I don’t normally post about politics here, because I figure there are already eleventy billion other people doing that, and the odds of changing anyone’s mind are pretty remote anyway. I’ve gotten involved before in long, intense political discussions on Usenet, writing enough words to fill a novel. Other than a way to vent, there’s not much point in it. But, since Jason talked a little about voting, I thought I’d say a few things about my thinking heading into this election.

First of all, I’m no John McCain fan.  I would have been happier with almost any of the other Republican candidates, and I still don’t know how we ended up with a guy who was rumored to be considering running as an independent or Democrat in past elections.  He’s never seen an immigrant—preferably an illegal one—that he didn’t want to give a job and government benefits to.  He’s no real friend to conservatives, voting with us most of the time, but always willing to shaft us if it gets him attention in the press.  His main constituency is the media, which has always (until now, of course) showered him with affection whenever he bad-mouthed his own party.  He’s a bad candidate, and if the Democrats had put up a halfway moderate person, say someone like Bill Clinton without the sex addiction, this choice might take more than half a second.

But they put up Barack Obama, the most radical left-wing member of the Senate (he gets better ratings from left-wing organizations than Bernie Sanders, an avowed Socialist), and a product of the corrupt Chicago machine to boot.  Except for the ability to give a good speech, there’s nothing good to say about his candidacy, and plenty of bad.

I’ll start with abortion.  Now, maybe you, dear reader, consider yourself pro-choice.  That’s fine, I’m not looking to argue that here.  But you should know that Obama is not pro-choice, if that term means anything; he’s as pro-abortion as it’s possible to be without actually performing them yourself.  He’s even more in favor of abortion than NARAL, which did not oppose the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, while Obama voted against the Illinois version.  He has promised to make his first priority in office the Freedom of Choice Act, which would remove all restrictions on abortion nationwide, all the way through the entire nine months of pregnancy.

So no more restrictions on partial-birth abortion, which 80-90% of Americans oppose.  No parental notification; the school nurse can take your 14-year-old daughter for an abortion without your knowledge.  He promises new federal funding for abortion, even paying for them with Medicare.  He wants to make abortion a civil right, which could mean hospitals and doctors would be forced to provide abortions.  Pregnancy counselors could be in the same boat.  The RICO act could be used to stop all anti-abortion protests, and even take away the tax-exempt status of organizations that preach against it.

Now, like I said, maybe you normally vote Democrat because you’re pro-choice, in the sense that you don’t like the idea of a woman being trapped by pregnancy, especially in cases of abuse or health dangers.  That may be understandable, but that’s not what we’re talking about here.  (And that’s what we’d continue to have under McCain; he’s no pro-life warrior.)  We’re talking about making abortion as routine as possible, shutting down all opposition to it at every level from federal to local, letting abortionists use any method they want even if it means killing the baby well after birth, and making sure nothing slows the decision process down long enough for a woman to have second thoughts.  Is that really what you want when you say you’re pro-choice?  A president who makes that his number-one priority?  I don’t think that’s what it means for most people.

On the economy, Obama is also something we haven’t seen in a viable presidential candidate in a long time, if ever: an outright Marxist.  He talks openly about redistributing wealth, something most politicians dress up in language about punishing the rich.  Obama’s so convinced he’s right, though, that he forgets to hide what he means sometimes, like when he famously told Joe the Plumber how he should be glad the government is going to take more of Joe’s money and spread it around.  Hanging with guys like Saul Alinsky and Bill Ayers just confirms what comes through his speeches and his books: he’s going to tax the heck out of us for our own good.

Of course, he promises middle-class tax relief; they always do.  It’s a lie (as it is when McCain says it).  It’s very simple: the middle class has most of the money and produces most of the stuff.  If the government wants to hand out goodies—and Obama’s promising goodies left and right—it has to get the money from the middle class, by hook or by crook.  Even if he doesn’t technically raise tax rates on us, we here in Illinois know there are other ways to squeeze us for it.  Our governor, Rod Blagojevich another corrupt product of the Chicago machine who will probably spend part of his retirement in prison like most of our former governors, also got elected by promising not to raise taxes.  Surprisingly, he kept that promise, but he made up for it by raising every fee he could find and increasing state-run gambling, which is a tax on the innumerate.  One way or another, Obama will make us pay.

Many people think we need to elect Obama to keep us out of foreign wars.  Apparently they weren’t listening when he promised to send more troops to Afghanistan, and suggested that he’d like to get involved in Darfur and other hot spots where the US has even less national interest than Iraq.  In places where he doesn’t suggest sending troops outright, he wants to send big piles of money to support the UN or other nations’ troops.  In short, he’s just as enthusiastic about projecting American power around the globe as Bush or McCain; he’d just like to do it in different places in different ways and let other countries boss us around more in the process.

Those are the big issues, but on pretty much every issue, you can assume an Obama presidency will mean more government control.  Do you homeschool, or think people should be allowed to?  Don’t be surprised if some new regulations come down the pike on that; teachers’ unions are the biggest supporter of the Democratic Party.  Own any guns?  If any gun-control laws come across Obama’s desk (which is likely, since we’re going to have a strong Democratic majority in Congress for at least two years), he’ll sign them.  Expect new attempts to tax the Internet, and to control what people can use it for.  Prepare for new bi-lingual efforts, more rights and benefits given to illegal immigrants, and less effort at controlling the borders (which is already a weak effort as it is).  We could even get the 55-mph speed limit back.

If you’re one of those people who thinks he’ll bring blacks and whites together….sorry, I don’t want to be insulting, but you’re naive.  Read his books.  From the way he talked about his “racist” white grandmother, to the way he idolized his bigamist deadbeat-dad and looked down on his mother, to the church and pastor he selected when he moved to Chicago, to the way he talks in his speeches about black “anger” and white “resentment,” he’s made it clear that he’s not another Tiger Woods, equally comfortable with all sides of his heritage.  He chose sides a long time ago, and if he’s elected, he’ll appoint judges and lawyers from the racial grievance industry who will only make the racial divide in this country worse.  Again, read his books; it’s all in there.

So, there are a few reasons I won’t be voting for Obama.  Since I live in Illinois, which leans hard to the left, voting for McCain wouldn’t do any good here.  The only way McCain would win Illinois would be if he won about 40 other states, and then my vote wouldn’t matter either.  So I’ll be voting for the Constitution Party, to help it get attention and funding next time around, in hopes that maybe one of these times we won’t have to choose between bad and much, much worse.

Were I in a contested state like Ohio, though, I’d proudly hold my nose and vote for McCain.  I might even take a page from the Democratic playbook and vote a few times, and volunteer to drive illegal aliens to the polls to vote in the names of felons and dead people.  Viva le democracie!