A Great Man Cries

And With Good Reason
{Updated for: Thursday, January 7th, 2016}

         America's Barack Obama has now started the final year of his two-term, 8-year presidency. This week -- Monday, January 5th, 2016 -- the whole wide world watched as the President of the United States unashamedly cried. And millions of democracy-lovers worldwide cried with him. The salient tears were for...the United States. An exceedingly smart and decent man, Mr. Obama -- the leader of the world's richest and strongest nation -- had ample reason to cry as the rest of the world watched. During his presidency, Mr. Obama has tried desperately to help the 300 million Americans not among the rich elite. And he has done as much as he can, such as: {1} Obamacare, a plan to help provide health care for those who can't afford it; {2} Iran, a plan to try to prevent a Middle Eastern power from getting nuclear weapons because it would exacerbate a part of the world that is already a tender-box largely due to the mistakes he inherited from the two-term George W. Bush presidency; {3} Cuba, a shameful U. S. policy that, perhaps more than any other issue, has mocked the U. S. image worldwide for well over half a century; {4+}, etc.

           During a tumultuous seven years as President, Mr. Obama -- a brave and deeply concerned man -- has cried many times as America's "Consoler-in-Chief." Time and again many Americans have cried with him as scores of innocent people -- such as the two-dozen little kids at Sandy Hook Elementary School -- were gun-downed in a gun-crazed society that arms vicious criminals and the mentally ill. And yet, his sane efforts to do something about it have consistently been met and thwarted by sheer right-wing insanity.

       Jonah Goldberg, the antithesis to President Obama, was born 46 years ago in Manhattan, one of the five boroughs of New York City. Within the bowels of the world's strongest democracy, he has never been a candidate for public office. Yet, on issues such as gun control, the environment, health care and educational opportunities for the non-affluent, Cuba, etc., Mr. Goldberg and his ilk often have more power than a two-term President. Mr. Goldberg is a lobbyist in a lobbyist-dictated U. S. government. He is an American Enterprise Institute fellow and National Review contributing editor. He is also a prime Editorial propagandist as a member of USA Today's Board of Contributors. As such, this week -- the day the President cried in front of the whole world -- Mr. Goldberg used almost a whole page in America's biggest newspaper to excoriate a great man, President Obama. One paragraph of Goldberg's scathing January 5th article was: "Obama doesn't really care. He sees his job as doing the things he wants to do and being the sort of president his biggest fans want him to be. That why over the holidays, he reportedly ordered his lawyers to 'scrub' the laws to find ways so he can take new unilateral action against gun ownership."

      Highly funded and normally unchallenged right-wing organizations in the U. S. with patriotic-sounding titles  -- such as The Heritage Foundation, Jonah Goldberg's American Enterprise Institute, The Tea Party, The National Rifle Association, etc. -- have not only infiltrated the pillars of the U. S. government but they have largely usurped both it and the Republican Party, which is one-half of the U. S. two-party system.

       And then, using a readily available and huge segment of the U. S. media, lobbyist such as Mr. Goldberg can endlessly preach to the choir, which unfortunately is now large enough to predicate who gets elected to the dysfunctional, largely bought-and-paid-for but ultra-powerful U. S. Congress, which "functions" despite having a national approval rating in the single digits. That's because the 535-member Congress can have a Tea Party zealot from South Carolina who alone can dictate abominations to the whole country on things such as gun control, or a Cuban-American zealot from Miami {whose father was a key Minister in the overthrown Batista dictatorship back in the 1950s} who can now dictate Cuban policy by such things as "slipping" anti-Cuban legislation into a multi-billion-dollar "must-paid" bill that is veto-proof and thus beyond the scope of a decent President's veto. In such a milieu, that decent President is also stymied when he tries to protect 5-years-olds at Sandy Hook Elementary School from a gun-crazed society.

        Yes, this week -- January 5th, 2016 -- a great, twice-elected President of the United States cried unabashedly as the whole wide world watched. You would cry too, I believe, if you were prevented from possibly saving 20+ children at an elementary school from being gunned down by a crazed gunman who had no problem getting access to an arsenal of military-type weapons. Mr. Obama, like America's great Founding Fathers, envisioned an ethereal America that would do all it possibly could to protect the most innocent and the most vulnerable among us -- such as those 5-year-old girls and boys at Sandy Hook Elementary School. What they didn't envision were loopholes in the U. S. Congress and a government at the mercy of self-serving and well-funded lobbyists. Therefore, Mr. Obama's tears yesterday were well-deserved and well-earned. His epic quest to avoid a post-apocalyptic United States will likely succumb to darker forces. Yes, I cried yesterday along with my President and those parents from Sandy Hook who, as shown above, bravely stood beside America's two-term President, Mr. Obama. An America that supports those parents, Mr. Obama, and the exalted office he holds, is the America that we and the entire world so badly needs. Money-crazed lobbyists overrunning Washington is the last thing America and the world needs.

Anyway, that's my sincere opinion.
Meanwhile:

Photo courtesy of: Desmond Boylan/Associated Press.

     The above photo shows the Governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, stopping off at Cuba's refurbished, state-of-the-art, deep-water Port of Mariel on his three-day visit to the island this week. At the above microphone, Mr. McAuliffe made a long extemporaneous speech. While praising the reception his 30-member entourage received in Cuba, he repeated what he has being saying for years: "I always thought the embargo was a silly policy." But, of course, a silly policy that, since 1962, has continued to hurt Cuba and demean America. Among other things, while in Cuba this week, Governor McAuliffe signed an agreement that hopefully will greatly expand trade between the mammoth Port of Virginia in Norfolk and the Port of Mariel, 28 miles southwest of Havana and 100 miles directly south of Key West, Florida. 

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