Obama Trying Too Hard For 'Cool' Vote?

George Stephanopoulos asks this question on this week’s The Bottom Line video, addressing the political reaction to President Obama’s visit to Late Night with Jimmy Fallon earlier this week. The segment under particular scrutiny is the “slow jam” session President Obama did in response to the vote before Congress preventing student loan interest rates from increasing this summer. The GOP has become particularly defensive about this issue.

I wasn’t going to even watch the video of Obama slow jamming. It just didn’t seem that interesting. Sure, it’s funny, but it’s not like Obama hasn’t done late night shows before. Then I saw something about Fox and Friends host Gretchen Carlson calling his appearance on Fallon, “nutso.” Being Fox and Friends, I didn’t think much of it. The backlash continued. A Missouri GOP House Member was reported to say in apparent response to the video that student loans gave America “stage three cancer of socialism.” Even that was not reason for me to watch. Republicans in the House have said much worse. But now we have George Stephanopoulos, of all people, reducing the issue to, “Campaigning for the ‘Cool’ Vote.” I drew the line. No, George. The President is just trying to do what is right.

The bill has stalled in Congress over a political tug-of-war of how to pay for the student loan stabilization. Keeping interest rates at their current level of 3.4% will cost about $5.9 billion over the next year (this is only for a one-year extension). The Democrats’ bill asks that the $5.9 billion be paid for by boosting the payroll taxes on the owners of some privately held firms. Republicans are in agreement. They do not want the interest rates to go up (though it should be noted the Paul Ryan budget passed by the House accounts for the rates to do just that, ostensibly a ‘yes’ vote for rate increases). However, the Republican proposal looks to offset the costs of the student loans with cuts from health care funds reserved for low and middle income families. Essentially, the Republicans would save money for middle class families by taking money from middle class families.

Stephanopoulos questioning whether the President is simply using this as a wedge device between himself and his presumptive opponent, Mitt Romney, is not totally ludicrous. Much has already been made this week about President Obama’s sliding popularity with young voters. But Obama’s push to keep student loan rates constant is not some pedantic attempt to win the youth vote. The President is doing what should be done. Middle and low income families are the ones struggling right now. The highest income earners are not, and have not struggled for decades. The GOP has blocked any and all attempts to request the wealthy start paying a little more in taxes because they argue during a recession ‘is not the time to raise taxes.’ They argue taxes should remain at their current level (extend the Bush Tax Cuts for the wealthy), even if it adds to the deficit, because now ‘is not the time to raise taxes.’ Why then, for the sake of the economy, is there a fight to take money out of the hands of lower and middle income families? Money that pays off student loan debt will not be spent in the marketplace. We’re already dangerously close to dipping back into a recession. Taking money from the consumers’ hands makes no sense. The President recognizes this, he recognizes the struggles that everyone but the ultra-wealthy are experiencing right now. Even Mitt Romney recognizes the GOP is botching this one. He’s come out in support of the extension, though he too endorsed Paul Ryan’s House budget.

Stephanopoulos’ analysis is, in my view, completely off the mark and devoid of import. His concern is: ‘Who does this help come election time?’ and ‘Is Obama pandering?’ His morning show routine has made him complacent to ask the difficult questions. In a country of disillusioned youth, a generation who view their own government not as ally but foe, we need a President who can identify with this new generation of voters, who can laugh with them, and maybe come out to the ‘playground’ for a game every so often. They don’t need another authority figure in their lives telling them what to do. They need someone who is listening (and will occasionally sing a slow jam).

Ed Schultz: Republican War on Poor

Much has been made recently of the Republican's "war on women". But there is another "war" being waged by conservatives according to Ed Schultz: a war on the poor.

