I started this blog two months ago. My reason: I was hearing and seeing a lot of things that concerned me that I was seeing happening in the election with regards to false statements and flat out lies. I wanted to try to do something to point out what was going on and make sure people were aware.
My intention was to point out the bad form of both sides, but the more I watched and read and researched, the more it became clear to me that the majority of the offenses were from the Republican side. I had been pretty sure I was voting for Barack Obama but seeing and hearing all of this just cemented my position and put me in the mind set that I had to try to do something to get Obama elected. I'm hoping this blog has helped somehow.
So it comes down to this. Tomorrow is Election Day. This is my last shot to try to write something compelling to convince any final undecideds that Obama is the right person for the job of President this election cycle. So that's what I'm going to try to do.
Here's my arguments:
- Obama wants to lower middle-class taxes for almost everyone in the country. McCain wants to lower taxes for the most wealthy Americans. So Obama is looking out for the majority of Americans, McCain is only looking out for the wealthy minority.
Unless you are making more than $250,000 a year, and just about everyone who is reading this post does not make that much, you should want to vote for Obama. It will save you a lot of money in taxes every year. - Obama wants to setup a health care system that will help almost all Americans get coverage. He mandates coverage for children and wants to prevent health insurance companies from being able to reject applicants because of past illnesses.
McCain wants to tax employee based health care for the first time in American history. Then he wants to give a $5000 tax credit to families to buy health insurance but the average health plan costs $12000 a year. Which means if you try to buy family health insurance, you'll be responsible for covering almost $600 a month to pay for it. Can you afford that? I know I can't.
In other words, while Obama wants to lower costs and help everyone get coverage, McCain wants to make it more difficult and complicated and far more expensive. - McCain calls Obama a socialist for offering tax cuts to people, which makes no sense to me. How is providing a tax cut to working Americans socialism? Another example of how McCain just doesn't get it. This can only help the economy because it put money back in the pockets of consumers to help them spend it and help struggling businesses. Why do you think so many businesses are struggling these days? Because no one has money to spend.
McCain also says we shouldn't be raising any taxes right now, referring to Obama's plan to let the Bush tax cuts expire and allow the tax rates for the wealthiest 2% of Americans to go back to where they were before the cuts were implemented. (Although the Republicans would have you believe that Obama plans to raise everyone's taxes, which is just not true.) But then McCain's going to tax all of our health benefits for the first time in American history. Anyone see a contradiction here? - Obama wants to responsibly end the Iraq War for two reasons: 1. to focus on Afghanistan where the terrorists really are and 2. to stop spending BILLIONS of American tax dollars in Iraq and start spending them here in America! Even the Iraqis want us to plan to leave and Bush and Rice are working with them to establish a plan.
McCain has no plans to leave Iraq and has said he'd be happy to stay there for 100 years.
The war in Iraq needs to end. There is so much that we could be doing with the money being spent there to create jobs, rebuild our infrastructure, and help the people in THIS country. I do not believe Obama will just abandon the Iraqis at the end of some pre-determined date. He will do it responsibly (he has said so) and will let conditions dictate how we leave. But McCain would just have us stay there forever. Want to know why our economy sucks? Spending billions in Iraq is a major reason. - Sarah Palin.
What can I say about this woman that I haven't already?
You can read my posts about here by clicking the links below:
- http://pickingapresident.blogspot.com/2008/09/palin-backstabber.html
- http://pickingapresident.blogspot.com/2008/09/i-want-to-get-back-to-original-point-of.html
- http://pickingapresident.blogspot.com/2008/10/palin-is-bad-mom.html
Those are a few of the things I've written about her. You can search through my posts if you'd like to see more details of what I think about Sarah Palin.
But what it comes down to is that Palin is not ready to be President if called upon to do so. People say they like her because she's one of us. Would you want your neighbor to be President? Do you think they'd be ready to deal with the problems our country faces and deal with international issues? Do you trust this woman to do what's best for everyone or just what she thinks based on her own super-religious views? (And that's not a knock on religion. But I believe politicians' decisions should not be based solely on religion as not everyone is religious. And too many of her views and statements are based in her religion. Ever hear of separation of church and state?)
This is a woman who could not tell you what newspapers she reads, name a Supreme Court verdict, back her running mate up by giving one example of when McCain fought for more regulation, and thinks Alaska's proximity to Russia makes her experienced in foreign affairs. She does a great job of bashing Obama but really can't tell you anything positive she and McCain would do for the country (this is all she's been doing for weeks). She also says some of the most ridiculous things you could imagine (Obama's a socialist, hangs with terrorists, etc.)
At the VP debate, she avoided half of the questions by spewing rhetoric and bringing up topics unrelated to the questions. Is this how she would deal with foreign dignitaries? What would she do when she has to deal with real problems and can't just give some talking points some campaign staffer wrote for her? She couldn't handle Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric. And they wouldn't let her talk to Brian Williams for more than 10 minutes alone. For most of the campaign she avoided reporters and still has not given a press conference on the eve of Election Day. If she can't deal with reporters, how can you possibly believe she can deal with real issues, real problems?
The possibility of this woman being President (not too unrealistic given McCain's age and health history) scares me to death. She cannot be put into this position.
