The Architect of Division

Although it was penned over a year ago, I read The Architect of Destruction today. I discovered that P. Maureen Scott is an impressive armchair psychoanalyst. The five-syllable words recounting her amazing vision into the deepest recesses of president Barack Obama's mind make a convincing case that "Obama has promoted the degeneration of peace, civility, and quality of cooperation between us. He thrives on tearing us down, rather than building us up." That is until you critically evaluate what Scott writes.

It's ironic how Scott calls Obama a divider in a screed that is itself incredibly divisive. She writes as if only people raised as a WASP in America's heartland by parents still married to their high school sweetheart know the true American experience. She infers that people of color, raised by single mothers, in Hawaii or other liberal state, etc. (i.e. people not like her) could not possibly understand what it means to be American.

The truth is that Americans come in many different colors. They come from the full spectrum of the socio-economic ladder. Some Americans are Muslims and some are even atheist. Americans include surfers from California and Floridians from indigenous tribes. Some were raised by their grandparents in the inner city. The children of lesbian mothers are Americans, as are Chicanos whose first language is Spanish. But Scott will tell you that none of them could know what it truly means to be American with their upbringing.

Scott considers Obama to be the Architect of Destruction. But her disclaimer that "it is not the color of his skin that is a problem in America" does not hide her bigotry -- it only highlights it. The truth is that she herself is the Architect of Division

The mountain erodes back into a molehill

For over a year, Republicans have been desperately trying to conflate the attack on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi with a deliberate attempt by the Obama administration to cover-up the "fact" that al Qaeda was the perpetrator. There is a general consensus on both the Left and the Right that incompetence and ineptitude played a role in exacerbating the calamity that occurred on September 11, 2012, in Benghazi, Libya. But the White House denies that they sent Susan Rice out to the Sunday morning news shows with talking points stating that the Innocence of Muslims video incited the attackers knowing full well the attack was actually orchestrated by al Qaeda.

It turns out that the whole Benghazi affair isn't a major cover-up conspiracy reaching the highest levels of government after all. In fact, the Innocence of Muslims video was the spark that led to the attack on the mission and CIA annex that fateful 9/11. And guess what else -- the attack was led by a militia that was involved in the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi but had nothing to do with al Qaeda (or any other international terrorist organization).

Yet in the face of all this, Rep. Darrell Issa stands by his claims of al Qaeda affiliation in the Benghazi attacks. As I watched him refuse to denounce his erroneous claims, he looked to me like a little boy with jelly smeared all over his face refusing to admit that he ate the jelly doughnut. Here's an idea congressman: if you don't like defending false assertions, stop making claims based on absolutely no evidence.

Negotiating 101

The GOP has been claiming for a long time that President Barack Obama refuses to make a proposal for dealing with the "fiscal cliff" -- at least not one with specifics. Calling their bluff, the president sent Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner to visit congressional leaders and make a proposal. It calls for $1.6-trillion in tax increases, $350-billion in cuts in health programs, $250-billion in cuts in other programs, and $800-billion in assumed savings from the wind-down of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's pretty specific.

Of course, now that he's complied, Republicans are reviling the president for doing just what they had been asking him to do all along. They're feigning offense for him not make any concessions in his proposal. Of course, had they wanted some concessions, the Republicans should have laid their own proposal containing those concessions on the table before the president presented his. But because they lack the spine to do so, they're instead faced with the president's proposal.

Republicans shouldn't be surprised by the terms in the president's proposal. For over a year, he's been very clear on his position and what he would do if he were reelected. The terms of his proposal look like what he campaigned on. America elected him based on that, so he owes it to the American people to try to get those terms in his proposal.

