How many have died in wars, protests and random acts of suppressive violence in order to protect or enable your right to vote as you see fit. You may have blood from someone that paid the ultimate price for your right to choose elected representatives of your free will flowing through your veins, that’s why wasting you vote is wasting their blood.
The right to vote is exercised today like one is cheering on their favorite sports team against their long term rival. Rooting interests and emotions tend to override real introspection and projection about what certain policies actually mean over time. When it comes to national elections the atmosphere has morphed into a bizarre group think and the thoughts of the day are canned, approved and rolled out via electronic messaging technology. News figures, politicians and like-minded citizens all repeat the same talking points on cue when certain issues present themselves.
The American Revolution, Civil War, World Wars and Civil Rights movement did not take place to enable a kind of fantasy political league environment that we live in today. Many Americans of a certain generation view war through the prism of video games where the combatants rise from the field of battle with the push of a reset button, but fallen soldiers on the battlefield do not rise again because there is no reset button.
Those that have fought and died over the years to protect and enable our right to live in a democracy deserve for the current benefactors of their sacrifice to take their voting privilege seriously, because for them it was worth dying for and we just have to stand in a line.
Does it sound like a crazy question to ask if whites are voting for Mitt Romney because he is white? Why does that question sound more outlandish than the often spouted supposition that blacks are voting for President Obama because he is black? John Sununu, one of Mitt Romney’s top surrogates, recently said that Colin Powell was endorsing President Obama because they are of the same race.
Until 2008 the issue of why any voter was voting for any candidate for President due to a racial preference never came up because al of the candidates had all been of the same race. Now in 2012 it appears that the same question from 2008 is back again. In 2008 96 percent of black voters voted for Barack Obama. In 2000 Al Gore got 91% of the black vote. It’s is not like African Americans just began to vote overwhelmingly for Democrats for President.
Could the problem lie in the signals towards the black community emanating from the Republican Party that drives up the voting percentages for their opponents? The list is long concerning various acts and statements over the last 4 years that would cause one to ponder if certain groups were viewed as equally deserving to have their hands on the reigns of government power as others. The first sitting President in history that felt compelled to release his birth certificate to quell a circus of distraction just happened to be the first President from a minority group in the United States.
It never crossed anyone’s mind to ask if whites voted for Presidents Reagan, Clinton or G. W. Bush because of their race because the Republicans still only pulled a small percentage African American support. It does not seem to be race, but policies that are driving certain voting blocks away from the Republican Party. If blacks were not voting in large numbers for Republicans before Obama ran for President, then why is the fact that they still are not voting for Republicans suddenly due to the race of the Democratic candidate for President. Not only have the Republicans alienated the black voting community, they seem to be working hard to do the same thing with the Latino community.
The charge that many that support President Barack Obama are doing so because he is black is an easy way for supporters of Mitt Romney to pave over the lack of substance, position changes and other issues with their candidates campaign. By placing the opposition to their candidate on something as basic as race gives many an easy out to avoid any real scrutiny of the effect that the policies endorsed by Romney would have if they actually went into effect.
President Obama must have taken his debate strategy from
Muhammad Ali’s 1974 fight against George Foreman in Africa.
Ali leaned against the ropes in the early rounds and allowed Fore to used his
entire arsenal before coming back to knock Foreman out. Obama laid against the
ropes during the first debate and Romney unloaded the kitchen sink. The second
debate feature a different President Obama and he pummeled Romney.
I would have been almost impossible for President Obama to
be as bad as he was during the first debate without trying. With Vice President
Joe Biden taking the undercard fight against Romney’s running mate Paul Ryan
the week before, Obama took on Romney and connected with shot after shot.
Romney exposed his entire flip-flop and deny debate fight plan during the first
debate. Every time Romney tried to slip away from a previous position President
Obama would nail him with the facts of his prior position compared to his
stated current position.
Romney was staggered several times during the debate. Romney
may have coined a new phrase during this debate with his description of a “binder
of women” when referring to his efforts to find women to work in his
administration when he was Governor of Massachusetts. Romney took a George
Foreman like haymaker swing at President Obama with his comments that the
President did not call the attack on the American Consulate in Libya a terrorist
attack when he made his statement the next day in the rose garden. Romney
thought he had connected, but the referee told him he only hit a glove as the
transcript showed that the President did label it a terrorist attack the first
time.
