I would like to thank you for this opportunity to defend my candidate and his religious preference. Nobody is perfect. It is always a matter of the lesser evils when we vote, isn't it? "We are One Nation, ..... One People ......united under the constitution of the United States of America!" Obama does not bring "religion" into his politics. I like that! There will be less and less traces of that mentality in the future of politics. In 1974 Gerald Ford and congress attempted to status quo "Christianity" as the mainstream religion of the United States. Through their actions, many non Christians have been oppressed, been pushed down in our society to the enslavement of organized social engine organizations that beat their chest that they are the chosen ones, they are the saved ones. I was raised to a converted (was Protestant) mother and a Catholic(would not take communion) father. And I went to parochial(Catholic) school that taught me the most cruel severe spiritual terrorism that anyone could ever be taught to spread to others. While these social organizations enjoy teaching that we should help one another in charity(something I admire about them), they do it in a very sick fashion sometimes. They taught me, at the age or 6-18, to tell other non catholics that they and their families would suffer eternally in some damnation, in hell fire, in some godforsaken separation from the Love of God! Soooooo sick! And to use a 6 or 7 year old boy to do this! Right here in the good ole PURE US of A! This happened all the while while I was being physically abused by my father and mother, sometimes being beaten by hairbrushes and strapping on occasion for my father's nitpicking children's offenses in our family. He was under pressure, having been raised by an intolerant non communicative father himself and having guarded German prisoners in WWII where he became abandoned (similar to how the Nazis programmed their SS in WWII) , hardened to the terrible physical abuses he had to witness...the daily beatings of enlisted prisoners of that camp that would go unchallenged by the US guards who were ordered not to interfere unless somebody was actually killed, actually died in their witness. That unanswered unresolved, un counseled witness made him an abuser to us as children later in his adult life. He and we are victims of circumstance, unfolding chaos in this modern world that pauses before being able to blanket us in a warmth of comfort that we seek to functionally cooperate with one another in sometimes less that desirable circumstances to do so. The Pledge of Allegiance, using the term "God" is a farce. We all don't believe in one God! If you ask enough questions of any "so called" believer, you will find that, more often than not, these believers do not agree on what God is. Very often their answers end in programmed "It's a mystery!", without any due consideration of logic! If you say there is One God, all knowing and ever present, then how can any logical mind conclude that this God can ever separate from itself? EVER? That obviously is the ONE thing that ONE God cannot do! So let me tell you, Mister Man, if God cannot separate from God's self, then Eternal Damnation is a big lie! The biggest LIE EVER put upon mankind! It is a lie purported by all Judeo Christian, Islamic,....you name it, any religion that says it exists and says there is One God! It is a lie from Jesus! Although people and organizations lie about this, they are in no less peril from it, either here or in any afterlife sense! We all do the best that we can! Jesus recognized this when he said, "Greater works than these that I do will they do who come after me, for I go unto my Father!", meaning that each of us makes mistakes on this earth, witnessable mistakes, even while doing our best, and if we can see each other as we are in heaven better than, with more love(time is unlimited in heaven....you can get that way)...then if we follow our imaginations of how things would be in such a circumstance, we can act accordingly and improve our human lot, healing one another instead of killing one another or building unresolved emotional stress upon one another one after the other. My personal relationship with Jesus Christ is unique. I tell you I am not a Christian because I do not profess or acknowledge...in fact I refute the infallibility of a man named Jesus Christ who is reported to have lived here on this earth 2000+ years ago. I believe that in heaven, that is what Jesus would want me to do. Since I see faults that he did, I do not repeat those faults. I am not of parts. that I can recognize, of my fathers the devil or demons or hurtful behaviors of my ancestry. I have resolved as many of them as I can and I continue to resolve them with resolve, even while being attacked by their grandchildren because they know not what they do. My daughter has cancer from her addictions to tanning, poor diet and her rebellion against the ways I taught her to live, brought on by the chaos of the religious peer pressures and media to dumb down what truth came from her father. My son is in jail on cocaine related charges, again, a rebeller against his father. Perhaps society will change enough to teach these children, to validate their father's teachings and not to bring hardship upon that father to punish that father (that worships heavenly spirit) .........and his family for the truth he shared with the world! I do not bow to the false God of eternal damnation promise or spiritual terror. I only follow leaders that do that when I am under threat of not being able to survive or help my family survive when I realize that if I don't cave into the Magisterium temporarily, an