Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

I am sick to death of these so-call Black "intellectuals" spending so much time criticizing President Obama - not because I don’t feel that EVERY politician’s feet should be held to the fire, I do, but because most of the nonsense  they’re spewing is pure, unmitigated, ignorance. And what makes it worse is it’s either purposeful ignorance, or ignorance due to a lazy-mindedness that could be corrected with less than ten minutes of objective research.
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The irony is, people like Tavis Smiley, Cornel West, the entire GOP, and a lot of other uninformed haters are severely criticizing the President, while Obama's is showing himself to be one the most fearsome warriors for the American people that this nation has ever had. That's why the GOP is trying to impeach Eric Holder, because he and Obama are killing their cronies on Wall Street for the abuse of the American people that led to the Great Recession.
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Most American's have forgotten all about the Wall Street debacle. They’ve simply written it off as a loss, but not Obama. He's made Wall Street pay all of the bailout money back to the American taxpayer, with interest, (Bailout Payment Tracker), reimburse customers, admit guilt (which leaves them open to private lawsuits), making them pay billions of dollars over and above what they stole, and THEN, he’s making them cooperate in their OWN criminal prosecution! These corporations may be "too big to fail," but if President Obama has his way, their managers won’t be too big to jail.
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But nobody's talking about that, and Obama doesn't believe in tootin' his own horn. The man is in Washington walking on water, while his critics are talking about him like a dog. But even as they criticize, he's quietly performing one miracle after another, and then casually walking away without saying a word. So if he has any shortcoming, that’s it - he obviously finds it prudent to pursue the nation’s interest without fanfare.
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A perfect example of that is, if the Republicans had captured or killed Osama Bin Laden, they'd still be bragging about it, and at this point, George W. Bush’s image would be near completion on Mt. Rushmore. Clear evidence of that is how the GOP was bragging about how valiantly they were killing innocent people in Iraq in response to 9-11 - Bush even showed up in a flight suit (presumably the one he ran away from when he was actually SUPPOSE to be in the military).  Every Republican in the country was running on it, but all they actually did was spent a trillion dollars with nothing to show for it - which was actually the plan (they purposely ravaged America’s coffers so they could use that as a pretext to attack the social programs put in place by the New Deal, the GOP’s primary reason for being for over seventy years). 
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Then, Barack Obama came into office and casually took out Bin Laden with three helicopters and a handful of America's finest. He then walked away just as casually as he accomplished it. Thereafter, he simply announced the event to the American people and went on to other things. Yet, we have Republicans running around claiming that he's the most incompetent president that we've ever had - and that's in spite of the fact that they, literally, had to hide Bush and Cheney for two election cycles.
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So to his severe detriment, President Obama just doesn't like to toot his own horn, but he should - if for no other reason than to bench the demagogues - because the American people should be lovin' this guy, and they could be of great assistance in helping him move the country forward. By emphasizing his accomplishments he could not only shut down the Republicans, but he could also shut the mouths of these so-called Black intellectuals who are so busy bashing the most powerful symbol of Black competence in the world, that they’re providing cover for Republicans who are, literally, cutting America’s throat. How could these people not recognize that, and how can President Obama not recognize the value of shutting these people down? But I suppose he has his reasons, and in light of his track record, I'm not prone to second-guess him.
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Again, take what he’s doing in response to the Wall Street scandal. While Obama is walking around smiling and being Mr. Nice Guy in public,Wall Street and the Republicans know who he REALLY is under that nice guy façade - Attila the Hun. While he's being criticized by uninformed idiots as being a tool of Wall Street, Obama has some of the biggest names on Wall Street in the woodshed bent over with their pants around their ankles. He's taking no prisoners - if you screwed the American people, you're going down - and some of the people going down were his biggest supporters, James "Jamie" Dimon, for example, the head of JPMorgan. I bet Cornel West couldn’t tell him Obama is "a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats." President Obama is, laterally, shaking that man’s world.

