George W. Bush

Choosing A Sitting House Member For Vice President Not Productive!

Ronald Leave a comment

This author mentioned last week that Paul Ryan was the fifth member of the House of Representatives to be nominated for Vice President in the past half century, which is true.

However, two of those five House members were not still in the House of Representatives when nominated for Vice President, and had accomplished beyond being a member of the House. These are Jack Kemp, nominated with Bob Dole in 1996, who was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President George H. W. Bush from 1989-1993; and Dick Cheney, nominated with George W. Bush in 2000, who was Secretary of Defense under the first President Bush for the same years as Kemp, 1989-1993.

But the only SITTING House members to be nominated were William E. Miller with Barry Goldwater in 1964; Geraldine Ferraro with Walter Mondale in 1984; and now Paul Ryan with Mitt Romney in 2012.

The first two experiments were a total failure, with Goldwater losing all but six states in 1964, and Lyndon B. Johnson winning the highest percentage in history, 61.1 percent of the popular vote. And Mondale lost all states except Minnesota and the District of Columbia, with Ronald Reagan winning 525 electoral votes, an all time high, and 59.4 percent of the total popular vote!

No one is saying that Romney and Ryan will do as disastrously as the other two cases, but the prospects for victory are based on very long odds!

Conservatives Attempting To Take Credit For Death Of Osama Bin Laden Away From President Obama: Is There No Sense Of Decency And Propriety Left?

Ronald 23 Comments

A new video is coming out which lies about President Obama and the death of Osama Bin Laden, claiming that Obama is taking full credit for apprehending Bin Laden, focusing totally on himself for political reasons, and failing to give full credit to the troops and special forces involved in the operation.

Is there no sense of decency and propriety left? The facts are that Obama did NOT focus on himself when announcing the success of the mission; gave FULL credit to the sacrifices and training and expertise of the special forces and troops; and clearly deserves FULL credit for accomplishing the goal, but of course with the work of the military!

If Obama’s decision to go after Osama Bin Laden had failed, we would never have heard the end of it, and it would have been used to demonstrate that he is weak, ineffective, a failure, much like Jimmy Carter was depicted after the failed rescue mission in Iran in April 1980.

It took guts and courage for President Obama to decide to follow through, and it is a profile in courage of massive amounts!

Strange that we have never had any other President, who was involved in a successful decision making process, facing criticism and being told that he deserves no credit for what he did!

There is no area of Obama’s Presidency that does not have an element of constant attack, even on the most outstanding single event of Obama’s term as President!

One has to wonder IF George W. Bush had accomplished the goal, he would have bragged to the skies about it,and no one would have denied him the credit for the success!

So it comes down to the fact that a person who is African American must be constantly attacked, and denied any credit or respect! Can anyone deny that when conservatives go so low as to deny credit for the most courageous decision of any President since the Cuban Missile Crisis and John F. Kennedy in 1962, fifty years ago?

Surprise: “Golden Boy” Paul Ryan Budget Plan Balances The Budget In 2040!

Ronald 5 Comments

Paul Ryan is supposed to be the “Golden Boy” of the Republican Party, their best hope for the future!

Ryan emphasizes the idea that we must transform Medicare to a voucher system to “save” it, and that Social Security must be privatized, and Food Stamps and Medicaid eviscerated. But at the same time, he wishes to cut taxes dramatically for the top two percent, worse than the Bush tax cuts, and raise taxes on the average person!

And all this to “balance the budget” BY 2040, TWENTY EIGHT YEARS from now!

This is courage? This is “reform”? Give me a break!

Paul Ryan: Big Spender When Corporations Or Republican Party Wants It, But Not Under Democrats Or Barack Obama!

Ronald 1 Comment

Conservatives and delusional people believe Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney’s Vice Presidential running mate, is the solution to BIG government and high spending levels.

The truth is that is ONLY true when Barack Obama is President, or the Democrats had control of Congress, beginning in 2007!.

Paul Ryan backed the Wall Street bailout when the economic collapse was occurring in the Fall of 2008.

Paul Ryan voted for all spending on the Iraq War, having no doubts.

Paul Ryan voted for all spending on the Afghanistan War, having no doubts.

Paul Ryan voted for the Bush Prescription Drug Plan in 2003, without making an issue of adding to the national debt, by refusal to pay for the plan with taxes.

Paul Ryan has become a deficit “hawk” only when Barack Obama became President, and when Ryan became head of the House Budget Committee in 2011.

Paul Ryan has a career of being a big spender, except when it was politically convenient to make an issue of every funding bill under President Obama.