Of course, this is out of character for the president, so that could explain why Republicans are taken aback. For most of his first term, the president used very different negotiating tactics. He would tell Democrats what his position on the issue was. Then he would make an initial proposal to the GOP that looked more like what Republicans had been telling their base they wanted. Seeing the president begin his negotiations at the point where they previously would have started, the Republicans would move even further to the Right and claim an ultra-conservative position as their starting point. After that, the president would make yet more concessions to the GOP without even being asked for them or getting any concessions from them in return. When agreement was finally reached, the president would call caving in to the GOP "bi-partisan legislation."

After being reelected by over 60-million Americans and a landslide in the Electoral College, Obama doesn't roll that way anymore. He's beginning negotiations with a proposal that has everything he wants. But the Republican leaders should stop complaining because the president knows he's not going to get everything he's asking for anyway. He's just using better negotiating tactics than he has in the past.

Rather than crying to the press, the GOP should come up with their counter-proposal and lay it on the table. Then one side discusses which of their terms are really important to them and which ones are not so much, and the other side does the same with the terms in their agreement. With that information, the parties can take specific terms and make offers like agreeing to give up one thing if the other party gives up another or one party can offer a term to the other in exchange for a term they want. Eventually, the parties move closer together and both sides get some things they want but neither gets everything they want. That's the way negotiations should work and the president has only taken the first step in that process so far.

Are you better off?

Tomorrow I expect to hear Mitt Romney asking the question, "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?" In anticipation of that question, allow me to prepare the electorate to answer. The answer is an unequivocal "yes."

Doesn't Romney remember the state the American economy was in when President Barack Obama took office? The financial sector was on the verge of a total collapse, the stock market was crashing, Americans were losing 750,000 jobs each month, credit was completely dried up, the auto industry was going bankrupt, our gross domestic product was shrinking at a rate of 9% annually, consumer confidence was at an all-time low, banks were failing right & left, and home values were depreciating at a breakneck pace. Essentially, the American economy was rapidly heading for a full-on depression.

Today, the Dow is close to the heights it was back in 2007 and almost as high as it has ever been. Chrysler & GM repaid the American people and GM is again the world's leading auto manufacture. The private-sector has added American jobs for thirty straight months. Credit is available to businesses again. American GDP has increased every quarter since Obama took office. Americans are consuming again. Even home values have stabilized (and begun ticking up in some areas).

Even though the American economy is admittedly tepid now, compared to when Obama entered the White House, it seems like the economy has been pushed up a very steep hill, not off the edge of a cliff. In other words, the answer to the question "Is the typical American economically better off now than four years ago?" is without a doubt "yes" -- much better off!

It was two terms of George W. Bush's fiscal policies that led to the Great Recession. Now when you look at the Romney/Ryan platform regarding the American economy, it is altogether indistinguishable from Bush's when he was in office. To quote the president who led America to four years of budget surplus and into the strongest economy since WWII, the GOP is saying about Obama, "We left him a total mess. He hasn’t cleaned it up fast enough. So fire him and put us back in."

Romney is not a felon

It’s time for all of Mitt Romney’s supporters to stop criticizing President Barack Obama for calling Romney a felon. Neither Obama nor his campaign team have ever called Romney a felon. In fact, I doubt Obama even privately thinks that Romney is a felon.

The issue stems from Romney filing forms with the SEC on behalf of Bain Capital that state Romney was the CEO, president, and managing director of Bain in 2002. Yet Romney has claimed during his current campaign for president that he was not actively involved in the business matters of Bain Capital after 1999. The two claims seem to be contradictory.

In response, Obama’s deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter told reporters, “Either Mitt Romney, through his own words and his own signature, was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the SEC, which is a felony, or he was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the American people to avoid responsibility for some of the consequences of his investments.” Yes, Cutter did use the word “felony” but look at it in context.

This is an either-or statement. It doesn’t say that Romney is a felon. It says he’s either a felon or he misrepresented his position at Bain to the American people -- one of the two but not both. When Obama tweeted that “if you don’t buy Mitt Romney’s excuse that he 'retroactively retired' from his buyout firm, you’re not alone,” he made it clear he believes it’s actually the latter. But misrepresenting yourself to the American people is not a crime.

