If you are looking for more information about the candidates’ positions on various issues; if you are waiting to see a copy of Obama’s birth certificate or McCain’s health records before you decide; if you still- STILL!- are among that surprising percentage of adults who don’t yet know who they will vote for for president, then I have a suggestion for you:
Ask your children who they are voting for. Then vote tomorrow at your Early Voting location for whichever candidate they name.
It’s that simple.
Your kids, my kids, the neighbor’s kids, and their children and grandchildren are the ones who will be saddled with the bills we older people have racked up over the last 30 years with our drunken sailor spending and they should be the ones who get the biggest say in who the next president will be.
Don’t try to play the “older and wiser” card, either. We’ve already dug $60,000 deep into the pockets of every man, woman, and child in the country. Babies born today have the albatross of our older generation’s greed around their necks the moment they breathe their first breath of globally warmed air. Drive those newborns home over roads and bridges that are desperately in need of repair, lay them down in cribs bought with plastic I.O.U.’s, turn on the lights whose wicks reach all the way to Venezuela, take videos of their first moments in their first bank-owned ARMed home with cameras hammered together in China, hope they are not awakened later by the sounds of police sirens as War on Drugs suspect #82,987,000 is being chased, lean down, give them a kiss, and whisper, “Get ready to pay.”
O.K., the baby may not be able to give you an answer to your inquiry about voting yet. But he/she will wish they’d been able to about 25 years from now! Of course, by then, you’ll have your eyes on retirement and can look forward to that young man or woman keeping the Social Security checks headed your way, all the while also having to pay for the wars your generation fought, the subsidies your generation paid to tobacco farmers, the perks your generation poured out on the congresspersons and Wall Street C.E.O.s 0f 2008, and the all of the interest on top of interest that has been accruing since your country couldn’t afford all that crap even back then, and were borrowing money from everyone to buy it all in the first place!
Really. Ask your teenager, ask your college freshman, ask the sixth grader who lives next door. None of them are as afflicted with the cultural baggage you (we) are. None of them has the economic glory days of the 80’s and 90’s in their memories. Some of them will probably even be facing down the wartime enemy as you (we) have defined that enemy to be. Their vision is a whole lot clearer than yours and mine! That may be hard for some of my fellow middle-agers to swallow, but..it’s true. (Most truth is hard to swallow, come to think about it; maybe that’s why we have swallowed so little of it during most of our tax-paying, tax-spending adult lives.)
Vote for the person the young ones are voting for, or that they would be voting for if they could. You (we) owe it to them. God knows they owe US.
The First Morning 
Nice one, Pops. I’m voting for Obama. 🙂
OK! Then I will, too!
This is kind of a lame argument, especially since I sense that you are pro-Obama here. If you truly want to elect the man who might have any snowball’s chance of reducing the deficit for your children, that would be McCain. Obama promises the moon, free college tuition and such, which are policies that are hardly going to reduce the deficit…but such statements make him popular among college students. (Never mind the fact that he probably won’t live up to the promise of cheaper college and they’ll have graduated by the time anything gets implemented anyway.)
No need to “sense” that I am pro-Obama, I am! I would be in a quandary right now if we were dealing with the McCain of 2000, but we’re not. His pitiful attempt to garner the 18 million votes cast for Hillary in the primaries with the choice of Palin is proof of that if nothing else is. A person needs much more than estrogen to be a Hillary.
Here are some questions I would want answered before voting for Obama:
1) Who are “Good Will” and “Doodad Pro”?
2) Why has Obama’s story about his relationship with Bill Ayers consistently morphed and changed over time?
3) What is the nature of Obama’s relationship Khalid Rashidi?
4) Why did Michelle Obama give up her law license 4 years after getting it?
5) Why am I the only one asking these questions?
Dave Dave Dave. I’m so sorry that you have gotten yourself caught up in such humanism. You have Blog’d and Blog’d about the inadequacies of Palin and McCain – being so “Pro-Obama” that you’ve forgotten to be Pro-God!
You talk about how terrible one person may be as if there is no way God could actually use them to fulfill His purpose. Have you forgotten about the God who used a stuttering murderer to deliver a nation from slavery? (Moses) Or the runt of the litter to be the king that would be after His own heart? (David), How about a bunch of “b-list”,fishermen, no-accounts, sluts and tax collectors to be a part of the movement that changed the course of humanity?
I am NOT saying that I am Pro McCain/Palin and ANTI Obama/Biden, I’m saying it’s time to stop drinking the Republican and Democrat Koolaid and start being Pro-America! We have gotten to be so devided in this country, and I’m afraid you’ve been duped into being a part of the problem. The next President we have (Obama or McCain) is goin to need our support and prayers! Because God is able and in His own way will use either candidate to do His purpose (not trying to beat the Calvanist drum here, God REDEEMS things, not justify them). I for one am tired of the partisanship. There are things for this Generation that need to be done, but damnit! It’s gonna take MORE then ONE president to do that. One President alone is not going to fix our economic problem, our environment problem, our values problem, our social justice problem, our war problem. It’s going to take a country that somehow finds it’s way to stop pointing fingers and start working together!