Paul Ryan is, therefore, not what his supporters think he is, and already, there is “buyer’s remorse”, a fear among Congressional Republicans that they will have trouble being reelected with the burden of the Ryan Plan on their backs.

Some see a major disaster in the making, a nearly total wipe out of GOP gains in Congress in 2010, after only two years in the majority!

Ryan may turn out to be worse for the party’s fortunes than Dan Quayle or Sarah Palin! Who would have thought that?

The Battle For The Jewish Vote In The Presidential Election Of 2012: The Role Of The Republican Jewish Coalition

Ronald 3 Comments

The Jewish vote may be a small percentage of all votes cast in national elections, but it is well known that the Jewish community votes in higher percentages than any other group in American society, and the concentration of the Jewish population in certain states can have a great impact on the electoral college, as for example, Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio, all swing or battleground states.

So the battle for the Jewish vote is intense, with the Republican Jewish Coalition trying to increase the percentage of the Jewish population willing to vote Republican, which was unsuccessful in 2008, when 78 percent of the Jewish vote went to Barack Obama.

Latest indications are that 64 percent of the Jewish vote presently is in the Obama camp, down 14 points, but still two thirds of all Jews. So the Republican Jewish Coalition is hard at work trying to convince even more Jews of the following ideas:

1, Obama is not sufficiently pro Israel, and cannot be trusted to support Israel, due to the well known tension that exists at times between the Obama Administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

2. Obama refuses to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, because of concerns about the Middle East balance.

3. Obama has not visited Israel as President in his first term, although he did as a candidate in 2008.

The reality is that the Republican Jewish Coalition has distorted reality dramatically, so how can one answer these three accusations?

1. Obama has backed Israel in the United Nations, has supported lots of extra aid and military support to Israel, has spoken up in defense of Israel in every way possible. And Israeli Defense Minister and former Prime Minister Ehud Barak and President Shimon Peres have issued lavish praise on Obama as a great friend of Israel, as good as any other American President from Harry Truman through George W. Bush, and both Israeli leaders went out of their way to issue these statements of support.

2. It is true that no move has been made to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, but NO President from Lyndon B. Johnson through George W. Bush has been willing to do so, because of sensitivity about peace negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis, and this includes Republican Presidents Richard Nixon,. Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush, a total of FIVE Republican Presidents, as compared to FOUR Democratic Presidents, including Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Obama!

3. It is true that Obama has not visited Israel in his first term, but NO President, Democratic nor Republican, has done so in their first term, and of course, Ford, Carter, and Bush I only served one term or less as President.

So the accusations of the Republican Jewish coalition are distorted, untrue, purely propaganda, and it will not succeed in bringing larger than about a third of the Jewish vote to Mitt Romney!

Triumph Of Progressivism: A Turning Point Challenge Fifty Years Apart: 1912, 1964, 2012!

Ronald 6 Comments

The battle between conservatism and progressivism/liberalism has been an never ending struggle throughout American history, going back to the time of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, and the creation of the first political party system in the Federalist Era of the 1790s.

After a half century of conservatism in charge in the Gilded Age and early Progressive Era, in 1912, we finally had the triumph of progressivism with the election of Woodrow Wilson, and the stellar second place finish of Theodore Roosevelt on the Progressive Party line. Wilson proceeded to promote economic and social reforms, partly based on Roosevelt’s ideas, and partly his own, and much of what was accomplished in the second decade of the 20th century remains with us today.

Reversion to Gilded Age mentality occurred under GOP Presidents in the 1920s and early 1930s, and the Great Depression led to a smashing landslide for Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s and 1940s, with the New Deal expanding much of what TR and Wilson had advocated, and additional ideas growing out of the economic crisis.

Harry Truman attempted more reforms in the late 1940s and early 1950s, but most were stymied by a conservative resurgence, and a similar situation existed in the Eisenhower years, and the Kennedy Presidency.

But when Lyndon B. Johnson came in after the assassination of President Kennedy, he dedicated himself to accomplishment of what FDR, Truman, and Kennedy could not achieve, and to expand beyond the New Deal of FDR with the Great Society.

The Republican Party and conservatives saw an opportunity to negate all of the economic and social changes of TR, Wilson and FDR, and Barry Goldwater, the 1964 right wing opponent of Johnson, declared war on the New Deal, and the result was a landslide defeat, and the greatest expansion of progressivism yet in our history.

By the time that Ronald Reagan won a victory for conservatives in 1980, and continuing through George W. Bush leaving in 2009, Republicans and the right wing set out to reverse the Great Society and New Deal, one program at a time, with Democrats being able to stop complete destruction, but Republicans and conservatives nipping away at one area of policy after another, and in the process increasing our national debt from $1 trillion when Reagan became President to $10.5 trillion when George W. Bush left office.

