A Delayed Response

I received an e-mail from a friend with this question: "What would be President Obama's three greatest successes/strengths and his three biggest failings?"

I have been thinking a lot about this question, lately. It comes from an e-mail I received a few months ago. Yeah, this blog isn’t the only thing around here that get’s neglected at times. If I had given an immediate response, it might have been different than the one I will give now, just as, months from now, my response might be still different.

Of course, these are my opinions, and I these items are not given in any particular order. Subject to change without notice. Your actual mileage may vary. Consult your physician before beginning any exercise program. Request a prospectus and read the it thoroughly before sending any money. Enough disclaimers? Okay, let’s get started.

Obama’s three greatest successes.

Osama Bin Laden — killed. Obama led the mission that eliminated Osama Bin Laden. This had to be done, if for no other reason  than to refocus the responsibility for the 9/11 attacks on the US away from Iraq and squarely onto Al Qaeda. Documents discovered in the raid showed plans for further terrorist activity. I think Obama deserves credit for the way he announced the victory. He didn’t take the credit. He didn’t even claim the credit for his administration, but announced it as the culmination of a ten-year effort. Class act, that Obama.

Obamacare. Polls have shown that most Americans realize the need to overhaul our nation’s healthcare system. Other presidents, including Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, tried to fix the problem. However, the country has continued to fall behind many other nations in quality of patient outcomes as the cost of American healthcare has become one of most expensive systems on the planet. The system that will result from  Obama’s health-care reform represents a compromise and is far from perfect. However, beginning in 2014, 32 million Americans will have health insurance, who would not have had it without healthcare reform.

The Stimulus. Contrary to what the nay-sayers and haters would have you believe, this program did a lot of good for a lot of middle-class families. I include the successful efforts to save the US auto industry. Those loans have been paid back and the restructuring that the auto companies went through continues to benefit them and their employees. This program was not perfect. The funds released to the states should have probably had more controls placed on them. And, it was probably not as well-funded as it should have been. That’s right — it probably should have been larger and faster, and there would have been even more bang for the buck.

There are so many other things I could have named. Some real financial and banking reforms have been passed. These haven’t gone far enough, but they have been a start. The repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” was an idea whose time had come. The draw-down of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. Taking place a bit slower than they need to, but they are taking place. Ending the Moammar Gaddafi regime. The appointment of two judges to the Supreme Court. Just the fact that he is our first African-American president is a major victory. You may consider the current US society to be post-racial in nature, but we still have a lot of people with overt and even covert racism in their attitude.

Obama’s three greatest failures.

Obamacare. Wait, wasn’t this one of the three successes? Yes it is, but, the program could have been so much more. The plan we needed as a nation one which would have provided for a single-payer system, similar to that in other civilized countries. Obamacare is better than what we had before, but it included the insurance mandate, which was narrowly upheld by the Supreme Court. I believe the Republicans, who wanted more than anything for Obama to fail, forced this compromise, feeling certain that the insurance mandate would not survive a Supreme Court Challenge. Being as the current system is modeled after the program Mitt Romney put in place in Massachusetts, you would think they would be applauding it and taking at least partial credit for Obamacare. No, that would be far too much credit for the president they hate. It’s like a cartoon tug-of-war between the Democrats and the Republicans. Obama gave some ground, and it was just enough to put him over the hole the Republicans has sawed most of the way through the floor. Fortunately the floor held and he did not fall through. Five Supreme Court justices were there to prevent the fall.

Extension of the Bush Tax Cuts. Obama chose to compromise with the Republicans in Congress in extending in the Bush-era tax cuts for all taxpayers – including the rich – and changes to the inheritance tax. I understand that the Republicans were holding middle-class taxpayers hostage. It was either extend the tax cuts for the rich or the middle class would pay more. I think he should have called their bluff. I don’t like the idea of paying more taxes, but I realize that we will all probably have to pay more to eliminate the deficit and the debt that plagues our country. Nobody should be immune from doing his or her fair share. This goes ten-fold for those wealthy enough to pay more.

Ending of the US manned space program. I know this program is very expensive. I also know that it created some of the best jobs in the world, and made this country the science and technology leader of the world. We have continued unmanned space exploration, and made NASA leaner and more agile, leading to some great successes and breathtaking Martian landscapes. However, think of what your reaction would have been if you had been told twenty years ago that the in twenty years the US will be depending on Russia to launch our astronauts into orbit. I am happy that the Space Station is an international effort. But, I think it is a very sad fact that the United States is not taking more of a leading role in space exploration. We will always have today’s problems. But that should not stop us from dreaming of and planning for our future in space. To quote Robert A. Heinlein, “Earth is too fragile a basket for mankind to keep all of its eggs in.”

