The Endless USA Elections and Why I'm Going to Go On Writing About Them

Your Humble Correspondent tried to do something I had been threatening myself to do for some time--to stop blogging about the current elections.  Anyone who knows me from my Multiply blog knows this a radical step for me. I' wasn't t even sure I could stop it--is there such a thing as Election Junkies anonymous?  

As it turns out I can't keep that promise.  Not even for a day.  Politics is my nicotine.  Here I go again.

One thing that is clear is that we have two and one half months to go before the General Election and, honestly, if anyone hasn't decided whom they are going to vote for (Obama, Romney, Jill Stein of the Greens, The Libertarian Guy Who I Can Never Remember) than they really haven't been paying attention.

Part of the reason for this has been my sheer frustration in seeing candidates like Romney get away with not disclosing the most basic information one should have about their candidacy in the modern Presidency; at least 5-7 years of their tax returns.  Why did isn't a law that all candidates to high office need to disclose their taxes when they are running for national office baffles me!  The other is the notion that Romney and Obama are essentially the same.  In some ways, perhaps they are I'll admit in foreign policy matters; but Romney candidacy will have a very  different impact on professional, and  middle and lower  income families and the elderly.             

In plain terms the Romney Ryan ticket will devastate the social safety net  for the jobless, those who are seriously ill , the elderly and for all people who actually have to work for a living.  And then give yet another round of tax breaks to millionaires!  So while the policies of the USA in the Middle East may not change so much if one or the other of these political birds wins, it makes a huge difference to a middle-aged and   middle class guy like me.

 

As it should to anyone who has paid into the Medicare system since I started working and now, because I am just under 55 at this point, I and million of others will face paying thousands of extra dollars for health care for the "crime" of living to age 65 or 67, and/or be handed a "voucher" for health care and put to the tender mercies of the private health care system when I am in my 70s if I have the good or bad luck of living that long. And, even if I don't, no one of my age bow should have to face that!  

So, yes, there is a difference in this election, at least to me and some of my co-horts, even among the two candidates.

The USA has a lot of problems right now, at home and abroad.  We have had high unemployment since 2008 and a stagnant economy in part  because greedy people played fast and loose with the personal housing market, and investment bankers on Wall Street shovelled money into a system that created a huge bubble that burst on us and took an estimated 14 trillion dollar out of the pockets of people who were the bedrock of our economy.

This economic tsunami will not be cleared up by anyone in four years or even eight.  The country is in a state of slow and painful recovery.    I see the only way out is to for the average income Americans coming together and saying "NO" to anyone who wants to take us back to the Wild West days on Wall Street.  No one likes being regulated but we all have to drive on the right hand side of the road and stop at a red light over here to drive. Just as a driver of a car or a truck needs regulations, so do mortgage holders and bankers.  Romney and Ryan want to pretend that 30 years of deregulation and increased income inequality under Reagan, and the Bushes didn't happen. Sorry it did.  We need to restore a serious regulatory system such has the Glass-Stegall Act again and we need to start making the wealthy pay their fair share again---not 13 percent or 17 percent but more like 30-35 percent to build up our infrastructure.  And cut the loopholes back as even Ronald Reagan and the Democrats in Congress did in 1986.

And lest you cry our "class  warfare" my visiting Republican friends bare  in mind that    the last and longest post-World War II  growth we had  was under  Bill Clinton and he raised taxes through Congress to a top rate of 39 percent. 

As Warren Buffett the enlightened billionaire investor ruefully put it, "Yes, there is class warfare in this country.  And my side is winning."

It's time we change that course, once and for the rest of the decades to come.

Obama's Slippery Slope?: Drone Strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia

Recent news reports have given us a better idea of what  is going on inside the Obama Administration and the drone strikes and Hellfire missiles attacks in the Near East and Africa.  

 

 Human Rights groups are bringing up objections to the escalations of these attacks.  Congressional Democrats, led by Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, are asking for clarification of "targeted attacks".   The CIA?  They won't confirm of deny anything, as usual.    

 

   Most of the NATO powers have been silent--at least publicly--on the attacks. 