The final punch may have been the best as the debate
ended. As the final round was coming to a close President Obama hit Romney with
a reminder to the nation about Mitt Romney’s comments about 47% of the country
see themselves as victims. Romney bounced back against the ropes and was dazed.
Romney wanted to take an swing, but bell rang and this round was over. The only
thing President Obama didn’t do was drop the microphone on the floor and walk
away in triumph.
There are several definitions of the word sham. Two definitions are:
· A trick that deludes
· An imitation or counterfeit claiming to be real
During the first Presidential debate Mitt Romney Romney instantly changed and denied so many prior positions that he became the first sham wow Presidential candidate. The sham was perpetrated on the American public and he thinks he got away with it.
Is it enough to be willing to change your positions to suit every particular audience if that seems to play the best for that moment in time? Has the concept of voting for someone because of their core beliefs lost it meaning? If Mitt Romney becomes President while constantly shifting positions in full view of the public it will mark the beginning of a brave new frontier in election politics.
A Romney win will usher in the age of situational position policies that most will consider unlikely to be the way the candidate would govern if elected to office. Consider Romney’s tactics during the primary season when he considered himself a severe conservative in order to defeat his opponents. Romney saw an opportunity to use the leverage of a 60 million plus viewing audience to break the hold the conservative elements of Republican voters had on him. After the debate Romney went back and forth on issues like abortion from saying he would not seek legislation to restrict abortion to stating he is proudly pro-life within a 24-hour time span.
If Romney becomes President by using a shifting sands strategy he will throw the world of American politics into an era of say anything, do anything to win where substance and facts matter much less than presentation. A world where facts don’t matter would be a frightening place to live.
Think about the antics taking place on the show Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and put it next to the shallowness displayed on The Real Housewives of any city you want to plug in or Keeping Up With The Kardashians. Which is worse for America? It’s about time we have something like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo to balance the wretched excesses of The Real Housewives, Kardashians and Basketball Wives.
Instead of seeing some woman with hundreds of designer shoes in her closet we can watch a real family living in a home that looks like thousands of houses across America. Instead of someone going into a designer shop to spend more than most Americans earn in a month we see June doing extreme couponing in the Piggly Wiggly grocery store. Instead of someone flipping a table in a fancy restaurant or tossing a drink in their enemy’s face we can watch bobbing for pig’s feet on Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.
Everyone is always glamorous, stylish and fabulous on the Real Housewives and Kardashians, but in the real world more people look like June or Sugar Bear than Kim Kardashian, just walk down any street and see for yourself. Could it be that Here Comes Honey Boo Boo exposes the divide in America where some want to pretend that we all live in some fantasy land where everything and everyone is fabulous? Most of us know a family or may be a family like the one on Here Comes Honey Boo Boo to one degree or another. In general we are far more likely to rub elbows, shop and visit with folks much closer to the family on Honey Boo Boo than those living or pretending to live the rich and fabulous lifestyles of Housewives, Kardashians or Basketball Wives.
No one is saying that everything portrayed on Here Comes Honey Boo Boo is laudable or something to be emulated, but it is probably closer to being real than what is usually placed before the public as reality television and maybe that is why some seem be having problems dealing with the show. The family on Here Comes Honey Boo Boo isn’t trying to impress everyone with glitter, wealth or flash like most other shows we have shoved before our eyes. If someone is not trying to impress you it’s hard for outside criticism to mean anything. I have a feeling that June is a lot sharper than most people think. June might not be the mom manager that Kris Jenner is to her daughters, but watch what she does as time passes.
TLC may have provided a great service to America by broadcasting Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. Here Comes Honey Boo Boo is a reality show reality check that reminds us that the biggest retailer in the world is Walmart based in Bentonville, Arkansas and not The House of Gucci out of Florence, Italy.
The first Presidential debate of 2012 confirmed that the news media has vacated it role as the fourth estate. The press was once respected and feared as an entity that would delve into missteps, misstatements and deceits on the part of those leading or seeking to lead the nation, but that has changed in 2012.
On October 3, 2012 a Presidential candidate from one of the major political parties was spontaneously reinventing himself for public consumption by changing or refuting every policy position he held before the event began. Mitt Romney must have felt safe that he would not be held to account for his sudden metamorphous by the news media because of the heightened interest his performance would create for follow on debates.
