REPLY TO DRRJP

Submitted by DANIEL REDMOND (United States), Apr 5, 2008 at 12:23

Well, Doc, that was a rather long-winded response but I'll try to respond to it point-by-point with as much brevity as I myself can muster.

I don't quite get the reference to Obama as representating a cross between Fascism and Communism. I've not heard him give a single sound bite of praise to Communism and neither has he given any reason to believe he's a proponent of Fascism. On the other hand, our current president, whose policies John McCain promises to continue, got into the White House due to the vararies of an anachronistic holdover of the 18th Century known as the Electoral College, a mechanism that ensures we will never be a true Democracy, and he has systematically encroached upon our Constitutional rights to the best of his ability ever since then.

I was born in 1948 and can well remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, and, yes, I agree that one atom bomb can certainly ruin your day.

I am not at all certain that Barak Obama would be a good president, but I suspect that he will be. I've done some research on his brief Senate career and he has put together a topnotch staff of advisors---the typical senator has a staff of more than 60 people, by the way---and has performed well in his first term, considering the restraints placed upon freshman senators and congressman within the committee-driven / seniorty-driven traditions of those institutions.

Obama doesn't have a lot of experience. Neither did Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and several others, all of whom were considered 'Washington outsiders' when they got to the White House. So what?

What is the basis for assuming that we are responsible for the survival of Israel anyway? What has Israel done for us lately? I'm not anti-Israel but the fact is that we have been supporting the Israelis for decades now and, let's face it, there is nothing that Israel has to offer America that we need or even want. I think it is up to the Israelis to ensure their own survival.

Yes, guys like Osama bin Laden are a genuine menace. But before we start looking for terrorists under our mattresses let's remember that in their biggest coup yet Islamo-fascists managed to kill slighly less than 3,000 people here on one miserable day. A terrible tragedy, to be sure. But every year we lose approximately 42,000 Americans to automobile accidents without batting an eye and another 430,000 die from smoking cigarettes that are sold legally in every state in the Union. That doesn't seem to worry us much either. We beat Hitler and the warrior cult of Imperial Japan and we'll win against these scruffy degenerate radical Muslims living in the caves of Afghanistan too.

Your belief that Obama will morph into a demogogue and a tyrant is simply an opinion that is unsubstantiated by any discernable facts. What I do know is that our other two alternatives in this election are a 71 year old man whose entire reference is to the past and a woman who is so power hungry that she can't seem to lose the notion that she is somehow entitled to the White House by divine right and royal prerogative. I don't care what John McCain did in the Hanoi Hilton 37 years ago, I want to know that he'll do something positive in the White House now rather than continue the destructive policies of George W. Bush. And Hillary Clinton has already had her eight years in the White House.....as First Lady......let's leave it at that.

Faced with those alternatives, I'm betting on the silver-tongued young senator from Illinois with the funny name and hoping for the best.

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