 

Meanwhile the increase in drone strikes have clearly killed some real terrorist leaders, including Anwar al-Awlaki, an English-speaking Yemeni-American who looked to be the next big leader of al-Queda, at least in it's AQAP (al-Queda in the Arabian Peninsula) group.  Dozens of others have been killed as well, as have been people who were by-standers.

 

The military brass itself has put pressure on Obama  to go after a large group of targets.  So far, at least according to Newsweek's Daniel Klaidman's book excerpt "Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency", http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/05/27/drones-the-silent-killers.html

Obama has been reluctant to give an o.k. to any strike that doesn't identify a specific identifiable target. The notion of "signature strikes"--taking a shot at a group in an isolated area which looks like a terrorist camp is something Obama has been reluctant to do.   He prefers  "personality strikes"--knowing to the best of the ability of the NSA, CIA, et al,--exactly where a known terrorist(s) are.     

 

For most of the 20th Century,  war was carried out without "direct target" strikes.  Bombs were released on cities, harbors, plants, troop concentrations, et al.  There were always attempts to hit a given target, but most of the bombs dropped by the Allies in World War II, for instance, were estimated to be well off their prime targets. 

 

At least a high-tech targeted strike, some critics say, is better than a Dresden/Coventry/Tokyo style firebombing.  Or the napalming campaigns of the US Air Force in Vietnam during that war.  But what is the acceptable number of collateral victims of the strike?  (I guess it depends on whose kid  is standing under the bombing range to my mind.)   

 

 And what compromises are there in the global war for morality advantage the USA and other nations might hold over a terrorist group if so many civilians are killed by a strike to pre-empt or retaliate in an attack? And what if the intelligence is wrong, and the White House kills the wrong people?   Or we get the right people but too many died who weren't terrorists?    

And how can we use lethal force in another country barring something like  a declaratioo of war, even a nation like Pakistan or Yemen or Somalia?  These three are nation-states which cannot or will not persue terrorists or support American efforts to do so.  The government in  Pakistan clearly see this as an unwelcome intrusion into  a vacuum  of  state power.  

On the other hand, waiting and doing nothing against groups like AQAP seems a deriliction of power as well. Every nation has the right to use force to defend itself--certainly from other national force.  But what of  "non-state actors" who  pose a threat to a nation like the United States which have already been attacked by a terrorist group?   

 

This being an election year, there is no doubt that President Obama, as a Democratic President, is under the gun from conservative critics and his opponent, Mitt Romney, to be "tough on  terrorism"--- which transfers to more air strikes.    A successful terrorist action against Americans abroad or at home would likely trigger a loosening of the criteria for a high-tech strike.

And the issue of using drones as domestic surveillance tools for law enforcement is another problem---a  major and dangerous precedent. One may feel safer (or not) that Obama or Romney or some other developed country with a   national leader will use drone technology wisely. But at least in the United States it is understood that presidents are accountable to more than just their intimates in the Oval Office.      

The spectre of September 11,  2001 and 3,000 innocent lives snuffed out  haunts the whole overview of this action.  But so does the US Constitution. Through the War Powers Act of 1973 and Congress' War Declaration power, Congressional approval is needed, demanded in some form, for anything like an  extended war. 

 

      Given all that is happening--threats and covert style-tactics from abroad from small cells of Muslim extremists-- is Obama's policies  getting this right?   Or ,as some say, is  he simply a war criminal? (If the latter, I ask, what other modern leader who carries out any covert action in time of  war or terrorist threat not  a war criminal as well?) 

 

   Using "national security" as an overriding impetus, is the Obama Admistration justified in total to fight an unorthodox war with precision weapons and to ignore the demands of those in his own party like Dennis Kuchinich and  international human rights critics?  I don't think it's that simple either. 

 

  Further disclosure to Congress seems to me is needed as to what is going on and where the line needs to be drawn. International Law is not to be slummed off  either.  If a nation cannot handle terrorists who are threats to other nations inside her borders,  it appears that some action through diplomacy is needed to declare via the United Nations that a portion of a nation is "ungovernable" and therefore justify this strange and troubling new phase of warfare.  

Just In! Obama Comes Out in Support of Marriage Equality

The path of justice moved just a bit upward today in America.

Although it is only legal in a handful of states (and none of them the important swing-states like Florida and Virginia), President Obama told Robin Roberts of ABC News he now supports the rights of same-sex couples to be married. 

