I Spoke too Soon

My wife and daughter went out canvassing for Barack Obama today while the boy and I stayed home. (She tried taking both kids once. Let's just say it didn't work out and leave it at that.)

I may have spoken too soon when I said that South Florida didn't represent "the kind of right-wing-Republican-agenda conservatism of northern Florida." The politics of divisiveness are certainly as popular here as elsewhere. First, there's this horribly slanderous poster, hanging until quite recently in a local (like around the corner from me) Republican campaign office, which compares Barack Obama to Hitler, among others. (Hitler! Really? Though this sentiment is not exclusive to FL.) Then there's the emails my brother's been getting from someone in our running group (his running group really; I'm a poseur). One email linked to a story about Muammar Gaddafi's pronouncement that Barack Obama is a Muslim of Kenyan origin who studied at Muslim schools (tell us something we don't know, Muammar), or so he said at a rally. He also expressed the hope that Senator Obama's pronouncements on Israel were just empty election year rhetoric. (You can read Gaddafi in translation here.) Now despite the fact that the source for the story emailed to my brother is a right-wing site famous for partial truths and hatchet jobs on Democrats, I'm sure that Gaddafi believes what he says. That doesn't make it true. Anyway, Gaddafi is probably getting his facts from American right-wing websites.

There's a lot to like about Florida (mostly weather) but politics is not one of them. I'll be glad when the election is over.