Know Thyself

As I was reading a couple of partisan political letters in the Victoria Advocate this morning, I asked myself" why did the writers wait until the last paragraph until they mentioned they were Romney supporters?" The owner of ACU-TUNE auto service, Steve Fiedler, titled his guest column" President Obama has a record of lies, hypocrisy."

Mr. Fiedler, being the partisan Republican he is, cherry picked a chronological chain of campaign statements to call the president a liar and a hypocrite. The writer started with Obama's promise to bring transparency to the White House. The president fulfilled that promise because the previous administrations had never put any pending legislation online for the public to see.

Transparency does not mean that you cannot have closed-door meeting to map out strategy. The writer fails to mention that for the first time, the White House released the visitors log for the public to see.

President Obama did say that he would bring civility and bipartisanship to Washington, but he was just a naive former senator who did not have the foresight to know that as he was dancing with Michelle at the inaugural ball; key leaders of the opposition party were plotting to derail all the president's future plans. The GOP came to be known as the party of NO.

President Obama made 508 campaign promises, of that according to Politifact 38 percent were kept. 16 percent compromised and 17 percent broken.

http://www.politifact.com/

Mr. Fiedler goes onto say that President Obama promised to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. The writer left out that the administration had to stop the job loss bleeding, make sure the most vulnerable among us didn't have to suffer more than necessary, and they took steps to ensure that teachers, firemen and policemen would not be laid off in great numbers due to state budget cuts. Can the writer tell us, what the unemployment figure and GDP would have been without those measures? Health Care costs were rising out of control; doing nothing was not an option.

Mr. Fiedler’s claim that President Obama has been the most divisive we've ever had is laughable. Obama maintains a 50% approval. President Bush left office with a 32% approval and Dick Cheney had a 15% approval. How quickly they forget. The former president and vice president are nowhere to be seen in the 2012 presidential campaign. The president apologized during the 2008 campaign season for his remarks concerning people clinging to their guns and their God. The man Mr. Fiedler is going to vote for said 47%of Americans were dependant on government and voting for the president. No such apology came from Mr. Romney, as usual; he denied the context of the speech.

The right wing is understandably upset because they could not hang a scandal on the president. Oh they tried, but those darn committees could not come up with anything, so they're trying to make the most of the Benghazi incident. In fact, I heard that Fox News gave more coverage to the Benghazi incident last week than to Hurricane Sandy.

They must not be well coordinated because their presidential candidate is not mentioning Bemghazi on the campaign trail. In fact, in debate number III, Mitt Romney agreed with all of the president's foreign policy actions. I seriously doubt that many people will go into the voting booths thinking that President Obama doesn't know the meaning of the word “terrorism."

Mitt Romney has a four-year record as governor of Massachusetts, and he's currently behind in that state by nearly 30 points. We have heard the many stances Mitt Romney has been taking during the 20 plus debates in the GOP primary and the three with the president, so it won't take time to tell on how he will govern. President Obama did not have two major car company CEOs write memos to their employees, telling them that their jobs were not going overseas, as Mitt Romney is saying.

The other letter written by Nanette Foster of Victoria, who is worried about our president honoring a foreign leader's culture and customs and thinks that the president is refusing to meet with prime minister Netanyahu. The president has had many talks with the prime minister and the last I heard (Netanyahu at the UN) they were in agreement on the sanctions imposed on Iran.

Again, when the president took office, we were losing 750,000 jobs a month, since that time, the private sector has created a little over five million jobs. As for the president being selective on who he bails out, if it's the auto industry, you are talking about, Nanette, he was only following the actions of President George W. Bush.

The administration and Congress have given small businesses 18 tax cuts, what else do they have to do to be user friendly as you state?

I can't rebut all of Nanette's assertions because the rest are just talking points that don't make any sense. The president hasn't done anything to remove God from anything nor has he done anything to remove your precious guns. Our defense is superior to any but it's bloated with waste.

I hope Steve Fiedler and Nanette Foster remain in the Republican Party.It seems like a perfect fit.

I've never found a reason to apologize for voting for a straight party ticket, in fact, I've read where 85% of voters already do that. Some people can't come to grips with the reality that sometimes; there just aren't candidates in one party that appeal to people. We fool ourselves every four years into believing that we weigh all the facts and pick the right person. We might do that in the primaries or at the local level but not at the state or national level.

I love early voting and I always take advantage of it but for those who haven't voted; please do.

Three more days before I take a break from blogging and I just might quit altogether.I think blogging (except for the professionals)has lost out to Facebook and Twitter.