Happy Days Are Here Again
Those words are reminiscent of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's campaign in 1932 when he defeated Herbert Hoover, symbolizing a putative end to the Great Depression. The tune gave hope to Americans who had suffered greatly after the Crash of 1929 and were still suffering, but promises, promises, promises can work magic to the soul.
Politicians are good at making promises that don't quite pan out. It happened in 2008, and now we're hearing the same tune again -- but from a different candidate, Mitt Romney, who's promising to save America from the path it's been on for the past nearly four years. This candidate actually has experience and a record of success.
The mainstream press has been predicting the inevitability of a second term for the president, and until recently, many Americans have been depressed at that possibility. But now they're thinking that the inevitability will be a Romney presidency as eyes are being forced open by the truth.
There has been earth-shattering bad news for President Obama this past week, but unless you get your news online or listen to Fox News, you will be unaware of it, because the mainstream press is not covering the story or is minimizing its importance. Andrew Breitbart promised that his Big sites would be doing the vetting of the president that the media neglected to do in 2008, and although he is not here to see the play-through, his protégés are doing a bang-up job.
They have secured a booklet from Obama's literary agency, Acton & Dystel, from back in 1991 which marketed him as "born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii." This publicity pamphlet, which showed the bios of its authors, was available online until 2007, when Senator Obama announced his run for the presidency. The bio was promptly revised to indicate that Senator Obama was born in Hawaii. Now the woman who was responsible claims she made a fact-checking error and is trying to dismiss that booklet as unimportant. It isn't, because bios to publishers are always first submitted by the authors themselves. That would make Barack Obama the first "birther."
This doesn't, of course, mean that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, but rather that he may have wanted to adopt an exotic persona for marketing purposes. The question has to be why the media and the McCain campaign failed to properly vet Obama as extensively as they did Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.
That booklet was not the only blow to the Democrat 2012 campaign. There is a new book by Edward Klein about the president, titled The Amateur. In it, the author has a revealing passage of Rev. Wright, Obama's former controversial minister whose anti-American and anti-Semitic sermons surfaced during the 2008 campaign but were safely smothered by an Obama-adoring media.
In the book and in subsequent tapes aired on Fox's Hannity show, the reverend asserts that he had been offered a bribe by an Obama associate to distance himself from the candidate. He also states that he helped Obama shed his Islamic heritage in favor of a Christian one.
Add these disclosures to the backlash from the president's flip-flop on the question of same-sex marriage and his administration's attack on religious freedom which specifically targeted the Catholic Church, and the worm has turned.
As of this writing, none of these negative reports have been aired in the mainstream press. Surprisingly AOL did report this blockbuster about Obama's Kenyan bio, and Twitter and Facebook have been inundated with comments about this latest brouhaha. Polling data also confirms that the president's ratings have dropped below Mitt Romney's.
It also hasn't helped that the White House has injected Barack Obama's alleged accomplishments into the biographies of previous presidents on its official site, www.whitehouse.gov. Here's one added to President Truman:
In a 1946 letter to the National Urban League, President Truman wrote that the government has "an obligation to see that the civil rights of every citizen are fully and equally protected." He ended racial segregation in civil service and the armed forces in 1948. Today the Obama Administration continues to strive toward upholding the civil rights of its citizens, repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell, allowing people of all sexual orientations to serve openly in our armed forces.
He's included similar boasts on the bios of Calvin Coolidge, Lyndon Johnson, FDR, and Reagan. These add-ons are further proof that Obama's narcissism knows no bounds.
There's more bad news for the Democrats, who thought they would be able to hold onto the Senate by ousting Mass. Senator Scott Brown in favor of Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Warren. Turns out the blonde, blue-eyed Warren has been touting a nebulous, possibly nonexistent Cherokee heritage for decades and has been listed as a minority at two universities. Her rambling explanation is fodder for jokes, and she has been dubbed "Fauxcahontas" as a result. Polling now shows that Sen. Brown is very likely to retain his seat by a large margin.
The Democratic convention is scheduled to be held in North Carolina, but that state recently voted to retain its ban on same-sex marriage, and many Democrats are trying to change the venue. The party is split on this, and the gay community is planning protests at the convention unless the site is changed.
Meanwhile, one of Mitt Romney's biggest supporters, Joe Ricketts -- the owner of the Chicago Cubs -- issued a call for using a super-PAC to launch aggressive attack ads against President Barack Obama. The plan would call for explicitly linking Obama to Rev. Wright and his angry, racially charged sermons.
Romney wisely issued a statement condemning this tactic and stated that he would instead be focusing his campaign on the economy and how to get people back to work. Almost immediately, several right-wing pundits chided Romney for not aggressively going after Obama's weak points. They accused Romney of making the same mistake John McCain did in 2008, but I disagree with this take. Romney's distancing himself from the fray and concentrating on the issues that most affect Americans is smart. Let the Obama campaign steep itself in pettiness and dirty tactics.
Mitt Romney knows that this country is in a crisis that is not about same sex marriage or religion. It is the economy and jobs, and his television ads promise:
Day One: President Romney immediately approves the Keystone pipeline, creating thousands of jobs that Obama blocked,
President Romney introduces tax cuts and reforms that reward job creators, not punish them,
President Romney issues order to begin replacing Obamacare with common-sense health care reform.
After hearing this ad, I can safely predict that as soon as Romney is declared president, the stock market will soar. I'm cashing in my soda bottles and joining E-Trade, 'cause happy days will be here again!