Let’s be clear on this

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Saying that President Obama doesn’t deserve credit because he didn’t fire the shot that took him out is like saying bin Laden is not responsible for 9/11 because he didn’t fly the planes.

Why do these people not recall that the possibility of a government shutdown last month was a direct result of the President’s refusal to accept the Republican budget that would have completely denied healthcare to some veterans,  raised healthcare premiums for current service members and retirees and included billions in cuts to “non-essential” discretionary military programs, including $2.6 billion in funding provided to care for America’s veterans through the Veterans Administration?

The proposal included eliminating planned major construction that would have stopped the building of new VA medical facilities and the repair and renovation of existing VA hospitals. Further cuts included spending that directly affected the medical care received by veterans, including decreased nurse/patient ratios, fewer opportunities for mental health counseling, longer waits for services and would have further hampered the effort to eliminate the backlog of disability claims and denied new housing vouchers to homeless veterans while continuing to support tax cuts for multi-million dollar corporations that have out-sourced American jobs, tax credits for the obscenely rich and while retaining their own healthy salaries and lifetime benefits.

Veterans should be thanking their lucky stars that their President was willing to risk a government shutdown that may have interrupted their paychecks for a few weeks rather than allow these outrages to take place which would have had consequences for a lifetime.

There is always going to be an element of the population that is inclined to bash President Obama. Whether that concerns his religion, his citizenship, his bringing justice to Bin Laden, or his ability to lead this country—No matter what evidence is presented they are going to find flaws with his birth certificate, deny he is responsible for finding and killing bin Laden, claim that his name alone is proof he is a Muslim (my great-grandfather was named Moses, yet we don’t claim he was prophet), or spew inanities about “sharing the wealth” and socialism because they have a fanatical, fundamental, abiding belief that he should not be president.  And I sincerely doubt its because he’s a Democrat.

I don’t agree with everything the President and fellow Democrats have proposed, nor do I agree with Congress or all Republicans on every issue. Thankfully, one of my freedoms in this country is that I am allowed to think about the issues at stake and the decisions being made on my behalf and freely exercise my right to question–all sides. Both the Democrats and the GOP are guilty of inventing fantastically distorted versions of the facts and spinning them into attractive half-truths for the gullible and of grossly misrepresenting the opposition. Who (other than Sarah Palin) could ever have bought into and actually believed that Obama and the Democrats were proposing medical death panels for our seniors with their Healthcare plan?  Who can actually believe that the Bush-Cheney Administration was not only aware of, but deliberately allowed the attacks of September 11, 2001?

A shit-load of Crazy People! (Well, there are the ignorant as well.)