Open Letter to President Obama

Dear Mr. President,

I had hoped that with the passing of a few days since the debate and some additional time to reflect upon what transpired, I would feel better about your performance. Unfortunately, time has diminished neither my disappointment nor my anger. True, the campaign has begun to push back and to expose a number of the lies Mr. Romney conveyed during the debate and, damn, if it isn't cute how the campaign has made children and their parents fearful of losing Big Bird. However, there remains the very disquieting realization that you let millions of your supporters down, not because you had a bad night, but because you didn’t fight and simply did not have our backs.

Throughout the campaign to this point, I know you are aware of how much energy has gone into pushing back against the assorted lies that had become the mainstay of the Romney/Ryan campaign whether it was Medicare, the budget, Obamacare, the military or Israel. The list of mis-steps by Mr. Romney came fast and furious and every one of your supporters stood ready and willing to push back…to take issue with and, in doing so, expose the lie. The stage was yours to bring our efforts full circle; to make good on our efforts and, with the entire country watching (not simply your devout followers) expose the lies for what they are. The opportunities were plentiful. How many times, for example, did Mr. Romney accuse you of “cutting” $716 billion dollars from Medicare? While I understand that he was baiting you and that there was certainly time enough during the debate to respond, your ultimate silence left exposed so many who so pointedly took issue with the Romney/Ryan $716 billion mantra. With each passing lost opportunity to respond I could only think about Soledad O’Brien’s unrelenting reproachment of Tim Pawlenty over the issue. If that effort and every effort each of your supporters made on your behalf is to have any credibility it was for you to stand before the nation in the debate forum and put the issue to bed once and for all.

Instead, you stood silent while Mr. Romney not only continued to mis-represent and mis-stated the facts not only about you but about his own positions, but accused you of lying! How, on earth, do you allow yourself to become the poster boy for the “Big Lie” when it is and has never been the case.

An old high school friend of mine, Ken Grant, left the following post on Facebook in the quick aftermath of the debate:

Last night’s debate made me sick, literally. The GOP plan to reinvent Romney worked perfectly: 1) any plan you might have had in the last two years that was unpopular, simply deny that you ever had that plan. 2) any plan that Obama has that contains some popular elements, simply claim that your [new] plan has this too. What made this so infuriating was how easily it worked. Obama had the worst performance of his life and Lehrer was totally ineffective at calling anyone out on the facts. After the GOP convention they openly admitted that they weren't going to let their message be affected by the fact checkers. No truer words were spoken. (http://www.facebook.com/ken.w.grant)

If you lose this election…and you may very well…you will have no one to blame but yourself. You took a lead which was well-earned, but earned on the efforts of so many people who went to such great lengths to defend you and to expose Mr. Romney and you simply did not reciprocate. I can forgive a poor performance…we all have them. However, simply leaving your supporters to twist in the breeze (and that is exactly how it felt) cannot be forgiven. I wish it were otherwise. 

The Week in Review

An interesting five days have we just witnessed, noteworthy not only for the events of those days but for the response  (or curious lack of response) to those events. Two such responses, in particular, stand out.

First, on Tuesday we awaken to learn that Benjamin Netanyahu has chosen regime change as an Israeli strategy for its self-defense though in this instance it is not the regime of its enemies that he seeks to change but that of the government of the United States. Bibi, it seems, has grown tired of the Obama administration’s prudent and cautious approach to Iran and saw fit to use the opportunity of a fairly ordinary news conference to castigate the Obama administration for not providing him carte blanche authority to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran in an unquestionably fruitless attempt to end the Iranian nuclear program. That the statement, made to an Israeli audience, was spoken in Bib’s nearly accentless English left no doubt about his intended audience – the American Jewish community and its renegade sponsors like Sheldon Adelson. In so doing, Mr. Netanyahu has clearly dropped any pretense of sitting on the sidelines waiting for the Adelson/Koch/Rove strategy to place a Republican in the White House and decided to take matters into his own hands by making a point that he knows will clearly stir the pot of conservative Jewish anxiety about a Black president with a Muslim-sounding name seeming to hold Israel’s fate in his hands.

Plainly stated, Mr. Netanyahu’s efforts are an outrage and an affront to this country, no less than the willingness of the Eqyptian and Lybian governments to remain mute while American interests are attacked to deadly affect.

And then there is Mitt Romney who somehow   has demonstrated an extraordinary ability to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. Putting aside the impropriety of his having commented upon a highly sensitive and explosive international crisis by criticizing the policy of the United States when a united front is needed, he offered those comments without having the facts and thus offered a critique that had no basis in reality. It is indeed remarkable that he finds it appropriate to make inappropriate comments upon issues he knows nothing about while offering the American people not a word about what his government would do to solve the problems which he claims have so damaged the nation. That he would think it appropriate to politicize the death of four Americans for his own political gain can only be viewed as a desperate attempt to reverse a course in his campaign for the White House that has gone astray. If nothing else, Mr. Romney’s performance either in or commenting upon the international stage has revealed one of his strengths…alienating our allies and undermining the interests of the United States.  Unfit to govern is the only way to describe Mr. Romney’s performance to date. The only thing more frightening about Mr. Romney’s performance is that it has had so little effect upon his standing in the polls.