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney is silent on how to react to the President's remarks.  No doubt he will have to huddle for a time with his handlers to figure out the best way to strike out at this plea for tolerance without appearing to be the total panderer to tea-party  far-right policies he had to be for securing the Republican nomination from tea party and priggish  activists.       

 

 

No state in the Union has voted in public referendum to permit gay and lesbian couples to marry, not even in California where there was heavy out-of-state monetary opposition to the issue in the Proposition 8 Amendment battle last year.  Much of the opposition came from the Latter-Day-Saints Church that Mitt Romney belongs. I do not happen to believe this election in November will be decided mainly or perhaps in major part on marriage equality, I do feel Obama should be given credit here since a lot of his support even in the African American community is divided on the issue. A political Rubicon has been crossed here and it should be noted and Obama given credit for standing with a minority for the sake of the spirit of equal rights for all citizens.   

 

 Bravo Mr. President.     

For more on this, see the link below:    

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-obama-abc-gay-marriage-position-20120509,0,6635227.story?track=rss

President Obama: 'You Are On Your Own'

One may strongly disagree with President Obama on a number of issues, and I can respect people who do.
But I guarantee you that you will never hear a Republican running for office with his philosophy. Here are some remarks he made about conservatives and right-zealots in a speech this week in Maine.


This is a man I am not ashamed to support.

The Right Prescription for "Obama Care" at The Roberts' Supreme Court

It's the second day of arguments before the Supreme Court on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. All detractors and some proponents call this "Obama Care". It's a program passed by both Houses of Congress two years ago, designed to phase in a public-private health insurance reform estimated to cover 95 percent of all Americans in a few years.  It is neither a single-payer system many nations have, not is it a total free-market approach that would treat health care like an ordinary consumer item such as personal computers, cable or satellite television access or tangerines.

The latest  and most contentious part of the argument is the health insurance mandate that would require people to buy health insurance. The issue seems to have ignited a fervor on the parts of many conservatives that somehow being compelled to buy health insurance is an assault on basic liberty and is therefore unconstitutional. 

It is clear from the media analysis and audio transcript of this day's argument before the High Court that many of the conservative justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts,  are seemingly skeptical of a mandate.  To these justices, a physician may as well be a grocer.

"Liberty" is something most people covet;  conservatives especially prize the idea of living a life with as few barriers as possible.   Who wants to be needy? But when it comes to health services we are not sure when neediness arises; much as many would like to stand on liberties, the rights we covet  need to be tempered whenever we are in need of assistance from the larger community.    

 

Ironically, the individual mandate idea came from the conservative Heritage Foundation and was endorsed by both Mitt Romney (who implemented it during his stewardship of a health care law as governor of Massachusetts) and Newt Gingrich.  Both these men now repudiate it. It may be that the messenger now being a Democratic US President has caused them to choose fanning flames of division over common sense principles.   

The practical matter is that anyone who is human and not a spirit can fall ill or get hit by a bus or assaulted from behind  in the street or have a vehicular accident. A parent can have  a family member or child develop a cancer or some other terrible condition.  Right now anyone who comes to an emergency room with a serious condition that requires treatment has to be given medical assistance and that can be costly.   Having everyone covered by health insurance would help reduce the drain on public expenditures. 

  To live in a nation where a family doesn't lose insurance coverage when a breadwinner is laid off or or a small business fails we need to have a health system that recognizes  people are not invulnerable to disease.  

You can go to a gym or walk ten miles a day and just eat apples and water and, even then,  STILL get sick or hurt or have a child who contracts leukemia. Anyone might  be brought unconscious and hurt  to a hospital and if you don't have insurance and the bills are astronomical the tax payer sooner or later will have to pay what you can't.   

S**t sometimes just happens.  It's part of being human. 

Right now the feeling is the individual mandate for health insurance, the centerpiece of the Affordable Care Act, may be in trouble in the SCOTUS and no one knows how it will be ruled upon. But we all know, deep down, that life and health is not a ordinary consumer product.  It is unique. And, like it or not,all Americans, save a few very wealthy billionaires,  are all subject to the national health apparatus no matter what anyone's  philosophical qualms. 

