My grade on Obama's 1st 100 Days

-4/28/09 The Obama administration is asking Congress to close the big gap in prison sentences for dealing crack versus powdered cocaine, a law that critics say is unfair to blacks. Federal law now has what lawyers call a "100-to-1" ratio for cocaine sentences, in which a person selling five grams of crack faces the same five-year mandatory minimum sentence as someone selling 500 grams of powder cocaine. Critics of the law say it unfairly punishes black offenders, pointing to statistics showing 82 percent of federal crack cocaine convicts were black, while nine percent were white.President Barack Obama had called for such a change while campaigning for the White House as he also fought against many of these situations as a civil rights lawyer.

This alone just upped his chances of a good grade in my book.

I am an Obama fan. Had no hesitancies whatsoever voting for him. I believe he has good intentions, his heart is in the right place and he's intelligent as all hell, which puts him WAY ahead of the curve of our last President. Oh and I adore Michelle :-) With that said, I am no fool. A politican is a politician who will always be a politician. And politicians pander, they lie, they "misspeak", they make mistakes, they take stuff back, and they duck and dodge to miss the dripping shit that they helped throw towards the fan. Obama has and will do all of the above, just as McCain & Hillary would have. So completely setting aside his skin color, coolness, refreshing & sincere love for his family & his amazing wife (did I mention I love her?), my grade for President Obama's first 100 days in office remains PENDING.

He has made some smart moves that work well for him.

Out the gate, he signed the Ledbetter law into action, guaranteeing and protecting equal pay between women and men, also making sexual discrimination cases on behalf of victimized women easier to file and more strictly enforced.

His stem cell research initiative, reversing the ban imposed by Bush, gets a standing ovation from me.

His willingness to travel abroad and LISTEN instead of lecture, paying attention to the global issues with America, and his dedication towards working with foreign leaders in order to restore their trust in our country is an excellent sign. I'm definitely looking forward to climbing out of the Piece of Shit status we currently have with other countries thanks to G.W.B.

Closing Gitmo is still iffy for me. I do believe Guantanamo Bay was a bad look for us. And it seemed rather pointless. But I do wonder now, where in the world will the detainees go and what trickery will they become a part of? Is this a safe move?

The Economy. Whew lord. I kinda feel bad for the current administration cuz it's really not their fault that our economy has been driven into the fiery depths of hell. I would say drag Bush's ass back in to help sort out the mess he made but no, he wouldn't do anything but throw gas onto the fire, i'm sure. So it is what it is and President Obama has the grand job of dealing with it. I think lots of his brain power is being applied to this issue and I can respect his hustle and work ethics towards the matter. The stimulus plan is slowly but surely trickling in. Working for a school district, I have a 1st row seat (okay maybe like 3rd row) to watch how jobs are being terminated, funds are flying out of the window and lives are being destroyed because of our financial situation. It has not been a pleasant two years for education. Over this past week, with the onset of stimulus plan dollars, we have been able to restore over 60% of the jobs that were pink slipped last year. A "plan" is in the works to use more money to get back as many employees as possible while injecting funds back into the schools as well. Things are far from being okay, but they are looking up instead of digging deeper into the pile. The AIG fiasco was a mess and tainted Obama in my mind because um..hello...why did he give them more $$$ in the first place? Yeah so that sucked. Not a wise decision. So the jury is still out on the economy, and rightfully so. You can't judge anything of this magnitude in 100 days. Ask me again this time next yr.

Education. Okay so i'm a broke college student. As are many of you. I'm looking for HELP from the gov't who claims to want to bolster the amount of US college graduates every yr. We cant graduate if we can't pay for school. We cant pay for school if yall dont give us any money. Duh. Education seems to be fairly important to our Pres and if the economy wasn't a ball of horse doo doo he would probably be doing more to strengthen that area. So far, I know he's pushing to lessen the amount of unsubsidized student loans offered and replacing them with more federal grants and gov't subsidized loans. Well halleleujah. UNsubsidized=UNcalled for high interest rates that I will have to pay back and it's UNlikely that i'll have the money to do so. Therefore, grants are GOOD. I also know he's pumping upwards of 5 billion dollars into Head Start programs, which of course, is a great thing. Education starts early, people. You can't expect little Johnny to graduate from college if he didn't even learn his ABC's until the 4th grade. Pre school is fundamental (oh and so is reading;-)

The costly, bloody, senseless wars are still raging. And to point out the fact brought up by my girlfriend, we're in a NEW war now with the damn pirates of the caribbean! Wtf. I swear its like a huge joke or something. But its really not funny. I understand that protecting our country is necessary & if our safety is being threatened, yeah, handle that. But it's time to let Iraq go. Sorry. Its time. Afghanistan too. Its pointless. Removal from Iraq needs to begin sooner than later. YES it should be done cautiously, I get that. But we gotta start somewhere. I'll give Obama an A+ times two if retrieval begins in early 2010.

It has been one helluva 100 days. Everyone else's 1st 100 seems like a Cinco de Mayo cake walk. So for the amount of pressure he's dealing with, i'm willing to ebb & flow with Obama for now. That's why im holding out on grading him. He's done a lot of good & he's made some questionable moves. I'm just sitting back & waiting. Eyes & ears open, trust. I know everything wont be resolved to my liking,nor to his because he does have the senate and house to work with [damn republicans]. But I do believe in his abilities. Let's just hope he comes through.