Obama is making the claim that Bain outsourced American jobs to foreign countries under Romney’s stewardship. But this activity occurred predominantly after 1999, so it’s in Obama’s best interests politically for the 2002 SEC filings to be factual, not fraudulent. He wants to make the case that Romney had executive authority over Bain when it was offshoring jobs, so Obama and his supporters want the electorate to believe the SEC filings’ statement that Romney was the CEO at that time.

Newt-land: the mirror image of reality

Newt Gingrich was on the stump today and I saw an excerpt of his speech. He was echoing the same claims he has been making for months now. He was essentially telling the crowd that President Barack Obama has:

• raised taxes
• increased regulation
• is anti-American energy
• wages class warfare

Of course, the crowd probably believed every one of these claims, even though they are all blatant lies.

In fact, Obama has ratified every extension of tax rates brought to his desk on taxes that would have otherwise increased according to law from before he was in office. He requested authority to consolidate federal agencies, which reduces regulation, and has consistently stated support for eliminating obsolete regulations that unnecessarily stifle business. His official energy policy is to develop more energy here at home and reduce our dependency on foreign oil. And he's bailed out bankers and forced millions of Americans to buy health insurance from private corporations, which heavily favors the wealthy.

Basically, Newt is 180-degrees wrong on every count.

The Party family

The GOP is normally so disciplined -- a big reason for its success. It makes me wonder whether I'm pleased or scared that it's been co-opted by the Tea Party.

An inconvenient truth

The railing Right would have us believe that the election earlier this month was a repudiation of the Obama administration's policy. Common wisdom is that it's all about jobs with voters. Since unemployment is higher than ever under the current administration, the conservative echo chamber would say, the electorate decided to evict President Obama's Democrat cohort from congress. As inconvenient as it may be for the GOP, the truth of the matter is that more private sector jobs have been created this year than in the entire eight-year tenure of the Bush administration.

Why do so many Americans think that the country is still shedding jobs? The same reason so many Americans think President Obama is a Muslim. It's the result of a false depiction of the government (i.e. the Democrat-controlled congress and the Obama administration) fabricated by the GOP and the right-wing media that has been adopted by the Tea Party and other middle-America voters without critically analyzing the messages that shape their view of the political environment. The fallacies are much more convenient for them than the truth is.

In fact, we have seen ten straight months of private sector job growth this year. More than 863,000 private sector jobs have been created in 2010. The number of new private sector jobs this year alone exceeds the total created during all eight years of the Bush administration.

Drill, baby. Drill!

In light of the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, you would think that Sarah Palin and other Republicans who chanted, "Drill, baby. Drill!" during the last election are feeling a little foolish now. So where do GOP lawmakers stand on the mantra now that the devastation that drilling for oil can do to the environment is glaringly apparent?

Although some have tempered their position, others continue to staunchly defend offshore drilling. As you might expect, you could find a supporter of "Drill, baby. Drill!" in a landlocked place like Utah. Surprisingly, even a GOP legislator from Texas, which has a long Gulf coast, still supports it. It's likely a safe bet that continuing supporters of offshore drilling receive campaign funding from the oil industry.

The Convention

Change is not necessarily reform

The Senate sent The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (this 2074 page, 2.5 MB PDF file might take a while to download) to the floor for debate. I support health care reform and I support universal health care. Since this Act is neither, I oppose it.

The root cause of our health care system's problems is the health insurance industry. Insurance adds zero value to the health care process, yet it still manages to consume thirty percent of the insured's health care costs. The most effective way to eliminate a large portion of the problems with our legacy health care system is to eliminate health insurance.

Unfortunately, instead of eliminating health insurance, this bill requires individuals to purchase it. The bill turns 94% of Americans into a captive market for the health insurance industry. The health insurance industry does not behave in the best interest of its insured when they have to compete to attact premiums. Consider how much less accountable the industry would be if Americans were forced by the government to buy their coverage.

