Tag Archives: Obama

Mar 4 2012

Citizenship: Martelly and Obama -Two Distinct Cases

Let me take a minute to address these people trying to make the silly and ridiculous comparison between the citizenship case of President Obama and that of President Martelly.

Some argue that like Obama did show his birth certificate when Donald Trump and others were raising doubts about his American citizenship, Martelly should give his passport to the Senate commission charged to investigate on the allegation of Senator Moise Jean Charles holding charges that Martelly is not Haitian so the country could move on.

Let me make it clear to these folks that those are two different cases in reality and political conjuncture. They are different in that, unlike the Martelly case, the allegation held against Obama did not come from a member of one of the country’s institutions; it came from a citizenship. That’s why even certain members of Congress in Trump’s party, the Republican Party, were calling him out on this.

In the Martelly case, however, you have a state senator making the allegation that Martelly is not Haitian. Now a Senate commission, from one of the country’s institutions I must add, is investigating the case. What makes this case appalling is not the fact that the citizenship of President Martelly is being questioned, but rather who is questioning it. This is not a simple citizen like Donald Trump questioning the president’s citizenship; it is a state senator.

In any country around the globe, a senator holds certain power and authority a normal and ordinary citizen does not. He or she can access any information in any institution at any given time to come to the bottom of anything he or she has doubts on.

So in light of that, before Moise Jean Charles, a senator I must add, came out to make such a serious allegation against President Martelly, he should have taken his time to collect all the pertinent information to build his case and corroborate his stance. He only submitted two bogus passport numbers, one of which, the American passport number, per Ambassador Merten, has absolutely nothing to do with the president. That alone should have been grounds for rejection of the case for insufficiency of evidence. No, they still want to play politics with this baseless and unfounded issue while millions are unemployed and living in abject poverty.

Now that they realize they are making a fool of themselves because the pieces of evidence they so-called had to substantiate the case against President Martelly have been refuted, they are pressing the president to come out with his passport to rescue them from the embarrassment. Why should he? I say let them destroy themselves. As Napoleon Bonaparte eloquently stated, “Never interfere with an enemy while he’s in the process of destroying himself.” So he must NOT submit his passport; it will stay in his pocket as he stated.

In the President Obama case, he did release his birth certificate because he was facing reelection pressures. That was the only way for him to put the nonsense behind him. Had he not done so, the issue would have not been put to rest, which could have caused him his reelection. So for the sake of politics, he was obliged to relinquish this very personal information. He did it for politics, not because he wanted to be a good-hearted and patriotic citizen.

It is imperative that we do not get these two cases mixed up. They are diametrically different, though they may have some points of similitude. Donald Trump is a simple citizen; Moise Jean Charles is a senator. The Tea Party backing Trump on his charge is a political entity within the Republican Party; the commission charged to investigate on President Martelly’s foreign nationality is an entity from within the country’s Senate, an institution of the state.

The fact that these guys in the Senate, after about three months of futile investigation, have yet to come forth with a conclusion of their investigation has proven their incapacity and the weakness of our institutions. If this case was investigated in the United States, I do not think they would have relied on President Obama’s goodwill to submit his travel papers to conclude whether or not he is a US citizen. No wonder the world is laughing at us as though we are a bunch of cave people living in this 21st century.

Feb 17 2012

CONTRACEPTION: The Republicans’ Scapegoat To Take Us To Medical Dark Ages

Foster Friess, a billionaire backer of Rick Santorum, a Republican candidate, was on Andrea Mitchell’s program on MSNBC yesterday complaining about today’s high-cost contraception; he was also promoting cheaper contraceptive means. He stated on the show: “On this contraceptive thing, my Gosh it’s such [sic] inexpensive. You know, back in my days, they used Bayer aspirin for contraception. The gals put it between their knees, and it wasn’t that costly.”

 

Aspirin in between the women’s knees as contraception, is this guy serious or what?

I think I got it now. The plan of the Republicans is basically to take this country back to the medical Dark Ages. At a time when we are talking about serious breakthroughs in the science of medicine, these guys are talking about inserting Bayer aspirin in between women’s knees as contraception.

How did we get to this debate shift today where, instead of debating how to fix this economy, we are talking about abortion, contraception and religious freedom?

Last year, as part of the health care reform law the president signed, it was required of all insurance plans to cover preventive care at no cost to the insured. When it comes to women’s health, however, the concept of “coverage of preventive care” does incorporate coverage of contraceptive services, including birth control.

While the president was making sure that women’s contraceptive needs are covered in the health care reform law, he realized that another principle -religious liberty -was being compromised. So he came out last week to rectify that so he could guarantee the inalienability of this constitutional principle of religious liberty we hold so dearly in this country. How did he rectify it?

The compromise the president has reached with the religious institutions and charities is that women will still have access to preventive care at no cost to them, which includes contraceptive services, no matter who their employers are. However, if a woman’s employer is a charity or an institution that objects on religious grounds to the provision of contraceptive cervices as part of their health plan, the president makes it clear that, under the new rule, the insurance company, not the charity or religious institution, will be required to offer free-of-charge contraceptive services to that employee.

