Louis R. Avallone

Category: Foreign Policy

  • Stupid is as Stupid Does

    Stupid is as Stupid Does

    By Louis R. Avallone

    –

    Sometimes we get so caught up in using labels that we miss the forest for the trees. Of course, labels help us organize our world, which is increasingly loud, confusing, and misleading. Folks often bite their tongue, or hold their comments back, afraid that they will be called a racist, or an elitist, a liberal, or a conservative, a sexist, or an anti-environmentalist – for simply what they believe.

    But no matter the label, I think it all boils down to the plain wisdom of Forest Gump’s momma when she said, “Stupid is as stupid does”.

    And the world is certainly full of lots of examples of stupid. It’s hard to comment on any of it, or engage someone in a meaningful discussion about it, without offending them – or some group – or risk being branded as a heartless so-and-so, or an insensitive you-know-what. Thus, lots of folks just keep their opinions to themselves.

    And a recent Pew Research poll indicated this as well: Most people who regularly use social media sites are less likely to share their opinions, even offline, unless they know their audience agrees. Our fear of isolation from others, it seems, keeps too many of us from sharing our opinions, and this encourages a sense of apathy, or a “to each his own” mentality.

    The problem with that, in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., is that “(o)ur lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

    For example, does it matter that welfare spending has increased 16-fold since the federal government began the “War on Poverty” in the 1960s, and that welfare spending has risen 32% since Obama took office? Yet the number of people on food stamps in the U.S. today exceeds the total population of Argentina (43,024,374)?

    Doesn’t it matter that Obama said earlier this month that he was “proud of saving the economy,” during the same week that 25,000 Americans filed for unemployment, and that the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 93 million Americans being unemployed now, or not even looking for work?

    Does it bother you that our federal government is borrowing 14¢ out of every dollar it spends now, just to keep the “lights on”, and yet Obama’s Executive Order on immigration enables those here illegally to get a check from the federal government through the Earned Income Tax Credit, even retroactively, going back 3 years? And did you know that last year the IRS sent $4.2 billion in checks to illegal immigrants in our country?

    This is exactly the kind of “stupid is that stupid does” thinking that will do us in. It’s contagious and it’s reaching epidemic levels – especially with the nonsense thinking in our society that places more value on how something looks or feels, rather than what it is actually.

    Does it bother you that our president is more concerned with “showing” the world that Americans are united together to fight ISIS terrorists, instead of him simply freeing up our military commanders to go break things and kill the bad guys (instead of just “showing” the bad guys how united we are in spirit)?

    And does it bother you that NBC anchor Brian Williams wanted to look more heroic when said his helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade as he was covering the Iraq war in 2003 (when it really didn’t), or when Hilary Clinton said that she landed in Bosnia in 1996 under sniper fire (when there wasn’t any)? Or when Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal wanted to appear as a war hero and said he served in Vietnam (when he hadn’t).

    If any of these examples bother you, speak out, be heard. There’s more people who think like you do than you might realize. And like fleas, roaches, rats, rust, and termites, if you say nothing, or ignore the problem, it will only become worse.

    Our society too often confuses doing something with actually accomplishing something. We give more praise and attention to those who care more, than those who actually help more.

    And it’s got to stop.

    So don’t be silent about things that matter, and call it like it is, no matter what side of the aisle you are on. And if anyone happens to get offended by you defending what you believe, especially the intellectuals who “know better” than the rest of us, just tell them to go see Forest’s momma. It’s not any more complicated than that.

    Image credit to grabgewalt.deviantart.com

  • Tell Me Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies

    Tell Me Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies

    By Louis R. Avallone
    –
    You probably have heard the song, “Little Lies” by Fleetwood Mac. You know the one. It goes, “Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies…” Well, there’s nothing sweet about this, and frankly, there’s almost nothing that makes me more angry.

    You see, in a recent radio interview with MSNBC host Al Sharpton, President Obama said it did not matter that Senate Democrats didn’t want him campaigning for them in their home states. He explained that those incumbent Senators, many whom are fighting for their political lives, “are all folks who vote with me” and “have supported my agenda in Congress”. We get it. You’re the President and folks need to go along to get along with you.