If I were to pick a fourth disappointment, it would be that Obama has not greatly cut back on the War of Drugs, as war we are losing as surely as any unnecessary conflict in Southeast Asia or the Middle East. Maybe a total legalization of drugs would be going too far, but the Federal war of Marijuana is a cruel joke for a government to play on its citizens. We should have learned our lesson when the Eighteenth Amendment to the US Constitution had to be repealed by the Twenty-First.

No president and no government is perfect. If Obama has fallen short of our hopes and expectations, please keep in mind that he inherited a messy situation, and that others who have been elected to make things better have set as their most important priority the undoing of this president, no matter who has to suffer in the process.

I hope you will keep this in mind as you go to vote this November.

The Elephant in the Room

I live in Tampa, Florida, just miles from where the Republican National Convention is taking place.

This is a huge event for the Republican Party. It’s huge for the news media. And, it is a really huge event for the city of Tampa, which has been preparing for the RNC for many months.

There are some billboards up to welcome the RNC to the area, and to remind everyone that Tampa has a Democratic mayor and City Council. Still, Tampa hotels and restaurants — even those who are owned and run by Democrats — are happy for the extra business that the RNC means to the area.

Tropical Storm Isaac delayed the start of the convention by a day, but, trust me, they’ve got plenty of time to do what they set out to do.

For instance, just hours ago, Mitt Romney was officially named Republican Candidate for the 2012 election. No surprise there.

Support for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan is not unanimous. I was a little surprised at how many convention attendees and convention protestors are still voicing preference for Ron Paul, the only former Republican candidate for nomination not to endorse Romney. They still want Ron Paul and will not settle for Rom-Paul, as the currently nominated team might be called.

Most of the convention attendees will do their best to show their support for Romney and Ryan. They will try to put on an enthusiastic face and a positive smile to help their candidate and their party win.

How sincere is this shining enthusiasm? I think — not so much.

For one thing, Romney has not shown the charisma or the sparkle or the friendliness that past Republican candidates have displayed. He has tried to become one of the guys, but it is very difficult to appear an everyman when you own multiple residences, bank accounts in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland, and when your wife owns a horse that danced in the Olympics.

Romney has shown no solid budget plan, but his running-mate has, and the Ryan budget is a ruinous threat on the political horizon. It would raise taxes on the middle-class, lower taxes for the wealthy, and not bring in a balanced budget until sometime around 2040. It would increase military spending, in spite of the fact that the United States currently spends more than the next five largest-spending nations combined. It would shred the social safety net and cut education. In short, the closest thing we have to a plan for Romney-Ryan is not something in the best interest of the vast majority of Americans. Nevertheless, they will try to sell their plan to that vast majority — or at least enough of it to put them over the top.

And they might succeed. They might pull it off.

Here in Florida, a large percentage of our television advertising has been paid political ads. I imagine it is the same in many other states, but this is definitely true of the battle-ground or swing states. The ads are frequent, nasty, and repeated often. Sometimes they are full of out-right lies, but Karl Rove and company have learned that, if you repeat a lie often enough, people will start to believe it.

The money for the attack ads is almost limitless since the Citizens United Supreme Court Decision of last year. The Koch brothers have a lot to gain with a Republican victory and they will spend hundreds of millions of dollars to increase the odds of that victory.

Should Republicans be worried about having such a lackluster candidate?

I think they should be. I base this on the experience of the Democratic candidates of years past.

I would argue that Walter Mondale had a better plan for America than did Ronald Reagan in 1984 and that Michael Dukakis was more qualified to be president in 1988 than George H. W. Bush. You might disagree with one or both of these statements, or you just might not care. My point is that the Democrats lost because their candidates lacked the charisma to beat their opponents.

Almost everyone in the Tampa Convention Center tonight is pretending that Romney is their candidate of choice, that he is the one to go into the fray and beat President Obama in November.

I am not saying that we should vote for Obama because he is the candidate we would most like to have a beer with. Some pundits insist that George W. Bush beat Al Gore because of this gut-level likability. That is setting the bar for the most important job in the nation much too low. However, a candidate for President of the Unites States should at least come across as someone who cares about people — both in the aggregate and as individuals, not as a last-resort who was hastily assembled in a back room a few minutes before being switched on to make a speech.

