Bill Maher came to the defense of President Obama during his "New Rules" segment this Friday evening and went after those that have accused him of being responsible for destroying our economy and pretending it is a "complete shamble."
And while I agree with Maher that the economy is improving and that it's completely unfair to blame President Obama for how the recovery is going due to the obstruction he's had to deal with during his time in office, I also think it's dangerous to pretend that the problems with our economic policies and those who have been left behind by it don't exist, just because we still have people lining up to buy phones, going to the malls to shop, or buying tickets to go see Bill Maher's shows.
We still have huge swaths of the country who are unemployed, under employed, who have given up looking for work, and who live in areas that are suffering from a depression and we're nowhere near getting the country somewhere close to full employment. And we still have one political party in complete denial about the fact that trickle-down economics doesn't work and tax breaks for the wealthy do not create jobs.
While I generally like Maher and agree with him for the most part on a lot of issues, this week's "New Rules" segment just didn't sit with me all that well for those reasons. I think sadly there are way too many out there still hurting in this economy and that it doesn't serve anyone well to pretend it's not happening instead of hammering the politicians who are refusing to do enough to fix the problem, or refusing to acknowledge the reasons the problem exists, and the fact that it's not because we haven't given the mythical "job creators" enough tax breaks.