By Dick Miller
WE.CONNECT.DOTS: For those left-leaning folks, recent events are comforting.
Both POTUS and SCOTUS raised up to deliver us from evil.
For Barack Obama, President of the United States, after 77 months of abuse, disrespect and more failure than success, the man who would be president, finally was. President Obama got two important decisions from the Supreme Court of the United States.
The Court’s decision preserving the Affordable Care Act rocked the capitol because this same court had toyed with sentencing Obamacare to death in the past.
This time not even close, a 6-3 decision “reaffirmed the foundation of President Obama’s landmark domestic achievement. It also seemed to take the starch out of legal efforts to undermine the basic structure of the law,” wrote the Washington Post.
By a closer margin, 5 to 4, SCOTUS also made same-sex marriage the law of the land.
President Obama did not pick this fight. He followed the path of much of Democrat leadership, at times being against same-sex marriage and at other times for it. His enemies made his role in history on this issue for him.
Because most opponents to same-sex marriage also were opposed to Obamacare and possess other right-wing positions, Obama’s enemies are responsible for the President’s defense of the subject.
During this same short period, President Obama used the “n” word in a press interview in regards to racism. This provided the only shot at the President by his opponents last week.
Then at the end of last week, during a eulogy for the victims of the shootings in Charleston, SC, he suddenly broke out in his rendition of “Amazing Grace.” Some 6,000 people in attendance quickly stood and joined in.
In a stunning display, the Blacks of Charleston did not burn, did not riot. They forgave. Nobody took exception with that.
In-between, Obama overcame strong opposition of his own Party to push the final pieces of his Trans Pacific Partnership through the House of Representatives. TPP is a trading partnership involving 12 nations and effects about 40 percent of commerce on this planet.
Will the TPP do as much damage to American manufacturing jobs as did the North American Free Trade Act? In 1993, President Bill Clinton and a cabal of Republicans told American voters NAFTA would create tens of thousands of jobs here. U.S. farmers would export their way to wealth.
NAFTA, which involved the US, Canada and Mexico, was supposed to elevate Mexico’s standard of living, reducing immigration to the US.
Nothing, of course, was further from the truth.
Many US firms re-located production to Mexico to take advantage of cheaper labor costs. A small trade surplus with Mexico turned into a huge deficit for the US. A small trade deficit with Canada became a larger deficit.
Food processors also moved south of the border. US beef imports from both Mexico and Canada have increased 130 percent since NAFTA went into effect Jan. 1, 1994.
The loss of more than a million US jobs is a NAFTA casualty, experts claim.
The events of the past week to ten days set parameters for the political future.
Republican chances of capturing the White House in 2016 dwindled. The host of GOP aspirants for the job will now scramble to the right to capture enough of the Party base to win the nomination. Too far right to move to the center for the General Election.
The Republican candidate who galvanizes the right on Obamacare, same sex marriages, anti-gun control and anti-abortion will win the nomination. Not enough voters agree with far right positions on these issues to win the Presidency.
Bottom Line: Events of the last 7 to 10 days are momentous and repercussions will play out over the next 16 months.
