Attack of the Republican Bloggers

It would appear that Republican bloggers on WordPress fell asleep in 2001, and woke up on January 20th 2009. It is as if the second President Obama was sworn into Office, the bitter wing of the Republican bloggers started making up as much nonsense as they could to discredit a legacy that had barely even begun. We’re less than three days in and Republican bloggers everywhere are vilifying Obama, questioning his life, his sincerity, with just plain nonsense. The British media has picked up on it too. It’s incredible, the wrath of Right Wing America.

As the inauguration procession moved down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the White House on Tuesday, Fox News reporters kept saying “This is really slow” and “slowest motorcade we’ve ever seen” and “he should be speeding this up“. There is no pleasing Republicans. They are bitter, and they will find any little detail to attack Obama on. Is it because he’s Black? Possibly for a few a black President is a difficult concept to understand, but I think it’s because he’s a Democrat. George W Bush is by far the worst President America has ever been graced with. An entire Planet could not wait to see the back of him. It is merely a few disillusioned Republicans who still cling to the idea that this war hungry, fear mongering, destroyer of the economy was actually quite impressive. These people, are never going to accept that a Republican might not be that good.

Bastardnation for example has run a story in which he states that Barack Obama was sworn in for a second time, without the press there, and so not the full transparency he promised. However, the swearing in photos were released the same day. Bastardnation knew it happened, the day it happened, in fact, about a minute after it happened. It’s hardly the best kept secret since Roswell. It was fully transparent. It clearly had no malice attached too it. If we did not now know about it, then that would qualify as a cover up and not fully transparent. Of course the entire press corps should have been allowed it, merely a rookie mistake. You Republicans have allowed Bush to get away with genocide over the past eight years, a picture of Obama should be the least of your concerns.
Clutching at straws already.

Firstjohnfourfive subtly suggests that Obama is unqualified to be President. Under what circumstances, it’s unclear. Suggesting of course, that simply, the Republicans don’t like him. That’s all. That’s the reason he’s unqualified. No Democrat would be qualified to run for President, under the Republican supporters. If it were true that Obama was somehow unqualified that raises a few bigger questions…
1) Why didn’t the actual Republican Party raise this issue, investigate it fully, and come to a conclusion themselves, rather than hoping that a couple of bitter bloggers might watch a Fox News report and come up with their own insane conclusions.
2) Does America seriously not look into the qualifications of it’s public servants before they take office? Even my local corner shop asks to see my qualifications, and verifies them. If Obama is not qualified, serious questions need to be asked about the background of candidates.

CNN Blogs wasted ten minutes of my life, telling me that Obama didn’t wear his jacket on his first day in the Oval Office. They claim that it was a Bush and Regan policy that out of respect for the office of President, the jacket is to be worn by anyone in the room. Fine. That was Bush and Regan. It’s a shame Bush policy stopped at jacket wearing and didn’t extend as far as lying to the World before entering an unjustifiable war, or destroying the economy. I’m unaware of why not wearing a jacket is disrespectful, yet lying to the public leading to a mass of American soldiers dying miserably in an unjust war, is perfectly respectable? As ever, Republican logic is beyond my understanding.
Comments from Republicans grace the blog, such as…
“That is the most powerful room in the world. It is a place to be respected, not hang out in. Consider it symbolic, but it was a constant reminder of the size of the task it is to lead the greatest nation on earth. Bush and Reagan got it right!!!“
- I just love the idea that Obama is merely ‘hanging out’. If Bush got it right, then i’d hate to see the state of the planet when someone gets it wrong. It’s just a jacket! It might have been hot in there. Who cares? He could be wearing a tshirt with Sarah Palin looking out of her Alaskan home and waving to Putin over in Russia… She can see him, you know!!!…. he could wear a shirt that says… “I just looooove the gays!!” It wouldn’t matter, as long as he gets the job done correctly!! I could not give a shit what my leader choses to wear, as long as he runs the Country better than Bush could ever have done. I cannot imagine Republican nonsense is going to steep lower than this one.

The mass of Republican anti-Obama bloggers will never have a positive thing to say of Obama. They will always shoot him down. They will never admit that he may have made the right move. They will continue to stick up for the deeply flawed legacy of George Bush and they will refuse to accept that Sarah Palin, was a nightmare choice for Vice President. In the eyes of the deeply Republican, Obama can never do anything right.

And then of course there are those who keep complaining that Obama isn’t a fan of torture. As if it’s perfectly feasible for America to stamp it’s moral fist across the World, whilst at the same time, administering electric shocks, burning, forcing prisoners to be naked and pose for sexually explicit photos, covering their eyes and pretending to execute them, lack of food and water, without actually determining whether these detainees have committed any kind of crime or not. British man “Asif Iqbal” was held at Guantanamo, told that he could be killed and no one would know who did it, forcibly injected with drugs, sleep deprived, and subjected to sexual humiliation. A guard, on arrival, told Iqbal … “you killed my family in the Twin Towers, now it’s pay back time…” purely because Iqbal in Muslim. He was found to be completely innocent of all charges. If that’s the attitude of right wing America, isn’t it right, by their logic, that those families of the victims of dead Iraqis have the right to “pay back” America? Flawed logic by a flawed Right Wing ideology, which then wonders why the World absolutely despises them.

It must please the Democrats to know that they’ve managed to annoy Republicans for no good reason other than being Democrats. It must please Democrats even more to know that the entire World, supports them.

Defeat is a bitter pill to swallow clearly.

President Barack Obama

****

“To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.” – President Obama

My grandparents claim to have felt the hope that echoed around the World when John F Kennedy became the President of the USA way back in 1960, from as far away as we are in the United Kingdom. The glimour of hope that change had come, that the World super power was not in the firm control of the Business elite, and the anguish and sorrow they felt when they heard of Kennedy’s assasination. They both say that the feeling of hope rekindled was evident in their minds yesterday at the inauguration of President Barack Obama.

Sky News played a video this morning of an interview with a Black American child. The interviewer asked what the election of President Obama meant to him, the child said…
“It means that when people see a black man on TV, they won’t see only a criminal or an athlete. They’ll see a president, a lawyer or a doctor.” – How beautiful and powerful can one child’s voice be? This voice, this single sentence, encapsulates a new America spectacularly.

In the hearts of those of us who have become disillusioned with America, (which includes Democrats, and the entire World, apart from the Republicans) hateful of the Bush Administration, sick of out dated intolerant Republican policies, it was a monumentous occasion to witness the end of such intolerance, not just with a new administration, but with an African American President who less than a century ago, would have been banned from sitting on the same bus as the white man.

Often i’ll be searching online blogs and come across those of cynical Republicans who have already condemned Obama to political hell, judging his legacy before it’s even begun, purely because he’s a democrat. Ridiculous comments like “He’s socialist“, when Socialism is about as far from Obama as a word could be, “He wont hand over his birth certificate“… as if they don’t adequately vet a potential senator and President before they take the job. “His middle name….. Hussain….. like Sadam….. AARRRGH!!!“…this one speaks for itself. “He refuses to swear on the bible, proving he’s a muslim“…. as if it matters what faith a man is.
All of this before the inauguration, even though he did in fact swear on the Bible. Republican smear tactics, tactics of an extremist party with extremist views, and who put forward an extremist candidate for Vice President. It was hope versus continued fear, and hope presided, thankfully. Why wont those same Republican Bloggers admit that their President over the past eight years has achieved nothing short of criminal, and should be taking the place of those at Guantanamo.

Aside from the policies Obama has which are right, good, and above all, hopeful for a country that has relied too long on the reckless behaviour of the wealthy, it’s the symbol that is enduring and so attractive. The symbol of a new World based not on the colour of somebodies skin. The symbol that you do not have to be somehow affiliated with Oil production to be welcomed into Washington. The symbol that the last eight years is dead, and a new era based not on fear or on hidden corruption and lies is replaced by intergrity, human decency, and kindness. It’s a symbol that becomes increasingly difficult to avoid buying in to. I certainly buy into it fully. I do not expect Obama to be a sort of Jesus-like figure, like some do. I merely welcome the departure of the destructive nature of Republican Conservativism. It has to be fair to say that the Republicans, who have spent eight years killing, silencing, looting Nations for nothing more than individual wealth whilst all the time letting Americans know that if you feel guilty that America is causing so much pain and suffering across the planet, then you’re not a true American, is over. Already, my faith in the most powerful nation on Earth is slowly renewing.

For the past eight years, or four years at least, it’s been difficult to envisage a time when “President Bush” was no more. The moment Obama was sworn in, his speech; his passion for what he was saying, inspired a smile from me, knowing it marked the end of the Bush regime so beautifully and eloquently, it rolled back the policies of the past eight years. The speech needed to renew hope and faith in America, it did just that.

BBC News interviewed a Republican voting couple in their home in Kansas. Their home, was a 200 acre land, sixteen room house, who claimed to be “struggling“. The lady they interviewed, was speaking to them from her library. I thought to myself, this is the legacy that has died today, the stupidity of people like this, the absolute nerve of these kinds of people to claim to be “struggling“. The BBC did it beautifully with the voice over man saying “We interviewed the family from their 200 acre property, that they really don’t need.” That alone, embodies the passions of the Left.

As I sat watching the inauguration, I could not emit the image from my mind, of the Black Panthers, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali dumping his Olympic medals because they wanted to send him to war yet wouldn’t let him sit on the same bus as a white man, Rosa Parks, and all those who suffered the wrath of the Ku Klux Klan, the slaves who built the White House, the thousands of black Americans who have struggled for equality across America over the generations. Yesterday, was the greatest day in the history of black America, and a day that will be remembered forever.

The election of President Obama is not about one man. History alone will judge the substance of his Presidency. The election of President Obama is a symbol. A symbol of how far America has come. How America does not need to be all about slamming an iron fist across the World, that love and hope is not dead, that the Republican Party has not indoctrinated the American public in intolerance, disunity and callous individualism.

When it was all over, Obama was stood with his wife and children, the new occupants of the White house, smiling gleefully at the future, after a speech that should be carved into stone, it pained me to see them walk off without turning to George Bush and say “You do not have to say anything unless you wish to do so, whatever you do say will be used as evidence in court”….. maybe one day.

Still, Did the BBC really need to tell me what roads in Washington were closed today? My car barely gets me to Tesco in Wigston.