Day: September 11, 2012

Commitment To Others (Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama) Vs. Commitment To One’s Own Wealth Acquisition (Mitt Romney)!

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Two former Democratic Presidents—Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton—have devoted their post Presidential lives to a commitment to help others, through the Carter Center and the Clinton Initiative.

They have both stood out for their efforts to promote peace, fight hunger and disease, improve the lives of others, rather than set out to add to their own wealth acquisition.

At the same time, Barack Obama seems likely to follow the same pursuits, because, after all, he devoted his early adult life to being a community organizer in the toughest neighborhoods of Chicago, dealing with poverty, hunger, and family problems of many Chicago residents. He has been ridiculed by the right wing of the Republican Party for doing so, but then the right wing of the GOP has also shown a lack of respect and deference toward both Carter and Clinton with their retirement years commitment to doing good for others!

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney has devoted his entire adult life simply to the acquisition of wealth for the sake of wealth, not concerning himself with the closing down of businesses by Bain Capital, and the loss of jobs by many thousands of workers. He also likes to flaunt wealth, as with the car elevator at his one of many homes in California, and his refusal to release his tax returns, because it would reveal just how manipulative and deceitful he has been, a man who has no ethics or morals when it comes to the making of money!

Of course, it is said that Mitt Romney gives to “charity”, but that “charity” is almost completely to his Mormon Church, which requires a tithe of ten percent from its membership. So that is not all voluntary, and in any case, giving “charity” solely to one’s church is not true charity, in the sense that he has shown no interest, with his vast wealth, to support good causes, as has Carter and Clinton, both far less wealthy than Romney.

And it is predictable that if Romney loses the Presidency, he will devote his life to his church and to the constant acquisition of wealth, as this is the trend of his life, not devoting time and effort to good causes, as Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton have done, and assuredly, that Barack Obama will do in his post Presidency!

Southern White Evangelical Christians Uncomfortable With Mitt Romney

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Southern white evangelical Christians might be unhappy with President Barack Obama, but as many observers have pointed out earlier, including this blogger, Mitt Romney’s challenge to thrill the above named group is causing unease among them.

The reasons: Romney is just too damn wealthy for people who struggle every day to get by, and his Mormon faith troubles them.

This may all be unfair and unjust, but again, it was predictable that these issues would surface as time went by, and now they have.

It does not mean that Barack Obama will win the South, but he already carried Virginia, North Carolina and Florida in 2008, and is still ahead at this time in both Virginia and Florida, while behind in North Carolina.

The interesting point is that Romney might be able, by default, with his opponent being African American, to carry the rest of the South, but the percentage he would need to give him a chance at the three states that Obama won, is slipping away from him due to these two factors.

And with the growing Hispanic-Latino influence in the South, it is clear that Virginia, North Carolina and Florida will become more “blue” over time, and that Georgia and Texas will eventually turn “blue” in future Presidential elections!

Eleven Years Since September 11: What It Has Done To America

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Eleven years ago, on a bright, sunny New York morning, just as today it is in New York, and on the same day of the week, Tuesday, America was struck by Al Qaeda and forces backed by Osama Bin Laden, causing the deaths of about 3,000 people at the World Trade Center, along with those slaughtered at the Pentagon in suburban Virginia, and those on the plane bound for the US Capitol or the White House, and forced into a crash by its courageous passengers in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

This is a day of commemoration and mourning for the loss of life, plus the deaths of over 6,000 Americans in unsuccessful wars in Afghanistan and Iraq since then, and the nearly 50,000 young men and women wounded, many of them severely, as a result of those wars.

We also mourn the loss of innocence that we had, that somehow, as the super power of the world, we were immune from such a shocking attack, and the sense of insecurity that it brought upon all of us.

Our lives have been transformed in so many ways that we can never reverse, and we can say that we have become ever more divided in the years since, politically, economically, and socially, and that we have a divided America more so now than ever since the Civil War and Reconstruction period in the middle to late 19th century.

We are a more stratified society economically, and we have become, more than ever, a nation of the coastlines versus the massive interior, a nation of blue versus red in political terms, and our country is rapidly changing in a way that worries us about the future, as to whether there is the potential for internal violence in the future, that might make the terrorism of September 11 seem like something minor, as compared to what could happen between the sections of the nation, the religious groups, the racial groups, the age groups, the gender groups, and the cultural groups that make America a complex nation in the 21st century.

Imagine going back to the year 2000, before the divisive Presidential Election of 2000, at a time when most Americans had never heard of Osama Bin Laden; when the World Trade Center dominated the Manhattan skyline; when there was no Facebook, Twitter, or Steve Jobs technology; when unemployment was only 3.9 percent; when the national debt was only $5.7 trillion; when gasoline was only $1.79 a gallon; and when the previous year, the biggest controversy was Bill Clinton’s sex life and his impeachment trial.

As America was entering the new century, we were extremely naive, worrying more about the effects of “Y2K” on computers, than the reality of what we were going to face in the first decade of the 21st century, which has worsened the outlook for America’s future in a dramatic way.

Oh, for the “good old days!”