The bill sets up an insurance exchange to create competition. But the industry already has an exchange: it's called the marketplace. As a free enterprise society, we believe that the free market is the most efficient of all exchanges. Yet, all the marketplace has done for health insurance is to provide worse service and higher premiums. I see no reason to think an arbitrarily contrived exchange would be any better.

The health care bill the Senate will debate is not reform; it's just change. As bad as our legacy health care system is, simply tinkering around the edges of it, as the Senate bill does, would most likely only result in an even worse system. The way to real reform of America's health care system is to implement a single payer system.

Promoting family values: bigotry, hatred, and intolerance

In spite of all the chaos in the GOP, some of the Christian Right have managed to galvanize under a cause: to discredit and criticize America's first African-American President using whatever lies, fallacies, and deceit serve their purpose. Reading these screeds, there's a conspicuous undercurrent of racism and misguided religious condemnation. The latest example of this was an email from one Sally Opper that I read today:

Subject: National Day of Prayer for WHAT??????

If this isn’t an eye opener, then I don’t what is….

National Day of Prayer for WHAT??????

In 1952 President Truman established one day a year as a National Day of Prayer.

In 1988, President Reagan designated the first Thursday in May of each year as the National Day of Prayer.

This year however, President Obama, decided to cancel the ceremony at the White House not wanting to offend anyone.

Presidential candidate Barack Obama declared the USA was no longer a Christian nation. Now see if you can wrap your brain around this: On September 25, 2009 from 4am until 7pm, a National Day of Prayer for the Muslim religion will be held on Capitol Hill, beside the White House. They are expecting over 50,000 muslims that day in DC.

The website (yes, there is a very informative website) is: www.islamoncapitolhill.com. Pay particular attention to the very bottom of the page: "OUR TIME HAS COME". Could it be that the REAL agenda of the President is becoming more plain????

It's a short and sweet email but it's replete with classic examples of deceitful attacks on the President. I wonder if Sally Opper is intentionally distorting this to get people up in arms against Obama on a fabricated accusation or if she simply lacks the logic and critical thinking skills required to recognize the fallacies and logic flaws in what she's provoking.

First of all, Opper should be pleased that the Islamic community is calling for a day of unity. The Islamic community's right to worship on Capitol Hill is the same right that Opper has to openly worship Christ and it's a right that would one day protect her were Obama to do that what Opper seems to fear: turn the USA into an Islamic theocracy. If anything, Opper should be critical of Christian leadership for not organizing a similar event for Christians if she thinks what the Islamic community organized is so important.

But to try and somehow blame Obama for this event is just intellectually dishonest. Neither Obama nor his administration nor our legislature had anything to do with it. It was organized by Hassen Abdellah, a lawyer and president of the Dar-ul-Islam Mosque in Elizabeth, N.J. And to call out the "Our Time Has Come" tagline to the notice of the event as Obama's agenda absent any kind of evidence other than that it will be "held on Capitol Hill, beside the White House" (which is public property where people of all faiths have the right to gather and pray) is simply a flat-out lie.

I don't know anything about Truman or Reagan establishing a National Day of Prayer and, since Opper cited no sources on it, I can't respond specifically. However, I do know two things about it:

1. Neither president could enact any such law without congress first passing it, and the current congress has brought no such bill to Obama's desk.
   
2. If they did, it would be unconstitutional, so neither Truman nor Reagan should have signed such a bill if it were brought to their desk.

Nor can I speak to Obama cancelling some non-specific (Christian?) ceremony at the White House since Opper has again left out any citation. But to then state that "Barack Obama declared the USA was no longer a Christian nation," conveniently leaving out the operative word Obama used -- "just" a Christian nation -- (as if to say Obama is trying to establish a Muslim nation) is simply deceitful, particularly considering that Obama is a devout Christian and has never been a believer in Islam.

