Last Night’s State of the Union Address by President Obama was the first of his second term, I sat watching the president and writing a blog simultaneously, then I did something (no idea what), and lost it all so I went to bed.

As the pres­i­dent spoke I thought about not just America’s future but also that of small depen­dent nations like my Island home Jamaica. Jamaicans were recent­ly told by their finan­cial bene­fac­tor The (IMF) that it will have to adopt even more strin­gent mea­sures than before to show it is wor­thy of more cred­it. Jamaica’s debt to earn­ing ratio is hor­ri­bly out of whack, Jamaica pays more of its earn­ings to ser­vic­ing its astro­nom­i­cal debt bur­den than almost all oth­er coun­tries on Earth includ­ing Greece. After ser­vic­ing its inter­est pay­ments there is very lit­tle mon­ey left do any­thing on the peo­ple’s behalf. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly galling because of Jamaica’s crip­pling cor­rup­tion epi­dem­ic. As impor­tant as Obama’s speech was for mid­dle and low­er-class Americans, so too was it impor­tant for coun­tries like Jamaica on issues like Immigration, and jobs programs.

Simply put, if there are less depor­tees to Jamaica if there is real immi­gra­tion reform, it would ease some of the crim­i­nal­i­ty so ram­pant on the Island. More mon­ey in the pock­ets of work­ing-class Americans means they are more like­ly to take vaca­tions to places like the car­ribean. Nothing that President Obama pro­posed last night will mat­ter if Republicans do not go along, if last night was an indi­ca­tion of whats to come then there will not be much accom­plished leg­isla­tive­ly in Obama’s sec­ond term. Republicans in the Congress sat on their hands when the President pro­posed rais­ing the min­i­mum wage to US$9, they sat on their hands on the Violence against Women Act, Rubio vot­ed no just yes­ter­day. They sat on their hands on the jobs Act Proposal. The fact is the only thing Republicans are excit­ed about is drilling for oil in America’s wet lands . To hell with the envi­ron­ment , as long as their super rich con­trib­u­tors are sat­is­fied. The irony of the night was Florida repub­li­can Senator Marco Rubio the 41-year-old wun­derkind who has being trum­pet­ed to be the sav­ior of the ridicu­lous­ly Neanderthal Republican Party. The prob­lem is, Marco Rubio is the prod­uct of Cuban Immigrants who came to the United States in 1956 . Rubio and his par­ents have ben­e­fit­ed much from Government largess.

Florida’s Republican US Senator Marco Antonio Rubio.

Marco Rubio who is a lawyer has now reached the top and he is pulling the lad­der away from any­one not at the top where he is perched. Marco Antonio is now a T‑Party dar­ling, he is regard­ed as the “crown prince of the Tea Party move­ment”.

Marco Rubio is not just a guy who is pulling away the lad­der for the poor , for women , for the old and indi­gent, this guy has proven to be a mon­u­men­tal fraud. In his now infa­mous Watergate response to the President Rubio pon­tif­i­cat­ed that he was for the poor, he went on to state that he lives in the same mid­dle-class neigh­bor­hood with retirees. However Rachel Maddow of MSNBC report­ed that Rubio’s house in the so-called mid­dle class neigh­bor­hood ‚has been on the mar­ket for a whop­ping 600+ Thousand dollars.

So the lit­tle Cuban-American crown prince of the T‑Party who loves the mid­dle class so much, real­ly wants to move to Washington DC where he may fur­ther ingra­ti­ate him­self with the 1%.

As President Obama con­tend with the rad­i­cal right-wing par­ty, hell-bent on cir­cum­vent­ing the will of the major­i­ty, coun­tries like Jamaica must do what it takes to get their own economies on the right track. There will be no hand­outs com­ing from coun­tries like the United States that will sig­nif­i­cant­ly change their circumstances.

They will have to make tough choic­es, in Jamaica’s case, it is ram­pant cor­rup­tion and run-away crim­i­nal­i­ty which is chok­ing the life-blood out of the coun­try, eco­nom­i­cal­ly and lit­er­al­ly. Jamaica how­ev­er , has a tough road to hoe as it is stuck with polit­i­cal lead­ers who either do not under­stand what crime and cor­rup­tion is doing to our coun­try, or are too heav­i­ly invest­ed in those vices to care,. either way it will be a dif­fi­cult way for­ward for Jamaica.

The Obama Administration’s less than adequate defense of UN Ambassador Susan Rice, coupled with the lack of blacks in his Administration has left some key members of the black political élite voicing their dissatisfaction with the President.

President Obama inher­it­ed a mess, no ques­tion, he has done an admirable job, even despite his­toric obstruc­tion and intran­si­gence from Republicans in the Congress.

Barring a cat­a­stroph­ic screw-up in the next four years, the President will place him­self among greats like Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. If Obama can lead and sign a com­pre­hen­sive Immigration Bill, which by the way Republicans are anx­ious to be a part of for obvi­ous rea­sons, and if he can do some­thing about the destruc­tion being wrought on the envi­ron­ment, and bring the unem­ploy­ment num­bers down to say 5% he will def­i­nite­ly be seen as a great President.

Obama will nev­er face the elec­torate again, so there is no need for pos­tur­ing or timid­i­ty. This is the time for Obama to look after his key con­stituents, the black community.

Obama was elect­ed to office with a vast plu­ral­i­ty of the African-American vote in 2008 and in the 2012 elec­tions, he received an even greater share dur­ing the last elec­tion cycle with an increase of 2 per­cent­age points over the 2008 elec­tion cycle.

This kind of loy­al­ty can­not be scoffed at. African-Americans stood in line for up to 8 hours in order to send a mes­sage to Republicans. President Obama needs to stand with the peo­ple who made him who he is. I total­ly get the fact that dur­ing his first term there were press­ing issues which required the President’s atten­tion full-time. The econ­o­my, the Affordable Care Act, Winding down 2 wars, end­ing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, Restoring America’s Image abroad, and a pletho­ra of oth­er issues.

