Hail to the chief

Photo from Politicususa

During the 2014 election I thought the Democrats made a huge mistake running away from President Obama and acting as if what the Republicans were saying about the president was true and damaging. Even at that time it was becoming very obvious that despite the ignorant racist obstructions put up against him Obama was having himself a very successful presidency. I thought those chickenshit Democrats should have embraced Obama and his policies, gotten the word out and jammed his successes down those smug Republican throats. If you could have watched the Senate campaign in Alaska you would have thought both candidates were in the same party.

The deficit was down, stock market way up, unemployment was way down and the GNP was rising. People found affordable health insurance and jobs were opening up. Those are just a few of the positives accomplished by the present administration. Take a look at how many others there have been by following the link at the bottom of this post. Hundreds.  All that and we still have our guns and we haven't been geo-tagged.

I thought it during the campaign, I felt the election confirmed the mistake when Americans voted against their own interests because they believed lies that no one was refuting when they should have and they hated having an African American in the White House. So many people pussyfoot around that issue but I won't. Racism is at the base of the most vitriolic hatred aimed at the president. That was all too obvious the day he joined Twitter as POTUS. The absolutely vile comments directed at him shortly after he signed on even made me cringe and I might be the original sailor with the salty language. It is racism pure and simple, hatred for a man because of the color of his skin.

Now we are more than a year past those elections and the Republicans have yet to accomplish anything in Congress despite their majorities. As a matter of fact they are so busy calling each other names while it seems half of them are running for president and so busy trying to criticize Obama for all the new things he is accomplishing that they have rendered themselves all but irrelevant. Still the criticism goes on, still the hatred and racism and denigration.

Well I for one am sick of it. I think it's time those of us who can see what a great job he is doing despite the obstructions have to stand up, be counted and answer back. Point out the advances and accomplishments, cheer for the victories, and most of all recognize that the United States is in incredibly better shape than it was the day he took office.

In the past couple of days I have shared two items on Facebook in that regard. One showing that for the seventh year in a row President Obama came out as the most admired man in the world in an annual Gallup Poll. Seven years in a row. Pay attention people.

The other one lists more than 100 accomplishments of his administration. There's a link to that list at the bottom of this post. Read down it if you have time. Many of them have hardly been noticed yet they have gone a long way to make life in America more bearable.

I have received some negative comments on those posts including from my own family. One of them even raised the spectre of my dead father who was so conservative he was one step short of a monarchy and saw communists behind every bush and doorway.  He even advocated putting the president in a uniform so he would command more respect overseas. If he were alive today he would have been one of the middle class victims of trickle-down economics and probably would have lost the pension that sustained him through the last years of his life. Still one of my relatives thinks he would be rolling over in his grave at the thought that a black man was succeeding in the White House. Rest in peace Dad.

I have let those criticisms ride for a couple of days, but I am gong to dump them from the posts and in their place put this little message up:  "If you've come to check on your ignorant racist response to this post, it's not here.  I will not abide one-sentence rebuttals to five years of good work. If you want to disagree go down that list of accomplishments and refute each one, with proof of what you say and then I might listen. The First Amendment guarantees free speech for sure, but it does not guarantee you a place to make your speech, nor does it protect you from consequences. If you want to keep that sort of crap going, get your own page and put your ignorance out there for everyone to see. I am not going to give you the opportunity here."

Meanwhile I am going to continue to post the positive messages of Obama's presidency whenever I can and I hope others will too. It's about time we stopped accepting the lies and started letting the truth out into the sunshine.

Here's the link to the list of President Obama's accomplishments