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Reasons Not To Vote For John McCain: Summing It Up

I started this blog back in June as a way to disseminate to then-ambivalent Hillary supporters the reasons why I thought no supporter of Hillary Clinton should support John McCain. It’s grown since then, and as a (formerly!) non-politics person, it’s sometimes hard to think of what to say without sounding like another whiny liberal blogger. But I’d like to bring back older posts that many of you haven’t read, and sum up my reasons not to vote for John McCain. Honestly, I think the older posts were my best ones, and I'd like to share them with you one more time. Thank you for reading.

No Hillary supporter should vote for McCain because he has opposed everything Hillary Clinton stands for: abortion rights, equal pay, access to healthcare including contraception, comprehensive sex ed. He also has behaved misogynistically in his personal life.

Sunni, Shia, remember that controversy? McCain's multiple "gaffes" demonstrate a lack of understanding of the basic relationships in the region, which will be vital to create a lasting peace. Thought foreign policy was supposed to be his strong point.

McCain's campaign is filled with lobbyists:

• Chief political advisor lobbies for brutal dictators and performed lobbying duties on McCain's campaign bus.
• Campaign co-chair (now resigned) and other high-ranking campaign officials lobbied him directly to disregard free trade agreements and give a $35 billion air force contract to a European conglomerate instead of American Boeing. At least one was being paid specifically to lobby McCain while she was part of his campaign staff (illegal).
• Other campaign staffers (resigned) lobbied for Myanmar's military junta.
• His top energy advisor was an energy lobbyist while he was also McCain's energy advisor, helping form his energy policy.
• Campaign manager lobbied for a Ukranian politician in opposition to United States' national interest. Also lobbied for a Russian businessman with so many organized crime and antidemocratic ties that he was denied a U.S. visa. A fundraiser lobbied for the UAE to help defend them after it came out that they kidnapped and enslaved children as camel-jockeys.
• Chief foreign policy advisor was a paid lobbyist for Georgia, even as he worked on McCain's Russia-Georgia policy.
• Hired an oil lobbyist to help find people to fill all vacant staff positions in a new McCain administration.

The economy: Phil Gramm, McCain's chief economic advisor, who resigned but still advises him, wrote the legislation that deregulated energy commodity trading. That's what allowed Enron to collapse, and that allowed speculators to drive up the price of oil. Gramm also wrote the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which deregulated the financial services industry and in large part resulted in our current Wall Street meltdown. By the way, Gramm has been mentioned as a potential Secretary of the Treasury in a McCain administration.

McCain takes a lot of money from lobbyists. Read the blog post for an interesting discussion of what this will mean for him politically, in contrast to the 3 million small donors supporting the Obama campaign.

Drill, baby, drill. McCain believes more offshore drilling will somehow make an immediate big impact at the pump, and remain environmentally safe. The day after he announced this turnaround on oil drilling, (the very next day!), he had a $1.3 million fundraiser with Texas energy industry executives. Did any of you happen to catch the number of oil rigs damaged or missing after Hurricane Ike, and how much oil spilled in the Gulf of Mexico? Half a million gallons.

McCain wants to give more and more tax breaks to the people who need it the least: the top 1% and especially the top 0.1% of earners in this country, and almost nothing to the lowest 25%, those who can barely fill their gas tanks and put food on the table. By the way, the top 1% earn over 20% of the nation's income.

McCain's gun policy is so extreme, he won't even speak out against a loophole that allows people on a terrorist watchlist to buy a gun. Oh, wait, his top foreign policy guy lobbied for a gun trade association that opposed closing that loophole. Right. (same guy who lobbies for Georgia).

Sarah Palin would assume the role of president if 72-year-old-he-with-a-history-of-cancer were to die. In my opinion, appointing her showed a terrible lack of judgement on McCain's part.

Palin is just the first of McCain's appointments. If elected president, yes, he can appoint Supreme Court Justices, but also a million other people you'll never hear about, but who carry out whatever McCain's party line is going to be. Remember Monica Goodling??

