Dear Uncle Chuck

(An email I sent my uncle after receiving a totally untrue chain email from him about how upset liberals were that Tiger Woods didn't make a political speech during his speaking event at the 2009 Inauguration. Woods has been a very vocal supporter of Obama and gushed his support energetically shortly after the election despite the fact that he has historically maintained a staunchly apolitical public stance.)

Uncle Chuck, why do you hate liberals so much? I'm really, genuinely curious about this. I don't understand what's so wrong about raising taxes on the wealthy while giving the lower and middle classes a break, or embryonic stem cell research, or calling for a massive stimulus package to stagnate skyrocketing unemployment levels and revive a terminally ill global economy. President Bush, after all, handed out stimulus checks twice. The first rounds of checks effectively annihilated the balanced budget achieved by the Clinton administration. The second was a desperate bid to demonstrate that conservative economic ideals of the "spend more than you can afford to" Republican party were fiscally viable. This led to the subprime mortgage crisis, which led to the credit crunch, which led to a terrifying global recession. The companies who desperately need federal funding to stay alive are dragging their feet because the government is not going to write them a blank check; the funds are available for those willing to dramatically reformulate their business plan, because the one they've been using thus far isn't working anymore. Similarly, the $500,000 salary cap that President Obama set on CEOs of businesses receiving federal assistance has sparked an outrage among these CEOs as well as reignited the conservative battle cry about the evils of government regulation. Apparently, asking businesses who stay afloat on federal funds to be accountable to the taxpayers who made those funds possible is socialism, and CEOs cannot possibly survive on $500,000 per year.

As for the accusations in this particular chain mail about us scheming liberals, where exactly is the evidence that Tiger's inviters were "stunned"? Oh, wait...there is none. Darn. Can't pin much more than an unfounded angry Conservative accusation on us. See the snopes research on this here: http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/tigerwoods.asp

As is noted in the (snopes) article, Tiger Woods often takes the opportunity to publicly address the importance of respecting and honoring our troops.

I love you,
Dondi