pan6467

Whoever wins, I pray for them to have the strength, courage and wisdom to lead our nation through the troubled times ahead and hopefully through good times.

I pray that they serve their term with honor, dignity and convey hope and assurance to the people.

I pray that they serve in good health and bring to our troubled divided nation unity and goodwill.

I pray they serve honestly and with true heartfelt caring towards each of us and do what they believe in their hearts to be best for us.... what is best may not always be easy for the masses to swallow at first, but hopefully the new president can explain how in the end we will be better and stronger after our shot of sour medicine is taken.

Bu most of all, I pray he is fair and puts forth what is best for the many and not just the few.

After, months of fighting, months of arguing, months of hatred and fear...... we need peace and to be brought together, I pray the next president can do this.

I am truly torn on who to elect. Obama's stated policies are what I have argued for for years. Much of what he says in his campaign I agree with and have said we needed for years {read some of my back posts before this past election season and see.... for those of you who believe I am such a Neo Con}.

But I also look at and judge a man by whom he associates with. Ayres, Wright, Rezko..... and so on. His reactions to those scandals and how he dealt with them bothers me. The lies and then the rebukes on the lies, followed with more lies.... the fact that if one brought them up his supporters shouted the person down instead of confronting them peacefully and with understanding for their doubts. But Obama and his camp treated those people the same way, ignore and shout them down, only he was very polite about it.

I honestly would have been satisfied if he had been honest and forthright.

I don't like the way the press would cover things up for him and pretend ACORN or some other issues weren't important but were all over every McCain misstep. That wasn't very unbiased, honest nor fair for the country. Fuck the candidates they could handle themselves. The nation more than anything at this time needed the press to be fair and honest. IT WAS FAR FAR FROM THAT.

McCain stands for much of what is wrong in this country. His policies are not that much different than what we have. And we cannot afford those policies any longer.

In the end, for me it comes down to what is best for my country, not for just me.

I want so badly to say I can vote for Obama without any reservations at all. But Wright, Ayres, Rezko and some of his gaffes worry me. The fact that in one place he would say one thing and in another he would say something totally different to pander to electors but that's politics.

I can't get over statements from his "spiritual leader" such as "the US of KKK A" "God Damn America" and his praise for Farrakhan.

That bothers me.

Yet, in my saying that, I have been called the racist and that bothers me more.

His policies are what is best for the country, the change he outlines could feasibly work and make us a better country again.

And I would so love to be able to vote for him just for that reason.

But does he just say what he knows we want to hear, or does he mean it and those radicals he has surrounded himself with will be talking about how he is too centrist for them.

I just don't know. I wish I did. I wish I could vote like I have for the past 5 times with clear conscience for the man I believed to be the best man for this country. Dukakis, Clinton x's 2, Nader and Kerry.

I do know that it's only 2 years of total rule, and if the Wrights, Ayres', Rezko's and Farrakhan's take over we can at least get Congress away from them and in 4 years have a new leader one who hopefully would do what I prayed for in the beginning of this long drawn out, post.

I also know that with McCain we don't stand a fucking chance of getting better in the near future if ever.

Thus, I have decided..... I will be voting for Obama. May he truly have only what is best for ALL the country in his heart.....

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

guyy

Thanks for your support, Pan. I sympathise with wanting to be judicious with your vote. We have it one short day every four years, then it's gone.

Off to the polls.

Derwood

I think we've seen in the past that a man of questionable character can be an effective president. Bill Clinton was a complete scumbag, but was probably the "best" president in my 33 years on this planet. The policies and decision making completely trumps any of the Ayres/Wright stuff for me (plus I think it's all completely overblown)

ratbastid

I'm much more interested in policy than in who my candidate crossed paths with over the years. I can see how the Wright thing would be scary to some people, of course, but the Ayers thing is just ridiculous.

But I also take your point, pan, about how poorly Obama handled these accusations. I suspect he thought that it was ridiculous and wouldn't get any traction, and then when they did, he zig-zagged some in his attempts to address it. At least that's what it looked like to me. Fortunately, it was really the only zig-zag in the whole campaign--compared to McCain, whose entire last two months was zigging and zagging.