These kinds of lies and deceit are a very unChristian thing to do and, were I Christian, I'd be a lot more concerned with the hatred, bigotry, and intolerance Opper is trying to provoke in the name of Christ than I would be with this Muslim event. This kind of deceit and unwarranted criticism of the president -- who people of all faiths and people of no faith must deal with as our chief executive for at least three more years -- advances no one's cause, least of all Opper's. All it does is create more divisiveness and ignorance in America (at least among those who fall for her dirty tricks) and fractures America along religious and racial lines.

Obama targets schoolchildren with his socialist agenda

President Barack Obama has stirred the ire of the GOP and the Right by declaring his intent to give a speech to American schoolchildren. Less than a week ago, the chairman of Florida's Republican Party, Jim Greer, released a statement about Obama's upcoming speech, saying "I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama's socialist ideology." Some parents oppose Obama's speech to students so much that they are pressuring their school districts to allow their children to opt out of the speech, citing concern about Obama indoctrinating their children with his "socialist" agenda.

Today President Barack Obama released the transcript of the remarks he will give for the back-to-school event tomorrow. It is staggering the lengths Obama goes to in this speech to inculcate American schoolchildren with socialist doctrine. Every American parent should read this speech for him or herself. This is just the sort of message to which conservative parents would not want to expose their children.

Jim Greer read a copy of the transcript today. Regarding Obama's speech to students, the Florida GOP chair said "It's a good speech, I'll let my kids watch." Wait! What?

Shocking news!

Tom Ridge is releasing a book in which the ex-DHS chief links politics to terror alerts. His book is expected to claim that the White House asked him to raise the official threat level just before the 2004 election, purportedly to swing voters to Bush. Ridge will claim in his book that, although he objected to it, he succumbed to the pressure of former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft.

This revelation is not the surprising part of this story. What surprises me is that the media is all over it as if Ridge's revelation is some kind of shocking news story. The fact is that over four years ago I was writing about how the Terrorist in Chief was trying to manipulate the election by terrorizing the American people with his Homeland Security Advisory System. And the talk all over the street at the time, from everyday people like me, was the same.

If we laypeople could see what the Wizard of Shock and Awes was really up to behind his curtain, why did it take journalists -- whom you would think were insiders in DC -- more than four years to tell what was going on?

President-elect Obama

McCain now resorting to flat out lies

Did you see John McCain's ad about Senator Obama's comment regarding "lipstick on a pig"? It's completely disingenuous on its face. I heard Obama's entire statement in context, and he was explicitly talking about a couple of specific McCain positions, not Governor Sarah Palin. Yet McCain outright states that Obama was talking about Palin.

You should have seen Hardball the other night. Chris Matthews completely owned the McCain Mouthpiece who came on his show to talk about the issue. The guy got himself so twisted up in the facts that not even he could support the contention that Obama was calling Palin a pig. It's a must see!

Then McCain released an ad that says, "Obama's one accomplishment: legislation to teach comprehensive sex education to kindergarteners." The truth is that when he was in the Illinois legislature, Obama favored (but did not sponsor) a bill to provide "age and developmentally appropriate" material for older students. It also allowed parents to opt-out of the education. The only education that it allowed for children in kindergarten was to teach them to avoid sexual predators.

Furthermore, it wasn't his only accomplishment regarding education:

In reality, Mr. Obama not only helped administer a $49 million education project in Chicago in the 1990s, but also sponsored or co-sponsored measures that increased the number of charter schools in Illinois, and expanded federal grants to summer school programs and to historically black colleges.

The audacity of hype

Last week, Senator Barack Obama made an international tour. Senator John McCain is the very one who goaded Obama into doing so by belittling Obama's foreign policy experience. Now McCain has the audacity to spin hype about how presumptuous Obama was to give a speech at the Tiergarten in Germany. The media have been just as relentless at trying to trip Obama up. Even the sweetheart anchor, Katie Couric, tried relentlessly but unsuccessfully to weave Obama into a catch-22 on the 'surge' while he was visiting Jordan.

