Vote for Kodos | Obamboozled
My grand plans for this series were scuttled by the weekend's train of events, so I shall make a short statement regarding the criteria by which this election should be decided, & then post excerpts from an individual effort by your humble narrator to convince an '08 Obama voter not to repeat that error of judgment this time around. (There is more back-&-forth to this discourse than I present below, but I pledge on my honor that I am not presenting anything out of context or in a way that differs from its original intent.) I thank you for your kind attention & your due consideration.

In '08, then-Senator Obama promised hope & change, with very few policy specifics. He promised a new kind of politics, & healing of this nation's bitter partisan division. Have we seen a new kind of politics? Has this nation's bitter partisan divide been healed? Are we more hopeful, or is there a sullen resignation to a "new normal"? Has this country been changed for the better or for the worse? The first three questions must be answered in the negative, meaning the answer to the fourth is a change for the worse. Thus, in light of what Mr. Obama has promised in his re-election campaign, more of the same, a "doubling down" on his energy policy, & "continuing" the work of the last four years, I ask you, What reason is there to believe, if Mr. Obama is re-elected, that the next four years will be any different, any better, than the last four years?

Economy & Debt

Ten of millions of Americans are out of work. The unemployment rate has been high (above 8% for over forty months & still 7.9% today) for the longest sustained period since the Great Depression. This has occurred despite a significant drop in the workforce participation rate, a drop to levels not seen in three decades, a drop that should have lowered the unemployment rate; if workforce participation was still as robust as it was when Mr. Obama took office, the unemployment rate would be north of 11%. I do not pretend that all of our economic difficulties are Mr. Obama fault, because I know a thing or two about economics, but a certain amount of blame must be directed at Mr. Obama for two failures: {a} his economic advisers boasted vainly that with the "stimulus" of early '09 that unemployment would top off below 6% & {b} in a television interview in the same period Mr. Obama said that if he had not fixed the economy in three years that he did not deserve re-election.

The most damning economic charge against Mr. Obama is that he has no published or publicized plan for a second-term that differs from his first term. In speeches, Mr. Obama has said that all we need to get us out of our current & persistent economic straits is more spending on public school teacher salaries & more spending on infrastructure. A repeat of the "stimulus" of '09, that's the White House's plan. Sure, because that worked out so well last time! The "recovery summers" of '09 & '10 certainly were glittering successes. Mr. Obama has put forward no new ideas for the next four years; so, why should anyone believe that they will be any different than the last four years?

In '08, candidate Obama said that passing a 9 trillion-dollar national debt on to our children was "unpatriotic." That's the word he used, unpatriotic. Not "unwise" or "unsound," but unpatriotic. Early in '09, President Obama pledged to cut the federal government's annual deficit "in half" by the end of his first term. At present, the national debt stands in excess of 16 trillion dollars; the debt has increased more in three-plus years under President Obama than it did in eight years under President Bush, whose spending candidate Obama called both unpatriotic and "irresponsible." By his own standard, then, Mr. Obama's stewardship of the federal books has been irresponsible & unpatriotic; I wouldn't use those words, but he did, & thus they must be applied to him as well. The annual federal deficit has been above 1 trillions dollars for every year of Mr. Obama's term, the first time that has happened under any American president. The only solution Mr. Obama has proposed for these deficits is to increased income taxes on "the rich" & to substantially raise taxes on capital gains, a great deal of rhetoric supported by no particular analysis nor revenue projections.

In '10, Mr. Obama promoted a blue-ribbon bipartisan commission to study the deficit & debt & to make recommendations for both the short-term & the long-term. The House, then with a Democratic majority, appointed three Democrats & three Republicans to the so-called Bowles-Simpson Commission. The Senate, also with a Democratic majority, appointed three Democrats & three Republicans. The president appointed five Democrats & two Republicans. I do not agree with all of the recommendations of Bowles-Simpson, nor do I pretend that its conclusions are received wisdom from atop the mountain, but it is interesting to note that Mr. Obama dismissed his own commission's proposals out of hand. Worse, while dismissing Bowles-Simpson Mr. Obama has proposed no alternate vision of how to reign in our "irresponsible" & "unpatriotic" deficit & debt.

Having increased the national debt by more than any of his predecessors & offered no plan for how to reduce our budget imbalance in the next four years, why should anyone believe that things will be any different than the last four years?

Foreign Policy & National Security

The world's stability & prosperity require American leadership, & absent strong leadership from President Obama American policy is adrift, placing us at the mercy of events.

