Invalidating dissent

Remember the Fall of 2008 when Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher unwittingly caused then presidential candidate Barack Obama to tell the truth on his plans to raise taxes?

If your revenue is above 250 (thousand dollars), then from 250 down, your taxes are going to stay the same. It is true that, say for 250 up — from 250 to 300 or so, so for that additional amount, you’d go from 36 to 39 percent....

Eventually it was learned that Joe wasn't even a licensed plumber. Upon that revelation, it was as if Obama's answer about small business was irrelevant because the retort was in response to a question from a non small business owner.

Pretty asinine logic to be sure.

Yet despite Obama's star not shining as bright these days, he still has his blind apologists.

The latest vapid spin comes from Washington Post columnist Colby King, whose staunch defense of Obama comes under the guise of a Father's Day column.

Family, marriage and the contribution of fathers come together as topics for reflection on Father's Day. So I'd like to know why Barack Obama, a husband and a father in a family structure that encompasses bonds deemed essential to our society, is constantly and savagely attacked by conservative leaders whose personal circumstances undermine the family values they espouse?

Being a good father and devoted husband does not preclude a President from criticism if he is perceived to woefully lack leadership in times of crisis. Jimmy Carter, father of four, was married to wife Rosalynn for more than thirty years while he was President yet was an unmitigated disaster as a leader. Despite Carter being an avid family man, should the American public have stood idly by while double digit inflation, the Iranian hostage crisis and a gas shortage crippled this country's morale?

Consider Obama: Raised by a single mother in a middle-class family where hard work and education were watchwords, Obama graduated from two of the top schools in the country, Columbia University and Harvard Law School.

Ummm.....so what? Ted Kaczynski (aka The Unabomber) was a Harvard graduate, too. At age 20 no less. He also earned a PhD in Mathematics from the University of Michigan. So does that mean someone like Rush Limbaugh, a college dropout, can't criticize Kaczynski for killing three people?

Now let's turn to Obama's foremost critics: Rush Hudson Limbaugh III, Newton Leroy Gingrich and Sarah Palin.

Limbaugh and Gingrich have said too many negative things about Obama to count. "I want him to fail" (Limbaugh) and "secular socialist" (Gingrich) are just two of their attacks. Yet two of the nation's loudest proponents of family-values issues are serial husbands. Between them, the two men have had seven wives.

Again, SO WHAT?!?! I never recall Limbaugh or Gingrich criticizing Obama for being a failure in personal relationships. Again I ask: How is criticizing the President on his fiscal policies, stances on national security and lack of leadership in a crisis in any way out of bounds? Isn't dissent the highest form of patriotism? According to Hillary Clinton, we as Americans "have the right to disagree with any administration."

But what would a Father's Day discussion of the nuclear family and a moral society be without bringing into the picture Mrs. Family Values herself, Sarah Palin?

The same Palin who last week said of President Obama, "It sounds like the inner circle that he has are some Chicago thugs." Well, Palin knows lawbreaking, too.

Sarah Palin broke the law? Do tell!

Her sister-in-law, Diana Palin, half sister of the former governor's husband, got a 15-month sentence this year. Burglarizing the same Alaska house three times for money to satisfy a drug habit is the kind of thing that can get you arrested.

Wait, what?!?! Was Sarah Palin an accessory here? How is she culpable in this?

Thuggery? How about Sherry Johnston, the mother of Levi Johnston, the high school dropout who fathered Palin's grandson? She was arrested and charged with selling drugs; after pleading guilty to one count with intent to deliver the drug OxyContin she was sentenced to three years.

Because of her medical condition, the woman who was once Bristol Palin's future mother-in-law was released from prison to home confinement, where she wears an ankle-monitoring device.

I've never met Mr. King before but I surmise that he has some pretty strong legs. I mean, one must to make such gigantic leaps. Again, how is Sarah Palin responsible for the behavior of two adults who are not even blood relatives? Show me the quotes where Palin advocated (or even dismissed the seriousness) of the aforementioned crimes and I'll be one of her most vocal critics. But that's really not the purpose of King's vacuous screed, is it?

And the whereabouts of 19-year-old Levi on this Father's Day weekend? His bonds with the Palins were so tight, he said on TV, that Sarah and her husband, Todd, allowed Levi to live in their house with Bristol while they dated. Conservative family values?

Yeah, that must have really enraged liberals when Levi and Bristol decided not to abort their baby. Think how giddy they would have become had staunch pro-lifer Sarah Palin raised a daughter who had an abortion. Suddenly the sanctity of life would have been vitally important to supporters of the most radically pro-abortion President in history.

And to think, as we prepare to celebrate this day of men and family, Limbaugh, Gingrich and Palin have the unmitigated gall to look down their noses at our president.

Let that be a lesson to us all. If we have personal failings, we haven't the right to exercise our First Amendment rights.

The President is leading this country down the road of financial ruin? Because of your divorce you're not able to strenuously object.

Our Commander in Chief has displayed a gutless approach to the war on terror? How can you opine if you can't even stay in college for four years?

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