It's About the Middle Class, and Elephants

James Carville and Stan Greenberg on "On Point," Wednesday, 7/11/12. (here) said

1. Obama is tied or only slightly ahead of Romney in the polls. 
2. Obama and Romney present profoundly different visions of the challenges facing the United States and the world, and, consequently, strikingly different solutions.Actually, Romney offers no solutions, only vague promises that he can do things.
3. In order to win re-election, President Obama has to focus on the future and the middle class. 

I agree. I also think Obama is doing a good job, particularly on foreign policy. Bin Laden is dead and American combat troops have left Iraq. Operation "Olympic Games" is slowing down Iran's nuclear ambitions. (Part of the reason for this may be that the Rush Limbaugh, the Koch Brothers, Rupert Murdoch Sheldon Adelson, the Republicans in Congress and on the Supreme Court, etc. - can't stymie the President on foreign policy the way they can on domestic policy.)

Carville and Greenberg focused on the economy.

• Unemployment is at 8.2%, 
• Under-employment is another 4% to 8%, 
• That's 13 million unemployed and another 6.5 million to 13 million underemployed. 
• Wages, for people who work for a living, are stagnant or dropping. 
• Energy costs are going up, real estate taxes are going up, housing values are, at best, stabilizing.
• College costs are rising, and the career prospects for recent college grads are in the toilet. 

Carville and Greenberg basically said "In order for Obama to win re-election, he needs to present a vision for the future that addresses these issues." I agree there too, however, I see a herd of elephants in the room that I didn't hear them talk about:

1. Obama's mother was a white woman from Kansas, his father, however, was African, and Barack Houssein Obama is a funny name for a US President. Still, enough people were inspired by his candidacy, rhetoric, and character to vote for him in 2008.  Martin Luther King, Jr., would have been proud.Yet Obama is an African American. Still, it seems to me, white boy that I am, that there may be some people who are "concerned" about Obama's race, and this is the real sentiment under all that "Birther" nonsense.
2. While he's African-American, he doesn't talk like Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King, Jr., or Mohammed Ali. He's a cerebral, analytical, lawyer. If Bill Clinton was the first black President, then Obama is the first Jewish President. Actually, he's the first Vulcan President, or at least the first since Wilson. Obama's a "Servant Leader." Ambitious but not arrogant. Sure of himself but not full of himself. Not full of self-doubt and insecurities, but full of an awareness that while he's unique and wonderful, so is everyone else.  He's a President who, if - when - his wife says "take out the garbage;" he takes out the garbage. I can see George H. W. Bush doing that, and Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton (course he would smile at Hillary and she would melt), and Al Gore, but not George W. Bush or Willard Mitt Romney. They would have help to do that - servants. ("W" would joke with them, give them nicknames, and dimly be aware of the ages of their children. Romney wouldn't even know their names.) Most of the folks in Washington don't understand this. Clinton might. And Richard Lugar, the soon to be former Senator (R) from Indiana.
3. Fox News, the GOP, the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson (Newt Gingrich's Sugar Daddy), Rush Limbaugh, etc. have been focused, since before the inauguration in January, 2009, with trying to make Obama fail, pretending that trying to force the President to fail is not the bad for the United States. When in reality 
4. Our environment is increasingly polluted. And our economy - and the global economy - is on a largely unsustainable path.  We have, mostly in the last 50 years, burned so much coal, oil, and methane that we have added about two trillion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, increasing the concentration of CO2 by about 50%, from about 260 ppm to 390 ppm. The scientific consensus is that this is sufficient to change climate and weather.  As Bill McKibben put it, we have changed Earth into Eaarth.

I Have A Dream

"I have a dream where one day my four little children are judged by the content of their character not the color of their skin." - Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. (here)

Dr. King made that statement on August 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, in Washington DC.

Election Day, 2008, was that day. Enough voters judged Barack Obama by the content of his character, not the color of is skin, that he was elected President of the United States.

Let's hope for the same in November, 2012, and going forward.  And that all are judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.  As Dr. King said,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

                Free at last! Free at last!

                Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

The Affordable Health Care Act - and Socialism

All the misleading hoopla about the Affordable Care Act, aka “Obamacare,” or as Rick Santorum put it, “Romneycare,” leaves out several actual facts.

1.  The law forces insurance companies to insure young adults on their parents' policies.

2.  The law prohibits insurance companies from dropping people with pre-existing conditions.

If this is socialism, then I am a socialist.

3. The law requires 30 million of the 50 million Americans without health insurance, to buy it (the same way that the governments of New York, New Jersey, and the governments of many other states require people who want to register an automobile to buy car insurance). This should, over time, lower costs for the rest of us.