Romney does not seem comfortable in front of a bunch of commoners. Oh, he tries very hard to come across as a regular guy, a working man, just like you and me. But, he is not very good at pulling off the deception.

Obama has had some great successes as president, and could have done so much more, had the Republicans not make it their mission to make him fail at all costs. He speaks well, speaks to Americans as the intelligent people he believes us to be, and has nothing to hide.

Romney has had more flip-flops than the shoe department at Wal-Mart. He doesn’t seem comfortable in his own skin, let along in from of the average people of the nation. He refuses to reveal his tax returns beyond those for the last couple of years. Even his own father went on the record as saying that the revelation of past tax returns are a must for a presidential candidate.

And, you can bet there are other things he’ll refuse to talk about too, as the campaign heats up.

I, for one, am looking forward to the debates.

So Long to a Hero

Well, It Wasn't Forbidden Planet, But...

Neil Armstrong once thrilled the whole nation
With flicks of his Lunar vacation.
     As SF films go,
     Not much of a show;
But it was the first made on location!

                 —Dan J. Hicks
                 Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine
                 July, 1979

Neil Armstrong, the first human being to set foot on the Moon, died today.

This fact saddens me in a way that is hard to put into words.

Today we mourn the passing of a man, but also relive the loss of a dream, of a goal, of an anticipation of an event which, although culminating in the act of one man, was the result of millions of hours of thought, hopes, dreams, sacrifice, and sheer hard work of many thousands of men and women.

Just about any person alive today, who was born before 1964 or 1965, can remember what he or she was doing on July 20, 1969, when the Eagle, the Apollo 11 lander, touched down on Tranquility.

This being the summer, my family was able to watch and listen as much of this unfolded. CBS was our network of choice. Walter Cronkite was at the helm for the broadcasts that so captivated us.

There was a lot of time to fill. CBS allowed its affiliates some network time to show what was taking place in each of the fifty states during the days between liftoff and landing. At least I think they showcased each state. It sure seemed like it at the time.

In any event this view around the country made an impression on my young mind. It showed me that, all around the USA — maybe all around the world — there were people not all that different from those in my house, wishing Armstrong, Aldrin, and Well, and knowing that they would never look up at the moon at night, and see the same, lifeless, alien body they had known all of their lives. It would be different.

The bootprints left by Neil Armstrong and those who followed him are still there, and there they will remain for the far, foreseeable future.

Another era ended when Neil Armstrong passed away.

I hope we humans return to the moon and travel beyond in the years and centuries ahead. I think that is how Neil Armstrong and all the other brave pioneers of the Space Program would have waned it.

I don’t think we, as a nation, and as a species, should settle for anything less.

The Chick-fil-A-Holes

Who would have thought that the act of eating a chicken sandwich would become a politically polarizing statement?

Dan Cathy, CEO of Chick-fil-A, made the following statement, during a ration interview:

“I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say ‘we know better than You as to what constitutes a marriage’ and I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to define what marriage is about.”

Response was swift and in two opposite directions.

A few mayors cried fowl — ah, foul — and say Chick-fil-A restaurants would not be welcome in their cities or towns.

Some Gay-marriage advocates call for a boycott of Chick-fil-A.

The Jim Henson Company, parent of the Muppets, has severed ties with Chic-fil-A, saying: “The Jim Henson Co. has celebrated and embraced diversity and inclusiveness for over 50 years and we have notified Chick-Fil-A that we do not wish to partner with them on any future endeavors.”

I hope they got out in time to same Big Bird.

Promoting diversity is a good thing, and I think the late Jim Henson would approve of this measure.

Others have gone the other way, embracing Chic-fil-A, in kind of a reverse boycott. (A girlcott? Probably not.)

This group of Chic-fil-A supporters has helped the fast-food chain break sales records. You might have seen news footage of lines of card and people, waiting for a chance to get their chicken sandwich and waffle-fries. They display their partially-eaten sandwiches for the new-cameras, and chomp down on them as if they were performing some kind of religious ritual. We’ll call it “Chick-filatio.”

Those folks, who might have otherwise ordered food from some other company or even prepared it themselves on those very busy days, have shown up to:

     (1)  show support for the American family
     (2)  defend Chick-fil-A’s First Amendment Rights
     (3)  protest Gay marriage
     (4)  all of the above!

Of course, I am all for supporting the American family. But, with only a minority of households consisting of one man, one woman, and one or more kids, support for the American family becomes a rather vague notion. Has it occurred to those who oppose same-sex marriage that allowing it to happen legally would create more American families, not fewer?

