Re Election

Letter writer Ilene O'Connell says the re-election of Barack Obama as president has made her "ashamed of my country" ("Ashamed of the country that re-elected Obama," Nov. 8). She is entitled to her opinion but not to create her own facts to support it. The fact is that the president - any president - has very little control over the price of gasoline. That's in the hands of the oil-rich nations and the big oil companies, who of course adjust the availability of supplies to make the most money.

U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin celebrated his election to a second term with a traditional breakfast at Fells Point diner Jimmy's Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. "I'm kind of a boring guy: Egg white omelet. So that's what I got this morning with my grits," he said. "It was delicious. " Cardin sat at a table with U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski, who was not facing re-election this year, and Del. Maggie McIntosh. After finishing his meal, Cardin walked through the restaurant and talked to other diners, apologizing if he had caused them any inconvenience.

The harm and damage that President Barack Obama has imposed on the U.S. calls for impeachment proceedings. Our deficit is now reaching levels from which it will be difficult if not impossible to recover because of failed policies and an incompetent administration. Mr. Obama has made our country a lot less safe with the START treaty. His failed Mideast policy has now put Israel on the line. His muddled policies in Afghanistan and Iraq will eventually cause us to fail there as well.

Republican Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett, who has represented Maryland's 6th District for nearly two decades, lost his bid for an 11th term Tuesday to a Democratic businessman who cast the closely watched race as a battle of different economic visions for the country. John Delaney, a Potomac financier, will become the seventh Democrat to represent the state in the House of Representatives in January after accomplishing the rare political feat of knocking off an incumbent member of Congress.

The best news to come out of Capitol Hill last week was largely buried in the back pages. It was the statements made by senior Republicans that if President Barack Obama wins reelection in November, they will retreat in their position on raising taxes on high-earners. Finally, a sign of compromise of some sort. It's hardly a guarantee that Congress will retreat from the looming "fiscal cliff" of massive tax increases and spending cuts that could easily plunge the nation back into an economic recession early next year, but considering how ridiculous and self-destructive the political standoff in Washington has become, it's something.

In President Barack Obama's much-anticipated acceptance speech in Charlotte, he sounded at times to be relying on the reverse of the old breakup line: "It's not you, it's me. " He told the American public that it is "you," and not he as president, who must hold firm behind his recovery efforts if the country is to bounce back economically over the next four years. Rather than taking advantage of Mitt Romney's failure in Tampa to provide specific details on what he would do to turn the economy around, Mr. Obama likewise fell short on any new approaches to break the stalemate.

President Barack Obama is now openly preaching the radical egalitarianism of John Rawls. Sneering at us Americans because we don't and can't produce the circumstances of our own births which is, of course, impossible. Mr. Obama arrogantly asserts that none of us deserve any credit for any distinctions any of us have ever achieved ourselves, whether those distinctions are vocational, familial, sporting, academic, and so on. He arrogantly demands that we believe him over the evidence of our own senses and that we submit to him as faceless, mindless cogs in wheels that he and a few of his own people will push around at their whims.

In his July 12 letter, "In 2012, Americans should vote with their heads, not just their hearts," William W. McCollum offered sage advice: Voters should select a president by using their heads. In disagreeing with the letter writer, however, I believe that by using their heads, voters should support President Obama. Mr. McCollum argues that the president failed to deliver on his promises, especially when the Democrats had so-called control of the legislative branch as well as the White House during his first two years.

While some of the ideas in your editorial about the mayor's skybox ("The people's skybox," March 21) had merit, anyone who read your statement that sometimes "the invitees seem to serve little public purpose" needs to understand that the purpose being served is the same one shared by the majority of Maryland politicians: Currying favor and getting reelected. The skybox is just another political tool for that purpose. Ruth Mascari, Monkton

LARGO -- A crowd of hundreds at Prince George's Community College is awaiting the arrival this morning of President Barack Obama, who is due to deliver the latest in a series of addresses on energy as rising oil costs create a drag on the economic recovery -- and his own re-election effort. Obama has stressed what he calls an "all of the above" approach to both energy independence and more drilling: Extracting domestic oil and natural gas while investing in solar, wind and other emerging technologies.