This is funny.

As we get closer to the election, there is a sense of desperation setting in. How do I know this?

I know this from the things I see around me, the emails I receive, the stories in the newspaper, and the pictures that are taken.

I saw this posted to a contact’s Flickr stream:


Not so much a statement of fact, as much of an example of the lengths McCain supporters are going to in an attempt play to potential voters’ fear (okay, there’s nothing on it that says it’s from a McCain supporter but I can’t imagine an Obama supporter would be running around putting something like this on a person’s windshield).

Then, I got this:



I watched the whole thing, you should too.

I don’t like politics of fear and it doesn’t matter to me who is doing it. When I got the following email back on November 4, 2004 I was no less annoyed:

Dear friends,

I have been composing this note in my mind all morning. I guess it's a sort of concession note, one which I was hoping and praying would be a victory note instead.

This is a very dark day for our country. The unified blindness to the danger that this administration poses to our very way of life and to our lives, is astonishing.

We are now in profound danger of losing everything that this country has stood for for over two hundred years. This disregard for the Constitution (which a President is sworn to protect) and the contempt for individual rights which this Administration has practiced is now only going to increase, as their perception that the American people approve of their actions is now in play.

It baffles me how the idea of "values" seems to have been completely distorted. Pastors around the country stood at their pulpits this past Sunday and urged their congregation to support Bush and his contingent because they represent "family values". They will get rid of Roe vs Wade, they will prevent gay marriage, they will bring prayer in schools and they will promote faith based initiatives... These issues are just a smoke screen put up to blind people to the fact that this administration has only one true "value" and that is MONEY. This country just sold it's soul to the devil and doesn't even know it.

What kind of "values" allowed them to murder thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, people whose only crime was they were in the way of Dick Cheney gaining control of the Iraqi oil fields and in the way of this administration's desire to set up permanent US bases in the middle east (that is what they are doing in Iraq, building permanent bases), these people weren't insurgents or terrorists, they were ordinary people going about their lives, children, babies, mothers, fathers, grandparents, farmers, teachers, lawyers and doctors, eating breakfast, going to school, telling their children bedtime stories, when bombs started dropping on their homes, their schools and their places of business. They hadn't threatened us, they hadn't attacked us, they hadn't done anything which justifies their deaths. (And what about the thousands who have been maimed, blinded, orphaned... homeless and jobless, the atrocities our government perpetrated are endless).

This Administration's "values" are to sacrifice the lives of brave young men and women whose only mistake was to trust their government. Brave and honorable American military personnel who had faith that their president wouldn't put them in harm's way unless it was absolutely necessary. Their lives are being sacrificed for the almighty god "dollar".

"Thou shall not commit murder..." unless you can justify it with lies. These are the real "values" of this administration, lies, murder and contempt for anyone who disagrees with them.

Trying to find ways around the Geneva Convention (which simply promotes human decency), mistreating helpless prisoners, keeping people imprisoned with no access to counsel (not everyone in Guantanamo Bay and other prisons is guilty, but have no way to defend themselves), this is the kind of behavior we equate with dictators and despots like Stalin and Hitler and yes, Saddam, not with our great American "values" of liberty and justice.

What kind of "values" justify the selling of our nation's beauty to the highest bidder? The fact that this Administration is willing to sell off forrest which are thousands of years old (some trees where saplings when Christ walked the earth), sell off the glorious beauty of God's creations, plant and animal, for corporate profit and greed is a sin not a "family value". The fact that they will pollute and plunder this magnificent planet is tragic.

They are selling off our children's future, they are putting our health on the block for the highest bidder. And they are doing it behind closed doors in secret meetings... those are the real "family values" of this Administration, how valuable is your family to their wallets. They rule the country through fear, when the truth is we should be afraid of them.

America is in for a shock when the truth of just how corrupt this Administration is begins to be clear. Because mark my words they are corrupt, "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely"... well the blind faith of the people just gave them "absolute power".

