Sunday, September 9, 2012

Obama’s DNC speech



Just in case you missed it, here’s a recap of Obama’s DNC speech.  I have a confession to make.  I missed it as well, intentionally.  I got this recap information off the internet.

Toward the beginning of Obama’s speech, he typically blamed the difficulties people have making mortgage payments on the Republicans.  By raising the subject, he just succeeded in reminding people with long memories and historical perspective that the problem is rooted in the Clinton administration, when banks were first pressured to issue mortgages to people who could not afford them.  Furthermore, there have been far more foreclosures in the 3 years since Obama was elected than in the 3 years before he was elected.

Obama raised the issue of how hard it is to pay for gas to put into our cars, supposedly because of the Republicans.  But this just reminds most of us how the price of gas was well under $2 per gallon when he took office, but now approximately $4 per gallon.  It also reminds many of us that he has an odd way to cut our dependence on foreign oil.  He is preventing offshore drilling off our own coasts, which would have increased our supplies and lowered our costs, while supporting the drilling off the coast of Brazil, thereby raising our costs, compared to domestic oil.

Considering his anti-colonialist leanings described in such devastating detail in the currently released record-shattering popular and authoritative documentary by an Ivy League Dartmouth scholar, who is hitting his target most effectively, 2016: Obama’s America, it seems pretty striking that if Obama feels that such offshore drilling is bad for the environment, he is helping another country ruin its environment, quite an ironic approach for a man who claims the high ground of moral outrage against the former colonialist powers for raping undeveloped countries by taking their natural resources. One can only wonder whether Obama or anyone who trusts his judgment feels that “ruining” natural resources is any better.

Obama claims to want to invest in clean coal, but many people in the coal industry seem to find him more eager to close down their factories completely than to re-tool them with the capability to produce coal more cleanly.

Obama’s claim to champion tax cuts for middle class families and small businesses seems to work only if he were to impersonate Mitt Romney, which is not very likely. It may be recalled that the only reason Obamacare was upheld was because the Supreme Court ruled that it was a tax law, contrary to Obama’s mantra to the people that it was not. Obamacare’s principal beneficiaries were supposed to be the people who cannot afford healthcare in the present. So it is interesting that in saving them with this health care law, he is taxing many of them for the first time. And this is supposed to be based on compassion for the poor.

Note: When his guard was down, on a previous occasion, Obama admitted to wanting to spread the wealth around, but he apparently shows a pattern of doing so most undemocratically, without leveling the playing field other than for his own teammates. He has exempted his favorite unions from Obamacare, as well as members of Congress, which would seem to be unnecessary had the law actually been beneficial to them and had he truly believed in leveling the playing field for all teams.

Corporations are people too

Obama and his cohorts ridiculed Romney’s statement that corporations are people too. This statement of course highlights metaphorically the simple fact that corporations are composed of people who have jobs because of these entities, and their profits fund the retirement plans of union workers who support Obama so wholeheartedly, or at least who used to before he chose to hold his convention in a “non-union” state, for political expediency and to hypocritically save money for convention-related costs, on the backs of non-working union workers.

Obama’s claim that Romney wants to spend “trillions more” on tax breaks for the wealthy is also absolutely unfair and untrue. The difference between what the wealthy pay now and what they would pay if Obama gets his way would not be trillions. Obama might not believe that corporations are people, but the tax breaks that benefit corporations also benefit the lowly employees and the pension funds in which many union workers of modest means derive income for their retirement.

When it suits Obama and his cohorts, he does indeed focus on the people side of corporations, like when he brags that he saved General Motors, and all the jobs associated with that corporation, while Romney supposedly wanted to let GM die. What the president realizes that most people do not know is that the president’s saving of General Motors rewarded unions and cronies who in many cases took advantage of the system, and gave the shaft – and no money – to prudent and responsible bondholders who had invested in good faith in a corporation that had been considered more stable than any other.
Romney simply wanted the procedures of bankruptcy to take their course, so that everyone would be treated fairly, with a truly level playing field, with nobody getting unfair kickbacks or favorable treatment other than as required by law.

 Furthermore, it has recently come to light, according to some sources, that the success of General Motors after it was “rescued” by Obama and his cohorts is based in significant part on GM’s getting preferential treatment by the federal government’s buying fleets of their cars, to give GM artificially high profits, and to make GM look artificially strong in the wake of Obama’s bailout.  Artificially keeping a poorly run company alive generally just prolongs the agony and delays the inevitable, and a fresh and fair new start.