Barack Obama came in with the intention of solidifying the New Deal and Great Society, and also bringing a new Progressive Era. And now Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are declaring war on everything that has been done by the federal government in the past century—from TR, to Wilson, to FDR, to Truman, even to Ike, to JFK, LBJ, even Nixon, Carter, even George H. W. Bush, to Clinton, to Obama–in their desire to make America ever more an oligarchy, a corporate dominated nation, and to destroy the middle class and the poor, and return us to the Gilded Age that began in the 1870s!

So 2012 is the most ideological election since 1964, as that election was the most ideological election since 1912!

The future of every social and economic reform of the past century is at stake in this election, and progressives and liberals cannot afford to sit on the sidelines, as this is as Theodore Roosevelt dramatically called it a century ago, an ultimate battle of Armageddon for the future of America!

Odd And Interesting Points About Paul Ryan, And The Presidential Election Of 2012

Ronald 4 Comments

There are many odd and interesting points about Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan that have been gathered, and here are some of them!

Paul Ryan, like Mitt Romney, is handsome, and they look good together photogenically.

Paul Ryan looks as if he could be one of Mitt Romney’s sons, and actually is only 12 days older than Romney’s oldest son, Tagg!

Paul Ryan has spent his whole adult life in government, with no experience in the private sector.

Paul Ryan was affected by the narrow minded, selfish teachings of Ayn Rand, and he was involved in work with former Congressman Jack Kemp, one of the authors of what became known as Reaganomics, which started tripling the national debt in the 1980s, due to the theory of Supply Side Economics. Now, Ryan wishes to multiply what Reaganomics in the 1980s and Bushonomics in the 2000s brought about, most of the increased national debt, $7 trillion of the total $10.5 trillion debt that existed when George W. Bush left the Presidency in January, 2009!

Paul Ryan’s dad died when he was in high school, and he was supported by the social safety net of Social Security with survivors benefits while in college.

Paul Ryan has lived off the American taxpayer his entire life, and will receive better health care and pension benefits as part of the federal payroll, that he wishes to cut for everyone else in the middle and lower classes!

Paul Ryan alienated Catholic nuns when he came out for cuts in food stamps and other benefits to poor children, and called for privatizing of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, while wanting greater tax cuts for the top two percent!

Paul Ryan was booed in his own congressional district for the Ryan plan which passed the House of Representatives earlier this year, but with no Democratic support and ten Republicans voting against, as well.

Paul Ryan comes across as articulate, handsome, and charming personally, the latter much more than Mitt Romney, but he also comes across to many as arrogant, nasty, mean spirited, uncaring, hypocritical , uncompromising, and loved by the Tea Party and the right wing media which have declared war on women, senior citizens, the middle class, minorities, and the poor!

Paul Ryan has no foreign policy experience, and being only a Congressman, can be seen as not qualified to be Commander in Chief on Day One!

This is the 5th time in the past half century that a member of the House of Representatives has been selected as a Vice Presidential running mate—William E. Miller of New York with Barry Goldwater in 1964; Geraldine Ferraro of New York with Walter Mondale in 1984; Jack Kemp of New York with Bob Dole in 1996; Dick Cheney of Wyoming with George W. Bush in 2000; and now Paul Ryan of Wisconsin with Mitt Romney in 2012. Notice all four of the earlier choices LOST the election that followed, with the exception of Cheney with Bush, but remember that Al Gore actually won the popular vote in 2000 by 540,000 votes, and the Supreme Court decided the election, intervening for the first time in American history!

And as said in an earlier post, finally, this marks the fourth time in the past 60 years that the Vice Presidential nominee has been more than 20 years younger than the Presidential nominee—Richard Nixon with Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952; Dan Quayle with George H. W. Bush in 1988; Sarah Palin with John McCain in 2008; and now Paul Ryan with Mitt Romney in 2012.

Additionally, we have no one on either ticket for this upcoming election who is from the Sun Belt states, the growing part of the nation. Instead, we have a Midwesterner and an Easterner on each ticket–Barack Obama and Paul Ryan from the Midwest, and Joe Biden and Mitt Romney from the Northeast!

Also, there is no candidate with military experience on either Presidential ticket, the first time since the 1940s!

And we also have no mainline Protestant on the Republican ticket, a mainstay of the GOP, and instead have a Mormon and a Catholic.

If anything, the only true “Protestant” is Barack Obama, as Joe Biden is Catholic!

More oddities and trivia will probably arise as the campaign develops further!

38 Years Since Gerald Ford Became President: The Last Moderate, Mainstream Republican Before Conservatism Took Hold Of The GOP!