Despite his full plate, he was able to put Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan on the Supreme Court, in addi­tion to plac­ing women in key cab­i­net positions.

Smiley and West

Whether you accept what Obama’s detrac­tors are say­ing or not , it would be sil­ly to dis­re­gard their argu­ments, these are actu­al­ly peo­ple who sup­port­ed the President, all they are ask­ing is that the President pay atten­tion to issues dear to them.

The issues of Hunger, Homelessness, Poverty, Declining Income, Declining Wealth, Rampant Injustice in the Justice System, Out of wed­lock preg­nan­cy, and dis­eases are not con­fined to African-Americans, but they do affect that demo­graph­ic more severe­ly than it does others.

If the spend­ing which Republicans hear­ken to is removed from the Obama’s record ‚Obama is a pret­ty con­ser­v­a­tive President. If his first term is any­thing to go by. Most of Obama’s poli­cies are con­tin­u­a­tion of Bush’s poli­cies, some of the peo­ple who exe­cute his poli­cies are hold overs from the Bush Administration. Bob Gates, and David Petraeus are just a cou­ple of the high-pro­file holdovers from the last Republican Administration, and he is putting Chuck Hagel anoth­er Republican back at Defense.

Additionally, Obama has shown total indif­fer­ence to the plight of Immigrants except just pri­or to the recent elec­tions. The issue of Immigration is incor­rect­ly approached as a Latino issue. There are mil­lions of peo­ple from oth­er parts of the world who aren’t Latinos.

The Obama Deportation Policy has been a dis­as­ter for fam­i­lies which have been ripped apart, with mass depor­ta­tions of immi­grants who com­mit­ted minor offences, some decades ago.

No thought is giv­en to the fact that many of the peo­ple are plucked up and sent to coun­tries where they have no con­nec­tion, in some cas­es peo­ple are deport­ed to coun­tries they have nev­er been to.

Those are just some of the dra­con­ian poli­cies of the Obama first term being exe­cut­ed under the guise of uphold­ing the laws, leav­ing chil­dren with­out par­ents, wives with­out hus­bands, all because of minor infractions.

In fact Obama has deport­ed more peo­ple than any oth­er President in American History, addi­tion­al­ly Obama has grant­ed the least amount of par­dons of any American President in mod­ern his­to­ry, to include all Republican Presidents.

Whether we like these sta­tis­tics or not is imma­te­r­i­al, these are facts, we may spin them , me may nuance them , we may try to ratio­nal­ize them away , but noth­ing makes them any less true.

Despite the last-minute Executive Order Obama signed before the Elections grant­i­ng tem­po­rary reprieve to so-called dream­ers, which by the way guar­an­teed him more of the Hispanic vote, Hispanics are demand­ing that he do more on their behalf.

It is only fair that Obama come to the table with a com­pre­hen­sive Urban Renewal plan aimed at the African-American pop­u­la­tion. There is approx­i­mate­ly 40 mil­lion peo­ple in that com­mu­ni­ty, and they must now demand to be heard and rec­og­nized from this President.

Thus far the pres­i­dent has shown very lit­tle con­nec­tion to the Afro-American com­mu­ni­ty. If the way the Susan Rice issue was han­dled is a barom­e­ter of the President’s com­mit­ment to his friends, the African-American com­mu­ni­ty is in for a long four years.

As the Obama Administration embarks on its 2^nd term there will undoubt­ed­ly be tri­umphs and tra­vails. It appears that in every Administration there are play­ers whom are sac­ri­fi­cial lambs. Oliver North under Reagan, Harriet Myers under Bush 43^rd, and now Susan Rice under Obama.

It seem to me though, that Susan Rice was made to look like a fool, in order that the Obama Administration may have the nom­i­nee it real­ly want­ed for the state depart­ment John Kerry. I make no claim to know how Washington DC works, but it seem to me that Obama was not pre­pared to fight for the woman he calls his friend. One may be cyn­i­cal about the motives of Senate Republicans, under­stand­ably so, they want anoth­er shot at the Massachusetts Senate seat that John Kerry is vacat­ing to head the State Department.

The ven­om with which John McCain, Kelly Ayotte, Lindsay Graham and oth­ers came out against Ambassador Rice leaves me to won­der if there is not more to it than meets the eyes. Separate and apart from the cyn­i­cal­ly obvi­ous craven desire of Republicans to poten­tial­ly pick up anoth­er Senate seat, it does seem there was a deep­er and more con­spir­a­to­r­i­al plot afoot when McCain referred to Kerry as Mister sec­re­tary, while he and oth­ers were simul­ta­ne­ous­ly wag­ing a vis­cer­al war against an African-American woman, expo­nen­tial­ly more qual­i­fied than he McCain or either of his cohorts to head the State Department, or any oth­er job for that mat­ter. There have also been whis­pers that many in the Republican Party actu­al­ly believe that Rice has been pro­mot­ed far enough.

Obama and Rice con­fer­ring. John Kerry

Now that is quite under­stand­able, the Republican Party would absolute­ly pre­fer to see blacks back on the plan­ta­tion, Black woman, maybe worse. Floating Susan Rice’s name then back­ing away was cow­ard­ly and cyn­i­cal. Rice has been one of Obama’s staunchest sup­port­ers, even before he became President. John McCain bears the scars of Rice’s unmit­i­gat­ed defense of Obama in the 2008 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. Barack Obama did not take a scratch for Susan Rice, he did not rec­i­p­ro­cate the loy­al­ty Rice demon­strat­ed on his behalf. What is polit­i­cal cap­i­tal if you don’t spend it on principles?

Irrespective of what oth­ers say, Blacks are the foun­da­tion of the Democratic Party and the spine that puts and kept Barack Obama in the White House. To have only Eric Holder in the top ech­e­lon of the cab­i­net is inex­cus­able and cow­ard­ly, as I said before, a Barack Obama with back­bone would shove Susan Rice down Republicans throats.The cor­dial­i­ty we saw extend­ed to Kerry on the first day of hear­ings, was a love-fest, com­pared to how Hillary was treat­ed the day before.

