The first two buses leaving for Philadelphia this coming Saturday at a pick-up point  in Manhattan were filled within a few hours. Some YWC!LI members expressed disappointment at not having had the opportunity to volunteer that day. 

No fear. Problem solved:

A third bus has been added for Long Islanders, starting in Southampton and continuing west.

YWC!LI has reserved seats for six members. If you want to join the group, click here to provide your name.  You will receive an email confirming — or indicating the seats have been filled. 

Any who may be denied for lack of space will be contacted first about a future bus trip.

For people in our area the bus will pick up volunteers this Saturday morning, 8:15, at:

 Queens AMC Fresh Meadows Theatre  

Arrive in Philadelphia at 11 a.m.  Obama for America (OFA) Fellows have organized an orientation and get-out-the-vote events.  42 South 15th Street, Philadelphia PA 19102

The bus will leave Philadelphia at 5:30 p.m. with drop-offs at the pick-up locations. Boarding from 4:45pm to 5:10pm

Be fired up and ready to go!

Funny how the world works.  Not hah-hah funny.  Funny, as in ‘really?

Thursday we were all invited to a performance of Jeykll and Smith.  In the March 15 production the evil persona emerges as a healer, of sorts.  A fascinating, enraging role reversal told by Greg Smith, until recently a sort-of-biggie at Goldman Sachs.  No need for stage or screen.  The story was waiting for me right there beneath my morning coffee on the Times‘ Op Ed page.  I get it that corporations are in business to turn a profit.  I’m good with that. Those who deny that basic construct of a free market society refuse to accept any notion of capitalism. But capitalism must have its limits. And by any measure, the saga Smith has shared with us outsiders portrays Goldman Sachs’ immorality to be well beyond any acceptable definition or boundary of capitalism, the free market, even caveat emptor.

It certainly causes one to wonder what recently happened at the firm that, after ten years or so, Mr. Smith finally had it up to his scalp. It’s unlikely we’ll ever learn what that ultimate deciding moment was, but the cumulative effect of watching greed and dishonesty take on previously unimaginable dimensions was, for him, ultimately too great to contain.  So he quit the firm and told the story of BlankHyde and his mates.

It remains the story of opposing personalities, good versus evil, at totally divergent ends of

morality.  Unlike Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella, there’s an economic continuum at play here.  At one end, Jeykll’s, is the one percent. He’s an Occupy stalwart.  He’s Michael Moore.  He’s Bernie Sanders.

At the far opposite end of the scale, the dark side, are the people and institutions that once were the great enablers of a functioning capitalist system– but have over the past three decades or so morphed into the rear Hydes of society. The bankster oligarchs–Blankfein, Mack, Pandit, Dimon, et al-collectively, the Greedy Bastards as Ratigan calls them.

Just hours before Smith’s vent/rant to the media, the AFL-CIO had announced a long-term strategy for addressing the inevitable consequences of three decades of economic policies designed by and for Wall Street and the uber-super-wealthiest Americans: At the heart of the problem was the hollowing out of American manufacturing, the growing dysfunction of our financial sector, and a rapid increase in economic inequality, all of which crippled the growth engine of the U.S. economy. . . thirty years of policies sir the one percent created the crisis.  It’s time to fix the economy.

How to Fix What Is Wrong with Our Economy outlines step-by-step policy decisions by business and government and the rise of corporate power over the past decades that brought the economy to its knees.

AFL-CIO: How to Fix What’s Wrong with Our Economy

The AFL-CIO stands firmly behind President Obama.  He gets it. He has said clearly, we are not going back to an economy that’s all about outsourcing and bad debt and phony profits. We cannot return to a ‘bubble and bust’ economy propped up by ‘fleeting bubbles and rampant speculation.

Greg Smith (aka Dr Jekyll) is unlikely to find employment at AFL-CIO headquarters.  However, the union’s call for economic climate change and Smith’s call for economic cultural change may turn out to be two important pieces needed to kick start economic policy change. The two pieces snap together like the initial pairing in a jigsaw puzzle.

It’s undeniable that Mr. Smith’s condemnation of deformed corporate culture is very powerful. Goldman Sachs lost more than $2 billion of its market value– wiped out in the blink of a corporate giant’s eye.  More than a 3 percent drop in its shares.  Alas, GS shares are up one-third this year.

If there is a lesson to be learned from Smith’s tell-all it is that morality matters.  One can only hope that there is a bit more reason for optimism now that, even in the dark world of Goldman Sachs and its profit- and greed-driven brethren, what goes around may yet come around.  Hopefully others will follow suit in the way of copy cat killers.