Romney made the right determination because after the debate ended news media outlets gushed about the energy, tone and style of Mitt Romney’s debate performance and did little to hold him accountable for the sudden policy changes that were often the opposite of long held positions. The news media had become another spectator and acted as a hype machine instead of truth filter.
The Sunday morning news programs after the debate featured dueling opinions from advocates of Mitt Romney and President Obama, but the media figures themselves have become dwarfs compared to the giants of the past. Would something on the scales of Watergate every come to pass again with the current crop of soft news personality types staffing newsrooms nationwide? Could it be that the diminished state of print media combined with broadcast news divisions finding themselves burdened with ratings expectations and some combined with the entertainment wing of networks have combined to gut the journalistic integrity of the business?
Can it be that an overtaxed, overworked and harried public is left with no one that will call out the blatant nature of deception being thrust upon the American public because they fear being shutout from interviews and access more than outing falsehoods that could harm us all in the end? At its worst the behavior of the current media borders on cowardice and is flirting with being unpatriotic.
“If you can’t blind them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit,” was a quote used by actor W.C. Fields and Mitt Romney used that as his strategy for the first debate against President Barack Obama. In August a Romney pollster said, “We're Not Going to Let Our Campaign Be Dictated by Fact-Checkers.” Romney gave fact checkers whiplash and finger cramps as he twisted and contorted away from positions he had held for months.
President Obama seemed unprepared and rightly so if he had expected that his opponent would stand on positions he had been campaigning on during his entire run for President, but a different Mitt Romney showed up. The Mitt Romney that denied his economic plan, tax plan and just about everything else he said he had believed previously was counting on public distraction and media laziness.
Mitt Romney knew there would be a huge viewing audience for the first Presidential debate and figure most of the viewers had not been paying close attention to the Presidential race up until that point. Romney has some reason to believe the public is too distracted to care if what he said was true given the Republican National Convention drew fewer viewers than an episode of the reality show Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. As for the news media serving as a source of fact checking, that ended when the fight for ratings became more of a priority for broadcast news divisions than journalistic purity.
Romney decided to introduce himself to over 60 million of the American electorate as a completely different politician than he had been during his prior months of campaigning. The next day when the focus was off his staff and spokespeople started to correct some of the policy shifts feeling that the information would not filter out to the voters that would not tune back in until the next debate. Welcome to the big top of reality television politics where style may rule over substance. Come on Honey Boo Boo, Mitt is counting on you.
The Presidential election is coming up in November. In October the jobless rate, the lowest in 44 months, is back where it was when President Obama took the oath office. That means President Obama has cleaned up much of the prior damage done by Republicans, now they want to move back into the White House and tear things up again with the same behavior that destroyed everything the last time around. Don’t allow President Obama to be the Republican’s garbage man.
It is a tried and tested practice in business and politics for one group to destroy something and then get out of the way and hire someone else to clean it up while they point fingers from the sidelines. Once the turnaround artist has finished getting things back in order the old guard wants to take over again and claim credit for the good results that were created by the just disposed of fixit man.
What is taking place with Mitt Romney is not a new game, but event timing is not always in the control of those trying to replay this old scam. In 2008 the economy collapsed so quickly that it was not able to be pushed until Obama won the election and took office. It is a matter of record that the financial meltdown occurred under the Republican administration of President George W. Bush. Now it is also a matter of record that the unemployment rate is now back where it was when Bush left office under President Barack Obama.
Romney’s big claim is that things should be improving faster and that is a bold assertion from someone that wanted to allow the American automobile industry to go bankrupt. The Republicans knew that their brand was bankrupt and that is why we don’t see Chris Christie, Jeb Bush and the like at the top of the ticket. Romney was a functional selection and his primary opposition was near laughable. The one shot Republicans had was to embark on a four year campaign of obstruction, demonization and rooting for American economic failure to have a chance to win the Presidency in 2012.
It’s time for the shell game to end. One of the statements Romney made during his secretly recorded fundraiser speech was that the economy would improve when he became President without him having to do anything. Romney knows that President Obama has already set the United States economy on the right track and he just wants to be able to convince the voting public to put him in office so the looting of America can happen all over again.
This should be a new day when the person that did all of the heavy lifting to clean up years of damage to America is rewarded for his hard work instead of once again watching someone else accepting accolades for something he didn’t do. Unless we vote for substance we will allow President Obama to become the Republican’s garbage man.
