A Game of Whac-A-Mole
WARNING: This post is political in nature, I really had to beg Joe to allow me to write it, thank you, Joe, I won’t let you down. To make the post easier to read and easier for me to draft I will introduce each President with their title of office and then it will just be their last name. This is not a sign of disrespect, in fact not calling the President by his/her title really upsets me.
Every four years we Americans play the same game of “Whac-A-Mole”, where we go enter the voting booth, and color an oval on the scantron sheet, thus casting our vote for who we would like to see as the President of the United States, and to be 100% honest, I have won a few and lost a few, but this post is more about, how the President really affects your daily life. For me, usually, I really don’t see the impact too much or directly. Up until our current administration, I didn’t see much of a difference at the gas pump or at the grocery store. But recently I have to admit that I’m really feeling the impact of President Biden (stick with me, this is a post about bashing the President). Under the leadership of Biden, the price of just about everything is up and I’m not talking about a small increase. Under President Trump, everyone was worried about how a businessman would run the country, and to be honest, if the MSM would just shut the hell up (that is a totally different blog post that I hope Joe will let me draft), most of us didn’t feel an impact either positive or negative under Trump. Yes, there was all this talk about “grab her in her pussy” and about “Russian involvement”, but none of that had any effect on me. I would say that personally, I felt that the country was safer under Trump, definitely more than under President Obama. But beyond that, you and I didn’t notice a huge impact on who was residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Under Obama, I would say that we noticed the most changes, and I’m sure I just triggered several of you out there. But before you start blowing smoke and start shouting “Orange Man Bad”, just calm down and like an adult, read the rest of this post, I promise it will be worth it. Also, I’m an Equal Opportunity ‘Basher’.
Let’s first take a look at Executive Orders, which are written orders issued by the President of the United States, acting in his capacity as head of the executive branch, directing a federal official or administrative agency to engage in a course of action or refrain from a course of action. Beyond a declaration of war, an Executive Order is likely the only thing that a presiding President will do that might have a direct effect on you or me, the average citizen.
- Biden (in just under 1.5 years) has issued 92 so far
- Trump (in four years) issued 220
- Obama (in eight years) issued 276
- Bush (W) (in eight years) issued 291
- Clinton (in eight years) issued 364
- Bush (in four years) issued 166
- Reagan (in eight years) issued 381
- Carter (in four years) issued 320
That is around 174 per President per term (minus President Carter who throws off the average and I didn’t factor in Biden as he hasn’t served four years yet. If you want to geek out, you can download all of these and see what they were. But on average most of the EOs that a President will sign, don’t affect Joe Public all that much.
I want to take a second here and do a little high school Government, and remind you that your representatives and congressperson actually work for you, not the other way around. We vote them into an office so they can represent you and me, and vote how the majority of us want them to vote. But in reality, they have become an untouchable Government official with a ton of perks and they often vote how influencers and lobbyists want them to vote. This is why it is so important to vote for new representatives often.
The other day, I was online surfing around and I ran across this extremely heavy political website/board. I could tell by the writing that most of those who were commenting were in the 25 or younger crowd. And let me tell you, they were flaming back and forth about how one President is better or worse than the other. Their comments were almost comical and most certainly showed that they didn’t pass their Government class in high school.
When I was in high school, we learned about our political system in 8-9 grade, we had some form of Government class every year and our Senior year is when we had the actual Government class, but it was so much more than what they teach now. The people on this website were talking about Trump’s taxes and how he wouldn’t provide his taxes. My thought on that is he was a private citizen when he filed those tax returns, so he isn’t/was not under any obligation to release them, and releasing them has no real value. If you are serious about your President and his/her money, then you should be more concerned about how much he/she is worth before entering office compared to how much he was worth after leaving that office.
