Obama’s farcical farewell address (2)

Joachim Hagopian is a West Point Graduate and former US Army Officer. He has authored a lengthy article on Obama’s farewell address on the heading, “Obama’s farewell address: touting the legacy, exposing the truth. Non-stop wars, a costly six trillion dollar legacy." Excerpts of his article have been chosen for you as follows:

President Barrack Obama delivered his farewell address in Chicago on January 12, 2017.

Obama then goes on to actually claim his so called victories:

If I had told you eight years ago that America would reverse a great recession, reboot our auto industry, and unleash the longest stretch of job creation in our history…if I had told you that we would open up a new chapter with the Cuban people, shut down Iran’s nuclear weapons program without firing a shot, and take out the mastermind of 9/11…if I had told you that we would win marriage equality, and secure the right to health insurance for another 20 million of our fellow citizens – you might have said our sights were set a little too high. And later claims: After all, we remain the wealthiest, most powerful, and most respected nation on Earth.

Again, this man is totally delusional if he believes “a great recession” has been reversed and that “the economy is growing again.” Additionally, Obama makes the bodacious statement that today “wages, incomes, home values, and retirement accounts are rising again; poverty is falling again.” When cost of living and inflation are accounted for, wages have either fallen or remained stagnant for decades now. Yet Obama stated: Last year, incomes rose for all races, all age groups, for men and for women. Reality shows that nothing could be further from the truth. Perched from his ivory tower White House, when not teeing up on multimillion dollar tax paid vacations, Obama’s “facts” just never seem to add up.

The so called recession economy has progressively slid from the 2008-09 housing market crisis to an all-out major economic depression that will inevitably and tragically surpass the 1930’s Great Depression in human suffering. Obama and the Feds managed to kick the can down the road just long enough for Trump to step into the Oval Office. Likewise, the entire global economy is anemic and faltering, including even China’s.

Obama states that “the unemployment rate is near a 10-year low.”

The truth is Obama’s job numbers are methodically crunched and cooked every month to deceive the public into not realizing that up to 40% of America’s working age population is not fulltime employed. If those working part time hours but desiring fulltime jobs along with those whose unemployment compensation has run out, and those chronically unemployed who’ve become so discouraged they’ve given up, that percentage of Americans would be nearing half the population.

Virtually every honest economist has for months been warning that Americans are teetering closer to the edge of a complete economic collapse. Obama’s assertion that we’re in “the longest stretch of job creation in our history” is pure fantasy. Since the recession virtually the only jobs Obama created are part time, seasonal or temporary, minimum wage positions that no one could actually live on. The boastful lie that Obama created 15 million new jobs is just the opposite from the truth. First, Obama artificially counts part-time employment in his artificial job creation boost. Secondly, his actual number of jobs created (including part-time) in his time in office amounts to 5.6 million. However, with his open border policy, the number of entrants into the US has soared to over 20 million, so his actual record has arguably added 14.4 million to the unemployed ranks.

As mentioned earlier, blacks under Obama are suffering the most with 26.2% of African Americans living in poverty. But near 1 in 4 Hispanic Americans are also poverty-stricken. 10.1% of whites fall under the poverty level. The South and California are the worst hit areas although the largest drops in middle class were in West Virginia, Michigan and Indiana. Just to make ends meet, more Americans are working two or three jobs than ever before.

During the Obama years the poverty rates have been climbing beyond America’s inner cities to its suburbs as well. Now the gap between the rich and the poor in America is at its all-time worst disparity ever and the highest in the developed world. Despite what Obama claims, today’s economy is in dire straits. And as a result, Americans either have no money to spend or worried over their uncertain future, are holding onto what little they have. An incredible 76 % of Americans live from paycheck to paycheck, just one away from homelessness. Hence, all across America shopping malls are becoming extinct. Their demise is accelerated by record number of closures of major retail outlet stores. 14 of the biggest - Target, Kmart, Macys, Office Depot and Sears among them, are all closing at least 100 of their stores.

Eleven other industrialized nations have more startup businesses per capita than America as entrepreneurship has fallen.

So you can see that clearly Obama is wrong, as he leaves office in 2017, the United States of America is no longer the wealthiest nation on earth. And the primary reason is that President Obama dutifully followed his rulers’ orders, padding the coffers of Wall Street and the military industrial security prison complex rather than investing in his own nation’s sorely needed infrastructure and the well-being of his own fellow citizens. The US military has been and is still misused as the elite’s corporate body guard to rape and pillage the earth, gobbling up and stealing precious energy, mineral and other natural resources. And the affluence of North America and Western Europe was viewed an obstacle that had to be eliminated prior to implementing a one world government.

