Governor Perry [Doesn't] Have Any Idea

I suppose that statement could be about virtually anything and still be true, but in this case these words were uttered by Texas Governor Rick Perry who was referring to the authenticity, or lack thereof, of Barack Obama's birth certificate.  The certificate was recently made public proving that Obama is American-born and eligible for the office of President of the United States of America...as if there was any real doubt!  The only people who put any merit in the manufactured 'birtherism' scandal were hard core, right wing staunch politicos and even they were considered to be 'fringers' or 'too far right' by many Republicans and supporters. Sadly, there are enough of these people in every State in the Union to sway an election.

Of all people, Rick Perry should be careful which conspiracy theories he throws his weight behind.  His political past and constant political incorrectness make him an easy target for ridicule when he takes such outlandish positions.  Still, he could be the next POTUSA, and every human being on the planet should find that extremely scary.

Who is there to stand in his way?  Michelle Bachmann?  The two of them are neck and neck in the sanity department, each being worse than the other.  Both are doing an excellent job of whitewashing their true beliefs with beliefs that the voting public will find more palatable.  We expect this from politicians since they all do it to some degree, but the magnitude of the obfuscation for these two 'candidates' is astounding.

So who else is a 'credible' candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination?  I guess that would be former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.   Unfortunately, the liability he carried into the 2008 race for the Republican Presidential nomination is still with him: his membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, familiarly known as the Mormon Church.  A great many Americans see Mormonism as a cult rather than a legitimate schism/sect of Christianity and that effectively eliminates Romney from consideration from their viewpoint.

If being a Mormon keeps Americans from supporting Romney, what hope do Jews, Muslims, adherents of non-Western religions and women have of becoming President?  I suppose 3 years ago the same could have been said about African-Americans, and look how that turned out.  I'm not sure if Obama won on his own merits or if he was the lucky beneficiary of a perfect political storm.

In 2008 there was a significant backlash against the Republican Party for the events and policies around the Presidency of George W. Bush.  It has been suggested that the second President Bush was the worst and least intelligent President in American history.  The predictable knee-jerk reaction steered many centrist Republican and Independents over to the Democratic banner.  There was also the flawed candidacy of the Republican nominee John McCain and his choice for Vice President, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.  Why was this ticket flawed?  Let me count the ways.

1. McCain was too centrist for many staunch conservative Republicans.  This likely lead to votes going to fringe candidates, spoiled ballots and abstention from voting.
2. McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone, which technically is not part of the United States. According to law, this makes McCain ineligible to be President.  It took a bipartisan review and a Senate resolution to 'declare' McCain a natural-born citizen.  I'm sure there were many Americans who did not agree with this decision and voted for a 'legitimate' American-born citizen instead of supporting McCain.
   It's interesting that this happened with relatively little fanfare but a huge production has been manufactured about President Obama's birth status.  This is just one example (of many) of the expert manipulation of the media by the Right Wing marketing machine.
3. McCain would have been the oldest President elected in history.  (Ronald Reagan was 1 1/2 years older at the time of his second inauguration.)  Ageism is quite real in American society and this alone would have deterred some voters.  The fact that John McCain had a history of skin cancer made matters worse.  The fact that Ronald Reagan descended into dementia due to Alzheimer's Disease shortly after his term ended would deter still more voters. (Some would point to his testimony during the Iran-Contra affair as evidence that the first indications of his descent into dementia occurred during his Presidency, not after.)
4. Sarah Palin as the running mate lost more votes due to sexism which, like it or not, is still rampant.
5. Sarah Palin was portrayed as rather daft and as not very worldly.  Things Palin did and said threw fuel on this already burning fire, and cost the ticket yet more votes.

With this many reasons not to vote McCain-Palin perhaps it is surprising that Obama didn't win more handily?

Back to Romney...he should be the slam dunk Republican nominee but nothing in American politics is ever that cut and dry.  He is a successful businessman in legitimate business.  He is pious and he is fiscally and to a lesser degree socially conservative.  He is practically a cookie-cutter candidate, but there is that darned stigma associated with ill-understood Mormonism.  Perhaps his best hope is to let Bachmann and Perry go at each other and watch them self-destruct, but the political spin machines have been working overtime for those two and it is remotely possible that they might not self destruct.  If that's the case, Romney, America and the entire world will be lost.

