Observations of our Presidential Race.

Sorry, I can't support these Republicans. They ask too much of us.

I haven't been openly supporting a presidential candidate lately. Largely, I've been dealing with the opinions of other people. People are entitled to their opinions, so I don't argue. On forums and posting boards, I will, from time to time, express my opinion. First, let me point out that we as a nation are in dire financial straights. Our deficit is higher than it has ever been. Unemployment currently rivals the Great Depression. This is correct. It is also correct that our economy is strengthening. You may ask how our economy is strengthening when our unemployment keeps going up. It's a good question, and one I'll explain in a little while. Right now, we're on the state of things.

Let's take a close look at Barack Obama. This crisis did not begin with him. He inherited it. When he took office, he began to work on instituting policies that he promised the people. He found that it would be dangerous to immediately pull our troops out of the Middle East, so he changed his long term goals, and eventually, he managed it. Health Care. It took him awhile to write that bill. It required a legal team and Congressional oversight and when he was done, he had a bill that could have restored our people's health, but it was not to be. By the time that bill had been written, another election had taken place, and Republican's now controlled the House and Senate. The bill got bogged down with provisions that rendered it ineffective. The new changes even began to attack our elderly.

Another piece I want to examine is the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act). Obama has taken a great deal of criticism for this bill. Obama did not write this law. This Act has existed for quite some time now. What happens is that each year the Department of Defense has to turn its records in at the end of the day just like you and me. The powers that be (Congress) review it and then determine what new privileges (if any), any changes in the budget, and any changes in authority that the DOD receives. The NDAA for the fiscal year of 2012 included a provision requiring military to take custody of terrorists, citizens were not exempt, and it broadened the definition of terrorist. In addition, it suspended the Writ of Habeus Corpus. That means that for the fiscal year of 2012, our Constitutional rights cannot be enforced. This also happened with the Patriot Act. This NDAA was penned by John McCain. Obama did not veto it, because it passed with a nearly unanimous vote (a mere 6 against in the Senate). This is referred to as veto-proof. It couldn't be vetoed.

Obama had absolutely nothing to do with this travesty and yet he is universally blamed. Thankfully, it isn't permanent. With the next fiscal year, all terms will have to be redefined before passing through Congress. People call Obama evil. They photoshop pictures of him and spread them across the internet. Invert images of him honoring the Star-Spangled Banner and pass it off as a real photo of him not knowing where his hand is supposed to go. Yet, Obama hasn't made jobs. Or has he? Obama managed to reduce our deficit by 27 percent by 2011 and using that success tried to pass a succession of three bills that would have spent found money, or at least half of it, a tremendous amount in any case, on making new jobs. All three were voted down by the Republican majority.

We are going to take a minute to look back at the Great Depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt took office after the beleaguered Calvin Coolidge presided over the what is now the second greatest economic collapse in the history of our nation. For two and a half terms, Roosevelt attempted to revitalize our economy, to no avail. His critics regarded him as a failure, and there was even an assassination attempt, yet the majority kept voting him in office. It took our entry into the Second World War to bring the Great Depression to a halt. What did it do? It created jobs.

Fast forward to now. Those who were in business for themselves before September 11 felt the the tug of recession. That was a time when Republicans insisted that Reaganomics was responsible for the time of prosperity felt under Clinton, and that he destroyed the economy for Bush. We now know that that isn't true and that Reaganomics not only was a failure, it was designed as an attack on the poor. Now we get to that interesting question. You see, our economy is improving. The War On Terror maintained the boost we needed to survive the recent failure of our stock market. So why don't we feel the improvement? Why are there no jobs? Well, there are jobs. They're in China. They're in Indonesia. They're in Calcutta.

Harley Davidson was one of the manufacturers who refused the bailout stimulus. They had been hit hard. They fired two-thirds of their employees. Their business is now thriving again. They are producing quality and goods...without those employees. They never hired them back. That's only one example. The fact is, all corporations have been doing it. Across the country, millions of employees have been fired to improve corporate bottom lines. None of them have been hired back. GM laid off a tremendous amount of workers, but gave them an option. Any GM employee that wanted to keep his job could move to China and work for the same pay as the Chinese.

Mitt Romney believes that this is the right of the corporation. Ordinarily I would agree, except these corporations all pay these politicians. They lobby for laws that favor them and to hell with the rest of us, and they deal in cutbacks and bribes. This being the case, I don't think they should have the right to increase their bottom line by raising unemployment. I do not feel that it is the right of corporation to improve their bottom line at the cost of destroying the nation.

