Are we out of the nightmare yet? Bad trip hangover done? Not quite. The economy can be better but it's been turned around as of late, just like GM. Our health and education systems will take another decade to modernize. Racism has new blood but their grasp on logic continues to dwindle. SuperPacs and the power of big money in politics are on the lips of regular Americans again so perhaps with this knowledge will come reform. Ya right!

Look how young he looked. Look how happy and hopeful we were. Realistically the man has affected huge change and has more to accomplish. I've been to socialist countries, I've spoke in length with people who live or lived under socialist systems. America is not and will never be such a system. The smear of 'socialist' at Obama needs to be countered. Just keep that in mind as the general election starts to heat up.

President Obama: I want a new agency to protect US consumers against predatory lending and other financial exploitations. I ran on this idea, won, and will get to work setting up the agency and naming a director, as specified by the passed Wall Street reform legislation.

Republican Congress: We don't like the idea of this agency and more regulation. Most of the companies and industries it might regulate are supporters of ours. We are going to fight this agency and give no support to this (even though the law passed last year).  

President Obama: Fine let's negotiate the details, but I'm not canceling it. I'll name a former state Attorney General to lead it. He will be the most powerful consumer advocate/watchdog in the country. The number of citizens this will help will be huge.

Republican Congress: No. No. No. We are against this because the citizens should be able to protect themselves against predators. We are against this because it's Obama's idea. This guy will have power over all industries? We believe that only people inside of industries are qualified to regulate themselves. Plus most of the 'predators' have bought and paid for the Republican Congress.

President Obama: If you won't help with this I'll name him with a recess appointment. This position is too important to leave vacant.

Republican Congress: Good try. But if we refuse to go into recess, you can't do a recess appointment. We will just write the schedule to say that we are in session every 2 days for the rest of the year. Haha!

President Obama: Hiding your recesses for over a year? Lame trick. Guess what I appointed him anyway. No thanks to you. I don't like taking no for an answer.

Republican Congress: KING OBAMA IS DESTROYING THE CONSTITUTION AND SHOULD BE IMPEACHED! HOW DARE HE BYPASS THE SENATE! Yet refusing to advise and consent the president and his appointments is the actual violation of constitutional duties.

(I guess they believe the senate can obstruct the prez using rule loopholes for over a year?)

And here's a final score for some ever important context --
Reagan made 240 recess appointments.
Daddy Bush made 77 recess appointments.
Clinton made 139 recess appointments.
Dubya made 171 recess appointments.
Obama has made 28 recess appointments so far.

Welcome to politics 101. Read the headlines on what they are calling Obama today about this recess appointment.

BTW -- a Fox news contributor yesterday claimed that President Obama looked like "a ghetto crackhead". Wow, hello. Where is the outrage?

• "BIG BRObama"   --- not bad, witty, rolls off the tongue. Big Brother ("The Man") being a black guy is a new one though
• "King Odumbo"  --- a real stretch here. He's the King, he's dumb, he's an elephant? Or is it because he has big ears?
• "Our Illegal alien monkey king" --- hitting for the cycle here. Not only is he a monkey, he's an illegal alien monkey!! King too - Oh no! We all know monkeys should be citizens.
• "Wookie"  --- there it is. The politically correct way of saying gorilla? Short and sweet, we get the point but you are just talking about Star Wars, right?
• "Our Affirmative Action President" --- wow. After GWB and the royal fascist family of oil tycoons running the country, this. Minimize and trivialize.
• "Half Blood" --- old school. This is the kind of talk that used to get people murdered.
• "Moochelle" --- how out of touch (or racist) do you have to be to think Michelle Obama is horribly overweight? How desperate are you if you need to shoot down a politicians wife based on her ass?
• "A pair of grifters"  --- nothing like calling an independently wealthy and educated college professor married to a lawyer "grifters". Good thing the Republicans are watching the crystal at the white house, yet the Iraq war cost a trillion dollars while Halliburton turned record profits. Who's grifting who? Just another play on their race.
• "Zippy" --- this one is the most common and I don't understand the implication, other than to make him seem like a sidekick or a token.
• "Pure Thug"  --- straight racist. Unless Obama had shown a history of violently or aggressively shutting down opposition or otherwise had blood on his hands, why would he be a thug? The man has manners and class and generally speaks thoughtfully, so where is the thuggishness? It's just word association to place that image in the heads of racists.
• "The Jeffersons" --- a 70's TV reference to a fictional black family from the ghetto that moves uptown. Again, considering Obama was raised in Hawaii by his white grandmother, and middle-class Michelle excelled through high school and followed her older brother to Princeton, where is the ghetto in the Obama's past? It isn't there, but the racists want you to associate them with the ghetto.
• "American Hating Muslim Family" --- built on the strong premise that the person that hates America most is it's very own president, and the person who ordered Bin Laden killed is himself a muslim that attends christian church and celebrates christmas. What a strange world these morons live in.

