By Les Dunaway

This past week brought more information about President Obama to the attention of more Americans than any time since he was a community organizer for Acorn in Chicago.

The Founding Fathers recognized that the election process is imperfect and could be subverted by those who wanted a democracy rather than the republic which the Constitution created.

They specified the shortest term for the House, because those Representatives were intended to be just that representatives of their neighbors.

They gave a longer term to Senators because they were to represent the states – serving their fellow citizens of the various state through the filter of the people elected at the state level and defending the 10th Amendment. This second, very wise, provision was circumvented by a previous generation of statists, with the 17th Amendment. [more]

The term specified for the President was between that of the Representatives and the Senators, recognizing that dealing with national issues takes longer. There was also an assumption that election process would do a better job of interviewing a presidential candidate by having more time for a national dialog.

In 2008, the American public did a poor job of interviewing and ended-up hiring a candidate wholly unsuited for the position of President. This poor job resulted from a perfect storm of apathy, ignorance, crisis, subversion of the 4th Estate, self-delusion, wadded panties and a paradigm shift in communications.

• apathy

  • Most of the population, in any election, in any country, at any time in history has been happily clueless and altogether unwilling to make even the slightes effort to know and/or understand the issues. Sadly, many of these people vote in national elections – generally based on the last name they saw on the boob-tube.

• ignorance

  • I seperate this from apathy because many people who care and recognize the importance of elections are not connected to / aware of reliable sources of information – see 4th Estate below

• crisis

  • The period of time, Aug – Oct, when the few who focus on the election begin to focus, was overwhelmed with a global financial disaster and people were more concerned with their life-savings than the mouthings of politicians whom are seen, rightly, as a necessary evil. This other-focus was strengthened by the knowledge among those who were informed that the crisis was due to poor hiring done in previous elections.

• subversion of the 4th Estate

  • The rot seeping out of liberal universities and corrupting the mainstream media reached a breaking point in the 2008 election and since. Even the most apathetic and ignorant now consider the  the mainstream media a bad joke. Sadly, even those who understand the totally information-free nature of “The Nightly News” still allow the rot into their homes – rather than make the tiny effort to find an alternative. Happily, talk radio and the internet offer an alternative for those who are aware of it. And even more happily, the rapid decline of viewers fortells  the, none too soon, end of the mainstream media.

• self-delusion

  • The 2008 election was decided by the most massive wave of self-delusion in the history of man. Despite the issues cited above, the information necessary to recognize the unsuitability of the candidate was available. But millions of voters chose to ignore it in order to be progressive.

• wadded panties

  • And then, we have those who knew the situation, had the information and were engaged and chose to not vote because they didn’t like their party’s candidate. It’s quite possible that this single group of fools decided the election.

• paradigm shift in communications

  • Much has been made of the youth vote in the 2008 election. There was no youth vote. There was a Twitter vote. Millions of young voters, mostly first-time, thought it was so cool to get a tweet from a candidate that they voted for him.

So, with that as background, the news of this week:

The first I noticed was Mrs Obama’s speech at the DNC. Like most of the speeches there, her’s was light on meaning and even lighter on fact-based statements. However, she said one thing which was, unintentionally, very, very true 

I have seen firsthand that being president doesn’t change who you are – it reveals who you are.  

You got THAT right, darlin! After the experience of Obama’s conduct in the office of President, even them most hardened leftists are clear that the 2008 election picked the wrong candidate. The damage Obama has done to the Democrat brand, makes even the Carvilles wish for John McCain. And it should make very clear to even the clueless of the clueless that if Obama is re-elected, you’ll get more of the same, on steroids!

Next was the continuing news about the move 2016: Obama’s America. Even CBS News had to admit:

The movie is now playing in over 1800 theaters – From the Chicago Tribune:

For those of you who missed it, Dinesh D’Souza had Obama figured out before he made the movie. The cover-article of Forbes 27 Sep 2011 was his How Obama Thinks. It’s very worth your time to read.

The next bit of important information came Friday evening from Mark Levin on his radio show. Mark gave a well documented, carefully thought-out summary of the same subject – what we can expect in a 2nd Obama term. It’s worth listening to the podcast of the first hour – which takes only about 40 min. There’s notes and sources here. The podcast is here

The best written came in Saturday’s WSJ from Peggy Noonan The Democrats Soft Extremism. As much as I admire Peggy, I can’t buy her sweet-faced delegates. I watched very little of the convention, but I saw no sweet faces (except for a baby or two, who hadn’t yet been taught to hate). I saw people who, at best looked like a before-ad for Metamucil and, at worst, like friends of Senator Byrd who’d left their sheets home.

The last 42 or so months have been an expensive lesson for America. I urge all of you to talk to a friend who helped elect Obama either by not voting or voting for him. If you were one of them, look in the mirror and think about what you’ll tell you children and grandchildren if he’s not defeated in November. You might want to think about explaining it to God, as well.

There are enough thinking people to defeat him in November and save our nation from the fate of Greece, Spain, Italy, …

17th Amendment

• William Jennings Bryan
• The Amendment