The Politrick

You know, its been a while since I last posted and I have so many thoughts running around this head of mine. We are heading into the final lap of seemingly the longest presidential campaign in recent memory. With so many important questions still to be answered from Senators Obama, Biden, McCain and Governor “Hottie McHotHot” Palin, I have to say I was flabbergasted by a story that caught my eye while I was reading my morning news briefs. Barack Obama is a Muslim? Really? Are we still debating this? So, I took the bait and clicked the link.

Apparently, Barack Obama mispoke. He said “my Muslim faith” in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. First of all, any racist ideologue out there who wants to use the word “Muslim” to invoke fear into people is quite sad. Not only is it pathetic but its bad politics. It is a cheap tactic that I hope most open minded Americans would never fall for.We all know that Barack Obama is not Muslim and I’m tired of hearing that. There are enough holes in Barack Obama as a candidate (his flipping on off shore drilling, his being wrong on the surge, his affinity to voting “present” rather than making clear votes, the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of earmarks he has requested during his short tenure in the Senate and more) that there is ZERO need to label him a member of a group that some misguided people may have preconceived notions about. Close minded people who lump a whole people into the same group as extremists are flat out wrong and I know Senator McCain is better than that. Surrogates, on both sides of aisle may be a different story.

With all this said, one would hope that Senator Obama would stay above the fray, perhaps turn the other cheek as one might expect from the individual who gave that rousing oratory from on high in Denver but much to my dismay, he did not. Senator Obama is using this opportunity to play “poor me” with the media and I was quite astonished to see that Mr. Stephanopoulos actually defended McCain by stating that nothing has come out of the McCain campaign to date which would infer that Mr. Obama is a Muslim or would invoke any negative connotations upon him that some may associate with the word. Obama just comes off as disengenuous in this clip, maybe its just me.

Check it out for yourself: Obama on ABC

For me personally, this is a none issue, but it will politicized from all angles and it takes the focus away from more  pressing issues like the economy, terrorism, energy and whether or not the Mets will hang on to win the NL East!