4. The law does not replace the health insurance industry with a government run program; it does not expand Medicare to cover all Americans. Similarly, it does not transform the Veteran's Health Administration into a “Citizen's Health Administration."

Actually, expanding Medicare to cover all citizens, perhaps by transforming the Veterans Health Administration into a Citizens Health Administration sounds like a good to me.

However, as President George Bush said, “Every American has access to health care. All people need to do is go to the Emergency Room.”  What he failed to mention is that using a Hospital's ER as a primary care clinic is very expensive.  When people without insurance do it, the hospitals make up for the loss by charging patients with health insurance for the costs of patients without health insurance. This is inefficient and expensive, and actually is socialism.

You Can Judge a Man by His Friends, part 2

Here we see Russian President & Dictator Vladimir Putin and American President Barack Obama at the G 20 Summit in Mexico in June, 2012. Unlike the pictures, below, of Putin with Assad and Ahmadinejad, these men are not smiling. They don't seem pleased to be in each other's company.

As an American, I am proud that the President of the United States does not seem happy to be in the company of the dictator of Russia.

Thanks to the NY Times for the image of Obama and Putin. 

Future of Civilization

State of the world, 2012, a companion to the World Watch Institute's papers, here.

Civilization
what will there be tomorrow
may we drink the rain

see only today
ignore toxic mountains seas
child tomorrow dies

we know not of worth
but cash flows, prices, some costs
happy counting beans
 
Fukushima and
the Deep Water Horizon
one map from Malthus

then there's energy
from Sun and Earth wind, water
we will then flourish

Civilization
what will there be tomorrow
may we drink the rain

You Can Judge a Man By His Friends, part 1

You can tell a lot about a man from his friends, and their body language. Above we see Russia's President / Dictator Vladimir Putin and Mahmoud Achmadinejad, his counterpart in Iran. Below we see Putin with Bashir Al Assad, his counterpart in Syria.  In the first picture, Putin has rotated his hand so that it is on top of Achmadinejad's. Note the smiles. They appear genuine.And why not? These guys like and understand each other. Just as Putin has a firm grip on Achmadinejad's hand, they all have a firm grip on power. Russia sells weapons to Syria and probably sells weapons to Iran.

Obama calls GOP budget 'Social Darwinism'

Washington, DC, April 3, 2012. President Obama attacked the Ryan - Boehner Grand Old Tea Party budget passed in the House of Representatives, calling it "Social Darwinism." The Grand Old Tea Party immediately attacked the President saying "Darwinism? That's evolution. We can't practice evolution. We don't believe in it!"

When he heard about the response from the GOP and Tea Party, President Obama started laughing. His laughter, however, subsided when he was reminded of the November 2010 elections, the Grand Old Tea Party majority in the House, their votes in the Senate, and their apparent 5 - 4 majority in the Supreme Court.

President Obama was having lunch with editors and reporters of the Associated Press when he condemned the Ryan - Boehner Grand Old Tea Party budget. He called it a “Trojan horse” and “thinly veiled social Darwinism.” Mark Landler, in the New York Times, aka "the Liberal Elitist media,"  (here), wrote that Obama said the Ryan - Boehner Grand Old Tea Party budget "would greatly deepen inequality in the country."

While expanding the disparity of wealth that exists between the 3.07 million richest Americans, i.e. the 1%, compared to the 303.93 million not-richest Americans, i.e. the 99%; by decreasing educational opportunities and access to health care, and by increasing poverty, the Ryan - Boehner Grand Old Tea Party budget would actually serve to expand equality among the 303.93 million non-richest Americans, albeit in what many consider to be the wrong direction.

The Ryan - Boehner Grand Old Tea Party budget has been endorsed by all four remaining candidates running in the Republican primaries. Altho Newt Gingrich, opposed it before he was for it, calling it "right wing social engineering." As Speaker of the House, Mr. Gingrich, it must also be noted, pioneered the technique of shutting down the government as a way to protect the taxpayers from the services they need from their government.

The Grand Old Tea Party also attacked the President for having lunch when he should be working. There are rumors that Mr. Gingrich called President Obama "shiftless" and "lazy" for having lunch when he should be working. However, as there are no reporters covering Mr. Gingrich, those rumors could neither be confirmed nor denied.

Rush Limbaugh demanded videos of the President with young female reporters. Mr. Limbaugh later changed his statement, demanding videos of young female reporters without the President, and large quantities of various controlled substances.

Former Vice President Cheney could not be reached for comment. It is believed that he is in a secure but undisclosed location where he may be hunting with lawyers. Or hunting lawyers.