Day: March 15, 2012

Joe Biden, Obama’s Greatest Asset And Emissary To Blue Collar Working Class, Comes Out Fighting In Toledo, Ohio

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Vice President Joe Biden, who has been a great asset to President Obama in so many ways, started the national campaign in Toledo, Ohio, today with a speech before a labor group extolling the record of President Obama in saving the auto industry, and attacking the Republican Presidential candidates by name for the first time, since it is still not certain who the GOP nominee against Obama will be in November.

Joe Biden represents the blue collar working class of Scranton, Pennsylvania and Wilmington, Delaware, where he grew up. And being a commuter on Amtrak to work for 36 years of service in the US Senate, Biden has come across as an average guy, who cares about his neighbors and his country, and as sincere and dedicated to help those in the struggling middle class that was the story of much of his childhood.

Biden knows how to deliver a fiery speech and how to excite a crowd, and he will take the fight for the Obama Presidency all over America in the next eight months.

His rhetoric will be very supportive, and he will use all of the energy he possesses to advance a second term for President Obama. The President is very lucky to have him there by his side! Biden will help carry Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and other states in a tough battle against those who would use religion and resentment (as for instance Rick Santorum) against Obama. And if Mitt Romney is the nominee, Biden will attack him mercilessly for his refusal to back the bailout of Chrysler and General Motors.

Speculation On 2016 Presidential Election Beginning: Early Speculation For Hillary Clinton And Jeb Bush!

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Despite the ups and downs of a Presidential election campaign, most observers sense that Barack Obama is likely to win a second term in the White House.

If that is assumed to be likely, it allows for speculation as to what might happen in 2016, and early thoughts are with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.

Both have been vetted in most aspects of their lives and careers, although certainly other information will arise as time goes by, but both are very famous and experienced, and of course, have the “sex appeal” of being the wife of a former President and the son and brother of two former Presidents, almost like having two royal families.

Hillary Clinton will be 69 years old in 2016, and will have come off two years of retirement, if her plans to leave the State Department at the beginning of the next term comes about. She will have had the eight years in the White House under her husband, Bill Clinton, as an activist First Lady, one of the standouts in that unelected office. She will also have had eight active years in the US Senate, a vigorous experience as a Presidential candidate in 2008, and four stupendous years as Secretary of State, embellishing her foreign policy credentials. With the growing emphasis on women’s rights, and her speech at the Women’s World Summit last weekend, this would be the time to start planning for another Presidential campaign, and no one would ever question her energy, her intelligence, and her breadth of knowledge and expertise. This is no Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann for certain!

At the same time, Jeb Bush would be 63 years old, with eight years as Florida Governor, the fourth largest state in America, and a record of handling hurricane crises on a very professional level, and demonstrating intelligence, depth, and knowledge on a Presidential scale, without all of the faults and shortcomings of the present GOP Presidential field.

Bush could have entered the race this year, but chose not to, with the major reason being thought to be his secret belief that it would be better to run when the Presidency was open, rather than running against an incumbent President. Also, he is well aware that the name BUSH is still unpopular after the eight years of his brother George W. Bush in the White House.

But Bush comes across as serious and a front runner for 2016, as it would be eight years after his brother’s terms of office and 24 years after his father’s one term of office. Of course, it is highly unlikely that his parents would be here to see their second son become President, an unbelievable distinction were it to happen, but one never knows what might happen, as with modern health treatments available to former Presidents, the best there are, George H. W. Bush and Barbara Bush would be 93 and 92 in 2016, and it certainly is possible they could both still be with us.

Imagine a race between Clinton and Bush, bringing back memories of a full generation, 20 years of Bush-Clinton-Bush, and possibly resulting in either a sequence of Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama-Clinton OR Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama-Bush! What confusion for students studying history in the future with either of the above chronological successions of the Presidents!

At the same time, there would be the desire of a younger and newer generation to challenge both Clinton and Bush, including Governor Martin O’Malley of Maryland and Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York at the minimum for the Democrats; and Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal at the minimum for the Republicans.

Needless to say, one can be assured there would be somewhere between ten and a dozen candidates seeking the Presidency on both sides of the political equation!

But experience and family connection could be the winning combination!

The New Conservative Attack On Abraham Lincoln And Theodore Roosevelt

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If one looks at American history, it is clear to anyone who is knowledgeable and objective that the two greatest Republican Presidents are Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.

Lincoln usually ranks as our greatest President, and TR is often ranked as high as 4th on the list, depending on the specific poll of experts and scholars.

Both Presidents, of course, have faults and shortcomings, as all Presidents and all people do, but to deny their greatness is promoting ignorance and falsehoods.