In 2008 candidate Barack Obama stated that he would go after Osama bin Laden even if he was found in Pakistan. Mitt Romney, among others said that they did not think it was a good idea to go into Pakistan to get bin Laden. In 2011 Mitt Romney has stated multiple times that he would go after Bid Bird and cut his funding. It seems that Big Bird needs to relocate to Pakistan if Romney becomes President. What a contrast.
Maybe Romney thinks that singling out a beloved children’s character like Big Bird is an example of how he can make tough choices even if it sounds harsh. Romney’s calculation is based upon this notion that government support for effort like children’s television programming, education or the arts is a waste of money because there is no profit in it for his supporters. Obama targeted Osama bin Laden because he was the head of an organization that carried out the largest terrorist attack ever in the United States.
Defunding PBS would just be a blip in the national budget and would be mostly a move to pleas certain elements on the right. Expending government funds on children’s and art programming does not generate billions business in government contracts for defense contractors even if some of the weapons are not wanted by the military.
You see there is something more fundamental at work in the Big Bird versus bin Laden point of view and that is the degree of seriousness that each candidate is taking in relation to the job at hand. Fast talk, showmanship and throwing out red meat to a political base makes for great theater, but the rubber meets the road on what each man considers to be the most important issues for the country. Saving the automobile industry or allowing it to go bankrupt when there was no private equity to be found is another distinction
The bottom line is that Osama bin Laden was in trouble when Barack Obama became President, but now Big Bird had better watch his back if Mitt Romney moves into the oval office.
Choosing substance over performance is a novel thing in a world fixated on drama, flash and shiny objects. Mitt Romney unleashed a tsunami of animated policy reversals during the first Presidential debate. On Friday October 5, 2012 President Obama answered loudly when the September unemployment rate came in at 7.8%, the lowest in 44 months.
As soon as the lower unemployment rate was made public some conservatives lost their minds and accused the Obama administration of cooking the books to make the President look good right before the election. Some highly respected business leaders, politicians and journalists went berserk with conspiracy theories. One even said that Obama supporters were misrepresenting their employment status to lower the jobless rate.
Now the picture is crystal clear. President Obama has been trying to bring the economy back from the brink of depression with an opposition party that is admitting it was in their best interest to keep unemployment high until after the 2012 election. Will a political party be held accountable for not doing everything it could to help get Americans back to work? It seems that the tantrums being thrown because it appears that more Americans have found work is a testament that many have placed politics above the needs of the people.
Some need to take a hard look into the mirror and consider their vote. Why would you cast your vote for someone rooting for a higher level of suffering among your fellow citizens because it served their political ambitions? Some may say they would have made things better after they took office, but when you hold public office it should be the American people that come first, not your political party. Delaying any efforts that would have put more people back to work as quickly as possible meant more lost homes, hungry children and despair. There should be a price to pay if anything was intentionally done or not done in order to delay the speediest economic recovery possible.
On October 3, 2012 the first debate between President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney took place and most pundits declared Mitt Romney the winner due to his animated retreat from prior policy positions. There was little talk of President Obama’s punch to Romney’s glass jaw when he got Romney to own changing Medicare. If the election is decided by Ohio and Florida then President Obama landed a devastating blow.
There was much made of the difference in styles between President Obama and Mitt Romney during the first debate. Many saw President Obama explaining issues with backup information from various sources and Mitt Romney making assertions without any credible or specific facts to support them. On the issue of Medicare the President got Romney to admit he supported Paul Ryan’s premium support/voucher plan. Romney then said that anyone currently on Medicare would not be affected, then President Obama looked directly into the camera and addressed the American people and said, “If you are 54 or 55 you might want to listen.” That was the segment of the debate where President Obama did damage to Mitt Romney with senior citizens and those within 10 to 11 years of Medicare eligibility. Romney now owns Paul Ryan’s Medicare voucher plan and took possession of it in front of millions of American voters.
America has become a reality obsessed television drama culture, but this debate was about swaying a small percentage of voters that are not already in one camp or another. Romney has to count on those on Medicare having an attitude that they would throw their children under the bus as it relates to voting someone into office that would change the program to a voucher system for their offspring that are in 50’s. That older and reliable voting block in Ohio, Florida and Arizona was paying attention to the substance and not theater. If you noticed, it was during the Medicare discussion that showed the President at his most attentive state during the entire night and he got the uppercut to Romney’s glass jaw that he was looking for all night.