John McCain Kelly Ayotte

Lindsay Graham

Of course Republicans were in love with Hillary Clinton, pre­vi­ous to this their last attempt to bloody her nose. The Clintons were just a month ago Republicans idea of good Democrats. Of course Obama has been re-elect­ed to a sec­ond 4 year term, so their atten­tions are now refo­cused on attack­ing the Clintons, just in case Hillary decides to run for pres­i­dent in 2016. I have no quar­rel with the idea of a Secretary of State John Kerry, after all it’s only fair that Obama reward Kerry with some­thing, it was Kerry who ele­vat­ed Obama’s pro­file by giv­ing him prime time keynote speak­ing time at his Nominating con­ven­tion in 2004.

Maybe if Obama had not giv­en that red state blue state speech at Kerry’s con­ven­tion, we would not have a twice elect­ed Barack Obama. I have no quar­rel with Senator Kerry, I thought he would have been a good President, He will be a great Secretary of State, I just don’t believe Susan Rice should have been the Ram caught in the bush­es and sac­ri­ficed as in the bib­li­cal sto­ry of Abraham and his son Isaac.

• There are cred­i­ble rum­blings that many in the Republican Party feel strong­ly that Susan Rice has been pro­mot­ed far enough. I am not quite sure whether it’s the black or the woman part of Susan Rice they hate more, or maybe both.
• Susan Rice has been a loy­al sol­dier for Obama, Obama has let Rice down.
• The love-fest I saw between Kerry and his Senate Republican col­leagues on Thursday January 24^th was a stark reminder, that when it comes down to it peo­ple look out for oth­ers who look like themselves.
• Can Barack Obama say the same?
• As African-Americans returned from Vietnam to seg­re­ga­tion, ridicule, and racial big­otry, so too has Susan Rice been treat­ed even as she con­tin­ues to give stel­lar and exem­plary ser­vice to country.
• Many who crit­i­cizes and cas­ti­gate her are sig­nif­i­cant­ly less qual­i­fied than she is, they lack the intel­lect, the edu­ca­tion, and the strength of char­ac­ter she has demon­strat­ed in her ser­vice to her country.
• Many who are now held up as heroes, actu­al­ly spilled their guts under pressure.
• Susan Rice has noth­ing of which to be ashamed.

Republicans start­ed a mas­sive cam­paign of obstruc­tion­ism against the new­ly elect­ed Barack Obama in 2008, even before the pres­i­dent was inau­gu­rat­ed the machin­ery was already in place not just to make Obama a one term pres­i­dent but to make him such a fail­ure, his record would be a dis-qual­i­fi­er to all oth­er African-American upstarts who ever got the grand idea they want­ed to be president.

Like every­thing else which has its Genesis in bad faith, this men­tal­i­ty became a mon­ster; the more they hat­ed Obama the more far right they lurched. That con­di­tion I char­ac­ter­ized as Barack Obama derange­ment syn­drome. As it got big­ger and big­ger it forced the par­ty far­ther and far­ther to the right, those with­in its ranks who were not true believ­ers were sum­mar­i­ly discarded.

Former Governor Charlie Crist of Florida, Long time Senator Richard Luger of Indiana, The late Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, and a litany of oth­ers were rou­tine­ly dri­ven from the par­ty. Others kept quite or pros­ti­tut­ed them­selves on the altar of right-wing con­ser­vatism to avoid hav­ing to face pri­ma­ry oppo­nents from their right flank, chief among them Arizona John McCain, and South Carolina’s Lindsay Graham.

McCain and Graham, two sen­a­tors who were once thought to be voic­es of rea­son with­in an increas­ing­ly unrea­son­able reac­tionary Republican par­ty, have become two of the most stri­dent and bel­li­cose with Obama derange­ment syn­drome, often times rais­ing eye­brows as to the rea­son­ing behind their stance.

As the par­ty moved far­ther to the right on the issues the par­ty became swal­lowed up to the point it is now almost impos­si­ble to dif­fer­en­ti­ate the dif­fer­ence between the lunatic fringe and the par­ty, some have con­clud­ed there are no dif­fer­ences between the two, they are one and the same.

As an out­sider I have long argued that the Press has failed dis­mal­ly in its duties to point deci­sive­ly at the rad­i­cal­iza­tion and obstruc­tion­ism of the repub­li­can par­ty, but even more that than that, he press has failed to speak clear­ly and deci­sive­ly about the harm the repub­li­can par­ty is caus­ing the coun­try ‚because of its rad­i­cal far right agenda .

What the Press has done is to use it’s time instead to con­flate the two par­ties into a dys­func­tion­al mush of what is wrong with Washington DC.

The main stream media has long been labeled pro-left, pro-demo­c­ra­t­ic or more recent­ly the elit­ist left media, of course the source of this label­ing is the rad­i­cal lunatics on the right who have fought this psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare with the press, cow­ing the vast major­i­ty of what would have been object media enti­ties into cre­at­ing a false equiv­a­lence between what they do and those on the oth­er side who chose to point to their dysfunction.

At the cen­ter of that fear may very well be found the rea­son that the Press, or what I pre­fer to call, the lame-stream Media is reluc­tant to stri­dent­ly call out the Republican Party on its ide­o­log­i­cal lunacy.

Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann have made careers as polit­i­cal sci­en­tists who focused on non-par­ti­san analy­sis and eschewed sin­gling out either par­ty for bad behav­ior. That changed with the pub­li­ca­tion of their book, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, which lament­ed that American pol­i­tics had become more dys­func­tion­al and that the Republican Party bore the brunt of the blame for the most recent offenses.