 

The individual mandate isn't perfect but it's what we have and I hope it is retained.  It's not a total cure, but it's a rational and reasonable "treatment" than what has been "prescibed"  by any President  or session of Congress before recent times.  

Back To the Future for the Republicans in 2012?

Watching the latest GOP Debate in Las Vegas on Tuesday night, I was  struck by how far to the right almost all of the six Republican candidates have gone in order to try and capture the GOP base, which appears to be, in the words of Dana Milbank of The Washington Post, made up by self-proclaimed "religious warriors and anti-government agitators." 

One candidate, Godfather Pizza honcho Herman Cain, claimed again that people who were out of a job and weren't rich have only themselves to blame.  (Really Herman? In this economy?) That's a but like saying black people were to blame for not being able to vote in the South back in the bad old Jim Crow days. Of course, back when Cain was a young man in Georgia in the 1960s, he meekly went to the back of the bus and waited for others to liberate him.  Instead of Dr. King's "We Shall Overcome", young Citizen Cane mantra was, to quote one wag in Newsweek, "Me Shall Overcome."

And Mr. Cain surely is a successful man.  But he's also a plutocratic ninny with a boneheaded and regressive "9-9-9" tax plan.  This would create a nine-percent sales tax on everything and would, once again, give millionaires more tax breaks than they already have had in the last thirty years.  Great. Even Ronald Reagan would have gagged on this plan. 

 

Mr. Cain also has no foreign policy experience or even much interest in the matter.  Ignorance of the leader of Kazakhstan is a badge of honor to him. And, to top it all off, his solution to illegal immigration along the Mexican border is to put up an  electrified fence and kill people before they cross the border.  A kind of reverse Berlin Wall you could call that.  (And here I thought there was nothing to learn from the old East German puppet state.)  

   And this guy is the front runner in South Carolina and Florida?  Is it possible the GOP voters are so desperate to get rid of President Obama that they are willing to even support this guy over the conservative-but-sane former Governor Mitt Romney?     

And then there is Rick Perry and his new flat tax that is about to roll out soon.  And Newt Gingrich who blames the whole of the economic meltdown, caused in the main by unscrupulous mortgage brokers and Wall Street speculators, on...the same "bad big government" he helped make sure was deregulated to impotency while Speaker of the Houe in the 1990s!  All  for the best interests of multi-national banks and big mortgage outfits like Countrywide and IndyMac.

 

 The federal government in question is filled with officials of both parties willing to do Wall Streets' bidding for plenty of re-election cash needed to get Congressmen and women in office.  It also keeps cabinet officials of both parties well represented by friends of billionaire speculators like Tim Geithner at Treasury and Hank Paulson of Goldman Sachs, who oversaw that department during the Great Meltdown and bank bailout of 2008.    

Of course, some like Ron Paul hate the Federal Reserve and the bank bailout of 2008 , which would make sense if the whole economy wouldn't have collapsed further without it.  The thing to do was to regulate Wall Street before the crisis, not deregulate it.  And now all these candidates want to roll back the regulations that have been put back into place--over banking lobbyist objections. At least the new Dodd-Frank Law recreates a watered-down version of the old restrictions that kept our economy from tanking for 68 years!  

Michelle Bachmann tells people without their old  full-time jobs and foreclosure of their homes staring them in the face to "hang on".  She offered no explanation as to what she would do however and it appears she too would not dare resort to anything beyond the "invisible hand" of the marketplace to help distressed people.

Frankly this is all very discouraging.  The US public does deserve a real choice in 2012 for the next presidential election.  But what we are getting from the "loyal opposition" are candidates who represent the top one percent of income and wealth gatherers. They hope to please them and bring the rest of their electorate along on the "wedge issues" like immigration, abortion, getting tougher somehow on China or Iran or something else.

The only Republican I can see who really has a grip on reality is former Utah Governor John Huntsman, who was also most recently the Obama administration's Ambassador to China. "The work of the nation isn't getting done," Huntsman says as he campaigned in New Hampshire recently, "because we got extreme elements on both sides that are barking at each other and the entire middle has been hollowed out." 

