Yes We Can
A few quick notes...thoroughly enjoyed the Democratic convention and am hoping and praying that Senator Obama is our next U.S. President. It is exciting, though, to know that either way it goes it will be an historic election since McCain has chosen a female vp nominee. I have no particular objection to Sen. McCain personally, but I think we've had enough killing and dying in the middle east...thousands of American lives later, as well as (I believe) hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives later and still no sign of the lunatic that murdered all those people on 9/11. I firmly and strongly believe that an American civilian life is not more valuable than an Iraqi civilians life and the losses there have been catastrophic. Enough already. Well, I shouldn't go on and on about my political beliefs because most anyone who knows me knows that I could go on and on and on about the way I feel about this.
However, I keep receiving these anti-Obama emails lately. They are interesting and I like to keep informed...I am not so bull-headed that I would not change my mind if the facts indicated that Obama was not a good choice for President, but the emails I am receiving are ludicrous. The jokes are one thing...I can chuckle at good jokes regardless of the candidate...but some of these other attacks on Obama range from misleading (to put it nicely) to disturbing.
The first one I am thinking of is this one I received where the attack was based on Obama removing an American flag from his campaign plane. It even cited Snopes as agreeing it was true. So, curious, I went to Snopes. It turned out to be true because the flag in question was a registered trademark for the airline that they bought the plane from and had to be removed by law!!! I hate this kind of misleading crap. Is this what the anti-Obama folks have to turn to in order to attack him?
The second one I opened up today was a big long attack on Obama's African roots. This I find disturbing. I thought the whole point in this country was that anyone can become anything they want to be regardless of where they came from. Now we are saying that Obama is "too African" because there are some photos of him with family in Kenya? Huh? There was one photo of his grandmother with a big smile on her face and I could not for the life of me understand what the problem was:
She looks so happy and proud, it made me smile.I don't like to use the racist label, but it seemed to me that the only purpose in using that photo was to remind the closet racists out there that his family is indeed black. It made me incredibly sad to think that photo of his lovely grandmother would somehow be used against him in the 21st century because of the color of her skin. Sick to my stomach and sad. I thought as a nation we were better than that now. The other point of the email was to discuss his family's "radical roots". I would venture to bet that very few people looking at that email understand very much about Kenya's political situation and that "radical" has an entirely different meaning. Lastly, again I must stress...what about his family? Do we hold an individual accountable for all the actions of their family? Obama is bad because he didn't disown them and is shown in photos posing with them? I know I have family members that I don't necessarily agree with on certain subjects, but I don't disown them! Enough to say that this email was incredibly disturbing because it appeared to be racist and also to attack a person for the actions of their extended family and I think both of those things are despicable ways to attack and political candidate.
Show me some fair and relevant criticisms of Obama (lack of experience, anyone?) and I'll be willing to listen and consider, but this trash is too much.
When will the mud-slinging end so that we can run a respectable campaign?
Oh well, better run...babies crying.
Love,
Melissa