Normally, I feel Schultz is over-the-top on his MSNBC program, but he really captures a great spirit in this piece, especially in highlighting the ignorance, or maybe it's selective reasoning, on the GOPs part of saying how the poor pay nothing in taxes, deciding only to point to federal taxes instead of looking at the entire tax burden (payroll, Medicare, state and sales taxes) shackled on the poor and middle classes. And, as Shultz points out, this is not unprecedented in the modern GOP party.

"This war is not new. It has been going on for years. But it really stands out this week. In a span of a few days, Republicans chose to protect the rich by voting down the Buffett Rule in the Senate. Now, they are attacking the most vulnerable. ... [Mitt] Romney tried to say he misspoke when he made that ["I'm not concerned about the very poor"] comment in February. But his policies prove, well, he was telling the truth. His economic plans puts money in the back pockets of the wealthiest Americans while raising taxes on people making less than $30,000 a year."

Catholic Bishops Object to GOP Budget Proposal

A group of Catholic bishops have sent letters to Congress over the proposed budget cuts in Rep. Paul Ryan's GOP budget plan, arguing the cuts fail to meet the "moral criteria" of the church. Some excerpts of the letters are as follows:

"At a time of great competition for agricultural resources and budgetary constraints, the needs of those who are hungry, poor and vulnerable should come before assistance to those who are relatively well off and powerful."

"Just solutions ... must require shared sacrifice by all, including raising adequate revenues, eliminating unnecessary military and other spending, and fairly addressing the long-term costs of health insurance and retirement programs. The House-passed budget resolution fails to meet these moral criteria."

The demands within the letters are powerful accusations against the GOP, but seem to be falling on deaf ears. Speaker of the House John Boehner, responded by saying the bishops are missing the "bigger picture" of the GOP budget proposal, that without fiscal restraint, the country will be buried in debt and no social safety net programs will survive. Boehner seems to have missed the point where the bishops address "raising adequate revenue" to cover these basic, "moral" needs of the people.

It's also noteworthy that Boehner, and the rest of the GOP, didn't seem to see the 'big picture' last month when Catholic bishops and other religious institutions objected to the ACA's mandate that all institutions requiring employees to purchase health insurance must cover all patient needs, including birth control and contraception.

President Opposes Minnesota's Gay Marriage Amendment

The GOP's war of religion continues. Across the country, state legislatures have sought to restrict access to contraception for women in the name of "religious freedom," a thinly veiled attempt to restrict women's reproductive rights. And in Minnesota, the state is now seeking to restrict the rights of the LGBT community by proposing Amendment One, a law to define marriage as between one man and one woman. The state already has a same-sex marriage ban in place.

But in response, the Obama campaign in Minnesota has come out against the proposed amendment. In a statement from Kristen Sosanie, spokeswoman for the President's election campaign in Minnesota, "While the President does not weigh in on every single ballot measure in every state, the record is clear that the President has long opposed divisive and discriminatory efforts to deny rights and benefits to same sex couples. That's what the Minnesota ballot initiative would do -- it would single out and discriminate against committed gay and lesbian couples -- and that's why the President does not support it."

While the President's stance on gay marriage continues to "evolve" (whatever that means), it's good to see them drawing attention to this issue in Minnesota and the GOP's continued hypocrisy on individual freedom and the question of repressive religious regimes on individual rights.

Budget Woes

Here's an interesting Op-Ed from back on July 23, 2011 in the New York Times. With the release of House Republican's budget today by Paul Ryan, it's important to remind ourselves that GOP initiatives (such as tax cuts and two wars) got us into this deficit mess and that cutting government programs will never balance the budget.

"Despite what antigovernment conservatives say, non-
defense discretionary spending on areas like foreign aid, education and food safety was not a driving factor in creating the deficits. In fact, such spending, accounting for only 15 percent of the budget, has been basically flat as a share of the economy for decades. Cutting it simply will not fill the deficit hole..." continue reading here.

House GOP Release Their Budget

The House GOP released their budget today. In other words, if you're healthy and if you're rich, nothing will change except you'll likely get more rich. If you're not these things, pay up, because you're the reason this country is broke. Read more about the article here.

Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee Chairman says, "It's up to people to demand from their government a better budget, a better plan, and a choice between two futures. The question is: which future will you choose?"

Let's choose the one that does not balance the excesses of the rich and well-off, those corruptors of government who complain taxes are too high yet have millions and millions to spend on elections, lobbying, and laws, on the backs of the most vulnerable citizens this country has, the citizens whose livelihoods are diminished because of unfettered greed in corporate America.

How Obama Tried to Sell Out Liberalism in 2011

By Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine

"Last summer, President Obama desperately attempted to forge a long-term deficit reduction deal with Congressional Republicans. The notion that he could get the House GOP to accept any remotely balanced agreement was preposterous and doomed from the start, but Obama responded to the increasingly obvious reality by reducing his demands of the Republicans to virtually nothing..." continue reading article.

Rick Santorum Sinks Low

Rick Santorum has taken his current front-runner status in the GOP primary as a sign that he no longer needs to worry about his GOP contenders, but instead should start focusing his attacks on his presumptive opponent in the presidential race, President Obama. One might think Santorum, a former Pennsylvania Senator, would be attacking the President’s policies over the three years Obama's served in office, or maybe something the President did while in the Senate. No. It seems Santorum wants to forego debating what the President has done for this country (politics aside: staved-off an economic depression; saved the American auto-industry; provided access to health insurance for millions of Americans who couldn’t get it before; the list goes on…) and the administration’s policies and just go ahead and attack the man himself, unbelievably questioning the President’s core religious beliefs. On Saturday, Santorum said the President’s agenda is tied to “some phony theology” not based on the bible. I think in the next couple of days we’ll even see some on the right bemoaning Santorum’s remarks and saying he went too far. So far, of course, the Obama campaign has disavowed the remarks. Robert Gibbs, adviser to Obama’s re-election campaign, said on ABC’s This Week that Santorum’s remark, “crossed the line.” Surely, it did. But I also think this speaks largely to the campaign itself. As the economy continues to improve, it’s going to be harder and harder for the GOP candidates to argue how the President’s economic policies have actually hurt the country. And that’s what this election is all about. It’s about the economy, the most important issue on voters’ minds. What this shows to me, as well as the contraception ‘controversy’ drummed up over the past few weeks, is that the GOP are desperately searching for cultural issues as wedge devices in the upcoming election to pull independent voters their way. Will this Bush-era tactic work? I’m sure that some voters will be swayed, but for the vast majority of them, especially liberals and the all-important independent group, this will only serve to further pull them from ever voting 'right' again.

And speaking of running the country on a campaign ‘based’on the bible,' here’s an excellent clip from The West Wing season 2. Imagine if we did have a President who based how the country should be run only on the words of that outdated text.

Obama and the Contraceptive Accommodation

I guess one of the things I find most appealing about Facebook is the access to information and opinion from my friends that I don’t find elsewhere. And I think the impersonal dialogue that exists through the site gives people incentive to write things they might not normally say during a conversation. For me personally it provides a gateway to my friends’ point-of-view that normally I do not think I would know. The contraception “controversy” dogging President Obama through the last couple of weeks has again provided a basis for some personal introspection on my part, some friendly banter on Facebook, and some evolving perspective on the issue.

It started with a link of mine to an article on Truthout.Org describing how this contraception issue is mostly being drummed by a partisan right-wing agenda to shift the upcoming presidential election towards social issues rather than the economy. The reason being this issue of having employers (including religious institutions) provide birth control care in their insurance plans has been law since 2000 and the Bush administration coming into office did absolutely nothing to appeal the decision of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s ruling that denying contraceptive care is in violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prevents discrimination based on sex. So, clearly, this was never a problem until a democrat was in office and then it became an ‘example’ of “government overreach by this administration”.

