Almost 5 months in

You know, I dig Obama.  Pretty much everyone that knows me knows that I dig Obama.  He was the right choice then and he's the right choice now and I don't expect that to change.  In the coming months we're going to get our first Latina Supreme Court justice and we might, if Congress gets it's ass in gear, we might just get a national health insurance plan that would be much like Medicare but for everyone not just the crinkly and wrinkly.  

These are good things.  Neither of these things would have a snowball's chance in hell of passing in any other circumstance.  GOPers don't like non-whites that much (if their leadership is to be believed) and they sure as hell don't put much stock in government doing anything right.  

Of course, only the GOP could so cleverly make the self fullfilling prophecy of "government is shit, private better" come true by coming to power and then spending the next 8 years guaranteeing that government is shit by appointing unqualified partisan hacks into positions of power and sending marching orders to all agencies that basically say "go eff yourself" if you're involved in anything related to oversight, regulation, or, well, really anything that has anything to do with the word "governance".  Not to mention slashing the budget of every investigative and enforcement office in every agency and privatizing as much as possible, including large portions of the US military.  But I digress...

I still like Obama.  I like that he's over there, chatting up world leaders, leaders that actually appear to look him in the eye and think, "Hey, I better pay attention, this guy ain't no fool like the last one".  He's done wonders for our reputation abroad (I can only judge from personal experience and the shittified AP) and at home, where people from all walks of life are actually starting to think that the American dream is true, not just something for rich, white, connected, sons-of-bitches.  No offense to all those rich, white, connected, non-sons-of-bitches.  I found it particularly telling that even hackolas like Ruben Navarrette, who, from what I can tell, likens himself the conservative mouthpiece of latinos everywhere, and clearly makes a definite effort to be as nobbish as possible with virtually everything he writes, actually wrote an editorial style article for CNN praising Obama's choice of Sotomayer, expressing how proud he was of that moment, and even going so far as to tell his 5-year old that it was a groundbreaking day in America.  

Obama did that.  He did that simply by having the guts to stand up and say, what the shit, we've got tons of qualified people in this country that didn't go to Country-club U and rub assholes with the Dick Cheney's and George Bush's of the world.  Clinton didn't do it.  Obviously Bush didn't do it.  Instead, he offered up the least qualified person to ever be nominated for the Supreme Court which is really beyond the pale since, you know, we already have that deaf mute Clarence Thomas who seems to just click "copy all" and "paste" when Scalia sends him his decision.  Again, I digress.  

Anyway, we now seem to have a government that functions (as in, doing oversight, not continuing to privitize everything down to the last toilet bowl washer, actually trying to do something to fix the financial crisis, health care, etc).  We have a government that more accurately reflects America as it is.  Our government is not just some frat boy club of chubblys who get the shits out of ill-advised, poorly planned foreign adventures or botched natural disaster response.  The gubnent sure as hell ain't perfect, but it's more perfect when you actually try to make it work.  So we can all be thankful for that.

BUT...

(You knew there was a "but" right?)

But, Obama hasn't scored like LeBron in the 4th quarter of Game 5.  And I'm getting pretty pissed off about it because as this blogger more or less said, we got all kinds of shitstorms circling our globe and there's one issue that is as simple as Sopa de Tortilla, an issue that Obama is sitting out of, an issue that is THE defining civil rights issue of our time.

And that's Gay Rights.  

Did you know that in most of the US, not to mention the world, you can be fired for just being gay?  How shit ass insane is that?  I practically soiled my daintees when I saw Milk because as much as shit changes, it stays the same.  By the way, the makers really missed out on a powerful opportunity at the end of that movie.  I mean, wouldn't it have been pretty damn impactful to have put up something like, "Even today, 20 years later, gays and lesbians can be fired for just being who they are...blah, blah, blah."  I mean, bloody hell, the reason I wrote "blah, blah, blah" is because I literally am not educated enough about this issue to write a full sentence about it!  

