At a time like this, you might as well be a Mench. Hell, you always ought to be a Mench.
I know that’s what you were going for. I’m just saying that the scenario described is like the do-we-torture-the-terrorist-to-find-the-ticking-atomic-bomb scenario: it’s so unlikely as to be utterly hypothetical. But not being there when your mom dies? That’s real, and it happens, and it saddles the person survivor with such a buttload of remorse that you would never wish it upno someone you loved.
“Unlikely”? I don’t necessarily think so. Remember the Manhattan Project? The scientists at Los Alamos were pretty isolated, had their mail/phone calls screened and censored. IIRC, they had to apply for permission to be gone for any length of time. While it is unlikely that we’ll have to fight another war like WWII, similar situations can and do arise. A few months back there was an astronaut aboard the ISS who’s mother died whilst he was in space. (IIRC, she died in a car accident, so it was sudden, and not an expected situation, though she was getting up there in years [70+]. The astronaut was making history, as he was a Japanese-American [the first, IIRC] and his mother had been in an internment camp in CA during WWII.)
Yeah. I don’t really see how this could hurt him. If he doesn’t get elected, is it really going to be because his went to be with his grandmother in her time of need? And imagine if he doesn’t get elected, and he doesn’t go to be with her…just think how much regret he might feel.
I believe I also read that this Sunday is also Obama’s grandmother’s birthday…so considering this might well be her last birthday, and that the woman is apparently in very poor health, I don’t think even the Republicans have the balls to criticize him for doing this.
However, like every grandmother (or parent) in a similar situation, I can bet she probably vigorously protested him coming, told him to keep going in the campaign and threatened not to let him into her room if he was foolish enough to come all the way there (yet secretly hoping he would indeed come see her one last time).
If Obama did not go and she died next week, he would have regretted that for the rest of his life. Not only that, but should he win (and I hope so) and he had not gone to see her before she died, it would have cast a horrible pall on his victory that would forever haunt him.
I say he should go to her-it should be how HE feels-if it were me, and I were dying, I would tell him it’s his decision. Not mine. Because if I said, “Oh, don’t come on my account,” I wouldn’t want him or her to feel bad if they wanted to come and didn’t. And as much as I might want to see him, I couldn’t make him feel like he HAD to.
On a rather disgusting note-the Freepers were saying he’s going to destroy his birth certificate-which proves he was actually born in Kenya-and some were saying he’s going to do something to hasten his grandmother’s death. Ugh. (Besides, wasn’t his mother a citizen of the U.S. anyways?)