immediate, in this lifetime, suffering will take place that will kill or dismember one of my family's members! This is spiritual terror. I am a survivor! But this religion thing is about common sense, logic, isn't it? Would you want me to stand beside you, saying "One God" in that pledge, when you and I do not agree on what that God is, and therefore that Oneness is false? That was lieing last time I checked! What is it to you? Or have you also learned to lie about lieing? lol I am a Forgive Affirmed Spirit. I am not a Christian, nor a Muslim, nor a Jew, nor a Mormon, nor a Church of Christ, nor a Baptist, nor a Methodist.....I am a Forgive Affirmed Spirit! You can read about Forgive Affirmed Spirit on Yahoo Questions and Answers under the search for it or search for "skahhh", my name under Yahoo. I am truly skahhhed and I share my skahhhs there with you. It sounds like scar for a reason. It is not important to single me out for my scars, rather that you each find your own scars and forgive them, share them with one another. Then they can become resolved, then we can have One Real Godlikeness that we can all concentrate on, that means something, that means healing to all of us! I believe Mr Obama believes like I do, but realizes that he must associate with something politically to align himself with the voting public. But I could be wrong here. If he does believe in eternal damnation, then I disagree with him, but he is still the hope of this country. He has a voice that cries out for American Values, the way I think they should be cried out for. He has the energy to cry out for the oppressed and the potential to recognize the economic crisis that is before us. The meaningful jobs are going away. Technology is quickly eating up the necessity for labor and if we don't get a handle on this real quick, millions of people are going to starve and die, right here in this country. Prior to this time, and perhaps for a time longer until our government realizes what it is up against, Governments have used wars as economic stimulus! Sooner or later this has to change or we will destroy each other on earth beyond repair! Idealistic differences are going to need to be discussed and consensused without killing one another physically. The hope of this happening may be in the US population building it's democratic spirit within it's constitution! The part of "our God" that we can agree on, that blessed us with this document is truly AMAZING, AWESOME! I could pledge allegiance to that part of God! Would you permit me to say that in the pledge? Can you hear me now? "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under that part of God that we all agree on that allowed us to form the the Constitution of the United States of America,... for which this Nation stands, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all!"? Hmmm.... I didn't think you would. You take your time and think a little more about this. You are grown adults. Words mean something, people. As we are from the Creation Energy, Image, the imagination that invented, imploded the Golden dust of the ages, mixed with temperature changes and the moisture that came about from those trapped changes of the dust and therefore the formation of our original slime that became human and evolved through creation to this point, we are parts of that creation/creator, and as such our words are from that Creation energy, hence our words are Words of God! No utterance can be but from that source else there is no source! I do not condone killing. I have never heard Obama EVER say he condoned killing! For you to say he condoned killing of Americans because he may not be of your church...to draw that conclusion is pure hatred! I despise that kind of hate. I will do everything in my power to subdue it and fight spiritually, mentally, emotionally, all the while defending my physical health as much as possible and the health of my loved ones as much as possible against the dumbing down of political thought and spiritual genocide that occurs from the spread of Eternal Damnation as some sort of contorted bipolar truth! I love this life. I love the people in it. I love it so much that I will lay down my thoughts for you and yours as plain as I can put them. I use my energy to do so. I know, and you probably know of noone who has done this plainer than I have. I would like to meet them if you do. They and I can hash this out. Always need a few more in this battle for functional truth. Muslims believe in Allah. They are just as contorted as Christians. They claim that Allah is only good! They claim that everything came from Allah. Well, I got news for them, unless you call everything good, then evil came from Allah too if that is what you call your Creation Energy. One source is one source, no matter how you cut it! So each of these religions lives a lie. Now the question to me is, who has the ability to cut to the chase, to use words and to write words and to re author democracy to fit all of us, without undue killing, a person brainwashed in Eternal Damnation from one side, or a person who can see through both sides? I think it is the latter. I think Obama has some foresight you will never get from any other status quo candidate! I admire any man who questions his faith openly and who can show that he is on a path to becoming a unifier of gracious loving spirit and who does so by his actions. Obama has done that. Obama wants retirees making less than 50k per year to pay NO TAX. If the immediate economic finances dictate that we have to pay people double minimum wage, what will your retirement be worth? You better be thinking things over, because this guy has done some thinking and if