I have a prayer today for the "Presidential Prayer Group", pray for America's sons and daughters because their lives have just been put into the hands of monsters...

And grieve with me because our lives are about to be forever changed...

Yours, O

PS Let's never give up the faith that real "values" will eventually prevail and we will be able to regain some sort of true decency and justice and honor to the concept of being a American. Let's march and write and demonstrate and not go gently into the night! And most importantly never ever give in to the fear and betray your fellows, together we will stand, divided we will fall.

I responded to the email’s sender in kind and told him not to pass off this whiny, poor me bs off on me. The response I got was full of vitriol but the upshot was I should think about leaving the country or as the last line of the email put it: So, maybe you should go to Bermuda... Or go to hell.

Yes, it’s easy to remain friends when people agree with you, not so much when they don’t.

Looking at that email now though, a couple of things immediately jump out at me.

First off, we’re still here.

How did that happen? Four years later and we are all still here! An amazing thing, no? The sky didn’t fall and we survived. All the gloom and doom embodied in the email sent to me on election day of 2004 and while things aren’t wonderfully, rosy, lollipop dreams we truly never know what they would have been like if the other guy won. They could be better or they could be worse and we’ll never know.

But... we survived.

Among the things the email warned of happening:

• They will get rid of Roe vs Wade (still here last time I checked)


• they will prevent gay marriage (well that didn’t happen, if anything there have been more states recognizing it)


• they will bring prayer in schools and they will promote faith based initiatives (I don’t think prayer in schools has gone through - I’m sure they have continued to promote faith based initiatives but I’m not quite sure to what effect)


• ...that is what they are doing in Iraq, building permanent bases (if anything I think people here feel we can’t get out soon enough and as far as permanent bases go I don’t even think the Iraqis want us there)


• The fact that this Administration is willing to sell off forest which are thousands of years old (our forests are still there)


• pray for America’s sons and daughters because their lives have just been put into the hands of monsters...

I mean... c’mon.

The point I’m trying to make here is no matter who wins, our nation is strong enough to survive it and if we want to make progress as a nation we have to begin to adjust our attitudes. When the American electorate felt the administration had failed them, the midterm election provided an opportunity for the citizens of this country to voice their displeasure and voice it they did. The Republican party lost control of the House, it happened for a reason, it happened because our system works.

It doesn’t work 100% of the time, it’s not perfect, far from it. The people who live in our land want desperately to get things right and I think all of us buy into the ideal.

One of the things I liked about the last debate... I mean really, REALLY liked. It was the fact Barack Obama didn’t succumb to the temptation to paint his opponent as a polar opposite. He was able to recognize there are areas where the two men agree and even issues where Obama has great respect for the stands his opponent has taken. In that single moment he looked to me, more presidential than any leader we have had in a long time.

Will this translate to an effective term in office should he become Chief Executive? I truly do not know. Even assuming he will win, is putting the cart before the horse because they are other factors in play here. Race, whether or not it is overt element of the contest, is still an issue in some people’s minds. It’s unfortunate, but I think people would be foolish to blind themselves of the role it is playing in this Presidential election.

Flip side, I saw this story in the paper:

Franklin County, Ohio, prosecutor Ron O’Brien launched the investigation after student reporters at palestra.net, a Fox News affiliate, discovered the mass registration effort at the home in a working-class neighborhood on Brownlee Avenue.

“Our board of elections referred 13 suspicious registrations to us, all from people with out-of-state addresses, all of whom claim to be living in a three-bedroom house in Columbus,” O’Brien said Friday.

Vote From Home is registered to the East 82nd Street brownstone of Heather Halstead, daughter of Halstead Properties founder Clark Halstead Jr. She and her husband, NYU grad Marc Gustafson, are among those under scrutiny.

Maybe there is this feeling, things like this are necessary but, I can’t condone the idea of ‘winning at all costs.’ It’s an attitude the sacrifices all the noble rhetoric and high-ideals. I’m enough of a realist to know politics are a dirty game but isn’t there a point where these things should stop? It sure seems as if no one is blameless.