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 Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 1:24 pm |
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http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/index.html
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2008-03-23-1.html
I read this about a week ago and since the Rev. Wright issue has been mentioned, i thought i'd post it. I don't agree with some certain details OSC mentions, but as for his opinion, oddly enough, i agree with everything he says (i say oddly enough, because i almost never agree with anything OSC ever says--great writer, but too much of a typical Mormon otherwise).
| Quote: | By Orson Scott Card March 23, 2008
Answers about Obama
So much nonsense about Reverend Wright and Barack Obama. Isn't it obvious to everyone that this is only a big deal because the Clintons want to play on white voters' racial fears?
Obama has never said or done anything to suggest that he shares any of Wright's offensive views. But I still hear people saying, "If he could associate with the man for twenty years, he must have heard some of this, and it's bound to have rubbed off."
So let's look at Wright's comments and see what they mean, and then at Obama's reaction and see what that means, and then I'll give you the final, absolutely true answer about how much difference it should make in deciding how to vote.
And then, just for good measure, I'll take on a comparison between Hillary's and Michelle Obama's senior theses, and, because my goal is to be profoundly useful to the world, I will tell you what is significant in these papers and what is not.
Reverend Wright
Reverend Wright made some outrageous comments, but keep some things in mind:
1. He is of a generation of black Americans who have every right to be angry and unforgiving. Just because white America would like to be forgiven does not mean African-Americans are obliged to do so.
2. He was speaking in a black church to a black congregation, not acting as spokesman for a presidential campaign.
Let's dispense with the "G-- d--- America" line first. He's a preacher. He can use the word "damn" and it isn't swearing. He can invoke the curse of heaven when he feels it's appropriate. I don't like that he said it or why he said it, but when a preacher damns something, it's different from other people saying the same words.
I was bothered by the "Jesus was a black man" line. Jesus most assuredly was not a black man, he was of the people living in Palestine in the first generation of Roman occupation. They're not black now and they weren't black then.
But then I remembered all the pictures of Jesus I grew up with -- the light brown hair, gently waving down to his shoulders, the white white skin -- and I realize that for centuries, white Christians have reimagined Jesus as a German or Belgian. Why shouldn't blacks have the same privilege?
The point where I thought Rev. Wright went too far was the insane charge that white people -- the U.S. government in particular -- created the HIV virus in order to kill black people.
This is a blood slander, charging a deliberate campaign of genocide -- and not only does Wright have no evidence, it is not even possible to synthesize any virus at all, let alone one of such complexity, given present technology.
But with this vile charge, Wright reveals the game he's really playing. The overall message of his preaching is this: Black people, nothing that is going wrong in your lives is your fault, and there's nothing you can do about it except get mad at white people.
No, he reassures them, Africans aren't dying of AIDS because of their own irresponsible sexual behavior, it's a white conspiracy. Therefore black people don't have to change in any way -- it's all someone else's fault.
A responsible message would be the Bill Cosby message: No matter whose fault it is, nobody's going to fix things unless we fix them ourselves. So if we keep engaging in self-destructive social patterns, that's our foolish choice.
Instead, Wright's anger is really just another way of flattering his congregation. Making them feel complacent. For which Wright gets paid.
It's just like famous 19th-century New York minister Henry Ward Beecher (whose sex scandal was the model for The Scarlet Letter). He's the one who invented the phony idea that there was a gate in the wall of Jerusalem called "the Needle's Eye," which was so low that camels had to kneel to get through it.
He did this because his congregation was very rich, and Jesus said that it was as hard for a rich man to get into heaven as for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.
How could Beecher make his congregation feel like good Christians without giving up their obscene fortunes? By explaining that all Jesus meant was that rich people had to kneel (conveniently, at his church) and they'd get into heaven with their money.
But there never was such a gate in Jerusalem. And a kneeling camel can't get through any gate, since camels can't, or at least won't, move forward on their knees. What Jesus plainly meant was it's impossible for rich people to get into heaven, and Beecher couldn't deliver that message and keep his job.
Wright, like Beecher, finds it safer to tell his congregation lies than to tell them to get on the stick and change their lives and their culture.
So my disdain for Wright's preaching is strong. However, I'm not in his church so it's none of my business. There are plenty of other black preachers telling their congregants the same lies and giving them the same excuses -- but there are plenty of white preachers telling lies to their congregations, too.
