Thursday, June 4, 2015

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


1 comment:

  1. Well said. I also am sick of racist ignorance, and have unfriended any number of trolls over the past few years. Every horrible racist comment is prefaced with, "I'm not a racist, but..." So many people have said President Obama is despised and considered a joke around the world. I always asked where they're getting their information, and it's based on something from Fox or some Billy Bob who told them that. As I said when the Republicans won their huge majority, it's time to put up or shut up. They've done neither. Thanks for your good words.

    ReplyDelete

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Nude beach blowjob jet ski fight leads to wife's death

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Memorable quotations

The best way to know you are having an adventure is when you wish you were home talking about it." — a mechanic on the Alaska State Ferry System. Or as in my own case planning how I will be writing it on this blog.

"You can't promote principled anti-corruption without pissing off corrupt people." — George Kent

"If only the British had held on to the airports, the whole thing might have gone differently for us." — Mick Jagger

"You can do anything as long as you don't scare the horses." — a mother's favorite saying recalled by a friend

A poem is an egg with a horse inside” — anonymous fourth grader

“My children will likely turn my picture to the wall but what the hell, you only get old once." — Joe May

“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” — Ernest Hemingway

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth. Kurt Vonnegut

“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a cheque, if you cashed the cheque and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”Stephen King

The thing about ignorance is, you don't have to remain ignorant. — me again"

"It was like the aftermath of an orgasm with the wrong partner." – David Lagercrants “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.”

Why worry about dying, you aren't going to live to regret it.

Never debate with someone who gets ink by the barrel" — George Hayes, former Alaska Attorney General who died recently

My dear Mr. Frost: two roads never diverge in a yellow wood. Three roads meet there. — @Shakespeare on Twitter

Normal is how somebody else thinks you should act.

"The mark of a great shiphandler is never getting into situations that require great shiphandling," Adm. Ernest King, USN

Me: Does the restaurant have cute waitresses?

My friend Gail: All waitresses are cute when you're hungry.

I'm not a writer, but sometimes I push around words to see what happens. – Scott Berry

I realized today how many of my stories start out "years ago." What's next? Once upon a time?"

“The rivers of Alaska are strewn with the bones of men who made but one mistake” - Fred McGarry, a Nushagak Trapper

Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stared at walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing. – Meg Chittenden

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity. – Franz Kafka

We are all immortal until the one day we are not. – me again

If the muse is late, start without her – Peter S. Beagle

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain Actually you could do the same thing with the word "really" as in "really cold."

If you are looking for an experience that will temper your vanity, this is it. There's no one to impress when you're alone on the trap line. – Michael Carey quoting his father's journal

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. – Benjamin Franklin

It’s nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of. – Shirley Hazzard

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence -- Bertrand Russell

You know that I always just wanted to have a small ship to take stuff from a place that had a lot of that stuff to a place that did not have a lot of that stuff and so prosper.—Jackie Faber, “The Wake of the Lorelei Lee”

If you attack the arguer instead of the argument, you lose both

If an insurance company won’t pay for damages caused by an “act of God,” shouldn’t it then have to prove the existence of God? – I said that

I used to think getting old was about vanity—but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. – Eugene O’Neill

German General to Swiss General: “You have only 500,000 men in your army; what would you do if I invaded with 1 million men?”

Swiss General: “Well, I suppose every one of my soldiers would need to fire twice.”

Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.—Gloria Steinem

Exceed your bandwidth—sign on the wall of the maintenance shop at the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center

One thing I do know, if you keep at it, you usually wind up getting something done.—Patricia Monaghan

Do you want to know what kind of person makes the best reporter? I’ll tell you. A borderline sociopath. Someone smart, inquisitive, stubborn, disorganized, chaotic, and in a perpetual state of simmering rage at the failings of the world.—Brett Arends

It is a very simple mind that only knows how to spell a word one way.—Andrew Jackson

3:30 is too late or too early to do anything—Rene Descartes

Everything is okay when it’s 50-below as long as everything is okay. – an Alaskan in Tom Walker’s “The Seventymile Kid”