    But what he said next reveals such an utter disrespect for the truth that it represent one of the greatest threats to democracy everywhere, and an affront to every man and woman who has fought and died to preserve our liberty: He said he told these Senate Democrats running for re-election, “…you do what you need to do to win. I will be responsible for making sure our voters turn out.”

    That’s right, just say whatever you need to say to the voters to win, and I’ll be waiting here at home in Washington, where we can resume my agenda when you get back.

    In other words, it doesn’t matter that the latest polls consistently reflect that almost 3 out of every 4 of us believe that the country is headed in the wrong direction, or that Obama’s approval index is in negative territory.

    It doesn’t matter to Obama how much the American people disapprove of his agenda for America. He only needs the Senate Democrats to further that agenda along – and not you, or me, or the sanctity of truthfulness in democracy.

    But there was a time in our nation when elected officials subordinated their own partisan interests for the greater good of our national interests. There was also a time when there was shame for not following through on your promises, or respecting the will of your constituents. And when you didn’t, there was honor in accepting the consequences.

    These principles were, in large measure, what brought about President Nixon’s resignation in 1974, when both Republicans and Democrats agreed that he had crossed the line. In fact, it was the most prominent of conservative Republicans – not Democrats – who eventually convinced Nixon to resign. And this was after Nixon had been reelected by the largest margin in U.S. history.

    Today, however, doing “whatever you need to do to win” seems to be the moral compass of our politics, and it pays homage to the belief that the ends really do justify the means, even though this is the antithesis of what our founding fathers believed.

    Not sure? Remember Obama promised that, “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” Meanwhile, almost 100,000 Louisianans have had their health insurance policies cancelled this year.

    He told us that the “Fast and Furious” program was started under the preceding Bush administration, but it wasn’t. In fact, the Obama administration, in October 2009, deliberately allowed American guns to make their way illegally into Mexico, where they were used by drug cartels to kill dozens – including a U.S. Border Patrol Agent.

    Obama said there was, “Not even a smidgen of corruption,” when questioned about the IRS targeting political groups, such as the Tea Party. But now we know that wasn’t true, and that the IRS “did not follow the law”.

    We were told by Obama that the attack on our embassy in Benghazi was because of a “shadowy character” in our country who made an extremely offensive video directed at Mohammed and Islam that sparked a “spontaneous riot”, but we now know that wasn’t true either. In fact, the original CIA talking points were revised at least 12 different times by the White House, just to fit their narrative – instead of the truth.

    On Obama’s first day in office, he proclaimed to his staff and the press, “Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.” Well, you can see from these few examples, nothing could be farther from the truth.

    So while Mary Landrieu feigns disapproval of Obama, considering the 6-7 score she gave Obama during the Senate debate in Shreveport recently, she still votes 97% of the time with him, and his agenda for America – despite how 3 out of 4 of us feel about that.

    You see, widespread lying simply makes it hard for citizens to make the best choices in the voting machines. And if our culture embraces a “do whatever you need to do to win” philosophy, then voting becomes a sham, and our democracy only an illusion.

    But if the future of our nation is a choice between citizens voting on lies and those who care more about the “ends” than they do the “means”, then you’ll have to forgive me for getting up and leaving when the President starts singing, “Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies…” just to get Senate Democrats elected. That’s a performance – and so out of tune with what we believe as Americans – I just can’t listen to it anymore.