And after they made this argu­ment, no one treat­ed the news very seri­ous­ly. Francis Wilkinson writes in Bloomberg about pos­si­ble rea­sons why their the­o­ry failed to catch on:

It’s hard to imag­ine a more whole­sale indict­ment from two emi­nent polit­i­cal sci­en­tists, each with a decades-long track record of non­par­ti­san analy­sis. It’s equal­ly hard to imag­ine the press qui­et­ly absorb­ing a sim­i­lar­ly pedi­greed indict­ment of the Democratic Party; the élite press, in par­tic­u­lar, would like­ly talk of noth­ing else. Yet main­stream news out­lets, while giv­ing the authors fair­ly promi­nent play, seem to treat the their the­sis as nei­ther new nor news.

What gives?

Perhaps it’s the soft big­otry of low expec­ta­tions. The most anguish over the state of the Republican Party seems to flow from con­ser­v­a­tives in var­ied states of excom­mu­ni­ca­tion, such as David Frum, Bruce Bartlett and a cadre of smart, young writ­ers who object to the empow­ered-state vision of Democrats but can’t abide the devo­lu­tion of the Republicans. Many lib­er­als, hav­ing per­haps nev­er giv­en suf­fi­cient cre­dence to con­ser­v­a­tive thought in the first place, regard the book’s premise with a know­ing shrug. Elected Republicans, nat­u­ral­ly, dis­miss the book as par­ti­san hack­ery (though for­mer Republican Senator Chuck Hagel gave it an enthu­si­as­tic blurb). Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, with char­ac­ter­is­tic def­er­ence to facts, denounced the authors as “ultra, ultra lib­er­al.” But the authors – and their cen­trist dis­po­si­tion — are well-known. Perhaps their the­sis is, too. It’s just that no one knows what can be done about it, or by whom.http://http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/26/ornstein-mann.html

There are no sur­pris­es in the fact that the Neanderthal minor­i­ty leader from Kentucky would igno­rant­ly dis­miss these two men as lib­er­al extrem­ists, after all what Mitch McConnell can­not under­stand he labels and hates.

Conversely for­mer sen­a­tor Chuck Hagel has always been a sane and rea­son­able sen­a­tor and human being.

On issue after issue the American media has fall­en short of its oblig­a­tions, maybe the mis­sion state­ment have changed, if this is so, then it is only prop­er that the media tell the American peo­ple it no longer seek truth irre­spec­tive of where it leads,or that it no longer is the guardian of our democracy.

It appears that the media hous­es that are not in the pock­ets of the far right are pet­ri­fied of being labeled left­ist that they acqui­esce with the talk­ing points of the far right and in too many cas­es find com­fort in the moral dis­hon­esty of false equivocation.

Fox News is a pro­pa­gan­da tool of the far right , it prop­a­gates and dis­sem­i­nates false-hoods, smear and pro­pa­gan­da, con­verse­ly MSNBC built their fol­low­ing on lit­er­al­ly fact check­ing and ridi­cul­ing FOX and Republicans in gen­er­al, this actu­al­ly start­ed with for­mer host Keith Olberman who had beef with FOX’s blow-hard Bill O’Reilly.

Yet there is a con­cert­ed effort with­in the media fra­ter­ni­ty to make the false par­al­lel that FOX and MSNBC are basi­cal­ly doing the same thing. This could­n’t be fur­ther from the truth. Even those who fan­cy them­selves media-crit­ics like CNN’s Howard Kurtz has fall­en vic­tim to mak­ing that disin­gen­u­ous parallel.

That moral cow­ardice on the part of the media, has lit­er­al­ly embold­ened the forces of the far right into adopt­ing much more author­i­tar­i­an prin­ci­ples into their platform.

No one chal­lenged the Bush Administration when Cheney clear­ly was man­u­fac­tur­ing evi­dence to launch America into an ille­git­i­mate war of choice, and after it was proven beyond a shad­ow of a doubt that the Iraq war was car­ried out on fab­ri­ca­tion and lies, no one was held account­able to this day, despite the tens of thou­sands of dead and maimed Iraqi’s and Americans.

The war on women:

The war on Immigrants:

Voter Suppression:

The war against Organized Labor:

The war against Gays and Lesbians:

The war against the poor and most vulnerable:

On issue after issue, what now obtains as the Republican par­ty has been clear and unequiv­o­cal­ly rad­i­cal poli­cies against the mass­es, and toward a cho­sen sub sec­tor, yet the Media have remained impo­tent­ly silent.

As I write this peo­ple in the State of Wisconsin have had their rights to col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing stripped away from them, work­ers in Michigan just saw their Republican Governor sign away their rights under what is called (right to work) which is Union bust­ing in a nut-shell .

Thus far 28 States have adopt­ed so-called right to work laws, which strips away work­ers rights to col­lec­tive­ly bar­gain for bet­ter pay and work­ing con­di­tions, those rights were the cor­ner­stones which built the mid­dle class in this country.

At the cen­ter of these dra­con­ian anti-Union laws are rich Billionaires, who are fun­nel­ing huge sums of mon­ey into what appear at first glance to be legit­i­mate grass-roots organ­i­sa­tions, but are noth­ing more than shell groups designed to dis­tort the truth and deny work­ers their rights.

On this and oth­er mat­ters of grave National inter­est the media is com­plic­it in its silence.

When the Unions are cas­trat­ed there will be no buffer between the dirty mon­ey of Charles and David Koch Sheldon Adelson and aver­age Americans.

These afore­men­tioned Billionaires and oth­ers have spent hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in the elec­tions of 2012 try­ing to turn back the rights of ordi­nary peo­ple to vote, to orga­nize and join Unions, and to have a say in their democracy.

On the occa­sion of the last elec­tion they were defeat­ed but not deterred, they are even more deter­mined to buy this democ­ra­cy, strength­ened and buoyed by the Supreme Court Citizens United Decision, which allows huge sums of mon­ey to flood the polit­i­cal sys­tem under the guise of free speech.

Labor orga­nizes, sup­ports work­ers and ordi­nary Americans, they get out their mem­bers to vote, this makes orga­nized labor the mor­tal ene­my of bil­lion­aire Industrialists like Charles and David Koch, who shroud their nefar­i­ous activ­i­ties with legit­i­mate phil­an­thropic donations.

