Mr. President,
You ran a campaign based on a slogan: change. Now I understand that you are a politician, and the vast majority of politicians will say anything to get elected, and today the vast majority (all but one, actually, the exception being Ron Paul) of politicians do not uphold their oath of office. You know, that oath you had to take twice, to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States?
Well anyway, I knew what you were long before you got elected: a tool of the corporate elite who wants to bankrupt the coal industry in the name of an unproven theory of anthropogenic global warming, even though there are thousands of scientists (who study this kind of thing for a living, I hasten to point out) who disagree with you. Anyway I knew that you would never lower taxes, or God forbid, get rid of the unconstitutional Federal Income tax. That might actually help the economy, removing the burden on individuals and businesses and helping good, honest commerce thrive once again. But you're somewhat of a marxist after all, and Marx's 2nd plank of his
manifesto was a "heavy progressive income tax." Then again we've had that since 1913, but it hasn't changed, and not too many people have protested anyway
. You have allowed the Federal Reserve, that privately owned central bank who inflates our money supply by printing off massive amounts of money and creating it out of thin air, to continue functioning; you have even allowed it to amass vast new powers, putting to rest any myth that the American financial system was actually a free one, as it was founded to be. Your socialist/fascist policies have saddled multiple generations of Americans with an ever increasing debt, and your first year budget deficit makes even George W. Bush look like a fiscal conservative. Please tell me where the change is here. Thats right, there is no change. The more things change, the more they stay the same. If voting changed anything, it would be illegal. Just like George W. Bush tried to stimulate the economy, you tried to stimulate the economy. Just like George W. Bush wanted amnesty for illegal aliens, so do you want amnesty for illegal aliens.
If by change you meant the outright nationalization of certain industries and companies, such as General Motors, then you have succeeded. Congratulations, you are the proud new owner of a car company that not too many people want to buy cars from anymore. How are we going to pay for all this again?
But I digress. You want to ban the sale, transfer and trade of all semi automatic weapons, robbing the people of America of their unalienable right to self defense from criminals of both the private and public sector, and
completely infringing upon the Second Amendment. You know, Barack, there is a reason it is the Second Amendment. Its not the 5th, or the last; the founders did not just throw it in the Bill or Rights so people could go hunting whenever they wanted to. They intended for every man to be armed, as Thomas Jefferson stated, for the sole reason of defending oneself from a tyrannical, totalitarian, out of control government. Sort of like the kind of government your currently presiding over - one that has destroyed the value of our currency and plunged our nation into multiple immoral and unconstitutional wars.
You have expanded the war in Afghanistan, taking it into Pakistan, all while your country is tens of trillions of dollars in debt. Have you learned nothing from history? Were you not paying attention when the Russians were there for nearly ten years, and still could not conquer the country? What about the British? They tried three times to conquer the Afghans, and were repulsed all three times. When will enough people have died? Do the deaths of innocent civilians by your predator drones have no effect on your conscience?
Your Department of Homeland Security has labeled all people who believe in the Constitution of the United States, and the principles it was founded on, as domestic terrorists. Anyone who supports Congressman Ron Paul, or former presidential candidates Bob Barr and Chuck Baldwin, have also been labeled domestic terrorists. You have kept people in prison without trial, violating their constitutional rights. You have even expanded the Bush policy of the outright denial of
habeas corpus. But you call it prolonged detention. You also speak more eloquently (after all, its the best goddamn teleprompters our money can buy) than Bush the Lesser and have a certain charm about you, so your supporters (the same ones who RAILED against Bush) still think you are the best thing to happen to the world since sliced bread.
You have failed to prosecute the Bush administration officials who concocted the evil policies of torture. You have failed to prosecute George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for torture, but more importantly, for their illegal, immoral, and unconstitutional war of aggression in Iraq. This empirical exercise in bombing a nation into ruin, occupying it, and then rebuilding it has cost hundreds of thousands of lives, not to mention trillions of dollars that America has had to borrow or print off. But not only do you not prosecute these evil, power hungry men, you keep their war going. You promised the American people the troops would be out of Iraq in sixteen months. Already that has been proven to be a lie, and even when some troops do come out in 18, 19 or 24 months from now, 50,000 will still stay there, in harms way. Again, what change is there to speak of?
Most scary to myself, being a 20 year old college student trying to make ends meet, is your quest to create a "civilian national defense force." Your Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel, has made it clear on video that he wants all Americans to do mandatory civil service, going to camps for 3-4 months to be "reeducated" or whatever we will do there. Is this Cuba? Is this Russia? China? North Korea? What gives the State the authority to pluck me from my daily life and transport me, by force, to a reeducation camp, where I will be trained to be a "civilian defense soldier?" Then again, what gave LBJ the authority to forcefully remove young, vibrant 18 year old men from their families, sweethearts, and friends, and make them slug through the jungles and foothills of Southeast Asia, where at any moment an anti personnel mine could pop up and disembowel them, or a snipers bullet could come spiraling towards their forehead. I will tell you right now that I will not go to one of these reeducation camps where I will be made to become part of a "civilian national defense force," and I pity the statist fool who tries to come and take me.
Please take notice of this. It is my redress of grievances. I am sure the National Security Agency will be aware of it soon, seeing as how they record and filter every single phone call made in America, read every e-mail and fax, and violate countless other of my liberties in the name of the "War on Terror" and the "War on Drugs."
Oh, that reminds me of another thing. Please stop regulating what people can or cannot put into their body. I like aspartame in my diet coke. It could kill me. So could cocaine, heroin, or most of all, alcohol, seeing as it kills more people every year than marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine does combined, even though your regime, like others before it, so graciously allow your subjects to drink the addictive liquid. The 9th and 10th Amendments to our Constitution state that you have no authority to regulate these things, and only the state and local governments do. Please end the War on Drugs, as it costs the American tax payers half a trillion dollars a year, not to mention countless lives. Prohibition leads to the black market drug trade, which leads to gangs, which leads to violence over drug selling territory and operations. Please end prohibition. It will not stop drug use, because nothing will ever stop drug use, but it will end America's criminal violence problem. Just like history showed us it would when the federal government stopped regulating alcohol, and people stopped dying on the streets of our cities.
To conclude Mr. Obama, basically, you have been even worse of a president than even my incredibly cynical mind could have imagined. Already you have me longing for the relatively small, yet out of control deficits from the eight years of the 2nd Bush regime. Someday your charm will wear off. There will come a day when you are caught without your teleprompter, and the American people will see you as you really are.
Josh Parris