Month: July 2009

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has just announced she will not run for reelection in 2010, and that is big news!

It would have been difficult to win reelection for Palin, with all of the controversies swirling around her.  Also,  being Governor would have tied her down to events in her home state, which an ambitious person would find stifling.

It is obvious that Sarah Palin is planning to run for President in 2012, and it cannot be done when one has to travel from Alaska to the lower 48 during the primary and caucus series of elections.

So we will be burdened with Sarah Palin, who thinks she is qualified to lead this nation, a view which only a hardline group of evangelicals hold, as a Presidential candidate in 2012.  It will certainly be interesting and fascinating political theatre, but I hope she realizes that she really needs to update her knowledge of the world around her if she does not want to look foolish and ridiculous in competition with the likes of Mitt Romney,  Tim Pawlenty, Charlie Crist,  Haley Barbour, Mike Huckabee  (all likely potential candidates),  and also the possibility of  Bobby Jindal,  Newt Gingrich,  Rick Perry  (despite their self destructive performances lately),  and additionally others such as Jeb Bush and Tom Ridge.

In any case, the GOP race for President may already, unofficially, have begun!

When one reflects on the disaster that the Republican Party has been through in the first half of 2009,  one has to say that former Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts looks better and better!

With the self destruction of so many GOP potential Presidential candidates–including Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, Newt Gingrich, John Ensign, Mark Sanford, and Rick Perry–Mitt Romney looks more legitimate and serious.  With his business experience, his family’s auto industry background,  his enactment of a state health care plan in Massachusetts,  his outstanding speaking ability,  his photogenic good looks, and his being a Republican NOT from the South or Appalachia (the basic image of the Republican party after the election of 2008),  Romney must be seen as the front runner for 2012 at this point.

On the other hand, the fact that Romney is a Mormon and is not therefore acceptable to the evangelical Christian wing of the GOP,  and the charges that his record in Massachusetts shows him to be a phony conservative,  can be seen as his major negatives.

But at this point,  if I was to put betting money down,  and I am NOT doing that LOL :),  I would say Mitt Romney is the man to beat!

Associate Justice Clarence Thomas has surprised even hardline conservatives in the recent Supreme Court term by demonstrating that he has moved to the right of his ideological twin,  Associate Justice Antonin Scalia.

On the decision upholding the Voting Rights Act, Thomas was the only one who wanted to overturn the law.  Now he is also the only one who felt that it was appropriate for a middle school to strip search a female student searching for drugs, specifically ibuprofen!

Thomas reasoned that a public school had the right to promote order, safety and discipline without any recourse to the Constitution for students.  This is astounding, and makes one glad he is not a principal of a school. 

Imagine–Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito, John Roberts, and Anthony Kennedy all joined the liberals on the Court—John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Stephen Breyer, and David Souter–in affirming that there are limits on what schools can do in the name of order, safety and discipline!  Clarence Thomas isolated himself, unaffected by the views of the eight others on the Court, and it makes one wonder how does this man tick?   What is the true story about this man and his psychology–a man who has said he wants to stay on the Court for 43 years, until he is 86, in order to confound the "damned liberals"!  But now he is defying those who agree with him over the years on most issues,  but have demonstrated some room for growth!  What a sad story for America!

What a sad, pitiful man Clarence Thomas is becoming, and reams will be written in history about this man and his narrowminded view of the Constitution and of life in general!

Barack Obama has just been added to the Hall of Presidents attraction at Disney World in Orlando, Florida, just as the Fourth of July holiday comes upon us.

It is said that the likeness of Obama is the best ever produced at Disney World, including his voice, speech cadence, wardrobe, hair, facial expressions and mannerisms. 

An already popular attraction at Disney World for the past forty years, it is certain that the new and improved Hall of Presidents will bring even larger crowds over this holiday and in the future.

It makes it more likely that the author will find time to revisit Disney World and the Hall of Presidents, which he last visited in 2002.  🙂

News has just come that the Russian government under Dmitry Medvedev, (but still under the influence of Vladamir Putin),  has agreed to allow the US to ship military supplies over its air space to Afghanistan, where NATO forces are engaged in the war against the Taliban.

This news is startling, to imagine a Russian government trusting the United States government enough to allow this, and overcomes the traditional image of the Russians as suspicious, paranoid, defensive, distrusting and belligerent toward dealings with the US and other Western countries.

It is a tremendous change from the mistrust and antagonism often evident during the Bush Administration, and it is testimony to how Barack Obama has been transforming America’s image in world affairs.  I suppose that the right wing talk show hosts and many Republicans will be critical and second guessing this development, because they still wish to promote the old Cold War mentality, but it seems likely now that American relations with the Russians will  be on a steady course toward improvement.

Let’s applaud the President for this accomplishment, which is certainly, at least on paper, a great achievement, and hope for its continued success!

President Obama celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Gay Rights movement,  (The Stonewall Riots in NYC),  on Monday with a large crowd of gay activists at the White House, the first time this group has been given such legitimacy by a President of the United States.

There have been a lot of complaints and grousing by gay rights advocates that the President has not been rapid enough in dealing with the issues of gay marriage,  "don’t ask, don’t tell" in the military, and hate crimes against gays  (a growing crisis).    But Obama made it clear that it was part of his agenda,  and that he was certain that by the time his term in office ended,  the gay community would be satisfied with the results.  He stated that these issues could not be resolved immediately, but were a high priority of his administration.

While it is frustrating for those who want quick action,  one must realize that Obama is dealing with a multitude of issues, and as the old saying goes:  "Rome was not built in a day".   The amount of topics that Obama is confronting and promoting is mind boggling, and therefore, the element of patience must be considered, and I believe that there will be great change in the area of gay rights over time.  So I say, give the President time and we can expect results favorable to the gay community in a time frame that will be limited in duration.

With the settlement finally of the Minnesota Senate seat controversy, the possibility of a filibuster proof Senate with 60 Democrats emerges, but at the same time, the end of the Supreme Court term this week also shows the emergence of a growing conservative dominance, led by Chief Justice John Roberts,  with the growing support of swing vote Anthony Kennedy.

So it looks as if in the coming years, we may have the old conflict that existed during the years of the New Deal under Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1930s–a conservative Supreme Court and a progressive Congress and President. 

That only changed when Roosevelt was finally able to replace some of the members of the conservative controlled Court by retirements, after unsuccessfully trying to "pack the Court", an idea which helped to undermine a continuation of the New Deal.  There was great conflict during the height of the New Deal years, and that scenario seems more and more likely during the Obama years, with the difference being that Obama only has up to eight years, while FDR had more than 12 years to help reshape the Court. 

It is unlikely that there will be much transformation of the Court before Obama leaves office, as those most likely to leave–Ruth Bader Ginsberg and John Paul Stevens–are on the liberal end of the Court.  Barring natural events outside the control of anyone, it is unlikely that Anthony Kennedy or Antonin Scalia will be leaving the Court anytime soon.  At the same time, the comparative youth of John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito, make it unlikely that they will be leaving the Court for the next 12-20 years. 

So we may have a very interesting confrontation between a country moving, seemingly, to the left, but faced by a Supreme Court moving noticeably to the right ideologically.