The chal­lenge to ordi­nary Americans are their inabil­i­ty to under­stood the seri­ous­ness of these issues, and their incli­na­tion to vote and sup­port caus­es and leg­is­la­tion that are dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed to their own self-interest.

And yes on these crit­i­cal­ly rel­e­vant issues the lame-stream media(Press) is silent.

We were always led to believe that it was a manager’s perogative to choose his team, in sports , business and certainly, the presidency of the United States.There is a lot to be said for senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, being considered for the role of Secretary of State of the United States. Senator Kerry after all has been the person who gave Barack Obama a national stage on which to shine. John Kerry made Obama the keynote speaker at his convention in 2004.

Fast for­ward to 2012 and the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, John Kerry was an unwa­ver­ing and staunch sup­port­er of Obama. Senator Kerry has giv­en of him­self , stand­ing in as Mitt Romney as Obama pre­pared for the debates lead­ing up to the 2012 elec­tions. Throughout the Obama pres­i­den­cy John Kerry has been a vocal and staunch sup­port­er of the pres­i­dent and his admin­is­tra­tion, some­thing that can­not be said of many democrats.

John Kerry’s pres­i­den­tial run was tor­pe­doed because repub­li­can right wing smear machine was able to turn a dec­o­rat­ed Vietnam war hero into a car­i­ca­ture, and at the same time it placed a man who hid out the entire war because of his fam­i­ly name and influ­ence. It would please me supreme­ly to see Obama reward Senator Kerry with the nom­i­na­tion to be the next sec­re­tary of state, many argue it’s a job Kerry real­ly wants.

With that said there is some­thing that must be said for a Kerry nom­i­na­tion, were the pres­i­dent to buck con­ven­tion­al wis­dom and not pick Susan Rice.

Every President, as all man­agers do, absolute­ly have the right to pick the team he or she chose to serve in their admin­is­tra­tion. It says a lot about pres­i­den­tial author­i­ty, if Barack Obama were to allow John McCain and the right to dic­tate to him who he chose to fill vacan­cies with­in his administration.

The US Constitution gives the Senate over­sight, (advise and con­sent) they have the pow­er to do due dili­gence, in deter­min­ing in their informed judge­ment, whether a nom­i­nee is qual­i­fied for the post to which he/​she is nom­i­nat­ed. They may vote no, that is the right of each of the 100 senators.

Susan Rice

What they do not have, is a Constitutional right to besmirch a per­son who has not even had her name entered for nom­i­na­tion. Susan Rice has not been nom­i­nat­ed to the post of sec­re­tary of state, it leads us to ask then,” what is the fire-storm about”? What is the obses­sion and ven­om for?

It would seem there is a cer­tain dis­dain with­in the repub­li­can par­ty for African-Americans, Van Jones the (crazy com­mu­nist), Susan Rice(unqualified), Eric Holder( con­spir­a­tor of fast and furi­ous), Valerie Jarrett (no expe­ri­ence to do any­thing) or Obama himself.(community orga­niz­er who nev­er ran anything).

This new love repub­li­cans have for sen­a­tor Kerry is at best cyn­i­cal and insult­ing, it goes to the heart of pres­i­den­tial author­i­ty, yet deeply trou­bling in intent. If Senator Kerry was to vacate his sen­ate seat, it would imme­di­ate­ly open up the poten­tial for recent­ly defeat­ed sen­a­tor Scott Brown to be reward­ed with anoth­er sen­ate seat up there in Massachusetts.

The polit­i­cal games­man­ship being per­pet­u­at­ed by repub­li­cans under­cuts the pres­i­den­t’s abil­i­ty to choose his own team, not only that it poten­tial­ly empow­ers them in a sen­ate where Mitch McConnell has made it his duty to obstruct every piece of leg­is­la­tion the pres­i­dent tries to get through there.

McConnell and repub­li­cans opposed to Obama, has abused the fil­i­buster process in that body lit­er­al­ly mak­ing sure very lit­tle gets done out­side pres­i­den­tial fiat,(executive order)

On that basis I strong­ly believe the pres­i­dent should nom­i­nate Susan Rice and ram her down their damn throats„ he can­not appear to acqui­esce to the extor­tion­ist strong-arm meth­ods being employed by repub­li­cans wrapped in the John McCain packaging.

Obama just won re-elec­tion by almost a hun­dred elec­toral votes, and a wide plu­ral­i­ty of the raw vote. The vot­ers have spo­ken, the elec­tions are over, if repub­li­cans don’t want to gov­ern then Obama must ram the pro­gres­sive agen­da down their throats until they gag.

But if his past is any­thing to go by, Obama will cave in the name of bipar­ti­san­ship, of course many on the right believe he has no right being president,why would he then allow his pres­i­den­cy to be dic­tat­ed by them? Republicans have used every tac­tic to get Obama to do their bid­ding , even though he beat them twice at the bal­lot box, most of his achieve­ments are clos­er to repub­li­can poli­cies than that of a pro­gres­sive president.

It is time for Obama to man up and get going on the pro­gres­sive agen­da, he was elect­ed twice, he does not need to face vot­ers again, this is the time for him to do what he was elect­ed to do.

The first order of busi­ness is to nom­i­nate Susan Rice, ram her down their throats and get mov­ing on his sec­ond term.

The issue of what hap­pened in the Libyan town of Benghazi is a legit­i­mate mat­ter for Congressional over­sight, as such, any con­gres­sion­al review body, duly con­sti­tut­ed, has a duty to get to the bot­tom of what exact­ly hap­pened, find out why it hap­pened, who is respon­si­ble if there are fail­ures of respon­si­bil­i­ty, and take cor­rec­tive action to ensure that the like­li­hood of recur­rence is min­i­mized if not poten­tial­ly eliminated.

