What lessons are there to be learned from the recall elec­tions in Wisconsin if any?

Tea Party installed Governor Scott Walker took a hatch­et to the rights of ordi­nary work­ers to orga­nize and have col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing. One could rea­son­ably argue that at a time when there are eco­nom­ic con­di­tions which mil­i­tates against large pay increas­es and ben­e­fit pack­ages, this is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a bad thing. After all, states, like indi­vid­u­als, must learn to live with­in their means . Those are per­fect­ly legit­i­mate argu­ments to make. Personally I nev­er quite under­stood why gov­ern­ment, from coun­ty up to the fed­er­al lev­el, con­tin­ue to run large deficits. Each and every house-hold have to man­age their fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ties. It is unfair and bur­den­some for Government to main­tain bloat­ed waste­ful bureau­cra­cies, then force already over-bur­dened tax­pay­ers to take on even more taxes.

It is not unrea­son­able in my view, that ordi­nary work­ing peo­ple expect their gov­ern­ment to adopt strict dis­ci­pline in the way it han­dles its fis­cal house, after all every American fam­i­ly is expect­ed to live with­in its means.

SO THEN, WHAT’S THE PROBLEM WITH WHAT WALKER DID ?

Scott Walker

In order to under­stand what the fuss was , and con­tin­ue to be, regard­ing Scott Walker’s approach, one need to peel back the entire façade which envelopes the Scott Walker persona.

Walker came to office backed by the Tea Party, as we have point­ed out before the Tea Party con­tin­ue to parade as a grass-roots orga­ni­za­tion. That is the far­thest thing from the truth.

The new tea Party came into exis­tence at about the same time Barack Obama was elect­ed pres­i­dent of the United States at the end of 2008. they argue that they are con­cerned about The expan­sion of the fed­er­al bureau­cra­cy, and run away spending. 

Again were those philo­soph­i­cal pure objec­tives I would be a Tea Party activist. The truth is there are a few things that bear some scrutiny.

(1) When did these things come to the fore? 

As I inti­mat­ed the Tea Party came into being at around the time pres­i­dent Obama was elect­ed to the pres­i­den­cy, so those prob­lems are not new ones which just hap­pened on the scene November 2008

(2) When did the issues dear to the Tea Party become an issue?

Big Government is noth­ing new, The last Republican Administration expand­ed the fed­er­al bureau­cra­cy, to include , Home-land security.

(3) When did the fed­er­al debt become an issue?

The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has always been a big spender, the last pres­i­dent had a sur­plus and a bal­anced bud­get on assum­ing office. He left a ruined econ­o­my, two unfund­ed wars, large tax-cuts for the rich­est Americans and sky-rock­et­ing deficits.

(4) So why are these issues now that Obama is president?

Well the out­rage of the Tea Party start­ed before Barack Obama even could enact one pol­i­cy, which may not cause con­ster­na­tion to the aver­age no-repub­li­can , but it does cause me some heart-burn.

President Bush 43^rd actu­al­ly did the first stim­u­lus, lis­ten­ing to Obama’s crit­ics one would be hard-pressed to hear any men­tion that pres­i­dent Obama inher­it­ed big gov­ern­ment and bal­loon­ing deficits.

(5) So then what’s the real issue?

I’m glad you asked. 

The Obama Administration reg­u­late banks, the Obama admin­is­tra­tion looks out for the envi­ron­ment, the Obama admin­is­tra­tion care about the aver­age American.

So why would the Tea Party have a prob­lem with those issues?

Well again I’m glad you asked this ques­tion, we have now come full cir­cle. There are peo­ple behind the Tea Party’s right-wing pop­ulism who need the legit­i­ma­cy of what many would have you believe is a grass-roots movement.

Enter Billionaire broth­ers David and Charles Koch, both men are American Industrialists who own and oper­ate com­pa­nies rang­ing from Oil to lum­ber to paper prod­ucts. Heavy tax­a­tion by gov­ern­ment cuts into their bot­tom-line, reg­u­la­tions lim­its their abil­i­ty to destroy the envi­ron­ment, and Unions are anti­thet­i­cal to what the Koch broth­ers want.

Those are the rea­sons so much mon­ey was poured into Wisconsin to keep Scott Walker in pow­er. Those are the rea­sons the Koch broth­ers give so much mon­ey to Carl Rove’s super-pac American cross­roads. That goes to the heart of Scott Walker’s response to a wealthy female donor when he cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly stat­ed that his desire is to divide and con­quer, that’s why Walker was bust­ed when he thought he was talk­ing to one of the Koch broth­ers on the phone. 

So the desire of the peo­ple of Wisconsin to see fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty in gov­ern­ment caused them to val­i­date Walker. The only prob­lem is that the repub­li­can/tea-par­ty’s plan is noth­ing more than a Trojan Horse.

Following on my com­ments on the upcom­ing elec­tions recent­ly, I will con­tin­ue to expand on what I see to be a despi­ca­ble cow­ardice and con­nivance in these upcom­ing nation­al elec­tions. You may be sur­prised to learn that I am refer­ring to Democrats.

It has become clear… well at least to me, that there are two dis­tinct wings in the demo­c­ra­t­ic party.The last two term demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dent Bill Clinton has left an indeli­ble impres­sion on the par­ty. He is con­sid­ered the actu­al defac­to leader of the party.

Hillary and Bill Clinton are still incred­i­bly pop­u­lar in the par­ty, as such many who were nev­er on the Obama express, whis­per that Hillary should have got­ten the Nomination over Barack Obama. I’m not quite sure what is the for­mu­la for that determination.

George Washington report­ed­ly turned down being crowned King, telling the peo­ple that they ran away from the British King and as such America did not need a King, smart man.

However if recent com­ments by Anne Romney are any­thing to go by Quote “It’s our time , it’s Mitt’s time” such pre­sump­tu­ous arro­gance.http://​www​.nypost​.com/​p​/​n​e​w​s​/​n​a​t​i​o​n​a​l​/​o​u​t​t​a​_​m​y​_​h​o​u​s​e​_​E​1​8​W​Z​X​I​i​c​M​J​E​p​o​P​x​H​e​D​scN It seem the Romneys believe that they are enti­tled to the pres­i­den­cy.

It seem that America is head­ed the way of a type of plu­to­crat­ic Monarchy of sorts. Recent Supreme Court deci­sion cit­i­zens United has also sig­nalled with some degree of cer­tain­ty that the coun­try is indeed head­ed for , if not already a plu­toc­ra­cy.

The Clinton Wing of the Democratic par­ty is the lib­er­al equiv­a­lent of the Tea-par­ty in my esti­ma­tion. Many of them still have not got­ten over the loss Hilary Clinton suf­fered at the hands of Barack Obama.

It was democ­rats who start­ed the despi­ca­ble nas­ti­ness in Pennsylvania and Ohio dur­ing the Primaries between Hillary and Barack. It was so-called democ­rats who were show­ing up with the card-board car­i­ca­tures. After the pri­maries were over repub­li­cans sim­ply picked up where the so-called work­ing class whites in Pennsylvania and Ohio left off.

I make that argu­ment in light of the glar­ing chasm in the num­bers, as it relates to Obama and whites. I believe if these vot­ers were in Obama’s col­umn this race would have been a fore­gone conclusion.

Bill Clinton did not have to do so much when he was pres­i­dent, he had Paul Begala, James Carville, George Stephanalous and many oth­ers includ­ing some who were sim­ply in it for what they could get out of it. Hillary Clinton had the entire con­gres­sion­al black cau­cus as sur­ro­gates. The ques­tion is where is the con­gres­sion­al black cau­cus ? Why are they not out there as sur­ro­gates for this president?

This mon­th’s job num­ber of 69 thou­sand, though noth­ing to crow about is a far cry from when Obama took office and the econ­o­my was hem­or­rhag­ing 700 thou­sand jobs per month. Though not fan­tas­tic I will read­i­ly take 69 thou­sand jobs cre­at­ed as against 700 thou­sand lost.

Republicans have blocked the pres­i­dent at every turn, why would the elec­torate reward them for bad behav­ior? The jobs bill which Boehner refus­es to bring to the floor of the house would , by many esti­mates cre­ate hun­dreds of thou­sands of con­struc­tion jobs, which in turn would cre­ate a pos­i­tive cas­cad­ing snow-ball effect on the economy.

When that jobs bill is added to the over 2 tril­lion dol­lars report­ed­ly in the hands of big busi­ness­es, yet they refuse to hire work­ers , it leaves lit­tle doubt that there is a con­spir­a­cy afoot to jam Obama’s pres­i­den­cy at every turn.

Big busi­ness­es want to return to the Bush years which saw the coun­try’s econ­o­my reach the brink of ruination.Nno reg­u­la­tions, and uncon­scionable craven tax cuts for the 1% . In Mitt Romney they have A per­fect emp­ty ves­sel who stand for noth­ing and will do the exact bid­ding of the 1%. 

Grover Norquist their no tax guru they all pledged to , have stat­ed that they only need a pres­i­dent to sign the Bills that gets shov­eled to his desk. Romney is that person.

The tragedy in all of this is that the elec­torate, which many cred­it with being intel­li­gent, seem will­ing to reward obstruc­tion­ist repub­li­cans who have lift­ed not one fin­ger to end their suf­fer­ing and has made it clear that they stand with big busi­ness. They seem pre­pared to give pow­er back to them so they can get back to tax cuts for the rich, dereg­u­la­tion, Ponzi gam­bling by big banks ‚wild unreg­u­lat­ed spec­u­lat­ing by oth­er finan­cial insti­tu­tions, mas­sive destruc­tion to the envi­ron­ment by large cor­po­ra­tions, and ille­gal unfund­ed for­eign wars.

Never mind the month­ly shed­ding of 700 thou­sand jobs when the pres­i­dent took office.

Never mind almost 4 years of obstruc­tion­ist tac­tics from republicans.

Never mind that when he took office no one knew where the bot­tom would be, when would it end.

Never mind that over 4 mil­lion jobs were cre­at­ed under Obama’s watch.

Never mind the auto indus­try was saved and ful­ly solvent.

