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<DIV>On Mon, 17 Mar 2008 21:34:24 -0400 "Discussion of the Good, Clean Funnies
List" <<A href="mailto:gcfl-discuss@gcfl.net">gcfl-discuss@gcfl.net</A>>
writes:<BR>> <BR>> My objections to obama ... I especially do not like
some of <BR>> his advisors, gleaned from the administration of one of the
worst <BR>> presidents in recent memory.<BR></DIV>
<DIV>Obama has advisors gleaned from the administration of George W. Bush? I
know <EM>Human Events</EM> has compared Obama favorably to Colin Powell, but
still...</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I believe you to be a fiscal conservative greenBubble, so I KNOW you
wouldn't be referring to the first president in living memory to balance the
budget and pay down the national debt as one of our worst (although I told
plenty of jokes about him myself), nor referring to the president who blew it
all in less than a year, mortgaging our government to the national bank of
China, as anything but. (This is something I hear about from my mother, whose
family has been east Tennessee Republican ever since my great-great-grandfather
came home from the Civil War with discharge papers signed by Abraham
Lincoln).</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>But seriously, I didn't know what you meant about Wright. After I got a
link to a recent speech by Obama, which turned out to be responding to some flap
about his pastor, I backtracked what the Wright thing was about. Like you, I
could care less. A pastor is responsible to his own congregation, nobody else,
and no church member is responsible for what his or her pastor says from the
pulpit.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>What DID impress me was the content of the speech, in which Wright was,
rightly, only a footnote. I found plenty to admire in Obama long before he had a
campaign, but I had found his campaign to be as fluffy as the critics say
(literature, TV commercials, etc.) The speech reinspired me -- it was the real
person behind the campaign. He put some real thought into it, he made it
something that could stand on its own, rather than a tit-for-tat to some dubious
namecalling, it was comprehensive. It debunked what is not true, it held firmly
to what is true. He made clear what he disagrees with Wright on, while
forthrightly saying what he admired about Wright. He talked about the continuing
legacy of Jim Crow (and correctly nailed that the most lingering legacy is being
fifteen generations behind on accumulation of capital, which often gets passed
along within a family), while openly acknowledging that there are plenty of
middle class or formerly middle class families, taught to think of themselves as
"white" (my choice of quote marks, not his), who have legitimate grievances as
well, and the two are often pitted against each other.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The word "nuance" got a bad rap in 2004, but it is exactly what I look for
in a candidate for high office. It may be a fancy sounding word, it may be of
French origin, but it means about the same as Ray Stevens's lyrics</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>"the answers aren't all yes or no</DIV>
<DIV>con or pro</DIV>
<DIV>to or fro,</DIV>
<DIV>everything's not left or right</DIV>
<DIV>black or white</DIV>
<DIV>day or night."</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Obama really looked at all sides of this one, in one speech, not saying a
little of one thing to one audience and a little of another thing to another
audience. Campaign promises are silly, because nobody, including the candidate,
knows what a new president is really going to be faced with. I want to know what
thought process the candidate will bring to problems and crises we haven't even
seen coming yet. So far, I'm still favorably impressed.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Siarlys</DIV></BODY></HTML>