Obama's re-election speech: a re-write of history and an omission

You can read the full text for yourself at the link below--but of all the things I was surprised by in Obama's re-election speech, two stick out:

1. A small thing, but significant: "Tonight, more than 200 years after a former colony won the right to determine its own destiny . .  . "  A former colony?  Which of the thirteen colonies is he referring to? And Obama is a Harvard law graduate? If you don't know and understand that America was formed from thirteen independent, original colonies, you are woefully ignorant--particularly to be President of these United States. No wonder Obama thinks the federal powers are unlimited (and unfortunately, our present Supreme Court apparently agrees--at least as long as you characterize the "power grab" as a "tax").

2. A glaring omission--no thanks, no mention of, Bill Clinton. Never, in the history of this Republic, has a past President taken such an active, and significant, role in a Presidential race. I understand Obama called Clinton after calling Romney, but still, public acknowledgement, and thanks, should have been made.

BBC News - Full text: Obama's re-election speech

Tomorrow: a post-election analysis of the Romney campaign (hint: it's not "rocket science").

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Obama's biggest vulnerability is not Obamacare

Having listened to about as much of CPAC 2012 as I could stand, I can see why Obama stands a good chance of re-election. That's not to say the President's re-election is assured. He definitely has some problems, but his biggest vulnerabilities have nothing to do with Obamacare or the Catholic Church, but instead issues that are being raised mainly on the left:

Dear Andrew Sullivan: Why Focus on Obama's Dumbest Critics? - Conor Friedersdorf - Politics - The Atlantic: "After reading Andrew Sullivan's Newsweek essay about President Obama, his critics, and his re-election bid, I implore him to ponder just one question. How would you have reacted in 2008 if any Republican ran promising to do the following?

(1) Codify indefinite detention into law; (2) draw up a secret kill list of people, including American citizens, to assassinate without due process; (3) proceed with warrantless spying on American citizens; (4) prosecute Bush-era whistleblowers for violating state secrets; (5) reinterpret the War Powers Resolution such that entering a war of choice without a Congressional declaration is permissible; (6) enter and prosecute such a war; (7) institutionalize naked scanners and intrusive full body pat-downs in major American airports; (8) oversee a planned expansion of TSA so that its agents are already beginning to patrol American highways, train stations, and bus depots; . . . . President Obama has done all of the aforementioned things. . . . . It isn't that I object to Sullivan backing Obama's reelection if his GOP opponent runs on bringing back torture. Is he the lesser of two evils? Maybe so. But lauding him as a president who has governed "with grace and calm" and "who as yet has not had a single significant scandal to his name"? If indefinite detention, secret kill lists, warrantless spying, a war on whistleblowers, violating the War Powers Resolution, and abuse of the state secrets privilege don't fit one's definition of "scandal," what does? If they're peripheral flaws rather than central, unacceptable transgressions, America is doomed to these radical, illiberal policies for the foreseeable future." (emphasis added)

And this is David Seaman, http://www.twitter.com/d_seaman ; Google+: http://profiles.google.com/dseaman, on the same issues: "What if we voted for Barack Obama, a rational moderate, and instead got one of the most irrational, secretive, and authoritarian presidential administrations of the past 100 years? What if Ron Paul and Buddy Roemer are right about the election process and about the erosion of our core civil rights? And what if Barack Obama truly DOES think the Constitution is an outdated joke?"


(David Seaman video)

If conservatives, and others, ever truly woke up to this, Obama might have a real problem being re-elected.

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