  • Original Ideas

    Original Ideas

    By Louis Avallone
    –
    The trouble with too many elected officials is that there is no idea too stupid for them to subsidize with your money. After all, these bureaucrats have more of your money than they do any original ideas of their own. In fact, many of them would not recognize an original idea if it bit them on the butt.
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    Instead of leading, our elected officials prefer to be more chameleon-like, and simply be what others want them to be.
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    But that’s backwards, right? Authentic leaders don’t watch polls to win popularity contests, or calibrate their convictions to win elections. They do the hard work of first setting goals, and then taking initiative.
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    They spend money on projects that are for the public good, and not merely on projects that help them while they are in office. Genuine leaders are transparent and they cut costs first, instead of raising your taxes. They set examples of good behavior for us, instead of merely legislating what’s good for us. They don’t blame, and they take responsibility for their actions.
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    As long as government has more of our money than good ideas, this type of leader will become more nostalgic in today’s “modern” world – and increasingly rare among elected officials everywhere.
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    In fact, Margaret Thatcher once wrote, “Do you know that one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas?” Maybe that’s why our federal government spent almost $600,000 to study where in a chimpanzee’s brain they get the idea to throw feces. Or why they spent $200 million to fund a reality television show in India to advertise U.S. cotton.
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    Or why Congress spent over $1 trillion in economic stimulus spending, when the results were record unemployment rates and the highest number ever of Americans collecting food stamps. Is there really any question that it was a good idea?
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    Or was it really a good idea for the President to propose a $1.5 trillion health care expansion and a $15 billion Medicaid bailout, when over 93,000 of our fellow Louisianans are still receiving cancellation notices for their health insurance, and premium costs are expected to rise, even for healthy citizens of our state, by an average of 266 percent this year?
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    Is there really any question that $3.7 billion in emergency spending on immigration is a good idea right now, when the current administration is encouraging the very activity that makes $3.7 billion in spending necessary in the first place? If this President won’t enforce immigration laws, aren’t we are only encouraging more illegal activity, and the billions in spending needed to deal with it?
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    These are all proof-positive examples of a system of government that has more of your money than they do good ideas. If the government spending more of your money was all that was needed to reduce the unemployment rate, pay down the federal debt, decrease the poverty rate, lower healthcare costs, and increase national security at our borders, wouldn’t we have achieved all of this long, long, long ago?
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    Especially in this election year, the leadership model for our elected officials, which currently measures leadership success by money and power, must be retired, and sent off to the scrap yard of history. We must elect leaders now who have more ideas – and not just more of our money – to solve our country’s most pressing problems.
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    Perhaps it is true that politics is the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary. But if this remains the conventional wisdom, then how can we really be surprised with the results?

  • Just Doesn’t Feel Right

    Just Doesn’t Feel Right

    By Louis Avallone
    –
    Do you ever have a hunch or gut feeling…where you are convinced, almost instantly, by feelings that you cannot always explain? Some folks call this intuition, which comes from the latin word “intuir,” meaning “knowledge from within”. These are the times when we just “know”in our hearts and souls, irrespective of our five senses, that something feels right, or feels wrong.

    This happened recently, as I watched Robert Bergdahl, father of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, speak in the Rose Garden at the White House. This is where President Obama made the ceremonial announcement that Sgt. Bergdahl had been released from the Taliban in Afghanistan, where he had been held in captivity for the last 5 years.

    Subject to an Executive Order, and without any Congressional involvement, President Obama released five (5) Taliban detainees from Guantanamo Bay in return for Sgt. Bergdahl’s release, and the deal was done.

    Even though the U.S. traditionally does not negotiate with terrorists, and even though each and every one of the Taliban men released from Guantanamo Bay is a hardened terrorist, and will likely participate in efforts to kill more Americans, the deal was done.

    And even though Sgt. Bergdahl reportedly left his command post in 2009 voluntarily, just before sending his parents an email explaining, “The horror that is America is disgusting,” even while hundreds searched, and as many as six (6) fellow soldiers lost their lives searching for him after he disappeared, the deal was done.

    And even though Sgt. Bergdahl is believed to have deserted the Army, proclaiming that he was “ashamed to be an American. And the title of U.S. soldier is just the lie of fools,” the deal was still done.

    And even while Taliban members have killed thousands of U.S. and NATO service men and women since their regime toppled in Afghanistan in 2001, following 9/11, the President still negotiated with them, and the deal was done.

    And even though negotiating with these very terrorists is demoralizing to the men and women in our military, who serve with honor and distinction, and to the memories of those soldiers whom have made the ultimate sacrifice, the deal was nevertheless done.

    SO…when Robert Bergdahl is standing in the Rose Garden of the White House, and he says the phrase, “bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim” (translated from Arabic, “In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate”), and when he posts online that, “Democracy is a cult in the West”, and that “I am still working to free all Guantanamo prisoners” and that “God will repay for the death of every Afghan child, amen!”, something’s out of wack.

    Whether you call it intuition or whatever, many Americans probably just can’t find the words to explain it either, because it just doesn’t feel right, as Americans.

