Wasting Your Vote Is Wasting Their Blood

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.

Obama’s Rope A Dope On Romney

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.

Mitt Romney – The Sham Wow Candidate!

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.

Romney Counting on Honey Boo Boo To Win

“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.

Don’t Make President Obama The Republican’s Garbage Man

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.

Obama’s October Surprise - 7.8 % Jobless – Conservatives Angry About Good News

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.

Will Mitt Romney Do A Leveraged Buyout Of America

Mitt Romney touts his business experience as a basis for his ability to turn around the United States economy. That’s a frightening proposition given that given that Romney’s experience as a venture capitalist involves leveraged buyouts. Wow, imagine the feeding frenzy of a LBO of the United States, what a business windfall.

If someone is using their business background as a basis for becoming President of the United States then you have to examine that business experience and determine how it would be used to reach their goals. Someone like Mitt Romney was involved in making profits from investments in start-ups and struggling companies. Mitt Romney’s firm was not interested in profiting from long term operating profits from the organizations it invested in, but in extracting the largest payout it could within a certain time frame. How would that apply in a government setting?

Don’t think that what would amount to a LBO of the United States is far fetched. Some of the most valued assets we have are being sold off or lease right now. One of the most precious assets the country possesses is its infrastructure.  Many public roads across the nation are being converted to toll roads under long term lease deals. A study  by the U.S. PIRG Education Fund details this growing trend.

Private/public partnerships and small government are the new code words for moving government services over to private for profit generating activities. The federal government is filled with opportunities for profit making transitions if the skids are greased with the President and Congress being of like mind. A nation with the riches of the United States is ripe with opportunities with obvious choices being the transition of Medicare and Social Security into the private account investment market. National parks could be opened for drilling and almost any agency you can think of could be outsourced on a consultant basis.

Some may ask why the scenario above would be a problem since we are running deficits as a country. The problem comes in because the government is based upon a service model and not a for-profit model. Government is here to serve it citizens and not profit off them as customers. When profit comes into the picture someone is not going to be able to afford the price and go wanting.

Mitt Romney is a businessman who is great at making money for himself and his investors, the question is can he deliver services to the citizens of the United States. There may have been a ray of hope given that he delivered a healthcare plan to the citizens of Massachusetts when he was Governor, but he avoids that subject like the plague in order to please his current supporters that are sitting at the table with their forks and knives hoping that a great feast is at hand.

How Did President Obama Screw Up The Great Economy He Inherited?

I only have one question as I listen to Republicans talk about how badly President Obama has screwed up the economy and that is how did he mess up the great hand he was dealt? You know with the 24 hour news cycle we have today and short attention spans it’s hard to remember how things were when President Obama assumed office January 20, 2009. I decided to rent a time machine from the local Home Depot and find out how great it was.

In order for me to make a proper assessment I decided to go back a few months before the election and see how prosperous the economic picture was in order to get a feel for the economic momentum that was taking place. I plugged in the time machine and had to hurry because it was rented for just half a day. I decided to travel back to September 2008. When I arrived, I was shocked by the chaos. All hell was breaking loose and on September 15, 2008 the largest bankruptcy in United States history took place when the investment bank Lehman Brothers sought chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. I started to think that things were not going so well back then.

I decided to cruise through September 2008 and saw banks merging, credit markets freezing and a near collapse of the entire financial system. I also saw President George W Bush standing in front of a microphone addressing the nation on how dire the economic situation had become. When I got to October 2008, there was a $700 billion taxpayer bailout of financial companies that brought the economy crashing down. In October 2008, 240,000 Americans lost their jobs and the unemployment rate hit a 14-year high.

As I continued forward through 2008 towards 2009 the economic carnage continued as job losses for November 2008 were 533,000 and 632,000 jobs were lost in December 2008. I could only guess that a miracle took place in January 2009 before President Obama was inaugurated and the economy took off into the stratosphere, but I was mistaken. In January 2009 the economy lost another 598,000 jobs. The U S Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that payroll employment had declined by 3.6 million since the start of the recession in December 2007; about one-half of this decline occurred in the 2 months before President Obama was sworn in and January 2009 the month he took office.

So wait a minute, so the economy was not in great shape when President Obama took office. What are these people talking about? The U S automobile industry almost failed and President Obama intervened to save it or we could have lost another 1 million jobs. By most accounts the economy has added around 4 million jobs since President Obama took office.

I’m confused about how President Obama screwed up so badly. It seems like he actually saved a failing economy. It must be the short attention spans we have today. Oops, I’ve got to get this time machine back before they charge me for another 4 hours.

Breitbart Says Presidency ‘beneath’ Sarah Palin, She Should Be Like Oprah

Sarah Palin

Andrew Breitbart, of the Shirley Sherrod saga, stated that the White House is ‘beneath’ Sarah Palin and she should become like Oprah and become a king maker for 20 years.

Before you grab your reading glasses, an article titled “Andrew Breitbart says White House 'beneath' Sarah Palin” by Jed Rosche March 23, 2011 and published in the Politico detail Breitbart’s complete statement. Let’s really examine the thought process behind the thought. Being Preisdent of the United States has always been thought of as one of the ultimate achievements available on the planet. There is only one President as a time, the maximum term is 8 years and awesome responsibility rest on this person’s shoulders.

Being a powerful media figure like Oprah Winfrey is also a lofty achievement and Oprah is the one and only of her kind. The real question is whether Sarah Palin could be either President of the United States or achieve the media status of Oprah Winfrey. To become President requires an appeal to and support from an electorate beyond a small core of fervent supporters. To become Oprah Winfrey requires and appeal to and support from the public beyond a small core of fervent supporters. Wow those things seem to be astonishingly similar.

According to the Politico article, Breitbart’s dream Republican Presidential ticket for the 2012 election is Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and Florida Congressman Alan West.