Voting Blocs May Decide the 2012 Presidential Election

The political face of America is changing as immigrant groups, legal and illegal, build our population to at least 310 million - and rising.
As the presidential election of 2012 approaches, the prime question will be turnout, that is, which voting bloc will respond to which candidate.
Will the giant demographic trends already in place benefit President Barack Obama and his Democrats sufficiently to overcome the negative effects of joblessness and unresolved wars in remote lands?
The basic constituencies of the Democratic Party are minorities, working women, educated voters in urban areas, and younger voters. They are growing at a faster rate than other blocs.
Republicans achieve their largest voting potential among the white and upper income voters where Obama’s support has been weakening. These Republican blocs have been shrinking as a share of the overall electorate.
However, Democratic turnout dropped in the 2010 congressional election as the higher percentage of white voters and senior citizens overcame the Democrats demographic advantage.
Working-class white voters will be the key to the 2012 presidential election. US unemployment numbers will be the crucial figures - not the frantic and ineffective attempts to rebuild foreign societies thousands of miles from American homes.

The Wars on Libya

The current attack on Libya by the United States is not the first. According to the authoritative Library of Congress, the attack is the second such war; the first was fought intermittently between 1800 - 1815 against the so-called Barbary States of North Africa led by Tripoli.

The war was never declared by the US House of Representatives as required by the U.S. Constitution. The Library of Congress study analyzed the 250 wars fought by the US and reported that Congress declared war in only five of them: the war of 1812, the 1848 war against Mexico, the 1898 war against Spain, the 1917 World War I, the 1941 World War II.

The Barbary States regular source of income was piracy. The young US paid cash tribute as did European nations to buy immunity for their ships and cargoes. When the Pasha of Tripoli raised the price for American immunity, US refused payment, negotiations failed, US set up a blockade. President Thomas Jefferson persuaded Congress to authorize the building of warships that saw intermittent action until the US blockade was lifted, the US considered resuming payments, a US ship and prisoners were captured and ransomed.

In the final settlement, Tripoli renounced all rights to halt or to levy tribute on US ships. It was not a brilliant triumph and did not end piracy until US Admiral Stephen Decatur scored a significant naval victory over the pirates.

In recent decades, Libya’s pirate/dictator Moammar Qaddafi has engaged in domestic and foreign terrorist actions earning the enmity of the US and other victims. A few years ago, a settlement was reached that satisfied the US and other affected nations: acknowledgment and payment was made by Libya for the destruction of a plane and passengers over Scotland, the responsible criminals were remanded for punishment, and Libya surrendered materials and plans for the manufacture of nuclear weapons they had imported.

Some Libyan tribes have revolted against the harsh Qaddafi regime. NATO and US military forces are helping them, mostly by bombing government installations. US participation has mainly been firing powerful, Tomahawk missiles from US ships in the Mediterranean Sea – an act of war but without authorization from Congress. Congressional resolutions demanding that the president adhere to the U.S. Constitution have failed by close margins despite receiving votes from both Democrats and Republicans.

The attacks on Libya continue. Libya’s prime oil export has been diminished, affecting the world price. Libya's assets frozen in US banks amount to $29 billion. American actions against Libya were acts of war by all international standards and are parallel to US military actions now in effect against Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, where we are currently fighting wars authorized by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama in violation of our constitution.

Qaddafi and his regime can fairly be described as modern pirates who ought to be resisted militarily - but by methods that conform to our prized national document and heritage, the United States Constitution. Presidential wars are illegal in the United States and unwise everywhere else. Making war, wasting the lives of our youth, and spending the enormous cost are too important to be left to the responsibility of one person and his advisers.

While NATO and US intervention in the Libyan civil war is carried out in the name of human rights, it is not clear which intervening nation will benefit from the overthrow of the Qaddafi regime. And big money is at stake - from the oil funds frozen in the US and future revenues from Libya's oil wells in a world of diminishing supplies. The armed conflict in Libya has taken more than 1.3 million barrels a day off the world market, helping to support the current high price of oil.

Killing Bin Laden – An Opportunity Missed

Osama Bin Laden was killed at the same time that a new model of Moslem change was emerging in the region, a model that is completely the opposite of Bin Laden's. Since January, popular uprisings have overthrown the dictators of Tunisia and Egypt, challenged rulers in Libya, Bahrain, Syria, Yemen, and Jordan, the greatest change the world has seen since the fall of the Berlin wall. And this revolution was based on non-violence and the public participation honoring law and order in an exercise of peaceful democracy. In contrast, the seizure and killing of Bin Laden was an authoritarian response to the brutal enmity of September 11.