The fam­i­ly of slain Ambassador Chris Stephens has asked repub­li­cans not to politi­cize the death of their loved one, this has not stopped the onslaught of attacks from the right led by sore los­er John McCain and his South Carolina side-kick Lindsay Graham. Barack Obama, pres­i­dent of the United States is the per­son who sent Ambassador Stephens to Africa, not John McCain or Lindsay Graham, nei­ther of whom have the author­i­ty to do so. It fol­lows there­fore that the pres­i­dent would want to know what hap­pened, prob­a­bly more-so than either of the two afore­men­tioned antagonists.

Their line of attack has tak­en a tone rem­i­nis­cent of the two cam­paigns Obama has been involved in for the pres­i­den­cy, they refer to the term “our embassy in Benghazi” as if it’s their own, and it need to be pro­tect­ed from Obama, as with most oth­er assets of the fed­er­al bureaucracy.

Republicans are con­ver­sant with the impor­tance of optics, they are stu­pid , but not total­ly dense, so they have solicit­ed the help of a female, that female is Kelly Ayotte the junior sen­a­tor from New Hampshire. Kelly Ayotte has no for­eign affairs cre­den­tials which would make her qual­i­fied to cri­tique Susan Rice’s stel­lar record, but they believe it gives them cov­er. McCain and Graham do not want to be seen as two old white males abus­ing an African-American Woman, which in fact is what it is.

They have talked about not want­i­ng to pro­mote any­one who may have had any­thing to do with Benghazi, as a lay per­son it bog­gles the mind as to how McCain et al see them­selves com­ing out on the right side of this cha­rade, many experts and ana­lysts strug­gle to fig­ure out the rea­son for this line of attack by the right.

Many argue that repub­li­cans believe Rice has been pro­mot­ed far enough. The cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Condoleezza Rice telling America about a poten­tial mush­room cloud was expo­nen­tial­ly worse that this drummed up witch-hunt, yet Both McCain and Graham sup­port­ed Condoleezza Rice’s nom­i­na­tion for sec­re­tary of state.

Susan Rice had noth­ing to do with Benghazi, zero, Condoleezza Rice had every­thing to do with push­ing America into a war of choice, based on what they now argue was faulty intel­li­gence, peo­ple with brains will tell you they man­u­fac­tured intel­li­gence to legit­imize that war with Iraq.

Susan Rice used the intel­li­gence giv­en to her by the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, repub­li­cans are not attack­ing David Petraeus , they are not attack­ing Hillary Clinton who runs the state depart­ment, so we must ask what is the rea­son for the assault on Susan Rice?

Barack Obama must stop mak­ing con­ces­sions to the repub­li­can right, he gets to deter­mine who gets on his team , Republicans who go on tele­vi­sion to argue for the nom­i­na­tion of Senator Kerry are doing so out of their own self-inter­est and not out of love for John Kerry. These were the same peo­ple who swift-boat­ed Kerry the war veteran.

By def­i­n­i­tion what they are doing is telling the pres­i­dent who they want him to name to be sec­re­tary of state, if Obama let them decide they get anoth­er United State Senator , plain and simple.

On dis­play is today’s repub­li­can par­ty, it is now a sin­is­ter, duplic­i­tous, under­hand­ed and men­da­cious bunch of des­per­ate white male fright­ened that the world they knew is pass­ing them by.

This is a cyn­i­cal but bril­liant move on the part of repub­li­cans, I must say, I can­not cred­it John McCain with com­ing up with this, he is not that bright. They are using McCain to sell this fias­co to the American peo­ple because of his faux high ground on mat­ters of for­eign affairs.

Neither McCain nor any of his band of antag­o­nist defend­ed war hero John Kerry when Bush’s peo­ple pil­lo­ried that patri­ot, now all of a sud­den they are push­ing for Secretary of State John Kerry.

There is just one prob­lem with their advo­ca­cy, losers do not get to pick the cabinet.

Much like they did after Bill Clinton was reelected in 1996 Republicans are on the hunt once again to find a scandal with which to distract the country.They are trying to create the impression the Administration is involved in a scandal, deny the president his agenda and win the next mid-term election.

You have already heard the words from all of their lying oper­a­tives , the same talk­ing points “we want an inves­ti­ga­tion much like Water-Gate, and Iran-Contra”, in ref­er­ence to Benghazi. What they do not tell you is that both those scan­dals were Republican scan­dals, one result­ing in the only American pres­i­dent resign­ing from office, and the oth­er result­ing in a senior mil­i­tary aide tak­ing the fall for the President.

I’m sure you thought they would have got­ten the mes­sage after the trounc­ing they took from the Obama led Democratic tick­et on November 6^th 2012,.……nah , they have to learn hard.

Learning the hard way for Republicans will mean actu­al­ly los­ing a few National elec­tions. This Republican Party as it is con­sti­tut­ed will not sud­den­ly change. It will have to suf­fer sev­er­al crush­ing loss­es in order to evolve.

The Republican Party as con­sti­tut­ed is not behold­en to vot­ers, it is behold­en to an unelect­ed lob­by­ist Grover Norquist who scares each and every can­di­date for the House and Senate into sign­ing a pledge nev­er to raise tax­es, at the per­il of being pri­maried with a can­di­date who tows the line.

Of course there is the T‑Party, a front group fund­ed and financed by rich Industrialists like Charles and David Koch, Sheldon Adelson and oth­er Billionaires who are hell-bent on own­ing the gov­ern­ment for their own finan­cial end.

You would nev­er know this if you just assume they are the inno­cent mid­dle age white women and ordi­nary look­ing every-day peo­ple you see artic­u­lat­ing the T‑Party’s mes­sage. Just dig a lit­tle deep­er, peel anoth­er lay­er off that onion and it becomes crys­tal clear that there is sig­nif­i­cant­ly much more going on just beneath the surface.

Both Political Parties are some­what behold­en to spe­cial inter­est , in fact just this week the new­ly reelect­ed President Obama met at the White House with sev­er­al groups, Labor , Business, Civic, and of course Congressional lead­ers. The rea­son for the series of meet­ings was to bring all stake-hold­ers on board for the tax hikes he ran on.

