In the continuing series of reasons not to re-elect Obama, I've previously provided ten. Here are the next five. Though there are many more, most are sub-divisions of reasons I've already listed. Here is Part 1. Here is Part 2.
11. Division. The President promised to be the Great Unifier . That there would be healing between red and blue states. He implied racial healing. Instead he’s driven more wedges between people. He has used race to divide America and to get votes. He called Republicans their “enemies” as he spoke to one Latino group He has pitted the rich against the poor and the middle class. His attempts to pit women against men (especially conservative men) have largely failed, though he made a valiant effort. Instead of a unified country, we now have a country that is more divided than ever before, but then again, “divide and conquer” wasn’t penned as a strategy for nothing.
12. Hanging out with the stars. You know what I mean. He spends more time hobnobbing with Beyonce, Jay-Z, and a whole host of other stars than he does doing his job. He flits from talk show to talk show, instead of meeting with world leaders. In times of peace and ease in this nation, that wouldn’t be optimal, but with our country in the economic peril that we are currently in, it’s frankly appalling. Hanging out with stars, Mr. President, does not make you one, but it seems that your desire is to win the stupid vote. It looks like you've got that.
13. Golfing. It’s not bad to have an outlet. To let your outlet take more of your time away from your real job, just like hanging out with entertainers, is similar to Roman Emperor Nero, who fiddled while Rome burned.
14. Stimulus. The Obama stimulus program has largely gone up in flames. His plan, costing upwards of 800 billion dollars has shown no results of significance. Instead, he says that it wasn’t enough to do the job. He’d like to dump more money that belongs to you and me down the drain in his Keynesian approach to stimulating the economy.
15. His vision. On the night of his election, he said he would "fundamentally transform the United States of America." Obama would like nothing more than to redo the Constitution which he considers “deeply flawed”. He and his associates view America as a place that needs to be torn down and rebuilt in the image of Europe. We’ve seen the fruits of the Euro-style, entitlement rampage that plagues such countries as Greece, Spain, Italy, France et al. Yet open display of the failure of such systems has left little impact on Obama’s philosophy. His has been a failed philosophy all around the world, yet he still plans to transform America in the image of Europe. Don’t let him do it.
Monday, October 29, 2012
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Why we should not re-elect Barack Obama (part 2)
6. The “Apology Tour”. Though fact checkers will tell you Obama never went on one because he never used the terms “I’m sorry” or “I apologize”, there are a multitude of sound bites, video clips, and transcripts of Obama condemning American intrusion, arrogance, etc., while speaking to foreign audiences. The fact that Obama is too narcissistic himself to utter the words “I’m sorry” or to include himself as an American in the phrase “We’re sorry,” is beside the point. What he did do was tell the world America was bad and that now that he was in power, all that would change.
7. Investments. To take money from American citizens and cherry pick businesses to “invest” in, such as Solyndra and many other “green energy” companies, isn’t what the government should be doing. Yet, that’s precisely what Obama means when he says the government should invest in green energy and technology. Sure, we should encourage cleaner air and water and the uses of renewable forms of energy, but not put billions of dollars of taxpayer money into individual companies. Offer grants to universities and other public entities for research perhaps.
8. Obamacare. Obama, with the help of his Democratic Congress, railroaded the Affordable Health Care Act through Congress, against the wishes of the American people. The repercussions are already happening with companies such as Olive Garden, Autozone, and many more, reducing their employees hours to below 30 so as to not have to provide prohibitively expensive coverage to them. In the future, the plan will limit health screenings to keep costs down, which ends up being far more repressive of women’s health issues than closing Planned Parenthood ever would be.
9. Coverups. Will we ever know what happened at Benghazi? There’s a whole lot of dishonesty going on there with the administration first telling us it was about a film when they knew it was a terrorist attack. Why the smoke screen? Why did four Americans die when we had the ability to keep it from happening? Why wasn’t the security beefed up when requested by the Ambassador? And of course the other major coverup was the Fast and Furious scandal. Can we afford this kind of dishonesty in a presidency?