Love and Charity

Obama literally accused Romney of being opposed to love and charity.  Even Clinton, no stranger to love, though not necessarily in the traditional way, conceded that he respects the Republicans’ claims to love their families.  Romney may not have disclosed an unlimited set of tax returns, but he has disclosed that he has personally donated about 16% of his income to charity, at least one year, and his income is not exactly negligible. Biden, by contrast, is on record as having donated less than 1% of his own income to charity, at least one year, although Democrats are quite generous when it comes to spending the money of other people, who work hard, on people who do not work at all.

Obama claims that Republicans “want to gut education.” Obama’s education seems to have failed to have taught him that you can’t legitimately claim to be a uniter or a unifier if you make statements that are so patently false and exaggerated.  Streamlining the system and allowing for autonomy in education does not mean doing a lobotomy on it – or gutting it.

Who truly cares about voter rights and voter fraud?

Obama claims that Republicans want to make it harder for members of minority groups and elderly people to vote, and even to deny them the right to vote.  He fails to recognize the simple motive that Republicans tend to have of wanting to prevent voter fraud, in contrast to many community organizers in Acorn and other entities associated with Obama in the past, which were exposed many times for participating in fraudulent activities. Identification is required to enter many buildings and to enter all planes, but somehow leveling the playing field so that everybody gets to vote one time and only one time is another type of equality that Obama opposes.

Those who advocate presenting identification for those who vote have advocated making identification documents free to obtain and even accepting outdated documents, so that the interests of the poor and the elderly will be accommodated, and they won’t be discriminated against.  Yet instead of appreciating attempts to prevent voter fraud, the president of the United States accuses people who seek to prevent fraud as attempting to disenfranchise people of color. Instead of encouraging people to present a Social Security card, or any other legitimate indication of identification, he prefers to play the race card.

Obama and the Military

Upon accepting the re-nomination, Obama boasted “so long as I am commander in chief, we will sustain the strongest military the world has ever known.”  Quite a statement for a person who boasted not that long ago that his goal was to downsize the military so that it would no longer be capable of fighting more than one war at a time.  Advertising this goal to our enemies would not exactly be the wisest course of action – except from the perspective of our enemies.  Unilaterally reducing our nuclear capabilities and conventional weapons while countries with access to terrorists add to their stockpiles also does not exactly seem to be the best way to sustain the strongest military the world has ever known.
Obama claimed to have strengthened old alliances around the world and forged new coalitions.  Tell it to Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, who had been a strong ally of the United States.  Obama not only threw him under the bus – or tank – but forged new alliances in Egypt and beyond, with the Muslim Brotherhood in his place.  The only problem is that many if not most people in the Muslim Brotherhood seem to consider themselves willing to join the family of nations only to the extent that they will advocate Sharia law and suppress the rights of minorities, certainly when it comes to religion.

Obama and the first and second ladies have made it a point of pandering to the military by vocally saying all kinds of nice things about them and supporting them – with taxpayers’ money, of course—as if they were never supported before.  What makes this so curious, particularly as to Michelle Obama, is that she famously said that she was never truly proud of America until her husband became a serious presidential candidate. She thereby insulted every single soldier who ever fought for America since the days of the Revolutionary War, including those who fought against the Confederacy, and those who fought Hitler to prevent the Nazis from dominating the world.  This means she wasn’t proud of America when it freed the slaves or gave them the right to vote.  Most ironically and intriguingly, it means she was not proud of American soldiers until they fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama’s Fundamental Goal of Changing America

Obama’s fundamental goal is to “change” America even though America became the world’s superpower before Obama came to power, and is on a course to cede this preeminent position to China and other countries more so than ever before as it owes more money to China and other countries than ever before, and as its debt to them increases at a faster rate, and in more dollars per year than ever before.  When a country has a reputation for being number one in the world in so many categories, and when people risk their lives and give up all their worldly possessions in order to start anew in this country, legally or illegally, than changing this country fundamentally can only send it in one direction – not forward but hurtling downward.

Obama wants to compete with the scientists and engineers from China. But if their scientists and engineers are so good, why are the Chinese constantly accused of trying to steal our technology?

Obama’s credentials in foreign policy

Obama pointed out that “my opponent and his running mate are new to foreign policy.”
Oh really?  Congressman Ryan is in his 7th term in Congress, and therefore has far more experience in foreign policy than Obama had when he ran for president, and Obama has had comparatively little time to learn on the job considering how he spends more time fund raising and campaigning than any other president in U.S. history.

