Looking Ahead

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis The life of President Obama is more pain than joy, no matter how cheerful he tries to be at the White House Blues and Rock Concert. The world has radically changed in the 21st Century, and so has our social compact, the rules of the road, if you will. We accept piracy, and negotiate and pay ransom, where in the past nations would have gotten together and blasted the stuffing out of the Somalian criminals, treating them like bandits at the crossroads, and made them behave. Drug lords run Guatemala, Honduras , El Salvador and parts of Mexico, with a murder rate up to 81 persons per year, and governments are intimidated. Afghanistan, where we tried to install democracy is slowly taken back by the suppressors of women and the drug growers, who kill our exasperated soldiers and rally the entire Moslem environment against the us, claiming book burning today, the world tomorrow. The hopeful Arab Spring is being been taken over by the mirror images of the tyrants we hoped would be eradicated by newborn democracies. And nuclear wannabes in North Korea exact ransom, and in Iran hold us up, and even if were to believe their claims of peaceful atomic energy, the Ayatollah steps forward and declares that another country, just trying to exist, is a land and people to be eradicated. Even the Hamas, for a decade in Damascus, leaves Syria and refuses to support the Assad minority government and his Allawi tribe trying to stop Syrian Spring with indiscriminate mass murder. What to do? Our President tries for peaceful solutions, quiet diplomacy, using a balance of power and such Mideast rulers who go with the US. For this he gets blasted by the GOP political candidates, right here in the US, who think him chicken, and deem a Rooseveltian “speak quietly and carry a big stick” policy a surrender, and an act of weakness. These are among the same 10 plus candidates whose campaign actions and interactions , particularly since January 2012, have revealed some of them to be smooth tongued liars , people one would not trust to do any business with, much less entrust the nation’s and the world’s future. Some of them have revealed their sanctimoniousness to be cover towards imposing rules over our personal lives, suspect of willing to violate women’s rights and abrogating the Constitution that they so seriously claim to defend, under the guise of protecting choice of freedoms of choice of faith. Sellout to special interests, glibness and barefaced twisting of answers, downright lying and sheer ignorance, lack of smarts and inability to reason are some of the qualities evident among the self-appointed candidates who ask us to trust them. This has turned us callous, or have made us ask for candidates with some reliable overwhelming principles, such as a sincere code of religious morality. That is a truly, truly dangerous thing. And then comes the biased law: the Supreme Court produces its Citizens United decision that permits corporations and billionaires elect Presidents. It may happen as we watch, Even the President has joined in, to even out the election funds balance, and not be left behind. Speaking of lying, there are the sneaky cheats who write deliberate concoctions of untruths, hiding their names and pretending to be of the Administration, with their plausible concoctions chain-distributed by e-mail to friends and fellow haters. Illustratively, an article, Wall Street Journal Sizes Up Obama, by Eddie Sessions, from WSJ (a phony attribution), produces a biography of a plausible character, an attractive student of interesting background whose Dreams of My Father (1995) is alleged to be written by Bill Ayers, a Communist with a small c, and whose leftist friends, classmates, professors and colleagues , and the Chicago Daley machine pushed him into state legislature, US Congress, to the 2004 keynote speech Then the story becomes scurrilous, going into birthism arguments, Obama’s communist ideas, his denials of serious threats at Ft. Hood and from the Christmas Bomber, and from terrorist suspects released from Guantanamo , and accuses him of being a sock puppet for his handlers, a ventriloquist’s dummy. Easy googling reveals that the author is an Alan Caruba, a PR pro for right-wing causes since the 1970s, writing in the WSJAnnex, a blog, pretending to be a WSJ editor. Another message to the faithful, no title nor author , warns the reader of HR4646, sponsored by the President’s financial team, that will add 1% transaction fee to all bank transactions, including Social Security deposits, purchases of al goods, real estate, stocks, trades,. It is alleged to be sponsored by Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR)and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IO), with approving comments by Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), using artfully selected quotes of the rumor in SSwopes.com , arranging the exposure text as real. Reading further, you find that this bill has been introduced by a far out leftwing Rep Chaka Fattah every session since 2005 as the Debt Free America Act, and has died, without any supporting sponsor, in committee, The authorship has been vigorously denied by DeFazio and Harkin, who in 2009 sponsored a value added tax on stock, bond, futures and similar transactions, HR4191, Let Wall Street Pay For Main Street, not approved by the administration, which also died in committee. , How to get back to normal, in the US? It will, not to worry. To cure the Citizens United decision, it would take amendments to the Constitution, a log term task, For a trustworthy Presidential GOP candidate, can the frequently position-shifting Gov. Mitt Romney reestablish himself, obviating a need for a negotiated Presidential candidate in Tampa in August? As to the world, a second-term president, experienced and smart, and fearless of failing the subsequent election, could be effective. That would neutralize the liars, and make for cleaner politics. Maybe. As for the GOP, to reestablish credibility, it would have to develop better signature requirements to admit people of character to the candidacy in primaries, a NRC task. The US will get back to trusting the politicians when the GOP stops selfish power-hungry road-blocks and returns to the standards, if not Lincoln and Roosevelt, at least those of Reagan, who knew how to cooperate, in the interests of the Union.