CONGRESS - The most incompetent and ineffective Congress in our nation’s history will adjourn today to allow members time to campaign for re-election. Congress usually adjourns in early to mid-October in election years. But this Congress will go home earlier than any other Congress since 1960. And why shouldn’t they take some extra time off. It’s not like they have any interest in accomplishing anything. This past week they failed to pass a bi-partisan farm bill that would have helped Midwestern farmers struggling due to the severe draught. They had bi-partisan support for a jobs bill that would have helped returning veterans. But it failed by two votes when the Republicans who sponsored the bill chose to vote against it rather than give a win to the president. So now they will return home to persuade voters to return them to Washington so they can do nothing all over again.
In fairness they did pass one bill before leaving. They passed a continuing resolution to keep the government running…and their $174,900 paychecks coming…until next March.
ROMNEY – The Romney campaign is shifting gears…again. Reeling from an avalanche of criticism over divisive remarks in which he wrote off 47% of the country; Romney now says that he wants to be president of “100%” of Americans.” He also said that he embraces the president’s charges that he is the grandfather of “Obamacare” and that he would never round up 12 million immigrants and send them packing…statements that are directly contradictory to those has made throughout the campaign. Clearly the Romney campaign is chasing the daily news cycle; a historically losing strategy that seems to envelop every failing campaign. Ultimately the blame falls on Romney, who insiders say is micromanaging the day to day campaign operations. Conservative Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, in a column titled: “Romney Campaign Needs a New CEO” called the Romney campaign a “rolling calamity.”
How is it that the guy who was supposed to be this incredibly successful CEO can’t run his own campaign?
MIDDLE EAST – Comedian Charles Krauthammer is at it again. In his Washington Post opinion piece he shortsightedly blames the president for all the unrest in the Middle East. In essence he says that Obama, by offering mutual respect to Muslims, has emboldened them toward acts of violence against the US and its allies. The result of Obama’s belief “that his very election would revolutionize Middle East relations” is the “black flag of Salafism, of which al Qaida is a prominent element, raised over our embassies in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Sudan.”
Krauthammer’s attempt to lump all Muslims among the radical minority that are causing violence throughout the Middle East is nothing more than anti-Muslim bigotry. He ignores the fact that 60% of all Muslims are under 25 years old, uneducated and unemployed. 56% of all Egyptian women cannot read. These are young, uneducated impressionable people easily swayed by zealots and miss-information.
The Middle East is going through a very chaotic time. The Arab Spring has witnessed an uprising against the ham fisted rule of cruel dictators. Change is messy, chaotic and often violent. Did the fact that the United States elected its first minority president play some role in convincing the youth of the Middle East that change was possible? Absolutely! Did this president arrogantly believe that he, like all his predecessors, Democrat and Republican alike, would be the guy to bring peace to the Middle East? Absolutely! Could this president or any of his predecessors controlled the series of events that have transpired over the past several months? Absolutely not!
So to Mr. Krauthammer we ask this one simple question. What is your solution? It is easy to fill a column with criticism; much more difficult to offer a slate of solutions. Mr. Krauthammer’s buddy Mitt Romney is finding that out.
We suspect that Mr. Krauthammer would like us to return to the good old days of the Bush policies on foreign affairs. The days when we used Hellfire missiles to till the fertile soil of the cradle of civilization in order to plant the seeds of democracy. We have seen firsthand just how well those policies worked.
They are building a monument to them in lower Manhattan.
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