Of course there are Interest groups which make up the Democratic Party’s Coalition, Labor, Blacks, Asians,Women, Gays. Lesbians, Jews, Latinos, essen­tial­ly every­one not a white Anglo-Saxon male ,

Norquist:  Limbaugh

The Republican par­ty does not believe there is a need for change, in fact many in the par­ty still main­tain that their mes­sage is a strong one, despite a crush­ing defeat just days ago, in which they lost seat in the House even in recent­ly ger­ry­man­dered dis­tricts , redrawn in their favor, they lost seats in the Senate , a body where Democrats were forced to defend most of the seats they had and it was pre­dict­ed they would not be able to retain con­trol. Democrats won the biggest prize of all by tak­ing the pres­i­den­cy with a whop­ping 303 – 206 elec­toral votes.

Romney tells donors the President gave gifts to Americans and then turned them out to vote for him , his run­ning mate, equal­ly dense , main­tained that peo­ple turned out to vote, and that was the rea­son they lost. One repub­li­can in the state of Maine said he saw black peo­ple at the polls , and won­dered where they lived, I guess blacks are not sup­posed to live or vote in lily-white Maine, I mean where do these retards come from?

There is not enough time and space to doc­u­ment the idi­ot­ic, moron­ic and nean­derthal utter­ances which have come out of the mouths of Republican’s, most­ly shell-shocked white males.

It is not an easy thing being a white male in America it seem these days, There is a black man in the White House, that’s got­ta be killing them, not to wor­ry, let them car­ry some stress for a change.

At the top of the leader board in the present day Republican Party are Norquist, Limbaugh, and the T‑Party, then there are the sec­ond tier lack­eys at FOX .

Then there are the elect­ed repub­li­cans like John McCain who have grown accus­tomed to stu­pid reporters from the lame-stream media ask­ing what they thought about issues, are scared stiff , that they are rapid­ly becom­ing irrelevant.

As such McCain has waged a rear-guard bat­tle against the Obama Administration since he was defeat­ed in 2008, despite the Obama White House being one of the most scan­dal-free admin­is­tra­tions in the his­to­ry of this repub­lic. The knack on Obama iron­i­cal­ly, is that he does not schmooze with the Washington crowd, many argue he holds them in con­tempt. I actu­al­ly do hope he does, most of them are rather contemptible.

The last Republican Administration was lit­er­al­ly above the law, they com­mit­ted tor­ture in con­tra­ven­tion of International Law. They venge­ful­ly and polit­i­cal­ly out­ed a CIA oper­a­tive, Valerie Plame, in order to get back at her hus­band A,bassador Joe Wilson, for call­ing out the Bush admin­is­tra­tion for lying and fab­ri­cat­ing evi­dence to start a war with Iraq. Then start­ed and waged an ille­gal war against the Iraqui peo­ple . Rendered bat­tle­field com­bat­ants to coun­tries where they main­tained dark sites, and had them tor­tured, and a pletho­ra of oth­er crimes. No one was held crim­i­nal­ly respon­si­bly for any of those crimes with the excep­tion of Dick Cheney’s aide Scooter Libby who was giv­en a slap on the wrist for lying in the out­ing of Valerie Plame.

John McCain:

This led me to do some research on John McCain, I want­ed to find out why he hat­ed Susan Rice the US Ambassador to the UN and pos­si­ble replace­ment to Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.

Rice, a Clinton admin­is­tra­tion vet­er­an, became Obama’s senior for­eign-pol­i­cy advis­er, after she chose him over Hillary Clinton ear­ly in the pres­i­den­tial race. That put Rice square­ly in oppo­si­tion to McCain, each time the war vet­er­an tried to chal­lenge the junior senator’s nation­al secu­ri­ty credentials.

Some of her choice quotes:

“His ten­den­cy is to shoot first and ask first ques­tions lat­er, it is dan­ger­ous and we can’t afford four more years of this reck­less for­eign pol­i­cy,” Susan Rice said to reporters about McCain in August 2008.

When McCain tried to paint Obama as some­one who rou­tine­ly shied away from tough deci­sions on Iraq, Rice was there to tear down his record.

“On crit­i­cal, fac­tu­al ques­tions that are fun­da­men­tal to under­stand­ing what is going on in Iraq and the region, Senator McCain has got­ten it wrong and not just once but repeat­ed­ly,” said Rice in June 2008.

With ref­er­ence to the sit­u­a­tion in Georgia where McCain announced ‘today we are all Georgian’s:

“We were deal­ing with the facts as we knew them,” Rice said on MSNBC. “John McCain shot from the hip, very aggres­sive, bel­liger­ent state­ment. He may or may not have com­pli­cat­ed the situation.”

And a ref­er­ence to McCain strolling around the mar­ket in Iraq with heavy secu­ri­ty to prove how safe it was:

Rice even got per­son­al with McCain when Obama trav­eled over­seas to vis­it the Middle East.“I think he wants to get out and do as much as he can Rice said about Obama’s trip. “I don’t think he’ll be strolling around the mar­ket in a flak jack­et.”

Rice was sub­tly refer­ring to McCain’s trip to Iraq a year ear­li­er, after he was mocked by lib­er­als for wear­ing body armor while vis­it­ing what looked like a peace­ful mar­ket in Baghdad.

What’s wrong with the Republican brand? Most people whether they have been in the United States for generations or are recent arrivals have the singular goal of achieving economic success.

Isn’t that what the Republican Party’s mes­sage used to be? Small Government, less Regulation, God and Country, Unleashing the Free spir­it of Individuals, Strong Defense, Personal Responsibility, so what went wrong? The mes­sen­gers went wrong.

Many peo­ple vot­ed and sup­port­ed President Reagan not because he was next to God, as some Republicans will have you believe, but because he encap­su­lat­ed with­in those char­ac­ter­is­tics a human component.