Paul Volcker calls Smith’s rant radical and strong. I call it welcome. Volcker added, I’m afraid it’s a business that leads to a lot of conflicts of interest. Perhaps he is being kind.

Call it what you may–conflicts of interest,  bubbles and busts, morally bankrupt people.  Is it possible that the confluence of Smith’s revelations and the AFL-CIO‘s announcement actually lead to revisiting Glass-Steagall?

Evil too often outdoes good. But critics of the Robert Louis Stevenson’s story plot have attributed its success as due more to the moral instincts of its readers than to the author’s ability to craft a story. Let’s hope it plays out the as well in this Strange Case of Jekyll and Smith.

Happily the recently updated jobs data for Long Island suggests a far brighter economic picture. Newsday calls the revised report one of the most dramatic do-overs for economic statistics in recent memory. The producers of the data claim to be shocked by the update.

Typical of ‘adjustments’ to the monthly figures is December 2011′s employment data.  The original data showed a decrease of 9,900 jobs on LI.

The revised data shows an increase of 6,500 jobs on LI.

Hmmmm.  Only off by 16,400 jobs.

Well, stuff happens, you know.
My focus here, though, is not on the miscalculations of LI jobs. Rather, it is on reports that are, too often, in need of major repair.  Getting the data out is not helpful when it distorts reality.December’s misreporting of local employment data is representative of errant projections over a period of many months. These were not typo errors. Rather, these are major glitches that impact hiring and planning for the future. In other words this data contributed to employer resistance to hiring thinking the local economy remained in the doldrums.

For political reasons there are too many rushes to judgment. That computers can spit out all sorts of tables and graphs and charts should not mean that those in charge should feel compelled to share the data.  The publication of teacher evaluations is just one example of garbage in/garbage out. The NYC Department of Education readily admits that data in its reports is, a high percentage of the time, greatly flawed.  However, because there are countless reams of paper available, the information demands publication.

This is a story that will be gaining additional traction as the campaign evolves. Eight states have passes photo ID laws with the obvious purpose of voter suppression, primarily (6 of  8) enacted by Republican legislatures/governors.  Texas and South Carolina are, for now, in the headlights. Thankfully, New York is not among them.  

 

The Voters Rights Act (1965) was landmark national legislation that outlaws discriminatory voting practices. Enforcing the intent of the fifteenth amendment, it prohibits states from imposing any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure … to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color. 

Here we go again.  It is alarming to see states, as diverse as Mississippi and Wisconsin, contending massive voter fraud necessitates stricter enforcement.  First, there is no data to support the occurrence voter fraud.  Second, consider the logic. A person so committed to a particular candidate feels driven to vote twice.  One extra vote out of hundreds, thousands, millions depending on boundaries.  The criminal penalty for casting a fraudulent vote could lead to one to two years in prison.  In Mississippi the penalty could be for five years imprisonment. Where’s the upside? Even irrational people would be highly unlikely to commit a crime given those circumstances.

This is about racism, power, and greed.  Photo ID laws are a powerful motivator for getting out the vote to assure majorities in both houses of Congress.

Very few people have heard of Kenneth Griffin.  That’s not by chance.  It’s by design. He just happens to be a multi-billionaire, CEO of the Citadel hedge fund. His name is not recognizable because he avoids headlines at all costs (no pun intended).  He prefers to discretely donate huge sums to candidates and political groups that support limited government.

In recent years he has given almost $2M to the Koch brothers umbrella SuperPAC Americans for Prosperity. Why bother writing about such a piddling contribution? Because, while backing Romney and the super-wealthy he complains that the uber-super-wealthy have insufficient influence. 

That means he is among the first and loudest to holler ‘Class warfare!’ and ‘Redistribution of wealth!’ the moment there is talk of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, tax reform, . . . This puts him at the front of the line in support of the Rand Paul-Lindsay Graham-Mike Lee plan to steal social security. 

I’ve recommended that you read Winners Take All Politics. Here’s some data from Chapter Two that suggests Mr. Griffin is the winner-take-all  category of frighties.  Pay attention to the Ms Bs, and Ts.

• As of 2007, the top 0.1% of Americans consists of about 15,000 earners. Collectively they earn $1T each year including capital gains, averaging incomes beyond $7M.  Ten years earlier the top 0.1% averaged $1M annually.

