The Ghost of America's Future: December 2010
(Ames, IA) December 1, 2010 -- With the 2012 presidential election less than two years away, both declared and undeclared candidates agree that the issue of paramount importance to a majority of American voters in the next election will be national security, not economics.
"Are you safer today than you were four years ago?" asks Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-Connecticut) as he travels to auditoriums, classroom and parlor meetings here.
Democratic challenger Hillary Rodham Clinton, who resigned as Secretary of State in October 2009, just shy of ten months after being sworn in, notes that recent deadly terrorism assaults in Boston, Charlotte, Dallas, Los Angeles and Seattle have done more to cripple the U.S. economy that did faulty lending practices that led to the prolonged recession of 2009.
Clinton resigned her State Department post in protest over the Obama administration's support of United Nations sanctions against Israel. The U.S. sided with other Security Council members in condemning Israel for its October 7, 2009 retaliatory attack against Iran, which three days earlier launched three nuclear-tipped missiles at Tel Aviv, killing 35,000 Israelis instantly and rendering much of the city of nearly 400,000 residents uninhabitable.
"In early 2009, people worried about losing their homes and their retirement savings," Clinton told a receptive audience in Durham, NH last night. " Now, as the coordinated attacks in five American cities clearly demonstrate, we all have to worry about losing our very lives."
President Obama, who has not yet formally confirmed his plans to run for a second term, told the nation in a televised speech after the fifth attack, a series of bombs set off in the crowded Pikes Place Market in Seattle, that the United States will not tolerate such attacks. "When it comes to our security, we are all of one party, all of one mind," the President said.
Meanwhile, Republican frontrunner Tom Tancredo, on the stump in Santa Barbara, California, decried President Obama's planned summit with the leaders of a dozen Islamic nations as "a poorly disguised attempt at further appeasement." Tancredo, a former Congressman from Colorado who advocates the complete closure of U.S. boarders to foreigners and immediate deportation of illegal aliens, has seen his once-fringe position gain popular traction since the recent wave of domestic attacks.
Senator Lieberman, who supported John McCain in the 2008 election primarily because of McCain's stance on defense and maintaining a sufficient U.S. military in Iraq, pins the Iranian attack on Israel and the recent domestic terrorism assaults on the resurgence of Al Qaeda in Iraq.
"The void we left when we withdrew from Iraq invited a new, more deadly strain of terrorism - one that knows there is no force in the world willing to stand up to it," Lieberman said this week in an Op-Ed article in The Wall Street Journal. "But our President continues to believe we can talk sense into those who are sworn to destroy us."
Despite the charges, President Obama remains popular in broad public opinion polls. Surveys show that large portions of the American electorate continue to support the President's defense and economic positions and believe the charges against him are politically and racially charged.
"The fact of the matter is that President Obama is restoring America's reputation among our allies and the cancer that is global terrorism is too large for any one nation to combat," said Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House. "The tragedies of Boston, Los Angeles, Seattle, Dallas and Charlotte should not be politicized," she added.
Senator Al Shapton (D-New York), who was appointed to fill Clinton's New York Senate Seat when she became Secretary of State in January 2009, called criticism of President Obama thinly veiled racism. "There are some people in this country who just refuse to accept the notion of a black man as president," Senator Sharpton said at a recent Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Manhattan. "It is not President Obama's choices as Commander in Chief that people resent, it is strictly his skin color."
This week marks two years since a series of coordinated attacks in Mumbai, India killed more than 195 people and sent the Indian economy into a tailspin. India's military response against Pakistan precipitated the ongoing regional conflict that to date has claimed tens of thousands of civilian lives on both sides.
"We'll never know what might have been," said Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) on Meet the Press this past week. "But I know this much, those who voted for President Obama because they wanted change, got their wish. Our world has changed."
View Dean Rotbart News & Comment, November 30, 2008
"Are you safer today than you were four years ago?" asks Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-Connecticut) as he travels to auditoriums, classroom and parlor meetings here.
Clinton resigned her State Department post in protest over the Obama administration's support of United Nations sanctions against Israel. The U.S. sided with other Security Council members in condemning Israel for its October 7, 2009 retaliatory attack against Iran, which three days earlier launched three nuclear-tipped missiles at Tel Aviv, killing 35,000 Israelis instantly and rendering much of the city of nearly 400,000 residents uninhabitable.
"In early 2009, people worried about losing their homes and their retirement savings," Clinton told a receptive audience in Durham, NH last night. " Now, as the coordinated attacks in five American cities clearly demonstrate, we all have to worry about losing our very lives."
President Obama, who has not yet formally confirmed his plans to run for a second term, told the nation in a televised speech after the fifth attack, a series of bombs set off in the crowded Pikes Place Market in Seattle, that the United States will not tolerate such attacks. "When it comes to our security, we are all of one party, all of one mind," the President said.
Meanwhile, Republican frontrunner Tom Tancredo, on the stump in Santa Barbara, California, decried President Obama's planned summit with the leaders of a dozen Islamic nations as "a poorly disguised attempt at further appeasement." Tancredo, a former Congressman from Colorado who advocates the complete closure of U.S. boarders to foreigners and immediate deportation of illegal aliens, has seen his once-fringe position gain popular traction since the recent wave of domestic attacks.
Senator Lieberman, who supported John McCain in the 2008 election primarily because of McCain's stance on defense and maintaining a sufficient U.S. military in Iraq, pins the Iranian attack on Israel and the recent domestic terrorism assaults on the resurgence of Al Qaeda in Iraq.
"The void we left when we withdrew from Iraq invited a new, more deadly strain of terrorism - one that knows there is no force in the world willing to stand up to it," Lieberman said this week in an Op-Ed article in The Wall Street Journal. "But our President continues to believe we can talk sense into those who are sworn to destroy us."
Despite the charges, President Obama remains popular in broad public opinion polls. Surveys show that large portions of the American electorate continue to support the President's defense and economic positions and believe the charges against him are politically and racially charged.
"The fact of the matter is that President Obama is restoring America's reputation among our allies and the cancer that is global terrorism is too large for any one nation to combat," said Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House. "The tragedies of Boston, Los Angeles, Seattle, Dallas and Charlotte should not be politicized," she added.
Senator Al Shapton (D-New York), who was appointed to fill Clinton's New York Senate Seat when she became Secretary of State in January 2009, called criticism of President Obama thinly veiled racism. "There are some people in this country who just refuse to accept the notion of a black man as president," Senator Sharpton said at a recent Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Manhattan. "It is not President Obama's choices as Commander in Chief that people resent, it is strictly his skin color."
This week marks two years since a series of coordinated attacks in Mumbai, India killed more than 195 people and sent the Indian economy into a tailspin. India's military response against Pakistan precipitated the ongoing regional conflict that to date has claimed tens of thousands of civilian lives on both sides.
"We'll never know what might have been," said Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) on Meet the Press this past week. "But I know this much, those who voted for President Obama because they wanted change, got their wish. Our world has changed."
View Dean Rotbart News & Comment, November 30, 2008
You have a similar future sense to mine. The American people refuse to learn from history and are doomed to repeat it. We are reliving Germany, 1933 with the President- Elect playing the part of the savior of the world’s troubles You, personally, know the rest of the German story.
Sometimes people cannot be told; sometimes they have no common sense; sometimes people must go through tragedy to learn to appreciate what they have or had. I am afraid this is one of those times.
M.S.
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