Never mind that man­u­fac­tur­ing is com­ing back to America.

Never mind that most of the top tiered lead­er­ship of Al Qaeda has been eradicated.

Never mind that the King-pin Osama Bin Laden has been neutralized.

Never mind that this pres­i­dent has passed uni­ver­sal health care , some­thing no oth­er demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dent was able to do.

Never mind that this pres­i­dent has passed sev­er­al laws and giv­en sup­port to women and peo­ple whom have been out of the so-called main­stream before.

Never mind that this pres­i­dent repealed “don’t ask, don’t tell”.

Never mind that this pres­i­dent signed the Lilly Ledbetter act into law.

Never mind that the pres­i­dent end­ed the Iraq war

Never mind that this pres­i­dent has restored the coun­try to promi­nence and respectabil­i­ty on the world’s stage.

Never mind that this pres­i­dent in his first term has opened up the mar­ket place for green ener­gy and has allowed more leas­es for oil and nat­ur­al gas drilling, even more than his pre­de­ces­sor, a drill baby drill pres­i­dent Bush.

Never mind that on the ques­tion of immi­gra­tion this pres­i­dent has deport­ed more peo­ple out of this coun­try than any oth­er pres­i­dent. Acquiescing exact­ly to what the lunatic right wants, yet he is accused of not uphold­ing America’s laws.

There are more than ade­quate rea­sons for this pres­i­dent to run on his record and be eas­i­ly re-elect­ed. Where are the democ­rats wo are sup­posed to be out there trum­pet­ing this pres­i­den­t’s record of accomplishment?

The fact of the mat­ter is, when­ev­er things fall apart they allow a black guy to have a go at it, ask David Dinkins about that. The pro­grams he start­ed were all cred­it­ed to the ego­ma­ni­a­cal Rudolph Giuliani. Yet most if not all of those ini­tia­tives were start­ed by David Dinkins. Yet they have effec­tive­ly scrubbed the Dinkins may­oral­ty from the annals of New York City dia­logue as if it nev­er happened.

To his dis­cred­it nei­ther Dinkins nor the lily liv­er­ied democ­rats have stood up to the pompous lit­tle ego­ma­ni­ac Rudolph Giuliani, they allowed them to use revi­sion­ist his­to­ry to dis­tort and destroy his legacy.

They will attempt to do the same to Obama, as they have done repeat­ed­ly to President Jimmy Carter. Over and over again they have ridiculed President Carter as an abject fail­ure, the every­thing that was wrong with demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dents, weak feck­less, inde­ci­sive. The truth is they wont men­tion the fail­ures they have had, from Hoover all the way down to bush 43^rd.

Democrats have allowed repub­li­cans to use the mil­i­tary to launch ille­gal and unau­tho­rised wars all over the globe to sat­is­fy large cor­po­ra­tions, and they sign on as lambs to the slaugh­ter, afraid of being labeled weak. President Carter’s pres­i­den­cy was defined by the débâ­cle in the Arabian desert, had it suc­ceed­ed his pres­i­den­cy would have been seen in a dif­fer­ent light. Never mind that the same prin­ci­ple applied to Obama’s deci­sion to go after Bin Laden the way he did. Had he failed his pres­i­den­cy would have been over, the sim­i­lar­i­ties are uncanny.

Yet despite the mon­u­men­tal risk Obama took to neu­tral­ize Bin Laden, enter­ing a sov­er­eign nation(Pakistan) with­out autho­riza­tion, (as he said he would as can­di­date Obama) it did not stop Donald Rumsfeld from say­ing it was an easy deci­sion to make, a deci­sion which required no more than 15 min­utes, 12 of which should have been spent on cof­fee break.

Donald Rumsfeld for­mer Defense sec­re­tary was even­tu­al­ly fired by pres­i­dent Bush, an abject failure.

People on the left do not have real fight­ers look­ing out for their inter­est. Democrats are feck­less cow­ards. Republicans set the agen­da , dis­tort the facts and cam­paign and gov­ern by lies. Democrats do noth­ing about it.

If pres­i­dent Obama los­es this elec­tion his par­ty will be respon­si­ble, not republicans.

Republicans do what they do, they do not care about any­thing but pow­er and the cause of the filthy rich. they do not hide that, they allowed the coun­try’s AAA cred­it rat­ing to be down­grad­ed over a pro­ce­dur­al mea­sure,( rais­ing the cred­it lim­it). They refuse to pass a bill which would put work­ers back to work, pol­i­tics at it’s worse.

If a par­ty can risk the eco­nom­ic via­bil­i­ty of the coun­try to fur­ther polit­i­cal ends ‚there is no telling what else they will do to gain power.

Democrats will lose if they once again fail to com­mu­ni­cate this to the electorate.

I don’t agree with all the peo­ple who sup­port me. And my guess is they don’t all agree with every­thing I believe in,” Romney told reporters before fly­ing from California to Colorado Monday evening. “But I need to get 50.1 per­cent or more. And I’m appre­cia­tive to have the help of a lot of good people.”

These are not the words of your low­ly blogger,They are the words of the esteemed Republican can­di­date for pres­i­dent Mitt Romney. Romney uttered these words on his cam­paign char­ter, in response to ques­tions from the press regard­ing his sched­uled Tuesday fund-rais­er in Las Vegas Nevada with (Carnival Barker) Donald Trump.

Donald Trump has posi­tioned him­self as one of the most well know big­ots in America. Trump despite his wealth, has shown that mon­ey can­not buy class. He con­tin­ues to fan the flames of racial hatred with the birther issue, which essen­tial­ly ques­tions the legit­i­ma­cy of President Obama’s pres­i­den­cy, by sug­gest­ing that he was not born in America.

After the pres­i­dent released his birth cer­tifi­cate and the ver­bal stomp­ing he admin­is­tered to him , in which he labeled him a car­ni­val bark­er, some thought that intel­li­gent peo­ple would be free from the big­ot­ed rants of the orange-haired-buf­foon.

That has not turned out to be so, Trump an ego-mani­a­cal nar­cis­sist has attached him­self to the Romney cam­paign like a par­a­sit­i­cal crus­tacean. Trump knows that there real­ly is no bad pub­lic­i­ty, he is in it to improve the trump brand, as such his tele­vi­sion show gets rat­ings and most of all he gets to hear his name men­tioned on tele­vi­sion. Trump fan­cies him­self as a major play­er in American pol­i­tics, after all, why not? Citizens United has basi­cal­ly put the pres­i­den­cy up for the high­est bid­der, why should he, the (car­ni­val bark­er) not be a player?

Trump does not care what hap­pens as long as he gets the afore­men­tioned, of course it would be bet­ter for him if Romney gets into the White House where they want envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions rolled back and the vig­i­lance of the envi­ron­men­tal Protection Agency done away with. This kind of men­tal­i­ty is not con­fined to Trump there are dozens of filthy rich bil­lion­aires who are will­ing to put their mon­ey where their mouths are to defeat Obama. They seri­ous­ly see cit­i­zens unit­ed as an open­ing of the door to pur­chase the elections.

Romney knows that the far right-wing of the repub­li­can fringe is sus­pi­cious of him, as such, he is pre­pared to hold his nose and cozy up to Trump, he is will­ing to roll the dice to see what trac­tion he may squeeze out of the birther issue. It is also con­ve­nient for Romney to say what he said in the open­ing state­ment of this blog. So he gets to say the nasty things he would like to say about the pres­i­dent, using sur­ro­gates, while keep­ing his hands clean. How suc­cess­ful will this strat­e­gy be? The birther issue has been debunked, as such those who espouse it are seen as racist vile crea­tures of the lunatic fringe. Like every­thing else Romney tries to have it both ways.

Conservative icon George Will blast­ed the orange-hair-buf­foon on tele­vi­sion last week say­ing quote:

“I do not under­stand the cost ben­e­fit here” “The cost of appear­ing with this blovi­at­ing igno­ra­mus is obvi­ous, it seems to me.” “Donald Trump is redun­dant evi­dence that if your net worth is high enough, your IQ can be very low and you can still intrude into American pol­i­tics,” Will con­tin­ued. “Again, I don’t under­stand the ben­e­fit. What is Romney seek­ing?”http://​www​.the​blaze​.com/​s​t​o​r​i​e​s​/​r​o​m​n​e​y​-​r​e​f​u​s​e​s​-​t​o​-​r​e​p​u​d​i​a​t​e​-​t​r​u​m​p​-​o​n​-​t​h​e​-​b​i​r​t​h​e​r​-​i​s​s​u​e​-​p​o​ll/

I think that what we have heard com­ing out of Mitt Romney’s mouth is the most despi­ca­ble vile but cow­ard­ly and rep­re­hen­si­ble type of pol­i­tick­ing imag­in­able. From Rush Limbaugh’s onslaught on Susan Fluke, to not stand­ing up to the hate mon­gers who demand­ed that his very qual­i­fied gay for­eign pol­i­cy advis­er step down, to the woman who called the pres­i­dent a trai­tor, no courage from Romney. Many peo­ple are won­der­ing when will Romney have his sis­ter-Souljah moment. But if what Romney had to say on that air­plane is any indi­ca­tion of his char­ac­ter, we will have a long wait.

Donald Trump is a clown , if Romney allows him­self to be han­dled by a clown, what does it make Mitt Romney?

As the Election cam­paign heats up we have been giv­en a taste of what’s in store for us for the next 6 months. We can look for­ward to a steady diet of lies racist innu­en­dos and a con­stant [oth­er­ing] sic of Barack Obama.

We may also expect the same old pre­dictabli­ty of wishy-washy Democrats. They will hide wher­ev­er they feel will afford them some cov­er and they will leave all the heavy lift­ing to the President. Yet those cow­ards on the bal­lot come November will not hes­i­tate to ride his coat-tails in the event he is succesful.