• The top 0.01% of Americans? Now we’re  talking real moola.  In 1974 this little group averaged annual incomes of $4M.  By 2007 that average had grown to $35M per year. Putting this in perspective, 6% of  national income accrued to the top 0.01% of families.

• We’re talking trickle-down b.s. Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush. The top 1% traditionally (Kennedy through Carter) earned, before taxes, 10% of the national income. Under Reagan-Bush that increased by 10-14%; under Clinton, 14-22%; under W., 22-24%. What does 24% mean? It tells us that the top 1% earned 24% of national income.

• Throughout that time the economy stopped working for the middle class. Goodbye economic ladder. Hello stagnant upward social mobility.

• In 2002-2007, the recession years, pretax income of the top 1% increased by 10% annually.

• Unspent income becomes wealth.  In 2004, the wealthiest 1% had average net worth of $15M.  In 2008, the wealthiest four hundred Americans had average net worth of $3.9B. By contrast, the net worth of the bottom 80% of households equaled $82,000–including the value of their homes!  In 2007, 17% of American households had a net worth of zero or less. And this was before the collapse of the real estate prices.

The authors of Winners Take All Politics summarize the cited chapter by focusing on SBTC, skills-based technological change.  Upward mobility was not a function of increased education, technological growth, or globalization.  Improvement of middle class finances all but stopped. Any middle-class income growth was not the result of increased earnings.

Rather, greater household earning is derivative of additional working hours and women joining the workforce to provide second incomes for their families.

Hyperconcentration of income and wealth in the United States is a relatively recent phenomenon unlike that of any other wealthy nation.

That’s the background to Winners Take All Politics.  Aside from Griffin’s huge wealth and enormous influence, the guy’s a loser.

Rabbi, may I ask you a question?

Certainly, my son.

Is there a proper blessing for the Tsar?

A blessing for the Tsar? Of course! May God bless and keep the Tsar… far away from us!
Many of us may be days away from learning that Congressman Peter King’s districthas been shifted eastward along the south shore of Long Island. U.S. Magistrate Roanne Mann has proposed a redistricting map for Congress that would revise the boundaries of  the five Long Island districts.  With State assembly and senate unable to reach agreement on congressional redistricting,the magistrate’s plan seems headed for implementation.

Of course that could mean that neighbors to the east will have the great honor of King’s representation. I am conflicted knowing that he will continue to represent Long Islanders. But for those of you who reside in CD3, congratulations are in store–I hope.

Why do conservatives clamor loudest about economic warfare and redistribution of wealth when there are hard times? For the same reason they tout trickle-down as the bedrock of capitalism. It’s because they know what we fail to recognize–that for three decades there has been ongoing tax reform that, at every turn, has greatly advantaged the uber-super-wealthy.

Or should that be say tax deform?  The wealthiest and their lobbyists continue to deform the American dream of economic fairness.  The legislated redistribution of economic rewards away from the middle class engine of our society to the uber-super-wealthy.  The growing inequality of incomes between the vast majority of Americans and the one-tenth of one percent.  Not .01 (the 99-to-1 that has become the mantra of Occupy movement) but .001–one out of one thousand. The uber-super-wealthy continue to swim downstream, amassing ever increasing fortunes, while the rest tread water. The recent economic crisis has actually aided and abetted the .001.

The rationales for the shift has been: (1) the momentum of technological advances that impacts jobs while raising productivity to all time highs; and (2) the flattening of the world changing how nations trade and out-source employment.

It turns out, according to Winner Take All Politics, that it is much more the American political system that for four decades has shaped and grown financial inequality. The authors of WTAP attribute the destruction of the middle class to a winner-take-all economy that stems from deregulation and the reversal of progressive tax policy. The transformation really picked up steam during the Reagan years.  The Bush/Clinton era added to its momentum.

Authors Hacker and Pierson reveal the fights waged during President Obama’s first two years in office.  Winner Take All Politics reveals how a political system, by design and inclination, had remained responsive to the needs of the middle class.  Such governance has been deformed into a capitalism that recognizes only the tip of  the top.  Not so much the super-wealthy, the one percent. They benefit from riding the coattails of the super-uber-wealthy (point one percent).

The authors’ view is actually optimistic.  They argue that if the roots of the economic erosion in America were technological advancement and a shrinking planet, there would be little opportunity, if any, to reverse the plight of the middle class. However, their contention that the cause of an unlevel economic playing field is legislation consistently favoring the tip of the top, a hope that things change can be brought about via political will of the people.

