Letter to the Editor 11/2/08

Submitted to The Standard:

My Vote is a Weapon

How is it that when a child needs health care it’s “redistribution of wealth”, but when Sarah Palin is redistributing money directly to the citizens of Alaska it’s not? How is it that when we want more money for education it is socialism, but a $5,000 tax credit for health care is not? Exactly how stupid do you think we are?

You have also selected Sarah Palin as your running mate. Never in the history of our political system has such a flagrantly inadequate person been within reach of such an important office. No single person possesses the spectrum of knowledge required to lead this country, this is why they have a panel of various experts (their cabinet). This is why the most important facet of a candidate is their judgment. How better off we’d be if George Bush had appointed somebody competent to the head of FEMA rather than his friend, Mike Brown? By choosing Palin, McCain has approved of her qualifications to feasibly sit at the helm of the most powerful army on the planet. The appointment of Sarah Palin is McCain’s first appointee on the Presidential playing field, and it should rightly be his last.

Your campaign admitted that if it continued to talk about the economy, Obama would win. That’s not a good sign, sir.

We live in a technological age in which we are dependent on the findings of science. Look around you – see the light bulbs, the air planes? Like medicine when you’re ill? Like the fact that we can wrest the paths of hurricanes from a mute nature? Science is far and away our best weapon for surviving in an indifferent, pitiless universe, and your campaign is thoroughly anti-science. You have taken a running mate who believes in witches, thinks the Earth is thousands of years old, speaks in tongues and worse, all while she derides scientific research. This is unacceptable.

You have made an issue of Obama sitting on an education board with a professor from the University of Chicago. You have also tried to tie him to Rashad Khalidi, when you are the chair of the International Republican Institute that funded the Palestine Center, which had Khalidi on the Board of Directors at the time. Anybody who has done a little bit of homework will catch you when you do things like this. It follows that you must be counting on voters not to do their research. That is what you think of us.

To all you voters, ask yourselves what you want with this election. John McCain’s campaign has depended, at every turn, on you being uninformed and eager to make this very important decision based on 30 second sound bites without doing any fact-checking. He has played to your prejudice, he has played to your fear, and he has counted on your ignorance in order to accomplish both.

I am better than that and so are you. Today, the last eight years will come to a merciful end. Today, my vote will be a weapon.