Dear America

I have always strived to keep this blog away from politics and political issues.

I am going to make a step in that direction - I feel it is important.

So here it is . . . . .

Dear America,

Let's stop this atmosphere of fear and unbearable political division.

We live in the greatest country on the planet and it works because we are all allowed to have our own beliefs and express them in appropriate ways.

But why must we strive to fall into this atmosphere of "FEAR"?

Barack Obama is our elected president.  He is not the devil and he is not evil.  He is not going to load us all up into cattle cars and send us to some horrible end.  He will not create "Death Panels" to knock off senior citizens.  He is a man who knowingly took on a horrible mess and is trying his best to find a center lane that we can all embrace and find our way out of this horrible economy and more horrible war.

Nancy Pelosi is not "That Bitch", she was the House Majority Leader and her job was to get her ELECTED Congressional Majority Party's agenda put forward.  She did that very well.

Equally, John Boehner is not some "Weird Colored Tool for Big Business".  Again, he is the leader of the ELECTED Congressional Majority Party and his job is the same as Nancy Pelosi's was.  It is a thankless job and they are the forward point which receives a lot of pressure both negative and positive.

Fox News is listed as an ENTERTAINMENT channel.  It is NOT a news channel.  I won't ask you not to watch it (I do occasionally), but balance it with some other sources of real news.  Try the networks or even CNN - they seem to do a fairly good job of covering all sides of an issue.  And if you watch Fox, give The Daily Show and Jon Stewart a chance every once and awhile.  He is entertainment as well, but often provides needed criticism and thought provoking looks at the major issues of the day.

And finally - Sara Palin needs to SHUT UP and be shut down.  She has almost single handedly instigated more contention and hatred in this already charged atmosphere than any other political figure.

Enough with the targets and guns and references to reloading.  The woman cannot even speak a coherent sentence.  Yes, she is cute and spunky and has a horrible train wreck of a life that we are all obsessed with, but she really needs to 

SHUT THE F%#K UP!!!!!!!!!

I have friends and family with political and religious views of all sorts and types.  We all do.  Find someone whose views are different from yours and sit down and listen to them - don't try to change their mind (it isn't going to happen anyway), but just listen and see what you have in common.  I'll bet you have much more in common than you think.

But please, let's strive to put an end to this atmosphere of FEAR.

Thank you.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.