As if that wasn’t enough, he said what I believe will be the most often quoted bit in Planet Atheism for the next couple of days:
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus… and non-believers."
Hell yeah! 
Just a couple of years after Bush Sr.’s “atheists can’t be considered citizens or patriots” quote. The tide is turning…
Thank you, America. The rest of the world breathes in relief.
Instead of pointing you to his victory speech, I’ll celebrate with a previous one, which still brings a tear to my eye when I watch it. Especially the second half. You’ve probably heard it before, but…
I can’t, what with not being American and all that. But most of the people reading this can.
Now, if we’re thinking about not voting because “none of the candidates really represent my positions” or “they’re both the same”, I leave you with two quotes for you to consider. Please do so.
Let’s say you’ve decided to sit out every election until you finally encounter the candidate who’s a left-handed green-eyed atheist libertarian who will institute the flat tax and can sing classical opera. I can guarantee you that you, my friend, will be sitting out every election of your entire life.
But let’s say a candidate finally comes along who’s a right-handed green-eyed agnostic libertarian who will institute some kinds of tax reforms (not the exact ones you want) and plays the tuba. And let’s say the other guy in the race is, hmmm, Fred Phelps. Are you really telling me that you’re going to sit out on principle because you only like southpaws?
– Kazim, The Atheist Experience
and, of course:
To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”
To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.
– David Sedaris, The New Yorker
In case you haven’t heard, there’s a guy running for president named Barack Hussein Osama Nobama. This Nobama was born outside America and secretly schooled in Islamic terrorism at a Wahhabi madrassa. He then moved to the United States to take up the radical ’60s teachings of the Weather Underground’s Bill Ayers, while also organizing for ACORN, a subprime-lending, voter fraud-committing collective of affirmative-action welfare queens. All this happened before he became an elitist celebrity advocate of socialism, infanticide, the sexual abuse of children and treason.
An exaggeration, right? Nobody could possibly really believe such idiocy?
Right…
The prosecution rests.
Conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh, naturally, are ignoring all of Colin Powell’s stated reasons, and saying he’s endorsing Obama only because they’re both black. Which, they say, amounts to racism.
Does that mean that they are voting for McCain only because they and McCain are white? The racist bastards!
In fact, if we take this absurdity to its logical limit, the only non-racists out there are the whites who’re voting for Obama, and the blacks who’re voting for McCain. Everyone else is just voting according to skin color, nothing more. Racists!
And to think these creeps have millions hanging on to their every word…
You’ve probably read the news by now (and, if you feel like being disgusted, read the comments at the bottom of this page: the number of Republicans who didn’t even listen to Powell’s reasons and are accusing him of supporting Obama just because they’re both black is simply scary), but I couldn’t let this part of Colin Powell’s statement pass by:
I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said: such things as, "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is he is not a Muslim; he’s a Christian, has always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, "What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?" The answer’s "No, that’s not America." Is there something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion he’s Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.
Kudos to Powell for having the guts to say that (remember McCain’s (paraphrased) “no, he’s not an Arab,” (meaning “Muslim”, really), “he’s a decent family man”, thus implying that a Muslim can’t be one?). The implication, which probably shocks and offends the Religious Right like few other things in recent memory, is that being a Muslim is somehow not inferior to being a Christian, that being a Muslim (or a non-Christian in general) doesn’t disqualify someone for the presidency.
What next, they may be asking? “Is there something wrong with being an atheist in this country?” 
I’m betting, of course, that the media will focus on “Powell endorses Obama”, and ignore this small bit of what he said, but, to me, that was the most important part. I can easily imagine Powell saying the same thing about any other religion, or about the lack of one, and these things need to be said, to combat the Religious Right’s dream of religious tests for high office (which, of course, you’d only pass by adhering strictly to their exact branch of fundamentalist Christianity).
Incidentally, it’s strange that I haven’t seen mass conservative cries of “Obama is an atheist”, since atheists are even more demonized than Muslims in the U.S.. I guess it’s the old “there are really no atheists, as deep inside everyone knows God exists” thing.
Articles like this, which I seem to be reading several times a day as I follow the U.S. elections, really get on my nerves. Not just because they’re wrong (they are), but because they spread ignorance, fear, and a complete unwillingness to learn anything, no matter what.
I won’t quote from that article here; if you’re interested in the subject matter, you’ve probably saw a dozen of them this week. The gist of them is always: no matter how bad things are, an Obama presidency / Democratic Congress will be even worse. No, really. Trust us. Things may be pretty screwed up these days, but Obama is a socialist! A liberal! He will destroy Capitalism, destroy the economy (as if it needs help, after the Bush administration), lead the United States into the dark ages, and so on.
Evidence? No need for that; Obama is a Democrat! What else do you need? Don’t you know that Democrats hate capitalism, freedom, America, and all that? If they win, they will raise taxes for everyone, spend money they don’t have (unlike the Bush administration, of course, which would never do such a thing), and, of course, promote the gay agenda, ban religion, force people to have abortions, surrender to Al Qaeda, move to the metric system (gasp!), and so on. Because that’s exactly what happened when Clinton was president, right?
What really makes me angry is this: Bush has been the worst president in recent memory, and the troubles are all his administration’s fault. Yet, without any data, without evidence, they claim that a change of administration would make things even worse. Bush sucks, but Obama is a liberal, and nothing is worse than that, to these people. And many believe them. Even though the last Democratic administration was actually much more fiscally conservative than the “oh, let’s spend a few billions each month in Iraq each month; it’s not as if they come out of our pockets” Bushites.
I’ve always believed – whether talking about U.S. elections, or Portuguese elections, or any others – that, if the group in power screws up, they must be punished, and that only a complete idiot will believe any “devil you know” arguments about the possibility of an even worse alternative. This is not a “devil you know” versus a “devil you don’t”: only the former has actually shown himself to be a “devil”. Suppositions and guesses about Obama’s future government (especially when they contradict all his stated policies) shouldn’t ever be comparable to real, actual, recent-past facts about Bush and I-voted-with-him-90%-of-times McCain.
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