John McCain Invades My Email

I know I am way behind the curve when it comes to technology. My geek friends kind of giggle at me when I tell them I still have an AOL account. I have had one for most of the last eight years and it has caused me far more pain than pleasure. It tends to be slower than other services, the pop-ups on a site I'm paying for is unbelievable, and the quality of the services for a premium service are quite week. But I feel stuck because so much of my information is wrapped up in this system.

Anyway, to add insult to injury, AOL has recently moved to heavy advertising and have begun to make some of their services free. Unfortunately, those of us who continue to pay for the services are seeing a lot more advertisements as well and I'm beginning to find them offensive. Just recently I opened up an email to send and found a photo of Sen. John McCain with a statement proclaiming he is "a common sense conservative." This bothers me on several fronts:

* Was his ad casually placed on my email or do they know I'm interested in politics and conservative politics in particular? AOL is already among the worse when it comes to pop-ups, are they spying on me too?

* It bothers me that McCain markets himself as a conservative. Other than his position on the war in Iraq, McCain is really quite liberal on social issues, loves tax increases, and is a big fan of regulations. Furthermore, his positions on campaign finance reform makes him an opponent of free speech, in my opinion. I admit, he's excellent on Iraq, but that is not grounds to make him President or even call him conservative.

* It irritates me that he is on something as personal as my email. And, what if he shows up on emails I send to others? I think that is terrible. I really don't want people to associate my correspondence with him.

Rather than winning people that he hopes are undecided and use AOL, I think his strategy is more likely to turn people off. It's bad enough that they put the latest brand of toilet paper in an ad on my email, but a candidate whom I ideologically disagree with, that's a disgrace.