For many people Obama is not a "lesser evil." For the privileged, he can be.

[joshcryer]

82. No, thank you, DonCoquixote.

I know where you're coming from. Let me tell you a story about my mom. She raised 5 kids, she's 66 years old. She called in to see if she could rent a new place one time and when she told the guy that she was on SSDI the guy replied, "Oh, welfare, sorry, we can't accept you." Of course, progressives know that SSDI is for people, particularly women who were home breadwinners their entire lives, who didn't pay in to Social Security because they were "stay at home moms." Progressives know that those women deserve the payments that they get after their husbands die, because, what else is there?

I mean, think logically, SSDI was implemented solely because US culture said, "Women cannot work, they must raise the children." Women who don't work and raise the children, therefore, do not pay into Social Security. Their husbands, however, due to patriarchal nature of our society during that time, did. Husband dies before full retirement (he was disabled, but that's beside the point), the wife should be able to get his benefits. Sadly the wife, under Social Security, gets only half the benefits, but that's better than nothing.

I don't know what it's like to have to suffer racial insults. They never affected me, even as a poor kid growing up, "honky" or "redneck" didn't have the same impact as other more hateful racial stereotypes. But as I became an activist I did see that a lot of those around me were far more wealthy than myself (for the record when my dad died we got a minor settlement and I lived on it for some time; he'd been an asbestos worker for decades and it contributed to his death; so I did have a small pittance of money but it wasn't more than would last a few years at most). After Seattle 99 (my dad died in 1996), I became disillusioned in activist circles because myself being arrested equated losing substantial amounts of money that I had saved up, but for others they could scoff it off and go back to protesting. It really, really pissed me off. "Good friends" getting bailed out when I had to sit until the court date to see what the hell I was facing. Fortunately, as I learned over time, being a white male allows you to slip through the cracks and you get away with things with only a slap on the wrist.

I've rambled too much, I just wanted to thank you for your response since so many others felt the OP was not to their liking.