Whoa, Who Knew You Cared!?

Having been flooded/deluged/inundated with emails since I posted My Voting in the 2008 Presidential Race about how I wasn’t going to vote for either ticket, I find that that simply isn’t good enough for some of you. Clearly some of you watched Craig Ferguson the other night, judging by the comments:

So…you want me to pick one? Really? Well, OK…but only if you agree to do what I say.

Actually, you already know where I’m going with this…despite all the smoke and mirrors (what with putting the spotlight on Sarah Palin, and acting all insulted whenever anything anti-McCain/Palin comes up regardless of whether it is true or slanderous), the fact is that not only can’t you put lipstick on a pig and have it be anything other than a pig, but you also can’t iron out the wrinkles from an elephant and have anything but a really pissed off elephant.

I’ll even do what Obama’s camp is still too afraid to do: I’ll tell you straight out that Sarah Palin is too inexperienced, too ill-informed, and too narrow in her world view to be that close to the presidency as anything other than an intern with a big mouth (and that’s a Clinton/Lewinsky swipe, you history-impaired quick-umbrage-takers).

When you factor in how ruinous McCain’s economic thrust would be for the country, and the scary imbalance within the Supreme Court another nominee like the last two would cause, then there’s no way I can vote for this man.

And that leaves Obama. I have no doubt that once he gets into office he’s going to royally frak up for the first year or two. Then, if he hasn’t grown a backbone yet, he’ll be limping his way to the unemployment office just two years later. But who knows…maybe the young vision thing will work. After all, we look nostalgically at JFK because he was so darned good on TV…and the moon thing. But we also had the Bay of Pigs, which really consolidated Castro’s power, and we had the Cuban Missile Crisis, which we helped precipitate. All was not as smooth in Camelot as the romantics remember.

Biden? For now, he’s the only one of the four that isn’t really ticking me off.

Oh…and you voters out there. Yeah, I’m talking about people like you, M.T from Iowa who was oh-so illustrative about fiery apocalypses (and btw, that’s how you spell it), it’s great that you have a strong faith and want someone with your values. You also tend to tweak me at least as much as I tweak you. Values are nice as a tie-breaker, but when push comes you shove, look at the real issues: economy, defense, health care, infrastructure, and stuff like that. Personal beliefs mean much less here than does someone who will deal seriously with serious problems and not the detail stuff that is more in the personal realm than the government’s. You firmly believe that homosexuality is wrong…fine, don’t you be gay, then. You think abortion is a sin, then don’t you have one. See…easy, and it didn’t require a president to do it. Stop trying to make this country into a theocracy, for God’s sake.

Great. Now I’m all riled up. I should probably just throw away my vote and select Ralph Nader as the next president. (Of course I wouldn’t, I’m still royally pissed that he effectively gave us eight years of W, which was a big L for the nation.)

So…whoever gets elected (I’m thinking it might be McCain, because that wacky Karl Rove has been prepping his election-day valid ballot hijinx again, I’m sure), at least we won’t have an oil man in the White House. I never thought that was going to be a good idea.

I just hope that a few things that will actually be helpful for the country happen: that both our federal and trade deficits are reduced; that health care becomes easier to obtain and is more affordable; we bring quality resources to environmental and ecological issues; that we fight only necessary wars and abandon those that are none of our business; that we massively increase clean electricity production to stave off the shortages that will happen once plug-in cars become plentiful; that science, technology, and pure research are not only encouraged but mandated; that we continue to recognize the importance of China’s rise to us; and that we start expecting a lot more from our children, and from us, for their sakes.