you waste your vote, it might be too late to head things in a functional direction! Many a person has been killed over religion. Many a person has fought in a war on the side of Christianity. If you go to Vietnam, 3 million Vietnamese were killed by our country. If you go to Iraq, how many Iraqis have died in this latest war? Oh I realize we are scared and we think they want to kill us. We get worried about that ..."Am I willing to die, to martyr for my religion?" complex they tried to brainwash into our minds in Catholic school. But millions more have died at the hands of so called Christians, than probably any other religion! We don't mean to kill others, but we, like Muslims, spend so much time memorizing scriptures and prayers that we fail, from time driven humanity to learn foreign language and find a way for all of us to agree, yet. This is how God, Creation, placed us here. Our purpose....apparently for the entertainment of how we are in spirit in that Creation energy to give us a break from all knowing boredom? Again, I am glad for this Barack Hussein Obama. He wants to actively pursue Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan! If we know where he is let's go get him! I agree! That's my political spouting for this day! Healing be unto you and yours and me and mine In Forgive Affirmed Spirit Skip Heilmann The following is a letter I got from a concerned friend about my support for Obama After one of the messages that Skip wrote, you might like to forward this missive to him. He plans to support Mr. Obama. I don't trust the slime from the word "Go!" For a start, I find that anything to do with Islam is totally repugnant to me. Living among those people for the better part of 4 years of my life gave me a deeper understanding of what they think of any person who does not absolutely adhere to their beliefs. Their credo is "Convert or die." Additionally, they have the option of lying as well. In my opinion, one of the most glossed over aspects of Islam is that it is OK to lie to a "non-believer" ( a.k.a. INFIDEL). I personally can find no source that can either confirm or deny this claim that I am making about Islam. Regardless, as the basis of a so-called "religion of peace," any lying doesn't cut it with me. I know of no other religion that teaches lying as a means to an end so openly. Fault any other religion in the world for various reasons all one wishes to, but don't forget that it's not a problem for Muslim people to lie. I did as the message mentioned and found this bit of information at the Snopes site: http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/muslim.asp In essence, Snopes.com points out that the claims are either exaggerated or false. To my way of thinking, again this all depends on how one wishes to view the issue. Let's face it, the Democrats are desperate. For Democrats, it's either "Billary" or some other questionable kook! Obama? PUH-leeze! Surely we can do better than that!? Truthfully, again to my way of thinking, if there is even the slightest question of being somehow having even so "little" as an "exaggerated" claim regarding some aspect of a candidate's fitness for "high office" ... it is sufficient to discount or discredit the efficacy of that candidate. Sadly, our country has degenerated sufficiently that we will soon deteriorate into the same kind of thing that ancient Rome became ... another has-been "super-power." Like Rome, this country will probably degerate to the extent that it will no longer hold faithful to the principles of the founders of this country. For a start, the "politically correct" folks have pretty much thrashed and trashed the more conservative elements of our society in the name of "freedom." So, there you have my opinion. Reader's Digest version? I wouldn't vote for ANY Democrat if that person was the ONLY candidate! What makes anyone think I would waste my time voting for a Democrat knowing the likes of Clinton (which strangely enough rhymes with Peron, the former El Presidente of Argentina) are still given credence by our media? A total waste. I'm convinced that most Americans are clueless enough they will vote for those candidates if for no other reason than I have never found myself in agreement with the "majority" here in the US. The beef, wordwran, is that religious discrimination is alive and well in the United States and is contorted and hateful agains people who can make a real functional difference in our society! Aaron, God is not unique to the Jews or the Christians! But I do think there was a sense of a Creator Energy. The word energy, as in cosmic energy was not generally accepted by general mankind until recently. So, the idea of Cosmic Creation, of a belonging to that Cosmic Creation is an evolving, unfolding one that recognizes as time goes by, that we are not all zombies spitting anything that our pastors tell us....some of it creates inequities that are one sided on the sides of the social engine belongers, the donating members of the traditionalist fundamentalist Eternal Damnation worshipping religious organizations! Times have changed and more and more people have found themselves thinking for themselves and bringing out their inner "Words of God" that threaten the there to fore presentations of their previous masters whom they memorized. The point is, religion, what and who God is, what and how nature is connected, what and how Creation is in us and about us is changing. America is changing. We no longer have a complacent majority sitting on the sidelines with no opinion except that they do want a quality of life and some equality. America has to change with that or it will be defunct in a short period of time.