Why I (still) won’t vote Republican, and why you shouldn’t either.

Actually, the reasons are many and varied, but I’ll stick with the big ones for right now.

1. This current economic mess was caused by Republican deregulation. This is a Bush recession and has been since it started in the fall of 2008. Furthermore, had McCain been elected that year, unemployment extensions passed over the last couple years would not have been offered, or perhaps only the first would have been. I would be homeless right now without those extensions.
2. ‘Fiscal responsibility’. The Republicans don’t have it. Of the national debt since 1977, Republican spending has added twice what Democratic spending has: $7.5 trillion under Reagan and the Bushes (and $4.3 trillion of that was Bush II all by himself) versus $3.7 trillion under Carter, Clinton and Obama. Yes, that’s right. Of the debt and spending that the Republicans are whining about, their own man is personally responsible for more of it than the last three Democratic presidents combined.
3. The party has mistaken their own religious beliefs for Constitutional government, as worst typified by their near-absolute opposition to equal marriage rights. Are there a few Republicans who support equal marriage rights? Yes. Are they doing anything within their party about that? Absolutely not, as far as I’ve seen. And absent a Constitutional objection to gay marriage, they continue to push their religious objections.
   Wanna know how many churches have been forced to perform a same-sex marriage in violation of their internal canon law? None. Zero. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Not a damned one. Which is as it should be. The churches get to make their own rules, so long as they don’t contravene certain basic health and safety rules. Even the health rules are weakened—Christian Scientists who refuse medical treatment, for example (although refusing medical care for their minor children is another matter entirely).
   The tradeoff in a civil society for non-interference by the government is that they do not get to impose their canon law on non-believers. You wouldn’t impose Jewish marriage rules on a couple Baptists getting married. Why would you impose Christian rules on Atheists?
   Or, to put it more bluntly, why would I consider voting for a party that considers legalized discrimination against me to be a good and desirable thing? For that matter, why would anyone support a group that favors institutionalized discrimination of any sort?
4. The Tea Party. How is it that a few common sense and mild reforms of the health insurance system is the end of the Republic, but these people were nowhere to be seen when Dubya’s administration was authorizing torture and suspending habeas corpus.
   As far as I’m concerned, the whole teabagger movement is just a figleaf for an inner cadre of leaders who simply can’t accept that a black man is president. Sure, they claim that the incredibly racist signs that keep showing up at their rallies are “not our people”… but funny how they keep turning up, and how we never see those sign-carriers ejected from the rallies or from the organization.
   With regard to “Obamacare”: I’m all for it, and it needs to go farther. I haven’t had medical coverage in ten years. I thought this was a first-world civilized nation. Silly me.
5. The GOP’s lapdog attitude toward business is appalling, and their solution to the problems we have is to apply more of what caused the problem in the first place: deregulation. There is nothing wrong with some basic, common-sense regulation of business. We’ve seen what happens when they don’t have oversight—you get Enron, you get the housing market crash, you get the near-depression we have right now.

I want to spend some more time on that financial thing.

The fact, supported by all the historical data, is that Democrats are better for the economy than Republicans are, and always have been.

Under Obama, we’ve already erased the losses on the Dow incurred under Dubya—the Dow stood at 10,581.90 the day Dubya took office and at 7949.09 on the morning of Inauguration Day, 2009 — a loss of 25%. As of 10/27/2010, it’s at 11126.28, gaining back everything Dubya lost and even topping the mark at the end of Clinton’s term. The other markets are all close to their pre-Bush levels —and all well above Bush’s closing levels.

Only three presidents have posted market losses between their first day of office and their last — and all three are Republicans: Hoover (lost 83.54%), Nixon (lost 16.10%) and Bush II (lost 24.88%). Nixon and Bush II extended their losses across all four major markets: the Dow, the NYSE, the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ.

The president under whom all four markets posted their largest gains? Bill Clinton. All four markets.

President under whom they performed worst? For the Dow, Herbert Hoover. For the NYSE, Richard Nixon. For both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq? Dubya.

The answer is clear. If you vote Republican, you are voting to worsen our economy.

Things That Rock A Lot, #1

1. Professer Julius Sumner Miller.
   And I say that’s wonderful. Why is there no DVD collection of his Demonstrations in Physics? For that matter, why isn’t there a complete DVD release of “Beakman’s World”?
   
2. President Obama, who’s done more good for this country in just two and a half weeks of his presidency than Dummy did in eight stolen years of his–but mostly for being able to say those magic words, “I screwed up.” Personal responsibility in a president! Who’d'a thunk it?
   

Looking for words when they won’t come.

I fancy myself a writer. I still harbor hopes of being professionally published some day. I’d like to think that my amateur output at least doesn’t suck. I am my own worst critic.

So I hate not having words.

