Top 10 Reasons Not to Vote for John McCain

Top 10 Reasons NOT to Vote for John McCain
John McCain has served our country bravely and has gone through some of the worst possible treatment as a prisoner of war. As admirable as that is, that alone does not make the Senator qualified to be the President of the United States. Why? Here’s a list of arguments against electing McCain.
10      Unwavering Support for President Bush.
Just from hearing Senator McCain’s campaign speeches, he pretty much thinks along the same lines of Bush on economic, foreign and social issues. McCain has voted with Bush 95% of the time last year and 100% of the time this year. McCain thinks the “economic fundamentals are strong” as does Bush. McCain also supports Bush’s tax policy. Bush and McCain both say the “surge” has worked, but are for keeping the troops in Iraq at a cost of $10 billion dollars a month, while Iraq has an $80 billion dollar surplus.  Both Bush and McCain have identical policies on immigration, abortion and other issues.
9       Corruption.
Has anybody forgotten about the Keating Five and the Savings and Loans scandal? When a federal investigation began, Keating told five senators to whom he had given thousand of dollars and gifts to that they should try and stop any probing. One of them was McCain who was later rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee for having “poor judgment.”
8       Straight Talk Express?
Senator McCain’s talk has been anything but “straight,” especially of late.  His flip-flops have been incredible.
Off shore drilling:  Now the Senator is for it after being against it for 26 years. Torture:  First against it, but now for it. Wiretapping: First against it, but now for it. Tax Cuts: First against it, but now for it.  Privatizing Social Security:  First against it, but now for it.  The list is almost endless.
The Senator has been chastised by the news media for being less than truthful (ok, lying) in his ads against Obama.
7       Iraq War.
As someone who was involved in the irrational war such as the Vietnam war and paid a personal price for it, you’d think that McCain would be hesitant to support one.  Yet, McCain supported the Iraq war and still has no exit strategy. The Senator appears to want to start another one against Iran. Quite honestly, he technically has no opinion on the war since he’s voted against numerous bills that would’ve provided billions of dollars for the troops.
6       Failure to Support Women’s and Minority Issues
McCain opposed equal pay for equal work for women.  His reasoning: “They need the education and training, particularly since more and more women are heads of their households, as much or more than anybody else.”
McCain voted against the bill that made Martin Luther King Day a national holiday, showing poor judgment. Dr. King is one of the key reasons the Civil Rights Act of 1964 even came into fruition. McCain says he eventually “learned that this individual was a transcendent figure in American history” and then starting supporting Dr. King. He couldn’t figure this out earlier?
5       Failure to Support Universal Health Care and Social Security
“The bonds we share with Europe in terms of history, values, and interests are unique,” said Senator McCain at a speech in Los Angeles.  One of the values the Senator doesn’t share is Universal Health Care that is prevalent in most of Europe and in Canada.  It is hard to understand how the Senator can put the “Country First,” while ignoring the health care needs of all its residents.
Also, if the Senator had his way, Social Security would have been privatized and the money invested in stock market.  To gamble with the financial security of the elderly is something that should not be commended but condemned.
4       Temperament.
Those who know Senator McCain talk of his ballistic anger that results in a frenzy of curses and profanity. He’s quite notorious for it. There’s no way to actually point out half of the things he’s said to critics, whether Democrat or Republican, or even his wife because, well, it’s way too vulgar.
When CNN pressed McCain’s spokesman about Gov Palin’s qualifications, the Senator refused to appear on the Larry King program.  His curt behavior in a Time magazine interview is another sign of McCain’s questionable temperament.
The most well known one would have to be when he called his wife a, well, naughty name after she was joking about his thinning hair.
One of his colleagues supposedly said, “I don’t want this guy anywhere near a trigger.”
3       Lobbyists in the Campaign or Fox in the Chicken Coop
Senator McCain says he is against special interests and lobbyists, but his campaign is run by lobbyists. What’s wrong with that? Lobbyists usually use money to get members of government to follow the interests of their clients, and not necessarily the public. Of course, their client can be a big corporation like a phone company or a cause like fighting breast cancer. Such is not the case for the McCain Campaign. Common clients for the 133 lobbyists are Verizon, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (which recently went through a federal takeover). The whole argument that lobbyists are scared of him because he’s a reformer is just baseless.
2       The Economy.
The Senator has pretty much no clue about the economy. (“The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should,” said McCain once.) Since McCain has been a member of Congress for over two decades and headed the Commerce committee, one would hope for, well, a lot better. Worse, his economic advisor, Phil Gramm, said that America is in a “mental recession” and is “a nation of whiners.”  High oil prices, housing crisis and bankruptcies—both announced and impending—of major financial companies should be of concern to all of us.  The national debt has increased by almost $400 billion dollars each year since 2002. According to the Department of Treasury, the nation’s total public debt, including debt held by the public and intragovernmental holdings, is almost $10 trillion. We cannot afford to elect someone whose understanding of the economy and whose judgment to appoint competent economic advisers is suspect.
1       Sarah Palin.
McCain chose Gov. Palin as running mate though he hardly knew her.  He seems to have selected her without proper vetting.  Gov. Palin’s penchant for earmarks, her involvement in the so-called trooper-gate, her employment of friends and classmates in state jobs, her affinity for secrecy, etc. seem to have been overlooked by McCain.  Gov. Palin has been described by her detractors as “Bush in a Dress” or “Cheney in a skirt.”
Senator McCain undermined his own argument that Obama is less experienced by choosing someone as his VP whose foreign policy experience, uttered with a straight face, includes “I can see Russia from Alaska.”
If education and experience are good yardsticks to have in a potential President, Gov. Palin just doesn’t qualify.  Going to five colleges in six years to get a bachelors degree, as Palin did, is not something that will get you a job teaching in a decent high school.  Now she’s going to be heartbeat away from the presidency?  What was the Senator thinking, or more to the point, was he thinking at all?  If his motto truly is “Country First,” why would he select Gov. Palin as his VP?

