NOBODY ASKED ME, BUT...
President Obama has been sworn in as the 44th president of the United States of America. There is no question (in the minds of most reasonable people) that he was properly elected by the States of the Union at the Electoral College, and incidentally by a clear majority of voters who participated in the election. The Constitution of the United States makes provisions for election of a president, and all indications are that those provisions were duly followed - ergo, Barack Obama is the legitimate President of the United States of America.

There seems to be far too many people unwilling to accept these constitutional principles of succession and order, and to allow the majority to rule. We think that personal political agendas, often driven by financial greed, are driving this destructive attitude. In our minds this is clearly unpatriotic activity which undermines our form of representative democracy which is based on the concept that the majority rules - but the minority can, and should, constructively protest. But that minority cannot and should not set aside or disrupt the will of the majority. Some of the people in our circle of contacts have taken their protest (actually an attempt at the disruption of legitimate constitutional government activities) to the level of a HATE CRIME. At the least, we consider these individuals to be unpatriotic; and in fact, they are a threat to a government OF the people, elected BY the people, and FOR the people - as Abe the rail-splitter would put it. We hope that these unpatriotic disruptors and haters will take some time to reflect on their nefarious activities, and realize that they have crossed the line of legitimate protest. Unfortunately, based on how these people apparently think (actually, it appears to be more of an emotional reactionary process than logical thought) we do not expect that they will come to this conclusion.

These screwballs exist on BOTH the conservative and liberal extremes of the political spectrum. Neither of these extremes move our country forward (they certainly are not "progressive"), nor do they preserve the American way of life (they do not "conserve" our precious freedom), they tear it down. One of the by-products of the vile hate which they spew on the Internet and TV is that it discourages many citizens from speaking out and participating in our democracy for fear of having to engage these people (often friends or family), and then being viciously attacked by them... Informed, reasoned, discourse is simply not what these characters want. In our view, our country needs a strong and legitimate minority to maintain balance in our government; but the current minority political party has diminished their standing to such a degree that they are no longer effective at bringing this much needed balance to our government. The recent inept negotiations regarding the self-inflicted "Fiscal Cliff" make this point all too well... If YOU think that OUR stating these observations is wrong-minded or offensive, then you are likely the very people we are referring to. We hope that more of our friends who find this behavior offensive will also speak out against your disruptive and inappropriate activities.

Recently, we were enjoying Shark & Bake (fish sandwiches) at pretty Maracas Bay on the north shore of Trinidad. We found ourselves sharing a table with some nice folks from Venezuela who made the statement that, "You Americans hate Venezuela and our President Chavez." We assured them that we did not hate the Venezuelan people, and that we were in fact glad that they had a republic, governed by a constitution, under which the majority of their people elected a leader. We told them that we were looking forward to visiting their country in the coming months. What we did not say is that there is no way we would vote for a socialist from the far left for president, but we did tell them that we were happy that the Venezuelan people were able to select their leader, and then allow him to lead them in the face of strong domestic and international opposition. It is their choice who leads them.

For the record, we are registered to vote as "independent" with respect to party affiliation. We endorse neither of the two major American political parties because, in the aggregate, the ACTIONS of them BOTH do not reflect our views of good government; but then, we do not condemn them either. The majority has spoken, and President Obama is our lawful elected leader - so please let him lead. As American citizens traveling the world we fly our national ensign onboard Tiger Lilly daily - we are PROUD TO BE AMERICANS! God Bless our president, and God bless the United States of America.
Tom & Lilly Service - Ambassadors At Large
S/V Tiger Lilly
Chaguaramas, Trinidad
West Indies