Republicans have argued that this elec­tion will be about the econ­o­my. After all why not? Mitch McConnell Republican Minority leader in the sen­ate syn­op­sised the entire­ty of repub­li­can strat­e­gy for the dura­tion of Obama’s pres­i­den­cy. “Our only goal is to ensure that Barack Obama is one term pres­i­dent” This state­ment came while the pres­i­dent was just inau­gu­rat­ed and grap­pling with try­ing to save the coun­try from a total finan­cial col­lapse. They have spent the last 3 ¹⁄₂ years doing every­thing in their pow­er, and trust me they have pow­er­ful friends , to destroy the pres­i­den­cy of Barack Obama, pick up the pieces lat­er and gov­ern for anoth­er decade. That is the strat­e­gy of repub­li­cans. Real patri­ots those republicans.

It is clear that the elec­tions will not be about the econ­o­my as the talk­ing heads on cable have been par­rot­ing, it will be about lies.

On issue after issue, repub­li­cans have dis­tort­ed pres­i­dent Obama’s record and have vir­tu­al­ly got­ten away with it. Cable hosts like Wolf Blitzer, Candy Crowley and Howard Kurtz of CNN have allowed them to lit­er­al­ly spout their talk­ing points as truth, with­out stop­ping them and point­ing to what they know are lies. Fox mis­in­for­ma­tion does not pre­tend, so we know what to expect from them , but CNN has parad­ed as a gen­uine News Organization , which they real­ly aren’t .

One of the knocks against Democrats is that they are wishy-washy, they have for decades allowed repub­li­cans to frame the debate paint­ing them as what the repub­li­cans want them to be at any giv­en time. Big spenders, tax and spend lib­er­als, social­ists, weak on nation­al defense, lovers of big gov­ern­ment, and a whole hosts of oth­er labels which are bet­ter suit­ed to repub­li­cans , but which they suc­cess­ful­ly project onto democrats.

What do democ­rats do ? Nothing, they do noth­ing, they parse and speak from the cor­ners of their mouths even, though they are the par­ty of bal­anced bud­gets, look­ing out for the poor and the mid­dle-class, the par­ty which keeps the peace, and the par­ty which have striv­en for the rights and dig­ni­ty of all Americans.

Republicans are gen­er­al­ly racists and liars, some racists, some liars, some racist liars, they may be all those things , but they are disciplined.

President Obama is out cam­paign­ing and stick­ing it to Mitt Romney the can­di­date of the 1%, many argue that the pres­i­dent should leave some of the heavy lift­ing to sur­ro­gates. If recent occur­rence are any barom­e­ter, then the pres­i­dent is doing what he needs to do, do what he wants done, himself.

With friends like Ed Rendell and Corey Booker Newark’s Mayor it is clear to see why the pres­i­dent can­not trust his mes­sage to democ­rats. Many democ­rats are look­ing out for their own brand, or are either sold out to the very spe­cial inter­est the pres­i­dent is lash­ing out against.

Barack Obama has a ter­rif­ic sto­ry to tell, he has pulled the coun­try back from the precipice of finan­cial ruina­tion, under his watch we have had con­tin­u­ous growth and over 5 mil­lion jobs cre­at­ed, Osama Bin Laden is dead and General motors is alive. the lat­ter coined by Joe Biden so I can­not take cred­it for it. A health care Bill has been passed and even though repub­li­cans have stat­ed their inten­tion to repeal it, we are yet to hear what their plans are for the coun­try’s over 25 mil­lion peo­ple who have no health care and the tens of mil­lion more who have insufficient.

What’s inter­est­ing is that repub­li­cans have offered up not one sug­ges­tion as to what they would do with the peo­ple whom are already cov­ered under the afford­able care act(Obama care). So we must con­clude that all the young peo­ple now cov­ered untill age 26 on their par­ents insur­ance will be thrown off, these peo­ple are not heavy users of health insur­ance because of their age, but what will hap­pen to the seniors, and the mil­lions who were told they had pre-exist­ing con­di­tions before the afford­able care act became law?

SO WHY IS THIS ELECTION CLOSE ?

This elec­tion is close because Republicans are ‚mas­ters of lies and decep­tion. It is an absolute art-form which enables one to con­vince oth­ers to take actions against their own self-inter­est. Marvelous indeed, repub­li­cans have tapped into hate, fear and anx­i­ety of the ill-informed mass­es of whites in this coun­try. They have paint­ed the pres­i­dent as an Other, Socialist, European Socialist, Fascist, Kenyan, Illegal Alien, Traitor,Arab, and a pletho­ra of oth­er deroga­to­ry names with a view to dis­cred­it him and to nul­li­fy his presidency.

This is at the heart of Mitch McConnell’s state­ment about mak­ing Obama a one term president.

This is at the heart of what they mean when they talk about tak­ing back their coun­try, take back their coun­try from who ? what makes them feel this land is any­more theirs than it is Obama’s or blacks or any­one else?

Trump  Palin

It is what’s at the heart of the birther non­sense, pro­mul­gat­ed by this orange haired ego­ma­ni­a­cal moron, it is what at the heart of this clue­less race bait­ing idiot Sarah Palin. One would have thought that after pres­i­dent Obama squished Trump at the White house cor­re­spon­den­t’s din­ner he would have dis­ap­peared like the Carnival Barker he is. But his over-sized ego will not allow him to dry up and blow away.

These are the faces of the mod­ern-day repub­li­can par­ty, the par­ty which has with­out a doubt staked its claim as the par­ty of the 1%. They havent even tried to cov­er this up, yet mil­lions and mil­lions of peo­ple will fol­low a bought-and-paid for cor­po­rate shill over the cliff, like rats to the wail­ing flute of the pied piper, vot­ing the inter­est of the 1 %.

Joan Walsh Editor of Salon​.com http://​www​.salon​.com/ put it suc­cinct­ly, when she stat­ed it was one of the most embar­rass­ing days of her life when the pres­i­dent of the United States had to show his birth cer­tifi­cate to an orange haired bul­ly. I agree with Joan Walsh, I dis­agreed with President Obama, I would not have released my birth cer­tifi­cate, he had no oblig­a­tion to do so and as pres­i­dent of the United States I would be all too will­ing to have that issue dom­i­nate the dis­course all the way to the next elections.

Joan Walsh.

Republicans have noth­ing to run on , in any oth­er coun­try this pres­i­dent would be a shoo-in for a sec­ond term. Some argue that race does not play a part in their crit­i­cisms of Obama. After all they argue he was elect­ed pres­i­dent even though he is a mem­ber of the minor­i­ty. To those I say with due respect, have you seen the most recent cen­sus reports as it relates to the latter?

There is a chasm between white men and pres­i­dent Obama as far as the polling data in con­cerned. This leads me to con­clude what I already knew and what we became aware of many years ago. The most feared man in America is an edu­cat­ed black man. Barack Obama has unearthed their deep­est fears, they have nev­er been forced to com­pete on an even play­ing field. They made the rules, they offi­ci­at­ed the games, they picked up the ball and went home when they saw fit.

This all came crash­ing down when Barack Hussein Obama became the 44^th pres­i­dent of the United States of America.

Every lie they ever told for over three hun­dred years were laid bare. Staring back at them was the by-prod­uct of every­thing they had tried to kill, sup­press, and emasculate.

Like a phoenix the Black race has shown its indomitable spirt and its will nev­er die, but that it poss­es the will to rise from the ash­es of what some thought was its demise.

Like a phoenix we will con­tin­ue to rise.

As America approach­es anoth­er Presidential elec­tion, one of the cen­tral tenets of this cycle is the widen­ing gap between the haves and the have-nots.Today there is data which sug­gest that 99% of the world’s wealth and resources are actu­al­ly owned and con­trolled by less than 5% of the world’s peo­ple. What that means in the reverse is that up to 95% of the world’s now 7 bil­lion and climb­ing inhab­i­tants are actu­al­ly left to fight over the 1 % that falls off the table of the rich and powerful.

The Republican can­di­date for President Mitt Romney, his par­ty and sur­ro­gates, argue that those who seek to talk about these dis­par­i­ties are envi­ous and resent­ful of suc­cess. Romney him­self is report­ed­ly worth a quar­ter of a bil­lion dol­lars and count­ing. I doubt that there are many peo­ple who would not glad­ly trade finan­cial posi­tions with Mitt Romney. How then are Republicans able to make the envy argument?

They do so by con­vinc­ing low infor­ma­tion peo­ple to believe in ideas and ulti­mate­ly vote against their own best inter­est. My focus today is not to talk about repub­li­can deceit , but to frame what is actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing not just in America but all over the world. The defeat of French President Sarkozy of France may actu­al­ly shed some light into that feel­ing of hope­less­ness the world’s peo­ple are feel­ing at the unmit­i­gat­ed greed of those who have every­thing yet have an insa­tiable rapa­cious desire for more.

In oth­er parts of the globe move­ments are spring­ing up, peo­ple are demand­ing their share of the world’s resources , whilst at the same time decry­ing the immense glut­tony of major cor­po­ra­tions, and what some per­ceive to be their wan­ton dis­re­gard for the lit­tle man. 

Several years ago as a small busi­ness own­er I was approached by a rep­re­sen­ta­tives of a large cor­po­ra­tion called Sprint, Sprint had just launched their pre-paid line called Boost, This new pre­paid line was to oper­ate on the IDN net­work, IDN uses a sim card and allowed Sprint to offer users walkie-talkie ser­vice, a move which was rev­o­lu­tion­ary then.

At the time they would have been hap­py to have a home­less per­son sell­ing the prod­uct. Fast for­ward to today, Boost has rev­o­lu­tion­ized the pre-pay indus­try with their $50 per month plan with no con­tract, this plan offers inter­net , unlim­it­ed domes­tic talk and text, and the abil­i­ty with on time pay­ment to shed up to $15 from the $50 plan over an 18 month period.

What’s not to like?

The idea took off beyond the wildest dreams of Sprint and the plan­ners, in addi­tion Sprint offered cheap phones to the con­sumers which they argued they sub­si­dized . Sprint then start­ed argu­ing that small retail­ers should not pur­chase too many phones all at once because they placed much fin­in­cial resources into mass pur­chas­ing of the devices and it was bad busi­ness to have them sit­ting on store shelves. So they cut off sup­plies, some­times for weeks on end , in an effort they argue would dry up mer­chan­dize being held by retail­ers. Never mind that small retail­ers like myself had to deal with cus­tomers who came to my estab­lish­ment and could not find the devices , some­times for weeks on end.