McCain has done his best to distract the American people from the issues with political stunts. Remember "lipstick on a pig?" His campaign itself has admitted that if they spend too much time talking about the economy, they will lose the election.

McCain, though a veteran and former POW, has voted against the interests of our troops and veterans again and again. Got a "D" rating from the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

McCain wants to tax your health care benefits until it gets so expensive that your employer will just stop providing them. Good luck on the deregulated free market! Yes, unbelievably, he also wants to deregulate the health insurance industry. If you're a health care provider, good luck getting reimbursed once the markets are deregulated!

I've tried hard to stay away from subjective "gut-feeling" topics on this blog, but this post will be incomplete if I don't ask you to stop and think, now that the campaigns are nearly behind us, about which candidate you think has acted like a man you'd want to be in charge of our nation.

Well, that's it. Thanks so much for reading, and please pass this along to anyone who isn't committed to voting for Obama. We’re going on a family vacation the week before the election, so this will be one of my last posts, barring another video or big topic idea.

So Now He Wants To Deregulate Teaching?

McCain from last night's debate:

We need to encourage programs such as Teach for America and Troops to Teachers where people, after having served in the military, can go right to teaching and not have to take these examinations which -- or have the certification that some are required in some states.

So now he wants to deregulate teaching?

(thanks to David N.)

Along Came John . . .

You know, I feel like I've covered most of the reasons not to vote for McCain, without attacking his person or his serpentine would-be first lady. I'd love some topic suggestions, but until then: videos. Enjoy!

McCain's Denial

Fixin’ to Vote Rag

Sarah Palin's Greatest Hits

In honor of tonight's debate, here's Keith Olbermann's salute to Sarah Palin . . . so far. Enjoy!

My Musings On Experience

A good friend of mine said to me the other day of Sarah Palin, something along the lines of, "Just because she's inexperienced doesn't mean she's unknowledgable or incapable." My friend was right, and it got me to thinking. I concluded that it's not really experience that has me concerned, as much as capableness.

What if McCain's running mate was Bobby Jindal instead of Sarah Palin? Jindal was a congressman for three years, and became Louisiana governor 8 months ago. Less experience, I think, than Palin's two years as governor of Alaska, even if you leave out her years as president of the PTA.

Jindal graduated with honors from an Ivy League school, and received a master's degree in political science from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, having turned down acceptances to Harvard Medical School and Yale Law School. Palin attended FOUR different schools (University of Idaho twice, having transferred out then back in to graduate) before finally receiving her bachelors.

Jindal, though I disagree with his positions, is a thoughtful man who would clearly be capable as an executive. Someone who could manage a meeting with world leaders, without being on the receiving end of mockery and outright cringing on the part of the American people. Someone who I think is qualified to run the country. I'm not worried about his lack of foreign policy experience as governor, because I'm confident that he follows world issues, is interested in them, and forms opinions, and can converse knowledgably about a range of issues, even those not directly affecting his constiuents in Louisiana.

Palin, though, is a train wreck. She can't answer simple questions, like, "What newspapers do you read?" She's barely conversant on even the big talking points associated with her ticket, much less an in-depth conversation about complex issues affecting the country. It's been reported that she had a thirty minute attention span during Alaska Gubernatorial debate prep. I think, perhaps, she can't be bothered to pull facts out of her head, or maybe she has such an intense lack of interest in global issues that it all just flies right out the window.

Since George W. Bush has made the United States a laughingstock for the past eight years . . . I, for one, don't want ANOTHER "Joe six-pack" running the country. I want someone a whole lot smarter than myself. I want someone with intellectual curiousity and interest in the issues s/he is asked to manage. Wouldn't you rather see the former President of the Harvard Law Review take office than someone who had to transfer back and forth FIVE times between different third-rate colleges, just to get her undergraduate degree? Wouldn't you rather have the guy who is conversant on a range of issues, over the person who can't name a Supreme Court case other than Roe v. Wade, even though she's been busy mouthing off about "activist judges?" Does she even know what that means? I'll take the smart guy, thanks.