Ronald 8 Comments

On this day in 1974, President Richard Nixon resigned, and Gerald Ford, who never sought the Presidency, became President, serving out the term of two years, five and a half months, losing a full term to Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Ford had his problems and opponents, and his administration will never be ranked among the best, but as Ted Kennedy said in 1999, awarding special honors to President Ford, 25 years after he pardoned President Nixon, Ford had indeed done the right thing regarding Nixon, and had demonstrated both courage and decisiveness in office.

In so doing, Ford gained the respect of the American people, maybe somewhat belatedly, but when on looks back almost four decades ago, one realizes that Gerald Ford was a decent man, a compassionate man, a moderate conservative who worked in the mainstream, but was weakened by the beginning of the right wing takeover of the GOP by Ronald Reagan, which also affected the Presidency of George H. W. Bush and that of his son, George W. Bush.

Ford looks better all of the time, particularly at a time when the GOP is so far to the right that it is literally scary what they wish to do–abolish the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Great Society of Lyndon B. Johnson!

And his wife, Betty, is also an inspiring figure, much beloved and respected.

So in retrospect, Gerald and Betty Ford look a lot better than what we have been offered since by the party that once had as leaders such luminaries as Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Dwight D. Eisenhower!

Barack Obama And “RomneyHood”!

Ronald 5 Comments

President Obama has come up with a new term for his opponent, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for President.

Referring to Robin Hood as the man who stole from the rich to give to the poor, Obama called what Romney represents as “RomneyHood”, in that he wishes to steal from the poor and middle classes to give to the rich, as if they need more tax cuts than they have already received under the Bush tax cuts of the past decade.

Mitt Romney is trying to overcome his wealthy, uncaring image, so he went shopping yesterday for a few items near his mansion in New Hampshire, and looked totally ridiculous, preposterous, and phony, which is nothing new for him.

It is clear that he cannot even shop and seem like a normal human being, and is totally non-communicative with the media in the process of acting stiff and formal, even when shopping.

This man is an aristocrat who cannot relate to average people and never will, and calling what he wishes to do as “RomneyHood” is, therefore, totally appropriate!

The Vice Presidential Selection: More Important Than Many People Realize!

Ronald Leave a comment

The office of the Vice Presidency has often been ridiculed, and some have argued for its abolition by a constitutional amendment, but that is a wrong headed idea.

The Vice Presidency has become an important office since the 1950s, when Richard Nixon transformed the office, both by his own ambitions, and the willingness of President Dwight D. Eisenhower to allow the office to expand.

While Lyndon B. Johnson under John F. Kennedy and Hubert H. Humphrey under Johnson were not used effectively by their Presidents, and while Spiro Agnew under Richard Nixon and Dan Quayle under George H. W. Bush could be seen as disasters in office, still the office has grown in stature and accomplishments otherwise.

So Gerald Ford, in his brief Vice Presidency under Richard Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller under Gerald Ford, Walter Mondale under Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush under Ronald Reagan, Al Gore under Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney under George W. Bush, and Joe Biden under Barack Obama have had a great impact on the office, and made it an office of real power and influence!

When one realizes that Ford and the first Bush ended up in the White House, as did Nixon and Lyndon Johnson; and that Humphrey, Mondale, and Gore were Presidential nominees; and that Rockefeller and Biden both sought the Presidential nomination, one realizes that choosing a Vice Presidential nominee is not to be regarded as insignificant to the nation!

But can we afford another Agnew, Quayle, Geraldine Ferraro, or Sarah Palin to be a possible heartbeat away from the Presidency?

The answer clearly is NO, so Mitt Romney, by taking his time to choose a running mate, hopefully is carefully considering who could really contribute to the office, and help Romney if the two of them end up in the White House!

If one decides to forget everything but experience and competence, and ability to add to Romney’s candidacy, then the choice must be one of the following: Condoleezza Rice, Rob Portman, or Tim Pawlenty.

Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, Bob McDonnell, John Thune, and Kelly Ayotte all have issues and problems if they are chosen, and one could argue that some of them could not match the list of Vice Presidents who have served, as not being on their competency level.

But if one had to predict what now seems likely, don’t be surprised that Mitt Romney selects Paul Ryan, which would be an unmitigated disaster, as the controversy surrounding him and his economic plans would reverberate against Mitt Romney.

The gut feeling is that Ryan is on the top of the list, followed by Kelly Ayotte, who is simply not qualified to be President, and would not be much better than Sarah Palin was in the 2008 election cycle.

So bet on Ryan or Ayotte, but if Romney does the best for the nation, it would be Rice, Portman, or Pawlenty!