I could write about my first full-time work week in nearly 14 years, but I won't bore you with that. By now, anyone who knows me can pretty much guess what I have to say about being confined to a cubicle, tethered to a phone line and stuck to a chair for 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, 2000+ hours a year. Sounds pretty dreary, doesn't it? Here's something even more dreary.
With the election of the replacement leader of the US looming over us, I feel compelled to share my opinion about all the mudslinging and useless finger pointing done by both parties - DON'T LISTEN TO IT. Sure, the intent is probably to get you & I, the voting public, enraged enough to do our own fact finding research so that we can make an educated "guess" (and I emphasize guess) about who our next president should be - NOT! Who has the time to do all of that? Unfortunately, not enough of us.
This all started with an email string that was sent out by my very pro-Republican dad. It misleads the reader, taking out of context particular statements and twisting them to make Obama sound like a racist. Though I'm a registered Democrat, I'm taking off my partisan hat for now, because I'm tired of the BS rhetoric that overpowers the true issues that face our country today - the economy, the war, our freedom. Both sides are guilty of it.
If you haven't seen the email that's been circulating, go to
http://snopes.com/politics/obama/ownwords.asp. It presents the complete context from which these statements were taken. Someone must have had a lot of time on their hands to go through his book and find, out of the thousands of sentences, those which could have the most negative impact on Obama's image. These are damning statements for sure when read alone. But given the whole picture, one can see that this is just another ploy to sway the lazy thinker's opinion. I'm being harsh, but what we should all be is enraged.
Do our leaders and their cohorts truly believe that we, the American public, the people they represent, the people whose best interests they claim to have in mind, are not smart enough to see through the smoke and mirrors? Who cares that Palin is a gun-toting, elk-hunting hockey mom. Does she represent the values that are important to me? Big deal - McCain was a POW (well, that is a big deal, but in a different way) - does that make him the most qualified leader for our already war-torn country? And what about Obama's so called lack of experience with foreign policy. Truly, in recent history, how many of our presidential candidates were experts on foreign policy? You get my point?
What we should really be concerned with is this. Who would I want running my house? Do I want my liberties taken away, legalizing spying in the name of "security"? Who has the right to tell me what I can and can't do with my body? Do I want someone else telling me how my hard earned money should be allocated - whether it be to support an un-winnable war or provide health care to everyone in the country?
I will support the candidate that I feel best represents the direction in which I want my country to move. I will be a cheerleader for the one whose values most closely mirror mine. I will make my own decision based on my own research, turning a blind eye to the negative campaigning that is almost expected in any political race. Like those old police shows used to say, "Just the facts ma'am, just the facts."
http://www.factcheck.org/
