 Obama fully embraced the Bush Doctrine of preventative war. From the Boston Globe:
‘The New America Foundation, which tracks the strikes, has listed 23 raids since the beginning of April, 2011, all but one in Pakistan’s tribal regions of North and South Waziristan. A June 20 attack was reported in Kurram, an area north of North Waziristan along the Afghanistan border.’
‘The drone program has become increasingly controversial as the Obama administration has expanded its use beyond the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Lethal missiles have been launched from unmanned aircraft in at least five countries in addition to Pakistan: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and, most recently, Somalia. The military’s Joint Special Operations Command used a drone last June to attack what officials said were two senior members of the Al Shabab militant group on the Somali coast.’

A commentator says:
‘Obama is commendable when he says he wants to avoid war. His policies, however, favor war by destabilizing the Middle East making it extremely hostile and favoring radical Islam over America’s ally, Israel, and American interests in the region… The president has chosen a very dangerous path for every American and one that promises great difficulty for Israel.’

By Obama’s third year as Commander-in-Chief, over 1200 American troops died in Iraq and Afghanistan – significantly more than the number who died during President George W. Bush’s term of office. And growing numbers of civilian contractors also have fallen. In the first half of 2010, 250 contractors reportedly died in Iraq and Afghanistan – more than the 235 military personnel who fell during the same period.[221]

National Defense

President Obama signed into U.S. law the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), only after his administration successfully lobbied to remove language from the bill that would have protected American citizens from being detained indefinitely without trial.   After the legislation cleared Congress, the ACLU commented that if President Obama signed the bill it “will damage both his legacy and American’s reputation for upholding the rule of law,” while executive director of the Human Rights Watch blasted the President for being ‘on the wrong side of history,’ noting that “Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law.”

Section 1031 of the NDAA bill, which itself defines the entirety of the United States as a “battlefield,” allows American citizens to be snatched from the streets, carted off to a foreign detention camp and held indefinitely without trial. As reported by Infowars.com, the bill states that “any person who has committed a belligerent act” faces indefinite detention, but no trial or evidence has to be presented, the White House merely needs to make the accusation.

More deaths in “dumb wars”

American deaths in Afghanistan more than doubled in Obama’s first few years compared with the preceding eight years of George Bush as he increased troop strength for no discernible purpose and to “win” unstated objectives. Against his own Defense Secretary’s advice, Obama attacked Libya and forced regime change without Congressional authorization in violation of the post-Nixon era reform measure, the War Powers Act.

After he took personal credit for killing Osama bin Laden, the U.S. State Department warned of increased risk to the lives and safety of Americans.   Bin Laden’s successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri confirmed the Benghazi Attack which took place on the anniversary of 9/11 and killed more Americans, was motivated by al-Qaeda’s desire for revenge. Bin Laden’s death, as Obama’s advisers warned, freed up jihadis who swore an oath of allegiance to the 9/11 mastermind to swear allegiance to rival and competing factions. The competing factions advocated the immediate establishment of the Islamic State, rather than after the overthrow of the Saudi monarchy and retaking of Mecca. As was well known, bin Laden always held a controversial and minority position among jihadis on the strategy for global jihad by attacking the United States first. Bin Laden’s killing, intended as an election year gimmick, brought Obama no improvement in approval ratings and spawned unprecedented growth in global terror and jihadi recruiting.

Al Qaeda and Libya
Main article: Libyan uprising 2011
In February 2011, the political unrest that spread through the Arab world showed up as protests in Libya. Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, leader of Libya for 41 years, responded to the violence[231] with legitimate steps. The United Nations Security Council voted to impose sanctions, and later passed a resolution to protect civilians. Obama, without approval from Congress and over the objections of his own National Security staff,  directed American forces to take out Libya’s air defense system. Secretary of Defence Robert Gates, National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough, and White House counterterrorism chief John O. Brennan all opposed the action. Obama later said, “if we waited one more day Benghazi, a city nearly the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.”   Alan J. Kuperman, in an editorial for the Boston Globe, suggested this statement was false, writing, “intervention did not prevent genocide, because no such bloodbath was in the offing. To the contrary, by emboldening rebellion, US interference has prolonged Libya’s civil war and the resultant suffering of innocents.” Kuperman, a professor of public affairs at the University of Texas who authored a book called The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention, further stated that the rebels had tricked the world into thinking a bloodbath was at hand and that Obama had lied to the American people in order to act on this theory.
Gaddafi [never] threaten[ed] civilian massacre in Benghazi, as Obama alleged. The “no mercy’’ warning, of March 17, targeted rebels only, as reported by The New York Times, which noted that Libya’s leader promised amnesty for those “who throw their weapons away.’’ Gaddafi even offered the rebels an escape route and open border to Egypt, to avoid a fight “to the bitter end.’’ [236]

Gaddafi wrote to Obama and told him he bore no ill will. “We have been hurt more morally than physically because of what had happened against us in both deeds and words by you,” he wrote. “Despite all this you will always remain our son whatever happened. We still pray that you continue to be president of the USA. We endeavour and hope that you will gain victory in the new election campaign.”

