My Family and Politics

This post has been a long time coming, but it's been hard to get all of the different ideas about it into a cohesive presentation. To begin with I should tell you that my Dad, my Mom and I are all registered as Republicans, while my brother is a cynic. My dad is a neo-conservative (i.e. a Rush Limbaugh Republican), I am a moderate (I call myself a Theodore White Republican,) and my Mom is somewhere in between, though not very vocal about her opinions.
My brother believes that everyone is entitled to his (my brother's) opinion, but, like my Dad, is not too concerned about whether the facts actually support his opinions. They seem to believe something is true only if it supports a particular predjudice they might have. I don't express my opinions often, but I'd rather know what's really going on than what someone thinks is going on. On the other hand, I do find the editorials very interesting.
The reason this is on my mind is because I was cleaning out my email inbox the other day, and there was (is) a lot of chain emails sent to me by my Dad concerning how this administration is going to be the ruination of the country. I simply don't have time to respond to all of them, though some of the themes are the same: we are on our way to becoming a socialist (communist) country because a democrat is in the White House, and Obama = Hitler because he campaigned on "change." (Somehow it doesn't matter that McCain also campaigned on change; he just used different terms. So did Ronald Reagan, for that matter.) My Dad gets a lot of email back from me referencing Snopes.com, Politifact.org and Factcheck.org, but not everything he sends is that easy.
There was an episode of American Masters on PBS the other night about Garrison Kieller in which he said something that made me realize my Dad's problem: He gets all his information from people who complain a lot. I believe there are better sources of information.
But anyway, now that I've laid a foundation explaining where I'm coming from, feel I can post about things that come up without causing you, my adoring public, to wonder what the heck I'm talking about.