That's just how it is in denominations where the people who don't like the preaching can change churches or fire the preacher.
Obama and Wright
The real issue is: Should we be suspicious of Obama because of Wright's teachings?
Obama has made it plain that he rejects Wright's racially divisive teachings. But he is tied to Reverend Wright by bonds of friendship that transcend doctrines.
They are friends. Reverent Wright and Obama worked together trying to make life better for poor blacks in Chicago. Wright was part of Obama's spiritual awakening and of his search for an identity as a black man. Obama hardly knew his father. Wright took on some of that role in his life.
It's not as if Wright has been accused of a crime other than saying things that make white people mad. I'm a white person. It makes me mad. So what? Wright's not running for president; if he were, I wouldn't vote for him.
Here is my question to those who think Obama should have broken off his friendship with Wright over Wright's offensive statements:
Do you want as President the kind of person who would deny and abandon his closest friends in order to win that political office?
Think about your family. Has your father or your mother or a grandparent or a sibling ever said something you thought was appalling and embarrassing? Do any of them hold opinions that you disagree with?
If your answer to any of those questions was yes, did you respond by breaking off all contact with them and denying your connection with them?
Sure, Obama called for Don Imus to be fired over his "nappy" remark -- he didn't know Imus; Imus was not his friend. It's easy to call for the destruction of a stranger.
But a friend who is as close as family? If you repudiate someone like that just because he said something embarrassing, you aren't much of a friend, are you?
I think Obama's behavior has been impeccably correct and completely honorable. Obama wants to be President of all the people of America, white and black. But he's not going to suck up to angry white people by repudiating one of his closest friends. Good for him.
Isn't it actually quite refreshing to have a candidate behave that honorably?
But if you insist on requiring that he completely separate himself from someone who has said offensive things, then what about a candidate who remains closely connected to someone who has committed crimes and done things that offend just as many Americans?
I speak of Hillary, who persists in her connection to an admitted perjurer who defiled the oval office with antics that would embarrass a randy college student (at last after he got sober and/or grew up).
Yet people actually honor Hillary for standing by her husband -- and, by the way, joining him in lying about his opponents and never apologizing for her own false charges.
What's sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose -- if you think Obama should separate from Wright, then you should be calling for Hillary to divorce Bill before she becomes President. After all, we wouldn't want to re-contaminate the White House with such indecency, would we?
And this time Bill would have way more free time. (Though less access to the oval office.)
It's all nonsense. I hope a candidate does not have to abandon his friends to become president. All he has to do is assure us that he does not share his friend's offensive opinions -- which Obama has done -- and demonstrate that he has never acted upon those ideas -- which Obama has also done.
That issue is closed as far as I'm concerned. If I hear anymore nonsense about this from any of you, I will reach an ugly conclusion about your real motive. No, I won't assume you're a racist, I'll assume something almost as icky: That you're a Hillary supporter.
Michelle vs. Hillary: The Senior Thesis Smackdown
All during the time Hillary was First Lady (not President, despite her claim of experience), Wellesley College kept her senior thesis under lock and key. They invented a rule that anyone could access any senior thesis except one by a sitting President or First Lady.
Princeton University was prepared to extend the same favor to Michelle Obama when people asked for her senior thesis -- without even waiting for her to become First Lady. But when reporters asked the Obama campaign about this, they did what Hillary should have done sixteen years ago: They simply provided the press with a copy of her thesis.
Since the press is not uniformly in support of Hillary, some reporters began clamoring for Hillary's senior thesis, after all these years. And guess what? She's no longer First Lady. So Wellesley allows you to see her thesis. You have to go to their archives. You can't photocopy the whole thing. But you can read it and copy bits of it.
So now I have read the conclusion of Michelle Obama's and of Hillary Clinton's senior thesis, and I can tell you that the results are significant and important for this election.
Not because of the content of their theses, however. These were seniors in college! They have a right to learn a few things afterward, to change their minds. Or do you think you should be judged your whole life by what you thought and said in college?
Let me point out my own sorry example. The election of 1968. Nixon vs. Humphrey -- but with George Wallace spoiling things by mounting the most important third-party challenge in my lifetime (I was born in 1951).
Fall of 1968, I had just turned seventeen. Definitely not a senior. I was a white kid raised in communities where I never saw black people, and while I had been aware of George Wallace as a segregationist governor of Alabama, I was ignorant of what that really meant in people's lives.
