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I don’t see how anyone who confronts Obama’s record with clear eyes can enthusiastically support him. I do understand how they might have concluded that he is the lesser of two evils, and back him reluctantly, but I’d have thought more people on the left would regard a sustained assault on civil liberties and the ongoing, needless killing of innocent kids as deal-breakers. Nope. […] The whole liberal conceit that Obama is a good, enlightened man, while his opponent is a malign, hard-hearted cretin, depends on constructing a reality where the lives of non-Americans — along with the lives of some American Muslims and whistleblowers - just aren’t valued.
Why I Refuse to Vote for Barack Obama
On stage, as he smiles into the camera, using words to evoke some of the best sentiments within us, it’s hard to believe certain facts about him:
- Obama terrorizes innocent Pakistanis on an almost daily basis. The drone war he is waging in North Waziristan isn’t “precise” or “surgical” as he would have Americans believe. It kills hundreds of innocents, including children. And for thousands of more innocents who live in the targeted communities, the drone war makes their lives into a nightmare worthy of dystopian novels. People are always afraid. Women cower in their homes. Children are kept out of school. The stress they endure gives them psychiatric disorders. Men are driven crazy by an inability to sleep as drones buzz overhead 24 hours a day, a deadly strike possible at any moment. At worst, this policy creates more terrorists than it kills; at best, America is ruining the lives of thousands of innocent people and killing hundreds of innocents for a small increase in safety from terrorists. It is a cowardly, immoral, and illegal policy, deliberately cloaked in opportunistic secrecy. And Democrats who believe that it is the most moral of all responsible policy alternatives are as misinformed and blinded by partisanship as any conservative ideologue.
- Obama established one of the most reckless precedents imaginable: that any president can secretly order and oversee the extrajudicial killing of American citizens. Obama’s kill list transgresses against the Constitution as egregiously as anything George W. Bush ever did. It is as radical an invocation of executive power as anything Dick Cheney championed. The fact that the Democrats rebelled against those men before enthusiastically supporting Obama is hackery every bit as blatant and shameful as anything any talk radio host has done.
- Contrary to his own previously stated understanding of what the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution demand, President Obama committed U.S. forces to war in Libya without Congressional approval, despite the lack of anything like an imminent threat to national security.
In the end, Conor Friedersdorf sums up my thoughts like no one else: “Romney revels in bellicosity; Obama soothes with rhetoric and kills people in secret. To hell with them both.”
(via slowkingvictim)
(Source: mehreenkasana)
Why.
If Dr. Paul does not win the nomination, I will still be voting for him, or even writing in his name.
Reasons:
Voting in accordance with my conscience and my principles is now more important to me than voting for the party. I don’t agree with any of the other Republican candidates on even half as many things as I agree with Ron Paul on. I’m a libertarian with a socially and economically conservative background, and Paul fits the bill perfectly. The other candidates are not talking about correcting the root causes of our national problems, as Paul is. They’re talking about trying to treat the symptoms by enhancing the very conditions that caused them. On policy issues, I see very little difference between the other Republicans and President Obama. So it does not matter one bit to me if it’s Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum versus Barack Obama in the general election. “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” Sure, the rhetoric is different, and the beneficiaries of government largesse are different, but free markets and individual liberty are thrown out the window just the same. Just as Obama has continued all of the most objectionable of the Bush administration’s policies: unconstitutional foreign wars and interventionism, massive deficit spending and corporate bailouts, corporatism, expansion of the welfare state, ad nauseam, I hold out no hope at all that the new bunch of Republicans will be any different, except for Ron Paul. I flat-out just don’t trust Romney, Gingrich is a disgusting human being and an opportunist, and Santorum is a warmongering religious authoritarian. I just could not, in good conscience, vote for any of them.
We should be doing everything we possibly can to avoid a war with Iran, because not only can we not afford it, not only would yet another aggressive foray into a land on the other side of the planet be morally and practically insane, not only is Israel not our constitutional responsibility to defend, not only can Israel handle the threat that Iran may or may not pose very well on its own, but Russia and China have major economic and political interests in Iran. An American invasion will almost certainly escalate into a long-expected third world war. Already, the Obama administration is moving troops around the world and cutting forces in Europe, Africa, and South America, in order to focus on China. This strikes me as either insane or evil. I want nothing to do with it. Another, bigger war will complete America’s decent into despotic tyranny and bankruptcy. All of the Republican candidates, save Paul, are just itching for that war, whatever their claims to the contrary. They all support the sanctions that are putting a choke hold on the Persian people, just as FDR’s sanctions against oil exports to Japan before WWII put Japan in a position where they had to either shut down and abandon their empire, or attack the United States in a gamble. Sanctions do not ever prevent wars. They cause them.
I will be voting for the man who represents an about-face along that road. For me, it will never again be about Republicans versus Democrats. It is about life and liberty, against all the tyrants and purveyors of death in the world who would snuff out that light.
Barack Obama is not America’s problem. He is just a symptom of a system that rewards smooth-talking liars who are backed by financial and military corporations that are deeply intertwined with the government, and which is fueled by the Federal Reserve’s powers to inflate the currency to fund corporate bailouts and wars. This has been going on for ninety-nine years. It caused every dead American soldier sent to perish in Eurasia, every American who starved during the Great Depression and every other recession, this past century, and it will keep killing and destroying for the sake of power, until it is stopped.
Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich are not the solutions to that problem. They are products of it, just as much as Obama is. None of them will reverse the decline of American freedom and prosperity, either because they don’t understand what’s causing it, or because they want to be a part of it.
Ron Paul has the solutions.
A prayer for those with dysfunctional families
Dear Lord,
I just don’t know what to do. There’s what you say about me, and there’s what they say about me, and the two are miles apart. Sometimes I think I’m crazy to think that I have this purpose and destiny that you created me to fulfill, especially when these people treat me like something stuck to the bottom of their shoe. Okay, yeah, deep down I know that all this is about them putting their issues on to me, but Lord, these people know me better than anyone, and when they say bad stuff about me, it’s hard to ignore.
I keep switching between hating them and hating myself and back again, and I’m so tired of being stuck in that. I need you so bad right now Lord, to help me break this cycle. I need to find a place with you, a secret place in my head where it’s just about me and you. I need to be able to be alone with you, and to hear YOU tell me who I am. Help me Lord, I feel like I haven’t been good to you, and I feel like I’ve had to so much anger and hate that you wouldn’t want to be with me right now.
But dangit, I know that’s a lie! I know you always want to be with me, I know you always understand about my emotions, I know I’m always welcome in your arms. You are my family. No matter what other people do, I won’t let them come between me and you!
I needed to read this.