Few Americans are criticizing President Obama for his key role in planning and guiding the assassination of Osama Bin Laden. Celebration was the order of the day, as most Americans felt an overpowering need to revenge the massacre when 19 criminals took the lives of almost 3000 innocents in a plot that benefited no one.

Some questioned the killing of the unarmed Bin Laden who did not resist seizure. Others questioned the immediate disposal of the body into the anonymity of the ocean along with the celebration of revenge. Perhaps the most effective critique was of the failure to seize Bin Laden alive, arrest him for his crimes, and then give him a trial on documented charges in accordance with established legal principles.

While there was and is more than enough evidence to convict Bin Laden of capital crimes in a trial, he would have the democratic right of self defense, Bin Laden's criminal acts would be explored and analyzed, his defenses examined. The whole world would be watching. Bin Laden’s supporters would examine his justifications against the teachings of the Koran and the accumulated legal experience of the centuries. The murderers of September 11 would face the cries and the descriptions of the victims.. The trial would be a profoundly religious, moral and educational event based on the accumulated legal tradition dating back to the holy instructions given at Mount Sinai.
Bin Laden could not escape retribution. His crimes would be delineated for Muslim and world opinion. And the world system of law would be strengthened at every human level if Bin Laden had been seized by US troops and kept alive for trial. The Israelis weren't afraid to keep Nazi murderer Adolf Eichmann alive after they captured him in Argentina. At his trial in Jerusalem he was accorded his rights, confronted with his crimes, did not deny his guilt, and paid with his life. The whole world was watching. The whole world learned the ugliness and destructiveness of anti-Semitism and religious prejudice. The courts, the evidence, the fair procedures, the rights explained and utilized were compelling examples of a democratic society.

Did we miss another rare opportunity for strengthening our legal system and promoting democracy?

Out of Libya

Recently at West Point, President Obama’s Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that “any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined.” Gates was opposing any US intervention – big or little - in the civil war in Libya – but here we go again.

At that time war talk about Libya came from the architects of the misbegotten Iraq war, Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman, Paul Wolfowitz and his fellow neo-cons. Now the President has been persuaded by Senator John Kerry and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that we must fight a third war against a Muslim nation.
We were able to pressure the dictators who run the Arab League to support war against Libya even though Saudi Arabia has invaded Bahrain while denouncing Libya for defending itself against rebels in its own country. The Arab dictators rule their rebels with iron fists.
As we write this blog, eleven US warships and a cloud of airplanes are attacking Libya from the Mediterranean; US planes are bombing Libyan airfields and military installations. If Qaddafi does not surrender, ground troops will surely follow even though Libya is hardly a threat to the United States. With only 6 million people, a persistent rebellion and little industry, Libya is outgunned and outmanned by an enormous margin. However, Libya has 2% of the world's oil reserves, giving it plenty of cash and making it mighty attractive in some quarters. Since September 1, 1969 it has been ruled by Dictator Gaddafi in a brutal and dictatorial manner. In 2003, Libya improved its international relations somewhat, stopping biological chemical and nuclear weapons development, signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty, accepting responsibility for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, UN sanctions were suspended; the US soon ended all sanctions, re-established diplomatic relations and began to purchase Libyan oil.

Libya’s military dictatorship is an outgrowth of its tribal rivalries and Gaddafi represents the dominant tribes centered around Tripoli. The perennially rebellious minority tribes live in or about Benghazi in Eastern Libya. The invasion by the US and its Allies is designed to change the tribal order, reversing control in a manner that virtually guarantees continued strife.

Although US forces are already on the attack, there has been no declaration of war by Congress as required by the U.S. Constitution so the legality of the war could be challenged. Of the 250 wars the US has fought only five have been formally declared. So much for our declared respect for the Constitution. No supporter of the US war against Libya claims that Libya threatens the US. Al Qaeda is not involved. The basis for the attack is stated as humanitarian, the spreading of democracy, the saving of Libyan lives. Opposition is based on the cost of the war at a time when US domestic expenditures are being cut. An attack for whatever reason on another Muslim country while we attack Muslim Pakistan with drone airplanes could stimulate anti-crusader attitudes and another attack on the US homeland. Once again it establishes US military intervention as the prime element in our foreign policy, concentrating US power in the presidency without traditional constitutional controls.

