After reading a column you [Bill Shipp] wrote before the election, I determined that I would have to write you and set you straight but after reading last Wednesday’s column, I could not put it off any longer.

In your column you asked not to be written to about the election, but since I am writing for the main part about something you wrote before the election, I think that exempts me. After all, I read your opinions all of the time so you should be able to read mine once.

Not too long before the election, you wrote a column about if Obama lost, what the reason for that lost would be. You said the race card was alive and well in the South and just the same as implied there would be no other valid reason for his losing. Sir, you have insulted the intelligence of everyone who reads your column, votes or backs any certain person by implying there is only one reason for anything.

Awhile back—eight or 12 years—the Democratic Party tried to get Gen. Colin Powell to run, but he was dissuaded from doing so by his wife. If the man would have run, I for one would have voted for him in a nano-second. I deeply regret that he backed Obama this year for they are about as different as two men can get. If Gen. Powell would have run it would had been as a Democrat. I myself am white, female, from the north, and a while past 60 years and also a Republican.

Who I voted for had nothing to do with Republican or Democrat but rather on the principles this country was founded on. Have you read what the people who signed the Declaration of Independence believed in? Well, I have and those are the exact things I believe in.

I believe God created Adam and Eve to be partners, not Eve and Ellen or Adam and Anthony. I believe if we are willing to let women get abortions up to and including the ninth month of pregnancy that we are on a very slippery slope that can lead to nothing worthwhile.

And yes, I believe children do come with an instruction booklet, but most parents do not take time to read it. It was authored by many and is really 69 books not one and its title is the Bible.

Do you honestly believe that after all our troops have been through since the fight for independence from England that it is OK to put a man in charge of the troops that doesn’t respect the flag enough to salute it or put his hand over his heart. And another thing, if the only thing his wife can find to be proud of this country about is a black man running for president, then she shouldn’t even be living in this country, let alone in the White House.

No sir, I will never respect that man, but I will respect the office he will be holding come January. I have always believed people shouldn’t ask other people who they vote for—that’s why they send you into a booth instead of counting hands, but this is one time I gladly declare I voted for John McCain and am proud of it. I’m also very proud of the way the man spoke and what he said during the concession speech.

Mr. Shipp, I have always enjoyed reading editorials of opinion pieces, but this time all you accomplished was to raise my blood pressure and you should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself because if there is a race card still alive in the South, then it is people like you who carry it around and use it as a freebie when you have nothing useful to say.

The one reason I am glad that Obama got in was because now the black man that uses his blackness as an excuse not to succeed no longer has an excuse. After all, the president of the strongest nation in the world will be a black man.

Vicki L. RobertsBainbridge, Ga.