You can have your own opinion but you can’t have your own science.—commenter arguing on a story about polar bears and global warming

He looks at three ex wives as a good start—TV police drama

Talkeetna: A friendly little drinking town with a climbing problem.—a handmade bumper sticker

“You’re either into the wall or into the show”—Marco Andretti on giving it all to qualify last at the 2011 Indy 500

Makeup is not for the faint of heart—the makeup guerrilla

“I’m going to relax in a very adult manner.”—Danica Patrick after sweating it out and qualifying half an hour before Andretti

“Asking Congress to come back is like asking a mugger to come back because he forgot your wallet.”—a roundtable participant on Fox of all places

As Republicans go further back in the conception process to define when life actually begins, I am beginning to think the eventual definition will be life begins in the beer I was drinking when I met her.—me again

Hunting is a “critical element for the long-term conservation of wood bison.”—a state department of Fish and Game official explaining why the state would not go along with a federal plan to reintroduce wood bison in Alaska because the agreement did not specifically allow hunting

Each day do something that won’t compute – anon

I can’t belive I still have to protest this shit – a sign carriend by an elderly woman at an Occupy demonstration

Life should be a little nuts or else it’s just a bunch of Thursdays strung together—Kevin Costner as Beau Burroughs in “Rumor has it”

You’re just a wanker whipping up fear —Irish President Michael D. Higgins to a tea party radio announcer

Being president doesn’t change who you are; it reveals who you are—Michelle Obama

Sports malaprops

Commenting on an athlete with hearing impairment he said the player didn’t show any “uncomfortability.” “He's not doing things he can't do."

"… there's a fearlessment about him …"

"He's got to have the lead if he's going to win this race." "

"Kansas has always had the ability to score with the basketball."

"NFL to put computer chips in balls." Oh, that's gotta hurt.

"Now that you're in the finals you have to run the race that's going to get you on the podium."

"It's very important for both sides that they stay on their feet."

This is why you get to hate sportscasters. Kansas beats Texas for the first time since 1938. So the pundits open their segment with the question "let's talk about what went wrong." Wrong? Kansas WON a football game! That's what went RIGHT!

"I brought out the thermostat to show you how cold it is here." Points to a thermometer reading zero in Minneapolis.

"It's tough to win on the road when you turn the ball over." Oh, really? Like you can do all right if you turn the ball over playing at home?

Cliches so embedded in sportscasters' minds they can't help themselves: "Minnesota fell from the ranks of the undefeated today." What ranks? They were the only undefeated team left.

A good one: A 5'10" player went up and caught a pass off a defensive back over six feet tall. The quote? "He's got some hops."

Best homonym of the day so far: "It's all tied. Alabama 34, Kentucky 3." Oh, Tide.

"Steve Hooker commentates on his Olympic pole vault gold medal." When "comments" just won't do.

"He's certainly capable of the top ten, maybe even higher than that."

"Atlanta is capable of doing what they're doing."

"Biyombo, one of seven kids from the Republic of Congo." In the NBA? In America? In his whole country?

"You can't come out and be aggressive but you can't come out and be unaggressive."

"They're gonna be in every game they play!"

"First you have to get two strikes on the hitter before you get the strikeout."

"The game ended in the final seconds." You have to wonder when the others ended or are they still going on?

How is a team down by one touchdown before the half "totally demoralized?"

"If they score runs they will win."

"I think the matchup is what it is"

After a play a Houston defender was on his knees, his head on the ground and his hand underneath him appeared to clutch a very sensitive part of the male anatomy. He rolled onto his back and quickly removed his hand. (Remember the old Cosby routine "you cannot touch certain parts of your body?") Finally they helped the guy to the sideline and then the replay was shown. In it the guy clearly took a hard knee between his thighs. As this was being shown, one of the announcers says, "It looks like he hurt his shoulder." The other agrees and then they both talk about how serious a shoulder injury can be. Were we watching the same game?

"Somebody is going to be the quarterback or we're going to see a new quarterback."

"That was a playmaker making a play.”