State Dinners, Apparently Everybody's Invited!

 

OK, so let me get this straight.  Two people, Tareq and Michaele Salahi, who are auditioning to be on the Real Housewives of D.C., simply walked in off the street and strolled right into the White House State Dinner for India’s prime minister, mingled with politicians and movie stars, and actually walked right up to President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, and India’s prime minister, introduced themselves, and shook there hands!? And you mean to tell me that no one from the secret service, the agency that is supposed to be protecting some of our most important leaders and family members, did not think to check to see if they were actually invited to this state dinner?  No one thought to look at a list, check a name, or ask for ID?  Do you realize that right now there are meetings going on all over this country and the Middle East of Klansmen, Neo Nazis, and Al Qaeda terrorist, who are kicking themselves in there asses, and telling each other, “It’s that fucking EASY!  All we had to do was rent a tux, buy a dress, and walk in!  ALLAH DAMMIT!”  You would think that for this president, in particular, the secret service would be stepping things up a notch.  I mean after all he’s just the first ever African American president we have ever had.  And you know that the day that President Obama won the election every white supremacist in this country was slapping them selves in there red neck faces while praying to their white Jesus that this was simply a bad dream and they would soon wake up to see President McCain, and V.P. Sarah Palin!  Is the secret service really this inept and if they are, President Obama should be very worried.

According to a resent report on CNN, since President Obama’s inauguration, death threats against the president has gone up by 400%.  The president receives on the average 30 death threats a day!  Yes you read that right, 30 a day.  The rise in the number of hate groups in this country has sky rocketed and there memberships have gone up as well.  Maybe the secret service missed the meeting on the day when this information was talked about.  Honestly, I have never seen such venomous opposition towards a president last for so long as it has for this president.  And I’m not talking from hate groups either.  That insane craziness I fully expect.  It’s the ongoing day after day opposition rhetoric that one hears on talk radio, FOX “News”, and the political arena that spills over into the general population. It’s normal and even healthy for our politicians to be challenged and questioned, but for some reason with this president I have seen some of the most hateful characterizations and often out right lies told about his actions and status and decisions.  I hear individuals still questioning his citizenship.  I hear people still insisting that he is a Muslim.  I hear people questioning his love and loyalty to this country.  I hear people accusing him of being a Nazi (show me a black Nazi, I’ll show you a kosher pig), a Socialist, a Fascist.  I understand that we had republican rule for the last 8 years and now this is a big change, and it’s quite a shock to those who liked that status quo and wanted Sarah Palin to be just deaths door away from the presidency.  But I believe that there is some thing much more dark and deep seeded about what is going on here.  I believe that there a lot of people out there, who even though they would never ever admit it to anyone, and maybe not even to them selves, simply do not like our president because he is black.  There are a lot of individuals who will claim until the day they die that they are not racist, truly believe they are not, and maybe by comparison to a KKK member or Archie Bunker, they are not, but still have issues with race.  That is not to say that those same people may not also have issues with the Presidents views and policies, but something deep down inside makes some individuals that much more opposed to and venomous about what is going on today then they would be had our president not been black.  And of course there are many people out there who simply oppose the president’s views regardless of his race, but let’s be honest, we live in America, and whether we like it or not we live in one of the most racist countries on this earth.  And if you don’t believe me, go live in Europe for a while.  I spent six months there in the late eighties and it was shocking how normal and accepted inter-racial couples were at that time.  It was an eye- opener as to how segregated of a society we really live in.  This country had slavery.  We placed Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II.  The Civil Rights act didn’t come about until the 1960’s. Gay people still can’t get married in most states, and have to pretend they are straight in our armed forces or get dishonorably discharged.  And women still don’t get pay equal to men in most cases.  We live in the greatest nation on earth, but often we don’t act like it.  We need to stop acting like we are at war with each other and start realizing that we are all in this together.  I would like to see Republicans and Democrats vote there conscious, instead of there party.  I would like to see news reported with integrity and the facts, and commentary kept separate.  I would like to see people make up there mind because they researched the issues, not because some talk show host or neighbor “claimed” it to be so.  I would like to see us battle the hate not just around us, but also the prejudices that knowingly or unknowingly exist in all of us.  I would like us to see if this President over the next four years can do something, anything to tackle the monumental problems we are facing, and make this country better then it was before he took office, but also not judge him only by his first year.  And if he can not make this country better, I would like to see someone else elected to replace him who we truly believe is better, not because of the color of his skin, or what party he belongs to, but because we believe in what that person stands for, and that what he stands for is better then what we have seen.    The health care debate has brought out the worst of us in this country.  We are better then what I have seen and we need to show it, not just to us, but to the world.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go drop in on a White House cabinet meeting.