Segregation was over, I figured -- the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts had determined that -- and now Wallace himself was declaring that he was no longer in favor of segregation, implying that he'd just been doing what the people of Alabama elected him to do. So in my youth and ignorance, all I saw was a populist candidate running a third-party challenge.
I completely bought into the "not a dime's worth of difference" slogan and yes, on my college campus I took part in the Wallace campaign, manning the American Independent Party table by the student union building for a few hours one afternoon and attending a couple of meetings.
But the non-student adults working with his campaign creeped me out. It made me uneasy that people like that were Wallace's supporters. By the time of the election I had drifted away.
Within a couple of years I had learned a little more and was deeply embarrassed at my naivete and stupid enthusiasm. I changed my mind completely. Now I have a deep aversion to bigotry-centered populist demagogues -- one thinks, for instance, of the leaders of the anti-amnesty movement. (I'm thinking of Pat Buchanan and, to my disgust, my fellow-Mormon Mitt Romney.)
But if you look at what I was doing in college, there's no denying it, I was a Wallace supporter in September and October of 1968.
Does that youthful stupidity mean that I cannot ever get credit for growing up and changing my mind? I hope not.
That's why, to me, the opinions Michelle and Hillary had as college seniors aren't even interesting.
Michelle Not Racially Divisive
But let's lay one canard to rest right now. The only way you could read Michelle Obama's paper and think she was being even the tiniest bit racially divisive is if you want that to be the opinion people get about her. In short, only Hillary supporters could find anything wrong with this paper.
Michelle's major was African-American Studies. Her paper was a study of the degree to which black Princeton graduates identified with the black community. That's not racial divisiveness, that's the scholarly field she was in!
She sent out questionnaires and got back enough responses to yield interesting, if inconclusive, results. In the questionnaire she used questions that revealed her ideas, at the beginning of the study, of what marked one's degree of identification with black culture.
Using those markers, she reached the conclusion that during their years at Princeton, black students tended to identify more closely than ever with the black community, but a few years after leaving school and taking part in the white-dominated mainstream culture, their degree of identification was much less.
This is about how blacks in that time and in that place saw themselves vis-a-vis the real racial divisions in our country. But her study was not divisive, it was observational.
Hillary's paper, on the other hand, was about radical community organizer Saul D. Alinsky, whom she got a chance to meet and interview. Writing in the late 1960s, Hillary was just feeling out her newfound radicalness and so she was sympathetic to Alinsky's causes, though not worshipful of him.
The funny thing is that not being allowed to see this paper made anyone who knew the topic wonder what she wrote that was so awful. When you actually read it, you really don't see anything more than youthful hero-worship combined with a terminal longing to be cool.
It's About How They Think
So the actual subject matter of both papers is really quite innocuous, in my opinion.
But that doesn't mean they're irrelevant. On the contrary, they are both very informative. I don't care what these two women believed in college. But the methodology and the manner of writing tell us a great deal about how they analyze and process information -- how they think.
What they think can change, but the way their brains work is almost certainly locked in stone by that age. In short, we can tell from these papers how smart they are, how open-minded, how incisive, how analytical.
I'm not talking about trivialities like spelling. They were educated at different times and were supervised by different professors. Both wrote these papers before spell-checkers and neither paper was written on a computer.
Hillary's spelling is better; Michelle Obama has faux pas like "occurances" instead of "occurrences." But this is no surprise at all, given the deemphasis on spelling in the years between their papers. Hillary is of my generation: We were taught to spell. And maybe one had a better proofreader than the other.
I'm talking about ability to think, and Michelle Obama's paper reveals her to be keenly analytical.
What I love is that in the process of her study, she realized the shortcomings of her methodology and the inadequacy of her initial assumptions. She writes quite clearly that the markers of commitment to the black community that she started out with -- liking black music, eating black food, etc. -- might not have been appropriate, and if she had it to do over again, she'd use different standards.
Not only that, but she ended with suggestions for further studies that should be conducted to get clearer, more useful results. She also speculated intelligently on why she got the results she did, and on what it really means about black students at Princeton.
On point after point, her analysis was incisive; yet she also introduced most of the major doubts that her study could arouse. In short, she had a true scientific attitude, with ego almost entirely removed from the process.
From this thesis, I see the youthful Michelle Obama as smart, honest, open-minded, humble, and determined to find out the truth regardless of consequences.
