President Obama Struggles to Find Himself

AS JACK NICKELSON WOULD SAY - - "I'M BACK !
Typed June 19, 2009

I might as well put something here down on paper so to speak on the subjects I would be blogging about were I not cut off from the internet now. President Obama is basically “trying to find himself” these days. He seems reluctant to want to overturn the “Defense of Marriage” act, and had his people at justice file a suit in court to defend this provision. This to me seems odd for a man who had loudly and often proclaimed his desire to advance gay rights. This is because this law itself is probably unconstitutional because it denies the “Full Faith and Credit” clause in the Constitution. This is the provision that says acts done in one state have to be recognized as legal in the other 49 states and why people can legally fly to Las Vegas to get married or get a divorce. As such I’m a little surprised the bill has not been challenged before now. Obama says he wants to advance the rights of gay people on matters of health coverage, but seems miserly in actually doing it. Also, and most importantly, this President promised to overturn the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” law in the military. Both President’s Clinton and Obama campaigned and were elected on this issue, and yet both backed away from their commitment. For President Obama a simple executive order would be all that is necessary to overturn the regulation and keep long standing gays from being booted out of the military after years of fruitful and loyal service. This is really a case where this writer has changed his position over the years. Gays have proven time and again that they are able to keep their “impulses” under control and that they are more than capable of carrying out their duties without being injurious to the entire group.

Also this President has trouble “finding himself” when it comes to figuring out who voted for him in the past election on economic issues. It wasn’t the corporatists who voted for him. Larry Summers and Timothy Geitner would never have been put into their posts were the choice put up before his constituency. These two believe in Big Money and are in that spirit holders from policies of the Bush Administration. And now Obama is slipping in the public opinion polls and people are wondering why. They are worried about these big Bush-Obama deficits. They don’t think GM and Chrysler should have been rescued, but believe more in the sink or swim mentality. Were this economy left to the market balancing mechanism Adam Smith talked about, things would in time come to reach a new state of equilibrium where the economy would be again functioning and in balance. But when the government steps in and throws the delicate Adam Smith model out of kilter and suddenly rich people are outright encouraged to make bad investments, then obviously you’re going to have big problems. People like Thom Hartman want new sweeping laws in all sorts of areas such as campaign finance. My philosophy is that full disclosure is all that is needed as a remedy here. “Sunshine is the best disinfectant” as they say, and people should be encouraged to read up. Now President Obama wants some whole new department of Finance or something with new powers given to the Federal Reserve they don’t even have now. The solution in my opinion is not the imposition of new regulations but a restoration of the old regulations that were done away with by Presidents Reagan and Clinton, many bills being passed in the waning years while Clinton was still in office that overturned long-standing regulations about Banks being gambling institutions given to investment speculation. In your grand dad’s day, banking was a rather dull, if not stifling occupation carried out by drab old men in gray suits, whereas today banking affairs are more in the style of Gordon Gecko, from the “Wall Street” movie, with lots of spine tingling roller coaster action. There are laws meant to curb the abuses exposed in the crash of 1907 that the neo cons of today have seen the abolition of. The worst thing President Obama could do is let the financial community write the new regulations. Almost anybody else- -would do a better job.

In the case of the election in Iran it’s a case of “I told you so”. Now the highest ruler in Iran has decreed that the election was fair and the results won’t be overturned. They will not hold a second election. The Republicans and others today passed a bill supporting the spirit of protest of the Iranian people in saying the election was not fair and that they should not cut off communication to the outside world. As you know since the internet has been cut off in that country, it’s hard to get images out to the outside world, even though that is being done. Some may hope that like thirty years ago that there will be a revolution and unlike in 1979, a better and not worse government will then be instituted. I told you in previous postings I did not think this would happen because the lock on government was too secure. Eastern Europe suffered for several decades under Communist rule despite glimmers of hope in Hungary in 1956 and the “Prague Spring” of 1968, only to have the iron lid of security come clamping down harder.

In this area of southern California we are finally getting some warmer, sunnier weather. But we aren’t the only people to have below average temperatures this spring. I hear that in places such as Boston and New York and Chicago they have had below average temperatures this past month, as we have. I know they released that global warming report a week or so ago but I haven’t seen that become a reality yet. Illinois doesn’t have the climate of Texas, New Hampshire doesn’t have the climate of the Carolinas, and Florida and Louisiana are not underwater. However I sill agree that the West has been abnormally low in rainfall, and it’s been that way for quite a number of years leaving forests open to diseases by agents such as pine beetles. We have to believe the experts who tell us that often symptoms of “global warming” is actually cooler weather in some places. But only hindsight is twenty / twenty.

Meanwhile the climate in Washington DC and in Congress has become downright stiffeling and unhealthful. President Obama wants “clean coal” and others say that this is a nonsensical term. I don’t know who is right. I do believe we need to proceed full throttle with sequestration of carbon technology. I wish I knew to what extend that “new technology” of all kinds is or isn’t being bought up by big corporations, only to take the technology off the market and insure that the public never knows about it. To me this might just be an area where we could have new legislation passed specifically to deal with this current ongoing reality. If you watched Days of our Lives today you know how the Di Mira family has the Courts in its back pocket, and they will issue any ruling that you choose. I don’t know if this is true for corporations. We hear that Thom Dashel’s wife is on the boards of various health insurance companies, and this is why Dashel came out against Obama’s health plan. People should read up on their congressmen and find out which team their man is pitching for. It’s rather strange to think of the sort of bills that would be getting passed now if George Bush were still in office and he had 59 going on 60 members of his party in the US Senate. But somehow the rules seemed different for them. Which raises the question as to exactly why is Al Franken not Minisota’s junior senator yet? I don’t know. I’ve never heard of an election recount taking this long. Democrats have been waiting nearly six months for their “New Day” but somehow things just haven’t played out the way everybody envisioned. (Selah)