I still haven’t any for my feelings on the election. My thoughts are still unsettled, in a good way.

I haven’t stopped smiling. When I see a picture of Rev. Jesse Jackson crying in Grant Park, or Condoleeza Rice choking up a bit offering her congratulations, I tear up. When I contemplate that Inauguration Day is the day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I tear up. When I catch a fragment of will.i.am’s Yes We Can, I tear up. Tears of joy, of relief, even of disbelief. Even a little of sorrow, thinking of my grandfather, who would’ve been so proud to see what America did on Tuesday, or President-elect Obama’s grandmother, who died Sunday night just short of his victory.

I feel like I’m waking up from a long nightmare.

Everything feels different. I noticed, walking to Kroger’s yesterday morning to get a copy of the paper, everyone was smiling. Broadly. Genuinely.

Kroger’s had sold out of newspapers shortly after opening. There’s a B&N a few blocks north. They were out, too. By this time, my hustling was joined by a young black professional, also searching for a copy of the paper before going in to work.

The B&N suggested UDF, but there was a 7-11 across the street, which I suggested we try first. They had three left. He grabbed two, I grabbed the last Dispatch and a USA Today. We were both smiling like lunatics.

It’s almost like something inside the country’s psyche snapped Tuesday night, that we remembered that it is okay to hope, it is okay to dream that the future might be better, that we are all in this together, that we are a better country than what we’ve been the last eight years, that we all have to come together to fix all the things that are broken.

It’s not a liberal thing, a conservative thing, a red, a blue, a purple thing. It’s an American thing.

I applauded John McCain’s gracious concession, although I admit to wondering where that John McCain had been the last three months. That John McCain, perhaps with Ohio’s Betty Montgomery as his #2, could’ve gotten even true-blue Democrat me to give him a second look.

And Obama’s victory speech was… right. He’s right. This isn’t the change, this is just the opportunity to bring the change about. We have a lot of things on our plate: a war in Iraq to end and one in Afghanistan to win, an economy in recession, a global climate in peril.

Can meet those challenges?

Yes. We. Can.

Into the home stretch… FINALLY!

I’m just back from the middle of a fairly monumental throng of fellow Buckeyes, gathered to see Barack Obama on the Ohio Statehouse lawn. Candidate-wise, I’ve been a very fortunate Democrat. Way back when, in 1976, my mom pulled me out of school to see Jimmy Carter on a last minute swing through Ohio, the Friday before the election. We were there early enough that literally the only thing between he and me was the podium, and I was fortunate to get to shake his hand (actually, I was damn near thrust in his face — I was only 12 and still relatively easy to lift).

In 1980, out of a sense of curiosity, I went to see Ronald Reagan at the Akron-Canton airport. Since I happened to be on the bus with the president of the College Republicans, I got a ticket into the VIP section, and in I went, carrying my camera and proudly wearing my John Anderson button.

I saw both Reagan and Mondale in ’84, getting to shake the latter’s hand. That was my first Presidential election as a voter.

Never got to see Dukakis in ’88, but I did see Jesse Jackson at a packed hall. Arguably the party’s greatest orator since FDR. I don’t know that he would have made a good President. I don’t think he would have been a bad one, like Grant or Buchanan or Nixon. But oh, how that man could talk.

In 1992, I teamed up with the BGSU College Democrats to get into a Bush rally shortly before the election. Carefully secreted in my then-fiancée’s purse? Broccoli, to wave at the president who’d famously declared his distaste for the vegetable (I like mine steamed, with cheddar sauce, thanks). :D

Not long after that, Bill Clinton made a late stop in Toledo the Sunday night/Monday morning before the election. I got his autograph on a corner of a campaign sign, a proud possession still.

Dry spell for 12 years.

2004, I saw John Kerry (with Bruce Springsteen opening for him) the Thursday before OVFF — my ex (the above then-fiancée) had just arrived in town for the convention—as in just arrived that minute—and we darted the three blocks north to see.

This year is the first time I’ve seen a candidate during the primaries, because it was all pretty much over but the shouting by the time the campaigns got to Ohio before. This is the first time I can recall that we were really in the thick of things. I saw Obama at Ohio State on 2/29, just before the Ohio primary (and have the video and pictures to prove it!).

I talked to my mom as I was leaving the rally. She’s been volunteering for Obama up in the Toledo area (yeah, yeah, home of Joe the Back Taxes Owing Unlicensed Plumber), and she says she hasn’t been this energized about a campaign since her first election: JFK. Seeing as how she went Dubya the last two times, I’m delighted. :)

She’s very pro-life. And she said the hard decision was this: Obama supports abortion rights, McCain supports the war, and she finds neither acceptable. In the long run, she finds the war more devastating, because abortion can be largely done away with by education: if you teach responsibility, it becomes less necessary.

