Obama, Hitler?

So just today I get an email with an essay likening President Obama to Adolf Hitler.  I don’t want to go into all the details put forward in the attempt to validate this point of view.  I simply want to speak to the core perspective point blank.

It’s stupid, unwarranted and un-American.

Just like it was when this kind of characterization was laid upon President Bush.

It was evil then.  It is evil now.

Why is it the extreme left and right feel the need to leave behind honest debate and resort to Apocalyptic fear mongering, sewing the seeds of profound insecurity, instead of articulating a cogent set of new and inspiring ideas?

I am tired of this approach. 

Do I think Mr. Obama’s new stimulus will work?  Am I convinced it is good?

How in the hell should I know?  Do you?  Does anyone?

What I am certain about is that while the latest response to our fiscal crisis is undoubtedly imperfect, I also choose to hold the belief that it is well intentioned, by and large crafted by folks who care about this country at least as much as I do.  I could be wrong, but being wrong is not a distinction that makes one unique. 

I simply refuse to be cynical. 

Therefore, I support the latest bailout/budget on that basis.  I hope it works.

Beyond a charge to the banking and loan industries though, perhaps what we really need is a jolt to the American consciousness and conscience, so that we might be less prone to reactionary vitriol, more sensitive to our common decency, and better attuned to the most reasonable faith and fact that, by and large, our public servants are not much better or worse than we are.

They may not be Mother Theresa, but damn it, they most assuredly are not Adolf Hitler.

Let’s get a grip, and let’s get together.

That kind of stimulus is long, long overdue.

Eric Holder — even Attorneys General can be broadly ignorant

What a sad speech made by the new Attorney General, Eric Holder, deliberately crafted to include the phrase saying that, as Americans, when it comes to race, we are “essentially a nation of cowards.”

No, I’m not joking.  He really said this.  Look for the video.

This was a formal address, not a gaffe occuring during a series of off-hand remarks over too many beers.

Electing Barack Obama, gutless?

Condoleeza Rice as our Secretary of State, spineless?

I guess…

But retaining Mr. Holder as our nation’s Attorney General?  

Truly pusillanimous.  Not to mention a national disgrace.

Steroids — Add muscle, and destroy a game…

What bothers me most about the latest allegation of steroid use, this time by Alex Rodriguez, is that Baseball brought this whole debacle upon itself — and then upon us all.

As long ago as 1999, when it seemed obvious that Mark McQuire had bulked up beyond reason and launched his name into the history books, hitting 65 home runs, the power-brokers of our national game could easily have done one simple thing.

They could have, and most definitely should have, hence forth adopted an immediate zero tolerance policy for performance enhancing drugs, instituting an immediate and permanent ban on anyone caught abusing this policy.

Simple.  Obvious.  An easy way to enhance the future of the game.

Nothing like this was done when it might have been, and now we are left with tarnished records and spoiled careers, where dramatic feats of polished athleticism will forever be encased in a dingy and tacky shellac of disappointment and doubt.

The guilty will persist in prevarication and, unless all the names of verified users is released, the innocent will have to endure lingering suspicion.

Thus in the blind zeal to attain something great, we are left with a moldering veneer and sickly hue cast over what used to be our green and often glorious fields of dreams.