When they get past name calling and string a few words together, the hate is tangible and real. It's truly amazing to walk amongst people with such horribly different observations about the world:

• "Who's a racist? Monkeys just don't have enough intelligence to run a country. Look at Kenya. Look at the USA."
• "Mooslims are destructive to all societies they infiltrate and have been their entire existence. Wish it wasn't true but thats their history."
• "Don't need another porch monkey loser."
• "How about a prisoner swap? I'd rather see our corrupt and arrogant melanzana president in that cage along with the rest of his mud people infested socialist regime! These traitors deserve no less."
• "Obama wouldn't mind the cage...It would be like the Zoo...feels like home..."
• "should have never invented cotton picking machines there would be a use to them other than complaining"
• "I'll be a HIGGER. Halfrican-nigger"
• "Will we see Moochelle on TV using a food stamp card?"

No thanks to republican sites like Foxnews, RedState, Lucianne, Ace of Spades, and Townhall for spewing this trash. Daily. This little collection I made took a few minutes and there is fresh racist hatred posted daily.

I remember back a few years, hating on Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld, primarily because of the war. I was also mad about putting CEO's in charge of regulating their industries, and upset about going backwards on the environment and climate issues, but generally most fired up about the war.

I called Bush a war criminal. W was either a retarded simpleton or a brilliant cover for this scheme in my opinion. I called for a deep investigation of Cheney and Karl Rove. I would not be against prosecuting for illegal acts that can be proven.

But still, compare the political outrage of the left trying to stop a war, run by a president they didn't believe in - to now. Only some of us are "post-race" and frankly, with people like the above right wingers shouting their place in America it will be a lot longer until we are truly free from racism.

Their skin color(s) of course. (I only type it for non-US speakers who might not know the term). Barrack is mixed African/Caucasian and Michelle is African-American, and both Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck have no issue calling them "Uppity" across the american airwaves.

Online and at rally's I've seen pictures of Obama turned into a gorilla, a suicide bomber, a pimp, and a gangster rapper. I've read and seen more insulting things about Michelle in 2 years than anyone even bothered to write about Mrs. Bush in 8 years. They literally can't even call her by her first name, usually using the name "Moochelle" or "Moose". And the references to her rearend crack me up - the republicans are on this trip that her ass is too big. What kind of men are these?

Global warming/climate change is not equivalent to your local weather forecast.

Idiots that rant about global warming being a hoax on the days it's snowing in their neighborhood (and use the snowfall as their evidence) are idiots. Pure idiots. How?

• By not understanding the size of the planet verse their local weather system; by not understanding that climate change causes extremes in all ways;
• By not understanding that the weather changes everywhere all the time, which is why we have averages and statistical computer programming analyzing everyone's neighborhood (not just yours you stupid yahoo);
• By believing that science/math/physics is open to 'opinion';
• By not knowing that the scientific method addresses doubt and skepticism immediately. The very nature of the scientific method is to work from a position of doubt and prove things to be not true.

I know I'm screaming into an empty room because people who watch Fox news weren't very interested in science or math class to begin with. But just sayin (again).

Sorry. Can't.