    Arguably, “bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim”, is a common Arabic phrase. That’s not the issue. But when you place it against the backdrop of Robert Bergdahl’s online postings, and his son’s emails explaining “(t)he horror that is America is disgusting,” there’s not a good feeling to this. Not at all.

    The White House Rose Garden ought to be used, instead, to praise the truly honorable service of our U.S. military men and women, particularly those killed while searching for Sgt. Bergdahl in the first place, not to honor anyone, military or otherwise, who is “ashamed of being American”.

    From the Rose Garden press conference, to negotiating with the Taliban, to releasing prisoners from Guantonamo Bay, the Obama administration has undermined our national security. History clearly shows that terrorism decreases only with overwhelming military force. An an example, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, pirates regularly attacked American ships, then kidnapped our sailors, and held them for ransom. We were spending 20% of the federal budget to ransom our sailors in the year 1800.

    It was not until Thomas Jefferson took office that we aggressively went after the pirates and refused to pay any ransom money to them. Not surprisingly, the kidnapping of our soldiers by pirates soon ended, and proving again the wisdom of peace through strength.

    Mr. Bergdahl, you and your family have the freedom to live wherever you wish, but know this: democracy is not a “cult”, as you put it. It’s not at all.

    It’s a shining city on a hill, blessed by God, and more than 1.3 million free men and women have fought and died to protect the principles upon which it was founded, including to search for your son. It is a rare treasure, and as Ronald Reagan put it, “If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.”

    Yes, there’s something very right about that. And it’s more than just a “gut” feeling.

  • Multitasking

    Multitasking

    By Louis Avallone
    –
    It’s ironic, isn’t it? The Democrats in Washington, on any day of the week, want to convince you that bigger government is better government. They want you to believe that it can provide better schools for our children, even though only 69 percent of U.S. teens now graduate from high school (despite $2 trillion in federal spending since 1965). They want you to believe that government can create jobs, even though nearly 30%, or over 30 million Americans are unemployed (or underemployed) – and that’s after more than a trillion dollars in stimulus spending. In fact, at the current rate of job growth, it won’t be until 2022 before we return to the almost full employment rate that we had back in 2007.

    And these Democrats are the same folks that believe that bigger government (along with good intentions) can help the poor move from poverty to prosperity, even though there are more people on food stamps today than ever before in our country’s history, and that’s after $1 trillion in annual welfare spending (which is 250% more than it was just 20 years ago).

    Yes, these are the same folks that feel government-run healthcare, which makes up almost 20% of our gross domestic product (or $2.5 trillion in spending), can be administered efficiently, and effectively, by the same federal government that already makes $72 billion in improper payments every year to our healthcare providers.

    And yes, that’s the same federal government that cancelled White House tours for students, released thousands of illegal aliens from prisons, and cut back on the number of air traffic controllers, just to make a point during the sequester earlier this year.

    But even though liberals have an unshakable confidence in bigger government, liberals suddenly start acting like our federal government can’t walk and chew gum at the same time whenever there’s scandal or impropriety. They deflect the importance of issues by claiming that the federal government can’t be troubled with the issue du-jour, as if their all-knowing, all-solving federal government can’t focus on more than one issue at one time.

    You can tell when liberals feel threatened with scandal or impropriety because they suddenly start saying that they need to be “doing the job that the American people sent them to do”, or that they’re “going back to work for the American people” now.

    Remember, during the Monica Lewinsky investigation? President Clinton couldn’t be troubled with such ridiculousness, since the allegations being made were “false” and he said he needed to “go back to work for the American people”.

    And then there’s White House advisor David Plouffe who said Republicans in Congress should focus more on “doing the job they were sent to do”, instead of focusing on the IRS scandal, the seizure of the Associated Press phone records by the Justice Department, and the foreign policy failure in Benghazi.

    You see how this works?

    And when Obama’s $500 billion “American Jobs Act” was in danger of not passing in Congress, and was being debated by Republicans, what do you think a Democrat Congressman pulled out of his talking points? You guessed it: He urged his colleagues in Congress to stop debating and to finish “the job the American people sent us here to do.”