Anyway, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act or ENDA, as it is fondly known as by the few policy wonks that engage in regular gay friendly wonkery, is languishing on the floor of the Congress, where it has sat for what, 15 years?  I mean, what the shit is that?  A very simple law that says you can't fire someone because of their race, sex, gender, religion and some other shit that ain't controversial AT ALL.  Is it just institutional laziness?  Is that why they haven't gotten up off their lobbyist fed asses and gotten that shit passed?  I know, I know, there's this whole issue of adding in "transgendered" as well.  Well slap my ass and call me bitch, we shouldn't be discriminating against transgendered people either because we shouldn't be discriminating against ANYONE.  That's, you know, FUNDAMENTALLY EVIL, and the kind of shit that we're supposed to be getting over.  

If ENDA wasn't bad enough, the military continues to kick openly gays and lesbians out just for the hell of it.  Now, maybe, and this is the quite literally the biggest damn "maybe" in the history of all maybes everywhere and in every language, but maybe in times of peace you could make an argument for a "go slow" approach to changing Don't Ask, Don't Tell.  But bloody hell, we're in 2 damn wars and we're kicking out openly gay men who speak Arabic and are experts in the Middle East!  There is no logic or reason to that and makes me wonder if Robert Gates sits around saying, "we're just a bunch of sticky pricks that can't have those queers running around us because we don't know what we'd do!"  

And let's not even get into Gay Marraige or we'll be here all night.  But I just gotta ask all the fundamentalist, sick bastard, wacko, wanna be party of Reagan, really be party of Falwell asshats out there: Given that the world is falling apart about us, with animal flus to one side, terrorism and piracy to the other, and the giant bloody elephant in the room that is Global warming about to trample the entire shebang, do we really, I mean really, do we really need to be going to the mat over this issue?  Nobody's proposing that you marry gays and lesbians in your hovels of God where you do crazy shit like pretend to speak in tongues and other creepy scary shit that I don't even want to know about.  Are you really so hyper-sensitive that you think that the mere presence of married gays and lesbians is going to undercut the foundation of your ever so "sacred and sanct holy matrimony" as described in your book of the dead which we all call the Bible?  Because if you are, then you gotta a whole little bit of faith and you should be ashamed of yourself.

This topic reminds me of the sheer stupidity of the radically conservative Christian movement and its spokesman and de facto leader James Dobson, Dr in what, who the hell knows.  The stupid bastard has said on various occassions that "the gays" are why the Roman empire collapsed which has just about got to be the biggest misreading of history of all time.  It's such a stupid proposition that it should be automatic disqualification from putrifying our public airwaves ever again.  I mean, think about it.  If you were to write something like that in a History 101 class, you would not only fail, you would become an instant assclown for the rest of your college career.  Because only someone who is fundamentally deficient in the brains department could suggest something as idiotic.

Guess Dobson ain't got a PhD in History.  But that's how bad the arguments from the Religo-Fascists have to be because they can't really come out and say, "we just hate all them faggots and their kissing and hand holding," and be considered good Christian folk, now can they?  

Well, I'm well good and off course now, aren't I.  

Obama.  The man can do this.  He can tell the military: finish this, now.  With a short, simple executive order, he can stop the military from kicking out people we desperately need.  And with the strength of his voice, his rhetoric, and his near universal respect across the parts of America that really matter (you know, the relatively rational, sane human beings that don't believe the utter horse shit that spews forth from the Triumverate of Unholy Evil that is Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Bill O' I sexually harassed my assistant Reilly).  

My point is, Obama is the most powerful orator in my lifetime.  He has changed attitudes and ideas simply for being.  He can push us forward on the most salient and important civil right and human rights issue of our time.  I know he's got a rather full plate right now, but he can do this.  It just takes a little courage.  So please, White House overlords, please Obama, get on it.  If they can discriminate against "the gays" then they can discriminate against us all.  And I don't want to live in a country like that.  Nor do I want my children, who will be called "Latinos", to grow up in a country that is one step away from deciding that there are certain inalienable rights that we can just take away when we good and damn feel like it.  

ENDA, the end of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and Gay Marraige now.  American values demand it.