Huntsman is right about "the hollow middle". But the only extremists who matter in this coming round of Republican primaries are the tea party hard rightists, the reactionaries who have been bankrolled by the Koch Brothers and Dick Armey's  Freedom Works lobby. You have to give them credit;  they  managed to convince millions that the failures of the mortgage giants and Wall Street are the fault of government regulation.  (Actually it was the lack of regulation or diligence to enforce same that is clearly to blame.)  

It's the soft core pro-corporate Democrats of the Clinton White House  and the hard core "ownership society" anti-regulatory and tax-cuts mania policies of the Bush Administration that put us in the great recession. Even if Obama was an effective president (and he surely isn't at this juncture) he is too wedded to the status quo and too hemmed in by the need to capture 60 Votes in the 100 seat Senate to pass anything that would help the average American in economic distress.  

 

Luckily for the candidates for the Republican nomination, their target voters have so far been mostly chumps. The activist/straw poll voters don't care about much more than getting that "black guy with a funny name" out of "their" White House and taking "their" country back.  And there's a lot to be said for enthusiasm in a democratic election.

 

But there comes a point in politics, however, when you try so hard to catch votes on the fringes that you forget that most Americans, I believe, care more about a man or woman who can get something passed in Washington, a pragmatist, than some unalloyed purity-figure.  

Or care, paradoxically, unlike the Red State hot heads, to be sure how little experience a candidate can prove he has  in elected office. 

 

The GOP has a unpopular President to run against, but so far all their candidates (save the unelectable Huntsman and possibly Romney)  are so far right they better pray for another economic meltdown to get themselves into that White House they think is theirs.                    

 

     There has always been room in both political parties for some extremism. But the last time extremists totally dominated a major political party like this was in 1964, when a surge of conservatives and newly minted anti-Civil Rights former Democrats from the Southern states got together and nominated the states-rights hardliner Barry Goldwater of Arizona.  The result was a landslide for Lyndon Johnson, a President who thought he would have real trouble in the election according to the tapes he recorded of himself while serving in the Oval Office while finishing John Kennedy's term.   

But LBJ won by a landslide.

 

But at least Senator Goldwater carried his  Grand Canyon State of Arizona and the deep South.   History may not repeat itself, but it just might echo like a yell across that big deep canyon.        

"The Great American Stick Up"

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Nonfiction
Author:	Robert Scheer

The former Los Angeles Times journalist and author Robert Scheer takes no prisoners in this account of how Wall Street managed to pull a compliant Clinton Administration over to its side. Clinton's acquiesence to further financial deregulations for Wall Street, especially repeal of the New Deal Glass Stegall Act of 1934 and other "modernizations" of banking laws helped lay the gorundwork that libertarian Republicans had started in the 1980's.

This book, one of many that have come out tracking the downfall of the American economy in the last decade or so, also shows that much of the personnel of that most recent crash like Fed Chairman Ben Bernake and Larry Summers (Clinton's Treasury Man, along with Robert Rubin) are still around to supposedly help "fix" the problem.

For those who want an insider's look at how much Washington and Wall Street are intertwined, look no further.

Here is Scheer interviewed on "Democracy Now" in the Fall of 2010.

The Coming Democratic Party Landslide of 2012?

First off, let me state the obvious--US presidential campaigns are interminable. Only diehard political junkies like myself seem to keep up with these "who's in--who out" matters at this point.   But its clear that the Republicans are sweating a bit already at what looks like a weak field heading into the next Presidential race. 

The November 2012 general election, according to CNN and anybody else with a calender is 531 days off.  And its more and more clear to me that what matters most is not just who is governing but what kind of influence from lobbying groups and campaign money generate in the leaders and Representatives we do elect.   But at the same time the success the GOP enjoyed in 2010 has led to a cavalier  attitude toward restructuring Federal programs that is not borne out by popular feeling.  As one critic put it, "Americans voted for the Republicans in 2010 because they thought the house of state  needed to be redecorated. The GOP appears to think they are commissioned to tear the whole house down to start over."

 

Therein lies Obama and the Democrats' opportunity.  

But we may at least have seen the "Hezbollah Wing"/tea party wing of the Republican Party alienate the mainstream American independent voter with their threats to try and default  on the national debt in the name of further tax cuts for millionaires and draconian schemes like the abolition of the Medicare Program.  Medicare is one domestic  government program that  retains popularity because of the high prices of  the medical establishment. 

