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Commentary: AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA , by Lou Pritchett
You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you.
President Barack Obama, on February 10, 2007, became a candidate for President of the United States. For over two years, he has been vetted and scrutinized by every politician, American voter, and media outlet in the United States. He has also endured the same critique by the people of other nations. Racist have chastised him. His character has been questioned. He articulates his views very clearly. Unless one simply doesn’t believe what he says, then it seems to me, we know a great deal about President Obama. Unless one can read minds, we will not know anymore. Those who claim they know nothing about him are being disingenuous, or they are ignorant and not capable of understanding or comprehension, or saying they know nothing about Barack Obama because of some unknown hidden agenda of their own.
You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.
Mr. Pritchett, you could have easily found the answer to that question on your own. That is if you really wanted to know. An explanation is presented in this video by no less than Fox News (well known for their conservative bias): School Days
You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.
Zbigniew Brzezinski was national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter (1977-81), born in Poland; Henry Kissenger was U.S. Secretary of State under Presidents Nixon and Ford, born in Germany; Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of California, was born in Austria. None of these patriots spent their formative years of youth growing up in America: would anyone argue that a part of these Americans culturally are not American. Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii and raised, mostly in Hawaii, by his late mother and grandparents. The last time I checked Hawaii as part of the Hawaiian Islands was admitted as the 50th state in 1959.
You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.
I believe that very few, if any, U.S. Presidents have run a company or met a payroll. I believe that most major corporate executives, CEOs, have actually not run the “nuts and bolts” of a company or had direct management responsibility for meeting a payroll. Besides, the fact is that the President of the United States does not run a company: he is in a position of leadership, and as president, will never have to meet a payroll, per se.
You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don't understand it at its core.
Does Mr. Pritchett know that Dick Cheney, former vice president and Secretary of Defense, no less, who directed the United States invasion of Panama and Operation Desert Storm in the Middle East never served in the Armed Forces became eligible for the draft, during the Vietnam War, and he applied for and received five draft deferments.
Did you know that John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, Grover Cleveland, William H. Taft , Woodrow Wilson although he served as President during World War I., Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Bill Clinton never served in the Armed Forces
Last, but not least, Franklin D. Roosevelt who served as President of the United States during World War II -- Commander in Chief of the mother of all of America’s wars -- never served in the Armed Forces.
The fact that President Obama had no military experience is of no practical importance; and is irrelevant.
You scare me because you lack humility and 'class', always blaming others
This statement is just simply not true. It is the subjective opinion of Mr. Pritchett.
You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.
Is this statement made because of the accusation by some that the President is at heart a Muslim? President Obama has persistently explained that he is a Christian. Perhaps you feel this way, Mr. Pritchett, simply, again, because you do not believe him.
On the other hand, is this statement made because McCain virtually accused Obama of being a terrorist for his limited association with William Ayers, and you align yourself with McCain. The President has said, The gentleman in question, Bill Ayers, is a college professor, teaches education at the University of Illinois,” “That’s how I met him — working on a school reform project that was funded by an ambassador and very close friend of Ronald Reagan’s along with a bunch of conservative businessmen and civic leaders. Even McCain said, when his terrorist remark against Obama got out of control, to one of his supporters, and I am paraphrasing No! No! He is not a terrorist, he is a decent man. He is a man I am running against that I simply disagree with.
To say that President Obama has aligned himself with radical extremists and that he refused publicly to denounce those who wish to see America fail is a false statement. Mr. Pritchett, if Senator McCain can recognize that he is not a terrorist or that the accusation is at its heart false, why can’t you.
You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the 'blame America ' crowd and deliver this message abroad.
America has been wrong about many things. To deny that would be irresponsible. However, President Obama, in the sense this remark is made, is not a cheerleader for the blame America crowd. To try to convince others of this is also being disingenuous.
You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.
If you want to accuse the President of being a socialist, that’s fine. He is. Nevertheless, call it what it is. America has never been, in so many ways, anything but socialist. It may be America’s brand of socialism, but it is and always has been socialism.
You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government-controlled one.
Where have you been, Mr. Pritchett, America’s current system of health care is a failure. It is in desperate need of reform. The free market enterprise of insurance has not been effective in controlling cost or in improving quality.
You scare me because you prefer 'wind mills' to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.
Such a statement is deceiving. President Obama has talked about windmills as playing a role in his energy plan, but I have never heard him say that it is his preference.
You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg, which provides the highest standard of living in the world.
You can never kill something you never had in the first place. The end of capitalism cannot occur because it never began. True capitalism operates in an economic free enterprise environment with little or no government control, which in the United States is not happening nor has it ever happened. The United States has always operated within the Keynesian paradigm. It was this form of American capitalism -- the American capitalist -- and reliance on the free market enterprise system to regulate itself, which got us into our economic quagmire in the first place.
You scare me because you have begun to use 'extortion' tactics against certain banks and corporations.
If you mean by extortion the illegal use of one's official position or powers to obtain property, funds, or patronage. Yes, he has. However, he has not begun to use extortion tactics: Extortion and coercion is what governments do. President Obama is doing nothing more than another politician would do under the same circumstances.
You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.
Now, let me see if I have this right: $700B under the Bush Administration, or so, is okay to bailout Wall Street; it’s okay to spend $674B, or so, on the Iraq War, a war of Bush’s design; but $787B under the Obama Administration, or so, is not okay to bailout Main Street. Do you really think if McCain or any republican were President, or if it were a republican dominated congress, things would be essentially any different? How much less do you think the stimulus legislation would have been? No stimulus? Perhaps McCain and the republicans would do nothing and rely on their ideology that the American free market system is the best system in the world for creating wealth, it will self-regulate, and if left alone it would solve its own problems. That seems to be the republican mantra. This is simply not a solution. Reliance on American style capitalism and laissez faire economics has been the problem. It took close to a year before the financial folks and the republican administration would even acknowledge we were in a recession.
You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people.
President Obama, more than any president in my lifetime, has personally expressed his desire and willingness, and has by example, to listen and consider opposing points of view whether they are intelligent people or not.
You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient.
Mr. Pritchett, there is not one statement or example that anyone could point to where President Obama, outside of the political hyperbole, could be authentically accused of his belief that he is omnipotent and omniscient.
You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.
Again, a political hyperbolic assumption; I don’t find it to be factual. How about the Limbaugh’s, Hannitys, Fox News, O'Reilly's, Becks, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, and many other less known personalities? Do you really think Obama is getting a free pass from them?
You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaugh’s, Hannitys, O'Reilly's and Becks who offer opposing, conservative points of view.
President Obama has never, to my knowledge, demonized or by example indicated that he was out to silence the Limbaugh’s, Hannitys, O'Reilly's and Becks who offer opposing, conservative points of view. However, I personally do for their over the top, hyperbolic, uncivil, and abusive, and unnecessary diatribe.
You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.
To control is to govern. That act of governing is management at a higher level than just to be a manager. The process of managing is to plan, organize, direct, staff, and control. In my view, this is what I would expect President Obama to do. In the hierarchical paradigm within which America assesses power or domination as value, rather than leadership in and of itself, one could not expect anything different.
Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.
This statement is the most absurd, irrational, radical, distasteful, and insincere of all of Mr. Pritchett fears.
In conclusion: Mr. Pritchett, spreading unfounded fears, which ultimately leads to hate, is what really scares me: especially when it is done by someone that assumably should know better than to propagate fear.
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