My point in linking the article was to highlight this GOP hypocrisy, but a friend commented about the ruling itself, having also fallen into the trap that the government is only now overstepping its bounds (and never did in the previous 8 years of the Bush presidency). He mocked that toothpaste will be the next thing the government will require employers to cover in their insurance plans. I responded that that was ridiculous because toothpaste is over-the-counter, and further tried to make my point that I was not addressing the contraception issue per se (for my views on it were initially that I think religious organizations should be allowed to deny birth control coverage based on freedom of religion), but, again, the hypocrisy of the GOP to make this an issue now. My friend then posted this:

“Here’s what I think. I read an article about how England lost their right to own firearms. It started slowly and pitted gun owners against each other. The government first outlawed automatic firearms. This only affected persons who owned automatic firearms so everyone else who owned semi-autos, bolt actions, handguns, etc. said, 'Oh well, this doesn’t affect me.' Next the government outlawed semi-autos. So everyone that owned bolt actions, handguns, etc. said, 'Oh well, this doesn’t affect me.' Then they outlawed bolt actions and so on and so forth. In England, all firearms owners should have stood together to fight the bans whether it affected them of not, but they didn’t and the government was able to break them down piece by piece. I see this contraception deal as the same thing. Non-Catholics are saying, 'Why do we care? We believe in contraception and preventative pregnancy.' What non-Catholics should be saying is, 'We do not share the Catholic Church’s belief on contraception, but we stand behind them in their Constitutional right to believe and practice their religious views.' This isn’t about me being Republican and you being Democrat. This is about a slippery slope. This is the first step toward the Government impeding the free exercise of religion. This isn’t some conspiracy theory,[sic] it’s just what governments eventually do.”

After pointing out that my friend should read Martin Niemoller’s “First They Came...” quote on the rise of Nazi Germany, I dove into an argument showing how I think President Obama’s shift to exempt religious organizations/businesses from this Affordable Care Act requirement was a “slippery slope” inclined the other way. (Note: the administration is now shifting the burden of covering contraception to insurance companies.) In my view, offering this accommodation to businesses with religious affiliations creates the opportunity for other businesses to deny contraceptive coverage, not only because they might have a moral/religious objection to contraception, but because they might want to save a little money instead of provide care to their employees. What were to happen if one of the largest insurance companies in the country decided that they had moral objections to contraception because some of their top executives suddenly became devout 'Catholics'? And when businesses are granted special privileges, why can’t a state or local government not be offered these same exemptions to discriminate against women for contraceptive use? And the current GOP front runner for the presidential nomination is Rick Santorum, who has been running on a staunchly evangelical platform and wants a Constitutional Amendment banning all contraceptives. This outcome seems like the next step in accommodating one religious group, or in reality what we should classify the Catholic Church as, this one business. The more I think about this issue, the more I side with President Obama’s initial take on this (and the one the EEOC deemed in 2000) is that no one group should be allowed to discriminate from any one group.

And I think it bears to mention, that Ron Paul, who has a strong backing all over the country for the GOP nomination, believes the Civil Rights Act was itself unconstitutional and should be repealed, and by extension would disagree with the EEOC’s ruling. Paul, a long-serving Texas Congressman, seems to me a very dangerous individual to have in office. Congressman Paul thinks that if a business, a person, or really anybody, wants to discriminate against a race, a sex, or any other group they have it within their rights to do so. Paul does not seem to understand that one individual’s freedom cannot be limitless. According to Immanuel Kant, the famous German philosopher, individual freedom extends only to the cusp of infringing on another’s freedom. Sure, you have the right to own a gun, but if your right to have that gun to kill me infringes on my right to life, then you should have to relinquish that right. Such are the basis for laws. Such balance is the basis for the Civil Rights Act, and the mandate in the Affordable Care Act to require employers to cover contraception. Government has an obligation to protect the citizenry no matter of race, religion, or creed. It has an obligation to thwart any person or entity who wishes to restrict the autonomy of another.

