We often speak of the social divide which has been unearthed by the Bush administration's nationalistic, fear-mining machinery. It's always been there, but it was buried beneath Clinton's era of prosperity. Well, that prosperity is a renewable resource in short supply these days, and folks are getting aggressive.

Here is a short chronology od events. First, my cousin sent me this e-mail calling for some drastic measure or another to be taken against Dan Rather. I haven't spoken with him in years in any way prior to this contact. He initiated a political discussion - or at least that is how I decided to interpret it. Either way, he picked a bad election cycle to bring it up and I wasn't about to play dumb or let this die.

I called him out on it, pointing out how the substance of the story still probably has some merit. That idea, arguably more important, was being drown out.

We continued to banter back and forth. He wanted me to call him since he didn't like writing e-mails. As you will read in this e-mail I finally teased out of him, his reasons for not wanting to communicate in writing became painfully clear. A taste:

Univ. of Penn a liberal school and could be slanted by those who are doing the research and secondly it is Jewish:  Annenberg, very few Jews vote Republican, hell the ACLU is run by Jews who are destroying every value that built America.  The ACLU is the Enemy of the State.  I do have Jewish friends that I made while living in FL, thank god they are Republican.

And then there's this doozy: