Why I Want Obama to Win the Election

I have been thinking about this topic lately, and there are a lot of reasons why I want Barack Obama to win the presidential election this November. Some of you (of the two who read my posts) will interpret this as me "coming out" as an Obama supporter. I am not "coming out." I am simply stating exactly what I already said - these are reasons why I want Obama to win. Nowhere will you see, "This is why I'm voting for Obama," because I have not even come close to concluding that I would be bold enough to take that course of action. Without further adeiu, here are some of my top reasons:


- He sounds intelligent. Now I know, no one is perfect, and even Obama can sound pretty labored when not having the luxury of a teleprompter next to him. But, come on, Bush can't speak coherently with a teleprompter (and John McCain is not so great himself). So having an intelligent-sounding president would be a real treat.


- I can't wait to hear the dynamics of political discussion completely flip-flop. After listening to "things aren't as bad as democrats make it sound" for at least eight years from conservatives under the rule of George W. Bush. I can see and hear and smell it now: all of a sudden, the country will be in the crapper, only because Obama became president. And it will be all Obama's fault. Of course, democrats will be saying "things aren't as bad as the republicans make it sound."


- Obama might actually have some positive foreign policy attributes, other than, we tell you what to do, you do it, or we threaten you, and then we bomb you. But then again, President Bush isn't the only president in recent history to take those positions, so I don't know how much hope we can have for the "weak on defense" democrat Barry.


- For all that's gotten screwed up under Bush's watch, I can't imagine Obama could do that much worse. I want Obama to get elected so everyone can see that the country actually won't be sent to hell, just because the "radical, marxist, socialist, communist, white-hater, muslim, abortion-loving, extremist-associating, corrupt-real-estate-broker-relationing," Obama got into office.

- When Obama implements his "socialist" policies, I want to see economic conditions improve in the country. And then I want to hear how it has nothing to do with Obama from the conservatives. Actually, I would love to hear them say they were wrong about the stock market self-destruction predictions they made previous to the elections, but I might as well clean all the bathrooms of Grand Central Station with my tongue (to quote "Weird Al"), because that ain't gonna happen.

- I want to laugh while people keep listening to Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, Savage, attack and attack and attack President Obama, and defend their actions, all the while forgetting how dispicable they thought (and said so) democrats and liberals were for doing the same thing to President Bush for eight years. My oh my, no wonder nothing changes. But it will be bittersweetly funny.


Okay, those are just a few reasons I came up with off the top of my head. On a related note: after decidedly hating contradictions, I am really starting to embrace them. Epecially the fact that so many people do not even see the blatant hypocrisy in their words and actions (and I probably don't see it in myself, which makes it even more ironic and painful). For republicans, when the economy is in trouble, it is not Bush's fault - it's the democrats'. When gas prices go way up, it's not Bush's fault. It's the democrats' because they resist more oil drilling, and nuclear power.


However, when Obama's president, if the economy is weak, it will be his fault. If immigration doesn't change, it will all be on Obama. If gas prices don't go down, Obama will be to blame. And people can't see the double standard that they wake up with, walk out the front door with, and come home with, every day of their lives.

I'll come right out and admit - I don't like Bush, not really much at all. But I don't think he's ruined the country. I don't hate him. However, I think he set the bar so low for U.S. presidents, that either Obama or McCain will make a better president. So I may vote for McCain, I may not. I may vote for an independent candidate like Ralph Nader or Chuck Baldwin. But when the new president is sworn into office in January, 2009, I will have hope for him, for us, for the country, because he will not be President Bush.

But hypocritical politics, I suppose, will endure. People who want to hate McCain will find reasons that support that agenda. People who want to demonize Obama so they can feel better about voting for McCain when they never would have supported "the maverick" otherwise, will do so. I will not be a part of groups similar to those. As a close relative said recently (and I hope he doesn't mind me lifting this from him), "I vote for people, not parties."

Maybe later on, I will tell you why I want McCain to win.