Let me just note here, tangentially, that no one is for abortion. The rhetoric from the Other Side makes it sound like we want abortions to be mandatory. All we want is for them to be available if a woman is in a position to need one. We also want responsible sex education and an easier adoption system so that even though available, there are other options, and good pre- and post-natal care and assistance for families in need for those who choose to raise their child themselves.

I do not believe that one can be against abortion and also be against spending for AFDC, Head Start, health care, etc. It’s an immediate contradiction in terms if life is important before birth and not after. While I disagree strongly with Alan Keyes on many things, he is to my knowledge the only conservative politician who understands this and supports programs that care for the child after he or she is born and I applaud him for that.

If you’ve ever been faced with that choice, I understand your pain. When I was married and my wife was pregnant, we talked about it, because it was a difficult pregnancy. We chose not to, to ride out the difficulty of the pregnancy itself and the fact that I did not yet have a permanent job—which made our little girl’s stillbirth all the harder to accept.

I guarantee you, whichever way you decide, it will be the hardest conversation you ever have, even if it’s just wrestling with yourself. It’s not a light decision. No one goes, “Whups, I’m pregnant, I better go have an abortion,” and goes skipping lightly to the clinic without a second thought. It tore me up, and I wasn’t even the one who was pregnant.

Anyway, enough tangent, other than to note that the first time the abortion rate in this country went down after Roe v Wade was during Bill Clinton’s presidency—financial security, job security and a strong economy also make abortions less necessary.

I suppose if I were to prognosticate, it would be a pretty stout limb I was going out on to say that Obama will be elected on Tuesday. A landslide would be nice, but a clean, theft-proof win will do as well. I think Ohio may well go blue this time around, and I think Virginia will hold. Not sure about Florida or North Carolina. I think it’s just amazing that North Carolina and Virginia are in play, and that even Indiana, North Dakota and Montana are wobbly!

To go out on a limb just a bit, then — let’s say NC and FL go Obama and the final EV count is 353-185. Dems get 59 seats in the Senate, counting Sanders and Lieberman, allthough I shouldn’t be suprised if they jettison Lieberman. They’ll only keep him if he makes 60, and even then I don’t think the caucus can really count on him. What they really need–and what they won’t get unless minority turnout is through the roof–is 59+Sanders. I ain’t holding my breath.

In regards to Obama-Biden

Color me satisfied. Biden adds foreign policy experience to balance the newness factor, gravitas to balance the ‘rock star’ factor, and a nice healthy streak of moderate-left attack dog politics to balance the ‘nice guy’ factor.

Clinton supporters: yes, you’re disappointed. Now get over yourselves. McCain is NOT preferable to Obama, and you know it.

Edit: In the interests of full disclosure, my first pick in the Veepstakes was Bill Richardson.

It also occurs to me that the choice of Biden says something about the depth at which Obama looks — he’s not letting Biden’s infamous ‘clean’ remark from early in the campaign be an obstacle (which the press made way too much of anyway).

I need this on a bumpersticker.

All over but the shouting… FINALLY.

Looks like Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic nomination today, finally. Hillary, who continues test my patience, still hasn’t conceded even though it’s mathematically out of reach. The magic number is 2,118, Hillary. He got it. You don’t. Time to step aside gracefully, like you should’ve done two months ago instead of wasting the party’s time and money on a pointless two month ego-gratification tour.

I’ve been celebrating by listening to the Deadheads for Obama concert. Obama re-united Lesh and Weir for the first time in four years – as if I needed any more reasons to vote for him!

Easy way to get my vote

Pursue war profiteering charges against the oil companies. It’s approaching USD3.50/gallon (or for my metrically inclined friends, it’s getting damn close to a buck a liter). Because they’re making record profits in the history of business and not just relative to last year. This means, obviously, that the run-up in prices is *not* due entirely to the run-up in the cost per barrel.

Survived the blizzard okay. Was snowed in Saturday and Sunday both, but can travel freely now. Not that I can go far on gas prices like that.

The good news that I take out of last Tuesday’s primaries is that if Hillary gets the nomination, she’s one hell of a fighter. I still prefer Obama, but I’ll take either one. If he can win Pennsylvania, though, that should pretty much moot things.

Weird year.

Oh, yeah!

6:30 in the morning. It’s cold and wet and dreary and raining and Tuesday.

And before the doors even opened, there was a line halfway down the hall at the polling place.

That is how it’s supposed to work!

Oh, and I could vote paper ballot — I said I didn’t like the electronic machines and would prefer to vote paper, and they took me right over to vote on a paper ballot.

Yeah!!

Let me just add: fuck you, Ken Blackwell. I love the newer, bluer Ohio.

‘Nother new vid at YouTube

Showing that Obama knows exactly how to connect with a Buckeye crowd. :)