One man's fight for Obama on the Wild Frontier of Facebook

(Here it is: my first diary.)

For those of you with accounts of Facebook, you are familiar with the "status update" function on Facebook, where you get to enter whatever you wish about what is going on right now with you. And ALL your friends get to see it when they log on to Facebook.

Usually it's something innocuous like: BillyT just came home from work and man is he TIRED!!

then your friends may comment: BOY you sure work some long hours! What kept you so long? Etc. etc....

But this is what I saw when I logged in tonight. (The names have been changed.)

Cindy finds it fascinating that the women in Obama's Senate Office make $.83 on the dollar. 6:47pm

Hmm. I considered my options.

This is a friend of mine from way back when we were kids going to summer camp. We found each other on Facebook. I admire her pictures of her and her infant son. They live in a Midwest "swing state." I have not communicated with her directly. Now we are just acquaintances, I guess.

This is clearly a dig on Obama and his push for equal pay for women. I found it rather ironic that Obama is being hit by a snark based on something he clearly has no control over as far as I know (FEDERAL WORKER PAY SCALE, as he is not a small business owner hiring these office workers on his own).

And to think how she is by default supporting the alternative of John McCain, the guy who voted against equal pay how many times, who said women just need more education, who called his wife a C$&T in public....

But, I toyed with the idea of letting it go.....

....I mean, who's gonna see this? Her 30 friends? (On Facebook you can tell exactly how many friends anyone else has.)

And in the years past I might have just let it go. I was definitely a non-political animal until earlier this year, my apathy honed and concentrated by years of what I saw as pointless bickering, same old politics, nothing done landscape of politics.

BUT NOT THIS YEAR. NOT THIS ELECTION. NOT TONIGHT.

So I started typing. At first I came up with some rather lengthy wordy responses like "Well, I don't think a senator gets to determine what the federal worker's pay scale is...." and the such.

Finally I came up with this: only those who know about McCain's record of voting AGAINST EQUAL PAY would get it.

BillyT at 8:53pm October 8 That highlights the importance to elect a President who has never voted against Equal Pay for Women....

I even thought maybe, just maybe, this acquaintance of mine would just let it go. But clearly she was also ready to "take the gloves off:"

Cindy at 9:11pm October 8 What it highlights for me is the importance of not electing someone who says one thing and does another...

Okay, I'VE GOT HER!!

Not only is she eager to put the dukes up, she's also opened up a big gaping hole: "not electing someone who says one thing and does another...." where do I even start on this with McCain as the target??

BillyT at 9:37pm October 8

Okay....let's really look into this "says one thing" and "does another" business:

By that I assume you mean the candidate who has said:

1. "My economic advisor was the biggest spearhead for DEregulation" (Phil Gramm, Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, 1999),

1. "I am a DEregulator" (March 29,2008)

1. and suddenly "I have always been a regulator" (October 2008, $&!t hits the Wall St. fan)??

But I digress....

The pay rates for those who work in the US Senate Offices (i.e. FEDERAL EMPLOYEES) are determined by whom? Not the senators themselves.

I doubt the Senators individually decide what pay scale to use for their office workers.

For your barb against "THAT ONE" to really pass scrutiny, I would need to know what the women are getting paid in McCain's office, or if he still thinks those women "just need more education...."

At this point, I Googled "federal worker pay scale" trying to look up any info on federal worker pay scale in the Senate offices. But what did I find??

http://obama.senate.gov/...

Kennedy, Specter, Obama, Senators Work to Overturn Supreme Court Decision on Pay Discrimination Friday, July 20, 2007 Printable Format

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Ben LaBolt

No American Should be Denied Equal Pay for Equal Work ---- Led Better Decision Undermines American Principles

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Obama (D-IL) joined a bipartisan group of fourteen Senators, led by Senators Kennedy and Specter, to introduce the Fair Pay Restoration Act, a bill to overturn the Supreme Court’s recent 5-4 decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, which undermined the basic protection against pay discrimination under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The decision also undermines pay discrimination claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. The bill would restore the clear intent of Congress that workers must have a reasonable time to file a pay discrimination claim after they become victims of discriminatory compensation.

So I sent more comments quoting this important evidence that Obama was not "saying one thing and doing another" as my acquaintance had insinuated.

My final comment to Cindy:

This is just one example of one-person front in this world of disinformation.

My acquaintance, a college-grad woman employed in some government office, should have known better. But even in this case an educated woman can first decide who will get her vote, and then omit important facts (fed worker pays not Senator-dependent, and what is John McCain paying his women workers??) to make a snarky comment about the other candidate.

Final thought: I hope I was able to stand up to her false hit on Obama's record of standing up for equal pay. And just as it was a sneaky bit of pro-McCain/anti-truth propaganda that reached 30 other people, I wanted to take advantage of that medium and show to those same 30 people that NO IT'S NOT OK to just take misrepresentations as truths since no one else bothered to speak up against it.

I HAVE NO FALSE ASPIRATIONS that "Cindy" will suddenly see the light and see who's the flip-flopper in this mismatch of a presidential candidates, but I hope that at least one of her 30 "friends" will read the exchanges and realize that someone out there is willing to stick up for Obama so maybe he's not soooo bad a choice.

I can only HOPE, one small "status update" at a time, right??