Four Score and biometric monitoring

My daughter was born and lives only 30 miles or so from where Abraham Lincoln was born almost 200 years ago. It seems every state that the man stepped foot in attempts to take some credit for his greatness, but the fact is that he was born in a small cabin in rural central Kentucky to two uneducated farmers.
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Today was an interesting day. Due to our location here in the Pacific Ocean, I was able to watch the complete election and still get to bed by 10:00, so this morning was the same for me as most. I tried not to talk politics at work too much, since others had voted differently on several things and it was not worth interjecting into our day that I "won" on practically every thing/person I voted for.

I was surprised at how some McCain supporters took the news though. Today I saw an American flag flying upside down. It made me almost physically ill. Had I not been at work, I think I might have knocked on their door and told them how incredibly disrespectful and unpatriotic they actually were, after asking what the emergency was.

In other parts of the country, it was certainly much worse. Today I called my daughter (10) in Kentucky to see how she was doing after bruising her wrist yesterday. She grumbled a little, but was otherwise OK. Suddenly I get;

"So you got what you wanted, didn't you?"

"You mean Obama? Yeah, I guess so."

She then asked If I had seen Obama's speech, stating that she liked it -especially that Sasha and Malia would be, "getting that puppy."

Then came the concerns again. Actually it was less concerns than anger. My 10 year-old daughter indignant that kids had been bringing their parents' hate and idiocy to school.

"Like now that Obama's president all the white people are going to have tracking devices implanted in them."

It's considered impolite to scream, "WTF?!!!" into your daughter's ear over the phone, so I refrained. That's certainly is what was resonating in my head though. How do people get duped into such ridiculous obvious steaming piles of bulls**t?

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

145 years after those words, and 232 years after Thomas Jefferson first penned, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness," rural Kentuckians are still prone to ignorance, racism, bigotry, and stupidity. But there is evidence that from the depths of dumbness greatness can emerge. It will be a long, uphill fight, but there is still hope for my daughter.



*As an aside, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln, all well respected American icons. All Atheists, or at the very least, admittedly not Christian.

"My earlier views at the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures, have become clearer and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them."

[Abraham Lincoln, letter to Judge J.S. Wakefield, after the death of Willie Lincoln]

"I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies."

[Benjamin Franklin, in _Toward The Mystery_]

"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."

[Thomas Jefferson]