10. Classlessness. From Obama calling Romney a B.S.er, to the crass Lena Dunham commercial, these past few weeks have been an endless stream of classlessness. Certainly unpresidential.
(To be continued)
7. Investments. To take money from American citizens and cherry pick businesses to “invest” in, such as Solyndra and many other “green energy” companies, isn’t what the government should be doing. Yet, that’s precisely what Obama means when he says the government should invest in green energy and technology. Sure, we should encourage cleaner air and water and the uses of renewable forms of energy, but not put billions of dollars of taxpayer money into individual companies. Offer grants to universities and other public entities for research perhaps.
8. Obamacare. Obama, with the help of his Democratic Congress, railroaded the Affordable Health Care Act through Congress, against the wishes of the American people. The repercussions are already happening with companies such as Olive Garden, Autozone, and many more, reducing their employees hours to below 30 so as to not have to provide prohibitively expensive coverage to them. In the future, the plan will limit health screenings to keep costs down, which ends up being far more repressive of women’s health issues than closing Planned Parenthood ever would be.
9. Coverups. Will we ever know what happened at Benghazi? There’s a whole lot of dishonesty going on there with the administration first telling us it was about a film when they knew it was a terrorist attack. Why the smoke screen? Why did four Americans die when we had the ability to keep it from happening? Why wasn’t the security beefed up when requested by the Ambassador? And of course the other major coverup was the Fast and Furious scandal. Can we afford this kind of dishonesty in a presidency?
10. Classlessness. From Obama calling Romney a B.S.er, to the crass Lena Dunham commercial, these past few weeks have been an endless stream of classlessness. Certainly unpresidential.
(To be continued)
Friday, October 26, 2012
Why we should not re-elect Barack Obama (part 1)
1. Blaming. Obama has blamed Bush for all the financial problems he (Obama) inherited since day one. He refuses to blame himself for anything he has or hasn’t done (such as his failure to reduce the deficit by half as he promised in his 2008 campaign speech). He has blamed America for the woes of the world, but more on that later. In contrast, he has continually patted himself on the back for getting Osama bin-Laden.
2. Leadership. In ‘08 when running for president, Obama promised to work across the aisle. However, instead of doing so, he instead railroaded Obamacare through without a single vote from “across the aisle”. That may have been the first time, but it wasn’t the only time Obama has used a “my way or the highway” approach to getting things through Congress. Since 2010 when the landslide Congressional elections fired by the Tea Party revolt left even less Democrats in Congress, he’s used decrees to make laws when Congress wouldn’t. That’s not leadership. That’s dictatorship. A true leader works with the opposite side to build consensus. A leader has the ability to speak to the American people and to galvanize them to face their future resolutely. Obama has created a sense of hopelessness among many, not optimism.
3. Failure to follow the Constitution. He has disregarded enforcement of immigration laws, used executive privilege for something it was never intended (hiding documents in the Fast and Furious scandal), failed to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, use of drones to spy on U.S. citizens (unconstitutional because we have a right to privacy). He has also tried, through Obamacare to force religious institutions who provide insurance to their employees to pay for contraception, even if their religious tenets expressly forbid it. This is a violation of the establishment clause of the Constitution.
4. Increased dependency. Obama’s policies have led to the largest increase in food stamps in American history. Instead of encouraging self-reliance, responsibility, and liberty, his administration has crowed about the number of new food stamp recipients, even calling it a good thing. Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack said, “If people are able to buy a little more in the grocery store, someone has to stock it, package it, shelve it, process it, ship it. All of those are jobs. It's the most direct stimulus you can get in the economy during these tough times." Like those same people wouldn’t buy things from the store if they actually had jobs.
5. The Supreme Court. Whomever is president during the next four years may likely be called upon to choose two new members of the Supreme Court. Obama has leaned toward activist judges who seek to not interpret the law so much as to legislate from the bench. That is not what the courts are intended to be. Likely nominees would be in favor of gun control and a whole host of other things that are not in keeping with Constitutional principles. Obama’s campaign promise was to nominate judges that judge based upon their "deepest values" and what's in their own "heart"(s). These are not what judges should be doing. They should be judging based upon the law. A judge who judges based upon his or her personal feelings, will have a hard time dispensing justice impartially.
