Enough is Enough

“Kill him, kill him! Traitor! Terrorist! Muslim! Off with his head!”
No these words were not shouted about the infamous terrorist Osama Bin Laden, but actually the Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama. In the last two weeks these racial slurs and threats were yelled during McCain/Palin rallies. What did the McCain campaign do about these horrible things being said? Nothing, absolutely nothing.
The Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin, in fact encourages the false rumors of Obama being a terrorist even saying that he’s “palling around with terrorists” and that “he’s not one of us”. Most people are accustomed to “dirty politics” but where is the line drawn?
I believe the line has been crossed. It is one thing to attack your opponent on disagreements over the issues, but the McCain campaign has done something completely different. Accusing someone’s moral character and their patriotism is too much. McCain and Palin have even gone as far as saying Obama hangs around domestic terrorists like Bill Ayers. Ayers founded a radical political group in the turbulent 60’s that was blamed from several bombings when Obama was a young child, but is now a professor at the University of Illinois. Obama served on a charity board in Chicago but other than that there is no other real connection.
It’s obvious to me that instead of focusing on the issues, McCain is realizing he is behind in the polls and are going to stop at nothing to win, which I think really reflects the kind of man John McCain is. It’s ironic because according to most polls the undecided voters are looking through the attacks and feel enough is enough. Even during the last presidential debate McCain tried attacking Obama but smoothly Obama turned everything back around on the issues. Americans are evidently tired of the attacks and are looking for serious approaches to the ails we face everyday with a dwindling economy, a weakened healthcare system, and the fight against global warming.
At the beginning of both campaigns each pledged that they would take the high road and run a clean campaign. I know that the Obama campaign has had their share of attacks saying John McCain is “reckless and unstable”. However when Obama has been called a Muslim, traitor, and terrorist at McCain’s rallies and the campaign did not denounce these lies I think there is something wrong here.
In reality Barack Obama has been a Christian his entire life. Nevertheless, as Colin Powell puts it “the really right answer is what if he is?” Sadly this campaign has brought us to the fact that some Americans are still behind with the strides our country has made. The McCain campaign and some of its supporters have shown that America still has a long way to go.
Instead of using more scare tactics, maybe John McCain should make his approach to fixing the economy clear and get back to the issues because this strategy of portraying his opponent as a “terrorist harboring traitor” is not working for him. He might be convincing Republicans, but they are not the ones who need convincing. Stick to the issues John, you’re just making yourself look worse than you already do!


I wrote this for my school's newspaper, I don't think the average student will even care or understand what's going on, but hopefully i reached out to a few. I think it's important to remember what kind of campaign McCain ran against Obama, it shows how far we still have to go in this country.

This Wretched Woman

Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer, feminist and activist best
known for 'The Vagina Monologues', wrote the following about Sarah Palin:

Drill, Drill, Drill

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night
that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.

I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have
spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is
antithetical to
Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to
saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, 'It was a task from God.'

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.

She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will
determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to
get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, 'Drill Drill Drill.' I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?

Eve Ensler
September 5, 2008

Republican Convention

I don't know how long I can stand to watch this. I tell myself the only way to be an observer in political science is to watch the other side. Honestly it makes me sick the way they use the fear factor. Rudy Giuliani says that the democrats were scared to mention islamic terrorists in their convention, it's sad how they use terrorism to scare the American people. He says that John McCain will make our country safe. How can our country be prosperous and safe when it's not healthy, when we are economically unstable. What's more important? Spending trillions of dollars on the Iraq War or making sure every American has health care and lives above the poverity line? It stuns me.
I see these Republicans speak and look into the audience and see all older white people most of them with cowboy hats on. I look at the keynote speakers all white males with the exception of Palin. I also hear the redneck country music that plays before commercial breaks. It's all frightening and somehow crudely humorous. Then I remember the happy joyous convention that the Democrats held. The convention where there was diversity in the crowd, where the speakers didn't use fear tactics like terrorists but actually spoke about issues that affects Americans everyday. They didn't have to frighten Americans with the middle eastern islamic terrorists, but appealed to the troubles we face everyday.

My Political Woman.

I am very interested in politics at the age of seventeen. Tonight I watched the Democratic Convention, as I did last night, but tonight was most inspiring. Hillary Clinton spoke and she was absolutely great. When Obama and Clinton were battling it out I didn't really have a preference towards one more than the other. I just wanted a Democrat to win office. Well now that Obama holds the nomination I got to appreciate Clinton. Tonight she spoke about her policies saying that Obama would follow through with them, she jabbed at McCain saying we cannot endure four more years of another Republican administration. Then she talked about health care as she usually does. I loved how she ended the speech by making me empowered as a woman. She made me feel so proud to be a woman. Then she related it all back to how Barack Obama should be president and you are not a Clinton supporter without supporting him. She was great, just great. Honestly if McCain wins i will try my hardest to leave the country and study abroad because all the hope I conjured up in this election in the American people will be lost. I do not understand how people can still believe lies...