    And what about when Republicans were questioning last month the confirmation of Thomas Perez as our next Secretary of Labor? Yep, a Democrat U.S. Senator pulled out the predictable, “Let’s just do the job the American people sent us here to do.”

    So, instead of confronting the objection, or the underlying issue, these folks in Washington are only interested in their next election, instead of the next generation. They don’t get it, and they will use any means necessary to distract attention away from failed policies and broken promises. And while the Roman empire kept its citizens distracted during its decline with bread and circuses, Congress is aided by Americans who are kept far too occupied by Royal weddings, American Idol, Justin Bieber, Dancing with the Stars, and Lady Gaga.

    Our message to liberals in Congress is simple, though: You can’t have it both ways. A government that is big enough to be all things to all people can multi-task, if you really want to do the job that the American people sent you to do.

    You can investigate the failure of the Obama administration’s foreign policy in Benghazi, while at the same time addressing the fact that the U.S. will no longer be the largest economy in the world by 2016.

    Congress can appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the IRS scandal, while at the same time deal with the fact that the average American family is struggling with the rising costs for food and healthcare costs. You can investigate the Justice Department’s seizure of the Associated Press phone records, and at the same time figure out how to reduce our nearly $16 trillion in federal debt.

    It’s still true, in the words of Ronald Reagan, “Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem.” However, that “problem” can still walk and chew gum at the same time. But continuing to walk all over the American people with tired and trite distractions, should simply no longer be an option.

  • Predicting the Future

    Predicting the Future

    By Louis Avallone
    –
    For centuries, man has sought to predict the future, whether by astrology, palm reading, tarot cards, tealeaves, or crystal balls. In more modern times, sociologists and statisticians have developed scientific methods for rationally predicting the future, through trend analysis and cyclical patterns, such as when interest rates are lower, the stock market rises, and bond prices go down (just as an example).

    It’s easy to understand why we are so fascinated by predicting the future. Comedian George Burns may have said it best, and most simply, “I look to the future because that’s where I’m going to spend the rest of my life.” It was Einstein who said he didn’t worry about the future because it comes soon enough.

    Of course, it has often been said that trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights, while looking out the back window. Incidentally, this also explains the kind of leadership coming out of Washington these days, and before long, it’s not unlikely that this foolish driving will simply get everyone stuck in the mud, on that country road, just spinning our wheels. And for those who have been stuck in the mud a time or two, spinning your wheels – only digs you in deeper.

    So, with all of that said, I am still going to share with you a method of predicting the future, regarding the path of our nation, and the leadership of those folks in Washington, for the next four (4) years. With this method, you will be able to predict the policies of this administration and amaze your friends, on a variety of important subjects, especially on those, which aren’t yet dominating our national conversation.

    Here is how you do it: Take any subject or issue, which this administration feels will advance their political agenda in Washington, and then find those instances in history where governments have instituted policies to address that same subject or issue. Now, make a list of those government policies that have failed.

    Now, by “failed”, I mean those government policies whose stated objectives were hardly achieved, and thereby the costs greatly outweighed the benefits. For example, foreign aid programs that don’t help many foreigners, increasing government spending for schools that don’t educate students very well, or welfare assistance to the poor that does not lift the poor out of poverty, etc.

    Once you have identified these “failed” policies of the past, you can now predict, with almost certainty, the position, and direction, of the Obama administration on that same issue. I’ll give you a couple of examples.

    Look at the European countries, and the results from generations of socialist government policies, nationalizing everything from banks, to automobile manufacturing, insurance, healthcare, education, and energy production. The economic competitiveness of these European countries pale in comparison to the economies of India, China, Japan, and Korea, where workers are more productive. The average German, for example, works just 1,535 hours each year or 22 percent less than the average working American.

    The Dutch and Norwegians put in even fewer hours, as do the British. In addition to this idleness, unemployment is even higher in European countries than it is in the United States.

    This makes the point, exactly, in terms of predictions: The Obama administration is following the same, failed policies of those European countries, including Greece, where entitlement, dependence on others, envy, irresponsibility, and lack of ambition have led to a lower quality of life for all, stemming from an inability to compete with more productive economies around the world.