Both have been analyzed and interpreted by massive numbers of scholars and writers of non fiction, and they have been depicted in all kinds of ways.

But recently, it has become fashionable for right wing propagandists to push a view not generally promoted in the past–that Lincoln and TR are in many ways “Marxists”.

It is pointed out that there is some correspondence and contact between Abraham Lincoln and Karl Marx, the author of “The Communist Manifesto” and “Das Kapital”, and the argument is made that Lincoln was a “Marxist” who promoted his ideals, a way to criticize Lincoln’s promotion of racial advancements and labor progress.

Theodore Roosevelt is said to have “Marxist” tendencies in his promotion of the “New Nationalism” platform in his third party movement, the Progressive Party, in the Presidential Election of 1912, including government intervention in the economy for workers and farmers, and the regulation of capitalism through government lawsuits against monopolies, plus the acceptance of the basic concept of “social justice”!

IF what Lincoln and TR advocated is “Marxist”, then we need to be “Marxist”, as just because Karl Marx advocated for workers and the overthrow of capitalism, does not mean that everything he believed in and promoted is automatically evil and vile.

It is evil and vile to be against racial equality, labor rights, social justice, and regulation of capitalism in the public interest.

These views of Lincoln and TR are what make them great Americans, as well as great Presidents of the United States!

Conservative and right wing attacks on Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Barack Obama, among other Presidents, is par for the course, because they are Democrats, but attacking the best Republican Presidents is a new tack that must be fought with vigor!

The Ides Of March: Significant In The Past And The Present!

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Today, March 15, marks the anniversary of the assassination of Julius Caesar in the Roman Republic in 44 BC, so well depicted by William Shakespeare.

But in America, it is marked by the speech of President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, calling for the Voting Rights Act to stop discrimination in voting for African Americans in the South.

Ironically, 47 years later, we are seeing many states, primarily in the South and Midwest, trying to deny the right to vote for the elderly, college students, the poor, and minorities by onerous Voter ID requirements, in many cases for people who have voted for decades without trouble, but now are being told they cannot vote in this year’s Presidential election.

This is all designed by Republicans and conservatives in their effort to defeat President Barack Obama by any means they can find, because they do not have the issues to win the election without utilizing dishonesty. And yet they claim they are trying to prevent voter fraud, which is only a few cases in many millions, far less than even one thousandth of one percent in the past decade!

So the Obama Administration, through Attorney General Eric Holder, has brought lawsuits against South Carolina and Texas, as well as Arizona and Alabama on other issues of racial and ethnic discrimination related to voting and basic human rights. And many Midwestern and Southern states, other than those mentioned, are also setting out to abuse the Voting Rights Act, trying to take us back to the era of Jim Crow voter laws, that denied poor and minority voters their basic rights!

Also, today marks the beginning of what is seen as an end to our engagement in Afghanistan, as President Hamid Karzai is calling for Allied forces to retreat to bases, and remove themselves from Afghan villages. This is the reaction to the tragic massacre by one American soldier last week, the murder of 16 civilians, including nine children and three women and four men, as they slept in their village a mile away from an American military base; and the earlier burning of Korans by American soldiers, leading to the killing of several soldiers by Taliban terrorists.

America has been in Afghanistan more than a decade, and the war is leading to no improvement worth the continuation of the sacrifice of our troops, or those of our allies.

Afghanistan has been the doom of Alexander the Great in the ancient world; the British Empire in the 19th century; the Soviet Union in the late 20th century; and now the US and allied nations in the 21st century! It is time to expedite our exit, and just use drones and the air force against Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists. Making Afghanistan a democracy is, sadly, a lost cause!

So March 15 past and present has significant meanings we must not forget!

The Special American-British Relationship Prevails: Obama And David Cameron

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The long term American-British friendship and relationship prevails, even now with a “progressive” President and a “conservative” Prime Minister.

Just the opposite of the relationship between a “conservative” President George W. Bush and a “progressive” Prime Minister Tony Blair, still the common ties connect the two nations, which have been closely allied since Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt linked in the Second World War era.

Britain has been America’s greatest ally in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they are committed to work together against the growing threat presented by the Islamic Republic of Iran, with its move toward a nuclear program that is seen as likely to cause danger not only to Israel and its Arab neighbors, but to Europe and the United States as well.

While Great Britain is promoting austerity to deal with its economic problems, a policy that does not seem to be working very well, the Conservative Party of that nation is nowhere near as right wing as the Republican Party and the conservative movement in America has become.

David Cameron has decided to be part of the cheering section for Barack Obama, something certainly not appreciated by Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul. It is clear that the British government does not have high regard for any of them, while recognizing the need, if any of them are elected, to deal with them.