(To be continued...)
2. Leadership. In ‘08 when running for president, Obama promised to work across the aisle. However, instead of doing so, he instead railroaded Obamacare through without a single vote from “across the aisle”. That may have been the first time, but it wasn’t the only time Obama has used a “my way or the highway” approach to getting things through Congress. Since 2010 when the landslide Congressional elections fired by the Tea Party revolt left even less Democrats in Congress, he’s used decrees to make laws when Congress wouldn’t. That’s not leadership. That’s dictatorship. A true leader works with the opposite side to build consensus. A leader has the ability to speak to the American people and to galvanize them to face their future resolutely. Obama has created a sense of hopelessness among many, not optimism.
3. Failure to follow the Constitution. He has disregarded enforcement of immigration laws, used executive privilege for something it was never intended (hiding documents in the Fast and Furious scandal), failed to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, use of drones to spy on U.S. citizens (unconstitutional because we have a right to privacy). He has also tried, through Obamacare to force religious institutions who provide insurance to their employees to pay for contraception, even if their religious tenets expressly forbid it. This is a violation of the establishment clause of the Constitution.
4. Increased dependency. Obama’s policies have led to the largest increase in food stamps in American history. Instead of encouraging self-reliance, responsibility, and liberty, his administration has crowed about the number of new food stamp recipients, even calling it a good thing. Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack said, “If people are able to buy a little more in the grocery store, someone has to stock it, package it, shelve it, process it, ship it. All of those are jobs. It's the most direct stimulus you can get in the economy during these tough times." Like those same people wouldn’t buy things from the store if they actually had jobs.
5. The Supreme Court. Whomever is president during the next four years may likely be called upon to choose two new members of the Supreme Court. Obama has leaned toward activist judges who seek to not interpret the law so much as to legislate from the bench. That is not what the courts are intended to be. Likely nominees would be in favor of gun control and a whole host of other things that are not in keeping with Constitutional principles. Obama’s campaign promise was to nominate judges that judge based upon their "deepest values" and what's in their own "heart"(s). These are not what judges should be doing. They should be judging based upon the law. A judge who judges based upon his or her personal feelings, will have a hard time dispensing justice impartially.
(To be continued...)
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Thoughts on Monday night's debate
Monday night’s Presidential debate showed one man who can look you in the face and outright lie, and another man, who though he isn’t perfect, seemed much more capable. Unfortunately, the one who can lie with impunity is the President as many factcheckers have discovered. Not that Romney doesn’t stretch the truth a bit at times. But let me give you some examples of what I’m talking about.
Romney stated that the President went on an “apology tour”. The President denied it. However, from my perspective, though the President didn’t and wouldn’t call it that, it amounted to an apology tour. Rush Limbaugh has done the not so hard work of compiling examples of the world wide tour of American “condemnation”. You can find it here: It wasn't just an apology tour, it was a condemnation tour
In fact that also proves many of the fact checkers wrong. Here’s what factcheck.org had to say: “Romney repeated his claim that the president undertook “an apology tour … criticizing America” after Obama became president. Obama called that “probably the biggest whopper that’s been told” during the entire campaign. And in fact, our own analysis, and that of other fact-checkers, found no “apology” in the president’s speeches.”
Obama also accused Romney of wanting the car makers to go out of business, and that Romney did not say he wanted the government to help them through the reorganization process. The full text of the op-ed that Romney wrote can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/opinion/19romney.html?_r=1& . And indeed Obama was wrong.
Thoughout the debate, the President used a death stare on Romney, as one viewer put it, perhaps trying Jedi mind tricks on him. At any rate it looked very odd, especially as the camera pulled back to show Obama leaning foward, glaring at Romney anytime he (Romney) was speaking.
