Obama's new tough tone

I think President Obama learned a valuable lesson this summer during the long and heated debt ceiling debate. You CANNOT negotiate with the new breed of Republicans. Period. They are hard liners and refuse to compromise. It took a long and contentious summer during which the public became increasingly incensed with both the President and Congress to make Obama realize that he had lost the support of the very people who worked hard to elect him. So he's finally woken up to the new reality that he needs to be the person we voted for and elected if he even hopes to retain the support of those of us who pounded shoe leather and dialed phones until our fingers hurt to make sure that he was elected President. I am glad to hear this new tough tone of his, at long last. He should have been taking it all along instead of continually trying to extend an olive branch across the aisle to these TEA Party extremists. From the day Obama took office, the GOP hardened its line and made his destruction their Number One agenda, and unfortunately, they've been remarkably successful in shutting him down and preventing him from being able to set the tone in Washington and be the leader we thought we elected. Now the gloves are off, and the swords have been drawn. It's about time that President Obama talks tough and lays out clearly what he expects. At last he's fighting for the middle class instead of seeming like he was siding with the wealthy and the corporations. I think he has finally set the tone for the next year as the election cycle gets underway. He's calling out those who so rabidly defend the wealthy and whose agenda is to throw the middle class under the bus. At last, THIS is the President Obama I voted for and I am sure that millions voted for as well. Now if he maintains this new tough stance and doesn't wither under the relentless Republican attack machine, maybe he will be re-elected after all, but unemployment is going to have to come down significantly as well and unfortunately, leading economists are saying that it will take at least a decade for that to happen, no matter who's in the White House. The President's American Jobs Act is a good start. Now let's see if he can keep this new populist tone and tough stance and fight like hell for the middle class and make sure that we don't keep being asked to give up more than we already have. We've sacrificed enough. It's time for the most fortunate among us to ante up and pay their fair share. Even President George Washington realized this, as Obama quoted in his Rose Garden speech the other day.
So, TEA Partiers, you who pretend to owe your allegiance to the Founders, even those early Presidents realized that everyone needed to pay their fair share so that we could be a great country. It's the right thing to do, both fiscally and morally. Thank you, President Obama, for finally taking off the gloves and laying down some smack to the recalcitrant Republicans who are so gung-ho about protecting those so-called "job creator" millionaires and billionaires. After all, my question to the GOP then is, "Where are the jobs?" Unemployment is stuck at a maddening 9.1%. Speaker Boehner, where are the jobs? Majority Leader Cantor, where are the jobs? Corporations are sitting on top of trillions of unspent dollars, where are the jobs? Pray tell us, where are the jobs these millionaires and billionaires are said to be creators of? Tell that to all the laid off factory and construction workers who I see begging on freeway entrance ramps every morning and every evening. Go on, tell someone who's been out of work for over a year and whose unemployment benefits are about to run out why it is so important to protect all the tax loopholes that millionaires and billionaires have. I'd sure like to hear your passionate defense of the ultra wealthy and the biggest corporations to someone who lost their home to foreclosure and can't find work anywhere. And don't even start with the talk of personal responsibility. It's not Joe Lunchbucket's fault that his factory closed its doors and moved to China. And no, as President Obama said, this isn't "class warfare", this is math, pure and simple. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the reasons that the middle class has been in sharp decline for the past several decades. Just ask those of us who've watched our paychecks flatten and our spending power disappear. Hey, at least some of us are still working, but for what some of us are making, it's costing an awful lot lately just to go to and from the job. But, oh, we've got to, got to, got to protect oil company profits, because we cannot tax those poor, poor billionaires who are the "job creators". I mean, gee, how can someone who makes $10 billion a year possibly live on, say, $5 billion? What a paltry sum on which to live the high life! Too bad they'd be forced to be so deprived that maybe they'd have to, oh, I don't know, give up one of the yachts in their fleet. Or maybe one of their numerous mansions around the world. What a rough life.....must be awful to be so wealthy and be facing the idea that you might have to pay your fair share of taxes so that our country can move forward and be great again.