Questions for President Obama

2008 Campaign

• Why do you think so many supporters feel let down by your presidency?
• Do you regret saying during the 2008 campaign that you'd close Guantanamo?

Banks

• Why shouldn't we break up the big banks given that they proved themselves "too big to fail" in 2008?

Bush Administration

• In declaring that we should "move on" lieu of investigating potential crimes by Bush administration officials, are you living up to your full responsibilities as our country's chief law enforcer?

Campaign Finance

• Are corporate campaign contributions bribes? What has to happen to eliminate such quid pro quo deal-making from national politics?

Civil Rights

• What are your reservations about gay people marrying one another? What do your gay friends think about your position?

Drug War

• What is your response to the recent calls from international heads of state and prominent figure here at home — such as George P. Schultz and Jimmy Carter — to end the drug war, which they all have deemed a failure? 
• Should people caught in possession of marijuana be jailed? How are our current laws against use or possession of marijuana any different from Prohibition in the '20's?

Elections

• Should election campaigns be publicly financed?
• Should the FEC  allow third party candidates to participate in debates?

Ethics

• Are military tribunals, Guantanamo and warrantless wiretaps ethical?
• In light of your intimation that former congressman Anthony Weiner resign during the throes of his Twitter scandal — which of course he did — would you say the same about Senator Vitter, who acknowledged hiring prostitutes, and, unlike Mr. Weiner, broke the law?
• Should the House Judiciary Committee hold hearings on reports of unethical behavior by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas?

Media

• What problems do you see in a profit-driven media? Should more news operations be nonprofit? Should the U.S. have its own version of the BBC, a sort of televised NPR?

Military

• When do you see the Afghanistan war ending? Will we always have troops there?
• Given the cost of stationing military abroad, why is it necessary to continue maintaining troops in Germany, Japan and Korea?
• Why did we build the largest embassy in the world in Iraq?
• Are we now living with the military industrial complex President Eisenhower warned us about in 1961? Has it become more powerful than the executive branch?
• More than half of American tax dollars go toward defense: Is this an example of misplaced priorities? If not, what percentage is too high? If so, what percentage would you consider acceptable?
• Do the tens of thousands of paid mercenaries acting on behalf of the U.S. abroad in any way hurt our national interests? 
• Two months into your presidency, you said that you would eliminate no-bid contracts at the Pentagon. Yet as of 2011, no-bid contracts have increased more than threefold since 2003 (from $40B+ to $130B+). how do you explain it?
• Is it possible that we'll enter a fourth war?
• If we consider it permissible to bomb other countries at will - Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and most recently Somalia - is it permissible for other countries to do the same? Why would it not be permissible for a country to bomb within the U.S. if an al Quaida presence is detected here?
• Taking into account the Downing Street memo, state department studies disclaiming Iraqi WMD's and evidence that Bush administration officials hoped to invade before 911, what do you think were the real reasons for that administration's invasion of Iraq?
• With Bin Laden dead and al Qaida now on the run in Afghanistan, why do we still have troops in that country?

Report Card

• What would you consider your greatest success in office so far? Your greatest failure? How would you have handled the latter differently?

Republicans

• Is Fox a news network or political operation? Is it appropriate that they're represented in the White House press corps, given their deliberate misinformation on topics ranging from WMD's to your birth certificate?
• How would you rate your negotiation skills with Republicans in Congress, specifically concerning health care legislation, the stimulus and the national debt?

Taxes

• How do tax cuts for corporations or the wealthy help our economy?
• What do  subsidies for billion-dollar oil corporations — many of which are now making record profits — that still exist almost three years into your presidency say about our pay-to-play political system?