"Is your mother a whore? Don't get offended! I'm not SAYING she's a whore..."

Being fearful is a horrible state to be in. That being said, I do find myself failing to empathize with certain kinds of irrational fears. I realize this is because I am NOT afraid of whatever they ARE afraid of; being able to see the man under the rubber mask renders the monster much less frightening.

I don't know what sort of a nation we'll be living in as a result of electing Barack Obama, but I can guarantee you that it's not going to be as great as people hope for, or as awful as people fear. It will most likely be in the vast middle ground that doesn't have a whole lot of sexy soundbites.

Mr. Obama has a long slog through a lot of thorny issues. The president does have a lot of power, but he's not (even under George Bush) capable of single-handedly altering everything that comes across his desk. Obama faces a list of things he's likely to face significant opposition in: repealing DOMA (Defense of Marriage), closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, a broad health care inclusion, and so on. He'll fail at somethings, succeed at others, and have an awful lot of compromises under his belt by the time his term ends, I'd imagine.

The campaign got rather nasty in the closing days, with lots of hints of John McCain's senility and Obama's terrorist buddies. The campaign ads have stopped, but dislike of Obama allowed the negative campaigning to continue. Reading the opposing viewpoints, Obama is already the most anti-American president ever. And he hasn't even been inaugurated.

Today's article comes from the Associated Press, via Google. Republican congressman Paul Broun from Georgia gave an interview where he effectively says Obama is Hitler-in-training. Latching on to comments Obama made about having some sort of national security corps, lightening the domestic need for military forces on American soil, Broun says Hitler started the same way. He finds this, plus Obama's opposition to assault weapons, may lead to the banning of weapons from civilians.

Does everyone remember your constitutional process classes? There's nothing a president can do to repeal an amendment to the Constitution. But let that be.

Rep. Broun encourages us that we cannot be complacent. "You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I'm not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I'm saying is there is the potential."

He gets my "I do not think that means what you think it means" flag for the day. When you say a person resembles another person in some way, that's a comparison. And when the congressman says, "He's doing things that Hitler and Stalin did," that's a comparison. Perhaps Rep. Broun meant to say "I'm not equating him to Adolf Hitler."

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