This is the type of person McCain picked as his first decision for a major cabinet position. Who else would he put into important cabinet positions? This shows extreme bad judgement. - For all of the talk of Obama's supposed illicit relationships, none of them have been proven to be of any substance. It's all pretty much speculation, nothing proven and nothing to show that any of these relationships have had any negative impact or influence on Obama and his mindset.
On the other hand, McCain and Palin have had many more troubling and direct connections to shady characters.
- Charles Keating was a close friend of McCain's and was convicted of defrauding investors of millions. McCain even went to bat for him to try to ward off investigators.
- Phil Gramm is McCain's close friend and economic advisor. He was directly responsible for our current economic crisis by pushing through legislation that deregulated the financial and banking industries.
- Todd Palin was a member of the Alaska Independence Party, an organization that wanted to secede from the United States. Sarah addressed and attended meetings for this organization on several occasions.
You can read more about both of their troubling associations here http://pickingapresident.blogspot.com/2008/10/so-lets-talk-about-mccains-staff.html and here http://pickingapresident.blogspot.com/2008/10/obamas-character.html.
So while Obama's supposed controversial associations are not proven to be anything more than speculation, McCain's and Palin's are proven to be much more troubling and real. - John McCain has proven himself to be erratic, indecisive, and to have poor judgement. He "suspended" his campaign to deal with the financial crisis, did nothing to help it, attended the first debate after he said he wouldn't if the financial package was not approved (which it wasn't at the time), and then never said that he was restarting his campaign. He's changed his positions several times. He's always been a de-regulator but has now been pushing for regulation of the financial industries. He's always believed in allowing businesses to fend for themselves but now wants to push through a plan to buy bad mortgages to help banks and lenders at the taxpayers expense.
(Let me talk about that last sentence for a minute. Do you understand what he wants to do here? Buy up bad mortgages, allow homeowners to refinance at current home values, and have taxpayers pay for the difference. Do you want to pay for someone else's mortgage while you are stuck paying your own mortgage at full price because you did the right thing? Read more about this here: http://pickingapresident.blogspot.com/2008/10/mccains-housing-plan-urgh.html. If you are someone who has a fixed interest rate loan and bought a house within your means as opposed to some big status symbol with a sub-prime loan, you should be outraged by this plan.)
In the meantime, Obama has been cool, calm, and collected. He's shown a steadiness and level-headedness we need right now. He's contemplative, thoughtful, and has shown a composed temperament. He's not quick to react without thinking about a problem and considering alternatives, unlike McCain, who has stated himself that he usually reacts to a problem without thinking about it. Is that the type of leadership we need? Isn't that what we've had for the past eight years? - Just look at the country right now. A sinking economy, millions losing their homes and jobs, a never ending war in Iraq where we are spending billions of dollars, unemployment rising, businesses closing or doing poorly, health care costs rising for those lucky enough to have it, poor perception of our country internationally, ... never has this country been in such doldrums. And do people really want more of this? Because the Bush Administration has governed over this mess and John McCain has voted for many of Bush's poor policies (90%, by his own words) and wants to continue them. Don't we need a change in direction instead of more of the same? Obama will give this to us the change we need.
- John McCain has run an increasingly negative, vicious campaign that has incited hatred at Republican rallies and has caused more divisiveness in this country. He and Palin have spent MUCH more time bashing Obama than talking about how they are going to help people.
In the meantime, Barack Obama has been talking of nothing but how he's going to help people and bring everyone together. Don't we deserve a President who is focused on helping our country as opposed to someone who's more focused on causing dissension and issues that are not important right now? - Finally, let's talk about the candidates themselves.
John McCain is quick to anger, makes bad, rash, uninformed decisions (suspending his campaign, first he's a de-regulator, now he's a regulator, Sarah Palin), and is not focused on the issues. I look at the Republican ticket and fear for our country's and my family's future if McCain were to win the election. He'd just be more of the same of what we have now and look where we are now. And heaven forbid anything ever happen to him and we have President Palin! That boggles my mind!
Barack Obama gives me hope for this future. He's inspiring to me. He's a true leader, a uniter. He's shown great poise and eloquence throughout this whole election process. He's shown he's ready to lead our country to new heights, to new, refound respect in the world, and I look forward to our country's future if he's elected President.
So there you have it. I truly believe Barack Obama is the right candidate for our country at this time. We need someone with the vision, temperament, thoughtfulness, and care that he has at this time. He is down to earth, truly understands what the middle class is going through, and wants to help them.
I hope you'll join me in voting for Barack Obama on Tuesday and allow him to lead our country into a bright new future. He IS the change we need.
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Thanks for reading this. If you've been reading the whole time, thanks again. I hope my writings have been helpful to you in making your decision for who to vote for as President. I'd love to know who's been reading and you can do so just by leaving a quick comment using the link at the bottom of this post.
Tomorrow is Election Day. I'll be doing my best to follow along with the election tomorrow night and keeping a running blog as the night unfolds. But I have a complication: Tomorrow is my wedding anniversary and I'm not sure right now how much focus on the election I'm going to be able to get away with. But I'll do my best.
In any case, I'll post SOMETHING tomorrow night with some final comments on Wednesday. I hope you'll all check in with me one final time (or two final times). I'll either be celebrating or wondering how it all went wrong and drowning in my sorrows.
Thanks.
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