Aid to violent Islamists

A March 29, 2011 article in the Washington Post included these paragraphs:

“ “It’s almost a certitude that at least part” of the Libyan opposition includes members of al-Qaeda, said Bruce Riedel, a former senior CIA analyst and adviser to President Obama. Riedel said that anti-Gaddafi elements in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi have had “very close associations with al-Qaeda” dating back years….I would hope that we now have a good sense of the opposition in Libya and can say that this is 2 percent, not 20 percent,” Riedel said. “If we don’t, then we are running the risk of helping to bring to power a regime that could be very dangerous.”

This set off a fierce debate in the Obama administration over the wisdom of arming terrorists.  It is now known sometime prior to March 31, 2011,  at the urging of Hillary Clinton and over the objections of his National Security Council, Obama signed a Presidential Finding authorizing support for the rebel jihadis.

By October 2011, Libyan rebel fighting groups with support from NATO overtook the capital and toppled the government. Gaddafi was captured and brutally and sadistically murdered. The jihadis were immediately recognized by the U.S. and the U.N. as the new legitimate government. Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, chairman of the National Transitional Council, announced Sharia will be the source for all legislation and all laws conflicting with Sharia are null and void.   Abdel Rahim al-Kib, the country’s interim prime minister, echoed Jalil’s words days later. The al Qaeda flag was flown above the Benghazi courthouse, and reports surfaced that the Libyan jihadis had imposed Sharia law in some parts of the country even earlier.   By February 17, 2013, four foreign nationals were arrested for distributing Christian literature, a charge that could carry the death penalty.

Terrorist attack on American soil
For a more detailed treatment, see Benghazi Attack.

With several U.S. embassies besieged on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney declared there was no reason to believe the attack on the sovereign territory of the United States consulate in Benghazi, less than two months before the 2012 Presidential election which killed Americans, was a terrorist attack.

“ The unrest that we’ve seen around the region has been in reaction to a video that Muslims, many Muslims, find offensive. ”

This became the official White House line. Between laughs with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central, Obama said the death of Americans was “not optimal”   When pressed by reporters, who pointed out evidence that the violence in Benghazi was a terrorist attack, Press Secretary Carney argued “the unrest around the region has been in response to this video.”

Leading suspected jihadis in the murders and terrorist attack were the local Benghazi branch of Ansar al-Shariah, known to have ties to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.  A commander of the terrorist group boasted jovially about the attack over drinks with reporters for the New York Times in Benghazi.

Al Qaeda in the Maghreb

Two more Americans were killed, along with 35 others, after being taken hostage by rebel jihadists in Mali shortly after the Libyan upheaval.

Hillary Clinton testified before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the wake of the Benghazi murders under her stewardship, that weapons and fighters equipped by the Obama administration made their way to Mali and Algeria:

“ There is no doubt that the Algerian terrorists had weapons from Libya. There is no doubt that the Malian remnants of AQIM [Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb] have weapons from Libya. ”

Afghanistan
Main article: Afghanistan War
Obama escalated troop strength and defense costs in Afghanistan from $43.5 billion in George Bush’s last year to $113.7 billion for 2011.  Adviser to General Stanley McChrystal David Kilcullen wrote, “One of the big strategic shifts is the use of language now which talks about Pakistan and Afghanistan as the same theater. Now we talked about Af-Pak long before the Obama administration came about, but the public use of that term, and the description of it as the Afghanistan-Pakistan campaign, sends a new message to people about how the administration is going to think about Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

Mexico
Eric Holder resigned as Attorney General in light of Fast & Furious and other scandals.

Main article: Operation Fast and Furious
In May 2010, President Obama promised Mexican President Felipe Calderon that his administration would assist Mexico in curbing drug cartel violence, which has led to 30,000 deaths in Mexico. “President Calderon and I . . . stand together against the drug cartels that have unleashed horrific violence in so many communities,” Obama said on May 19. “Mexico can count on the United States as a full partner in this effort.”

The Washington Post has reported however that White House officials stopped a requirement for gun dealers to report bulk sales of high-powered semiautomatic rifles commonly used by illegal drug cartels. Justice Department officials had asked for White House approval to require thousands of gun dealers along the border to report the purchases to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and Explosives. ATF investigators expected to get leads on suspected arms traffickers. Senior law enforcement sources said the proposal from the ATF was held up by then White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. Gun dealers have been required for decades to report the sales of multiple handguns to the ATF.

Guantanamo Bay
Main article: Guantanamo Bay
One of Obama’s campaign promises was that he would close the American detention center at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba – detainees would be flown to other countries while the ones awaiting trial would enter the American court system. Two days after taking office he signed an order directing the military to do so.    But, in November 2009 Obama admitted that his self-imposed deadline of January 2010 would be missed, and in March 2011 the president went back on his campaign promise, signing an executive order to create a formal system of indefinite detention for the prisoners.

Russia

Obama criticized president of Russia, Vladimir Putin for carrying out a referendum for the seizure of Crimea to Russia.

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