What Now?

The scary emails that have been going around for months seem to be continuing. There are folks out there that still feel the need to forward ridiculous emails about Obama: being a Muslim, hiring all manner of unqualified people to staff his White House, taking everyone's money and giving it to people that don't work. When will it end? Will we be subjected to this nonsense forever?

I just don't understand why this continues. What is meant to be accomplished by such antics? Case in point: my best friend forwarded this email that her husband's grandmother had sent. Yes, grandmother. It proceeded to outline (ignorantly and unconvincingly, I might add) how one cannot be both a Muslim and a good American. Pretend for a moment that this is even a valid argument, and consider instead the fact that Obama is not, for the billionth time, a Muslim. Really. How many times does this have to be pronounced?!

Now, back to the email itself. Aren't we as Americans supposed to be equal? Why then, are we so damn afraid of anyone that varies slightly from ourselves? I won't even attach or post this email because of it's extreme ridiculousness and idiocy. I just wish that people would wake up and realize that Barack Obama will be our President come January, and perhaps our energies would be better spent focusing on making our country better and not on denigrating the next leader of the United States.

Kansas City is Not a Blemish

So yesterday I was mistakenly reading the Letters to the Editor online at the kcstar.com. Bad idea. Post election emotions have prompted all the crazies (myself included) to post whatever ramblings they deem worthy of online publication. So I decided to start my own blog. At least this way I'm posting my ramblings in my own private (ha!) corner of the internet.

The guy that led me to this conclusion had the audacity (of ignorance, not hope) to refer to Kansas City and St. Louis as zits on the otherwise clear face of Missouri. He actually said, "Thank God for rural Missouri." I mean, really?!? This is the reason our fine state went red once again. Thanks to chuckleheads like this guy, and the 17,769 folks that voted for Nader and the 11,355 folks that voted for Barr. These stats were online with some super cool interactive maps.

Additionally, a man named Gary Kerr posted a comment about how naive our country was to elect Obama as our next President. He suggested we go ahead and start grooming two strong Republicans for the 2012 election. First of all, grooming is the term used to describe what pedophiles do to children prior to abusing them. Poor choice of words, Gary. Second, didn't Senator McCain himself suggest in his concession speech that we come together as a country to support our next democratically elected official? I believe he most certainly did. My response to him was to follow his own candidate's advice. Besides, could we really just ignore the next four years even if we wanted to? I think not. Clearly Obama was not everyone's choice (although 52% of the popular vote, 63.4 million ballots cast beat George Bush's popular votes in 2004) but is the choice. So come on people, live with it. Do whatever needs to be done to be okay with this selection, because we have no other option.

Now is our opportunity to show the world that Americans might actually care about people other than ourselves. Maybe we can earn a bit of the privileged place we hold on this planet. And maybe, just maybe, we can not damage the earth any more in the process...