Normally, picking a candidate to vote for is a "no-brainer;" you have a good candidate and one that's not so good. When you're lucky, which is rare these days, you have two great candidates and you have to really do some research to find out which one is going to represent your interests the best. In recent Presidential elections, it's been a matter of voting for the guy you disliked the least. And now, we come to a new twist, where you have two candidates that you just can't embrace no matter how hard you try.
I'm a registered Republican. That doesn't mean that I always vote the party line. I've voted for plenty of Democrats in my life. And, I'm admittedly a conservative, somewhat to the right of McCain and way to the right of Obama, who is as far left as you can go. There are some things that I have a more liberal view of than most Republicans and, no, I'm not a "moderate."
Before I go further into my reasoning for choosing McCain, I need to underscore the fact that I am not a die-hard Republican by telling you that I intend to vote against every incumbent at the California State level and in Congress, regardless of party. I don't think I need to explain why, except to say they've all strayed from their duties to me and to you and they have collectively brought this country to the very verge of disaster in so many ways that I don't have the space to0 elaborate. They're airheads, they're nincompoops, they're drunks, they're party-goers, they're do-nothings. They take kickbacks from failing financial houses. They have the lowest approval rating in the history of this country. They are all ugly, narcissistic bottom-feeders and they all need to go.
That having been said, why do I choose McCain?
Well, I was ready to quit the Republican party when he got the nomination. I was livid with rage, and to this day am still unhappy. Sarah Palin is a nice addition to the ticket and I think she will do well in her role and will live up to her promises to the best of her ability, but that has no impact on my decision. In fact, my decision is, I feel, very pragmatic.
We are facing, at the time of this writing, unprecedented financial peril. We have world-wide dangers lurking in the Middle East, with Korea, and now with Russia; we are already militarily committed to Iraq and Afghanistan. We have an immigration problem that has yet to be resolved. We have a national, and indeed a world-wide energy crisis and the growing probability that greenhouse emissions are having an adverse impact on global climate that could lead to disruptions in our food supplies and worse. We have an election system that's been besmirched by ACORN.
These are all issues of great magnitude that will have to be dealt with during the coming four years.
These are issues that require knowledge and judgment.
Barack Obama has never held a military position and has virtually no knowledge whatsoever of military strategy or capabilities. I'm not saying that McCain is an expert, but he certainly has had military experience; he comes from a military family and graduated from Annapolis. Barack Obama is a novice again when it comes to national finances and the economy, and McCain is certainly no genius in that respect, either. But, good managers can tap good and knowledgeable expertise to advise them. What we do know now is that Republican financial experts were sounding the alarm bells about our financial crisis a decade or more ago and the alarm bells were summarily dismissed by the Democratic financial leaders, so I would suspect that Obama's financial advisors as President would be less reliable than McCain's.
I don't agree with McCain's stance on immigration. It gives me heartburn every time I think about it. Obama's stance is much, much worse. The energy crisis needs both short-term and long term solutions, and McCain's strategy of drill now and reduce our reliance on foreign oil is sound strategy, as long as it is followed up with the investigation and research for viable alternatives.
So, on those points, I give the advantage to McCain. He does have a track record and we know, to a great degree, how he thinks. These are two critical things that Obama lacks.
As to the matter of judgment, we know only about Obama what we have been able to dig up through the limited research avenues and tools we have available. The Obama campaign has virtually shut down and closed out all of his past. That secrecy, in and of itself, tells me that Obama does not want to be open and honest with the American public. We all have skeletons in our closet, but the office of the Presidency of the leading nation of the world community demands that those skeletons be exposed and revealed. Obama refuses to do so.
So, we are left to wonder about his past, to wonder about how Jeremiah Wright can be the pastor at his wedding and his preacher for over 20 years and why it took national umbrage to get Barack Obama to eventually leave that church after 20 years. And, we have to wonder about William Ayers and Tony Rezko, and Farrakhan, Khalidi, Aramanda, the over 500 campaign contributions from Iran that Obama's camp is refusing to identify. Those things weigh heavily on me because Mr. Obama won't tell me about Occidental or Columbia or Harvard. Their weight is compounded by his adamant secrecy, and his judgment in refusing to open up tells me that his character and his loyalties are, at the very least, suspect.
I do not believe that this country can step into 2009 with a leader who refuses to tell us what we need and are entitled to know, who has no track record, and who is weak in two critical areas, (military and the economy).
I believe that, in the dangerous times we are facing in so many respects, we cannot take a chance on this man. Now is not the time to add another risk to the forces in the shark tank that might bring this country down.
I vote for John S. McCain.
That's MY AMERICAN OPINION, respectfully submitted.
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