Every reason Universal Health Care is crap… is crap.

According to the American Medical Student Association:

http://www.amsa.org/uhc/uhc_counterarguments.pdf

You couldn’t have it in a better form.

Vice Presidential Debate: facts from falsehood.

Senator Joe Biden of Delaware clearly won the first and only vice presidential debate on Thursday, October 2^nd, 2008 against Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska. It wasn’t necessarily because Senator Biden was especially outstanding, or because both the CBS and CNN polls said so; it was because Governor Palin was, once again, especially bad. There was an obvious sign of nervousness within Palin, along with completely incorrect facts, a horrible debate strategy, and accidental clues revealing what she might even do as vice president.

Senator Biden was, quite simply, Senator Biden. He was himself, and the only thing he had to worry about was whether he would be too harsh to Governor Palin, only because it would be interpreted as a sign of sexism. This was certainly not the case throughout the whole debate. The main accusation of factual error for Biden was regarding his statement that McCain had voted against the troops. Senator Biden was, in fact, correct. Senator McCain had voted against H.R. 1591, a bill which would’ve provided more than one billion dollars for the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. His reasoning was because there was a timeline included in the bill for troop withdrawal, despite the fact the Prime Minister of Iraq Nouri Al-Maliki supports a timetable. Governor Palin, on the other hand, was clearly nervous in the beginning. Why even ask if you could call Senator Biden “Joe” if you’d only refer to him as such once much later in the debate: “Say it ain’t so, Joe” regarding his numerous references to the Bush Administration.

Governor Palin was expected to completely mess up primarily because of the amount of scandals and terrible interviews she was involved in, particularly the ones with CBS’s Katie Couric. She didn’t completely crash, but it still wasn’t good enough. One reason was her style; saying colloquialisms such as “betcha” and “darn it” don’t help add to the gravity of the discussion. However, she was specifically bad because of her various factual errors.

The accusation that Obama voted 94 times for higher taxes is absolutely false. Out of those 94 times, twenty three were for proposed tax cuts. Seven of them were in favor of lowering taxes, and only raising taxes on corporations or separate wealthy individuals, if any. Eleven of them were for increasing taxes for citizens making more than one million dollars a year for funding programs like Head Start or Veterans’ health care. The list continues, as noted by the website www.factcheck.org.

Regarding taxes, it was the main if not the only subject Palin discussed when it came to the economy. The only time she even mentioned the word “mortgage” was when talking about McCain’s call for reform of mortgage lenders, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. She forgot to mention one McCain’s senior adviser, Rick Davis, was a lobbyist for Fannie Mac. In fact, approximately five members of the McCain campaign, at the least, lobbied for either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

The claim that Obama voted to raise taxes on citizens making $42,000 a year is also entirely false. In fact, it was a non-binding budget resolution about middle class tax cuts and allowing tax increases for the wealthy. Senator Biden was correct when he stated Senator McCain didn’t support new bankruptcy to help home loaners avoid foreclosure; Palin responded, “that is not so” and then switched the topic to energy.

In terms of energy, she never specifically discussed McCain’s energy plan for the United States. Instead, she said how alternative energy sources are necessary and energy independence “is the key to America’s future.” This is, by no means, anything new. When it came to one specific fact regarding the “$40 billion natural gas pipeline” Alaska is building, this is also false. Alaska hasn’t even begun construction on the so called pipeline.

She was also wrong when she stated that global warming is based on cyclic changes. In fact, both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) agree that human-caused greenhouse gases are the primary culprit. The IPCC also stated that “[t]he increases in surface temperature over the 20th century for the Northern Hemisphere” were “greater than that for any other century in the last thousand years.”

Palin was just as terrible factually when it came to foreign policy. She was incorrect when she stated that U.S troop levels were now at “pre-surge levels.” She was wrong when she stated Senator Obama had never supported the surge. He has previously agreed that it has reduced violence, but that it hasn’t help in the process of political reconciliation for Iraq. She was also wrong when saying the commander of Afghanistan for the army, General David Mckiernan, not McClellan, thought an Iraq style surge would work.

Focusing more on her style, she sometimes even directly refused to answer questions. This is not a good debate strategy, it’s confusing to viewers; how hard can it be for a person running for vice president to answer any political questions? Her worst moment came at the end of the debate regarding the candidates’ Achilles heel, whether it is lack of discipline or experience. Biden choked up is his response: “the notion that somehow, because I’m a man, I don’t know what it’s like to raise two kids alone, I don’t know what it’s like to have a child you’re not sure is going to — is going to make it — I understand.” Palin’s response not only had no relevance to the question, but it was an incredibly cruel way to show McCain’s “maverick” career: “People aren’t looking for more of the same. They are looking for change. And John McCain has been the consummate maverick in the Senate over all these years.”

In the end, Biden didn’t have to try that hard to win the debate in Washington University. The only reason people would think Palin had won was because the moderator, Gwen Ifill, did not give nearly enough follow-ups to each statement from each candidate. If she had, Ifill could’ve rebuked half of the quotes from Governor Palin. The debate was no contest; Senator Biden won by a longshot.