Thanksgiving Message from NorthShoreDad

 

Today is Thanksgiving and I have a lot to be thankful for!  First and foremost I have my family to be thankful for.  I have a beautiful daughter who makes me smile every time I look at her and always makes me laugh.  I have a wonderful son who is so smart and handsome and brings me so much joy, and who today is celebrating his sixth birthday, and I have the most beautiful caring wife in the world who has made my life complete and has made every day worth living. I am a very lucky man.  But these are not the only things that I have to be thankful for.  I have a wonderful mother, father, sister, in-laws, and extended family that marring my wife have given me.  I am even thankful for Glen Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, FOX news, Sarah Palin, The Democrats and Republicans, the election of President Barack Obama and all the craziness that is involved with running this country, for with out these people I would have nothing to write about.  But this post is not about them.  This post is an unusually personal post because of what day it is today and because what my family is experiencing that sometimes makes it difficult to find the thanks in this day.  This post is about my father.  Without getting into too many details, my father’s time on this earth is limited.  I know it, my family knows it…and he knows it.  At times like this it is sometimes difficult to look him in the face and think to myself what here could I possibly be thankful for.  To see what he is going through is the most difficult thing to watch.  To see what my family is going through is equally difficult.  But these times and this process that my father, myself, and my family is going through has produced something that I did not expect. It’s often said that we should tell the people closest to us how we feel because life is short and if you do not say something now you may never get the chance to.  I have been shown exactly how true this is.  Even though my father is going through something that I should never wish anyone to go through, at the same time he has been given a gift.  Maybe a gift he did not want but a gift none the less.  He has been given the gift of being able to tell some of the loved ones around him how he feels about them before his soul moves on. And in this time I have heard him say some of the sweetest things, things that I have never heard him say before.  They say that at times like this the person becomes uncensored.  They say what is on there mind and while at times it has made for interesting discussion, but it also has let out a level of sincerity and tenderness that I have seldom heard from my father.  I believe that these things are private between my father and his loved ones so I will keep what was said private.  Let’s just say that while I feel sad at the potential loss of my father, I am thankful that I have been given this time to truly tell him how I feel about him and what he has done for me.  I feel blessed to have heard him say how important the ones around him are to him, and I feel lucky to have this father in my life for as long as he has been.  No matter how long a person lives, it is never long enough.  There is always more to do, more to say, more to experience.  We are never ready to say goodbye, but having been given the opportunity to tell my father how much he is loved is something I will always cherish.  For that I am thankful.  So on this Thanksgiving, tell the ones around you how important they are to you.  Tell them how you feel about them.  And gives thanks that you have them in your life.  I love you dad.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Miss Alaska, If I were President...

 

When I was in my twenties, often I would be flipping through the channels and I would come across an episode of Saved By The Bell.  Now I don’t know what it was about this show, because it had unbelievably bad acting, the most contrived story lines since Three’s Company, and was about all the type of high school kids that I hated when I was in high school.  But for some reason it just drew me in and no matter what vitally important task I had to do at that time, it went on hold so that I could see if this was the week that Kelly would finally kiss Zak, or what wacky thing Screech would do to annoy Principal Belding.  I could not stand this show but for some odd reason I could not take my eyes off of it.  I’m sure it had something to do with Tiffany Amber Thiessen, and the thoughts that I was having, that I could be arrested for since she was only 16 at the time (I cannot tell you how stoked I was when I found out she was going to be on 90210.  Now I could think perfectly legal thoughts about her!  Well, mostly legal thoughts about her.)  But the reality was it was something more than that.  It was the same reason why when we see an accident on the highway we all slow down to look, hoping to see something incredibly horrific that we can ooo and ahhh about, such as an airplane that fell from the sky on a van filled with nuns, or that the Oprah’s Dream Bus had run over Dr. Oz.  But normally it’s your usual fender bender and we drive past disappointed because our time was just wasted with nothing to show for it.  This is exactly how I feel about the three ring circus that we call Sarah Palin.  She is currently on her U.S. book tour to promote her book, Going Rogue, which apparently explains why it was everyone else’s fault that John McCain lost the election, except hers of course, and other beauty queen answers to the question, if you were president, what would you do?  Is she selling lots of books?  Well of course she is.  If Jeffery Dahmer wrote a book about cooking he’d sell millions!  No one would want to eat anything in it, but we sure would want to see what he could to with a marsala sauce.
 