As the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the plan grew so did the desire for more sophis­ti­cat­ed devices com­men­su­rate with the times. In effect con­sumers want­ed all of the trap­pings of the inter­net, talk and text, up to date devices, low month­ly pay­ments and no con­straints of a con­tract. So the big­wigs decid­ed that the prod­uct was now strong enough to sup­port direct stores . So they embarked on entic­ing poten­tial small busi­ness peo­ple to invest in stores car­ry­ing noth­ing but Boost and vir­gin mobile phones and acces­sories, yet Sprint bears none of the cost and over-heads of the oper­a­tional costs asso­ci­at­ed with those stores.

Of course yours tru­ly said thanks but no thanks. One of their reps told me recent­ly quote“Mike we have count­less deal­ers and you are the only one with a Barber shop in the same facil­i­ty as your store.” I told him my Barber shop stays you may go.

What Sprint is seek­ing to do is to dic­tate to small busi­ness peo­ple how they should con­duct their busi­ness, they want to add cer­tifi­cates to busi­ness peo­ple’s com­put­er on the premise they want to dis­cour­age unau­tho­rized retail­ers from sell­ing pre-paid pins, they frame it as a means of dri­ving busi­ness to the door of busi­ness peo­ple like myself, in essence it is a track­ing device. A track­ing device which is sim­i­lar to their attempts to tell retail­ers how many phones they must sell per month , how their prod­ucts must be dis­placed in the retail­ers own store and how much space and mer­chan­dize retail­ers must devote and stock respectively.

The threat?

“Do not do as I say, we de-autho­rize you”. Never mind that Sprint’s name is so bad in cer­tain cir­cles many peo­ple dis­card their Sprint con­tracts to get Boost and Virgin Mobile ser­vices, unaware they are both owned by Sprint. The arro­gance of Sprint in assum­ing that small busi­ness­es will take on over-heads to mar­ket their prod­ucts is stag­ger­ing , yet some small busi­ness peo­ple unaware that I am myself an authroized retail­er, have con­fid­ed in me that it is extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to oper­ate the direct stores with all of the cost and risks sell­ing only the afore­men­tioned products.

None of the oth­er providers of cel­lu­lar ser­vices I mar­ket in my store have ever approached me with any of the demands Sprint has the audac­i­ty to demand.

I men­tion this sto­ry to high­light the bla­tant dis­re­spect and dis­dain large cor­po­ra­tions have for small busi­ness peo­ple and the ordi­nary man. At the same time they chose this auda­cious path ‚they give away American jobs to poor­ly trained peo­ple in the Philippines and oth­er Countries who are extreme­ly rude and incom­pe­tent , frus­trat­ing cus­tomers who then return to stores like mine to sort through Sprint’s cus­tomer ser­vice problems.

Many large cor­po­ra­tions have come and gone, America needs to con­stant­ly seek to encour­age and facil­i­tate small busi­ness­es in the Towns cities and ham­lets all across the nation, our peo­ple are bet­ter served when we offer inti­mate friend­ly service.

We wait to see how Sprint will even­tu­al­ly evolve.

On the 11^th of May I wrote a blog which sought to lay the foun­da­tion so we can under­stand why crime is such an entrenched prob­lem in Jamaica.
In that Article I out­lined the dif­fer­ence Hugh Lawson Shearer was as a Prime Minister when con­trast­ed with the oth­ers even in his own par­ty, the Jamaica Labor Party.
In this the age of infor­ma­tion and free­dom of infor­ma­tion laws, Shearer’s record as a leader may be accessed and scrutinized.

I will not seek to spoon-feed you guys on this. The Manley years which suc­ceed­ed Shearer is also pub­lic record for all to look at and form their own opin­ions. I for one do believe there are good and bad in almost every­thing. The ques­tion is, does the bad out-weigh the good in an endur­ing way that we would most cer­tain­ly have been bet­ter off with­out the good asso­ci­at­ed with them?
We may look at the Manley years with objec­tiv­i­ty, and feel good about min­i­mum-wage increase, no more bas­tards kids, and all the oth­er social pro­grams that he enacted.

We then com­pare them with the phe­nom­e­nal increase in crim­i­nal­i­ty and law­less­ness due to his pol­i­cy of anti-cap­i­tal­ism which taught lazy Jamaicans who want­ed what oth­ers worked for, that peo­ple who had mate­r­i­al wealth were vicious evil peo­ple. A pol­i­cy which rein­forced the notion that what they had should be tak­en from them and divid­ed up among the poor.

Manley fol­lowed up those poli­cies by telling the busi­ness class that if they did not like his socialist/​communist poli­cies they should hop onto one of the five flights per day which were leav­ing for Miami then.
Of course they took Manley’s advice, why would they not?
They were already been set up as ene­mies of the state, many were being mur­dered, so they took flight and they took their mon­ey with them.
They were not going to be vic­tims of Manley’s social engineering>.

The endur­ing lega­cy of Manley’s poli­cies rever­ber­ates through Jamaica to this day.
The coun­try which had a Ministry of (Mobilization) what­ev­er the hell that meant , has strug­gled to rede­fine itself beyond the depen­dent aggres­sive vio­lent abra­sive peo­ple we are seen as , always with a hand stretched out.
That is not to say that was the vision Manley had for the coun­try, the oppo­site is prob­a­bly clos­er to the truth. However once the prover­bial genie was let out of the bot­tle there was no putting it back.

Once oppressed and under­priv­i­leged peo­ple were allowed to move into peo­ple’s homes take them over, take over their busi­ness­es, do noth­ing but col­lect pay­checks the coun­try would nev­er be the same again.
Why would the peo­ple want anoth­er par­ty in the mix? This par­ty is great , “we do as we please, what’s not to like”?

This saw an almost mar­gin­al­iza­tion of the oth­er par­ty, which as some argue is now noth­ing more than a filler party.
A filler Party they argue which is there sole­ly to fill in when the nation is tired of the PNP. Political devel­op­ments over the last three to four decades makes it a bit dif­fi­cult to argue with those assertions.

This aggres­sive nature which was cre­at­ed by the Ministry of pro­pa­gan­da oc> (mobi­liza­tion) was not sim­ply going to dis­si­pate sim­ply because the so-called rich had fled the coun­try, after all, greed and envy ‚like all oth­er preda­tors, needs prey.

Once the rich had left the greed and envy was turned within.
Which leads us to the present crime situation.
Checkmate…

President Obama has stopped dither­ing after he was forced off the fence regard­ing the gay mar­riage issue. Vice President Joe Biden in an inter­view last Sunday stat­ed that he was total­ly com­fort­able with the mar­riage of same-sex cou­ples, and frankly he did not see what the fuss was beyond that. This cre­at­ed a flur­ry of activ­i­ty around the issue, many won­dered if Biden had mis­spo­ken once again, he is well-known as a gaffe machine. The next day Education sec­re­tary Arne Duncan stat­ed on MSNBC that he was also in favor of same-sex mar­riage, Interviewer Mark Halperin asked Duncan if he had ever said so in pub­lic before, Duncan shot back “I have nev­er been asked before”

Cable chan­nels lit up with spec­u­la­tion as to what Obama’s posi­tion would be, as Illinois state sen­a­tor Barack Obama was for civ­il union , his aides argued he was still evolv­ing, this did not slow down the inces­sant 24 hour chat­ter on cable, with many all but demand­ing that the pres­i­dent come out one way or the oth­er on the issue.

Obama like any politi­cian spent time con­sid­er­ing the polit­i­cal ram­i­fi­ca­tions either way. This could not have come at a worse time for the pres­i­dent in my esti­ma­tion, the state of North Carolina just this week vot­ed deci­sive­ly by a twen­ty point mar­gin to out­law same-sex mar­riage. North Carolina is an extreme­ly cru­cial state for the pres­i­dent, no demo­c­rat had won that state until Jimmy Carter did in 1976, Obama won North Carolina by a com­fort­able mar­gin in 2008 , owing large­ly to the large African-American com­mu­ni­ty there, which turned out in big num­bers to give Obama the win.

Other swing states like Colorado, Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, Pennsylvania may fac­tor into how this ulti­mate­ly plays out in November. Many swing states have large chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tive pop­u­la­tions who are vehe­ment­ly opposed to same-sex mar­riage or even civ­il unions.

The Hollywood crowd is ecsta­t­ic with the pres­i­den­t’s decision,segments of the media are also hap­py but , it is still left to be seen how actu­al vot­ers will react to this his­toric deci­sion by Obama. (The LGBT) com­mu­ni­ty had long framed this issue as a civ­il rights issue, link­ing their sojourn to the civ­il rights strug­gles African-amer­i­cans waged.

This strat­e­gy has angered some with­in the African-American com­mu­ni­ty who believe that there is no con­nec­tion between the two. African-Americans are actu­al­ly large­ly against gay mar­riage, now coined (mar­riage equal­i­ty) for palat­i­bil­i­ty. These are some of the very vot­ers who just vot­ed unaminous­ly to out­law mar­riage equal­i­ty in North Carolina, and the most loy­al part of the pres­i­den­t’s base.

Many pun­dits argue that blacks are just not gonna aban­don the pres­i­dent on this issue, because of the pride they feel at hav­ing a black man in the white house.I am not so sure, hav­ing lis­tened to the views of some pas­tors who fear that they will be forced to mar­ry peo­ple of the same gen­der against their core chris­t­ian prin­ci­ples. These pas­tors have large con­gre­ga­tions which may not be hap­py with this deci­sion. The ques­tion is, are these vot­ers going to go out and vote for Mitt Romney? Or will they chose instead may just choose instead not to go out and vote at all?

Mitt Romney the repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date in response to the pres­i­den­t’s posi­tion, stat­ed that he believed that mar­riage should be between a man and a woman. Romney also offered up more extend­ed and nuanced ‚(wishy/​washy) plat­i­tudes, which I will not delve into at this time.