Ronald Reagan

A com­po­nent which rec­og­nized that there needs to be rev­enue to run a coun­try, there needs to be com­mon sense reg­u­la­tions in place to safe­guard the pop­u­lace, and there needs to be an under­stand­ing that this is a nation of immi­grants and as such there must be a release valve which allows peo­ple here undoc­u­ment­ed a chance to come out of the shadows.

Reagan under­stood that there need­ed to be rev­enues, as such he raised tax­es numer­ous times, repub­li­cans who use Reagan as the holy grail of con­ser­vatism, will not men­tion that he raised tax­es exponentially.

Reagan under­stood that a nation of immi­grants will invari­ably attract, well… immi­grants, legal and ille­gal, so he grant­ed unequiv­o­cal amnesty to those who were here liv­ing in the shad­ows. Republicans today do not talk about that aspect of Reagan-ism.

Those peo­ple were allowed to come out of the shad­ows and become reg­u­lar tax-pay­ing mem­bers of soci­ety. Many of those peo­ple, most­ly men, were Jamaicans who had come here to work on Farms, to this day they are loy­al Reaganites.

Cubans in Miami will also tell a sim­i­lar tale, as to why they are loy­al to the Republican Party. In fact, as it relates to the Jamaicans, the val­ues once espoused by Republicans were the very same val­ues they were raised to believe in, it was sub­se­quent­ly pret­ty easy for them to become loy­al fans of Reagan.

This is some­thing that the last stan­dard-bear­er of the Republican Party, Willard Mitt Romney sim­ply did not get, and arguably still does­n’t get.

Mitt Romney.

In a con­fer­ence call with fund-rais­ers and donors to his cam­paign, Mr. Romney said Wednesday after­noon that the pres­i­dent had fol­lowed the “old play­book” of using tar­get­ed ini­tia­tives to woo spe­cif­ic inter­est groups — “espe­cial­ly the African-American com­mu­ni­ty, the Hispanic com­mu­ni­ty and young peo­ple.” “In each case, they were very gen­er­ous in what they gave to those groups,” Mr. Romney said, con­trast­ing Mr. Obama’s strat­e­gy to his own of “talk­ing about big issues for the whole coun­try: mil­i­tary strat­e­gy, for­eign pol­i­cy, a strong econ­o­my, cre­at­ing jobs and so forth.”

In oth­er words, Romney believes giv­ing col­lege stu­dents a break, giv­ing young women access to con­tra­cep­tion, allow­ing dream­ers a lit­tle breath­ing room from depor­ta­tion a gift. Those things which Romney denounces as gifts are what most peo­ple see as good gov­er­nance, gov­ern­ment deliv­er­ing ser­vices to the peo­ple it serves.

What this state­ment revealed was the deep­er inner core of what Romney actu­al­ly and tru­ly believe, jux­ta­pose that state­ment with what he said about the 47% we are made painful­ly aware how America dodged the bul­let by not elect­ing this guy.

The shock­ing tragedy inher­ent in Romney’s con­tin­ued dis­dain for the elec­torate, is proof pos­i­tive that he cares noth­ing about aver­age Americans.

This is the same can­di­date who want­ed to con­tin­ue tax give­aways to the rich­est Americans,wanted to dra­mat­i­cal­ly increase the bud­getary allo­ca­tion to the Military Industrial com­plex, even though some mil­i­tary lead­ers say they did not need it.

Romney made abun­dant­ly clear who he want­ed to give gifts to, and it did not include the moochers who do not take respon­si­bil­i­ty for their own lives.

Romney’s state­ments are not in iso­la­tion how­ev­er, his run­ning mate Paul Ryan sug­gest­ed that the rea­son President Obama won the elec­tion was because peo­ple voted.

Quote:”“What the pres­i­dent and his cam­paign excelled at doing is mobi­liz­ing turnout in their crit­i­cal base areas, and they expand­ed the turnout above the norms,” he said. “They had record turnout in urban areas and all of our polling did not project that kind of turnout, and that’s why we thought we had a very good chance at win­ning this race going into elec­tion day(.“huff​in​g​ton​post​.com)

In oth­er words they lost the elec­tion because peo­ple voted.

The tone deaf­ness of these peo­ple is amaz­ing, these are the peo­ple who want­ed to lead America,and in some way are still in lead­er­ship posi­tions polit­i­cal­ly. That was not all Ryan had this to say about los­ing the very town in which he was born to his con­gres­sion­al challenger.

Quote:“When you join a nation­al tick­et for a par­ty, you become more seen as a Republican guy than nec­es­sar­i­ly a Janesville guy,” he con­tin­ued. “So I think my image, or the thought peo­ple had in their minds of me once I joined the Republican tick­et, was more ‘Paul Ryan, Republican,’ than ‘Paul Ryan, Janesville guy.”(huff​in​g​ton​post​.com)

Well you don’t say? So peo­ple saw Paul Ryan as a Republican in his home­town and as such he lost con­vinc­ing­ly, yet the good­ly Congressman/whiz-kid did not see their nation­al defeat com­ing? some whiz-kid, some pol­i­cy wonk.

The truth of the mat­ter is that the Romney/​Ryan tick­et sim­ply could not see the defeat com­ing, because they were locked away in the par­al­lel uni­verse of FOX mis­in­for­ma­tion, and racist talk radio which told them what they want­ed to hear.

In fact they had peo­ple telling them they were win­ning the elec­tion by a land­slide even the night before the elec­tions, even though all of the polling data and oth­er indi­ca­tors were actu­al­ly point­ing to an Obama landslide.

The ideals of the repub­li­can par­ty are still great ones, the prob­lem is not the mes­sage, it rests with the mes­sen­gers, who have become increas­ing­ly white, male, racist, unyield­ing , misog­y­nis­tic, and dumb.

The Republican Party of white males are not going to real­ly get the mes­sage of this elec­tion until the par­ty suf­fers sev­er­al more loss­es, it took sev­er­al hun­dred years of telling them­selves they are supe­ri­or to oth­ers, one elec­tion cycle will not undo that misconception.