 

The Republican obsession to deregulate and privatize everything in sight  might work on some industries, and people can be fooled over issues like banking regulation because their is so much manipulation and smoke and mirrors there.  But things like Medicare, Social Security and unemployment  insurance for the laid off worker are matters that hit home, literally.

Let's look where the public stands on Medicare Reform, to take just one example, from a recent Associated Press Poll published last week:

   

"In the poll, 54 percent said it's possible to balance the budget without cutting spending for Medicare, and 59 percent said the same about Social Security.

"Taking both programs together, 48 percent said the government could balance the budget without cutting either one. Democrats and political independents were far more likely than Republicans to say that neither program will have to be cut.

"The recession cost millions their jobs and sent retirement savings accounts into a nosedive. It may also have underscored the value of government programs. Social Security kept sending monthly benefits to 55 million recipients, like clockwork; Medicare went on paying for everything from wheelchairs to heart operations.

"Overall, 70 percent in the poll said Social Security is "extremely" or "very" important to their financial security in retirement, and 72 percent said so for Medicare. Sixty-two percent said that both programs are extremely or very important."

Not good news for the newest class of Republicans, those who bliindly have followed House Budget Chairman  and Ayn Rand acolyte Paul Ryan in a crazy plan to gut Medicare, with crazier plans for Social Security waiting in the wings to justify further tax cuts for the top one or two percent of income earners and/or receivers.    

Bernard Goldberg, a disgruntled former CBS on-camera news reader who turned into a Fox News contributor a few years back, gave some analysis recently about Obama's  chances. He recalled that the election might be shaping up the way the 1936 Presidential Election did in some ways. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was re-elected not because he had ended all economic ills in the country, but because the public recognized that with all the the ups and downs of New Deal experimentation, his leadership was moving the nation in the right direction.  Plus its hard to deny a sitting President a second term.    

  Goldberg writes: "After all, sitting presidents usually win re-election. Since 1936, 11 incumbent presidents have run for a second term and only three were defeated – Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush.

"And, like FDR, Barack Obama has something else going for him – an intangible that may compensate for bad economic news: likability -- an essential characteristic for anyone hoping to do well in politics.Except for his enemies – and that’s not too strong a word if you’ve ever listened to his most passionate detractors -- Americans generally like Barack Obama, even when they disagree with him on matters of policy.

"They like his smile, they like the way he talks, they like the way he dresses and carries himself, and yes, they like the fact that he is the first black man elected president of the United States of America. In some ways, it is a source of national pride."

 

Is some of this superficial? Yes, it is.  But politics is more visceral then rock-hard scientific theories. How else to explain the enormous success of Ronald Reagan, a man elected seemingly because of his style over his illogical "voodoo economics" which even leaders in his own party thought daft?  If Reagan could carry 49 states in 1984, what might prevent Obama from taking 35-40 and walking away with the election.  

 

Who are the Republicans  in the race now?  Who else is likely to get in? Sarah Palin?  Here's how a Public Policy Institute estimate shows what would happen in a Obama-Palin Race:

 

 

Well, what if some GOP types get cold feet about Palin.  So they nominate some governor with low national public identity?  Yes, dark horses have won the Presidency, but can a candidate for the Republicans win and appeal to the hard right tea baggers and the independent voters who just plain like Obama?  I doubt it. And another big Obama victory will certainly eat away at the GOP majority in the House. (Less likely in the Senate, though, where the Democrats have to defend 23 seats to the GOP's 10.

 

So maybe Barack Obama should take a page from FDR's 1936 playbook.  That's not an original idea of mine as this clip from the MSNBC cable network shows.

 

 

Aloha, Presidential Birther Cranks: President Born in the USA!

As of this morning, the far-right Tea Partiers and their  latest champion, Donald Trump, no longer have a wedge issue to call out President Obama.  (Unless, of course, for the die-hards who will still pretend  this document is a nefarious trick and that the President was Kenya-born.) 

Now they are forced to argue the issues and support their draconian plans to cut Medicare and balance the budget by giving another huge tax break to the  top two percent on income earners (and many just plain "receivers") in the country. 

