Bat shit crazy

George W. Bush is an asshole.  He managed to taint and corrupt an already unstable foundation of ideals.  He subverted the 1st amendment with free speech zones .  He can not take credit for the failure of the press.  That stunning dereliction lies at the feet of the corporate media.  He plunged us into two wars with more than 4,000 U.S. casualties and uncounted(at least by us)  Iraqi and Afghan deaths.  Two wars financed by slight of hand and off the budget.  The military has been stretched to its limits.  Recruitment and reenlistment was so bad that stop loss was initiated as a back door draft and enlistment standards were veritably thrown out the window.   He demonized nations and peoples and our unilateral military campaign against Iraq on the most mendacious of reasonings has made the U.S. a pariah on the world stage.   He took a surplus and plunged the nation into a record deficit with the ready assistance of a Republican majority legislature for 6 of his 8 years.

This is what we elected Barack Obama to contend with.

President Barack Obama is being portrayed as a Nazi, a cartoon cat, the Muslim Communist Joker, etc etc.  He is being hung in effigy.  Someone painted a swastika on the sign of Georgia 13th District Congressman David Scott.  A man ripped up a sign bearing the image of Rosa Parks at Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill recent town hall meeting.  A man with a gun strapped to his thigh  showed up at President Barack Obama’s healthcare townhall in Portsmouth, NH.  The man was holding a sign ‘It is time to water the tree of liberty’, a statement reminiscient of Timothy McVeigh’s T-shirt “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”  The tshirt he was wearing he bombed the Alfred P. Murah building in Oklahoma City, OK.  People who either themselves or their family receive government healthcare are some of the most vocal opponents to healthcare reform.  The environment is toxic and stupid.  It maybe toxic simply because it is so very stupid.  Obvious lies and distortions are magnified and there is only the most obligatory efforts to counter.  Broadcast and cable news broadcasters and pundits and analysts are so amazingly inane and useless.  They are spineless and ineffectual.  They are sniveling and contemptible.  They are fully participating in and perpetuating the utter stupidity and outright lies.  There is however an unmistable racial component to this cognitive dissonance.  There is a segment of the population that can not bring themselves to accept this Black man son of a white woman and Black man.  His father was born in Kenya and muslim to boot.  I can understand the suspension of belief that Barack Obama demands.  A man from this background becoming the leader of the free world has to fuck with your head in a way.  His existence and success and bearing flies in the face of so many of our most firmly held ideas.  Black men are criminals, junkies, and absentee fathers.  America is rascist to its core and that is irrevocable.  But here we are and it is driving people bat shit crazy.