But what exactly is it that makes this woman relevant in any way shape or form?  The answer is nothing.  She is the train wreck that we simply cannot take our eyes off.  She became famous for being the biggest mistake that any Presidential Candidate had ever made since…well since no one!  She is unprecedented! What the H. E. double hockey sticks, was John McCain thinking, YaBetchYa!  If he wanted to pick a woman as his running mate, well that’s all fine and dandy, but with all the well respected, intellectual, experienced republican women in this country that he could have picked from, he chose a unknown, former beauty queen, with no experience on the national stage, who shoots buck, and whose only foreign policy experience is that she can see Russia from her porch.  Let not forget that this is the woman who could not name a single magazine or news paper, did not know what the Bush Doctrine was, and who in recent interview on FOX kept mixing up Iran and Iraq.  Apparently Sarah told Sean Hannity that she wants to crack down on IRAQ’s nuclear plans.  Maybe Sarah isn’t aware that we already had one idiot president crack down on IRAQ’s mythical weapons of mass destruction.  So now Sarah has been on every talk show that she can get her perky little face on.  She’s been on Oprah, Hannity, Glenn Beck, O’Reilly, Good Morning America, The Today Show just to name a few and so far all she has shown  us is that according to poor little, I’m the ultimate victim, Sarah Palin, she was wronged big time.  She was taken advantage of, her good untarnished name (yea, right) was dragged through the mud.  Apparently everyone in the McCain campaign was out to get her and if they just let sweet perky Sarah, be Sarah, everything would have been just fine.  To this I say, Sarah P, get a clue.  Take ownership for once in your life for what you have done, for the answers you gave, for the mistakes you made.  Being cute and perky is not gonna get you through this one.  Politics is a dirty game and apparently you were not prepared to play.  You wanna be president some day?  Well maybe you should not have quit your day job as governor of Alaska and wrote a, I’m rubber and your glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you, book!  Maybe you should have spent the next few years staying in politics, leading the people of Alaska, built up somewhat of a record, unlike, as you claimed your democratic rival, who is now president, did not.  But instead, now you are a ex-Governor Palin who quit half way through your term so that you could go do personal appearances, and write a book, and get rich. You choose money over the people of Alaska.  Do you really think that is the best position to be in going into a presidential race?  You have effectively now become known just for being you.   You have become the Paris Hilton of politics. 

But just when I thought I had seen it all, I was wrong.  The other evening I had fallen asleep on the couch.  I woke up and it was just past 3 am, and Larry King was on CNN.  I was half asleep and without really paying attention I heard Larry ask his guest, “Do you think Sarah Palin could win in 2012?”  I heard the man start to give his answer and turned my head to see who it was.  I rubbed my eyes and squinted at the screen, and then I saw his name and thought to myself, “No it can’t be.  Is Larry King really asking this guy that question?  I’m half asleep so maybe I just read it wrong.”  So I looked again at the name under the picture, and answering Larry Kings question, was none other then Joe the Plumber!  Joe the bleepin’ plumber!  Joe, I’m not even a plumber and Joe is not even my real name, the Plumber!  The only thing that I care less about then what Sarah Palin has to say, is what Joe, my 15 minutes of fame expired 20 minutes ago, the plumber has to say about Sarah Palin!  There was no way in hell I was going to waste any time listen to Joe the Plumber’s opinion of Sarah Palin, and then it happened!  I changed the channel as fast as I could and wouldn’t you know it, Kelly kissed Zak!  The world was good again.