Margie Robben

Community Organizer in Chief

What can a President do when your governing is paralyzed by a majority of the opposing party vowing to make you “a one term President”?

What can a President do when every bill you wanted passed in Congress is either not presented, is fillibustered, or is ignored?

What can a President do when the opposing party spends millions of dollars making sure Americans get their message which says you are not one of them, you were not born in America, that you are against Israel, you are a Socialist, and you are against Capitalism?

What can a President do when the opposition does these things as they try to destroy you and your message?

You wanted to say,”yes, we can” but they said, “no, you won’t”. They have a majority in the House of Representatives and they can stop you in your tracks. If they make it impossible for a President to govern, what can you do?

The simple answer is, YOU GO TO THE PEOPLE! You transition from “Commander in Chief”, to “Community Organizer in Chief”.

Besides, you have already succeeded in the Commander in Chief role. Hard to admit, but they loved your taking down Osama bin Laden and your using the drone strikes for U.S. Citizens who became enemy combatants. Now, like you did after finishing college, do the Community Organizing thing. You know how to do that well.

I think the American people are getting your message. As CO, you have about twelve months for all to see and hear. The protests are starting in the New York City area of Wall Street. Take a subway or train down there and you will see it happening. The protests for reform is spreading all across America.  Catch up on what the people were able to do in Wisconsin and in Ohio. Everyone wants “yes we can” and everyone wants “change”.

No one wants change just for the sake of change, though. People want good change. Reform change. Change so the middle class will start coming back to America.

There is lots of work to be done. The message has to get from Wall Street to Main Street, then on to the Supreme Court and to both Houses of Congress.

At the present time, in over fourteen States, there is a major effort to make it more difficult for U.S. Citizens to vote by requiring new identification rules, not sending out ballots unless requested, no early voting, and closing or restricting the places people can register to vote. If the new state laws go through millions of people may be unable to vote when November 2012 rolls around. These new restrictive voting laws may be successful in making the President a one-termer.

If there ever was a time to pay attention to what is going on politically, it is NOW. Later, it may be too late to do anything about it. People are beginning to hear the call and are taking action. They are tired of the race for the leader of our Country to be decided on who has raised the most money. They are tired of the lack of ethics and greed at the top of the political and economic system.

It will be too late to do anything about what happens after the November 2012 elections. We cannot afford to hear people say, “I didn’t know what was going on” or “I was too busy to pay attention”.

Tune in. Get the facts. Check in with the “Community Organizer in Chief” at www.whitehouse.gov

And, check out for accuracy, those crazy e-mails you have been getting. Here are the fact-checking websites to help you get the right information:

www.FactCheck.org   www.snopes.com    www.PolitiFact.com   www.OpenSecrets.org   www.TruthOrFiction.com   www.Hoax-Slayer.com

Greenwich Time has a “You said it” column, somewhat like “Letters to the Editor” of other newspapers. I was a bit confused by the recent letter on May 18, 2011 when an Old Greenwich resident wrote the following:

Getting Osama    

The vow of George Bush, the brilliance of Dick Cheney, the force of the Navy Seals – all American patriots – tracked down and ended     the scourge of Osama bin Laden

Huh? Was this tongue-in-cheek or did the writer believe what he wrote?

Usually, when someone writes satire, somewhere before the end of it you understand whether the writer is joking or whether they believe what they are saying. In this case, there was no clarity.

Since it is not clear, I thought I would respond to it as if the writer believed what he wrote.

In college, in order to graduate, I had to take a math class. I decided to take “mathematical logic”, and because I had no high school math and because I was twenty years removed from high school, I took the math course on a pass/fail basis. And thank god I made that decision. I would never have had a passing grade if all I took were tests. Homework assignments got me through. It took me ten hours to complete an assignment when it should have taken only one hour. The professor took pity on me and asked me if I learned anything. Yes, I said, I learned how to deal with frustration.

What I did learn from the course was to understand you can make many statements, true or false, and if your conclusion proves the premise, then a statement can be logical. But, I also learned that logic says nothing about “truth”.

Logical statements

1. President Bush is an American patriot, and he made a vow to track down and end the scourge of Osama bin Laden.

2. Cheney is an American patriot, and he also tracked down and ended the scourge of Osama bin Laden.

3.  The force of the Navy SEALs, all American patriots, tracked down and ended the scourge of Osama bin Laden.

That is the logic.

Truth analysis:

1. President Bush made a vow nine and a half years ago to track down Osama bin Laden. After looking for him for a while he publicly admitted he lost interest and said he didn’t care about Osama bin Laden any more and that he was probably hiding in a cave somewhere, or even dead.

2. Vice President Cheney worked closely with Bush using harsh interrogation tactics on prisoners which he thinks were somehow responsible for finding Osama bin Laden. He did not find Osama during his term in office and after eight years he, as well as the President, left the pursuit of Osama to the next President.

3.  The CIA, working on a top-priority goal of President Barack Obama, tracked down and found Osama bin Laden, and the Navy SEALs, given orders from the President, ended the scourge of Osama bin Laden.

That is the truth.

Any comments or questions?

E-mail Marge at mbrobben@aol.com

It was a quiet Sunday night just before 10 p.m. I was settling in for a long night’s sleep searching the television channels for something interesting to watch. Being a “news junkie”, Sunday night is not the time to find anything that satisfies my habit, and I usually settle for watching a serial drama as a second best.

While searching, I noticed a line of print running across the bottom of the screen. It said that President Obama would be making a special announcement at 10:30 that night. Oh my! What is happening? Nothing ever happens on Sunday night. There must be some mistake.

 I called down to my husband, to share the information, but he was watching the Mets and he didn’t hear me call out. I called down again ten minutes later. No response.  I kept seeing the same words running across the screen on every station, I shouted as loud as I could. John! Come upstairs! He heard me the third time.

We were very worried. We lived through many “big announcements”. Most of them were not good. We started speculating.  Did it have anything to do with the spreading of radiation from Japan to California?  Was it North Korea and a potential attack on us?  Did Libya’s Kadhafi surrender or was he causing more mischief? 

The TV people were running helter-skelter as live backdrops to the news stations. They reported their major associates were called up and told to “come in fast”. They use the word “grave” when talking about the announcement.

GRAVE?  Grave is serious, sober, solemn, weighty, threatening a seriously bad outcome or involving serious or critical issues. The television anchors continued to say they “would not speculate” but you could see some of them were visibly disturbed.

We sat together waiting for the big announcement. Ten-thirty passed. Ten-forty five. No Obama. Piece by piece. Bits of information about the event were reported. They were saying Osama bin Laden was killed. Osama bin Laden was killed by the American Navy SEALs. This wasn’t “grave”, this was “joy”!  Can “grave” be “joyous” at the same time. Yes it can!

President Obama finally appeared on the screen and he gave the details of the killing of Osama bin Laden. He said the U.S. Navy SEALS took command of Osama’s dead body and put it on the helicopter with them. Hooray!

The college kids in groups began emerging from their dorms all over the country, singing the American Anthem. Chanting USA! It was a good night for the American people and justice for the destruction Osama orchestrated on September 11, 2001.

For almost ten years, under the direction of Presidents Bush and Obama, we looked for this evil man, found him, and ended his life so he could not live and destroy again.

God bless the United States of America.

No one knows when disaster will strike a person or a country, but it surely will strike. To those of us who are fortunate enough not to have it strike our front door, we are thankful, and at the same time we can reach out and assist those whose door it has struck.