Libya does not threaten the US or our allies. Follow the advice of Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The oil isn't worth the trouble and the loss of reputation. The tribes of Libya will have to work out their differences themselves.

Oil or Israel or Both

When Egyptian youth began their occupation of the Cairo square, it was difficult for the Israeli public to take it seriously. They knew that the Egyptian army dominated the government, that the so-called dictator Hosni Mubarak served at army pleasure. One of the most popular jokes circulating in Israel during the first outburst of protest in Egypt read "Dear Egyptian Rioters, Please don't damage the pyramids. We will not rebuild."
Israel's seeming indifference in the current continuing crisis is matched by its indifference to popular outrage in almost every nation over its 44 year occupation of the West Bank territories once controlled by Palestinians. This indifference was sustained by its belief that authoritarian Arab regimes would keep their subjects’ rage in check and that the survival of the authoritarian Arab regimes would be defended under the United States security umbrella for geopolitical reasons and especially for the continuity of the oil business. The deference to the US was responsible for the stability of Egypt's and Jordan’s peace accords with Israel.
This functioning of power reaches beyond the limits of representative democracy into sanctified areas of corporate profits, national income and world hegemony. Hosni Mubarak is out of power but Israel may once again become the pariah nation in the region. If democracy becomes a way of life there, at least one of the nascent political parties will make demands of Israel. A change of government in Egypt, still undetermined, is likely to undermine Israel's strategic situation, even the degree of US support, as America might be forced to choose between Israel and the wildly profitable flow of Arab oil.

A Test of American Exceptionalism

General James Clapper, Director of US National Intelligence, told a Senate Committee that his group was aware of the deep-seated problems and tensions in the Muslim Middle East nations long before the current riots.

The secret 18 page classified report was ordered by President Obama. It concluded that the area was ripe for popular revolt due to massive unemployment, the large impatient youth population, rising food prices, and corrupt government practices.

However, neither the White House, the State Department, the CIA nor the Defense Department was able to muster enough pressure on their Middle East allies to change policies to avert the current revolutions.

Has President Obama launched a similar study of the condition and attitudes of American workers, suffering from some of the same pressing wounds?

Unemployment in America is receiving media attention but not a serious program to solve the crisis - and the real numbers reveal a catastrophic decline in family income. While the official unemployment numbers are about 9% and not declining, worker income has been reduced even more dramatically because so many discouraged workers have stopped looking for work, so many qualified workers are working at wages far below their skill levels, so many are working part-time, that the accurate number of unemployment is likely at 25 million.

Figuring a typical family of four, the 25 million grows to 100 million people whose standards of living have been dramatically reduced even with government assistance. That is one third of the total 300 million population of the United States – an authentic crisis. How long will it take before there are popular uprisings in the US, uprisings led by the youngest workers, those with the most anger, perhaps with the most idealism, with the uncompromising determination and energy to stake out positions in the public square and to maintain their demands until the nation takes care of all its citizens?

The richest nation in world history can do no less. The land drained by the mighty Mississippi should take inspiration from the revolution of the land of the ancient Nile. Not to respond would be a negative redefinition of our proud tradition of American Exceptionalism. We like to think of ourselves as a new kind of nation, a unique model for the political world, the proverbial City on the Hill. This crisis is a test. Prove that we are as noble as we say we are. The whole world is watching.

Protecting US interests in Egypt

The Obama administration's official position on the Egyptian uprising has been changing almost daily. Their immediate response was to back President Hosni Mubarak, to the dismay of the protesters. On January 27, VP Joseph Biden went so far as to insist that Mubarak was not a dictator. Then that position was reversed, President Obama himself abandoned Mubarak saying it would be better if the transition process began now and not in September. Today, February 7, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned against a hasty exit for Mubarak, saying that moving him could threaten the country's transition to democracy.

At the same time, all administration spokespersons insist that these decisions must be made by “The people of Egypt”, even though it appears that the United States is pushing Egypt in multiple directions according to the numbers and strength of the protesters in the Egyptian square.

The US ought to follow its own advice and stay out of the internal Egyptian crisis except as it affects basic US interests. It has massive clout with Egypt because of its $2 billion a year support of the Egyptian military and economy.