Mitt Romney: The Sellout I Thought He Was

I was never a Mitt Romney supporter, but for some reason when I learned today that the expected happened: he will endorse John McCain for president, I felt my blood boiling a little more than usual.

While I never "endorsed" Romney, I was at the point of actually believing he might be our best presidential candidate who had a shot at winning. I liked his ideas and his background and leadership skills. Literally, the next day or so, he dropped out of the race. Now, just a week later, he is endorsing McCain.

It upsets me that I even came close to supporting this sellout candidate. The reason why it took me so long to warm up to him - his convenient changing from a liberal Massachusetts politician to a republican presidential candidate - ends up being the reason why he lost the race, and why I couldn't support him whole-heartedly. Put succinctly, you can't trust what Romney says.

He talked all the talk - Washington is broken, McCain is a liberal, we won't solve our problems by sending people who already work in Washington back to Washington, and so on. All of them sounded like reasonably sound and reasoned arguments. So what does the sellout do one week after he betrayed his entire support base? He tosses out all of his "principles" and supports a man who has none.

Just like he did to become a nominee.

I thought he was different, but unfortunately, Mitt Romney is no different, no better, than any of the other hypocritical, self-serving, special-interest-protecting Washington politicians. They have no principles, and neither does he. If he does, he values them as much as the average politician, only as much as it benefits him popularly and politically.

Recall the South Carolina Presidential Debate, if I am not mistaken, when there was a conversation between Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul about fixing what one has broken. Well, Romney has said time and time again that Washington was broken, and yet one week after he bailed on his principles, he turned against them completely and fell in line with the "broken" establishment. Nice job, buddy. Turns out he's just another one of talking heads that really has not the slightest intention of turning things around for our great nation.

I can only sympathize with his supporters. They must feel stabbed in the back. But many of them will still follow Romney blindly, just like they did before. Who cares what he said in the past, he's Mitt Romney, and if McCain is good enough for him, he's good enough for us.

Not that we can be surprised. Another flop for flipping Mitt. Another sellout endorsing the sellout candidate.

Why would he do this so readily? The answer is simple: another victory for the failed "war on terror." We will have to visit this subject later, but it seems any principles you might have should be suspended in order to win against "the bad guys." This is no surprise - the current administration has continually eroded our freedoms to "protect us." So the final lesson is, no sellout is too costly when you can use terrorism and terrorists to help your party's chances of winning the White House in the election. And in the world of Romney, death by terrorists is synonymous with Democrat in the White House.

Thank goodness for the conservatives, the principled ones, the republicans, who sacrifice so much so that we can live a life free of say....the hell that people live through in a place like Iraq.

Freedom: Drawing the Line in the Sand

Texas Congressman and Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul has shed light on a lot of issues facing the American people today. Of all the pressing matters in front of the people, the starkest is the fact that many Americans do not really understand or know what the meaning of freedom really actually is.

This can be attributed to a number of factors, including our lack of knowledge about our own history, our mental amnesia in connection with any world events preceding 9/11/2001, and our stubborn (arrogant) claim that we are the greatest nation in the world - not arrogant, just the greatest - and think the rest of the world should follow and be replicas of our government and system.

As stated, there are many other factors, but simple observation shows that those in control of the information and power channels in this country have gone out of their way to make sure our brains tend to function along the lines of the person or people just described above. If anyone criticizes America or its policies, they are "anti-American," "far left," etc., etc.

