What Are You Voting For?

• What Are You Voting For?
  
  It’s a little less than two months until the election. I suspect most of us have already made up our minds who they are voting for. I finally decided last week, and I did it by considering the following things. Even if you have made your choice, it doesn’t hurt to think about these factors before casting your vote.
  
  John McCain is too old. He should have been elected president eight years ago. It was his moment. Today, he is seventy four years old, and he is running for the toughest job on earth. The Oval Office has ruined the health of men almost half his age. No matter how good a shape he is in, he is too old for the job. We wouldn’t let him drive a bus, we wouldn’t let him practice medicine, we wouldn’t let him teach college. But it’s fine to make him president. I honestly don’t think he’ll last two years, and then who do we get? Sarah Palin.
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  Voting for John McCain is voting for Sarah Palin. Former chairwoman of a PAC that is currently under federal indictment, a woman who hired a high powered lobbyist and got more government funds for a town of 11,000 than the entire state of Idaho, a politician who got elected on her promise to build the Bridge to Nowhere, then when it was politically expedient, cancelled the project (but never gave back the money). This woman is now running as a political outsider. Don’t worry about her almost complete lack of credentials and any kind of experience. Hey, Alaska’s pretty close to Russia. That makes her an expert on foreign affairs! Where have we heard all of this before?
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  Sarah Palin is George W. Bush. George Bush was just as unprepared for the demands of the Oval Office eight years ago as Palin is today. What did we get? Dick Cheney running the country, while Bush stood on an oil drum shouting “Mission Accomplished!” Looking back, it’s clear that the one government official who truly answered the challenge of 9/11 was Rudy Guiliani, while Cheney and Bush cowered in their hidden bunkers. When Katrina came, and we looked to him for leadership, Bush trimmed the brush at his ranch while thousands of Americans drowned in their own sewage. Sarah Palin is George Bush with big hair. She uses the same speechwriters and talks in the same clichés. She’s probably smarter than Bush, but she still answers to the same people Bush does. It’s the people who give Bush his instructions who we really should be worried about.
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  George W. Bush and Sarah Palin are slaves. I would have used the word whore, but that’s an insult to hard-working prostitutes, who can at least choose not to do things that are harmful to them. Bush and Palin have no choice but to obey their masters. They are slaves to the oil companies. They are slaves to defense contractors. They are slaves to the banks and mortgage industry. Why didn’t Bush do anything about Katrina? Because it suited the real estate developers. Why are Bush and Palin pushing for drilling on federally protected land when the oil companies already own millions of acres of land with oil in it and don’t drill? Because it gives the oil companies options on incredibly valuable real estate. The interests of these companies come before any other consideration. Do we really need another Bush to be our president in the tough times ahead? Because if you thought the last eight years were awful, wait until you see what happens after the election.
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  Tough times are ahead regardless of who is president. The only thing keeping the economy from collapsing are billions of our tax dollars in corporate welfare the Federal Reserve are throwing into the stock and mortgage markets. The stereotypical welfare mothers who have children and don’t work, that’s small change. We’re also giving welfare to the bankers who sell houses to these welfare mothers without asking if they have any income. The resulting defaults are costing us billions upon billions of dollars. And that’s just the beginning. Drive around any community in America and see all of the strip malls that don’t have any renters, all of the empty stores being built while older ones stay vacant. The commercial mortgage market is the next to go. The commercial mortgage market in the US is currently valued at something like twenty times the Gross Domestic Product of the entire earth. It’s being propped up until after the election. It’s a leaking balloon that’s being kept inflated by Ben Bernanke desperately blowing in it while no one is looking.
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  John McCain and Sarah Palin don’t care. John McCain supposedly doesn’t know how many houses he owns, is kind of vague about how much money he makes. He’s old, so maybe he’s forgetful, but I think he doesn’t want to answer the question. Sarah Palin is a corporate welfare mother. If we can learn anything about her career so far it’s that she knows how to find money. Regardless of what happens to the rest of us, they’re covered. What do they care if the price of gas goes above four dollars a gallon? They’re not going to be unemployed when the banks start to shut down faster than the FDIC can cover, when companies unable to borrow any more operating capital start putting workers on the street. When given the choice of doing something to save one of their fat cat masters or doing something to help you, what choice do you thing they are going to make?
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  Who’s looking out for you? It’s not Bill O’Reilly. It’s not Rush Limbaugh. It’s not Karl “Turdblossom” Rove. In the end it may not be Barack Obama or Joe Biden. But we already gave the others a chance, and this is where they have got us. If the surge has worked so well and we have won in Iraq, why can’t we bring any soldiers home? Why doesn’t anyone mention Afghanistan? All we hear is that everything is working, but just a glance at the headlines will show us that it’s not. We have bridges falling into the Mississippi River, railroad overpasses collapsing on I95 in Philadelphia, every time it rains in New Orleans the remaining locals pray for the levees. This is what has come out of running the government like a business. Considering how poorly most American business is doing today, maybe we need to find another model.
  Voting for John McCain and Sarah Palin is voting for more of the same. They answer to the same corporations and special interests as Bush, they are committed to the same policies as Bush, they don’t represent any kind of break from Bush and Cheney. Voting for them is like re-electing Bush for a third term. Ronald Reagan asked if you were better off after four years of Jimmy Carter. Are you better off after eight years of Bush? Unless you’re a member of the board of directors for Exxon or own stock in Halliburton, you know the answer to that question. We need to start making better choices, because at the rate we’re going, it may be the last choice we get.

And however you vote, make you sure you get to the polls.