It's the Black Guy...

...in the White House.

Seriously, that's the meat to that nut. It's The Black Guy in The White House.

NOTHING will change in the next year or so with regard to the right wing. And when he gets re-elected, NOTHING will change again.

The level of disrespect is out of bounds, even with the fact that we live in a most un-civil time. Personal relationships are all about "my truth" instead of "being connected in a community." It's what matters to "me" that's most important, screw your feelings.

President Barack Obama made a very difficult decision. He made a decision that could've made or broken the remainder of his term in the White House. He called for special forces to kill Osama bin Laden (hereinafter "bin Laden" or "OBL"). There are many clips of Shrub where he's clearly saying, "I honestly don't waste much time thinking about OBL. Really, he's not in the front of my mind." It's a documented fact that GWB eliminated the OBL task force. He redistributed those folks to go get Saddam. Because OBL "wasn't important."

That's because Shrub was determined to "prove his manhood" by finishing Pappy Bush's job. To prove to his family that it wasn't a mistake that Jeb wasn't the one in the White House. It wasn't a fluke; Cowboy George was gonna get Saddam. God told him to. No matter that it wasn't the best idea; no matter that evidence clearly showed that OBL was a growing threat. God told him to take out Saddam, and By God, he was going to do that. He must've gotten that epiphany while he was out on vacation chopping brush. He certainly felt free to receive that message, and apparently not receive the intelligence briefings warning him several months in advance of 9/11 that the attacks were "imminent."

So. We had the "birthers" who demanded in the face of incontrovertible evidence that President Obama produce a "real" birth certificate. And President Obama, after dealing with that craziness, finally did. So, now the birthers still don't believe him! "It was doctored." "It was PhotoShopped." "It doesn't use the right words." I'm telling you, if Jesus Himself came down along with St. Peter, the Virgin Mary and Pope John Paul II (recently beatified) and all of them, along with a choir of the Seraphim and Cherubim told the birthers, "It's cool - he was born in Hawaii," they'd shriek collusion, conspiracy, cover-up because that's all they know.

And now I'm watching the blatant disrespect and disregard for the office of president - much less the MAN who holds the office. Because he's black. And the white crazies are not that far removed from their KKK days and Jim Crow. Harsh? To quote Tea Party Diva Poopsie Palin, "you betcha."

Harsh is as harsh does. Poopsie herself credited Shrub.... Shrub - for the capture of OBL. Really? What planet are you on? The Planet Denial, because it's a Black Guy in the White House.

President Obama hasn't always lived up to my own expectations. No president in history, no matter how sanctified and holy they may seem in retrospect, is perfect. JFK had affairs. Nixon was paranoid. Lincoln was a closet racist, and Jefferson owned slaves. And that's just a small slice of history.

But he's still the president. His office is due the respect, even if you can't manage to speak his name without gagging.

We like to think that in America we have a melting pot. That may have been more true in my parents' and grandparents' ages when immigration was all about people coming to America to be American. It was a proud moment when you became a citizen and learned English. Yes, there was racism. "No Irish Need Apply" is just one of the idiocies.  But by and large, there was more respect for the immigrant who came here to make a better life for himself or herself.

Now, the "immigrant" (and by the way, unless you're a direct descendant from Plymouth Rock, you are of "immigrant stock" somewhere in your family tree) is viewed as "the other." And not in a good way. And "the other" is to be suspected. "The Other" is someone who is "Not Like Us" and "Strange" and "To Be Viewed as Different."

And to be fair, sometimes immigrants give themselves a bad rap. They do get all, "We need to keep our heritage pure and we CANNOT ASSIMILATE." Well, yeah, you can because when you assimilate, you add to our collective culture and you enrich it. When you expect us, as your adopted country, to adapt to your ways and you refuse to adapt to ours - well, we wonder why you came here. What's the point when you don't want to be bothered to change or enjoy the delights of the variety of our culture, and you demand that yours be treated as "better" than ours?

Anyway, I digress. The point is, we are still a very long way from being color-blind. This generation coming up (my kids and their friends) are a heck of a lot closer to being color-blind than even my generation. My generation likes to talk a good game, but as you can see by pundits and talking heads in the media, we're not there yet. There's a huge segment of the population my age and older who don't like The Black Guy in The White House. And they'll do everything to stonewall him. To their own detriment and the detriment of everyone around them.

Why are they so afraid? Why does it enrage them that President Obama stated in his campaign that he'd get OBL, and he did? The spin coming from the right is enough to adjust the tilt of the planet's axis even more than the earthquake in Japan did.

Just suck it up and put on your big-boy skivvies. President Obama is the one who can truly fly the Mission Accomplished banner. But he won't. It is what it is - he got OBL, he visited the 9/11 survivors. He invited Shrub, and Shrub declined. The first statement was "he wants to stay out of the limelight" but now the radio is saying that he "feels dissed" because he didn't get "the proper credit."

Really? When GWB was using the bullhorn on the 9/11 site, did he thank President Clinton for leaving all that wonderful intelligence for GWB and his crew to use? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm?

And also, the idea of releasing the photos? Keep them hidden. Look what happened with the release of the photos of Saddam's sons, and the Abu Ghraib fiasco. Anyone with a grain of common sense or a few working brain cells can tell you that those pictures are deliberately inflammatory. The Abu Ghraib photos specifically have been used in anti-American propaganda. Those pictures hurt our military. Wave your flag on that fact.