Dan Cathy, as a human being and as an American has a First Amendment right to free speech, as do we all. I oppose any effort to take that away. But Chick-fil-A is a corporation. My Constitution, including all amendments, does not say anything about corporations having First-Amendment rights. People have Constitutional rights.

Oh, but Mitt Romney has said, “Corporations are people, my friend.” Well Mitt Romney has said  a lot of damn-fool things — so many of them, in fact, that he occasionally agrees with himself. If corporations are people, and if Bane Capital, under his direction, helped to destroy corporations (which it did), then Romney has led the murder of countless human beings. And that didn’t even include those real humans who might have lost their healthcare due to his actions, and might die as a result. But we’re getting off-topic.

If you are going to buy food from Chic-fil-A for no other reason than to support Dan Cathy’s First Amendment rights, then I suggest you march in the next Gay Pride parade, to support that group’s First Amendment rights.

I have nothing against gay marriage. The meaning and purpose of marriage has evolved over the course of human history. Adults should do what they want to do, especially when it comes to finding ways of being responsible, when it doesn’t hurt anyone else. The marriage of two women or two men does not in any way harm the marriage of a man and a woman. We have more important things to worry about

I know of no instances in which a Chick-fil-a restaurant has discriminated against a gay person. I don’t think those who have taken their anger out against Chick-fil-A or its franchises or employees are doing the right thing. Don’t tell a restaurant chain it will not be welcome in your town because of the views of its CEO. Don’t spray graffiti on the sides of its buildings. If you don’t want to see Dan Cathy get a few cents richer, don’t go there yourself. I, will probably not go back for a long while, and never on a Sunday.

All of this talk of fast-food has made me hungry. Is anyone making a Burger King or McDonald’s run?

King Mitt and the Dancing Horse

So Willard Mitt Romney will not release the customary ten years of tax returns that even members of his own party have asked for. What is he afraid of?

I believe that he is hiding a lot of things which would hurt the image he is trying to project as that of a normal, hard-working, American, who is just looking for a chance to get into office so he can straighten things out and make things better for everyone. I think that image is false and dishonest and I think Romney is hiding his tax returns because he knows it and just wants to keep up the charade a little longer — just long enough to beat that Harvard elite, Barack Obama.

Oh, I called Obama an elite. Was that a mistake? A Freudian slip, perhaps?

There is nothing wrong with elites. Elite means best and most qualified. We call the Navy Seals an elite fighting force, and so they are. We call our Olympic athletes elite. It’s not a bad word when used I that sense. Obama happens to be one of the most well-educated presidents of the we have ever had. If that doesn’t make him elite, then I don’t know why not.

But, back to Romney. Just the tax return that we have shows $75,000 in deductions for Rafalca, the horse he claims is owned by his wife, for expenses related to competitions in the sport of Dressage. Yes, Dressage is an Olympic event. The Romneys' horse will dance in the Olympic Games, currently taking place in London. And Rafalca is a beautiful German-bred mare. I hope she does well, though I won’t go so far as to shout “Break a leg, Rafalca.” Horses don’t understand the irony in that theatrical good-luck wish.


My point is they deducted more for their dancing horse than many Americans earn in a year. This deduction is most certainly legal. And I suppose that all the money Romney has hidden away in Swiss and Cayman Island bank accounts is totally legal under our corrupt tax laws. We don’t know how much of that kind of activity there has been because he won’t let us see those returns.
Most of us can’t take advantage of deductions like that, and I’m not so sure that most hare-working Americans would avoid taxes by putting it off-shore, even if they could. And most of us don’t build beach houses with elevators for our automobiles, either. But Romney is doing that. I wonder if Rafalca will ever ride that elevator?

Romney is a member of the elite. But, it’s a different kind of elite. This is not the elite of hard work and intelligence. This is the elite of having lots of money, by being born into it and then by ruthlessly increasing ones wealth at the expense of others, sometimes by closing their plants, sometimes by firing them outright.

This is a dangerous and caustic form of elitism called entitlement.

Romney often seems clueless in dealing with everyday people. I wonder if he really understands what the Office of the President really means to the People of the United States, or if he feels it is just something that he is entitled to — not because of what he has accomplished — but just for who he is.
King Mitt the First? Or King Willard the Deserving?  Which title will it be, Mitt?

The elections are coming up in November. The clock is ticking.

And the horse is dancing.