As you know, I’ve held off on discussing politics on here for some time now, but it’s time to come back to the most important issue. I know that most of my readers are good citizens so I’m preaching mostly to the choir, but please make sure you do one thing tomorrow: vote.
Even if you don’t believe we have the most stellar options, and even if you’re not happy with some of each of the candidates’ pasts, we have two individuals neck-and-neck and voter turnout is what is going to shape the course of the country and the world for the next four years.
Still undecided? Think the two candidates are two sides of the same coin? Well, they agree on one thing, and that’s that the war in Iraq has to be finished in some manner. Fine. But on almost every other issue they are polar opposites. Consider that the next president will likely appoint between one and four Supreme Court justices. Think about your values and which individual most closely represents your values. I’ll spell it out for you.
If you want tax breaks for the big corporation you work for, then Bush is your man. If you want the top 1% of income earners (who mostly earn their income from their investments and not from any actual work) to have a more fair share when it comes to paying for the services the government should supply to all citizens, then Kerry is your guy. If you believe that even when the life of a woman is in danger, or after she is raped, she should not have any option of terminating the pregnancy, then Bush is your guy. If you believe that a woman has the right to choose to protect her body and can make decisions for herself with guidance from doctors, then Kerry is your man. If you believe church and state should be separate, that empirical reality is truth (or the path to the truth) and faith-based “reality” leads us back to pre-Enlightenment times, then Kerry is the guy you vote for.
The only explanation for anyone who is undecided is either they don’t know what their own values are or they just don’t have the mental capacity to contemplate the differences between the two main candidates.
Will the world be better off four years from now if one guy is president instead of the other? That’s impossible to say. But you have to start by taking the path that is best. The only way to do this is to vote.
Well said, except for the part where Bush doesn’t want abortions for rape victims and cases where the mother’s life is in danger – he does. And the part about high-income earners paying their fair share – fair is completely subjective, and the top 20 percent of wage earners shoulder almost 65 percent of the federal income tax burden. I could talk about the corporate taxes and such as well, but I’ll just send you over to factcheck.org, where they say it much more eloquently than I.
Well I was just giving an overview without getting too much into details. When it comes to abortion, the issue may be that if the Supreme Court decides killing a pregnant woman is a double murder, abortion can easily be classified as a single murder, thus making all abortions illegal. Whether that happens, Roe v. Wade will be overturned anyway if the Bush gets to appoint enough justices, and if you want that to happen, vote for Bush.
As far as taxes for the rich and corporations, Bush and his crew believe in “trickle-down” economic theory. They believe that improving the economy depends on the tenets of this theory. If you believe in trickle-down theory, vote for Bush.
I am not checking your statistics, but just by saying the top 20% of “wage earners,” you’re not including the top tier of “income earners.” The term “wages” doesn’t include investment income.
I didn’t even touch on the notion of what would happen if either candidate decided to “privatize” social security. Social Security isn’t an investment program… It *seems* that way because you put in money now and supposedly get money out later. But wage earners pay in and older collectors are immediately paid. There’s no holding. If SocSec was partially privatized, billions of dollars—maybe trillions—would be needed to make up the difference of lost immediate income… for decades, until the SocSec money that was invested had time to *possibly* earn income in the market. I didn’t mention this issue because I don’t think anyone on the planet has a decent plan to fix social security. :>
factcheck.org is a good site, I agree. I visit often. :>
So you’re voting for Bush, then? 😉
(Dropped in via Blog Explosion. Nice place you’ve got here.)
I know my mind, and my values, and have already voted. GO KERRY! 🙂 (sorry, had to do it)
Thanks for the comment, Mir!There are many other important issues, like the environment, that I didn’t touch on… Hopefully after tomorrow I won’t have to talk about politics any more.
Done!