Jack & Jill Politics

Dear (half-term) Gov. Palin —

Actually it’s working out just fine for me, thanks for asking at your incredibly expensive Tea Party. I mean, don’t get me wrong. A brother isn’t perfect but I know the country is headed in the right direction and certainly wouldn’t be under your incapable, confused-scrawl-written hands. It seems most of Americans agree:

A full 71% of voters—including a majority of Republicans—feel that Palin is unqualified to be president. Only 37% have favorable views of Palin…

The fact is that Barack Obama has done a lot of things right in his first year, including preventing total financial collapse, helping state governments with stimulus funds and stemming job losses. He’s not getting a lot of credit for that but any doctor would tell you that you have to stop the bleeding before you can fix the rest of the patient.

The Obama Administration predicts an average of 95,000 jobs created each month in 2010. That’s putting us on the road to recovery.

We’re on the right path in terms of taking climate change seriously, rehabilitating our global relationships, making progress towards finally ending the war in Iraq, closer than ever to real healthcare reform, ending DADT, etc. Folks are right to be asking for more help from our government however.

Where do I think Obama could strengthen his helping hand? Well, I actually agree with critics who say that Obama chose Wall Street over Main Street. He was too soft on em, believed their lies. People aren’t able to re-finance or modify their home loans so they are walking away from their mortgages. This is a serious meltdown of the housing system. People need housing relief and they need it now. The president’s Making Home Affordable initiative is a complete failure to the banks’ lack of cooperation but it was the right instinct. It needs an emergency re-formulation and probably the force of legislation or executive order since foreclosures are rising again.

Small businesses need to be able to get loans again in order to hire workers again. This is CRITICAL as about 2/3rds of Americans work in small businesses. I think the Prez gets this — but we need to see him working on it. Obama needs to re-capture the spirit of populism in his government. We need to see and feel that he’s on the side of the people.

Roland Martin says the Prez needs to get all gangsta on the GOP…not sure if I agree. Barack Obama seems so un-gangsta to me. It’s not his style — a brother deep down wants to hug it out with everyone who’s mad or sad.

Still — I do believe that there is a real villain at work here and it’s the banks which, whether out of fear or greed, are holding the rest of the world hostage by locking up the benjamins, the bread and the butter. If they can’t be coaxed or convinced into change, then they will have to be co-erced. And it looks like world leaders are warming up to do just that, dollar bill y’all. There’s global support brewing for a tax on banks worldwide. Make em pay, I say.

Miz Sarah — may I respectively ask you and your angry, mostly white, mostly older, mostly bigoted, mostly fearful group of Tea Partiers to explain to us your recipe for reform? What is it exactly that you are angry about? Or is it just old ideas and sour grapes, sister?

I still believe that America needs both Hope and Change. And that one thing we don’t need is you calling for secession — this is a time we should come together as a nation, not pull apart. Shows who the real patriot is, huh?

Sincerely, Jill