Imagine–hope and change in the same sentence.  Now, where had I heard that?

******

Winner Take All Politics-How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class  (Hacker and Pierson) is highly recommended reading.  The kindle version is $9.99; softcover, $8.88. Check your local library.  Want to read a book that both explains economic change and at the same time illuminates hope? This would be a good read for you. Alternatively, watch Bill Moyers’ interview with the authors: Moyers Interviewing Authors

Hacker and Pierson present a convincing argument that America’s economic problems are reversible. Obvioulsy that is long-range thinking and highly debatable. What about this moment?

Let’s consider the frameworks for economic growth proposed by the GOP candidates.

There has been, for too long, an uneven playing field in America whose slope has taken the middle class out of capitalism’s economic equation. We have, algebraically and financially, been factored out of the equation.  If our economy was played on a pinball machine, bells would be ringing, lights would be flashing, and the board would be alarming us TILT! TILT! TILT!

Forewarned is forearmed.

1. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget  provides these insights:

Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum tout policies that would push the debt beyond current projections. This would be primarily because their proposed tax cuts outweigh spending cuts. Ron Paul’s plans, alone, would begin to sharply decrease the debt.However at incredibly great cost to the existing social/financial safety net.

The Committee’s report concludes: 

Analysis shows how difficult it will be for any president to change the trajectory of the debt. And it underscores the need for bipartisan efforts to increase revenue and curb spending, particularly as an aging population is about to drastically drive up Medicare costs.

Paul Krugman looks at the Committee’s report this way:

    The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget recently published an overview of the budget proposals of the four “major” Republican candidates and, in a separate report, examined the latest Obama budget. I am not, by the way, a big fan of the committee’s general role in our policy discourse; I think it has been pushing premature deficit reduction and diverting attention from the more immediately urgent task of reducing unemployment. But the group is honest and technically competent, so its evaluation provides a very useful reference point. . . proposals of Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Mitt Romney would all lead to much higher debt a decade from now than the proposals in the 2013 Obama budget. Ron Paul would do better, roughly matching Mr. Obama. But if you look at the details, it turns out that Mr. Paul is assuming trillions of dollars in unspecified and implausible spending cuts. So, in the end, he’s really a spendthrift, too. . . 

 

• 2. The Congressional Budget Office reports:

The need to cut the national debt is not often discussed in the campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. But a recently released report by the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office found that the budget proposals of the three leading candidates for the nomination, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, would all actually increase the national debt to higher levels than the 80% of GDP mark by 2021 it is expected to hit under the current policy proposals of President Barack Obama. 

Referring to the Republican candidates, the Committee’s leader Alice Rivlin states:

   The budget proposals of Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and even Ron Paul will all increase the national debt over the next decade, not reduce it as they all would have us believe.

     Gingrich brags that the federal budget was balanced when he was House speaker. But the budget group said the policies he’s promoting now, including spending on space exploration, would increase the national debt by an additional $7 trillion over the baseline over the next decade to 114% of GDP. 

    Santorum’s policies would drive up the debt by an additional $4.5 trillion, to 104%

but his cuts to revenue-raising taxes are advocated alongside a severe cutback in popular federal assistance programs that many Americans across the board depend on.

    Romney’s proposals would increase public debt to between 85% and 96% of GDP, depending on the level of new revenue his proposals could generate in addition to the new tax policies he announced this week.

   The CBO study proves that the fantasy they are selling the Republican voters in their primary race is indeed a false one. The truth is you can’t slash the main government revenue generators – taxes – and expect to have enough – even after you reduce the size of government – to pay down the national debt. The math just doesn’t work.

3. Another nonpartisan group, the Tax Policy Center has analyzed Romney’s tax proposal:

      Compared with current policy, the proposal would actually raise taxes on the poorest 20 percent of Americans, while imposing drastic cuts in programs like Medicaid that provide a safety net for the less fortunate. 

The richest 1 percent would receive large tax cuts – and the richest 0.1 percent would do far better, with the average member of this elite group paying $1.1 million a year less in taxes than he or she would if the high-end Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire.