In his farewell speech Obama dared to sneak in a plug for his abominable Obamacare, at the end of his braggadocio repeating the boldface lie that 20 million more Americans are benefiting from his “right to health insurance,” the same right that gives you no right to opt for no insurance without incurring increasing fines for refusing to buy his corrupt brand of snake oil that has rates obscenely skyrocketing by 24% this year on average. Obama’s fuzzy math must be referring to those same 20 million new immigrants he allowed into the country complete with insurance entitlement. In any event, even Obama’s main claim to fame – that the least number of Americans in history are uninsured – is bound to start rising again with his now Unaffordable Care Act. Yet despite this reality, Obama insists that “health care costs are rising at the slowest rate in fifty years.” The man’s delusional. His boldface lie glosses over the truth that in August last year alone healthcare costs rose higher than at any time prior to 1984.

Over two years ago it was noted that the US leads the entire world in any number of dubious ways. And we know that in two years things have only grown from bad to worse. As the nation that grants the most outrageous and unfair tax breaks to the rich, the US also leads the globe in tax evasion and corporate welfare. And with multibillionaire Trump coming to power assembling the wealthiest administration in US history, that statistic will not be changing any time soon. While good for the wealthiest class, America leads the planet in declining public services, child poverty and homelessness. While the rich get richer and the poor poorer, America’s number one in citizens in prison, supplying 25% of the world’s inmates containing only 5% of the world population. Americans are also number one in police brutality, and police murdering unarmed citizens, sadly three times worse if you’re African American than white and two times more likely than if Hispanic.

Obama is correct in saying the US is the most powerful nation on earth if measured strictly in terms of human genocide and global destruction. With US Empire’s nonstop record of aggression and slaughter committed against rest of the world, killing 30 million other humans since World War II alone, the United States is by far the world’s biggest murderer as well. If US exceptionalism is measured in terms of number of invaded smaller countries, murders of foreign leaders, 59 government coups since WWII, engaging in economic warfare by enforcement of trade embargoes (Yemen, Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba), as well as imposing various economic sanctions (Russia, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Sudan), and countless tampering in others’ elections, all with total impunity, then yes, the US is uniquely exceptional in its unmatched evil. And that was just the short list. America ranks as the world’s worst offender.

No other nation on earth comes even close to making war over 93% of its time in existence. No other nation on earth has over 130,000 soldiers occupying more than 150 nations at nearly 1,000 military posts worldwide, with another 4,000 US troops this month lining up along Russia’s western border, joining NATO’s 300,000 troops on active alert. Ready to ignite the next world war, Commander-in-Chief Obama has the US military occupying over 77% of all other nations on earth. In comparison, the number of foreign nations where Russia deploys its troops remains a single digit figure, and in all nine countries Russia is an invited guest, unlike America. If power in the world is measured in terms of causing grave risk to every living inhabitant on the planet dying from nuclear holocaust, then once again Obama’s US of A is number one.

The liar-in-chief also boasts that America is the “most respected nation on earth.” What a pathetic laugh that is. The reality is with so much US aggression and violence inflicted on the rest of the world, America has to be the most hated and feared nation on earth.

A Gallup poll found that the United States is the biggest threat to world peace. Though few nations can openly call America out for its never-ending transgressions, for fear of being overthrown, invaded or severely punished, behind closed doors, many the world over cannot wait to see the Empire crash and burn. The entire planet has suffered immeasurably for more than a century at the hands of the brutal world bully and unilateral executioner. Other nations see through Obama’s lies and hypocrisy, and his wormlike leadership from behind is secretly mocked as mealy-mouthed and weak. On the world stage he has zero credibility and is hated, and unfortunately due to the sins of his seamless Clinton-Bush-Obama cabal, Americans get lumped in and are hated too. But hate and fear have nothing to do with respect.

Getting back to more of what Obama believes are his bragging rights, he touts normalized relations with Cuba among his most notable accomplishments. The Empire’s embargo lasting more than half a century cruelly caused untold human suffering on the little Caribbean island. But the resourceful nation survived and even thrived in ways in spite of it. So who benefits by the thawing relations? Tourism revenue is pouring in while the Cuban elite may begin reaping the benefit of less restrictive trade after decades of isolation. Yet despite these obvious perks, since Obama opened the US embassy in Havana in August 2015, the first full year of normalization saw the Cuban economy shrink by .9% after a 4.4% growth in 2015. No doubt Western predators are eagerly pouncing on Cuba’s natural resources to turn that country into another banana republic. Perhaps an undefiled Cuba was better off during the nearly six decades the island proudly and defiantly stood independent of the constantly threatening imperialistic Empire 90 miles away (not to mention the failed US Bay of Pigs invasion and alleged 634 attempts on Castro’s life).

RM/ME