 

Below: reprint from "The Daily Telegraph" (UK):

Barack Obama hits back at 'birthers' and releases birth certificate

Barack Obama has moved to quash "birther" conspiracy theories alleging he was not born in the United States by releasing his long-form birth certificate.

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Mr Obama said he was bemused over the conspiracy theories over his birthplace, and said that the obsession over the "sideshow" issues was a distraction in a "serious time".

"We're not going to solve our problems if we get distracted by carnival acts and sideshow barkers, We do not have time for this kind of silliness, we've got big stuff to do, I've got big stuff to do," he said.

Earlier, Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said: "The president feels this (controversy) is bad for the country, that it is not healthy for the political debate."

Mr Obama's 2008 presidential campaign had previously released a shorter regular birth certificate issued by Hawaii authorities after conservative critics and pundits fanned rumors that he was not American-born.

The version released by the White House on Wednesday was a copy of a long-form, original document made at the time of his birth and kept since in official records in Obama's native state.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/

First Lady Attacked for Advocating Breast Feeding!

I was hoping I might not ever come to this but it did. First Lady Michelle Obama has been attacked, seriously attacked mind you,  for supporting  breast-feeding for mothers with young children! 

 

From an ABC News blog 2/15/11

Rep. Michele Bachmann spoke out Tuesday against First Lady Michelle Obama’s reported support of tax breaks for breast pumps.

On Laura Ingraham’s radio show Tuesday, the Tea Party favorite criticized Mrs. Obama for reportedly endorsing steps she warned could lead to a “nanny state.”

"I've given birth to five babies and I breast fed every single one of these babies," Bachmann, R-Minn., said. "To think that government has to go out and buy my breast pump for my babies. I mean, you want to talk about the nanny state? I think you just got a new definition -- a new definition of the nanny."

The IRS announced last week that breast pumps and supplies that assist lactation are medical care under Internal Revenue Code “because, like obstetric care, they are for the purpose of affecting a structure or function of the body of the lactating woman.”

Bachmann, who is in her third term and considering a challenge to President Obama in 2012, declined to elaborate on her comments through a spokesperson Tuesday evening. The Office of the First Lady also declined to comment.

This is not mind you a program to out and out buy breast-milk storage systems, no, just a tax break.  Yet this modest change in the tax laws has brought condemnation in the American far Right perennial campaign to condemn everything not controlled by their leadership as bad for the nation. 

 

It seems the First Lady has made speeches in the past suggesting it would be good for mothers to breast-feed children at least in the first six months after birth. Scientific studies have shown it reduces the likelihood that said babies will grow up to be obese.   

(above) From a April 10, 2010 CBS Evening News report with Harry Smith

Nobody could be against mothers breast-feeding their kids, right?  Surely there are some points in the health care spectrum which politicians and professional special- pleaders in America can agree on, right?        

 But this is not so. To some, like Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachman, Sarah Palin--who snarled that Mrs. Obama was only advocating more mother's milk use because the price of store bought milk was getting higher-- and the usual cast of knee-jerk reactionaries, this is actually a step toward.....I don't know what...you tell me...I'm guessing they fear the spectre of centralized economic planning, all   centered around a nation of families who let breast pump tax breaks blind them to the loss of freedom as we know it...yeah, that sounds like the group I'm thinking about.  

Is there no end to this hysterical anti-government hyperbole?   Well no, as this selection from an article on the asinine imbroglio todays' Washington Post shows.   

"Her worldview on child rearing is totally oriented to institutionalizing children!" said Cathy Ruse, a senior legal fellow at the Family Research Council. "Giving tax breaks for breast pumps helps only those moms who are working outside the home and does nothing for us stay-at-home moms. This is consistent with President Obama's pledge to increase the childcare tax credit as opposed to the child tax credit, incentivizing putting your kids in daycare over any other childrearing arrangement."

  The far Right in the United States is so zeroed in on the track of disagreeing with anything government does to help working families that they attack even a small incentive to reduce childhood and adult illness.  

Color me gobsmacked.

 

It's come to this.  Good thing Mrs. Obama didn't come out for a heliocentric solar system or helmets for  high school  football players; then she'd really have kicked up a tempest!