Eastwood Redux

I suppose because the real Barack Obama was a less viable target for the Republican's aspiring to supplant him in 2012, the primary season bore witness to the creation of a "Straw Man" version of the President. Over and over again, from the mouths of everyone from Mitt Romney to Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum to Michelle Bachman, the candidates took turns blasting away at a President and a set of policies that did not and never had existed. Cheers rang the halls where stood the GOP aspirants as they pointed at the fictitious Barack Obama and condemned him for being a socialist, for being a "baby killer", for not being born in the United States, for being a Muslim who was secretly the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and for conspiring to strip fine law abiding Americans of their right to carry a WMD in their pockets. Listening to this lunacy we took solace in the expectation that because so many of these candidates were playing to the lunatic political fringes of our society, the hyperbole would quiet once a candidate emerged and the true campaign started. Boy were we wrong.

Not only did the "Straw Man" version of Barack Obama not exit left, but he, in fact, became front and center at the recently completed Republican convention. Nothing could have more perfectly underscored the fear of the Republican party running against the real President and his real policies than the sight of Clint Eastwood speaking to an empty chair upon which sat an invisible President who, in much the same fashion that Michelle Bachmann and her cohorts lambasted the President during the primary season for all of his fictitious failings, was then lampooned by Mr. Eastwood much to the delight of the assembled hordes. The performance by Mr. Eastwood was not the actions of a doddering old fool. This is, after all, one of our leading movie makers and actors who continues to deliver some of the most powerful films of our day. No, Mr. Eastwood's performance perfectly encapsulated what has been apparent to anyone who is not part of the base to which this tragi-comedy is directed...that because the Republicans and Mr. Romney realize that they cannot take on an actual Barack Obama, they have to make one up and then expend tens of millions of dollars to convince the unconvinced that the fictitious Obama is real and the real Obama is fictitious. 

One can only hope that when Mr. Romney is forced to stand beside the actual Barack Obama and not the invisible, foul-mouthed one dragged onto the stage of the RNC convention by Mr. Eastwood,  that Mr. Romney will be forced to address the real President, his real policies and his real plans for the future. There are, without any doubt, questions...real questions...that should be asked an answered by the President about his policies and his plans. The American people are entitled to those answers, but so too is the electorate entitled to have a choice between two candidates who base their positions on the facts and in reality. To this point, Mr. Romney has not shown an willingness to deal with the facts and with the reality of those facts. One can only hope that the President will leave Mr. Romney no choice but to finally engage the real Barack Obama. 

Ungovernable II

What the Republican Party has done to this country is despicable. What the Democratic Party, including the President, has done in allowing the Republican Party to get away with its agenda is as despicable. Both parties are equally responsible for damaging if not outright ruining the lives of millions of Americans and should be held accountable. The Republican agenda is clear and quite publicly stated by many including most notably Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority leader. Regardless of the damage inflicted, they have made clear that they will not permit the President to succeed. To that end, taking advantage of Senate rules that somehow, in clear denigration of the Constitution, did away with the filibuster rules, Republicans took turns announcing their intention to filibuster virtually every piece of legislation advanced by the Obama administration. For their part, rather than demanding that the Senator at issue actually filibuster in public by tying up Senate business spending days reading from a telephone book, Senate Democrats simply put their collective tails between their legs, looked at the numbers and concluded that were the threat to filibuster actually carried out they wouldn't have enough votes to end the strategy. Consequently with the threat alone,  in the comfort of their offices and out of public purview, Republicans, seemingly engaged in a macabre tag team wrestling match, took turns announcing their intention to filibuster thus ending any chance of any Obama-sponsored legislation getting passed  without ever having to carry through on their threat. Having barred Obama at the barn door, like a schoolyard bully, Republicans now blame Obama for failing to fulfill his promises. How many times during the recently completed convention did Republican speakers castigate the President for failing to fulfill his promises without once acknowledging not only that they were complicit in the failure but that it was central to their strategy. Meanwhile, despite their laughter at the conundrum they have successfully created for the President, millions of Americans suffer as pawns in a sick game of chicken. In any event, so goes the strategy which they have executed to horrific effect.