Many hail the pres­i­den­t’s posi­tion as a his­toric moment for civ­il rights, the ques­tion is what kind of out­come will it have for his short-term polit­i­cal future? As the pres­i­den­t’s posi­tion has evolved it behoves all of us to be cog­nizant of the protes­ta­tions of those who invoke God’s name into the debate, many of them used his name to jus­ti­fy slav­ery, Jim Crowe, to bar inter racial mar­riage, and to gen­er­al­ly dis­crim­i­nate against minorities.

Whether we agree or dis­agree with the deci­sion of the pres­i­dent, those whose rights he pro­fess­es to pro­tect are no less than the rest of us. Even if he and the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty are sin­ful and deserve to burn in hell it still is not up to the rest of us to impose those penal­ties. As the scrip­tures clear­ly states let the wheat and the tares grow togeth­er untill the day of harvest.

God is the ulti­mate judge.

The Obama Administration has announced they are ready to launch their 2012 elec­tion cam­paign, this coin­cid­ed with Mitt Romney all but lock­ing up the nom­i­na­tion for his par­ty. Santorum the last real chal­lenger dropped out before Romney swept all of the five states which were up for grabs last Tuesday. Of course I think we are all aware there are no coin­ci­dences in pol­i­tics, so it’s safe to assume that the launch was intend­ed to coin­cide with Romneys inevitable win in the states which had their pri­maries Tuesday.

President Barack Obama. Governor Mitt Romney

The Obama cam­paign would be well advised that the lev­el of excite­ment which char­ac­ter­ized their first vic­to­ry may not be avail­able to them this time around. The econ­o­my is still only ten­ta­tive­ly recov­er­ing, Guantanamo Bay is still open,The Afghan war is still being waged, even though it seem no one knows why and to what end. Unemployment is high, and there is a gen­er­al malaise in the air. much of the stag­na­tion in the econ­o­my may actu­al­ly be traced to the doorstep of repub­li­cans in con­gress who uni­tary have opposed every pro­pos­al or leg­is­la­tion the pres­i­dent has put forth. Mitch McConnell stat­ed emphat­i­cal­ly that his only goal is to ensure that the pres­i­dent serves only one term.

Mitch McConnelEric Cantor

One would have thought that as Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell would have had more to do than sub­vert the pres­i­dent ‘s agen­da for polit­i­cal gain. Obviously vot­ers in the state of Kentucky are sat­is­fied with this tired lame excuse of a pub­lic ser­vant so he is allowed to do it with­out con­se­quence, come next elec­tion they will vote him back into office, such is the state of ide­o­log­i­cal pol­i­tics in this coun­try that peo­ple like the sen­ate minor­i­ty can sub­vert the will of the vast major­i­ty of the peo­ple who elect­ed the pres­i­dent.

Make no mis­take, the rea­son we have seen this una­nim­i­ty of GOP oppo­si­tion to this pres­i­dent is racial ani­mus. Many of the poli­cies this pres­i­dent has put forth are most­ly car­ry overs from the Bush pres­i­den­cy. Bush enact­ed the Patriot Act, Obama con­tin­ued it. Bush start­ed the stim­u­lus, Obama con­tin­ued it. Bush spent tax­pay­ers mon­ey like a drunk­en sailor, Obama spend to stim­u­late the econ­o­my. Bush mass deport­ed peo­ple, Obama accel­er­at­ed the depor­ta­tion process. Bush start­ed the Afghanistan war, Obama con­tin­ued and broad­ened it. In fact many of Obama’s sup­port­ers are mad at him for exact­ly these poli­cies of Bush which he railed against as can­di­date Obama.

As a con­se­quence Obama has lost sup­port from the left, lost sup­port from the inde­pen­dent mid­dle and gained noth­ing from the right. Many make the case that Obama had to try to work with repub­li­cans, I dis­agree, elec­tions have con­se­quence. President Obama was elect­ed to car­ry out a man­date, if vot­ers want­ed repub­li­cans they would have vot­ed for them, they did not. Democrats had the house the sen­ate and the white house , yet rather than enact the pres­i­den­t’s agen­da they squab­bled and fought amongst them­selves, argu­ing about left­wing, lib­er­al, and blue-dog, and who fit­ted into what cat­e­go­ry. Voters boot­ed them from the house and hand­ed con­trol to repub­li­cans , who have since done noth­ing for the aver­age American.

Republicans in the house and Senate should not have had a oppur­tu­ni­ty to affect this pres­i­den­t’s agen­da, democ­rats were hand­ed a size­able major­i­ty in the house, con­trol of the sen­ate and con­trol of the white house. Given all of that pow­er repub­li­cans would have changed the face of America. President Obama has been forced to play defense and use exec­u­tive orders to get any­thing done, which saw him spend­ing a lot of time sell­ing his plans to the American peo­ple when he should be doing what he was elect­ed to do, govern.

John Boehner 

Paul Ryan

When the his­to­ry books are writ­ten detail­ing this chap­ter of American History, this con­gress will have the dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion of hav­ing assault­ed and abused the first African pres­i­dent. Not with water-hoses , guns , dogs and legal thugs , but by una­nim­i­ty of inac­tion, dis­re­spect and deri­sion. This con­gress led by John Bohnear must be remem­bered with the likes of George Wallace, and Bull O’Connor.

Republicans nev­er ceas­es to amaze me, I nev­er quite under­stood how they man­age to get so many peo­ple to vote against their own self-inter­est. The oth­er sub­ject of amaze­ment for me is that they lie bla­tant­ly , some­thing which is a pet peeve of mine , but I digress, I utter­ly loathe liars, yet repub­li­cans as a unit to the last troll, are able to lie bare-faced with­out bat­ting an eye and peo­ple vote for them. Lying is a seri­ous char­ac­ter flaw, to me it goes to the heart of one’s char­ac­ter, or as in the repub­li­cans case, the lack there­of. I won­der if oth­er peo­ple find the act of lying as loath­some as I do?

The repub­li­can Governor of Mississippi recent­ly stat­ed on right-wing radio that all democ­rats and planned par­ent-hood wants is to com­mit abor­tions. Now grant­ed that it is all lies, abor­tions is a small part of the ser­vices that planned par­ent-hood offers to women. The very repub­li­cans who holler and pros­trate them­selves as sav­ior of unborn chil­dren in Paul Ryan’s bud­get would deny the very chil­dren the most basic of neces­si­ties, food.

It fol­lows that what they care about is only what hap­pens in a wom­an’s womb, they care noth­ing about chil­dren, they would cut ser­vices like food stamps, and oth­er basis ser­vices to the poor­est peo­ple who are unable to help them­selves, whilst giv­ing more and more tax breaks to the wealth­i­est peo­ple who do not need the money.

The tried and failed poli­cies of trick­le down eco­nom­ics which Herbert Walker Bush cor­rect­ly labeled voodoo eco­nom­ics has been exposed as a sham and a fraud­u­lent back-door way of pay­ing off wealthy cam­paign donors, cou­pled with recent supreme court deci­sions in cit­i­zens unit­ed , aver­age Americans are in for a very rough ride. The pow­er of the American peo­ple are now cen­tered in the hands of a very few filthy rich people.

The wishy- washy nature of democ­rats, does not allow them to call repub­li­cans out as the flam­ing liars they are. This has giv­en them unre­strained acces to shape the debate based sole­ly on fic­tion. Say what you want about repub­li­cans they under­stand the art of decep­tion, I would nev­er sup­port them but one has to give cred­it to an orga­ni­za­tion that can effec­tive­ly make fools of so many, get­ting them to dis­re­gard their own interest.

Republicans have very strict dis­ci­pline, they all repeat the same lies , and they usu­al­ly do so with­out any push­back from their feck­less polit­i­cal adver­saries. Democrats choose rather to use nuanced terms, giv­ing cre­dence to the lies that they are elit­ists. Rather than speak direct­ly to the American peo­ple, the way repub­li­cans do, democ­rats beat around the bush. With the loss of a straight shoot­er like Barney Frank of Massachuset, democ­rats will be even worse off. Bill Clinton had Carville and Begala, Obama has himself.

If Obama shape the nar­ra­tive with easy and direct clar­i­ty he will win re-elec­tion, con­tin­u­ing to speak in pro­fes­so­r­i­al terms will end up in defeat for him . Based on his record there is no rea­son for him to lose this election.

Post Tivoli incur­sion , have seen a dra­mat­ic increase in crime in Jamaica , which has effec­tive­ly erod­ed the gains made by the secu­ri­ty force .

Quite pre­dictably , the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) , now the oppo­si­tion , which had con­tributed immense­ly to the prob­lem in the first place , pri­or to the incur­sion , has tried to gain polit­i­cal mileage from an issue which has seri­ous impli­ca­tions for this country .

Instead of engag­ing the PNP in dis­cus­sion on the issue, in an effort to arrive at con­sen­sus ad idem as to the way for­ward and iden­ti­fy solu­tions that could solve the prob­lem , they have sought to politi­cize it and rel­e­gat­ed it to a polit­i­cal football .

In the mid­dle of all this, is the Police ‚who have been giv­en the prover­bial bas­ket to car­ry water , with lit­tle or no resources to deal with a prob­lem ‚that they, the politi­cians them­selves, unwit­ting­ly , might have cre­at­ed and facilitated .

In the con­text of Jamaica, crime is a com­plex issue and has deep roots that facil­i­tate its exis­tence. It gains nour­ish­ment from the government’s, past and present, rel­a­tive inabil­i­ty to arrest the deep socioe­co­nom­ic con­cerns of the poor work­ing class peo­ple of this coun­try. They have instead engaged in a sort of polit­i­cal pro­tec­tion­ism of the polit­i­cal élite, seek­ing more to pro­tect their inter­est as to “who gets what where and how.”

The solu­tion there­fore is quite sim­ple , invest in our social cap­i­tal , stop unwant­ed waste of tax pay­ers mon­ey facil­i­tate invest­ment in this coun­try and imple­ment trans­par­ent mech­a­nisms to pre­vent cor­rup­tion which has starved this coun­try of well need­ed resources .
The ques­tion is though, does this crop of politi­cians have the polit­i­cal will to imple­ment these ini­tia­tives to resolve our con­tin­ued eco­nom­ic stag­na­tion? Your guess is as good as mine.