Forbes Magazine: Economically, Could Obama Be America’s Best President?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2013/05/16/economically-could-obama-be-americas-best-president/
 

Acording to a CBS News report:
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In the past, "The banks in all the SEC cases were allowed to neither admit nor deny wrongdoing - a practice that brought criticism of the agency from judges and investor advocates.
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"But in a first for a major company, JPMorgan admitted in the agreement with the SEC over the $6 billion trading loss in its London operation that it failed in its oversight. The admission could leave the bank vulnerable to millions of dollars in lawsuits. JPMorgan also reached settlements over the trading loss with the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Britain's Financial Conduct Authority."
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In response, the government in January 2012 set up a task force of federal and state law enforcement officials to pursue wrongdoing with regard to mortgage securities.
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In September, JPMorgan agreed to pay $920 million and admit that it failed to oversee trading that led to a $6 billion loss last year in its London operation. That combined amount, in settlements with three U.S. and one British regulator, is one of the largest fines ever levied against a financial institution. In another case, the company agreed to pay a $100 million penalty and admitted that its traders acted "recklessly" with the London trades.
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To sum up the pound of flesh that Obama is extracted from this one corporation (and one of his biggest supporters) for the abuses that it perpetrated against the American people, Obama has demanded the following:
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1). Of the $13 billion, $9 billion is fines or penalties and $4 billion will go to consumer relief for struggling homeowners.
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2). JPMorgan also agreed to provide cooperation in investigations against individuals within the company.
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3). JPMorgan settled SEC charges in June 2011 by agreeing to pay $153.6 million and reached another such agreement for $296.9 million last November.
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4). As part of the tentative agreement, JPMorgan dropped its demand for the Justice Department to take a "non-prosecution agreement" off the table, which means a criminal investigation of the bank's conduct being handled by federal prosecutors in Sacramento, Calif., continues.
."Mounting legal costs from government proceedings pushed JPMorgan to a rare loss in the third quarter, the first under Dimon's leadership. The bank reported Oct. 11 that it set aside $9.2 billion in the July-September quarter to cover a string of litigation stemming from the financial crisis and its "London Whale" trading debacle. JPMorgan said it has placed a total of $23 billion in reserve to cover potential legal costs."
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.And they’re not through paying yet, because in spite of this "settlement" the administration is STILL coming after them with MORE charges, including criminal. And again, in another first - the head of JPMorgan, James Dimon, was one of Obama's biggest supporters. So Obama has taken a "take no prisoners" approach - if you screwed the American people, you're going down, no matter who you are. That’s a new wrinkle in American politics (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57608321/jpmorgan-chase-justice-department-reach-tentative-$13-billion-deal-over-mortgage-backed-securities/).
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And Obama’s accomplishments go far beyond simply punishing Wall Street. In addition to getting Osama Bin Laden - again, something that Bush spent a trillion dollars allegedly trying to do - Obama, literally, saved the world from slipping into another Great Depression. While the Republicans, and many Black Obama haters, have the audacity to ask "Where’s the jobs?," these people are conveniently failing to recall that under George W. Bush the nation was hemorrhaging 850,000 jobs PER MONTH. So compared to that, we’re experiencing a robust economy. Obama also saved the American auto industry, cut the deficit in half, and he’s providing health insurance to millions of Americans who couldn't previously obtain it.
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In addition, he’s gotten Syria to give up their chemical weapons, and persuaded Iran to allow nuclear weapons inspectors inside the country. If George W. Bush had been as effective in Iraq as Obama has been in both Syria and Iran, he could have saved the nation a trillion dollars, and saved the lives of more than a million people.
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With that said, I'm going to repeat myself her, because I feel obliged to ram the following point home. Compare President Obama's accomplishments above with the fact that Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, two of his most persistent and severe critics, traveled all across the country on a bus under the pretext of being so passionately concerned about poverty in America that they felt honor-bound to take a stand - but of course, that was BEFORE the election, and when they had books to sell. But now that the election is over, and they don't have any books to sell, they couldn't bring themselves to walk down the street from Tavis' office to support the Black Friday demonstrations taking place all across the country against Wal-Mart - Tavis' major sponsor, a member of ALEC, and the biggest abuser of the working class in America today.
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And not only did they fail to attend ANY of the demonstrations taking place across the country against Wal-Mart, they didn't even issue a statement of support. All we've heard coming from the Smiley/West camp are crickets - and as everyone knows, that's extremely uncharacteristic of Cornel West, who's renowned for being willing to trade a kidney for a sound byte.  So I'd say that just about says it all about those two - Tavis Smiley and Cornel West are two of the biggest hypocrites that the Black community has ever suffered. Their constant denigration of the most powerful symbol of Black competence in the world is a slap in the face of the Black community, and nothing short of a distraction that allows cover for the GOP to more easily pursue their agenda of cutting America's throat.  
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Thus, contrary to the criticisms of the GOP, and the attempted character assassination of the president by a handful of self-serving, and/or clueless, Black "intellectuals," Barack Hussein Obama has already accomplished enough to be remembered by history as one of our greatest presidents, and he, the Black community, and his supporters, would be well served to begin to trumpet that fact, and tell the idiots, demagogues, and poverty pimps to go take a nap.