Topic category:  Government/Politics

Whether President Obama will be a one-term president may well depend upon whether the whole truth about him and his administration becomes generally known.

Obama needs a "civility" shield, again!

Then septuagenarian Senator McCain foolishly gave him one in 2008, famously stating: "I admire and respect Senator Obama."

The New York Archdiocese of the Catholic Church did the same, by inviting him to the 2008 Alfred E. Smith Dinner, notwithstanding the 2004, statement of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops that "[t]he Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions."

Presidential candidates should be carefully scrutinized.

"Civility" is not a substitute for scrutiny.

Whether it's Chris Matthews, or Bill O'Reilly, or anyone else, mindlessly taking Obama at his word is a mistake.

As Ronald Reagan said with respect to the Soviet Union: "Trust, but verify!"

In the foreword to his Great Economists in Their Times (1966), Dr. Broadus Mitchell, a self-identified socialist, wrote: "Ideas are inseparable from lives; principles and policies belong, after all, to persons."

In 1997, Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess, in an editorial titled "The Meaning of Civility" (www.beyondintractability.org/documents/editorials/civility.jsp?nid=6760), explained that "any reasonable definition of civility must recognize that the many differing interests which divide our increasingly diverse society will produce an endless series of confrontations over difficult moral and distributional issues" that often "will have an irreducible win-lose character and, hence, not be amenable to consensus resolution." They advocated a strategy that they called "constructive confrontation" and asserted that the constructiveness of public debate requires, "[f]irst, and most obviously,...a commitment to civility in the traditional and relatively narrow sense of the word." in their view, "[p]eople need to recognize that other thoughtful and caring people have very different views on how best to address their community's many complex problems" and "[c]onstructive debate needs to focus on solutions which are most likely to be successful, and not upon personal attacks leveled by adversaries against one another." That, they noted, "is summed up by Roger Fisher, Bill Ury and Bruce Patton, authors of the New York Times best-seller Getting to Yes, who advise disputants to 'separate the people from the problem.'"

Thoughtful and caring people do find themselves on different sides of many issues, but it is incredibly naive to assume that everyone is well-intentioned, especially stealth socialists, and people can be separated from all problems.

In 2008, Republican presidential nominee, veteran Senator and navy veteran McCain conducted a "civil" campaign against a rookie United States Senator with no military or executive experience named Barack Hussein Obama, Jr....and lost.

The Left (including the liberal media establishment) is hoping for a "civil" campaign between now President Obama and his former Ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman.

Michelle Malkin knows that would end in Obama's re-election and Republicans will not nominate Huntsman.

Malkin:

"This is all you need to know about the manufacturing of the Huntsman candidacy: Swooning reporters far outnumbered supporters at the kickoff in Liberty Park and at a follow-up rally in New Hampshire. CNN’s enamored anchor Wolf Blitzer gushed: 'Here’s what I especially liked about Jon Huntsman’s presidential announcement in front of the Statue of Liberty. He called for some civility in the race for the White House. Unlike several of the other Republican candidates, he did not open with a blistering assault on President Obama.'

"Yeah. Who do all those uncivil Republicans running against Obama think they are — opposing the opposition with oppositional rhetoric? Heaven forfend.

"Former McCain mastermind John Weaver, now a key Huntsman strategist, said this week the campaign will be 'mellow.' More like 'marshmallow.' Instead of trashing enemies by name, they’ll keep it vague and mushy. Huntsman has been buoyed by months of glowing coverage from left-leaning, dead-tree media, whose reporters have lapped up his trashing of the GOP as 'devoid of ideas' and 'a very narrow party of angry people.' See? No names. No nasty. Embrace the civility!"

Thanks be to God, Malkin prefers to embrace, and spread, the truth.

Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies, Malkin's no. 1 best seller, points out that people ARE part of the problem while exposing Obama and his administration.

That book points the way for conservative would-be Obama successors.

Michael J. Gaynor

Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.