 4. The Romney plan (from his campaign website):

Reducing and stabilizing federal spending is essential, but breathing life into the present anemic recovery will also require fixing the nation’s tax code to focus on jobs and growth. To repair the nation’s tax code, marginal rates must be brought down to stimulate entrepreneurship, job creation, and investment, while still raising the revenue needed to fund a smaller, smarter, simpler government. The principle of fairness must be preserved in federal tax and spending policy. (I’m not making this stuff up.  He actually says that)

Romney: Individual Taxes

• Make permanent, across-the-board 20 percent cut in marginal rates
• Maintain current tax rates on interest, dividends, and capital gains
• Eliminate taxes for taxpayers with AGI below $200,000 on interest, dividends, and capital gains
• Eliminate the Death Tax
• Repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT)

Romney: Corporate Taxes

• Cut the corporate rate to 25 percent
• Strengthen and make permanent the R&D tax credit
• Switch to a territorial tax system
• Repeal the corporate Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT)
•  

5.  In summary, Krugman tells the story best:

      All four Republican presidential candidates still standing are fiscal phonies. They issue apocalyptic warnings about the dangers of government debt and, in the name of deficit reduction, demand savage cuts in programs that protect the middle class and the poor. But then they propose squandering all the money thereby saved – and much, much more – on tax cuts for the rich.  

     Republicans screaming about the evils of deficits would not, in fact, reduce the deficit – and, in fact, would do the opposite. What, then, would their policies accomplish? The answer is that they would achieve a major redistribution of income away from working-class Americans toward the very, very rich.

1950.  I was six years old awaiting my favorite program.  Often it was Howdy Doody’s task to halt the schemes of his nemesis, Fineas T Bluster.  The tension was thick (for a first grader).  Strings were being pulled.  A flubadub could occur at any moment.

2012.  Not much  has changed apparently.  I am no longer six years old. But someone’s still pulling strings. This time they’re tied to Fineas T’s much younger brother Feckless T Bluster.

Feckless! That’s what Mr. Bluster called President Obama yesterday. As in careless? As in irresponsible?  The most feckless president, he opined, since Jimmy Carter: President Obama has damaged American standing abroad and diminished our global standing. 

Doesn’t Feckless Bluster or his handlers read the newspaper? Whoever’s pulling his strings has them all tangled up.

If Obama has demonstrated an unarguable strength–in contrast to any of his GOP opponents– it’s as commander-in-chief.  His record is virtually unblemished (other than, perhaps, waiting a bit too long to engage in Libya).

So what does Feckless T then do?  He outlines his plan as a pretend commander-in-chief. It turns out that the Feckless T Bluster plan is all but indistinguishable from that which President Obama has been implementing since taking office. In his op-ed, Romney said he would press for ever-tightening sanctions against Iran, support Iranian dissidents and buttress his diplomacy by keeping open military considerations.  Do these words somehow ring a bell?

Feckless T Bluster somehow managed to ignore President Obama’s strong(est) commitment to Israel. $205M to enable completion of Israel’s short-range Iron Dome missile defense system reducing the threat of rockets from Hamas and Hezbollah.  That’s in addition to the annual $3B defense assistance. He came to Israel’s aid when fire raged through its Carmel forest.  He called for removal of Hassad in Syria.  He ordered the successful assassination of Bin-Laden. He cast his vote in the U.N. against the anti-Israel resolution. He opposed the Goldstone Report.  He led opposition to the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state. He assured that Israel’s embassy in Egypt would be protected from demonstrators.

Let’s see Feckless T Bluster just try to mislead Americans about this president’s commitments.  Dirty Harry’s make my day would be the appropriate response. President Obama pretty much said bring it on during Tuesday’s press conference: If some of these folks think it’s time to launch a war they should explain that . . .Everything else is just talk.

Leaders around the world, far differently than their reaction to the previous administration, will tell the world the Republican hawk’s accusations are unfounded and undermine all the good Obama has accomplished around the world to date. Israel’s President Shimon Peres called Obama a great friend of Israel, adding that security cooperation between Israel and the U. S. is the best we have ever had.

I can’t wait to see Feckless T Bluster on the national stage debating foreign policy with President Obama.  Feckless T Bluster will meet the same fate as his Fineas T. But he’d find himself at the hands of a far more difficult nemesis than Howdy Doody.

Since 1950 trivia devotees have posed the question, What does the T in Bluster’s name stand for? 

Finally we know the answer — Trouble.

Abraham Maslow nailed it. His metaphor speaks to a one-size-fits-all mentality. It’s about single-issue narrow-mindedness. It’s like having just one arrow in the quiver.  It’s even more graphically a reminder of Barney Fife having a single bullet in his belt. 

Like good old Barney, John McCain keeps his bullet ready in his shirt pocket. And every time there is a need for fear-mongering he puts it into his gun. That’s where the analogy ends. Fife carried a .38 in case an emergency threatened the sleepy hollow of Mayberry . McCain brings out something much more lethal and the location in his sights is, this time, Syria.

