President Barack Obama's First Three Years

With the GOP campaign caucuses currently dominating our domestic political news, it is interesting and actually instructive to listen to the continuous cacophony of anti-Barack Obama drivel and negativity streaming from the candidates’ mouths.

All of them from front-runner Mitt Romney to Ron Paul and everyone in between are doing a great job of pretending that the George W. Bush years occurred in another dimension, leaving the Obama administration to blame for all the problems, real and imagined, that America is struggling with currently.

Never mind that most of our economic indicators save for national unemployment numbers improved dramatically in 2011, from the stock markets to American corporate and personal spending, exports, IPOs forecast and company sales growth.

Listening to all the Republican invective you would think that the United States was in the grip of our second Great Depression, which ironically we WOULD’VE been if the administration’s stimulus act and the Wall Street Recovery loans hadn’t worked so well three years ago.

As a panacea to the GOP gloom-and-doom strategies evident daily as the candidate squabbling continues, let’s take a short-version look at some of the major advances, improvements and fixes that the Obama administration has effected in three years that have brought America back from the brink of collapse, keeping in mind that these are exactly the facts that Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and the rest of the gang DON’T want you to focus on.

1. Ending the Iraq War " Last month (Dec. 15) marked the official end of the Iraq War, a needless, ugly conflict based on a series of lies by the prior administration that resulted in over a million casualties and the physical ruin of a nation that never attacked us. It also resulted in billions and billions of profit-margin dollars realized by hundreds of American corporations from Halliburton to Blackwater, the real main reason for our attack.

2. Wall Street Recovery Act (and concurrent GM/Chrysler loans): Ended the Bush recession as well as prevented many of the similar problems that Europe is now struggling with. Virtually all TARP dollars have been paid back to the Treasury, leaving the auto dealers as well as thousands of American banks financially solvent. Not passing this legislation (over fierce Republican opposition) would’ve been economically disastrous to our nation’s recovery, and would’ve led to our own version of the financial crisis horror stories currently emanating from Greece, Italy et al.

3. Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act: Enacted the most sweeping financial legislation that America has passed since the Great Depression, and again was implemented over GOP congressional opposition and filibusters as being too "unfriendly" to businesses. Never mind that all the Enrons, WorldComs and the housing market collapse that occurred last decade were directly attributable to the relaxing of many federal corporate regulations that occurred shortly after the Bush Administration took power. These new Obama directives affect hedge funds, housing loans, the often times-shifty fine print of credit card companies and many other consumer-impacting concerns and will be a boon to the average American, as well as hold corporations more accountable re: how their practices impact their customers than ever before.

4. The death of Osama bin Laden : After the 9/11 attacks of 2001 no explanation should be necessary, except to note that Obama stepped up the search for the murderous despot after his inauguration, a stark contrast to Bush redeploying 70 percent of our troops from Afghanistan to Iraq back in 2003, essentially negating most of the "find bin Laden" effort.

5. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act : The roller coaster ride that brought this sweeping and necessary bill into fruition ended on March 23, 2010 with Obama’s signing of the law. Though it will remain a work in progress as different legislation is rolled in on various timetables, it represents a deficit-reducing godsend to most Americans struggling with spiraling health care/hospital costs, as well as a reining-in of an industry that represents about 18 percent of our Gross National Product, and is set to rise to 21 percent by 2020. This is economically unsustainable and unlike college tuition costs which are equally onerous, is even more damaging as EVERYONE needs decent health care, no matter what your occupation or financial status is.

The GOP also wants us to forget about our joint Russia/US Nuclear Arms Reduction Treaty, the repeal of "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell," and the reinstatement of the bipartisan State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). In short, there is no comparison between the morass America was swamped under three years ago and where we are now, both internally and on the international level. And the ship is sailing in the right direction, despite all the Republican’s haranguing.