Time is getting short on the election. With one and a half months left to try to determine if a single candidate in the mess we call the political system of America is worth their weight in horse manure, the stories just keep getting more depressing.
First and foremost, Ron Paul is out of the picture. In most states, you can’t simply put him down as a write-in candidate, either. Requirements vary from state to state, but many require that the candidates themselves file appropriate paperwork with the state in question. This does not lead to a candidate showing on the ballot, either. You’re still a write-in.
Bob Barr is the official Libertarian candidate this year and frankly I don’t know what to think of his liberty “born again” status. Barr was never a devoted fan of liberty in his years – he even voted for the Patriot Act, though now states;
“I voted for the Patriot Act– but I certainly would not do it again. It was probably the worst vote I cast in Congress. At the time we had obtained assurances from the administration that they would limit the applicability of the Patriot Act provisions. They promised that they would engage in appropriate and full reporting and disclosure to the Congress, and we were able to secure sunset clauses for a number of provisions.
But it became clear very quickly that the administration did not intend to limit the use of the Patriot Act. So one of my primary activities over the last five years since leaving Congress has been trying to undo the damage wrought by the Patriot Act and preventing further abuses.”
I don’t know whether to believe him or not, but perhaps it is best that I give him the benefit of the doubt for having changed. After all, in spite of his inability to even stand in Ron Paul’s shadow, he is at least talking the talk these days about shrinking the government and returning to the Constitution. That’s far better than what I’m hearing from the others – insecurities over whether his words will match his actions aside.
I could never vote Democratic, due to the anti-Constitution stance the party has maintained for decades. I don’t need a mother, thank you…and I don’t care to put Obama in that role. Besides, I’m quite sick of his call for “change”, when all it means is to impose a different pile of manure than what the Bush administration has layered on us. Whether the fecal flow comes from a donkey rather than an elephant is inconsequential – we’re still covered in shit.
John McCain – what can you say? Technologically inept, a poster boy for “more of the same” when it comes to the Bush war on everyone and everything “not American” – there’s nothing appealing about this guy. As for his running mate, Sarah Palin – well, that’s where I’m truly frightened. Her bronze age beliefs in the Biblical “end times” being at hand, as well as her dispensation viewpoint being so utterly against my universally libertarian nature, added to her lack of any background in foreign policy – leads to a model of interaction with the world, that would make Bush’s fiasco’s appear to be a model of foreign policy sanity. Anyone willing to sacrifice America for Israel should be immediately disqualified – and her religious beliefs would call for just that. That and since I view religious devotion as delusional thinking at best, insanity at worst, her faith alone rules her out.
Looks like it will have to be Bob Barr for me this year. I wish I could say that I was enthused with this choice, but he is quietly talking for the points I believe in. I hate to think that I’m picking the lesser evil, but if that is the case, at least I’m picking an evil which is actually calling for protection of individual liberty, while the others scream for more control.
Tags: 2008, Bob Barr, election, John McCain, obama, presidential election, Sarah Palin
