I imagine that a major topic of tonight’s Mc Laughlin report will be the latest poll numbers showing 54% regard President Obama as “incompetent” and that 33% regard him as the worst president since 1945. I cam remember when they thought that about Jimmy Carter and never thought grinning Jimmy would ever live that down, but now he’s got a Black man do assume a role he’d rather not stoop to playing. (Selah) We are coming up on the fourth anniversary of when I came to the conclusion that President Obama should not run again. It took me a while to track it down but there are two files right together where I said the same thing. As you know 33% of Americans believe that Barock Obama is the worst President we’ve had since World War II. He beats out Carter, Bush, Ford, and Nixon for this distinction. 54% of the people believe that President Obama is “incompetent”. Just think of all the trouble the democrats could have avoided by running a more sensible candidate in 2012. But President Obama is a very vain man. He doesn’t care what others think. And to be frank, this is a major character flaw. Didn't your mother tell you "Just because you CAN do something doesn't mean you SHOULD do it". (Selah) First of all he has negatively impacted his own race, perhaps for decades or longer, before the Democrats ever think about running a Black man for President again. He is virtually doomed to be a lame duck President for the next two and a half years, but he knew this four years ago. He didn’t care. He didn’t care about the damage he was doing to his party, or the progressive left, or for that matter indirectly to his country, or to the office of the Presidency itself which had undergone a drastic loss in overall respect since he has occupied the White House. All of these things have been negatively impacted by President Obama’s choosing to run for a second term. There is virtually no possibility of any political “rehabilitation” of President Obama. He will be the second President in a row to leave in a virtual state of disgrace. What must his wife and kids think? If I were President Obama back in July of 2011 I would have thought of more than just how much fun it is to ride on Air Force I and pal around with foreign dignitaries, and make those endless trips to Hollywood for another round of money raising. And now I wonder - much of that goes to- - oh Labor Unions- - or the City of Detroit- - or defense funds against citizens unjustly tried?
- - - - - h e r e - - i s - - t h e - - p a s t e - - - -
I guess I’m waiting for the Mc Laughlin group because they usually evoke some written response on my part. This morning the idea that Obama must not run again became clear in my mind. He has completely alienated his democratic base, which is also a reason why the election of 2010 went so bad. It’s because the young and the dispossessed did not care to show up and vote. The tea party always does. Other than the trio of Randy Rhodes, Thom Hartman, and Stephanie Miller, I’m not sure any other democrat is inclined to be an apologist for this President now. Obviously the media hates him. They will listen to the political right, but they will not listen to people on the left who think Obama is a major sell-out on every issue and in fact stands for nothing. (Selah) This is Saturday July 9, 2011 and Eye Witness news is on now. I really need to look in on Chris Matthews. I’ll check that now. An E mail just donged.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I was watching that space guy for a half hour discussing the possibility and definite plans for putting people on Mars for the decade of the 2030’s. I’ll be about eighty by then so it’ll be a little too late for me. This guy’s fourteen year old granddaughter says Mars is not visionary enough, but we need to travel out of the solar system. And then the guy said that “We need to make long term plans beyond that of our children and grandchildren, to colonize space since we don’t know how long planet earth will be habitable, and this is what good societies do”. There was talk about how working with a space simulator is vastly different because of gravity and orbital mechanics, than flying a fighter craft and pinpointing a target. This guy was a marine and thought he was prepared for anything. This speech was delivered April 22nd about the time when there was a lot of astronomical stuff in the news with the moon, and with Mars being at its closest approach to earth. He expressed hope that the US could again send rockets into space as early as 2017, and then we would work around the Moon trying to capture an asteroid and putting it in lunar orbit, so that we can study it at length. Of course the decision was made in 2004 to scrap the space shuttle program as the upshot of an investigation as to why and how the Columbia blew up in early 2003. Of course then you have your Christians saying that they know it as a fact that earth is the only planet with life, because God told them, and besides Jesus was coming back in a few years so it would be a mute point anyhow. Then we have that “balloon craft” that blows up really big once it leaves earth’s atmosphere. The speaker kind of reminded us how “You can’t steer a parked car” and we need to go SOME direction now, and then tweak it later. “If we just float around in a sea of endless ideas, we’ll never get anything accomplished”.
Bit coins or “digital on-line currency” got off to a slow start because one guy tried to buy lunch in New York with bit coin and it took him two weeks. Now he says there are “several restaurants in New York” that accept it. Bit coin in Argentina is five hundred times as prevalent as it is here. There are other “properties” of bit coin I was not aware of. First of all it bypasses the banks and can be transferred from person to person directly. But they claim there is a “deflation problem” of all things because bit coins are always increasing in value, kind of like gold, so that one is less and less inclined to spend it but rather to hoard it. And they say there is the instability of value problem because bit coin may fluctuate ten percent or more in a day. But this whole process “takes governments out of the equation”. I hardly see this as a problem, and indeed it almost seems like a right wing panacea. But it does have interesting possibilities for illegal commerce such as narcotics. And the thought hits that somehow the government might declare the whole thing illegal because they can’t control it. Others say “It’s too wide spread worldwide for that. The whole concept still seems really strange to me. They have these kinds of stories on this weekend- - because nobody wants to hear regular news, and it’s probably a good thing, to take a vacation from that - occasionally.
Tropical storm Arthur has been making its way up the east coast. Thursday night it passed by the outer banks of North Carolina – and I heard someone even say Virginia Beach , and last night it visited activity on all that Cape Cod eastern area of New England. It’s one of the earliest major storms we have had on the Atlantic. We are reminded endlessly of the weather, and yesterday there was some horrific dust storm in Phoenix, and the whole state of California is as dry as a tinderbox. I went out for a smoke and then down the elevator glancing at the soccer game where I missed that cherry shortcake desert they had for snacks, and I didn’t want macaroni in a cup, so just hat two cups of coffee. Loretta took forever to move out of the way.
I tuned in that ode to Benjamin Franklin historic thing and watched almost the whole thing. Franklin’s son was a loyalist and would be all his life, so Benjamin cut him out of his will. He had a seventeen year old grandson that Benjamin tried to turn into one of the French aristocracy. But the grandson went on to become a business failure and die an early death. Franklin did not treat his wife well at all and would not return for her funeral, just like Mom and Dad would not interrupt their New England vacation to attend Nana’s funeral. Franklin’s drive above all else was public service and so he founded the public library and the fire department. He also did things like study the Gulf Stream and came up with other knowledge about electricity besides inventing the lightning rod. He said “Newton isn’t practical enough for me”. Franklin was very strongly anti slavery tword the end of his life. Of the found fathers he got along with Jefferson the best. Franklin spent protracted time overseas- like in France, as a diplomat. The French said they could trust Franklin more than most American. He negotiated all the loans from the French we got during the revolutionary war. They did not mention daylight savings time. I heard he thought of that when he was annoyed at how early the sun came up in a French hotel room.
No comments:
Post a Comment