Cheyene, if you want anyone to take your walls of text seriously, you should break them down into paragraphs and expound on your opinionated statements instead of just stating them simply and leaving it at that. Now I'm not pro-Obama, I'm not against him either, but I am anti-ignorance, and saying that Obama is a puppet of Congress is a bloody ignorant statement. Congress is disorganized and divided, not to mention consisting of dozens of wealthy fools who, at best, might be looking out for their DISTRICT'S constituents, but certainly cannot come to any sort of blanket agreement for the good of the environment, maybe even just for the good of all Americans.
The Clean Air Act and its amendments are the last pieces of good environmental legislation, and getting even that bone tossed to the environmentalists required months of hard work, talks and compromises with the opposition and corporations (why should car manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, banks and agribusiness be the ones writing our legislation ANYWAY? That's why we elect legislators for christ's sake!)
In fact, if you made any sort of serious research into the workings of Congress and back-room deals, you would know that the President is influential but hardly the main player in the game. He can say "yes, no, maybe so" but he can't personally enact the legislation that would deliver the things he promised.
The most he can do is submit a proposal to Congress and make telephone calls to try to get someone in Congress to get that thing through the House and Senate. And when Congress is so divided, it's hard for ANY president to get anything done. The anti-Obamaites are so radically opposed to him that they will reject almost anything he puts forward, even if it would do Americans 100% good with no harm. Of course if he lets them add to the bill so that they can get tax cuts for the rich, or lower fuel mileage standards for SUVs (oh wait, they aren't regulated anyway because they aren't "cars" or "trucks") maybe the Republicans will think about it. ::Eyeroll::
The top concern of politicians in America today is re-election. Fact. If we did away with that, we might see some stuff actually get done, because they won't be too busy campaigning and fundraising to pay attention to their actual job.
And this is just one facet of what is wrong with our system of governance. To all those who claim that this is a democracy, I recommend that they do some reading up on the reality of our system. Presidential elections are bullshit, it's the electoral college that makes the final decision. And get this! Candidates for elector are nominated by their state political parties, which means that people who haven't pledged allegiance to some party, some dogma, can't even run for elector. This effectively bans from meaningful participation those who have analyzed the system and come to the intelligent conclusion that parties are nothing more than cults that discourage disagreement and debate in favor of blind loyalty and propaganda.
This is why change from within the system can never take place on the scale that it is required, for a more conscientious and peaceful government -- because what was so cleverly designed over 200 years ago has been perverted and stretched to conform to a new purpose, one that the American people did not vote on. If you want to change this society, something will have to collapse and be rebuilt. I am more interested in the rebuilding part. It would be bloody unfortunate if we made it all collapse and it turned into something just as bad or worse.