    Here’s another example, with regards to foreign policy: Obama said, “Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don’t pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us” and that he would negotiate with Iran personally, saying “I’m not afraid of negotiating with anybody”. Well, history’s lesson on this foolishness is fatal. While England and France negotiated, Hitler continued to mobilize his military, and violated every agreement in the meantime.

    Iran is doing the same now, and is using negotiation to buy time for their deadly ambitions. And much like Hitler, they agree to negotiate, then violate the negotiated agreement, then refuse to negotiate, until the international community responds forcefully, and then they agree to negotiate (again). The merry-go-round starts all over.

    Still, today, our Iran foreign policy seems to be a Xerox copy of the failed attempts to deal with Germany, which led to World War II. What happened to the successfully proven foreign policy of America: peace through strength?

    Perhaps Obama’s interest in repeating failed government policies is because he believes that everyone, who has tried them before, just didn’t do them well enough. Maybe he thinks they weren’t smart enough to understand them, in the first place, but that if he tries them, he’ll get it right.

    Others say that Obama is just interested in re-making America into a European-like state. Maybe. But thus far, he seems only interested in those European policies that have failed.

    So now, at the end of this column, and unlike past centuries of mankind, you now have a reliable method of predicting the future, regarding the leadership of those folks currently in Washington. I can’t explain why they do what they do, but it reminds us all of one thing: We desperately must look to the successes of history, if we’re going to restore, anytime soon, our nation’s great future.

  • Debate of Ideas

    Debate of Ideas

    By Louis Avallone
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    Poll after poll, before the first Presidential debate on October 3, was all concluding the same: Obama would win the debates. In fact, just 2 days before the first debate, an ABC News/Washington Post national poll indicated that 55% of likely voters agreed that Obama would win that first debate, with only 31% saying that Romney would be victorious.

    But like Rocky Balboa, who almost always was told he didn’t have a chance, and shouldn’t bother, Romney came out swinging…and never looked back. He ignored the critics, and the polls, and left Obama looking dazed, and confused.

    MSNBC host Chris Matthews explained Obama’s stunned appearance, “He had his head down, he was enduring the debate rather than fighting it.” Faithful Obama supporters like comedian Bill Maher even said Obama “looked tired” and “had trouble getting his answers out.”

    Obama would remain up against the ropes all night during that debate. Some say his poor performance was because he was tired, but some say it was his planned strategy – to make himself the underdog. Al Gore even suggested that the mile-high altitude in Denver may have had some effect on his seemingly diminished fighting spirit and general sluggishness to counterpunch Romney. Even Romney himself felt compelled to note Obama’s confusion during the debate, saying, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

    But the criticism of Obama on his debate performance is really out of place. It’s not that he was not “on his game” or didn’t have that “eye of the tiger”, but rather his sluggishness and uncertainty, during the debate, was merely a reflection of the paralysis our nation is enduring under his policies, from the economy to national security.

    You see, despite the explanations and excuses, Obama’s performance (or lack thereof) was less about Obama’s debate acumen, and more about the simple truth that you can’t make chicken soup from chicken poop.

    I mean, what did folks expect from Obama during that debate, in the eleventh hour of his presidency? A miraculous makeover of the ill effects of his administration’s policies? That’s a tough one, considering his own vice-president recently confessed that the last 4 years of failed Democrat policies have “buried” the middle class. And that his administration is peddling an economic recovery that is the weakest since World War II; in an economy where household incomes have fallen 8.2% since he took office.

    Plus, there are now 23 million Americans who are unemployed (or underemployed), and of that total, 6.7 million have completely given up looking, but still want a job. Of course, you know that unemployment has been above 8% now for 43 straight months (and among African-Americans, the unemployment rate is even higher – 14.4%).

    So, how do you credibly defend your own policies in a debate of ideas, when your results are so abysmal? What do you do when there’s an additional $6 trillion in new national debt since you took office?

    What can you say to the American people when you are blocking a Canadian pipeline and choking the fossil fuels industry, all while the price of gasoline has nearly doubled under your watch?

    What debate maneuver would dress up the idea of accelerating the bankruptcy of the Medicare program, by raiding $716 billion from it and funding Obamacare instead?

    President John Adams once said, “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” And the same is true here.