Then I read Hillary's conclusion, and I was stunned. It's not just that her opinions are all over the map, usually without any kind of evidentiary justification. It's that she can't seem to write a paragraph that makes any kind of point.
It's a chaotic mess. What does she think of Alinsky? One moment she seems to think that his enterprise was valuable and important; the next, that he was untrustworthy and unreliable and not a clear thinker. What does she think of anything? She seems to be looking down on everybody.
And then it all comes clear. There's only one consistent theme that is expressed throughout Hillary's paper. It's all about how smart she is, how superior to everybody and every group she mentions. She can mock this and that because she stands on a higher plane than they do.
Instead of being an earnest seeker after truth, like Michelle, Hillary writes as if she knew "the truth" and if the reader is smart, the reader will know it too.
But in the pages that I read, Hillary shows no competence whatsoever at rational analysis, at self-questioning; she writes pretentiously, but very, very badly.
If you aren't very analytical yourself, you can come away from her paper thinking what she wants you to think: Wow, wasn't Hillary Rodham, like, smart and cool?
But if you hold her to any kind of rigorous standard of scholarship and thought, her paper is an embarrassment. It's not that she's dumb, it's that she's glib and assumes that whatever she happens to believe is the smart thing.
If I got a paper like Michelle Obama's from a college student today, I'd be impressed. She'd get an A -- after she corrected the spelling errors.
But I'd hand Hillary's back to her and say, "Now go do some research and analysis and figure out what you think before you start writing your real thesis. This one is a waste of everyone's time."
Michelle Obama is not running for President. But she is running for the office -- First Lady -- that Hillary claims is the very best qualification for being President eight years later.
I can tell you right now that if Barack listens to his wife the way that Bill claims to have listened to Hillary, President Obama will have a far smarter pillow-talk adviser than President Clinton ever had.
And that, my friends, does matter.
Bill Clinton married pretentious ambition. Barack Obama married the smartest woman he knew.
Slam dunk for Obama. Meaningless dribbling for Hillary. |
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"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed." |
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| Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 2:02 pm |
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| Yaish |
| Intel Chief |
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Ok, I'll be honest but I got bored about halfway through.
For me, this didn't break my streak of disagreeing with almost everything OSC says.
Is Obama the same as Rev Wright? No of course not.
Should someone abandon their friends to become President? No, of course not.
Should someone be judged by the friends they keep? Well yes, actually they should.
I have some acquaintances with whom I disagree over a great many things, but not too many friends. My friends are people who think pretty much like me and who do things I think are morally acceptable.
If one of my friends does something I find reprehensible, I am no longer their friend. It's funny how it works out that way.
Now, not everyone has to do this. I can completely understand why someone might want to remain friends with a person even when they do something that you strongly disagree with. Most people however, are not running for the office of President of the United States of America.
If they were, I would indeed expect them to hold to a higher standard, especially since they are nominally representing ME whenever they speak or go about their official acts.
Card also mentions that since Wright is a black preacher, in a black church, and he's just saying those things to get his black congregation to go along with him it's ok.
I find that completely ridiculous, the environment doesn't have a thing to do with the act. Damning America? Sure, go for it. But don't expect me to want you to be the spiritual adviser for the man who will be leading America. That isn't the type of advice I want our President to receive.
If someone is making claims that the government is conducting a planned genocide on blacks across the world, I don't want them anywhere near the centers of power. I don't want people who listen and silently condone that sort of behavior near those centers of power either.
Have all the wacked out, screwed up, tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theories you want. Hold whatever personal beliefs you wish. I don't give a damn. But, don't expect someone isn't going to hold those beliefs against you when picking you for President.
Someone's religion, their friends, their personal beliefs are EXACTLY what we should be looking at when choosing a President. No, not soley, obviously their record, their experience, and their stated intentions mean just as much. To think that the personal lives of a President are somehow not relevant campaign issues is childish however.
You aren't choosing a gardener, you are choosing someone who is supposed to represent you in the seat of President. Their decisions will affect you every single day. If you don't take their underlying personality into account you'll find yourself unhappily surprised someday.
I also find this one particular quote very offensive:
| Quote: | | Now I have a deep aversion to bigotry-centered populist demagogues -- one thinks, for instance, of the leaders of the anti-amnesty movement. (I'm thinking of Pat Buchanan and, to my disgust, my fellow-Mormon Mitt Romney.) |
So the anti-amnesty movement is bigoted? Why? Because OSC says so? Sorry, it's based on the fact that people here illegally should have to go home and earn their way in, not be given a free pass. It works for everyone, of every color and country of origin.
