(no subject)

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Why I Refuse to Vote for Barack Obama

I am not a purist. There is no such thing as a perfect political party, or a president who governs in accordance with one's every ethical judgment. But some actions are so ruinous to human rights, so destructive of the Constitution, and so contrary to basic morals that they are disqualifying. Most of you will go that far with me. If two candidates favored a return to slavery, or wanted to stone adulterers, you wouldn't cast your ballot for the one with the better position on health care. I am not equating President Obama with a slavery apologist or an Islamic fundamentalist...What I am saying is that Obama has done things that, while not comparable to a historic evil like chattel slavery, go far beyond my moral comfort zone.

This is written by someone who supported him 2008 but won't this time. I've seen quite a few similar sentiments being shared in various places. This should be the year when third parties of any kind get a big boost in votes. Unfortunately, I think the author's opinion that people wouldn't pick one of the two candidates advocating stoning adulterers is misplaced. They will hold their nose or look the other way and vote for their side because they think there's only two horses in the race. Well, the only wasted vote is one that isn't cast, and I would add, for the person who best represents you regardless of party.

Comments

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

That's what happens when you watch fox. You start believing things that having nothing to do with reality and are just based in fear and propaganda.

[marina-herriott.livejournal.com]

/when you watch fox/
I've began to watch FOX month ago 'cause now I share FOX's opinions. Before I watched CNN. 4 years ago I supported Obama. Now I understand how his foreign policy is dangerous for the world and the domestic policy - for the country.

[hikarugenji.livejournal.com]

It really is a quandary, one that I posted about on this forum before. I am 100% certain that Obama supports my views and positions better than Romney does, and that I would vastly prefer an Obama second term to a Romney presidency. I don't agree with this "they're both the same" stuff you sometimes see from third-party supporters. On the other hand, the platform of the Green party comes closest to my ideal political ideology than any of the other platforms. I think that both sides have merit -- the idea that I would be giving a vote or half-vote to Romney if I voted for Jill Stein, and the idea that I should vote my conscience if I honestly think a third party represents my interests better.

I already sent in my absentee ballot (I'm overseas) but I ended up going with Obama -- I would have voted Green for more local elections that they actually had some chance of winning but no candidates were running in them. I wasn't completely happy with the decision, though.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Its a first across the finish line winner take all race. Third party is not viable. Its just a protest vote.

If you vote 3rd party, you may feel good, but ultimately it will have little effect other than to split the vote for the candidate who is closest aligned to you.

I think 3rd party can work, but from the bottom up, not top down.

[rjf-snyker.livejournal.com]

If i was american citizen. I vote for Romny. He is very cheerful politician.
http://www.vesti.ru/only_video.html?vid=449366

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

With wealth exceeding 9 figures, he damn well should be cheerful. But that's no criteria for choosing a leader.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

"I love humor. Ha. Ha. HA."

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[op-tech-glitch.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'd be cheery as fuck all the time too if I lived in one of these:

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Short of a Parliament-type government like Canada(and even they still use first-past-the-post representation) with proportional representation, I don't see third parties being able to break in.

My moral comfort zone has been expanded, probably due to disappointment with every candidate I've ever liked, starting with Nixon.

[kayjayuu.livejournal.com]

Especially with deep pocket lawyers on either of the two major sides. (https://www.google.com/search?q=challenges+to+libertarian+ballot+access&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#q=challenges+to+libertarian+ballot+access&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&hs=2bE&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=imvns&source=lnms&tbm=nws&sa=X&ei=b0hkUN-hAsjgrAHkuIDwCQ&ved=0CA0Q_AUoBA&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=7a1bf0fe15a60010&biw=1024&bih=434)

[muscadinegirl.livejournal.com]

Nixon is preferable to any of these jokers. He signed the Clean Air Act into law and didn't oppose Roe v/s Wade.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

I've ever liked, starting with Nixon.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

That article's a disingenuous piece of trash and it's not worth responding to beyond that.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Hey, drone striking american citizens could be someones deal breaker. Seems fair enough.

[vehemencet-t.livejournal.com]

Underlankers while that article is poor, the issues are real and Im sick of it being hypocritically ignored by progressives. Glen Greenwald wrote a piece for the Salon a bit back which was much better linked. Just ignore all the opinion piece shit about Ron Paul.

The fallacy in this reasoning is glaring. The candidate supported by progressives — President Obama — himself holds heinous views on a slew of critical issues and himself has done heinous things with the power he has been vested. He has slaughtered civilians — Muslim children by the dozens — not once or twice, but continuously in numerous nations with drones, cluster bombs and other forms of attack. He has sought to overturn a global ban on cluster bombs. He has institutionalized the power of Presidents — in secret and with no checks — to target American citizens for assassination-by-CIA, far from any battlefield. He has waged an unprecedented war against whistleblowers, the protection of which was once a liberal shibboleth. He rendered permanently irrelevant the War Powers Resolution, a crown jewel in the list of post-Vietnam liberal accomplishments, and thus enshrined the power of Presidents to wage war even in the face of a Congressional vote against it. His obsession with secrecy is so extreme that it has become darkly laughable in its manifestations, and he even worked to amend the Freedom of Information Act (another crown jewel of liberal legislative successes) when compliance became inconvenient.