It doesn’t need to be Syria.  McCain’s military background is deeply embedded making everything in sight look like a nail for his hammer.  I am shaken by the thought that this guy could have been our commander-in-chief.  McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Service Committee, has  called for American-led air strikes to stop the slaughter of unarmed civilians being carried out by the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Providing military assistance to the Free Syrian Army and other opposition groups is necessary, but at this late hour, that alone will not be sufficient to stop the slaughter and save innocent lives. The only realistic way to do so is with foreign air power. 

President Obama has spent his first term showing the world that the hammer and nail approach to foreign policy is secondary to diplomacy, sanctions and negotiation.  That’s the ongoing conversation he is having with Prime Minister Netanyahu who is hammerish. Naturally, pistol-packers Joe Lieberman and Lindsay Graham have jumped to back McCain’s position.  The Obama administration has opposed military intervention in Syria, believing that tougher economic sanctions and greater diplomatic pressure will drive Assad from power.  

Not to be outdone when it comes to fear-mongering, Newt Gingrich has made his pitch.  His position is that Israel shouldn’t give the Obama administration any advance warning should it decide to attack Iran over its nuclear weapons program, the administration can’t be trusted to keep the information secret.  Mr. Cheerful, as he self-describes, declared back in December that the Palestinians are an “invented” people potentially put him even further to the right of Netanyahu.  By questioning Palestinian identity, Gingrich aligns himself with the approach of Israel’s ideological Jewish settlers.   The ideological solidarity and lavish promises of support by the Republican candidates are taken with a grain of salt by Israelis. Nachman Shai a parliament member responded to Gingrich, This is an American election, not an Israeli election.

Sen. McConnell brings his hammer, laying out conditions under which he would introduce a bill in the Senate authorizing the use of military force against Iran. ”We have now reached the point where the current administration’s policies, however well intentioned, are simply not enough.” Distancing their organization from McConnell’s remark, an AIPAC official immediately put out this response, This idea originated with Mr. McConnell, not with AIPAC.  

Translation: Israelis recognize the difference between campaigning and statecraft. And they don’t like Gingrich upping the ante. Romney, on the other hand has not said much about Israel.  It has been his position that he would defeat the jihadists all around the world. Most of his speeches have focused on restricting Iran rather than making decisions to resolve the tension between Israel and Palestine. Gingrich criticized Obama for apologizing to Afghan authorities for burned Qurans on a military base, saying the apology was “astonishing” and undeserved. The world knows that any American president would have rightly responded exactly as has Obama.

Speaking to AIPAC, Romney will accuse President Obama of lecturing Israel about Iran. He won’t be alone. Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum will use the opportunity provided by the AIPAC conference to win Jewish voters away from Obama by painting him as weak on Iran. Mitt Romney repeats his talking point at each opportunity, Obama’s foreign policy is based on saying “pretty please” to America’s foes. 

 

That point will be pretty hard to make come the debates. From ending the war in Iraq to ordering the raid that killed bin Laden, President Obama’s foreign policy is based on the belief that there’s no contradiction between being tough and strong and protecting the American people, but also abiding by those values that make America great. 

Obama, typically eloquent, responded to the field of Barney Fife lookalikes, The senator from Arizona, could never get a nomination in the Republican Party this time around, would be considered too liberal. 

President Obama understands that Americans are tired of war and cynical of fear-mongering having caught on to the Republican strategy for years now.  After all, as Maslow describes their narrow-minded approach to foreign policy, if all you have is a hammer, keep looking for nails to pound.

At Tuesday’s press conference Obama summed things up admirably: Now, what’s said on the campaign trail — you know, those folks don’t have a lot of responsibilities. They’re not commander in chief.  And when I see the casualness with which some of these folks talk about war, I’m reminded of the costs involved in war; I’m reminded of the decision that I have to make, in terms of sending our young men and women into battle, and the impacts that has on their lives, the impact it has on our national security, the impact it has on our economy.

Former high-ranking military, intelligence, and State Department officials took out an ad in the Washington Post urging President Obama to stand fast against political and lobbying pressure to attack Iran over claims it is trying to develop nuclear weapons: There is a national reflex on the conservative part [of the] political spectrum to reach for the military option first and others second. 

Given our president’s outstanding foreign policy achievements to date, in particular regaining the trust of the international community, Republican hammering has them playing Whac-A-Mole.