Last I checked,  we’re living in a democracy in this country, not a theocracy. Therefore, whatever one’s religious views on contraception for women are, these views must not be forced upon others as not everyone may share them. 

So we need to be very careful as we are following this debate over religious freedom, abortion and contraception to make sure that we don’t get distracted from the real issues affecting lives in this country and, as a result, let these republicans take us to the medical Dark Ages.

Dec 23 2010

PRESIDENT OBAMA DESERVES TO BE PRAISED

Sometimes, I go hard on the president, especially when I see him playing softball with the

President Obama signing bill

 Republicans who want to see him fail. But no matter how hard I go on him, it’s all out of love for the man I voted for. This time, I believe he deserves to be praised for such an outstanding cruise to the finish line.

In this lame duck session alone, in this one-month worth of legislative session, he won more legislative victories than some of his predecessors did in their entire years in office. In just one month, after he got slammed in the midterm elections, here are the legislative battles he won:

  1. he got his tax cuts bill passed
  2. he got unemployment benefits extended for the unemployed who lost their jobs to no fault of their own
  3. he got DADT repealed, which will allow homosexuals and bisexuals to openly serve in the armed forces
  4. he got the New START Treaty –a nuclear arms reduction deal with Russia -voted on in the Senate and passed with an overwhelming bipartisan majority (71-26 vote)
  5. he got the 911 Healthcare Bill for First Responders of the World Trade Center Terrorist Attacks passed unanimously

Those are some tough and serious legislative victories; they require that you have an iron spine to fight and win them. It was a tough year for the president. He got hit real hard in the midterm elections, but he recovered strongly and expeditiously.

The First Lady, the girls, and he -aboard Air Force One -flew out of Andrew Air Force Base to Hawaii for a well-deserved and relaxing two-week vacation.

Starting January, the 112th Congress is going to start its legislative operation. I can foresee some rough and tough arm twisting going on both sides of the political spectrum. Mind you, 2012 is already taking shape. So no need to mention it is going to get even more interesting than it has ever been. I just cannot wait!

Nov 19 2010

MANIGAT, MARTELLY, BAKER & LAGUERRE: WAKE UP!

The presidential election in Haiti is only days away, yet JUDE CELESTIN still matters. Something was not done right. I can tell you this much –it is because you guys (MANIGAT, MARTELLY, BAKER and LAGUERRE) did not play right. I would beat up all four of you for your complacencies. You failed to link him to the failed policies of the PREVAL administration.

The man in the White House, RENE PREVAL, said that CELESTIN is his man, what better evidence do you need to destroy or make him insignificant in the race? That’s exactly what you should have been wanting from him, and he delivered it to you “UPS delivery” at your doorsteps. How could you not use that to run an effective character assassination campaign against the man?

We democrats did it here in the US. How you think we literally annihilated McCain during the 2008 presidential campaign and gave Obama the election on a silver platter? We played three smart cards against him.

1. We linked him to the failed policies of the Bush administration –the baseless Iraq War, the recessive economy, the handling of Katrina in New Orleans, big tax cuts for big corporations and the top 2% Americans while neglecting the middle class, etc… 

2. We proved to the American electorate that he was out of touch with reality. On Monday, September 15, 2008, he hand-delivered to us the gift we had long been waiting for. On the campaign trail in Jacksonville, Florida, he declared: “the fundamentals of our economy are strong [despite] tremendous turmoil in our financial markets and Wall Street.” Mind you, he made such statement right in the middle of the recession, at a time when the economy was bleeding jobs.

 

3. We transformed Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, his pick for vice president, into a laughing stock, a joke, someone not worthy to be taken seriously. By doing so, the McCain candidacy was viewed as a big joke. Her interview with CBS’s own Katie Couric did it for us.

 

We played the three cards so well strategically that before you know it, Senator McCain was already confined in history book. He was a done deal. We slashed him in the polls. So no one can tell me about the effectiveness of a character assassination campaign strategy, for I have seen it used many times in every single election (local and national) here in the United States.

I do not work for your campaigns, nor am I one of your cheerleaders. However, I want to place my country, Haiti, first. In this election, I do not have a fighting dog, which by now you should know. I do not know whom I am for. I do know, however, whom I am against. I am against PREVAL and his protégé JUDE CELESTIN.

Quit all the “kole mouda” with CELESTIN. The clock is ticking. You do not have that much time in front of you. It is time to proceed with PLAN B –CHARACTER ASSASSINATION. You guys need to run ASAP campaign ads on the radio and on TV telling the people that a vote for CELESTIN is a vote for the continuation of the PREVAL administration embodied in the policies that gave us -MINUSTAH, CHOLERA, LACK OF OVERSIGHT, CORRUPTION, MY PALACE COLLAPSED, etc…” Take my check to the bank and cash it. Trust me, it will not bounce.