For now, Perry's comments relating to birtherism should cost him.  Even Karl Rove, the mastermind behind eight years of Bush-Cheney chastised Perry!  He said, "You associate yourself with a nutty view like that and you damage yourself."  He's right.  When it comes to political popularity he usually is.  Too bad he was wrong about most everything else, IMHO.   Why would he openly chastise Perry.  I imagine there are two reasons.  First, it is sound advice that Perry clearly needs.  Second, Perry is too much of a loose cannon to be a Rove-ish candidate, meaning he can't be molded and manipulated as easily as Dubya was.   This makes him less than a completely viable candidate.  If only Bachmann and Perry would speak more often and more freely sane citizens would no longer have to worry about them being mistaken for serious candidates.

Regardless of who ultimately wins the Republican nomination, can they stand up to Obama's bid for reelection?  Unfortunately, yes they can.

The media, as usual, has regurgitated the  garbage spewed by the Republican PR pundits.  Obama has been portrayed as a bad President, which is incredibly ironic given who he succeeded as President.  (Incidentally, I support Amnesty International's effort to have Bush & Cheney put on trial in the International Court for having committed war crimes.   It'll never happen.  America seldom (if ever) pays for its mistakes and for that reason more than any other that the rest of the world hates and/or derides it.)

Obama made one mistake, and the responsibility for the rest of the events that garnered bad press fall on other shoulders. 

His mistake was trying to actually follow up on his promise of bipartisanship.  The White House decided that their first major challenge would be to reform health care.  It was badly overdue and eventually someone had to do it or the country would face some serious repercussions.  At the time, Democrats controlled both Houses.  There was no reason for him to almost endlessly negotiate and amend the bill in order to satisfy Republicans, but he wanted to remain true to his bipartisan promise.  Sadly, he stood alone as the Congressmen and Senators were more partisan than ever.  By the time this was done, the country had already rescinded its support of the Democratic Party in spite of the fact that there had been no real opportunity to do much of anything.  The Democrats received their mandate but were granted no time to achieve it.   Both Houses shifted to the Right with the balance of power changing in the House of Representatives.  Now, due to unprecedented partisanship Obama would be hard pressed to pass even the most benign bills.

Frankly, I'm surprised the American people haven't called for the heads of their elected Tea Party officials.  Their behaviour during the debt ceiling crisis was tantamount to treason!  They ignored the best interest of the country in order to further their own agenda/platform/ideals and in doing so nearly destroyed the country.  As it was, the U.S. Government's credit rating was downgraded by one step by Standard & Poor's.

This is incredibly ironic since Standard & Poor's  had assigned the top AAA rating to even the riskiest collateralized debt obligations.   This ultimately led to the global financial crisis in 2008.  Apparently, so long as you pay Standard & Poor's to rate you highly (which is astonishingly how the system works) they will, and S&P clearly isn't on the Government's payroll.  The groundwork for this disaster, meaning the lack of meaningful regulation of the financial sector, and the obvious complete lack of ethics by those heading the financial sector, was laid long before Obama took office.   Deregulation is a Republican thing.  And in spite of this, Obama is held responsible by the American public for 'allowing' the crisis to occur and how it was subsequently handled.  The fact that handling it any other way would likely have crippled the American and possibly global economy is lost on these people.

Getting back to the debt ceiling crisis...  All this happened because Tea Party politicians decided that they were more important and powerful than the President.  As a result of their united hijacking if the American economy, they were.  At this point, I don't know why the American people bother electing a President given that the Houses can completely block the wishes of White House.  It seems that in the face of ever-increasing partisanship the President is powerless and obsolete.

So, other than being exactly what he was elected to be, namely a bipartisan President working towards a bipartisan Washington, the only problem with the Obama presidency and administration is that they had the misfortune of being in power when the Republicans could hold the government and country hostage.  However, instead of the blame falling on the true villains of the situation, Obama wears the egg on his face, another successful spin job by the Republican media moguls.  This leads me to believe that we may be heading for another Republican Presidency, which is probably not a good thing, at least if you aren't among the financial elite.   If only there was a viable (and ethical) candidate...