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Obama is Hitler
Thursday, July 22 2010
Ray and Nancy drank coffee and then headed off to the closing on their house down in Old Hurley, the first real estate either of them has ever owned. In the early afternoon they came back, having done the deed. And at that point we assembled a convoy (well, it was only two Subarus) to move Ray's stuff out of our house and garage (this included some large furniture pieces Deborah had given him) into the new place. Once down there, we moved most of the stuff into the studio (a finished space attached to the detached garage), then all of us (Gretchen, Ray, Nancy, Sally, and Eleanor) walked around the place to see it in its barren state. It's a good house with lots of potential as a place to throw huge parties. Its standout characteristic is its long, narrow yard, which extends all the way to the US-209 right-of-way in back. Ray and Nancy will have to find a better use for it than as lawn, its present state.
Sally kept wandering off across the neighbors' lawns. You don't have to travel far either north or south along Old Route 209 before crossing a boundary, and by the time I got to her she was in a lawn two or three houses to the north. But the people were nice. It's a nice neighborhood. And Hurley's Pacific Islander population just increased by 14%.
Probably less sanguine than some about the demographic changes afoot were a small group of protesters at the corner of Wynkoop and Old Route 209. There were two or three white-haired white women holding signs advocating the idea of Obama's impeachment (perhaps because he's from Kenya). The signs had the now-classic (and much parodied) picture of Barrack Obama with a Hitler mustache, as if the criminalization of pre-existing conditions in health insurance were in any way reminiscent of the killing of six million Jews, the killing of six million non-Jews, the invasion of Poland, the invasion of France, the bombing of London, the subjugation of Norway, the breach of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, and lesser crimes too numerous to list.
On our way to lunch in Kingston, Gretchen rolled down the window of Ray's car and hollered at the protestors that she was embarrassed that she lived in the same town as them. Gretchen's main problem with the protest was not its intended target (Obama) but the means of the attack (the ignorant trivialization of the Holocaust). Gretchen hasn't been an especially good Jew for the past few years, but on this one issue she remains as Jewish as ever. It turned out that the protesters were supporters of Lyndon LaRouche, a fringe right wing ideologue and perennial presidential candidate. Their Obama-with-Hitler-mustaches have been a common image at Tea Party rallies, though most non-LaRouchies find them either offensive or distracting. From my perspective, the Hitler mustache signs are mostly a good thing, because they suggest to ignorant middle-of-the-road Americans that Obama's opposition consists mainly of a bunch of irrational nutcases.
We had lunch at Gabriel's in Uptown Kingston. Our waiter was a flamboyant gentleman with long painted nails and closely-shaved legs. He wasn't handling the stress of the Thursday lunch crowd particularly well, seeming frazzled by the smallest things. I ordered the falafel wrap, the only item that I find reliably good there. If one asks for hot sauce, one is given a little ketchup container full of Sriracha (aka "rooser sauce"). That's almost like being back in Portland, Oregon (where squirt bottles of Sriracha can be found on a good number of restaurant tables).
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