Day: August 18, 2011

The Republican Assault On The Environment!

The Republican Party has a heritage of Presidents who promoted the environment, but now it is being totally abandoned by the GOP House of Representatives and the Republican Presidential candidates, in their mad dash to support the oil and coal industries and others which pollute the environment and undermine Americans’ health and well being!

Theodore Roosevelt, while President from 1901-1909, became the supreme conservationist and environmentalist, promoting a quadrupling of national parks, calling conservation conferences at the White House, and working to cut industrial damage to the environment. The historian Douglas Brinkley has written a massive work hailing the environmental commitment of this second greatest Republican President, only ranking behind Abraham Lincoln in historical reputation!

Sixty years after Theodore Roosevelt left office, President Richard Nixon (1969-1974) became a major advocate of the environment, through the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, and his appointment of former Alaska Governor Walter Hickel as his Secretary of the Interior.

Twenty years after Nixon entered office, President George H. W. Bush (1989-1993) was able to get through the Clean Air Act of 1990, recognizing the great problem that had been created by industry and needing more federal intervention.

And now twenty years after Bush I became President, the party they led is backing away from any concern with the environment. It is not just Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann, but even Mitt Romney, who had earlier backed environmental protection as Governor of Massachusetts, has given up his principles in the pursuit to win the GOP Presidential nomination and appeal to Tea Party looniness! Legislation has been proposed to allow uranium mining in the Grand Canyon, a most reckless action, which thankfully can be prevented by the Democratic controlled Senate and a Democratic President using his veto.

This is a tragedy of massive proportions, and TR and Nixon must be turning over in their graves, and Bush I certainly must be very disturbed privately at the abandonment of the most important heritage America can offer to the future–clean air, clean water, clean soil!

Michele Bachmann Pledges $2 Gasoline If She Is President: Yeh, Sure!

Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann has been making a total fool of herself to anyone who has any brains or common sense!

She has made the most stupid, idiotic, statements imaginable about all kinds of subject and topics, making intelligent people’s eyes roll!

But now she has REALLY accomplished her all time greatest blunder ever: a campaign pledge that when she is President, gasoline will be below $2 a gallon!

Michele Bachmann apparently thinks that she can control the world’s oil prices, the oil cartel and the oil companies! She has no understanding of basic economics, and yet she is going to produce miracles! This woman is a raving maniac, hallucinating to the extreme, in her belief apparently that her so called connection to God is going to bring back $2 gasoline, which will NEVER occur!

This is a greater pledge than Herbert Hoover promising in 1928 to end poverty in America, and that every American would have two chickens in every pot, two cars in every garage! It is greater than Ronald Reagan saying he would balance the budget by the end of his first term, 1984! It is greater than Richard Nixon promising a return of law and order and bring us together when he first won the Presidency in 1968!

There is more chance that we will land on Mars in the next decade than that we are going to have $2 gasoline return!

This woman, Michele Bachmann, has lost all credibility, and needs to be drummed out of the race as a fool and a danger, because she can only incite mindless people who have no clue to how government works, and she promotes division, not unity, in the midst of major economic crisis, when wisdom, not stupidity and hallucination, needs to be present to deal with our problems as a nation!

The Political Hypocrisy Regarding President Obama’s Martha’s Vineyard Vacation!

President Obama, his wife, and two daughters are leaving Washington, DC for a ten day vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and the political attacks are beginning.

The argument that is given is that the country is in economic crisis, and that many people are not taking vacations and cannot afford them, and therefore, the President is not entitled to any vacation break.

What hypocrisy this is, when one considers that President George W. Bush took month long vacations regularly at Crawford, Texas, and President Ronald Reagan spent inordinate amounts of time on vacation at his ranch in California, but that is alright because they are Republicans, and the Republican House Speaker John Boehner is not in DC, and neither are his House members! If indeed, the President is not entitled to a vacation break, then neither are the GOP members of Congress!

The fact that Obama has more stress and tension than any President since Franklin D. Roosevelt, a lot of it engendered by the refusal of Republicans to be patriotic enough to cooperate with him on any matter or issue, is enough reason for Obama to have the right to a vacation break!

The President needs some off time to recharge his batteries, so to speak, and it is important for mental health and stability. And besides, it is not as if he will be out of the loop in dealing with issues and crises that might arise when he is away from the White House!

In a sense, the President is NEVER away from his job, just in a physical sense, not being in the building. What is more important is that he be aware of what is going on, and the commitment to avoid being lazy, such as George W. Bush being too lax to read the memos about Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden being an imminent threat to the United States in August 2001!

President Obama is always up to date, and more committed and dedicated to his job, than George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan EVER were, so give him slack and stop complaining that he has a vacation break, and in the process, is promoting “family values”, which the GOP claims to wish to promote!

Herman Cain, Allen West, Tim Scott: African American Republicans Who Come Across As Outside The Mainstream!

A recent development that makes one wonder about what motivates people is the candidacy of Herman Cain for President, and the words and actions of Congressmen Allen West of Florida and Tim Scott of South Carolina.

These people are the face of African Americans in the Republican Party, and all three have made people’s heads turn and eyes roll, as all three have come across as way out of the mainstream of American politics!

Herman Cain, former talk show host and corporate President of Godfather Pizza, is running for President, and making ridiculous statements, including letting the average American decide if a mosque can be built in his or her community, and stating that he would not appoint a Muslim to his cabinet. He also has made statements against Mormons, as not being a Christian group, and while that could be argued, the answer is who cares, as we do not have a religious test for public office!

How would the American people react if we were to say that a church or synagogue could not be built? It is not up to the average American to limit the rights of any religious group to organize, and Cain shows tremendous prejudice against both Muslims and Mormons.

Now Cain has suggested that Barack Obama face impeachment because of the Health Care legislation, and because the administration is attempting to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. So we are to impeach a President because we disagree with his policy choices? Then every President would face impeachment!

Also, Cain claims he woke up after finishing fifth in the Ames, Iowa Straw Poll, believing that he will be the Republican Presidential nominee, which means he is mentally deranged, having delusions of grandeur! What an embarrassment to the party and to the African American community at large, and notice he has no ideas or suggestions to help create jobs for his own community or Americans at large!

Then, there is Allen West, who uses incendiary language regularly, uses his military background as a plus, even though he was drummed out of the military for inappropriate behavior in Iraq, and fails to act in a chivalrous manner against anyone who dares to criticize him on the issues! So he goes ahead and insults Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to the extreme, using inappropriate language in an email, over reacting to her denunciation of his stand against Medicare, when he has hundreds of thousands of constituents in his district who are covered by Medicare. West refused to apologize for his outburst, and obviously has an anger problem, and yet some are crazy enough to suggest him for Vice President!

Tim Scott has also called for the impeachment of Obama because of the Debt Ceiling Crisis, even though both he and West contributed to it through their support of the Tea Party Movement, and both of them are among the most right wing members of the GOP presently, and both are a disgrace in the sense of not accepting how their stands hurt the African American community at large.

It is almost as if Herman Cain, Allen West, and Tim Scott are aliens from outer space, who somehow got stranded on earth, and need to be examined in a lab for their weirdness, and anger, and self hate of who they are!