Ultimately, I think we're both voting for the right guy.

flstf

Maybe I am somewhat of a reverse racist but I can excuse Rev. Wright and other blacks from his generation for being angry. I still remember traveling with my family to my father's birthplace in Louisiana back in the 50's. As a young white boy walking down the street black people including whole families would step off the sidewalk out into the street to let me pass. Whites only and blacks only signs everywhere. I can only imagine how angry I would be growing up in such an environment.

abaya

Thank you for saying that, flstf. It hits home for me too, even though I didn't grow up in that era. I have the same feelings that you do on the matter.

And Pan, thank you for voting Obama today. I'm more than impressed.

__________________
And think not you can direct the course of Love;
for Love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
--Khalil Gibran

smooth

the whole wright thing confuses me because:
1. he's not saying anything much different from religious zealots blaming our problems on the non-religious factors in society. mostly attributed to sodomites, secularists, and socialists and any other amount of riff-raff that can be blamed for what ails the country atm.

2. in certain evangelical or fundamentalist churches, the idea the USA is Babylon and Catholicism and/or Protestantism is the whore of Babylon in Revelation is official doctrine. Even traditional brands have centric to their teachings (regardless of members' knowledge or adherence to this doctrine) that the "world" and the "christian/holy" are separate entities that should only converge at the most minimal levels when it comes in the form of the state putting it's nose into church affairs (but not necessarily the other way--but sometimes even then like the LDS or Branch Davidians or 4-squares). it seems as the level of disenfranchisement grows, so does the reliance on literal interpretation of the bible along with fire and brimstone sermons.

so you find these kinds of sermons in black churches dealing with some pretty fucked up social conditions, like residuals from slavery and poverty and crime, and you find these in white churches that are also trying to make sense of pretty fucked up social conditions, loss of political capital, poverty, and crime.

in inner city or rural black churches, I don't think you'd have a hard time finding a sermon questioning the "God bless America" mantra in the face of homelessness, millions of US babies sleeping with malnourished bellies, the failure of such a rich community to deposit at least some of that wealth into the shitty parts of our country. for taking us into a questionable war, for racking our debt skyhigh, and for our greed and excess. it would be very odd if a pastor or preacher did not end such a sermon with, "no, God damn America". You would have no problem finding such a sermon coming from Palin's main church. The themes would probably be built around the godlessness of this nation, it's homosexuality, it's greediness, and etc. The end of this sermon would probably be "God has damned America" You don't have to look very far either, this "fringe" position was basically voiced by Jerry Falwell after 9/11. And while people thought the timing was crass, don't confuse that with many millions of people actually believing in the spirit of the message: that this country is a heathen haven that will be leveled during the rapture (which incidentally will occur either tomorrow or shortly thereafter).

3. anyway, the point is that the message "God damn America" is not partisan. The sentiment is pretty common, actually. The capture of it and dissemination as if it's news was partisanship, and not much more can be made of it. Fire and Brimstone sermons from protestants fell out of favor over 100 years ago, so I doubt McCain would be sitting in a pew hearing a message like that. But George Bush and Sarah Palin certainly received heavy doses of similar messages.

__________________
"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

Amaras

What do you mean, doubt? He was a choirboy around that time, wasn't he?

__________________
Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.
-Noam Chomsky
Love is a verb, not a noun.
-My Mom
The function of genius is to furnish cretins with ideas twenty years later.
-Louis Aragon, "La Porte-plume," Traite du style, 1928

smooth

lol, I should have said as an adult.
but I didn't know until I just looked it up, but suspected he would come from the Episcopalian tradition which I don't think has a very strong fire and brimstone tradition. that's what I was raised anyway, and it's basically catholicism without the pope. Even the Calvanists I don't think were damn america so much as we're all damned unless proven by grace to not be.

it's really hard to talk about religion in broad strokes because of the many factions and doctrines. this website I just looked up lists McCain as currently attending southern baptist so who the hell really knows what he has and has not been exposed to lol.

__________________
"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman