Someone asked me the other day to “justify” why I will not be voting for Barack Obama in November. While I am somewhat annoyed that I need to explain my political position the question did get me thinking. Why wont I vote for Obama, well there are a few reasons, and none of them have to do with me liking John McCain (which I don’t). I must confess that I did like Ron Paul, but then I welcomed myself to the harsh reality that he will never be on the ballot. If you are an Obama supporter you might be a bit offended by the remainder of this post, I am warning you now. Please do not post argumentative comments, I will delete you. I am happy that this is America and that we are all entitled to our opinions, with that being said my blog is not democratic, freedom of speech is not allowed, I get to “censor” things… you have been warned. Anyway back to why I cannot vote for Obama, here are 7 reasons why I just can’t do it:
1. I do not like people that tell me things they think I want to hear. Let me give you an example, I cannot stand people that tell me things like oh your shirt is so cute or I love your hair, when they obviously don’t, I would rather you just admitted that I looked stupid, anyway when Obama speaks I feel like he is telling me what I “want” to hear and it annoys me, I feel like I am a fairly intelligent adult and I do not appreciate being lied to.
2. I hate the idea of giving people something for nothing. Let me explain. I understand that there are some situations where people honestly need help, and I would like to provide those people with the help necessary to get back on their feet. What I do not like are the people that take advantage of the system and fail to do things for themselves. In my experience when you do everything for someone they do not learn how to do things for themselves and when they find themselves in a similar situation they are unable to correct the problem and bounce back.
3. I do not think the best solution for a “faltering” economy is to heavily tax companies that are moving outside the US, I think we might need to investigate why they are moving overseas and attempt to rectify the problem. Punishing them will just discourage businesses from remaining in the US.
4. I do not care about global warming, there I said it, you can all think that I am an awful human being, my self esteem is high enough that I can deal with that. I do think that we need to come up with an alternative energy source but I think even more than that we need to curtail federal spending and reduce the national debt, if finding a new source of energy requires the US to borrow more money from China I do not think that we should be heading down that road just now.
5. “Family Values”, I do not think that Obama and I share the same family values, sure I think it is great to go to church and spend time with family, but I do not think that my children need to have every thing (granted I do not have children). I do not think the solution to strengthen the middle class families is to provide more after school programs, increase the number of sick days provided by employers, or increase the number of “flexible work schedules”. I agree that middle class familes have a hard time, but I think it is up to individual to make things work.
6. Education, I have worked hard to help fund my college education. I have a few student loans, I have a job, I have had grants, and several people have been generous enough to help me. When I graduated from college my dad said that one of the reasons that they had me pay for my schooling was so I would appreciate it more, and even though at times it has been painful I do appreciate what I have done. With that being said I strongly disagree with Obama’s college “credit” program. I do agree that everyone should have the opportunity to have a college education but I do think that there is already A LOT of money out there that goes unclaimed, I do not think we need to dump more money into this. I like the idea of encouraging young people to do community service but I don’t think it will encourage them to be philanthropic, instead I think they will consider this to be a “job” or a required service.
7. Health insurance. I understand health insurance is expensive, I paid for our health insurance today and trust me there are lots of other things I would have liked to spend that $800 on. I do not think that the solution to the problem is putting health insurance in the hands of the government. I think this will just perpetuate the attitude that many Americans have that health insurance is something they should be given, and no they are wrong about that. I believe that universal healthcare will just decrease the responsibly the individuals feel for their own health and for the use of services. For example if you had to pay $200 for the emergency room you might not go, but if you knew it would be free you would go even if all you had was a cold. I have heard universal healthcare compared to the DMV, personally I hate the DMV because it is inefficient, the people are obnoxious and it smells, imagine if the hospital was like that. I like going to the nice hospital with short lines and lolly pops so no thanks. There are some good alternative to universal healthcare and I do agree with a safety net, something like CHIP or TANIFF, but no I do not want to pay so Joe down the street can go to the hospital for something stupid like a paper cut.
So I think that is enough about my opinion on Obama for the present time. On a much happier note I do like John McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, so far. She makes me feel a little bit better about voting for him, and yes I know that is what he was going for.
2 comments:
I've wanted to talk to you about this for a while now but every time I look your direction during a political conversation you look like your head is going to explode from too much jaw clenching...
You know I love you, but as a firm supporter of Hillary I still don't understand how you can swap to McCain instead of Obama.
1. What you want to hear - Obama has continually called out fathers for not spending time with their kids and teaching them family values. Is that telling people what they want to hear? He has not wavered in his beliefs and has told you what he believes in. If that happens to coincide with what you want to hear, all the better!
2. Something for nothing - I understand this viewpoint and there is a lot to it, but coming from a privileged life with parents who made good decisions and helped you prepare for a successful life doesn't exactly make us experts in when people need a helping hand and when they are just whining...
3. Global economy - again I understand where you are coming from about jobs moving overseas, but the fact is the economy is global. Jobs we are bad at or that can't be done in a cost effective manner in the US WILL move overseas eventually. Our responsibility now is to focus on what we can do well in the future. The built-in problems with corporations and the fact that they can't focus on anything except profits by their very definitions is a long conversation for another time... but trickle-down theory does not work.
4. Saying you don't care is much better than saying it doesn't exist.
5. I have no idea what you are saying here. Parents need to spend as much time with their kids as possible.
6. I agree that college education is completely wasted on people who aren't there by choice and actively engaged in learning.
7. Universal healthcare was Hillary's biggest passion. If you supported her so strongly before how did you miss this about her? I agree that a completely universal free system won't work, but the system we have now is definitely not working.
As far as I’m concerned the most important issue of this entire election is war. McCain wants to stay at war, start more wars, and use military instead of diplomacy. A vote for him is a vote for continued violence, continued enlarging of national debt, and in the end he will have to go back on his promise of lowering taxes to pay for the wars.
Delete me if you must, but I've been dying to have this conversation with you and I can't pass up the opportunity.
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