Romney knows about foreign policy from the point of view of a businessman in a global economy, not to mention from a point of view of investments, and probably learned more in prepping for more debates than any other presidential candidate in American history, because there were simply so many debates this year, and Romney was the only one to emerge on top, and to continue to the next round.
In typical divisive and derisive hyperbole, Obama accused Romney of referring to Russia as our number one enemy – and not al Qaeda – and accused Romney of being in a Cold War time warp.

Although Obama implies he is not in a Cold War time warp himself, he may be interested to learn that Russia is no longer the superpower it was before the Soviet Union split up, and there is no reason to believe that Romney is not aware of this or that Romney has actually said what Obama alleges he said.
 Romney may have pointed out, as have many others, that he would stand up to Putin because he (Romney) is not convinced that Putin has become a good and trusted ally considering that Putin continues to support Iran in various ways, not the least of which is supplying Iran with nuclear materials which can lead to Iran’s becoming in possession of nuclear weapons, God forbid, and then transferring them, God forbid, to some of their client terrorist organizations.  

If anything, Romney singled out Iran as a country to be supremely concerned about as a sponsor of various terrorist countries and organizations and as a bully nation threatening to annihilate a member nation of the Unite Nations.  It was Obama who was caught by a live microphone confiding to Putin that he will be more flexible after the elections, as if he is closer to Putin – a true chauvinist—than to the American people he is supposed to serve. It may be news to Obama to learn that al Qaeda is just one of many terrorist groups nowadays, and is not quite as dominant as it once was, and lost some of its dominance long before Osama bin Laden was killed in his semi-retirement home where he had very limited communications with the outside world.

It took quite some nerve for Obama to criticize Romney for “insulting our closest ally at the Olympics,” when what happened was that Romney, who had a lot of experience when he had been called upon to save a previous U.S. Olympics from corruption and mismanagement, gave some constructive advice about improving security to prevent the likelihood of security breaches leading to violence and murder, such as what happened in Munich almost exactly 40 years ago. It seems that some people in England took offense, and the leftist American press falsely claimed this was a “gaffe.” At worst, it was constructive criticism not accepted in the helpful spirit in which it was offered.

By contrast, there is no greater irony and there was no greater insult to an ally than the insult Obama had perpetrated against this very same ally by very publicly removing from the Oval Office in the White House a gift given to our country by England, a bust of Winston Churchill, one of the heroes of World War II, the war to defeat the Nazis, and returning it to the British. He also was given an expensive gift by a visiting British prime minister, and in exchange narcissistically presented the prime minister with a set of tapes of some of his own narcissistic speeches.

Obama obviously either misquoted Romney directly or quoted him out of context in claiming that Romney said it was “tragic” to end the war in Iraq. Romney may have pointed out many errors in judgment in the way the war was fought or ended, but ending the war, in itself, could not have possibly been said by Romney to have been “tragic.”   Misquoting Romney and others, and not even realizing the need to apologize, shows a character flaw in our president which is truly tragic.

Taxation

Obama speaks of tax increases for millionaires, but then proceeds to define them as entities with income over $250,000, including small businesses.  Nearly half of the people in our country do not pay any taxes, and the top 1% and 10% of our wealthy people already pay far and away more taxes than members of the middle class.  Some of their income is from investments, which can be legally sheltered, and should not be expected to be taxed at the same rate as income, which is why in effect some secretaries appear to pay taxes on a comparable percentage of their INCOME.

If the wealthy will perceive they are overtaxed (even if other people believe they are not), and if owners of small businesses will be defined as wealthy with a threshold of $250,000, they will leave the country, just as they leave an overtaxed state to settle in a state with more moderate taxes, and they will take their businesses as producers (with the jobs they produce, as well as their goods) – and their business as consumers – to other countries.  This is one change Obama did not promise that is indeed happening on Obama’s watch. Not enough Americans are watching. More should watch.  There isn’t much time. The time bomb of a loss of too many job creators to allow for adequate employment is almost upon us.

Why Obama says we didn’t elect him

Perhaps the most ludicrous of the many ludicrous statements in this speech was Obama’s declaration that “You didn’t elect me to tell you what you wanted to hear.”  That’s interesting; it would certainly seem to most people that they wanted to hear about “hope and change,” and they didn’t want to hear how Obama expected to pay for it by killing the goose that laid the golden eggs!
THE END

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