Puffin’s Place

A good friend indicates weariness with my “kill Hill” meditations, so let’s move on to some more positive thoughts.

Barack Obama. I want him to be president. I like it that he is articulate. I like his ability to talk about the country and the future in a way that makes me feel good about both.

Now what are all the reasons voters are supposed to hang garlic around their necks and flee from him?

Well, he declines to wear a flag lapel pin. He has never said so, but I wonder if the sight of such a pin in the lapels of Cheyney, Rumsfeld, and GWB have suggested that the pin may be a symbol for something quite other than love of country?

He was caught not holding his hand over his heart during the national anthem. Wonder how many of us would be so caught. Like Obama, I have never ever heard that such a pose is required for the national anthem. Even had I learned this, I would not do it. It is a bit of silly theatre.

Then there is Anton Rezko, for which see Robert Novak’s column in today’s Washington Post. After slyly implying that Obama should not be in a Georgian mansion, Novak manages to suggest vague but ominous ties to an Iraqui money-launderer. Now I do not know what the deal is with Rezko not do I have a clue if Obama should or should not be apprehensive. But I do know that a political figure knowing shady characters—witness Kennedy and Giancana, Nixon and Rebozo, George W. Bush and Abramoff, and others. Personally, I am more inclined to grant Obama a “bone-headed” moment than to believe he is corrupt.

Then there is his supposed visit with two 60’s radicals ten years ago. When did this country decide that not talking to those with whom we differ politically is unclean? Good lord, we watch tv broadcasts of Charles Manson, MSNBC makes minor celebrities of inmates in major American prisons, and on and on but Obama is not supposed to talk with a couple of people that threw bombs?

Obama’s pastor who is said to dislike America and whites and accused the US of “racism” is a bit harder for me to swallow—both because I do not trust those immersed in any religion and because I have never been black and subject to racism. But last I knew, there are still segments of this country that Bush has not yet ensnared in his spying and tapping, and the good rev. has every right to think whatever he likes and Obama has every right to go to whatever church he likes so long as he does not try to march me into it. More, I might add, than one can say about most of the far right evangelicals. Anyone remember McCain’s delight at Hagee’s endorsement?

And, finally, there is Michelle Obama, who committed the unpardonable sin of not always being proud of America.

Let’s see: we had a president forced to resign just ahead of impeachment. We had a president who vomited into the lap of a Japanese dignitary. We had a president who had some sort of obscure sex with a cigar and an intern in the oval office. We have a president who endorses torture, lies about nearly everything that can be tracked, started a war because the country’sleader “tried to kill my daddy,” and spends his off hours shredding the Constitution.

Oh, gee, I wonder why wicked Michelle has not been proud!

As BO says, this is the silly season.

Next time,  some reasons I will vote for Obama for president.