Those of us voting for Barack Obama for President of the United States in November would like to ask those of you voting for John McCain a little favor: If you're going to hate Barack, which, you clearly are, please hate him for something he actually is or has actually done (like voting the wrong way on FISA), as opposed to shit you just made up or - the equivalent - heard on the Fox Wastework or right-wingnut radio and decided to believe, regardless of whether or not facts ever entered into the equation.
For instance, all of us who worship at the Church of Facts would like it if you stopped saying Barack used to be a Muslim, since this is not true. He wasn't raised Muslim, never was a Muslim, and does not have here in his hand, a list of purported followers of Islam. Even the Muslims have retracted the letter they printed, which they claimed was Obama talking about Islam. The chain emails you get that have evidence in them are full of lies, big lies, the ones the Nazis said were easiest to swallow. The man's a Christian, if that makes you feel any better, and I'll take you one step further on that one, too.
He didn't bail on his congregation because he needed to get away from Jeremiah Wright. Wright was already his former pastor when the shit hit the fan. This "he quit being a Muslim, quit his Church" thing has been blown up by people into a propensity to run from organizations when they create trouble for him, leading to the natural question, "Will Barack run at the first sign of Presidential trouble?" This question, unanswerable until the future itself unfolds, is at best speculative, since it's based on specious reasoning and assumptions drawn from non-factual data. Specifically: He's been a committed Christian pretty much his whole life, and he left his congregation for that most predicable and age-old political reason - it simply isn't mainstream enough for a Presidential contender.
Truly, this question of "right religion, wrong religion" is a six-inch curb the human race needs to hold hands and jump together, along with any other petty, ignorant, stupid, emotion-driven hatreds we maintain over others. Stereotypes aren't universal and so thus, cannot be relied upon. They do not make a firm foundation for further action or decision-making, and are, thusly, crap. Stop trying to jam square people into round holes you previously decided made sense, and judge people for the things they actually do. It seems unfair that you would deprive people of the chance to be their own assholes, as opposed to the ones you just think they are. So cut it out. This will keep you writing the script, and minimizes re-writes. Follow that? Ha.
Additionally, it would also be great if everyone could vote for a candidate for President, and not simply vote against one of the guys running. I'm getting really exhausted with single-issue morons who vote for Candidate B, even though they don't much like him, simply because Candidate A is pro-whatever it is they don't like. You would have voted for Candidate A, except that some group somewhere has got you convinced that his stand on this one issue makes him non-viable as a candidate, and so you gotta throw him out. Imagine if you picked your friends that way. Shit - I guess some people do. I am flawed enough that I can't imagine I have any friends who choose friends this way. Good thing I'm not running for "friend." This "voting against" thing is really stupid, and should be done away with as a process. You could have a couple of guys wait outside the polls with truncheons, weeding out anyone who doesn't seem to have a concrete rationale for supporting their man. Sounds like I'm giving up on democracy, doesn't it? Again, ha.
So yeah, I feel like if everyone could just get on my wagon here, and following a couple of simples, it would lead to a lot more shutting the fuck up on a national level, and possibly more thinking, which, it struck me, could probably help us out a lot.