    You see, persuasiveness and platitudes make for entertaining political fodder, but they don’t change the facts. Animated stump speeches don’t help the 50% of college graduates this year who can’t find work. “Words” don’t provide the 47 million Americans on food stamps the means to move from poverty, to prosperity.

    Theoretical discussions about how our foreign policy “should” work doesn’t reduce the threat from a nuclear Iran or North Korea, nor from terrorist attacks against our embassies, or the murdering of Americans overseas.

    This is why the criticism of Obama’s debate performance is out of place. It’s not about his energy level, or enthusiasm. Nor was it his grasp of the issues, recall of the facts, or the lack of a teleprompter.

    It’s simply this: His policies are indefensible. And without a record to run on, and unless the American people will accept his “intentions” alone, to do good (once again), how much better could anyone have expected him to perform in a debate of ideas; especially when the only ones he has had, have turned out so poorly?

  • Denial

    Denial

    By Louis Avallone
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    You heard about that didn’t you? Oprah Winfrey commented last week that the critics of the President should show “a certain level of respect” to him? After all, she said, “…everybody has a learning curve, and I feel that the reason why I was willing to step out for him was because I believed in his integrity and I believed in his heart.”

    Really? Well, her “stepping out for him” during the 2008 campaign is an understatement. In fact, The New York Times referred to Oprah’s 2008 campaign rally in Des Moines as “the largest spectacle of the campaign cycle.” In fact, she then believed in Obama’s heart so deeply that she said, “For the very first time in my life, I feel compelled to stand up and to speak out for the man who I believe has a new vision for America.” She even called him, “the one.”

    So, what’s really going on here? You see, Oprah sees how Obama’s “heart” has pushed through a $1 billion “stimulus” spending bill and yet the economy has still shed more than two million jobs since doing so. She reads that unemployment has risen to 9.8%, and that it doesn’t even include those discouraged workers who have given up looking entirely, not to mention the 60.8 million Americans still dependent on the government for their daily housing, food, and health care. She hears the reports of one million home foreclosures in just 2010, even as sales of new homes hit a 47-year low.

    She sees how Obama’s “heart” proposed a 2012 budget that reduces community development funding and home assistance programs, affecting mostly minorities, who are twice as likely to live in poverty as the rest of the population. She sees how Obama’s “heart” also now proposes almost $1 trillion in new taxes, over the course of the next 10 years, most of which are tax increases on individuals, while still adding over $26 trillion in new debt in the long run.

    Oprah watches as Obama’s “heart” bows to President Hu Jintau of China and nearly genuflects at the feet of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. She hears when his “heart” also led him to apologize for our country, to the European countries, by saying that “there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive,” despite the countless American lives sacrificed, so that others might live free, and without persecution.

    So when Oprah tells us to essentially give a break to “the one,” she may just be in denial. And she is not alone. You see, denial is a defense mechanism, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, despite the overwhelming evidence.

    From her recent comments, she is using many of the mechanisms of denial. Like so many supporters of the President, she minimizes the reality of the facts, but more importantly, she rationalizes it all away by explaining that “…everyone has a learning curve.” And because she may actually be experiencing feelings of embarrassment, remorse, and guilt from her “over-the-top” campaign endorsement, considering the direction of our country, she seems to minimize much of any responsibility simply by explaining she believed in his “heart”; everything else, she seems to say, she never bargained for.

    But perhaps more than anyone, Oprah knows that it takes more than “heart” or “wishful thinking” to be successful.

    After all, Oprah is the embodiment of the American dream, and her success is the result of hard work, dedication, and an unbridled entrepreneurial spirit to overcome whatever obstacles may lie ahead. Born to a pair of impoverished teenage parents in the South, and later raised in an inner city Milwaukee neighborhood, Oprah landed a job in radio while still in high school and began co-anchoring the local evening news at the age of 19. Later, she would be told by an assistant news director in New York City that her “hair’s too thick, nose is too wide, and chin’s too big.” Still, she went on to syndicate the Oprah Winfrey Show, the highest-rated program of its kind in history, has been ranked as the greatest black philanthropist in American history, and became the richest African American of the 20th century.

    Oprah knows that “respect” is earned and that success is more than “wishful thinking” or puling on one’s “heart” strings. She’s just in denial. And in the words of Mark Twain, “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.”