I will be voting for McCain/Palin in this election. BUT I am no Republican nor am I a Democrat. I’m an American. What I mean is if Obama wins the election, He will be just as much my president as McCain will be if he wins.
You say that Palin/McCain are not qualified to be our leaders. You’re right! Neither is Obama/Biden.
We tend to call the “equiped”, but God equips the called. Our next president is going to need God to equip him for this job. That’s how our Father works, He has an awesome way of using the least likely to be great in Him. And if our next president does not seek the Lord, then… well, you can look through the bible to find what happens to leaders who forget the Lord (not always death, mind you, but usually ruin).
David, as a man of God that I know you are, please consider that these polotics you are striving in, is not going to save us, only God will. I love you man, and I want a better world just as you do. We need to quit wasting time talking and start looking from what our Father is doing around us and start joing Him (reaching out to the needy, cloting the naked, visiting the prisoner, telling His story in our lives). God want’s to use people to do these things, not a Government.
for 2008, Vote America, but back it up w/ your personal commitment whoever the President becomes. God is actually for everyone, not just Democrats 😉
Shalom
I learned last spring not to respond to those who want to remain anonymous, but to post their comments anyway. I’m breaking my own self-commandment here for a moment:
I think most people who know me- not all!- will attest to the fact that it is my best attempts at following Jesus that cause me to follow him into all kinds of places. I see Jesus far more clearly in prisons and jails, in 12 step gatherings, and in hospital rooms and homes where people are suffering, than I do where people are gathered saying all the ‘right’ words,praying instead of serving, or reading their Bibles over and over again instead of touching the wounds and heartbeats of others.
Those spiritual disciplines are important, but only as jumping off points for service in the name of Jesus. Thus, I have chosen to change some of my behaviors over the years. (One of them being voting straight Republican most of the time!) God really does love everyone! (What a concept!) Thus, it is incumbent upon me (and actually not hard at all) to love those who disagree with me on virtually anything, even as I do those who agree.
Obama will reveal his clay feet to me just as McCain already has. That’s a given. But he is the best choice I see right now to lead the most people and the country I love every bit as much do the most conservative among us. (I know that because I was once one of them!) I know that’s difficult for some to understand. It was for me once upon a time too.But so be it. There’s nothing I can do about the places Jesus leads me. 🙂
(And, if McCain is elected, there will be no one more dedicated to praying, fasting,and hoping that he stays healthy for four years!)
“(And, if McCain is elected, there will be no one more dedicated to praying, fasting,and hoping that he stays healthy for four years!)”
Subtle snark on Palin here – so you’d be more comfortable with a MAN who has less executive experience (Obama) to run the country than a WOMAN who happens to have garnered the highest approval ratings of any governor and happens to have *accomplished* things during her short tenure?
Maybe it’s time to check your own biases.
Perhaps you are finding it hard to believe a woman can be pretty and competent? Please don’t tell me you would be OK with Hillary – fact is, Palin has more executive experience than Hillary herself and I’m a Hillary fan. Palin worked her way up without the benefit of connections, a fancy education, or a presidential husband. I have the greatest respect for Palin and I admire her.
So it boggles my mind that anyone would feel “safer” with Obama running things than a known quantity like McCain or an accomplished governor like Palin. But then again, I’m one of those angry PUMAs who will be protesting against caucus fraud with my vote – and Obama will NOT be getting my vote. He’s a cheater and a fraud.
Either I am a sexist- a closet misogynist, or..
the the ramifications of having a boggled mind are made evident in your comments.
I’ll let my readers decide.. 🙂
Hillary or Bust:
You may want to read this:
http://www.yestodemocracy.com/yes_to_democracy_no_to_pu/2008/10/reader-comment-no-longer-a-puma.html
It is written by someone you would probably not consider a ‘sister’ anymore, but she reveals that most incredible of human strengths: the ability to change one’s mind..
Hilary or Bust,
another overplayed sexism hand. Women fought their way up tooth and nail to get past discrimination and to rise above it. We have risen. Let us stay here. Don’t let us fall 30 years back by supporting an unqualified woman who does not stand for the values that her fellow women fought so hard for. Having a woman in the White House? What a spectacular dream, and one that I cannot wait to see as reality! But I will be picky, damn picky, about the first woman I choose to represent me. And Sarah Palin is not her. She does not support women in the way that I believe women should support one another: with honesty, and integrity, and knowledge. She is not qualified to be our VP and as a former Hilary supporter you should be ashamed to support her.
I too am confused as to what the charges against barry are, but I can tell you with the utmost certainty that he is married to the most beautiful AND competent woman. One who fought for her own rights and mine and yours and every other woman out there.
I won’t support that work being undone.