The US could protect its interests by insisting that it would support a new government if the following conditions were met: The 1979 peace agreement Israel would be continued. The Suez Canal would remain open to all shipments of oil regardless of origin. Egypt would continue to cooperate with the world community in the struggle to eliminate terrorism. Egypt would adhere to United Nations prohibitions against the use of torture.

The US would have a policy that met international norms and protected its vital interests The US would affect Egyptian foreign policy without intervening in local political combat. The path for cooperation between the two nations would be clear. The US would have a coherent policy based on its own needs not relying on the number of protesters in the Egyptian square. The uncertainty of US policy would be eliminated. The world’s only superpower should protect its interests without waiting to measure which way the wind was blowing.

How to Reduce Deaths by Guns

For the safety of all Americans, the purchase and use of firearms must be controlled and regulated by the federal government in a uniform system applying to all gun owners in all states. Qualifications for ownership and use should include: passing a written test, a physical test, and a medical test as well as training in use of firearms.

A fair and workable system should have as a basic principle that every gun owner should have a reason to have a gun: military, security officer, police, hunter, target shooter. There should be uniform regulation in all states so that a person cannot buy a gun in one state but then take it to another state to evade regulations.

Enforcement should be the responsibility of the local police chiefs, who know the angry and unstable people in their area, who have self-interest and motivation because their officers are most often in the line of fire. All guns should be stored in the local police station, signed out for use, and then returned to the police station. No guns should be allowed at home to avoid children or unauthorized persons having accidents, to avoid the use of guns as a tool to settle an angry argument, to avoid gun use in a vehicle during road rage, to avoid availability during mental depression.

The cost of installing such a system would be far less than the current cost of gun incidents. It would give law-enforcement another tool at the local level where most crime and accidents take place.

Legitimate use of guns under safe procedures would be protected, even encouraged - but murders, suicides, and deaths by gun accident and errors would be reduced dramatically.

General Petraeus Says.......

The broader counter insurgency strategy of Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander in Afghanistan, and the Karzai government of Afghanistan,is "to win over the population with good government and economic opportunity", as well as with improved security.

Modern, literate, supremely powerful United States of America has some of the same problems as backward, illiterate Afghanistan, riven by civil war and tribal rivalries, occupied by 150,000 soldiers from Western nations bearing different religions, technologies and cultures.

The 100,000 American troops represent a nation with a string of problems, conditions that need solution –“to win over the population with good government and economic opportunity”. Some of the evidence can be found in the latest public opinion polls showing that only 27.6% believe the direction of the country is correct, 65.8 believe it wrong. 74% disapprove of the performance of the U.S. Congress. And President Obama has a job approval rating of 45.5% versus disapproval of 47.9. Americans have serious political differences that we solve ourselves without foreign interference, interferences that we would totally reject as outright imperialism.

General Petraeus has said repeatedly that there are merely 50 to 100 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Interfering in the Afghan civil war diverts us from our prime problems at home. Thank you General Petraeus, for reminding us of our primary responsibility, "to win over the population with good government and economic opportunity." – in the United States of America.

The Drama in the Wikileaks

Wikileaks is a sensation, providing an unprecedented view of backroom bargaining by embassies all over the world, harsh assessments of foreign leaders and insider views of nuclear and terrorist threats. Like its predecessors the Obama administration says the diplomacy must remain secret. Wikileaks says all governments abuse secrecy by hiding facts and negotiations that should be made public. Here are a few examples:

• American and South Korean officials have discussed the formation of a United Korea should North Korea's economic and political troubles cause the North to implode.

• The US has offered political and large financial incentives to many countries to persuade them to take some of the prisoners now held in Guantanamo Bay Jail, untried and therefore unconvicted.

• When Afghanistan's vice president visited the United Arab Emirates this year, local authorities discovered he was carrying $52 million in cash. Perhaps for a drug deal?

• China's Politburo directed the invasion into Google's computer systems in China. Other cables said that China has broken into US government computers, those of US allies, the Dalai Lama and American businesses.

• American officials sharply warned Germany in 2007 not to enforce arrest warrants for CIA officers involved in a bungled operation in which an innocent German citizen with the same name as a suspected militant was mistakenly kidnapped and held for months in Afghanistan.

The drama in the Wikileaks cables often comes from diplomats' stories of meetings with foreign figures, as well as games of diplomatic poker, the raw use of US power, and US assets spent profusely on legal and illegal strategies.