Meanwhile, as Obama was addressing 200,000 spectators in Germany, McCain showed him up by visiting a grocery store in Pennsylvania where the local Republican party was able to funnel an entire shopper to meet him and drive home the message about the rising prices of food. As if he did not wreak enough damage on Obama with that move, McCain followed it up by drawing a throng of six small business owners to the Sausage Haus in Ohio. At the Haus, McCain said:

Well I’d love to give a speech in Germany to -- a political speech -- or a speech that maybe the German people would be interested in but I would much prefer to do it as president of the United States rather than as a candidate for the office of the presidency.

Translation: "I would love for the German people to be interested enough in me to draw a crowd of even 200 people (let alone 200,000). Maybe then it would be worthwhile for me to visit there as a candidate instead of waiting to be President." This is what makes the media's hype about Obama's trip being presumptuous so audacious. McCain had just finished an international trip of his own, meeting with American generals and foreign leaders. Yet the press never asked him if perhaps he should have waited to be elected President before making his trip.

Granted, 200,000 Germans attended Obama's speech, which could have been seen by some as over the top. But it's not as if he put a gun to their heads and forced them to attend. They wanted to hear Obama speak to them. Isn't that 200,000 reasons enough for Obama to make his international tour, whether he be President or just a candidate?

Obama's foundation of sincerity

As you can see by reviewing the history of this blog, I've reserved judgment on Senator Barack Obama's candidacy. I knew very little about him to base a judgment on early in the primary elections. I learned more and more about him as his campaign progressed and I became very impressed with Obama by the end of the primary elections.

One of the top two factors that I liked about him is that he struck me as being sincere in his politics. There was no double-talk and spin in his words. When questioned, he would respond head-on rather than trying to dodge the questions, as is altogether too common among candidates. I could sense his commitment to his stances on the issues. Obama seemed to be the most authentic candidate I've seen in some time.

Unfortunately, cracks have recently begun to show in this foundation. Many months ago -- before it became evident that he would raise so much funds for his campaign privately -- Obama said he would use public financing for his campaign. Now that it looks like he will likely surpass half a billion dollars of fund raising for this campaign, Obama decided to opt out of public financing.

I have no problem with this decision; it would've been political malpractice to stick with his original position. It's Obama's justification for the change in his position on public financing that I find weak. If the public financing system is broken, why did he originally support it? Obama would've seemed much more sincere had he instead simply said, "I changed my mind; it would've been unfair to my supporters to not fully leverage their contributions."

To add to that, Obama stated his support for the update of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that is currently before the House of Representatives. It's bad enough that President Bush considers himself above the law when it comes to the FISA. Now Obama favors law that removes more of the right to privacy that the Bill of Rights gave us.

Yet he also claims that he will fight to strip a provision granting immunity to telecommunication companies when the bill comes to a vote in the Senate next week. If Obama opposes the terms of the bill, why would he state his support for it? I'm having difficulty finding the sincerity of this seeming contradiction.

These two issues alone are not enough for me to denounce Obama. However, if this is a trend that continues, it will certainly lead me to question my support for his candidacy. I hope the future brings us consistent stances from Obama that reinforce his persona of sincerity.

McCain denounces the separation of church and state

By saying "the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation," Senator John McCain made it clear last fall that he doesn't understand what the Establishment Clause means. The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." Yet McCain ignorantly goes on to claim of our Founding Fathers that "they didn't mean, in my view, separation of church and state." It's as if McCain lives in a parallel universe to W's Backwards World.

Pulling the puppet strings

Unfortunately, the Blogspot column is too narrow to display a funny poster I saw. Using the power of PhotoShop, it explains the one problem that prevents McCain from being the perfect president. If you're up for a laugh, it's worth the click to check out the Weekend at McCain's poster.