For their part, Democrats, at least until recently, had as big a set of balls as a Roman Eunuch when it came to pushing back against the Republican strategy. Recall that they were the party in power in 2008 having seized both houses as well as the White House and with a clear mandate to implement the policies which the public endorsed in the voting booth. What did we get instead? A President so intent to avoid any criticism that he was not making an effort to work with the Republican minority that he never realized until it was too late that the Repbulicans had no intention of cooperating on anything advocated by this President. The President's intentions, however good, nevertheless doomed much of what he hoped to accomplish (though he was able to accomplish much despite the Republican strategy) and set him on the a path toward possibly being a one-term President. For their part, House Democrats literally ran against many of Obama's policies, fearful that a stand with the President would result in their losing in the coming election. What they didn't realize or seem to understand is that the electorate, at least that part which actually demands facts and principles, does not and will not favor an elected official who doesn't have the guts to stand by his or her principles. Regrettably, Democrats never realized that the only thing they should have feared was their own loss of principle and for that transgression they were punished by an electorate that, at the time, was becoming enamored with the violent rhetoric of the Tea Party. The Democrats, and the President, fearful of taking a stand and telling Republicans to get on board or get out of the way, lost their way, leaving in their wake the disaster which masquerades as the federal government. 

If Mitt Romney is elected the Democrats will have no one to blame but themselves.

Apple Clearly Has a Short Memory

In his article, "Apple's Lawsuit Sent a Message to Google (Rich Karlgaard: Apple's Lawsuit Sent a Message to Google - WSJ.com:) Mr. Karlgaard argues, appropriately, I believe, that Apple's lawsuit against Samsung was, in truth, a proxy fight between Apple and Google. Curious that in touting its victory against Samsung that Apple ignores its own history. As Karlgaard notes, following Jobs' visit to Xerox' Palo Alto Research Center in 1979 he developed a machine and operating system that drew heavily on the Xerox model...windows, mouse...and the rest, as they say, is history. Point is that the way technology companies were able to advance their concepts and push what has become a revolution in technology was by sharing information and design and improving upon both. That's how Apple got the point we find it today; this is how Samsung has been able to achieve the results which led Apple to file suit.

'via Blog this'

Lady Liberty is Broken

As the Republican faithful gather in Tampa to nominate the Romney/Ryan ticket, it is astonishing to observe what has befallen the party of Lincoln and, in fact of Reagan. No longer is there a willingness to compromise and hence to govern. It is in fact now viewed as treasonous to their cause to even contemplate reaching consensus. No longer is there a willingness to listen to new ideas or opposing views, to be guided by facts, to be guided by basic principles of science, to even consider how or to what extent their philosophy for governing will affect tens of millions of Americans. Fundamental to the founding principles of this country are the words that adorn the Statue of Liberty, facing to the east and beckoning the world to take comfort in the protection of the United States and all that it stands for. "Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" The Republican party of today, dominated by some of the most extreme views since the Union was torn apart during the 1850s and '60s, has no interest in the tired or the poor or those who have lived under the heel of tyranny. Rather, the Republican Party of today is the party of intolerance, hatred and exclusion. The Republican Party has become the school yard bully, either espousing violence to gain the upper hand or not having the courage to stand up against violence and the fanatics who would threaten the very fundamental fabric of our democracy. They are a party of the gun, in both literal and figurative sense, unwilling to do anything to protect Americans from the explosion of gun violence that continues to sweep across the land and intent on holding a figurative gun to the head of the American people in order to push down their throats their vision of legitimate governing...the debt ceiling debacle being the latest and most dangerous example. This is the party that attracts people to its ranks who ridicule the disabled, for having the audacity to ask for help from the government in the form of healthcare reform;  this is the party that wants to rid the country of help for the poor in every form and help for the elderly in the last years of their lives. This is the party that denies women rights and equally standing, made emphatically clear by a perverse view that rape isn't so bad and then not surprisingly advocates positions that would rape both the land and our economy. This is the party that offers no solution for the tens of millions of people out of work and facing the loss of their homes other than to let them know that if they wait long enough, the huge tax breaks afforded the very rich will eventually make their way down to them without explaining how that will happen or why that strategy will work when it has never worked before.

Across the country, in every state and locality in which Republicans dominate, the theme is the same and provides a vivid example of the what this country will look like should they come to control the government. The poor will be cast off because local governments, already placed on the precipice of bankruptcy by a Republican dominated Congress which slashed federal subsidies to the states for social services, will be unable to provide the services they are already obligated to provide. Our infrastructure will continue to crumble because again the Republican-led Congress places a far higher premium on cutting taxes than providing the government with the resources needed to provide even the most rudimentary services. Our schools will continue to decline because, again, the states, faced with providing broad services to its citizens with limited resources, will not be able to support public education; and, of course, millions of Americans will go without medical insurance and thus be unable to afford basic health care.

Republicans, obviously tired of the "tired" and "poor" hope and pray that the downtrodden simply go away, perhaps hoping that if they stop providing the revenues necessary to provide the "huddled masses" with the basic necessities of life, they will simply die off and leave, in their wake, the utopian existence essential for the Republican philosophy to have any chance of success. What their increasingly extremist views do not seem to understand or acknowledge is that these people are not going away. These people are the very soul of this country and, having fought for the liberties that the Republican platform would so blithely strip from them, through their service and their work, they have every right...nay, a greater right to share in the nation's bounty and opportunity.

One can only trust that what we are witnessing is cyclical and will die of exposure to the light in the same fashion a vampire cannot stand the light of day.