Now, here is a look at Willard Mitt Romney. He says he can bring back the jobs. Anyone who believes him deserves what he gets. Mitt Romney is one of the corporate villains who makes his money by firing people. In fact, that's his job. Corporations hire him to fire employees and outsource jobs. Mitt Romney's product is unemployment.

As emphasis to this, what does Mitt Romney plan to do when he gets into office? “Planned Parenthood; we're going to get rid of it.” Let me explain the function of Planned Parenthood: these offices are not abortion clinics. They are not maternity wards. They are health professionals that help a parent weigh the pros and cons of childbirth based upon the health of the patient. This is for mothers who plan on getting pregnant and want to learn if they are going to be healthy enough to care for a child. This for mothers who are already pregnant and are concerned for the welfare and condition of a child in the womb. This is an organization that provides cancer care, bone therapy and numerous other crucial health services that are not made available to women elsewhere. In the rare cases in which Planned Parenthood may recommend abortion, the issues are health related, abortion itself being a dangerous procedure and therefore a last resort. This means that when they recommend abortion, the mother is in imminent danger of death, or that the child suffers a severe deformity that upon birth will make it's quality of life negligible. The purpose of Planned Parenthood is to help a woman plan to be a parent and to assure her health.

There has also been an issue of contraceptives. Birth control is actually what this medication is least used for and is a life saving medicine, but if you believe the GOP line, it's only a tool of sexual promiscuity. Now in the war on women, consider this, an abusive man who is upset that he has lost access to his children and his abused wife, and sees the Violence Against Women Act as an obstacle to beating his wife, asked Romney whether or not he would continue to support it only to learn that Romney had no knowledge of the 1994 Act. Mitt eventually said that he would err on the side of protecting the child (I breath a sigh of relief for this much). I have listened to the statement and can easily conclude that Romney, indeed, has no education with relation to VAWA. That will be a concern to people on both sides of this issue. Not only does this mean there will be no relief for the abused mothers and falsely accused fathers who suffer injustice at the hands of a frivolous and often vindictive court system, but they will see a whittling away of the few rights and freedoms they have left under this president, who has launched his campaign in direct assault of the freedoms of women in this country.

These aren't the only freedoms in danger. In California, Proposition 8 passed allowing gay marriage. The Mormon Church launched a campaign to have Prop. 8 overturned and succeeded with a vote of 7,000,000. The California Supreme Court determined that the overturning of Prop. 8 was unconstitutional according to California State law. Why? Because there is a legal provision (many states have this provision) that once a law is added to the California State constitution, it cannot be removed. Prop. 8 was a state constitutional amendment. Mitt Romney was infuriated, and immediately said that he would make judges answer for defying the will 7,000,000 people (He called it an overwhelming majority when in fact it was just a 2% majority).

There is a point to make here: gay marriage only affects gays. It will not promote paedophilia (paedophilia has plenty of followers with or without gay marriage). This nonsense comes from the fact that Christians believe homosexuality to be deviant, so the weak-willed argument is that all deviance is the same. It's the same as the belief as, they don't care if you worship Isis, Diana, Artemis, Shiva, Ganesha, Ariadne, Kaun Yin, Allah, or whatever, if you don't worship THEIR god, you worship evil. Now, since it can be argued that marriage is a religious institution, I will argue that marriage has no place in our laws as it violates the First Amendment and I will further argue that since there is an existing law that grants marriage, gays should be granted the right to a union with the same benefits, which is, in the end, what they want. Mitt Romney has fought long and hard against this. He has made it obvious that he feels the majority should have the right to determine the privileges of the minority.

In fact, he said it: “Today, unelected judges cast aside the will of the people of California who voted to protect traditional marriage. This decision does not end this fight, and I expect it to go to the Supreme Court. That prospect underscores the vital importance of this election and the movement to preserve our values. I believe marriage is between a man and a woman and, as president, I will protect traditional marriage and appoint judges who interpret the Constitution as it is written and not according to their own politics and prejudices.” For one thing, the Constitution does not say that the vote of the people is absolute. Let me get this straight, if the majority of the people voted to allow people to commit random murders, it would be okay because that is the will of the people? Is it okay to reinstate slavery then if the majority vote for it (African-Americans; take note.)?

