How do I disappoint thee? Let me count the ways.

I know there are still OTBs out there (Obama True Believers). I know this because when I dared to suggest that the lackluster performance of the POTUS along with his wish-washy majority in the House and Senate might have contributed to our losing Ted Kennedy’s seat to the GOP after 47 years, there were several people willing to suggest that I am just an Obama hater. Are you kidding me? I don’t have time to hate Obama. I’m way too freaking’ busy being roundly disappointed in the man. It’s as simple as that. Anybody who wants to believe that this guy is showing his supposed leadership qualities simply has his or her head firmly planted in the sand. (I could have suggested that their heads were planted firmly up their sphincters, but I’m trying to keep it clean.)

On Wednesday evening, Obama will give his first State of the Union address. He’s planning on focusing on the economy and health care. I addressed both of these in “Disaster in Massachusetts,” so I won’t rehash them here. But I do have a couple of additional comments on health care. I’m getting letters from these supposed progressive organizations telling us how to go about getting the present health care bill passed. This bill should never pass. It’s a joke. Any time you allow the health care industry to write a bill and any time your president cuts deals with big pharma on the prescription portion of the bill, you can bet your bottom dollar (and I do mean just that) that there is no real health care reform going down. While there may be a couple of checks and balances, the fact is that the bill forces people to purchase health care under penalty of punishment (something that the POTUS was against as candidate Obama), and does not include that “robust public option” that he was so in favor of back before he was elected. Lack of a public option means that the insurance companies still do not have competition, so their performance doesn’t have to improve.

I’m with Dennis Kucinich on this. There’s nothing progressive about this bill. It’s a bad bill and it should not pass. The Democrats should go back to the drawing board, tell the insurance companies that their input is not needed, forget about getting GOP buy-in, put in the robust public option that the majority of Americans want, and pass real health care reform instead of this sham that’s winding it’s way through Capitol Hill. While there are some that think any change is better than no change, they should think again. We’ll be stuck with a dog for a long time because nobody will touch health care again for years.

Oh, by the way, President Obama…

There are a couple of other issues that the POTUS has allowed to fall by the wayside. I’m sure he won’t address these in the State of the Union speech, so let’s address them here. Between February and May of 2009, several polls were conducted that indicated that the American people wanted the Bush administration investigated for torture and violation of human rights. Never let it be said that the POTUS doesn’t protect his own. He flat out refused to allow it. In reality, however, it didn’t even matter that the American people wanted it. There are clear indications that the Bush administration violated both U.S. and international laws when it comes to detention and torture. That alone is a mandate to investigate and punish if violations were found. When it comes to blowing smoke about human rights, the United States has no problem criticizing the likes of Fidel Castro, Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Amadinejhad. Hell, according to Junior, one of the reasons we invaded Iraq was to save its inhabitants from that marauding human rights violator named Saddam Hussein! Remember when Dick Cheney said that we would be welcomed with open arms? The problem is that we don’t walk the walk. We’re just cheap talk.

Unless we are willing to hold our own leaders accountable, I think it would behoove us to keep our mouths closed when it comes to criticizing other nations on human rights issues. To be vocal is the height of hypocrisy.

In spite of what others may tell you, the majority of the American people want to see the LGBT community given equal rights. The American people are socially light years ahead of where our political leaders are. While the POTUS talked about the repeal of the absurd Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the overturning of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DA/DT), and the passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) while he was candidate Obama, he has been positively wimpy when it comes to taking action. According to President Obama, 2010 will be the “right time.” Or not. With the Democrats running scared do you think they’ll even touch the topic of LGBT civil rights? There may be an outside chance if the Democrats maintain their majority (which is in deep question right now). If the Dems don’t maintain their majority, LGBT civil rights will go nowhere with a GOP majority.

The defense of marriage act is clearly discriminatory. The United States basically passed a law that allowed marriage discrimination against one group of people. Yet, in spite of the fact that the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act was a topic on the campaign trail, the Obama administration actually defended DOMA when it was challenged in court after his election. There was simply no need to do this. The Obama administration could simply have let the challenge wind it’s way through the system. If that wasn’t bad enough, the brief written in defense of DOMA invoked both incest and pedophilia. Is it any wonder that President Obama has lost the support of much of the LGBT community?

Then, we have Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the absurd notion that you cannot effectively serve your country if you’re gay. Gay people have been serving in the military for years now. The LGBT community just wants to be able to serve openly without discrimination. More than 13,500 service members have been removed from military service since DA/DT went into effect in 1994, many of them Arab linguists. Does this make sense considering that we are fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan? You know, the notion that we are fighting two wars and we should just leave well enough alone doesn’t hold water. Harry Truman went ahead and desegregated the military in the late 1940s in spite of the fact that the military brass didn’t want to deal with the ramifications. It was the right thing to do. As Matthew Yglesias points out, there will never be a convenient day for military leaders to step up to the challenges of having gay and straight soldiers serving side by side. Hell, we’ve been at this since Bill Clinton’s first term. What we have is an administration that is clearly against DA/DT, but simply doesn’t feel like doing anything about it because it will piss off the military brass. In many ways, that’s worse than being in favor of this misguided piece of garbage.

But the failure of the Democratic majority to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, is the most cowardly of all. This is pretty much a no-brainer. In 29 states, it’s still perfectly legal for a company to fire an employee simply because of his or her sexual orientation. Now, I don’t know about you, but I think firing someone should be tied to job performance, not whom an employee may or may not be sharing a bedroom with. Yet the Democrats simply cannot seem to locate their cohones on this one either. They’ve decided to put this off until 2010 as well. ENDA has been bouncing around DC since 1994. It is now more than 15 years since I worked as a volunteer for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and got my former corporation to sign on in support of the bill, and it still hasn’t passed. What’s the hold up this time? Well, back in the nineties, nobody could utter the word “homosexual” without choking. Now, try getting a politician to say the word “transgendered.” We’re trying to protect transgendered Americans in ENDA now, as well we should, and there’s yet a new stigma to get stuck on. It’s really disgraceful and embarrassing that in this day and age we should even be discussing such an issue.

And the disappointments don’t stop here. There’s the issue of transparency. Again, President Obama has failed to live up to his campaign pledge on this topic. There’s the promise that we’d do business differently in Washington by eliminating special interests. This hasn’t happened. Just take a look at the mess that health care reform is in. In fact, it’s hard now to distinguish the Democrats from the GOP when it comes to big money special interests. Ending the war? We’re not even close in Iraq, and we’ve escalated in Afghanistan. I know, we’re supposed to call it a “surge.” Let’s call it what it is: Escalation. And the president’s use of drones has certainly contributed to civilian deaths in Pakistan and, to a lesser extent, in Yemen and Somalia. We’re going nowhere on climate change simply because we continue to dance with the oil and coal companies. The Democrats’ failure to deliver the change mandated by the American people is palpable and they’d better wake up before the mid-term elections roll around.