The President was childish and scored points on scathing sarcasm when he chided Romney after Romney had said we have fewer ships than we did in 1917. We don’t by the way, but the President’s response was really unpresidential. “We also have fewer horses and bayonets than we did back then,” the President responded. “We have things called aircraft carriers...and submarines now.”
All in all, I think it did Romney no harm with undecided people, and may have swayed more of them to his side. The President, speaking largely to his base, probably persuaded few of the undecideds that he’s the man to continue the job. We’ll find out soon enough.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Writing to avoid writing
As a writer, I often find myself puttering about in the style P.J. O'Rourke writes about here: On Avoiding Writing. Further, rather than doing things to avoid writing altogether, I find myself writing things other than projects that I'm supposed to be completing--that is, while I should be working on my novel, which is currently gathering pixel dust somewhere on the dusty shelves of my hard drive, I find myself writing responses to political arguments or other posts, creating blog entries, etc. The question is, what to do about it.
I've tried the old, make it your habit to work on your current writing project for a set time before you do anything else approach, and just have not found myself to be disciplined enough. Personally, I think that's a cop out and I know if I really wanted to do it, I could make myself do it, just as I do other things that aren't really that pleasant, such as exercise, for the reward of good health. The reward of working on the appropriate writing project is a completed project that could perhaps go before a publisher.
I think I must find more enjoyment in the present from avoiding writing than I do in working toward the goal of completion. Maybe that's because I have so many interests that it doesn't really matter to me if I write or not, but again, I'm losing the big picture that would tell me that if I worked on writing long enough to become a successful writer, that is making a good living at it, I'd have more time to pursue those things I'm interested in.
That and it's much easier to fit in a three or four paragraph blog post than it is finding time to work on my novel. Part of the problem is, my blocks of time are so small, it seems like I'm riding a tricycle across America when I work on my novel. The old adage "slow and steady wins the race" may be true, but sometimes it just isn't pleasant.
So what to do about this? I think I need to complete the inner struggle of defining who I am as a writer and at a deeper level, as a person. If I'm to continue as a writer, I must write, and I must work on those projects that will define me as such, not for anyone else's definition, but for my own. In my own mind, in my heart of hearts, when I have written and published a novel which people actually buy, only then will I truly have become what I personally believe I'm capable of becoming.
If I fail to reach that goal, then I have not maximized my abilities. I may have improved them and honed them in such a way that I can convey thoughts in a lucid manner on the printed page, but I have not achieved what I set out to achieve many years ago. It's something I need to seriously think about.
I've tried the old, make it your habit to work on your current writing project for a set time before you do anything else approach, and just have not found myself to be disciplined enough. Personally, I think that's a cop out and I know if I really wanted to do it, I could make myself do it, just as I do other things that aren't really that pleasant, such as exercise, for the reward of good health. The reward of working on the appropriate writing project is a completed project that could perhaps go before a publisher.
I think I must find more enjoyment in the present from avoiding writing than I do in working toward the goal of completion. Maybe that's because I have so many interests that it doesn't really matter to me if I write or not, but again, I'm losing the big picture that would tell me that if I worked on writing long enough to become a successful writer, that is making a good living at it, I'd have more time to pursue those things I'm interested in.
That and it's much easier to fit in a three or four paragraph blog post than it is finding time to work on my novel. Part of the problem is, my blocks of time are so small, it seems like I'm riding a tricycle across America when I work on my novel. The old adage "slow and steady wins the race" may be true, but sometimes it just isn't pleasant.
So what to do about this? I think I need to complete the inner struggle of defining who I am as a writer and at a deeper level, as a person. If I'm to continue as a writer, I must write, and I must work on those projects that will define me as such, not for anyone else's definition, but for my own. In my own mind, in my heart of hearts, when I have written and published a novel which people actually buy, only then will I truly have become what I personally believe I'm capable of becoming.
If I fail to reach that goal, then I have not maximized my abilities. I may have improved them and honed them in such a way that I can convey thoughts in a lucid manner on the printed page, but I have not achieved what I set out to achieve many years ago. It's something I need to seriously think about.
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