Women, gays, and all non-whites, take careful note of who you vote for.

Rick Santorum doesn't believe in the Separation of Church and State. The fact that Kennedy would not force his Catholic beliefs on the Baptist church made him want to throw up. It was his overstep of authority as governor of Texas that resulted in the death of Terry Schaivo, and he believes that people living in poverty should not have access to life saving medications because their corporate owners have a right to set the price. He also wants to ban porn. Sounds good to me, but what about Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press and all that good stuff? The banning of porn would reduce violence. Would it? I'm pretty sure murderers and rapists will be just as numerous without it as with, if not moreso. From Wikipedia.com: “Research concerning the effects of pornography is inconclusive on the issue of crime.”

Of Rick Santorum, I try not to think much. His family values are great...for a church. He needs to run for Pope, not President.

Newt Gingrich, ah Newt. It's strange that nobody remembers what this man supported when he was Speaker of the House in the 90's. He vowed authoritarian rule if elected president. He swore to fire all liberals from government and to arrest and imprison any judge that ruled against him. He has promised to make full use of powers allowing him to detain and torture U. S. citizens without a trial.

Ron Paul is a man I don't always agree with. He has had a racist past, but I would never hold that against him. Nobody is perfect after all. His policies are radical. Some of them may be good for this country. Some will probably not be so good. I am will continue to be an opponent of public education, feeling that it is no education at all. Ron Paul talks about privatizing education, which I believe would be a huge step to restoring this country to greatness. That having been said, it is unlikely he would be very successful at instituting his policies, a fact which would make him a weak president. Most importantly, he offers no viable alternatives. He thinks because we didn't have certain laws before, we don't need them now. He happens to be talking about the laws that granted women the right to vote, gave them the right to own property (in the 1970s), outlawed rape (in the 1980s), domestic violence (in 1994). He is joining the war on women, and advocates the removal of VAWA. It hurts the rights of men, and that's enough. Who cares about preserving the rights of women?

So, who will stand up for women's rights and gay rights? None of the republican candidates. In fact, Romney and Santorum have both vowed to punish the judges who have supported gay rights against “the will of the people.” Both have sworn to force their religious beliefs upon the nation.

So, I support Obama. I am here in support of President Barack Obama for re-election. He has protected our women's rights, our gun rights, and our rights to healthcare. All of the other candidates, actively and even proudly vow to remove these rights. I am appalled. The religious right calls us terrorists for believing in freedom. They call us socialists for trying to help other people. You God fearing people out there! If there were men out their dying in the streets, what would Jesus do? He'd help them, and the Republican delegates have already called that socialist healthcare at the expense of the taxpayer. Are you Christian or a taxpayer or both? Christians have to be charitable to the poor and unfortunate. Why shouldn't your tax money be used for that? It is exactly what Christ asked of you, and now you're stiffing him on the bill. Those of you who say, “MY tax dollars aren't going to any of those bums,”--and don't say you haven't said it; I hear several such things each day--do you really believe that Jesus is pleased with this? Especially after he commanded you to give to the poor in Matthew 19: 16-31?

The point is, who really has our best interests at heart? Is it Mitt, who is actively talking about returning healthcare to its former inglory (18th worst in the world according to the World Health Organization), and even bringing it lower by eliminating healthcare for women? Is it Rick Santorum, who has made it plain that he will force his beliefs on all of us if elected President? Is it Newt Gingrich, who plans on bringing the swastika back into fashion (it is, in fact, his dearest ambition. Some people want to be cowboys when they grow up, others want to be astronauts, and still others want to be hated dictators.)? Is it Ron Paul, who has his superhero tights on and plans on overhauling our entire legal system from the days of George Washington? Or is it Barack Obama, who's only crime is fighting a losing battle without our support and not giving up?

I support a man who believes in helping the poor, and has worked his hardest to do so. I support a man who has not forced any of his beliefs down my throat. I support a man who has the entire world set against him and faces a fight that a man ten times stronger than him is not likely to win, but he faces it anyway, with courage and hope. He hasn't failed. He just hasn't met your expectations. That's Barack Obama. He has fought to protect our rights in Congress. If you want to know who is taking our rights, look no farther than Congress, and if you want to know who else will take your rights, look no farther than Mitt Romney, or Rick Santorum, who champion everything Congress has stood for. No jobs! No healthcare! An end to womens rights! That's what they're about.