The fact is that most illegal immigrants HAPPEN to be latinos since we share a border with Mexico and it makes a natural entry point for Mexicans and other Latin and South Americans.
We share a borer with Canada too, but not too many Canadians are crossing over illegally. If they do, send their ass back as well. |
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... the kilt had concealed a blaster strapped to one thigh and a knife to the other. He was aware of the present gentle customs against personal weapons, but he felt naked without them. Such customs were nonsense anyhow, foolishment from old women - there was no such thing as "dangerous weapons," only dangerous people.
--Robert Heinlein in Methuselah's Children |
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| Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 5:31 pm |
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| paul68 |
| Shaved Ape |
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| Joined: 15 Nov 2005 |
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| Location: Wer'e not from around here man! |
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Damn Yaish, you pretty well beat me to every point.
"Just because white America would like to be forgiven does not mean African-Americans are obliged to do so."
I have nothing to be forgiven for, just as I feel the majority of "white" America doesn't either. In fact, I am part of a generation that has found itself on the defensive, for things they never did, bending over backwards to prove how wonderful and accepting a well adjusted young white person I am. Meanwhile I have years of school, living in a ghetto, wherein endless instances of being targeted by blacks for violence and persecution took place, BECAUSE I AM WHITE. Who should be pissed here? Who should be forgiven? It can be swept under the rug all anyone wants, but the plain fact of the matter is, black on white violence FAR outweighs the reverse and has for decades, and black against white discrimination happens much more often than the reverse, and has for decades.
A black man in a predominantly white church will have little to zero issues. A white man in a black church better be ready for one interesting life. I am sick and tired of hearing morons trying to be politicaly and intillectually correct spouting off about the need for whites to be forgiven, to make apologies. Guess what? Whatever happend 200 years ago, 100 years ago, 50 years ago? That was not me. Get the fuck over it, like the Jews, the Catholics, Italians, the Irish have. I don't owe any black man jack shit, just because he's black, and I am white.
"Obama has never said or done anything to suggest that he shares any of Wright's offensive views."
No he has not, and it is because of this, that I still hold out hope for him and his campaign. He HAS however CHOSEN to affiliate himself closely with a person who has a bigoted, racist character and consider him a close friend and a mentor. This IS A PROBLEM.
"Do you want as President the kind of person who would deny and abandon his closest friends in order to win that political office?"
No, I want as president someone who chooses his friends according to their character and how well it compliments their own.
I would have no problem whatsover with a president who said to someone close to him, "I'm sorry, but what you are saying and what you are teaching is racist, bigoted, ungrateful, extremely offensive, derogatory to my country, and I cannot accept such views and behaviour in persons I would call friends."
I would find that a truer display of character than tolerating such behaviour for the sake off what? Compromising your supposed values, your very character so you can be a member of a church?
Obama is supposed to get kudos for not totally ditching Wright now that he is running for Pres? Please. He'd dammned if he does, and dammned if he dont, and he knows it. Even more damage would result from a total break with Wright now that all this has come to a head. The natural assumption would be, "If Wright is so offensive, why didn't he break from him a decade or so ago, instead of now when he's running for office"?
THAT would be the most obvious of political pandering, politics as usual, something ALL the candidates are trying desperately to make themselves appear against since it's the biggest underlying theme this election. People are sick of the politics of the last 15 years, and anyone who plays the usual game is asking for a huge defeat.
"Someone's religion, their friends, their personal beliefs are EXACTLY what we should be looking at when choosing a President."
Exactly right Yaish. |
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| Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 8:06 pm |
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| Raven |
| Google Meister |
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| Quote: | | Someone's religion, their friends, their personal beliefs are EXACTLY what we should be looking at when choosing a President. |
So... does this means that whoever you voted for 4 or 8 years ago was based on who their ministers and friends were? All your mayors and governors and senator, etc were voted for because you had no problems with their ministers or their friends...? I’m sure if everyone thought like that, we wouldn’t even have politicians because no one could get voted in because they all most likely have at least one friend who’s a massive douche.
