The Flow of Consciousness

By this time next week, the initial hullabaloo of the election will be finished and hopefully—barring a Florida-2000-scale mess—the United States electoral college will have chosen a new president for the nation. The people will have spoken, having chosen from the two candidates the media has spoonfed to them since the candidates’ nomination.

On one hand, we have Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois. The Democrat hails from Chicago, where he was a lawyer before finding himself in the Senate in 2000. Opponents have connected him with various unsavory characters throughout his short political career, yet the man overpowers their cries with his charisma and eloquence.

Obama is basically a socialist. His plan to tax the wealthiest Americans more than the poorest is a clear indicator of his desire to redistribute wealth amongst the people, as if his plan for universal healthcare wasn’t socialist enough to prove it. He’s in favor of pulling troops out of Iraq, but, to my knowledge, he plans to keep them in Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, and all those other 137 countries where we have bases. He’s in favor of more economic regulation and more Federal meddling in education.

Obama has, however, supported network neutrality and wants to see more transparency in the federal government, but that doesn’t really mean anything. There was a study a while ago (I don’t recall if I blogged about it or just twittered it) which showed that transparency in government does little to reduce the corruption.

Honestly, Obama wants to do good. He’s just not willing to stay within the rights granted to the Federal government in the Constitution. In fact, I’ve not heard Obama say the word “constitution” in all of the debates I’ve watched.

Then, there’s this elderly guy from Arizona by the name of John McCain. He’s the senior senator from the state; a warrior by training. He was a soldier in Vietnam, staying in the Hanoi Hotel for several years. He’ll remind Americans—"my friends," as he calls them—of that every chance he gets, even though it has no bearing on his policies whatsoever. His supporters also tout this at every opportune moment. Annoyingly.

McCain promises to lower taxes, like Obama. The former is lowering them for everyone, especially the $250K+ crowd who already pays more. The latter actually plans to raise them for that crowd, while heavily lowering them for everyone else.

Before having an orgasm because of this tax thing, keep reading.

McCain however wants to tax healthcare benefits. Yes. Insurance. He’ll give you back money from your income taxes, but he’ll turn around and take it all away in insurance taxes.

McCain is a warrior. He fights wars. He wants to keep our foreign presence active for eternity, no matter the cost. Oh, and he makes laws like McCain-Feingold, which he’s almost broken several times.

McCain would give an education credit—a voucher—to every parent who wanted one so that they can send their children to another school if their school is failing. Yes, this means that McCain fully supports No Child Left Behind. That support alone is sufficient to lose him support of any teacher who is in his or her right mind.

Short story: both McCain and Obama’s tax policies suck. McCain’s is better for the rich, Obama’s is better for the poor and middle class. Neither is fair, really. Neither really wants to do anything sensible and new about foreign policy. Both voted in favor of the bailout, so neither has a sufficient grasp on non-Keynesian economics to understand why that was a bad move. Neither acknowledges that the Federal government has screwed up education royally.

Shorter story: Neither McCain nor Obama are fit for the office of President of the United States of America.

I’ll not be voting for either, and I urge you to vote otherwise, too. I prefer to vote for a candidate based on principle, not on fear that another who is worse would win. I vote for a candidate as if I am personally responsible for everything that candidate does, good and bad.

If more people voted like that, we’d have a good president for the first time in a long while and his (or her) name would not be Obama nor McCain.

My predictions: Obama will win. It will be a 8-9 point difference. That is, if the election isn’t stolen. In that case, McCain will win by less than 1 point. Obama would face an assassination attempt before the end of the first year, because some crazy redneck doesn’t like the new black president. It won’t succeed. McCain probably won’t survive the four years, as his health is already arguably declining.

I’d rather have President Biden than President Palin. The latter scares me more than anything, even more than a President Huckabee (at least Huckabee supported the fair tax).

Locally, Jason Altmire will defeat Melissa Hart for the PA 4th Congressional seat by double digits. He’s worlds better and will make for excellent opposition when I potentially run for Congress sometime after 2010, when I turn 25.

I don’t care much for the other races, other than a really local one (Michelle Brooks will defeat Duke Whiting…again in the PA 17th state legislative district). Brooks is pretty cool (met her in July in Erie) and opposes Real ID, so she’s got my vote.

Ron Paul did something today which I think only a few people saw coming, but is not surprising at all.

He essentially recommended that his supporters support one of the third party candidates. That’s Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution party, Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party, Ralph Nader the Independent, and Bob Barr of the Libertarian party.

He and the third-party candidates outlined four major issues which must be addressed in this election, and every election. The full declaration is on the Campaign for Liberty web site, but here’s a summary:

Foreign Policy

Pull out of Iraq. Cease war propaganda. Open up trade. Return to non-interventionism.

Privacy

Repeal FISA, PATRIOT, and Military Commissions Acts. Reject presidential signing statements and executive orders. Deny immunity for illegal corporate cooperation with the government.

The National Debt

No increase in the budget. Diminish the debt as a top priority.

The Federal Reserve

Investigate this private organization. Deny corporate bailouts, no matter how large or detrimental it shall be. Punish corporations for fraud and criminal acts.

He also gave an outstanding statistic (emphasis mine):

The system we have today allows a President to be elected by as little as 32% of the American people, with half of those merely voting for the “lesser of two evils”. Therefore, as little as 16% actually vote for a president. No wonder when things go wrong, anger explodes. A recent poll shows that 60% of the American people are not happy with the two major candidates this year.

Later in the day, Paul appeared on Wolf Blitzer’s show with Ralph Nader.

It’s amazing that Blitzer can’t seem to wrap his head around the fact that Ron Paul will not vote for McCain or Obama because he does not feel their policies are sound. Blitzer’s stuck in the “if you’re not voting Republican, then you must be a Democrat” mindset which plagues this country.

No, the third-party candidates don’t have a chance of winning this year. That’s not the point. It was fairly easy to see that Obama would be the Democrat candidate and McCain would be the Republican. I forecast this almost a year ago (I wish I could find that damned post). However, they’re not out to win.

They’re out to convince Americans that the two party system is broken, and that there really is little difference policy-wise between Obama and McCain, and that neither would adhere to the oath which they will take in their inauguration:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

McCain and Obama have consistently avoided Constitutional issues and citations, and that’s just part of the reason why neither will see a vote from Ron Paul, or myself for that matter. In fact, Obama didn’t even say the word “Constitution” in one of the debates I blogged. I have yet to hear McCain say anything about the Constitution in any recorded or live capacity.

The key goal of the press conference was to urge the press to open up the dialog between all of the candidates who are on enough state ballots that they could garner the 270 electoral votes necessary to win. Any candidate who meets that requirement should be invited to the debates.