Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Gail Collins, "Bill, Barack and Us": How Many Pinocchios for Collins?

If the Republican Party has veered hard to the right, has the Democratic Party been hijacked by the left? And if so, what awaits the US if Obama is reelected?

In her latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Bill, Barack and Us" (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/opinion/collins-the-roots-are-back.html), Gail Collins makes light of the fact that the Democratic platform originally omitted any reference to God:

"The Democrats had been waiting for Clinton’s speech for two days, during which they diverted themselves with a couple of brief platform fights, one about inserting a mention of God, who had inadvertently been cut out of the platform’s 40 pages."

Like it or not, there was nothing "inadvertant" about this omission from a platform which was reviewed with a fine-toothed comb.

Then, too, Collins fails to make reference to the initial decision that the Democrats' plank should not recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and should not acknowledge Israel as America's staunchest ally in the Middle East, as in years past. After much criticism and many raised eyebrows, reference to God and recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital were restored, but only after a questionable vote.

Although we are now being told that Obama requested that recognition of Jerusalem be restored to the platform, we previously learned that the Democratic National Committee had omitted reference to Jerusalem in keeping with Obama's foreign policy (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2012/09/new-york-times-editorial-words-not.html).

Collins blithely concludes her op-ed by observing:

"So, we’re almost done, convention-wise. We’ve learned that both parties like God and moms, particularly moms with humble roots. They both have faith that people who work hard and play by the rules can overcome exposure to secondhand furniture while they’re in college. Otherwise, it’s just a matter of whether you want to raise taxes and balance the budget like Clinton, or cut taxes and plunge us into a hopeless sea of debt, like Bush. Let the fight begin."

What could be easier for Collins than to depict 2012 as a contest between Bill Clinton and George Bush. Unfortunately, however, notwithstanding Clinton's protestations that he could not have done a better job than Obama regarding the US economy, it is Obama who has plunged the US "into a hopeless sea of debt." According to a March 2012 CBS News article (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57400369-503544/national-debt-has-increased-more-under-obama-than-under-bush/):

"The National Debt has now increased more during President Obama's three years and two months in office than it did during 8 years of the George W. Bush presidency.

The Debt rose $4.899 trillion during the two terms of the Bush presidency. It has now gone up $4.939 trillion since President Obama took office.

. . . .

The National Debt also now exceeds 100% of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, the total value of goods and services."

Still worse, it was just announced by the Treasury Department that US debt now exceeds $16 trillion (see: http://news.yahoo.com/us-national-debt-hits-16-trillion-republicans-blast-031301848.html).

Where is Obama's map for steering America out of this "sea of debt"? God, not on the guest list for the Democratic convention, only knows.

2 comments:

  1. Ha,
    That reminds me something. A late friend of my was one of the people who worked on the Reform Judaism platform in the 1970s.
    The platform was ready and he was rereading it, checking. He had a feeling that something was missing. He was reading and thinking and the feeling grew stronger ... What was missing from this document of "religious" Jews? What was it?
    Suddenly it hit him. God. My friend left the same day.

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  2. BTW, I am pretty sure that in a new platform of Reform Judaism there still won't be God, but there will be a lot of Obama. You've got to have someone there.

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