Let's get political . . .again!
2008-07-25, 3:31 p.m.

The following email was sent out to the CODEPINK listserve, and here I am forwarding it you.
I've been highly optimistic with Obama running for president, even though he like all other candidates is AIPAC bought and packaged,
[side track! Stumbled across of Obama visiting the wailing wall wearing a Kippah. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gz8uyDFpV4vMwzamHD3226Cn8EpQD924BAJG0
"The Democratic presidential candidate toured Yad Vashem's Holocaust memorial, where he donned a skullcap, and he stopped in an Israeli town that has been barraged by Palestinian rocket fire. Obama also visited the Western Wall � Judaism's holiest site � where he touched it and prayed. His one stop in the West Bank was the headquarters of moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

"What if Obama had put a Palestinian headdress on his head, as he put on a Jewish skullcap yesterday? What if he took off his shoes and stepped into the Al-Aqsa mosque, as he did at the Western Wall? That would be balanced behavior," wrote editor Hafeth Barghouti in Thursday's edition of the West Bank newspaper Al-Hayyat al-Jedida." Note from me: I also would have liked him to have seen the church of nativity, or the holy sepulchre (?) as long as he was going to make religious visits. Jersulem is a GORGEOUS city, I know I've mentioned how much I love it numerous times, but one of the beauties of the city is it's diversity, and the proximity of that diversity. The wailing wall, the AlAqsa mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre are RIGHT next to each other. His other option? Keep religion out of it. There are plenty of gorgeous places in Israel he could visit, even ones with strictly political symbolism (there's always the apartheid wall. Both sides of it.) that he could visit. As a Palestinian Christian, and with Israeli Christian friends (not to mention palestinian and israeli atheist friends), I am once again angered by the constant push of religion into this conflict.]

Ok, back to me . . .
on other issues I felt I was actually being well represented by a presidential candidate. But then I keep getting word of things like this . . .

"July 25, 2008

Dear Friend,

We are guardedly optimistic about the growing consensus for a timeline to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. But unlike Barack Obama, we don't want to see our troops removed from the "bad war" in Iraq only to be sent to fight "the good war" in Afghanistan.

One of the very first actions of CODEPINK when we formed in 2002 was to go to Afghanistan to see, firsthand, the results of our invasion. We were horrified by the "collateral damage" -- the steady stream of innocent civilians killed and maimed by our "smart bombs." We pushed our government to stop killing civilians and to compensate the families of those who we had mistakenly killed or maimed.

Seven years later, innocent Afghans continue to be killed by our troops, more US soldiers are now dying in Afghanistan than Iraq, the Taliban are gaining new strength, opium production has soared, and Osama bin Laden has not been found. The Afghan people continue to be among the poorest in the world, women continue to be oppressed, and the U.S. government reneged on its promise of a "Marshall Plan" to rebuild Afghanistan.

Barack Obama and John McCain are advocating the exact same "solution": Send more troops. But more troops will only mean more violence, more suffering, more killing of innocents, and more recruits for the Taliban."

Note: Still rather you voted for Obama instead of McCain. I DESPISE the man, not to mention his wife *shudder*