He has entrenched for a generation the once-reviled, once-radical Bush/Cheney Terrorism powers of indefinite detention, military commissions, and the state secret privilege as a weapon to immunize political leaders from the rule of law. He has shielded Bush era criminals from every last form of accountability. He has vigorously prosecuted the cruel and supremely racist War on Drugs, including those parts he vowed during the campaign to relinquish — a war which devastates minority communities and encages and converts into felons huge numbers of minority youth for no good reason. He has empowered thieving bankers through the Wall Street bailout, Fed secrecy, efforts to shield mortgage defrauders from prosecution, and the appointment of an endless roster of former Goldman, Sachs executives and lobbyists. He’s brought the nation to a full-on Cold War and a covert hot war with Iran, on the brink of far greater hostilities. He has made the U.S. as subservient as ever to the destructive agenda of the right-wing Israeli government. His support for some of the Arab world’s most repressive regimes is as strong as ever.

Most of all, America’s National Security State, its Surveillance State, and its posture of endless war is more robust than ever before. The nation suffers from what National Journal‘s Michael Hirsh just christened “Obama’s Romance with the CIA.” He has created what The Washington Post just dubbed “a vast drone/killing operation,” all behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy and without a shred of oversight. Obama’s steadfast devotion to what Dana Priest and William Arkin called “Top Secret America” has severe domestic repercussions as well, building up vast debt and deficits in the name of militarism that create the pretext for the “austerity” measures which the Washington class (including Obama) is plotting to impose on America’s middle and lower classes.

The simple fact is that progressives are supporting a candidate for President who has done all of that — things liberalism has long held to be pernicious. I know it’s annoying and miserable to hear. Progressives like to think of themselves as the faction that stands for peace, opposes wars, believes in due process and civil liberties, distrusts the military-industrial complex, supports candidates who are devoted to individual rights, transparency and economic equality. All of these facts — like the history laid out by Stoller in that essay — negate that desired self-perception. These facts demonstrate that the leader progressives have empowered and will empower again has worked in direct opposition to those values and engaged in conduct that is nothing short of horrific. So there is an eagerness to avoid hearing about them, to pretend they don’t exist.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

That's a convincing argument.

[eracerhead.livejournal.com]

Third party candidates won't be viable unless the Republican party continues on its death spiral that started with Reagan. So if you want more parties, work toward hastening their demise.

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

How do the 92 elections, 2010 elections, and republicans in the white house for 3 out of 6 terms count as a death spiral?

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

It's why I'm voting green.

[marina-herriott.livejournal.com]

I am the libertarian with this test (http://www.isidewith.com/).
(http://marina-herriott.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/569/107499)

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

I love his wishy-washy notions that any Presidents outside the 'establishment' would act differently. Or that the President is somehow responsible for all of Congress' decisions.

I love conceited libertarians like the one in the article. They can stay home for all I care, the 'both parties are the same!' rhetoric has been thoroughly debunked. People need to realize what's at stake here and as Samuel L. Jackson would say, wake the fuck up.

[vehemencet-t.livejournal.com]

Dont spout that bullshit. In the core root, both parties voting records are hardly different at all. Whether Romney or Obama, I doubt you would personally feel a difference.The U.S. political race is a sham decided in the halls of elite power and not thr popular ballot.

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

I wish I had a nickel for all the anti-Obama articles and comments I've read that include "I won't vote for Obama again".

"Again" implies that the author actually voted for him in the past - which I seriously doubt.

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

I didn't write any articles, but I did, and won't.

[muscadinegirl.livejournal.com]

No matter who you vote for, the working class is screwed.

[vehemencet-t.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

One of the things that puts me off is his flip-flop (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/27/inside-obama-s-war-on-weed.html) on the issue of medical marijuana.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Yeah, he claimed to be for medical marijuana in 2008, then he upped the crackdown, and now claims to be for it again? WTF?

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

I'm a 2008 Obama voter who is very unhappy with some of the things he's done, especially in terms of continuing certain Bush-era policies that led me to vote for him in the first place.

But I'm far more unhappy with what Romney will do if he wins, and what his party has come to represent. That makes my choice a lot more clear.

[vehemencet-t.livejournal.com]

Wow thank you for a much more clear-headed and reasonable answer than Underlankers.

Thank you.

[tilitali.livejournal.com]

It's very good point.