Allen West: The Personal Good

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) took place late last week in Washington D.C. All the biggest names in Republican politics were in attendance, and even some Occupy Wall Street protesters decided to join in on the excitement, or maybe just create some on their own. There were countless speakers throughout the conference, each offering up their litany of excuses not only as to why President Obama is such a bad president, but why he's such a bad person. Frankly, that's all anybody has heard who's been even remotely paying attention through the twenty-something debates the GOP primary has had so far, so as an outsider and liberal, none of that stuff really excited me. Mitt Romney didn't convince me any more than he did Sarah Palin that he's conservative. Rick Santorum gave a well received, though ultimately uninspired speech at the conference, and failed to hold the momentum he gained earlier in the week with a sweep of lat Tuesday night's caucuses. On Saturday, Santorum placed a distant 3rd in Maine's caucus. Ron Paul continues to hold his firm grasp of a decent-sized portion of the GOP electorate, narrowly beating front runner Romney in Maine. And Newt: I'm not too sure he's over the hill quite yet. But there was at least one thing I heard coming from CPAC that interested me.

Florida Congressman Allen West gave a speech on Friday night where he laid out this little tidbit, "We also realize that the public good is a misnomer, created by our liberal friends. It is not the public good that matters. It is the personal good."

I'm quite astonished by this statement. To me, this sounds like one of the most selfish things ever uttered by a man. It is made worse that Rep. Allen West considers himself a christian, a religion that teaches the practice of helping others in need, "do unto thyself as you do unto others," and to "bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ". Not only does this statement fly in the face of West's supposed religious beliefs, but it flies in the face of American values. We are the "United States," are we not? It's difficult to separate the inherent "public" of this nation when 50 territories (and thousands of others still within those) are bound by a simple doctrine of "We the people..." A statement such as West's is so callous and base that it makes me wonder how I grew up in the same society as a man elected to public office who would say this. Personal good means nothing without public good. If the public lacks freedom then the individual is bereft of it. If the public lacks goods and services then the individual is in want of these. If the public lacks safety, the individual is isolated in fear of everyone around them, and the more selfish they become the smaller the island to which they are immured.

Elitists Vs. The 1%

I was reading through Paul Krugman's piece today in the New York Times and was struck by a sudden realization. We hear quite a bit in the media about these "elitists" who are these privileged, upper class, intellectuals that have ruined the country in numerous, countless ways. Now, there are "Right Wing Elitists" such as former President George W. Bush. And then there are "Left Wing Elitists" such as our current president, Mr. Obama. But I believe there is a discordant variation of the way the media portrays these two "different" groups.

If you were to Google "Michelle Malkin elitist" you'd find a few links to her blog and the above image will come up. These blog entries chastise the President for his apparent hypocrisy of pointing out other elitists while trying to play himself off as an average American. And we hear all the time on Fox News of "liberal elites" who are subverting the country and have taken it over(!) already. Just refer back to Glenn Beck's satirical, conspiracy-theorist run on Fox for plenty of reference material. And these elitists must be stopped at all costs from further damaging the country.



What we have from the other side of the aisle is a fixation on the 1%, the wealthiest Americans who have siphoned money for the last 30 years from the middle and lower classes, who have bought elections, and silenced the press and freedom of speech. But these are the "job creators" and hence are sacrosanct in GOP rhetoric. And therein lies the hypocrisy of the Right's defense of the 1% in light of the Occupy Wall Street protests. The right cannot stand that a contingent of the population is protesting the abuses of the wealthy, but it is the wealthy 1% who are the "elitists" the right seems to believe have destroyed the fabric of America. They can't have it both ways. Either the elites are helping the country by creating jobs, or the elites are hurting it by fundamentally stripping away our freedoms and luring us into a socialist state. The GOP needs to come to this same realization: elitists are the 1%. The funny thing is: I tend to agree with the assessment that elites have thrusts this country into a tailspin of corruption and greed.