Mr. Obama boasts that our alliances are stronger than ever, but how so? In '09, as part of the now-failed "reset" of relations with the Russian Federation, President Obama put the kibosh on our missile defense program, halting work on two massive radar installations in Poland & the Czech Republic, relatively recent members of N.A.T.O. The Czechs & the Poles had engendered the anger & attempted intimidation by the Russians over those installations, but President Bush had assured them that American is a steadfast ally. Mr. Obama then pulled the rug out from under their feet. As fruits of the reset, Russia continues to occupy large portions of Georgia, continues to exert a malign influence over the politics of Latvia & the Ukraine, & continues to ship weapons & materiel to the Assad regime in Syria.

The Obama administration refused to sell F-16 fighter jets with advanced avionics to the Republic of China (R.O.C., Taiwan), despite a 1979 law requiring the U.S. to arm the Taiwanese against possible mainland Chinese aggression. The sale would not only have provided an ally with valuable defensive weapons, but would have generated jobs at the American plants that manufacture the F-16s. Why was this sale refused? For fear of offending the People's Republic of China (P.R.C., China). In gratitude, Beijing has continued to make aggressive territorial claims throughout the South China Sea, based upon the preposterous "nine-dotted line."

And if our alliances have never been stronger than ever, why are the Israelis screaming bloody murder about the lack of a "red line" for Iran's nuclear bomb program? The hallmark of American policy under Mr. Obama has been uncertainty & inconstancy. What was our response to the Libyan civil war? Britain & France set the course, leading an Obama aid to coin the notorious phrase "leading from behind." Our response to civil unrest in Egypt? Mubarak, an ally, had to go. Our response to civil unrest in Iran? No call for the bloodthirsty ayatollahs to step down. Our responce to civil unrest in Bahrain? Silence as Saudi-led G.C.C. forces quashed the peaceful protests. What is U.S. policy regarding democratization in the Middle East & Persian Gulf? For it in Egypt, Tunisia, & Libya; against it in Iran & Bahrain. What then is our policy?

Syria is a committed foe of the United States, a rogue regime that as recently as '07 was attempting to develop the atom bomb. (Stopped by unilateral Israeli action.) What is U.S. policy in Syria? The violence continues to spiral out of control & threatens to engulf the neighboring states of Lebanon & Jordan, yet America stands impotently on the sidelines, unwilling to lead, at the mercy of events instead of striving actively to shape those events.

I ask you, in all honesty, what is current American policy? What are the stated principles that guide our decision-making? What are the core values that allow us to remain steady in a constantly changing international scene? This is Mr. Obama's great national security failing, not the individual examples of fecklessness but the lack of a goal, the lack of a vision. What is America's place in the world? I say, as have three generations of American statesmen before me, that our place is to lead, that the world requires American leadership, & American leadership has been in the direction of greater peace, greater liberty, & greater prosperity. Absent that leadership, what course will the world take? What course is the world taking as we stand by, impotent & listless? We, & the world, cannot afford uncertainty. We must stand for SOMETHING.

A last note on priorities & leadership. President Obama ordered a contingent of American military advisers to Uganda, to coordinate the hunt for the vicious warlord Joseph Kony. This is right & proper, for Kony is a monster & his Lord's Resistance Army has been retarding the progress of central Africa—both political & economic—for far too long. These are not American combat troops, but advisers, trainers, intelligence analysts, & communications experts. This too is right & proper, for it should be Africans soldiers who bring this monster to justice. Yet in the same time frame, no contingent of American military advisers were dispatched to Libya to coordinate the accounting for & securing off the vast weapons stockpiles left lying around the country after the well-earned demise of Colonel Qaddafi. These need not have been combat troops, but s variety of munitions specialists, intelligence analysts, & civil affairs officers, to help keep those weapons from disappearing into the wind. No such American contingent was dispatched, & Libya's weapons have proliferated throughout North Africa, falling into the hands of the Islamist Tuareg rebels who have seized control of northern Mali, very possibly into the hands of the Islamist Boko Haram terrorists in northern Nigeria, & into the hands of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (A.Q.I.M.). Again, in no way am I opposed to the use of American might to help bring Joesph Kony to justice (or to put him in the ground with extreme prejudice, either is acceptable), all I am asking is what was the compelling American national security interest or priority that lead to the dispatching of forces to hunt Kony but not to the dispatching of forces to stop Qaddafi's arsenal of spreading throughout the Sahara, the Sahel, & parts beyond? What are the guiding principles of our policy that illuminate why those choices were made?

Freedom of Religion

Amendment I to the United States Constitution reads, in part, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;…" Hereafter, I shall refer to a Constitutional guarantee of "freedom of religion." I hope this slight deviation from the text does not offend thy eye or cast doubt upon the arguments to follow, for I believe "freedom of religion" captures the spirit of "free exercise thereof."

