Email to my sister after a heated phone call this morning...
Hi Erin -
Thought I'd send you this picture of a bunch of extremists
Yes, a bunch of African American welfare mothers
with four kids from three parents who don't feel like getting a job.
Oh wait, it's a bunch of white folk in Indiana at an Obama rally.
I got very defensive this morning - I said I went campaiging and you
called me an "extremist". I do have a problem with that as you went
straight to an inflammatory term. That's what McCain and Palin do - it
causes divisivness as you saw this morning. But I apologize for escalating the conversation.
I talked to several McCain supporters
last weekend in Nevada and I just said "I appreciate that you have
done your research and made your decision, have a good Sunday" and if
they were watching football I'd ask if the Raiders were winning. Wish I had done that this morning, wish you had too by not pulling out the "E-bomb"
This is all wrought by George Bush. Times are tough because of the
Republican policies. Don't wag your finger at people who took loans
they could not afford. They aren't that smart, that is in large part
why they can't affort the loan in the first place. And while you
commendably tried to talk some people out of those loans, companies, realtors
and mortgage brokers were making money on the deals, so most of them
took advantage of the lax regulation to score the bucks. And the
investment banks sliced and diced and resold those loans and issued
CDS policies on them. That was all allowed by the Republican administration
and McCain is no different - his chief economic advisor was Phil Gramm
who wrote the legislation that allowed this stuff to happen.
I don't think we can cut off people who are on entitlement programs, there
is absolutely tons of abuse but "There but for the grace of god go I". I don't
think that is an extremist view. That's a tough issue, but Bush has not done
anything to solve it, McCain will not solve it, and to assume Obama is trying
to get into office to throw money at welfare queens really underestimates
Barack.
But that
isn't the meat of the problem. We are allowing big companies to rip people
off blind, especially the oil companies. Drilling more will not lower the price
of gas (look - it's dropped already because people are losing their jobs!) but
it WILL make more for oil companies. The cost? We screw up our land and burn
up the rest of our oil.
Also we are pumping boatloads of money into Iraq for no good reason. The money
we spent there could finance the entire bailout. Instead we pump money into
there, there are families missing sons, daughters, mothers, fathers. And we will
be paying for health care of those veterans for decades. You asked if I know anyone
on Welfare? No. But I DO know a lot of guys from the train who take the train to
the VA in Menlo Park, and I ride by that hospital and also the VA in Palo Alto. Those
guys are on the train because they are too brain damaged from war to be able to
drive. And they will live another 30-50 years.
You say Obama is inexperienced. Zbiniew Brezhinski said the other day you can hire experience, and
experience is overrated anyway. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld have decades of experience
and look at the mess they got us into. Colin Powell (also involved in that war and run
out of the Bush White House for his dissent) - What I see in Obama is intellectual vigor
and intellectual curiousity. He's a SMART GUY. If you don't think he knows what the heck
he is doing - how did a black man (purposefully eschewing "African American" for effect) from Chicago go from Illinois Senator to almost the White
House in 4 years? A vast left wing conspiracy? No. Did he personally visit 50 million doors?
No. He had a plan, hired the right people, and built a campaign. And he can give a pretty
damn good speech which inspires people to do better things. People say things like "Kids are
screwed up not because there isn't enough money in the schools, it's because the parents
suck". Does George Bush inspire you to be a better parent? No way. Barack inspires a lot of
people to try harder and that's what we need today.
I don't think anything I just wrote is extremist. Saying that half the country is "Anti-American", that
is extremist. I resent being told by the McCain campaign that I hate America.
I don't know what the heck the misunderstanding was about Tara coming out here because she
didn't seem to have any problems. Mom and her will probably blame each other, but I asked
myself "What would Barack Do" and I said "He would mend the fences and not blame anyone!"
Oh - and we're naming our son after the man who loses the election. Think about that when you pull that lever Mrs Swing State!
Happy Halloween!
John