Lately, when I see one of these articles about an athlete declining an invitation from President Obama to visit the White House because his (or her) "political views differ from his," my first thought is always one of bemused incredulity.
The simple fact is, regardless of what some Tea Party nincompoop believes, Barack Obama is a center-right moderate politician. He and his policies are much closer to those of the Eisenhower/Nixon Republicans than they are to the Roosevelt/Johnson Democrats and, although I personally respect the President as an admirable and worthy representative of our nation, his policies are far too timid to be labeled as liberal, progressive or -- dare I say it -- socialist. There are those would would tar the President with the socialist label. They allege he's Muslim, Kenyan, somehow less than American. They are, quite simply, delusional and/or cynically dishonest. There is no room for debate about that among rational people.
Then I remember that there is no way on God's green Earth that I would have ever gone to the White House to shake the hand of its previous occupant. Of course, when you take into account the world-class ineptitude and the war-based-on-lies and the cratered economy and the Hurricane Katrina debacle and the general assault on civil liberties, we Dirty Fucking Hippies were clearly right about him.
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