I tried to find solid numbers, but they are all over the place, but they all seem to show the exact same pattern:
- Trump was worth $3 billion before office and was worth $2.3 billion after; this indicates he lost money while in office
- Obama was worth $1.3 million before office and $70 million after; this indicates that he gained around $68 million in eight years
- Bush (W) was worth $20 million before and $40 million after; this indicates that he gained around $20 million in eight years
- Clinton was worth $1.3 million before and $241.5 million after; this indicates that he gained $240 million in eight years
- Bush was worth $4 million before and $23 million after; this indicates that he gained $19 million in four years
- Reagan was worth $10.6 million before and $15.4 million after; this indicates that he gained $5 million in eight years
- Carter was worth $2.3 million before and $10 million after; this indicates that he gained $8 million in four years
My question is, how did they make all that money while you were in office? Until Obama signed it into law, a presiding U.S. President was not allowed to own stocks or own real estate. The current salary for a sitting President is $400,000/year, which works out to be $1.6 million in a four-year term (Clinton, Bush, Reagan, and Carter make $200,000/year), plus they get a $50,000 expense account every year on top of their salary. I’m assuming that the president isn’t charging for appearances while still in office, then that is a ‘boat-load’ of lemonade to sell to make that kind of money. If you are honestly concerned about the President’s money, then we should make it law that they provide their tax returns while in office and for 10 years after leaving office. I would expect them to make money after they leave office, that is usually from book sales, charging for appearances, and their pension. They also receive funds for travel, office space, support staff, and mailing costs.
** FUN FACT – President Trump was the first President since John F Kennedy to donate their annual salary
I chuckle at some of the things these people on the online boards and forums bitch about. They are still posting memes of Biden, in the face of the Ohio worker, and of him falling up the stairs. They are still bitching about the “grab her in her pussy” comment that Trump made.
First of all, It is a FACT that Biden did indeed state “I’m not working for you”. I need to paint some context first, so I don’t get flamed by jerks thinking that they know everything (they will still flame me, but I have the facts on my side and, they have their opinion).
All the fact-checkers were calling this one false or half-true because the meme that was floating around showed Biden pointing his finger at the worker while he was at the Detroit Fiat Chrysler factory. Biden actually pointed his finger at the man, and about 2 seconds later after he withdrew his finger, he said “I’m not working for you, Give me a break, man. Don’t be such a horse’s ass.”. The ‘Fact Checkers’ stated that he wasn’t pointing his finger at the man when he said “I’m not working for you”. However, most people only see that it isn’t true and they move on. In fact, that is intentionally done this way to help sway voter opinion.
It is a FACT that Biden fell up the stairs, twice actually. There isn’t much to debate here, he fell up the stairway of Air Force one, it was all captured by MSM and it flooded the airwaves, making America look bad. On the surface, it isn’t a bad thing, except the MSM was over-publicizing it, making the Office of the President of the United States look bad, not just President Biden. If the Office looks bad, then America looks bad.
It is a FACT that Trump did say “Grab ’em by the pussy”, but at the time (2005), he was a private citizen and it was on a bus at the NBC Studios where Trump and Billy Bush, just talking while they were waiting for the show to start. This type of locker room talk is very brash, but we all do it. There are very few women out there who have not talked to a girlfriend about some guy’s butt or his nice package and I know that men talk about women in the exact same light. My take on this is shame on NBC and/or Billy Bush for releasing this and using it against Trump, some 15 years later. This was recorded and saved for that very purpose.
We will honestly never know how good or bad of a President both Trump and Biden will actually be, because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic downturn that came with it.
Yeah, I know, all of you people out there bitching, that Trump let COVID-19 into the country. All I can say about that is, you are so delusional, there was no way to stop it and there are only two countries that are not reporting COVID cases, and they are Turkmenistan and Tuvalu, hell even North Korea has COVID-19 cases (In fact there are over 6 million reported cases in North Korea). It is likely that Turkmenistan has cases that are not being reported, and very likely that Tuvalu, being an island doesn’t have any cases. So to think that we were going to stop it from entering the U.S. is just crazy.
Looking at North Korea, which completely sealed its already nearly closed borders and implemented traditional measures of social distancing and wearing masks, they still had nearly 20% of their reported population contracting COVID-19. If Trump closed our swiss cheese borders at the first sign of COVID, we would still have millions of cases in the U.S.
Many will argue that Trump had the lowest unemployment numbers in modern history and Biden had the highest numbers, but you have to calculate that COVID ushered in lower employment numbers as many businesses closed during COVID. Once the pandemic started to fade and many businesses returned to full operation, which required more employees. These numbers had nothing to do with who is the President.
Many will bash Trump for this and for that, but things for Biden aren’t looking so good right now, with the price of gasoline, the supply chain issues, mass shootings, and general stumbling over words and his feet and shaking hands with no one, not to mention his obsessive compulsion to touch and kiss young girls.
When I was growing up, the office of the President was something to look up to, today, it is something to laugh at.
I do however find it humorous that when a Republican is in office, the economy, stock market, gas prices, interest rates, etc., are all directly related and affected by the President. But, when a Democrat is in office, the President has no control over any of those.
We honestly haven’t had a good President for many years now.