Since 2009 both President Obama & Secretary of State Clinton have referred to the vast importance of "freedom of worship," as a right of all Americans & a right of all Mankind. Freedom of worship, specifically, not freedom of religion. What is the difference? "Worship" can be as limited as what happens inside a church/mosque/synagogue/temple/those things to which we collectively refer as "houses of worship." "Religion" is a far different animal, encompassing worship & a great many other activities. You undertook your missionary work as part of your freedom of religion, in addition to your temple-bound freedom of worship. The Salvation Army collects donations as part of a religious duty to perform good works, not as specific acts of worship. But, in truth, maybe a mountain is being made out of a semantic molehill. Maybe there is no difference 'twixt freedom of religion & freedom of worship.

Except, there is the small matter of the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act (P.P.A.C.A.), "Obamacare" to some, sometimes even Mr. Obama. There is a mandate under the P.P.A.C.A., administered by the Department of Health & Human Services (H.H.S.), that requires employer-provided health insurance plans to cover drugs & treatments that violate the religious objections of some. Thus, Catholic institutions such as hospitals & universities must furnish their employees with insurance that covers contraception, sterilization, & fertilization prevention (the "morning after" pill). The use of these drugs explicitly violates Catholic teachings. There is a religious/conscience exemption to the H.H.S. mandate, but it defines religious employers so narrowly that in order to be considered a religious employer a Catholic church that donated food to a homeless shelter would have to ensure that the food went only to Catholics. By serving those beyond its own flock, the church is no longer a religious employer, according to the H.H.S.

Now, the issue here is NOT conception, abortion, or the beliefs of the Catholic Church. The issue is if a religious organization can be compelled by the state to engage in actions that violate its own dogma & teachings. It is one thing if an individual employed by a religious organization chooses to violate those precepts—for example, if a professor at a Catholic university chose to purchase her own contraception. The matter is then one of conscience betwixt her & her church. It is quite something else when the state compels the Church to provide her with contraception, in contravention of its own teachings.

Amongst the Fourth Estate, this issue has been treated as a simple case of the Catholics living in a pre-birth control pill fantasy land, & unjustly trying to impose its puritanical practices on 21st century libertines. The specifics here are less important than the principle, because the principle, once affirmed, can then be applied to all specific cases. Does the state, here in the guise of H.H.S., have the right to tell a church which of its teachings are valid & which are not, to which it can adhere & which it must compromise?

As a Catholic, & a Knight of Columbus, this issue is near & dear to my heart. The United States Council of Catholic Bishops has taken the H.H.S. to court to halt the mandate, with the outcome yet unknown. But this case has ramifications far beyond Catholics. Let me use as an analogy the words of German pastor Martin Niemöller, regarding the pernicious way in which tyranny progresses:

"First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

"Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

"Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

"Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me."

If the state is allowed to be the arbiter of Catholic belief, how long will it be until the state appoints itself the arbiter of [some other sect's] beliefs?

Variation on This Post's Second paragraph

Also, here is the election in a nutshell: Do you want four more years just like the last four years? An unsustainable fiscal path, acrimonious gridlock in Washington, executive orders that make a mockery of the Constitutional checks & balances, an impotent foreign policy, ever-decreasing levels of personal freedom, & economic growth so anemic that an unemployment rate of 7.9% is trumpeted as good news? I do not promise that the world will be sunshine & rainbows with Mitt Romney in the White House, but I do promise that it will be different than the world with Barack Obama in the White House. Four years ago you voted for hope & change. I am asking you to vote this year for hope & change, the hope that Mr. Romney's changes will be for the better, because all Mr. Obama is offering is more of the same, a less hopeful world where the biggest change is our lowered expectations.

Operation AXIOM
Three hundred ninety-seven years ago to the day, 5 November 1605, terrorists claiming to defend the savagely oppressed Catholics of England attempted to blow up the House of Lords by placing barrels of gunpowder in the vaults beneath the Palace of Westminster. The act of mass murder, intended to kill the king, James VI & I, & much of the English elite, was to have been the opening volley of a general revolt. The plot was thwarted, thank goodness, though the revelation of the conspiracy's purpose worsened considerably the plight of Catholics in England.

"Remember, remember, the fifth of November,
The gunpowder, treason, & plot,
I know of no reason
Why the gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot."

The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day
Mustard Plug, "Kill the Governor" from Skapocalypse Now! (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: The governor the characters in the song seek to assassinate is explicitly named as Michigan's John Engler, in office from 1991-2003. "Kill the Governor" is an ugly song & Mustard Plug, much as I enjoy their music, are uncivil & highly intolerant brutes.