CNN: Elliot Spitzer- Bill Maher: 'President Obama Never Blames Republicans'

Source:CNN- Elliot Spitzer, interviewing comedian Bill Maher.

"Comedian Bill Maher says many Americans do not vote in their economic interest and discusses the possible reasons why." 

From CNN

Apparently Bill Maher is making the argument that President Obama should forget about 40% of the electorate and act more like a party leader like in Europe with their parliamentary systems where the Prime Minister or President there just runs to keep their party happy, because they know they don't need 50% or more to get reelected. 

The problem with that is that only 53% of the electorate voted for him in 2008. You can't screw off 47% of the electorate and just concentrate on 53%, because that would leave the President without a lot of room for error. And with an economy that will still have an unemployment rate of at least 8.5% unemployment going into the 2012 general elections and with no President ever getting reelected with an unemployment rate higher than 7%. (At least in modern times) 

The President is going to have to broaden his base, not to win everybody but to get as many votes as possible. He's going to have to lock down the Democratic Party and win the Independent vote to get reelected. And it's possible that the President could get reelected with a Republican Congress. Especially since 2/3 of the Senators up for reelection are Democratic seats. 

And I believe the chances are good better then 50-50 that Democrats will win back the House, but with this economy, thats not a guarantee. The biggest thing that President Obama has going for him right now, is his competition. (Or lack of it) Which doesn't highlight a strength of the President but the weakness of the Republican opposition right now. 

The Republican Party right now doesn't have a presidential candidate that can both win the nomination and the general election. Their best candidate in the general election is Mitt Romney, but both the Tea Party and Christian-Right really dislike him (if not hate him) and probably believe he's as bad as Barack Obama. Which is why Mitt Romney has been going out-of- his-way to look like a Religious-Conservative, with coming out for a constitutional amendment against gay marriage. But its all politics, he's Northeastern Republican and they tend to be moderate-liberal on social issues. 

The President's biggest strength is Republican weakness. But this is what President Obama can do to win the Democratic Socialist-Left back or enough of them to get reelected, make the next fifteen months about jobs. Along with the Democratic Senate, all they should be doing right now is pushing legislation to create jobs. And the President and Congressional Democrats both have a jobs agenda to do this. Infrastructure, energy, and Free Trade which would all be a boost to our manufacturing industry, because we would need new supplies for our infrastructure projects, repairing old ones and building new one. 

A comprehensive energy plan would be a boost to our manufacturing industry because again the supplies that would be needed. There's three trade deals stuck in Congress right now: Central America, Columbia, and Korea, which is a bipartisan problem that the President should try to fix. That would be a boost to our manufacturing industry as well, because we would be able to sell more products in foreign markets. 

The next fifteen months should be all about jobs for President and the Democratic Senate and the House Democratic Leadership should be pushing a jobs agenda as well. And using that against the House GOP by telling then what have you done to create jobs and what are you going to do. It would also be a great campaign issue as well. 

President Obama is clearly not going to win everyone back, the entire Republican Party won't vote for him most likely. But he can't get reelected without the Democratic Party united behind him and voting for him. And then communicating a jobs agenda to enough Independents to win the election. And to do that going forward is has to nothing other than about jobs, pushing jobs legislation through the rest of this Congress. And going forward on the campaign trail. 

Russia Today: Lawrence Korb- 'US Defense Budget Higher Than Ever'

Source:Russia Today- Lawrence Korb: Assistant Secretary of Defense, in the Reagan Administration.

"RT (formerly Russia Today) is a state-controlled international television network funded by the Russian federal tax budget.[5][6] It operates pay television channels directed to audiences outside of Russia, as well as providing Internet content in English, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, and Russian.

RT operates as a multilingual service with conventional channels in five languages: the original English-language channel was launched in 2005, the Arabic-language channel in 2007, Spanish in 2009, German in 2014 and French in 2017. RT America (since 2010),[7] RT UK (since 2014) and other regional channels also offer some locally based content." 

From Wikipedia 

"When it comes to making decisions about how to save the US from the economic crisis, many people claim the cuts should come from defense spending. 20 percent of the US total budget goes to defense spending, which has many Americans disgusted, but the US' Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, begs to differ.  Will cuts damage US security? Lawrence Korb, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, gives us his take on how defense cuts will affect the US. 

From Russia Today

Anytime you are involved in deficit reduction you have to look at the entire Federal budget to get the most savings as possible while hurting the least as possible. And you especially have to look at areas where you spend the most and the Defense budget represents around 20% of our Federal budget and 5% of our GDP. But you shouldn't cut defense in ways that hurts your national security obviously, but what you do is cut in areas that you don't need to spend as much or shouldn't be spending at all. 

According to GAO (Government Accountability Office) we can't even get an audit of the Defense Department and we don't know how large our Defense budget is. And the Defense Department also wastes around 100B$ a year in a 700B$ Budget which should be more evidence for the need to cut here. Because they are not very good with the money they get as far as spending it properly. 

What we shouldn't be doing is cutting in areas that directly relate to our national security if we were under attacked in some way. And we needed to respond right away but where we can cut is in some of the areas where we are currently responsible for the national security of other nations. And I'm talking about defending developed nations, Europe, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Korea, and demand that they play a bigger role in their own national security. And bringing our troops home and using that revenue to help pay down the debt and deficit. 

Libertarians and Democratic Socialists believe that since the United States spends the most on defense than any other nation in the world combined, that we should move towards a European style defense Budget, where they on average only spend around 1.5% of their GDP on defense. But the problem with that is the reason why Europe only spends around 1.5% of their GDP on defense, is because they know America has its back in their own national security. If we took that money away from them, as well as personal and other resources, they would have to make up the difference or see their defense get weaken. 

I don't want to see America go down to 1.5% of our GDP on defense. We still have too many threats facing us and need to be strong. But we could get by with 200B$ a year less on defense 500B$ a year for our Defense budget or 3% of GDP and be fine. 

What America needs to do as a country is take a bigger lead in securing its own national security and deal with its own domestic problems, which we have plenty of. And let these other developed nations take the lead and responsibility in defending themselves. This saying is starting to sound old but thats because of only how true it is: America can no longer afford to be the sole policemen of the world. Other developed nations need to step up to the plate and play their part as well.