And you now have issues with this guy because he’s friends with a minister you don’t like. That minister is an American, if Obama wins, then he’ll be the president of that guy, plus he’ll be the president of all the other thousands of douches that America is filled with just like every president that came before him who were also all associated and friends with people who were sometimes way bigger douches than this guy ever was. The only reason we know so much about this one douche is because the network of douches won’t let it go. This friend didn’t just suddenly pop up when Obama was running for president; he’s been around for a good portion of his life… Obama’s been running for politics and winning positions for about 16 or so years. If you’re so worried about how this guy will affect his decisions, then look at his past positions and see if you notice anywhere that it affected him negatively… I’ve been doing a lot of research and still doing more, I haven’t found anything yet, I’ll let you know if I do. |
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"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed." |
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| Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 10:24 pm |
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| paul68 |
| Shaved Ape |
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| Joined: 15 Nov 2005 |
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| Location: Wer'e not from around here man! |
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http://skeptomania.forumwise.com/skeptomania-thread5423.html
I've done a great deal of research on Obama, and have been looking him up since he spoke at the DNC for Kerry. As you can see from the above thread, I had little problem allowing the benefit of the doubt, and letting his record speak for him.
HOWEVER. This instance, and Obama's subsequent handling of it, has me questioning whether letting his record alone speak for him is enough.
The main problem being, Obama's claims that in 20 years of church under Wright, 20 years of considering him an advisor and "spiritual mentor", he never heard Wrights sermons denouncing white America, never heard praise for Farrakhan, never saw the racist and bigoted side of Wright?
I'd have been much more willing to accept Obama saying point blank, that Wrights views are common in lower class areas where poverty, crime and the like are a problem in the black community, and that his hopes were to change that.
That I believe is closer to the truth.
Character, take your lumps, move ahead, and people will respect you for it... But no.
No, instead he seems to have tried to deny knowledge, which we've had quite enough of for the last 8 years.
Obama should have simply denounced his rhetoric, and moved on. The more he addresses it, the worse he looks. And frankly, it's depressing for a former enthusiastic supporter.
"So... does this means that whoever you voted for 4 or 8 years ago was based on who their ministers and friends were? All your mayors and governors and senator, etc were voted for because you had no problems with their ministers or their friends"
No, it does not. It means that these things are part of what helps when forming an idea as to a persons character who you will likely never get the chance to meet for yourself.
So, are you saying that we should ignore that a hypothetical candidate is a member of a Fundamentalist Mosque? Or a member of The Westboro Baptist Church? |
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| Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 10:34 pm |
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| Yaish |
| Intel Chief |
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| Joined: 14 Oct 2005 |
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Oh no doubt there are lots of ugly people in the background of every politician. It doesn't mean I have to accept it or vote for someone who associates with people I find abhorrent.
Yeah, we know more about Obama's pastor than we know about most other candidates but that's the way it works. You can't blame the media simply for outing his ministers diatribe. They wouldn't run it if people weren't interested, and people ARE interested because here is this person running for President of the United States, and one of his closest mentors and friends keeps saying things that most Americans find repulsive.
When Obama still sticks with that guy, even if he says "well, I don't agree with THOSE positions of his" it still brings into question his true feelings and motivations.
If someone was friends with a pedophile but justified it by saying "Well I don't think you should fuck little boys in the ass" it still makes that guy a scum for hanging around him.
Obama's situation is different, but in some ways just as bad or even worse.
As for Obama's record, I don't like it. He doesn't stand for anything I stand for and neither does Hillary. McCain is better for me personally, but not much better. Of the candidates available he is the one that most closely represents my beliefs. I might wish to pick someone else but that isn't a realistic option.
Unfortunately I'm in the position of voting AGAINST someone again, rather than for them. Not an ideal situation by any means but it's the best one left. |
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_________________
... the kilt had concealed a blaster strapped to one thigh and a knife to the other. He was aware of the present gentle customs against personal weapons, but he felt naked without them. Such customs were nonsense anyhow, foolishment from old women - there was no such thing as "dangerous weapons," only dangerous people.
--Robert Heinlein in Methuselah's Children |
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| Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 10:55 pm |
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| TheMadHobbit |
| Subway Tolkien |
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| Joined: 17 Oct 2005 |
Posts: 1969
Karma: +24
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| Location: NJ |
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| I am voting "None of the Above". I think they ALL suck but I have a moral imperative to vote, so it looks like a write in this year. |
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"I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain." |
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| Skeptomania - Paranormal / UFOs, etc. Forum Index -> POLITICS |
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