Errol Mc Leish

• Errol Mcleish is final­iz­ing his stud­ies in Law he hopes to prac­tise law in Jamaica, he also has a wealth of expe­ri­ence in law enforce­ment mat­ters and is a guest blog­ger on this site.

(1)

Eternal Father, Bless our Land,

Guard us with thy mighty hand,

Keep us free from evil powers,

Be our light through count­less hours,

To our lead­ers, great defender,

Grant true wis­dom from above,

Justice, truth be ours forever,

Jamaica, land we love, Jamaica, Jamaica, Jamaica, land we love.

(2)

Teach us true respect for all,

Stir response to duty’s call,

Strengthen us the weak to cherish,

Give us vision lest we perish,

Knowledge send us Heavenly Father,

Grant true wis­dom from above,

Justice, truth be ours forever,

Jamaica, land we love, Jamaica, Jamaica, Jamaica, land we love.

To Portia Simpson Miller

To the Prime Minister of Jamaica, Portia Lucretia Simpson Miller, please note, above are two things I would like to intro­duce to you.

(1) The Jamaican flag:

The most rec­og­niz­able sym­bol of our nation, it is the sym­bol that we hold dear, irre­spec­tive of par­ty or oth­er affil­i­a­tions, it is the sym­bol of our nation-hood. It evokes pride in us wher­ev­er we are domi­ciled, it is the sin­gle most com­mon thing that ties all of us togeth­er and cor­rect­ly so. 

Madam Prime Minister our flag is not JLP , it is not PNP . It does not belong to you or any­one else, it belongs to us, all of us.

(2) The nation­al anthem:

The nation­al anthem I would like you to acquaint /​re acquaint your­self with it, we the Jamaican peo­ple want our coun­try to be for all Jamaicans, not for JLP, and cer­tain­ly not for PNP. Our coun­try Mrs Miller does not belong to you, it damn sure isn’t PNP coun­try. We are tired of you and your min­ions divid­ing our coun­try into polit­i­cal enclaves, inorder that you and your cronies may fat­ten your pock­ets. Have you no shame?

A PNP hack defaces the Jamaican flag , a Councillor lies impugn­ing the char­ac­ter of a hard-work­ing busi­ness man and all you have to say is this.

However, speak­ing at a ground break­ing cer­e­mo­ny in Hellshire, Portmore, St. Catherine this morn­ing, she said her par­ty has already addressed the issue and she has noth­ing fur­ther to add.
She point­ed out that she gave instruc­tions for a state­ment to be issued by the par­ty and that was done.
Simpson-Miller said as a leader (jamaican​glean​er​.com)

Madam prime Minister I am sor­ry to dis­abuse you of your view that the PNP speaks for the Jamaican peo­ple. Yes you won the elec­tions and it mat­ters not that you won with the low­est vot­er turn out in the his­to­ry of our coun­try. It mat­ters not that most peo­ple are so fed up with the polit­i­cal par­ties in the coun­try that they stayed home. None of that mat­ters, what mat­ters is that you are the elect­ed leader of Jamaica, for bet­ter or worse. You need to under­stand that the des­e­cra­tion of the Jamaican flag is a seri­ous issue no one wants to hear from your damn moron­ic par­ty , you were elect­ed to lead. Don’t you think that you should.….….. lead? You have a propen­si­ty in the face of major foul ups to inso­lent­ly tell peo­ple to talk to the PNP. You have a lot of mouth when you are seek­ing pow­er, now when there are issues which requires lead­er­ship you are con­ve­nient­ly silent. As was the case with Trafigura, your enor­mous cab­i­net, and now this dis­grace­ful dis­play by your cult fol­low­ers, you have the gall and temer­i­ty to sug­gest that you gave the par­ty instruc­tions to address the mat­ter and you have noth­ing to add. Who the hell do you think you are? Just a few months ago you were run­ning around beg­ging for votes but now you are above address­ing a mat­ter of impor­tance to our peo­ple and our coun­try. We know you are not very smart, actu­al­ly we know you are not smart at all, but you damn sure owe the nation some respect , you owe the nation an expla­na­tion why your fol­low­ers think it is okay to deface and dis­grace our flag and anoth­er min­ion lie on a mem­ber of the pub­lic to cov­er his ass.

Your party,and all of you are noth­ing but a colos­sal dis­grace, 100 days since you took office and what piece of leg­is­la­tion have your gov­ern­ment passed? Nothing!!! Ask your­self this ques­tion, “Have I earned the salary I took since I have been in this office I am not qual­i­fied to hold”?

There are not enough words to describe the pic­ture below. Your eyes are not deceiv­ing you. This was the swear­ing-in of Glendon Harris PNP coun­cil­lor ‚as Mayor of the sec­ond city of Montego Bay. This event is per­fect­ly rou­tine, one par­ty los­es the elec­tion the sit­ting Mayor makes way for the new may­or. Well that’s the way intel­li­gent peo­ple do things, unfor­tu­nate­ly not the low life thugs in the PNP, instead what they did is almost tan­ta­mount to trea­son.

Jamaica’s Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller:

Over the years we have been fed with the non­sense that Jamaica is PNP coun­try. The PNP of course is the People’s National Party, the old­er of the two main polit­i­cal par­ties which has shared pow­er between them­selves since adult suf­frage. As our coun­try look to cel­e­brat­ing 50 years of Independence it is time for the nation to take an intro­spec­tive look at its accom­plish­ments over this peri­od since we have been unshack­led from colo­nial dom­i­na­tion. This is a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty for the coun­try to re-cal­i­brate and assim­i­late new per­spec­tives into the nation­al dia­logue. this is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for lead­ers of the coun­try to change the dog­mat­ic atti­tudes they have and take a look at the out­side world to see what works, with a view to see what may work for our peo­ple, in our unique circumstance.

On the oth­er side of the polit­i­cal divide is the Jamaica labor party(JLP) which was sound­ly reject­ed by the elec­torate in nation­al elec­tions held December 29^th of 2011. The JLP under the lead­er­ship of 39-year-old Andrew Holness can use the par­ty’s defeat as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to re-cal­i­brate and present itself to vot­ers as the real par­ty of sub­stan­tive growth and devel­op­ment for Jamaicans, the way Alexander Bustamante intended.

The Jamaica labor par­ty must start at the grass­roots edu­cat­ing peo­ple at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el , empow­er­ing them into select­ing their own can­di­dates. A new cam­paign geared at edu­ca­tion must trum­pet the achieve­ments of the labor par­ty . It must draw a sharp con­trast between what has been tan­gi­ble long-term poli­cies it enact­ed over the years on behalf of the peo­ple as against super­fi­cial fluff poli­cies of the oth­er par­ty. The JLP like its com­pe­ti­tion has made a lot of mis­takes over the years, not least of which is its inabil­i­ty to shun gar­ri­son politics.

The par­ty must not only eschew gar­ri­son Politics as Holness said he would , it must engage vig­or­ous­ly in the pol­i­tics of trans­paren­cy and account­abil­i­ty. Moving for­ward this will dif­fer­en­ti­ate the Labor par­ty from the PNP, a par­ty drunk with cheap pop­ulism and the pol­i­tics of nepo­tism, give­aways and payoffs.

Labor must under­stand that as more and more peo­ple are intro­duced to infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy they will even­tu­al­ly rec­og­nize that the brand of pol­i­tics prac­ticed by the PNP has been keep­ing them enslaved and chained to pover­ty. These more informed , bet­ter edu­cat­ed peo­ple will look to the labor par­ty for a new direc­tion, a direc­tion that leads them down a path of sus­tain­able growth and long-term devel­op­ment. The path the Labor par­ty of Bustamante, Donald Sangster, and Hugh Lawson Shearer, our coun­try’s best Prime Minister forged in the inter­est of all Jamaicans.

Former prime Minister Bruce Golding has done incal­cu­la­ble harm to the image of the par­ty in his han­dling of the Christopher Coke mat­ter. Golding unwit­ting­ly destroyed his polit­i­cal car­rear and dragged the par­ty down into the pits with him. The tragedy inher­ent in that débâ­cle is that Bruce Golding did not have to do any­thing in that process, it was a mat­ter for the courts.

Holness must not be intim­i­dat­ed into going door to door lis­ten­ing to the peo­ple, ask­ing them how they feel about the issues. He must then incor­po­rate that infor­ma­tion into for­mu­lat­ing poli­cies , in coöper­a­tion with the pri­vate sec­tor and oth­er stake hold­ers. The sin­gle great­est imped­i­ment Holness will face will be com­mu­ni­cat­ing a mes­sage of long-term dis­ci­pline to a pop­u­la­tion that is always wor­ry­ing where the next meal is com­ing from. The Coke case, bet­ter know as the Mannat Phillips and Phelps mat­ter, is not the only scan­dal to have erupt­ed in Jamaica, far from it. The PNP is a scan­dal plagued par­ty which seem­ing­ly is immune from con­se­quence in Jamaica, but that’s anoth­er sto­ry for anoth­er day.
Finsac, Cuban Light Bulb Trafigura are just a few of the scan­dals that have plagued the PNP to which they have been let off the hook.

One promi­nent com­men­ta­tor aligned to the rul­ing par­ty sug­gest­ed that the JLP is just a filler par­ty which gets elect­ed when peo­ple are a lit­tle tired of his par­ty. Even though his com­ment is large­ly hubris, there is a cer­tain degree of res­o­nance in there.

ONE HAVE TO WONDER, IS JAMAICA REALLY PNP COUNTRY?

