An open letter to those who pass on "Obama is a Muslim" e-mail messages and the like.

You've seen the smears.



This is Obama leading the Pledge of Allegiance in the United States Senate.

Obama took his oath of office on his family Bible:



Obama has been a Christian for years. He describes his conversion from being "faithless" to Christianity in his book Dreams From My Father on page 295; note that this book was published in 1995.

Note that he had been a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ for about 19 years until recently:

Barack Obama Racist Black African American Trinity Church
by Jesus_Christ4Barack_Obama

So: stop spreading these lies. If you want to vote for John McCain: you are entitled to your choice for President. You are NOT entitled to your own facts.

Resources:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/fightthesmearshome/

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/obama.asp

May Jesse Helms Rot!

I'd say "may he rot in hell" but I don't believe in hell.



http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1995/05/bates.html

INNUENDO AND DIVERSION

After nearly a quarter century in the Senate, Helms understands how a determined minority of one can influence the national agenda. Whether he is suggesting that the commander in chief needs a bodyguard or demanding that Fidel Castro leave Cuba "in a vertical or horizontal position," Helms is well-known for his use of innuendo and diversion. Even the Republican Party treats him as a rogue elephant, powerful yet dangerously erratic. But the recent GOP stampede has given Helms a respected position from which to trumpet his bitter opposition to abortion, gay rights, racial equality, arts funding, and aid to what he calls "foreign rat holes."

His agenda is driven by a lifelong opposition to democracy and diversity. In his first months as Foreign Relations chair, Helms called for tougher sanctions against Cuba, accused Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide of unleashing "vigilance committees," and moved to gut support for developing nations. On the home front, he introduced a bill to eliminate all affirmative action programs, which he denounced as "reverse discrimination at the hands of ruthless bureaucrats."

How did someone so mean-spirited end up in a position to act on his divisive politics? For the most part, Helms wins political battles by keeping the spotlight on the morality plays he stages. To hear conservatives tell it, Helms is a personal friend of Jesus Christ, a populist defender of the little guy, and a bitter opponent of big government.

Shifting the spotlight reveals a different Helms. A former bank lobbyist whose fundraising machine has been fined for breaking federal campaign laws, Helms favors a big-spending, activist government--one that aids those in economic power. He voted to bail out the savings and loan industry, for example, and has seldom met a big-ticket missile system he didn't like. By contrast, he has voted to slash school lunches for impoverished children, medical care for disabled veterans, prescription drugs for the elderly, and wages for working families (see "On the record," below).

"Looking at the record, people ought to understand that Helms is not representing them on the great majority of issues," says Rep. Melvin Watt, a North Carolina Democrat. "They perceive that he stands up for the little guy, but he really stands up for rich people rather than poor and working-class people."

[...]
POLITICS OF SEGREGATION

The strategy that helped Republicans sweep to power last November is one that Jesse Helms perfected decades ago. "Jesse Helms understood before anyone else that the proverbial angry white male feels the most aggrieved, and is therefore the most likely to vote," says Larry Sabato, a professor of government at the University of Virginia. "Jesse Helms was an angry white male before most of his compatriots were. He should have been lucky enough to be on the ballot in '94. He would have won easily."

Unlike many of his Republican counterparts, Helms has changed little over the past 50 years. Long before Rush Limbaugh, Helms pioneered the use of television to rally public sentiment. While Ronald Reagan was losing primaries to Gerald Ford, Helms mobilized the religious right and built one of the most profitable political fundraising machines ever. And long after die-hard segregationists like George Wallace and Strom Thurmond began courting black voters, Helms fueled white fears by opposing a national holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whistling "Dixie" while standing next to Senator Carol Moseley-Braun, and supporting apartheid in South Africa.

"His racial politics are deeply held convictions, not simply politics of convenience," says Christopher Scott. "He has a view of a fundamentalist Christian society in which everyone is not welcome. If you could pick up the South Africa of 20 years ago and transplant it to America, that's what he would do."

Born in Monroe, N.C., in the fall of 1921, Helms grew up in a segregated world not unlike the one of apartheid. He dropped out of college to work full time as a reporter before discovering the two arenas that would shape his career: broadcasting and politics. He learned about radio as a Navy recruiter during World War II and stuck with the emerging medium as news director of a fledgling station in Raleigh. And he was an "unofficial" researcher for conservative Willis Smith, whose 1950 Senate campaign is still considered one of the meanest and most racially divisive in the country's history. (One of Smith's ads featured a doctored photo of the incumbent's wife dancing with a black man. Helms has denied any involvement, but a newspaper advertising manager later told Helms biographer Ernest Furgurson that Helms personally cut up the photos.)

Smith won, and Helms was rewarded with a job as staff administrative assistant. In 1953, Helms returned to North Carolina as executive director of the state's banking association, spending the next seven years fighting to enrich his bosses. He won a seat on the Raleigh City Council and, in 1960, took a job as a TV commentator. He spent the decade railing against King, "Negro hoodlums," the media, "sex perverts," and anyone on welfare. As he explained in one of his nightly five-minute broadcasts, "A lot of human beings have been born bums."

Since Helms won election to the Senate, no "bums" have felt his rage as fiercely as citizens of poor nations. Over the years, the senator has proposed hundreds of measures to slash foreign aid, overthrow governments he doesn't like, and block administration policies. As the new chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, he has made it clear that his first priority is to enact deeper cuts to a foreign aid budget already slashed nearly 30 percent in the past decade.

"The fact is that the American people are sick and tired of this whole foreign aid concept anyhow," Helms said last year. "I find myself wishing that somehow we could put it on a national ballot and say: 'What do you think of this?'"

Those cuts will hit hardest in the Third World, where Helms has long been a staunch ally of right-wing military rulers like Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Raoul Cedras in Haiti, and Roberto D'Aubuisson in El Salvador. Confronted with evidence that D'Aubuisson directed death squads to murder civilians, Helms made it clear that some things are more important than human life. "All I know," he replied, "is that D'Aubuisson is a free enterprise man and deeply religious."

Rot you worthless bigot; I am glad that you are dead!