With the Democratic Convention over and the Republican Convention almost finished, I figured it was time to lay out where I stand on the issues at hand, and hopefully explain why I’m voting the way I am.
The economy is the #1 issue in my mind. Foreclosures are affecting everyday people, but is the government helping them? Nope. They’d rather bail out the big lending companies who wooed the uniformed consumer into accepting loan terms the banks knew the people couldn’t pay. They banked on being able to foreclose on a house and resell it for a profit. Well, they are foreclosing all right, but they aren’t making a profit because there are too many homes. So the government has to use our tax dollars to keep the shysters in the business of foreclosing on more unsellable homes, thus putting hard working people out of something they were convinced they could afford. It’s time to help the people, and not the big banks who made shady deals. However, this help should not be in the form of government money. It should be in the form of educating the consumer on fiscal responsibility so they can recognize what they can and cannot afford. “Introductory rates” and adjustable rate mortgages are very suspect at almost any time. It’s too bad banks did the hard sell, and consumers were gullible enough to believe them.
Oil:
Allow expanded drilling, but keep funding alternative sources of energy. If energy independence is our goal, then we must have other sources besides oil. Aside from the obvious “green” choices of wind, wave, etc., nuclear is a clear option. However, the liberal hippies keep yelling “NIMBY” to the waste products, which are minuscule compared to the tons of carbon dioxide and other pollutants fossil fuels dump into our atmosphere.
Which brings us to climate change:
I’m of the mindset that humans aren’t the primary cause of global warming. To believe such is the height of arrogance. See that big flaming ball in the daytime sky? That’s a huge freaking fusion reactor that could wipe us out with one massive flare. It’s been scientifically proven that small fluctuations in solar output can have massive effects on our planet. That, in my meteorological educated opinion, is the primary cause of climate change, and there’s jack squat we can do about it. However, I do believe we are a contributing factor. Carbon dioxide from burning fuels, cutting down forests, and methane from super farms retain heat. Nitrous oxide and sulfur dioxide (NOx and SOx as my chem teacher in high school used to say) are harming our forests. Non-biodegradable trash is filling our dumps and being tossed on the roadsides by stupid people. Thus, we must limit our contributions to both climate change and pollution. It’s not just good for us, it’s good for the Earth as a whole.
International relations:
Bush and his policies of torture, abolishing Habeus Corpus for “enemy combatants” (which also applies to US citizens), spying on US citizens without warrants, and putting commercial interests before diplomacy has caused the US to fall from it’s original high standing in the international community. Even Canada issued a warning to it’s people that the US practices torture and not to travel here. We must repair this, and McCain’s policy of “100 years” in Iraq, “Bomb, bomb Iran,” and bullying Russia will not help us.
Finally, abortion:
The “abortion issue” isn’t about abortion. That’s what the neo-cons and christian conservatives want it to be about. The “abortion issue” is about personal choice in health care. Do you want big bad government telling you what medical procedures you can and cannot have performed on you? That’s the BIG PICTURE that keeps getting glossed over with “pro-life” v. “pro-choice” and all their rhetoric. Keep government hands off our health choices!
I don’t trust Obama. Hell, i don’t trust any “politician” to do anything but whatever will get them nice chunks of money from the PACs, and maybe the occasional gift on the sly. However we only have two choices. One is furthering policies that placed us in our mess, one is advocating “change.”
As I have stated previously, I agree with Larry Hunter:
These past eight years, we have spent over a trillion dollars on foreign soil – and lost countless lives – and done what I consider irreparable damage to our Constitution.
If economic damage from well-intentioned but misbegotten Obama economic schemes is the ransom we must pay him to clean up this foreign policy mess, then so be it. Its not nearly as costly as enduring four more years of what we suffered the last eight years.