Author Naomi Klein puts it this way:

that shock came after "September 11, which, for millions of people, exploded 'the world that is familiar' and opened up a period of deep disorientation and regression that the Bush administration expertly exploited. Suddenly we found ourselves living in a kind of Year Zero, in which everything we knew of the world before could now be dismissed as 'pre-9/11 thinking.' Never strong in our knowledge of history, North Americans had become a blank slate - 'a clean sheet of paper' on which 'the newest and most beautiful words can be written' as Mao said of his people. A new army of experts instantly materialized to write new and beautiful words on the receptive canvas of our posttrauma consciousness: 'clash of civilizations,' they inscribed. 'Axis of evil,' 'Islamo-fascim,' 'homeland security.' With everyone preoccupied by the deadly new culture wars, the Bush administration was able to pull off what it could only have dreamed of doing before 9/11: wage privatized wars abroad and build a corporate security complex at home."
The Shock Doctrine (2007), p. 16

Repeated: we do not understand freedom. Thus the media continue to puzzle over the campaign of Ron Paul. He has no lobbyists breaking down his office door. He does not agree with most of the Republican party agenda. He does not have billion-dollar corporate donors padding his pockets. He has little chance to participate in the debates, and gets relatively little news coverage compared to the "legitimate" presidential candidates.

And yet the fact remains: supporters continue to flock to him by the thousands and dollars by the millions continue to amass without any real mechanism to drive the fundraising except Paul's followers at the grassroots level.

While they can't explain it, Ron Paul's opponents generally find ways to demean and mock his messengers. This obvious notion reinforces the greater truth: they do not understand freedom.

They do not understand the blessing of being free to read and learn without worrying about being eavesdropped upon. They do not understand the meaning of freedom as pertaining to talking on the phone without being spied upon. They do not understand the freedom, privilege and honor very few other people in the world have to be suspicious and fearful of large government and excesses of power. They do not understand the importance to citizens of the whole world to be free from torture. They do not understand that freedom is not expecting our president to "fix Washington" or "fix the country." They do not understand that freedom is getting out of the way to the greatest extent possible and letting the people participate in the remediation.

They just do not understand.

This is not really written to help them understand. For that which might have been incredible to the founders of our great nation is too common today: we don't understand, we don't know, and we don't care that we don't understand and don't know. After all, we have the freedom to be arrogant, and pride doesn't really walk hand-in-hand with seeing things from a different perspective.

Some of the "mainstream" say they agree with just about everything Ron Paul is saying. They know in their hearts that the "legitimate" candidates are nothing more than what continues to emerge in election after election as picking the lesser of two evils because we don't believe most of what any of them say. Yet they say they will not support Ron Paul because he has no chance of winning. Still just another show of the of the lack of appreciation they feel for the freedoms they enjoy.

This election could turn out to be one of the most important and historical elections in a long, long time. The line is being drawn, and more than ever those who love and embrace freedom are coming out in support of Ron Paul and his message. They are not anti-American. They do not despise freedom or our troops. In fact, it is more likely the other way around. Those who oppose Ron Paul, his message, and his followers, are simply (whether inadvertently or knowingly) displaying their lack of understanding of what freedom is.

Freedom is having a say in what government does. Freedom is speaking out, asking questions, reading, learning, protesting, fighting for the rights of not only men and women of this country, but those in the wide world, our brothers and sisters. Freedom is letting our counterparts in other countries live under the form of government of their choosing. Just as a civil war was necessary to free men from slavery, so it may take another war to tell government leaders to back off and give return our freedom to us. For much of the reason we don't know what freedom really is is due to the fact that we didn't really have as much freedom as we previously assumed. Fortunately, it is our gift and obligation to stand up and defend that which only God can give. It is time the government stepped back and realized that it does not give us our freedom; rather it exists simply to protect our freedom.

Ron Paul and his followers represent the hopes of all men to have freedom and liberty, not just promises and wishful blindness. God willing, the Ron Paul "miracle" may not be as inconceivable as his detractors seem to think. Keep loving America and what it really stands for, and keep cherishing your freedom to fight for what's most important. If you haven't joined the revolution, think about it. Freedom is the most contagious idea around.

Freedom: the power to act or speak or think without externally imposed restraints.

Freedom: Liberty of the person from slavery, detention, or oppression.

a. Political independence.

b. Exemption from the arbitrary exercise of authority in the performance of a specific action; civil liberty: freedom of assembly.