Edward Phillip George Seaga

The PNP have ben­e­fit­ed for decades from a mis­con­cep­tion that it is for the small man. A mis­con­cep­tion nur­tured by cheap pop­ulism, and fer­til­ized by polit­i­cal give­aways and promis­es. The lead­er­ship of peo­ple like Hugh Lawson Shearer has been sig­nif­i­cant in set­ting a path for the coun­try that has been devi­at­ed from, by some in the labor par­ty when Shearer stepped aside to make way for Seaga. I have no fight with Edward Seaga, I am aware there is a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the labor par­ty which is still aligned to that wing. I am just not con­vinced that the Seaga doc­trine has been help­ful for the par­ty or the coun­try over­all. The lead­er­ship style of Seaga arguably placed the par­ty in obliv­ion for 18 ¹⁄₂ years and con­tin­ued into rel­e­gat­ing the par­ty into the first sin­gle term for either par­ty in the his­to­ry of elec­tive pol­i­tics in the country.

1972 : The Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon Hugh Shearer, cut­ting the rib­bon at the offi­cial cer­e­mo­ny of the Jamaica Industrial Development Corporation’s, Small Industries Development Division at 2 Ruthven Road, Kingston 10. The divi­sion is a spe­cial new

depart­ment cre­at­ed to assist the small entrepreneur.

The labor par­ty must pre­pare itself for tough slow slog­ging, if it is to change the per­cep­tion it allowed to become real­i­ty. Despite the fact that the labor par­ty is the par­ty which stands for real growth and devel­op­ment through low crime, edu­ca­tion, and low tax­es, it has ced­ed too much ground over the years to the oth­er par­ty which fol­lows a path of pop­ulism, crash pro­gram, intim­i­da­tion and scare tac­tics aimed at the busi­ness class. Labor has a rich tra­di­tion which it must bring to the table. It must rein­tro­duce young peo­ple to the labor par­ty which believes in work and entre­pre­neur­ship over the depen­den­cy of a wel­fare state.(jamaica labour par​ty​.com)

Picture of the Cornwall Regional Hospital which was built by the Jamaica Labour Party 

Many peo­ple do not know of the stel­lar his­to­ry of the Jamaica labor par­ty. The par­ty has not done enough to edu­cate and inform the peo­ple, it has allowed the debate to be shaped by its adver­saries. It has allowed a false nar­ra­tive to devel­op that it is a par­ty for the rich. The reverse is actu­al­ly the truth. A par­ty which sets long-term goals of adher­ing to the rule of law, which believes in the free mar­ket, which believes that cheap hand­outs is not in the long-term inter­est of the indi­vid­ual, or the coun­try by exten­sion , is a par­ty that should be supported.

Picture of The National Conference cen­ter which was built in record time (1 year) ! 

Factory work­ers sewing in a gar­ment fac­to­ry dur­ing the 1980s

In the 1980’s This was what inside fac­to­ries looked like, pro­duc­tion was hum­ming tow­er­ing edi­fices were being con­struct­ed that will be part of the nation­al land­scape for gen­er­a­tions to come. Even if we are unable to get these labor inten­sive jobs back, we must find a way to bring tech­no­log­i­cal jobs to Jamaica, this is the par­ty that knows how to do that.

Go out and do it Andrew Holness.

Portia some­times defy her crit­ics with her cun­ning. What she lacks in intel­lect she cer­tain­ly has in street smarts. Of course it is insult­ing to sug­gest that the roll-out of this crash pro­gram give away, is not done to pay for votes in the upcom­ing local gov­ern­ment elec­tions. Most impor­tant­ly it would cer­tain­ly look bad­ly on her and her par­ty if all the par­ty hacks were seen wear­ing par­ty col­ors. Telling them not to wear the gang col­ors is dubi­ous and cer­tain­ly cynical.

Jamaica’s Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller(glean­er pho­to)

PRIME MINISTER Portia Simpson Miller has issued a call for peo­ple employed on the Jamaica Emergency EmploymentProgramme (JEEP) to refrain from appear­ing par­ti­san on work sites.“I want to make an appeal that nobody must wear par­ty colours on the JEEP pro­gramme. It is Jamaica’s pro­gramme, not a polit­i­cal par­ty,” the prime min­is­ter said. Simpson Miller has moved to dis­miss fears that the tim­ing of the local gov­ern­ment elec­tion was strate­gic in order to coin­cide with the roll-out of JEEP. jamaica​glean​er​.com

I have a cou­ple of ques­tions for prime Minister Miller.

(1) Why would you wor­ry about work­ers appear­ing par­ti­san on work-sites,? are you wor­ried that the world will see that it is a PNP pay for vote ‚crash pro­gram give-away that will con­tin­ue to sink Jamaica fur­ther into poverty ?

(2)Seriously madam Prime Minister how stu­pid do you think we are? Elections are con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due by the end of March and you have announced that elec­tions will be on the 26^th of said month. Yet we are to believe there is no con­nec­tion between the elec­tion date and the roll­out of this par­ti­san pay­out acronym JEEP.

Personally I don’t mind being tak­en for a fool, but I would rather be tak­en for a fool by some­one who is actu­al­ly smarter than I am. Just how stu­pid do you think Jamaicans are?

During the 70’s this very brand of pol­i­tics was prac­ticed in our country,bands of brig­ands were giv­en pay for work they nev­er did. All over the coun­try ‚pri­mar­i­ly in cities and Towns, large crews of PNP red/​orange clad thugs, male and female sat on walls , motor­cy­cles, and on street cor­ners drink­ing Guinness and smok­ing mar­i­jua­na. At the end of the week they received pay­ment from the government.

While this drain was tak­ing place the gov­ern­ment pro­ceed­ed to tell the mid­dle class that if they did not like social­ism they should take one of the five flights a day that were leav­ing to Miami.

They did.

Michael ManleyPercival James PattersonSimpson Miller

That was the class which cre­at­ed jobs, they all left, that exo­dus was the largest of its kind in the his­to­ry of our nation . Our coun­try is still suf­fer­ing as a result of that brain drain. What was left was the polit­i­cal class the work­ing poor and the hood­lums. That peri­od has been the sin­gle most defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic which impact­ed the destruc­tion of Jamaica’s once pris­tine neigh­bor­hoods. People sim­ply walked out of homes they worked hard to build. These homes end­ed up being cap­tured and occu­pied by PNP thugs. Three decades lat­er that par­ty is still seen as the sav­ior of the mass­es. Of course, who would­n’t love a par­ty which lit­er­al­ly fright­ened peo­ple out of man­sions so that com­mon thugs could have them for free?

That was the begin­ning of the destruc­tion of our coun­try. Today some want to make the peri­od of Michael Manley a pos­i­tive for our coun­try. That peri­od was a colos­sal fail­ure of social engi­neer­ing that has lit­er­al­ly set our coun­try back 50 years. I will con­tin­ue to show the world what that peri­od has done in set­ting the course of destruc­tion our coun­try has been on ever since. After 8 years of JLP rule They fol­lowed up with a peri­od of 18 ¹⁄₂ years which has cement­ed that destruc­tion. Revisionist his­to­ry will not change those facts.

The United States is now a coun­try divid­ed and extreme­ly polar­ized between Republicans and Democrats. There are many inter­ven­ing fac­tors that one could arguably point to why the coun­try is so sharply divid­ed , not least of which is race. Prior to the last twen­ty years when the coun­try was sold out to spe­cial inter­est, the fights waged between the two par­ties were bat­tles waged for the good of the country.

Not so in Jamaica, one par­ty strug­gle to set a course for progress the oth­er wins every time on fight­ing for party.

Promises, nepotism,corruption, polit­i­cal pay-offs, patronage,these are the cor­ner­stones of PNP pol­i­tics which has dom­i­nat­ed the land­scape and fooled a peo­ple, many of whom are intel­lec­tu­al­ly chal­lenged and oth­ers who feel they are so smart they will suf­fer the Empress to con­tin­ue to believe in the fal­la­cy of her new clothes.

REPUBLICAN DEBATE NUMBER 20:

Watching the Republican can­di­dates debate Wednesday night remind­ed me why I can’t stand politicians.

(Getty image)

Rick Santorum said he vot­ed for no child left behind, a sig­na­ture accom­plish­ment of for­mer President George W Bush. However he said he did so for the team, sug­gest­ing that he did so as a repub­li­can in sup­port of a repub­li­can pres­i­dent. Mitt Romney wast­ed no time in jump­ing on Santorum berat­ing him for doing so, ask­ing quote ” I won­der which team he was talk­ing about”?

Of course research lat­er shows Romney stat­ing his sup­port for no child left behind as a good thing. No child left behind I believe, was a plan cre­at­ed with the best of inten­tions and orches­trat­ed and passed into law by the Bush Administration. Critics of No child left behind have now point­ed out that the Act, forces teach­ers to teach to a test , rather than allow stu­dents to test to the teach­ing they receive.

The truth is this should have been obvi­ous to pol­i­cy mak­ers from the get-go, kids do not process infor­ma­tion the same way , nei­ther do they assim­i­late infor­ma­tion at the same time. This is influ­enced by gen­der, eco­nom­ic con­di­tions and myr­i­ad oth­er issues. What I find loath­some is that Romney now make an issue out of no child left behind, after it is seen not to be work­ing as the Bush admin­is­tra­tion thought it would.

The ques­tion is why can’t some­one just admit that they sup­port­ed some­thing that they thought was in the best inter­est of the coun­try and it did not shake out that way? President Obama has since allowed sev­er­al states to opt out of no child left behind.

IS NEW JERSEY’S GOVERNOR CRIS CHRISTIE HAVING IT BOTH WAYS ?

New Jersey’s ram­bunc­tious Governor Chris Christie has stat­ed over and over again that he isn’t run­ning for pres­i­dent of the United States, but is he being truth­ful? Christie recent­ly bucked crit­ics in his state by order­ing flags flown at half-staff after the death of pop icon Whitney Houston. Many peo­ple includ­ing some police unions argue that Houston had not lived a per­fect­ly angel­ic life and as such that hon­or ought not be accord­ed her. Christie did not budgec he stood by his deci­sion. He argued legit­i­mate­ly that many notable icons from New Jersey ‚like Frank Snatra and oth­ers, lived lives sim­i­lar to Houston and the same hon­or was accord­ed them when they died . He argued cor­rect­ly that Elvis Presley also received the same hon­or, and no one found it objectionable.

