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.

News Media’s Lust For Debate Ratings Over Facts Fail America

 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.

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.

Has Mitt Romney Revived The “Ugly American”

 

The Meriam-Webster dictionary defines the term Ugly American as: an American in a foreign country whose behavior is offensive to the people of that country. Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney traveled to London and on the day before the opening ceremonies of the Olympics he managed to offend the entire United Kingdom.

Romney managed to win a gold medal for multiple foot-in-mouth insertions by first answering a question posed to him by Brian Williams of NBC News regarding how he felt about the prospects of success for the Olympic Games in London. Romney rattled off a list of concerns about various items from security to whether the people would come together and rally around the games. Romney’s response set off a firestorm and he was rebuked by British Prime Minister David Cameron, the Mayor of London and the British Press. London Mayor Boris Johnson said before a crowd of 60,000 in Hyde Park. "There is a guy called Mitt Romney who wants to know if we are ready. Yes, we are!” That was just the beginning.

Romney later met with Labour Party leader Ed Miliband, but forgot his name when speaking to the press and referred to Miliband as Mr. Leader. Romney also referenced that he had met with the head of MI6, the U.K. Secret Intelligence Service, which is so secretive that it was not verified that it existed until 1994 by the British government. Mitt Romney managed to turn what should have been a series of positive foreign credential photo opportunities into a political nightmare that dominated headlines around the world. Some compared Romney to President George W Bush and one even said he was worse than Sarah Palin.

Mitt Romney has his money spread around the world, but he does not seem to travel so well.

New Demand, Old Workforce, Not Enough Jobs Ever Again

There is an ugly truth about the job market that economists and politicians will not speak. The United States and the world will never need as many workers as it has in the past to supply more than we could ever buy or consume and with almost everyone in the modern workforce, this is a huge problem. The solution is a global lower standard of living.

Automation has enabled a far smaller workforce to produce huge quantities of goods and services that called for multiples more workers in the past. Everything from automatic teller machines, automatic car washes to personal computers remove job positions from the workforce. One example is a sales division of a company that 15 years ago had an administrative assistant for each sales team that would prepare proposals, presentation materials and take messages. Now sales people use software tools like Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Word and connect their laptop to a projector to do a presentation. An automated voice response answering system takes messages and the need for the administrative assistant is gone.

Many offices now have an empty desk in their lobby where a receptionist once sat. Often a sign with a list of extensions to call if you need assistance sits alongside a telephone. The combination of personal computer software and automated answering technology has eliminated a huge number of jobs forever. The same thing can be said of factory automation where robots do almost everything with humans often connecting subassemblies built by machines and performing final quality inspections. Millions of jobs have been permanently eliminated by industrial automation.

The other issue is the size of our workforce. Almost everyone is seeking employment. Most suburban neighborhoods are ghost towns during the day because everyone leaves to go to work. There was a time when a married couple would have a stay at home parent if one of them earned enough to support the family and provide a comfortable lifestyle. There have always been situations where both the husband and wife worked out of economic necessity and that was the norm. Something changed and the workforce ballooned when the norm became that the earning capability of a husband or wife was not the determinate of whether both worked. The expectation was for both members of a marriage to get jobs and work.

Social factors like a low rate of marriage and huge divorce rates create social insecurities that drives everyone to work because the thought of being suddenly alone without marketable job skills is too big of a risk.

The expectations of career goals, earning’s growth and enhanced lifestyle changed the definition of what a comfortable lifestyle entailed. Increased consumption from dual high income households combined with the use of credit by everyone fueled an outsized demand for everything from electronics to homes. This inflated demand masked the fact that normal demand could not support our work force.

The financial crisis ripped the scab off the real issue of the workforce and demand imbalance. Many consumers retreated back to an earlier model regarding buying goods and services. We had been on a “just get it if you want it” economic model and suddenly switched to a get it if you absolutely need it mentality. The days of replace it if it’s broken have replaced getting the hot new feature such as a 3D television when your current television will still last for years.

At the same time demand crashed, people ready to exit the workforce through retirement came back in because many had their retirement savings gutted by the stock market crash during the last part of 2008. The combination of low demand and swollen workforce creates a nightmare scenario that unfortunately may be solved by a painful descent into a generally lower standard of living for millions of Americans. We are now dealing with something closer to the real economy, but it happened so suddenly that there was no adjustment period, just pain for many.

Unemployed But Not Destroyed & 911 Country Down

I went to work today for the first time in over one year. That statement illustrates the depth of the nation’s problems. Educated, experienced and willing workers can’t get jobs in the United States and some can’t even get a face-to-face interview.

In light of going through this journey across the desert, I have written my 13^th and 14^th written works. Unemployed But Not Destroyed is for everyone out there who is absolutely confused, disgusted and perplexed at the state of the economy and job market. Companies seem to be sitting on mounds of cash and are hiring more workers abroad than in the United States.

How do you maintain your dignity during long periods of unemployment? How do you react to those accusing the jobless of being lazy, unmotivated or even needing drug testing? How should the unemployed feel about those who accuse them of riding on the public dole by accepting unemployment benefits? There are ways to respond to all of those attempts to pile guilt onto those unexpectedly thrown into this extremely harsh job market. Ironically many of those hurling insults helped cause the problem in the first place.

911 Country Down is a quick examination of the current state of the United States of America. We have companies with massive cash reserves that won’t hire. We have politicians that are more concerned about the needs of special interests than of citizens that voted them into office. Elected officials and special interests that fund their campaigns have turned politics into a two party reality show complete with point scoring. Many of us participate in our own misery by continually falling for the pick pocket and distraction games. Distractions such as hot button social issues, crazy Presidential birth certificate theories and double-secret hidden religious agenda nonsense allow the collective American pocket to be picked and send upward to the richest among us.

Government is being demonized all across the country as being something undesirable and many are buying into the narrative. Stop. This is just a preparation to transform everything from our public schools, roads and Social Security system from service based to profit making concerns. In other words the carving knife is out to slice up the spoils and pass them out to business interests as rewards for filling campaign coffers with cushy positions waiting for them in the newly privatized former government run systems.

911 Country Down – How to Fix America is value priced at $.99.

Some are fixated on assigning blame. I only have one thought for you to consider. If your car is in the ditch do you blame the tow truck driver trying to pull you out or the person that ran you off of the road?