Police unions always take the posi­tion that any­one who fall foul of the laws, or ever suc­cumbed to human frail­ties are dis­pos­able. In their per­fect lit­tle worlds they some­times play God, they may be remind­ed to take a look in the mir­ror and amongst their own ranks. People make mis­takes in life , includ­ing cops,it smacks of some­thing else oth­er than what they claim, when they take that holy-than-thou atti­tude. It also reduces sup­port and empa­thy oth­ers might feel toward their causes.

Governor Christie did not back down, but was it out of a core prin­ci­pled belief or is he audi­tion­ing for a place on the repub­li­can tick­et in what many spec­u­late could be a bro­kered con­ven­tion in August? Christie has tak­en a posi­tion on most nation­al issues, he is one of the most quot­ed repub­li­cans, yet he main­tains that he will not run for pres­i­dent. Christie also showed a side of him that may play well with repub­li­can pri­ma­ry voters.

Christie clashed with New’s week Johnathan Capehart also a MSNBC con­trib­u­tor , and who also hap­pens to be open­ly gay. Christie got real ugly lash­ing out at Capehart when Capehart point­ed to incon­sis­ten­cy between his posi­tion and that of pres­i­dent Obama as it relates to gay mar­riage. Christe resort­ed to being a school yard bul­ly by revert­ing to the following

“I used to be a pros­e­cu­tor. I’m not going to be cross-exam­ined by you this morn­ing,” said Christie to Capehart in a heat­ed exchange on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “You’re going to lose.”Read more: http://​poloti​co​.com

This kind of attack on media is symp­to­matic of repub­li­can can­di­dates run­ning for pres­i­dent but we have not seen that kind of ran­cid rabid con­fronta­tion­al school yard bul­ly type tac­tic employed in gen­er­al . It smacked of Newt Gingrich’s attack on Juan Williams ‚a phys­i­cal rough­ing up of CNN’s Don Lemon by bul­lies in the Michelle Bachman’s for­mer cam­paign, and for the record Lemon is also an open­ly gay African-American journalist.

Newt Gingrich also lashed out at CNN’s John King for lead­ing with a Question about his infi­deli­ties and state­ments Marianne Gingrich made to anoth­er net­work about him want­i­ng to have an open mar­riage. Gingrich lashed out with a false sense of out­rage to rau­cous applause from the par­ti­san crowd in the hall. Mitt Romney also lashed out at John King in the last debate , telling John King “you get to ask what you want I answer what I want“in response to King demand­ing he answer the ques­tion he asked him. of course the attack on the media seem to always be a clar­i­on call for right wingers in the repub­li­can par­ty when their lies are exposed.

So what is Chris Christie run­ning for ? I don’t know ! I feel how­ev­er Christie would like to see Romney get the nom­i­na­tion and ask him to be his run­ning mate.

Say you read it here first when it come to pass.

Republican front-run­ner Mitt Romney built his entire pres­i­den­tial cam­paign on the boast he will restore the American econ­o­my. In his hur­ry to cement that nar­ra­tive it appeared Romney for­got two words (eco­nom­ic recov­ery) Romney’s cam­paign fer­vent­ly believes that the dam­age repub­li­cans have done to the econ­o­my start­ing with eight years of George Bush, to their absolute obstruc­tion to every­thing pres­i­dent Obama has done to fix the econ­o­my, is more than enough to see the pres­i­dent kicked out before his poli­cies can return enough jobs to ordi­nary Americans.

This strat­e­gy is a seri­ous bet against the very American peo­ple repub­li­cans claim they want to help. Before we talk about the econ­o­my I just want to speak a lit­tle bit about the Romney cam­paign. As I said in a recent blog it is instruc­tive that Romney chose not to run on his record as a lib­er­al Governor of Masseschutes. most American pres­i­dents were for­mer gov­er­nors, if Romney’s record as an exec­u­tive was good why then has he cho­sen not to run on that record, if he is indeed seri­ous about becom­ing pres­i­dent of the United States of America?

The truth is, under Governor Romney’s stew­ard­ship his state was near the bot­tom, 47^th in job cre­ation. Romney’s health plan which has a man­date that forces peo­ple in Massachuset to buy health care or be fined , is the tem­plate for the much maligned Obama care which most Americans are yet to see or under­stand. Romney came to the con­clu­sion that he can­not run on that record and as such he would gam­ble on run­ning on his record as a busi­ness­man . The only prob­lem with that strat­e­gy is that the facts do not line up with his nar­ra­tive, as head of Bain Capital a ven­ture Capitalist com­pa­ny, Romneys objec­tive was not to cre­ate jobs, con­verse­ly what Bain did was take over com­pa­nies, gut­ted them , took the cap­i­tal out and filed for bankruptcy.

Despite these facts that Romney will not allow to get in the way of his nar­ra­tive Romney con­tin­ue to ham­mer away at the econ­o­my , lam­bast­ing the pres­i­dent as incom­pe­tent, over his head and mak­ing the case he will do a bet­ter job. Never mind that when the pres­i­dent took office the econ­o­my was shed­ding 750 thou­sand jobs each month and has now turned around and is now adding almost a quar­ter mil­lion jobs per month, even as the coun­try recov­ers from the worst reces­sion since the great depression.

Romney in response to the new jobs num­bers for January took some time to come out with a state­ment, and when he did he said the econ­o­my is rebound­ing but it would have been bet­ter if not for the poli­cies of the pres­i­dent, in fact Romney is find­ing it hard to artic­u­late the rea­son why any­one should vote for him for pres­i­dent. On the radio show of right-wing talk­er Laura Ingram, Romney was asked how can he say the econ­o­my is get­ting bet­ter, then turn around and say that we should change the pres­i­dent ? Romney asked Ingram if she had a bet­ter suggestion.

INGRAHAM : How do you answer the pres­i­den­t’s argu­ment that the econ­o­my is get­ting bet­ter in a gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign if you your­self are say­ing that it’s get­ting better?

ROMNEY: Well of course it’s get­ting bet­ter. The econ­o­my always gets bet­ter after a reces­sion. But the ques­tion is, has it recov­ered by virtue as some­thing the pres­i­dent has done or has he delayed the recov­ery and made it more painful? The lat­ter is, of course, the truth.

INGRAHAM: Isn’t that a hard argu­ment to make? Is that a stark enough contrast?

ROMNEY: Well, have you got a bet­ter one, Laura? This hap­pens to be the truth.

The econ­o­my is get­ting bet­ter, of course, com­pared to where it has been. It would be absurd to say dif­fer­ent. (The econ­o­my grew by 2.8 per­cent in the last quarter.)

Mitt Romney left him­self no escape valve that would relieve some of the pres­sure in the event the econ­o­my con­tin­ue to add jobs, which will indi­cate to the vot­ing pub­lic that the poli­cies of this pres­i­dent are work­ing, or at worst aren’t as rad­i­cal as Romney and Gingrich would like to scare them into believ­ing. So what will Romney do if the econ­o­my con­tin­ues to add man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs, Israel does not attack Iran caus­ing the price of oil to sky­rock­et, or there are no ter­ror attacks on the coun­try? How does Romney piv­ots when he built an entire pres­i­den­tial cam­paign against the econ­o­my? They have stat­ed that Obama owns the econ­o­my, with no men­tion of the fact that the econ­o­my was almost sent into a depres­sion by George Bush’s tax cuts for the rich­est Americans who do not need them, unde­clared wars, and an unre­strained “do as you please green light” giv­en to big banks and finan­cial institutions.

Romney clear­ly can­not artic­u­late a path for­ward on for­eign pol­i­cy. The Iraq war is over, Osama Bin Laden is dead, troops in Afghanistan will soon be head­ing home, there is a stran­gle hold eco­nom­i­cal­ly on the Iranian econ­o­my over their nuclear pro­gramme, and despite their lies America’s image has been restored abroad to the extent that is pos­si­ble, because of this pres­i­dent. So it seem Romney whom it seem more and more will be his par­ty’s nom­i­nee will get des­per­ate and clear­ly will have to scare vot­ers about Obama , of course David Axelrod will be pre­pared to fight back despite cit­i­zens unit­ed big mon­ey let into the polit­i­cal dis­course by the Supreme Court.

In a stump speech after win­ning the neva­da cau­cus­es Romney told the peo­ple gath­ered [H]e’s been try­ing to take a bow for 8.3 per cent unem­ploy­ment. Not so fast, Mr. President. … We wel­come any good news on the jobs front, but it is thanks to the inno­va­tion of the American peo­ple in the pri­vate sec­tor, not to you.’ … Romney’s com­ments are a hint of how he would cam­paign … if … the unem­ploy­ment rate con­tin­ues to fall: with a two-fold attack that the offi­cial fig­ures do not reflect the true scope of job­less­ness and that any improve­ment is despite, not because of, the pres­i­dent.(Politico .com)

There is Romney’s strat­e­gy , blame the pres­i­dent for a bad econ­o­my, but deny he has any­thing to do with it when it improves. How effec­tive this strat­e­gy will be is yet to be seen. Romney and his min­ions must be des­per­ate or they real­ly take vot­ers for absolute fools. Romney can­not have his cake and eat it too , either the pres­i­dent owns the econ­o­my as they are quick to point out, good or bad, or he does­n’t and can­not be held respon­si­ble for it. As pres­i­dent Obama said Republicans can make a deci­sion to have a strong mil­i­tary, , a decrease in the nation­al debt, and bal­anced bud­gets , or they can con­tin­ue to give the wealth­i­est 1% tax-cuts they do not need , but the coun­try can­not afford both. On every issue repub­li­cans want to have it both ways.

It’s also inter­est­ing that when­ev­er they talk about unem­ploy­ment fig­ures repub­li­cans use a dif­fer­ent method­ol­o­gy, gen­er­al unem­ploy­ment num­bers are not used by repub­li­cans, they talk about peo­ple who have stopped look­ing for jobs and oth­ers who aren’t count­ed, for a pletho­ra of rea­sons. All of a sud­den peo­ple who do not want to work, peo­ple who decid­ed to stop work­ing are brought back into the frame­work, as they seek to fudge the num­bers in an effort to dis­tort the narrative.