Casting Votes

Well, My wife and I submitted our absentee ballots for President the other day.  We didn’t get here soon enough to register. I think this is going to be a very important and historically significant election.  I think this could be a very close race and the amount of voter turn-out will really be an important factor.  Without getting into the controversial aspects of my reasoning, which I know has been considered by both candidates, and seemingly ignored by the media,  I will say that this election will be made by new voters.

Anyway, My wife and I filled out our ballots separately and although I am pretty sure I know which way she voted, she could have voted for Nader and the Green Party for all the proof I have.  We tend to think in similar ways politically, and being a military family has a way of galvanizing certain positions.  I know a lot of people voting for Obama just because he will end the war in Iraq which is wholly untrue, but you can’t convince people otherwise.  Again, without getting into it – you can’t just end a war.  It takes time to back out and leave safely, to make sure all the lives lost and work done doesn’t go to waste, and to leave something stable in place when you do.  Besides, this nation doesn’t want another Vietnam on its hands, even though OIF is for all intents and purposes already Vietnam v2.0.

I will say that my ballot went for the man I thought had the best chance to put us on the right course, McCain.  I don’t agree with everything he says, if I did I would be stupid.  However, I do believe that he truly wants to do what is best for the country and not just himself.  His track record proves he will not be a puppet to the party (Pelosi, Biden, DNC), and that he will go against his own party if he feels its the right thing to do.  Not to mention, he has served his country, been a POW, and knows what it takes to sacrifice for the higher ideal.  He may say Iraq needs to go on longer than Obama, but at least he knows what it takes to commit lives to the cause, and not just play a numbers games with those lives and money for the benefit of his career and partisan politics. 

Obama just reminds me of a used car salesman – saying whatever is needed at the moment to get the vote.  He has no real plan to accomplish any of it.  He might as well be running for class president and using “longer recess, better cafeteria, and no homework” for his platform for all the planning he has shown to actually getting the problems solved.  I don’t think McCain will be another 4 years of Bush, mainly because McCain has been a wild card for the party and a thorn in its side for so long that he can’t change the way he does business.  He is a Republican, so by default he will often see the Republican way, but the way he goes about things and his ability to go against the GOP, tell me he will be doing what he thinks is best – regardless of partisan politics.

Anyway, enough waxing political.  I made my vote, cast my lot in with McCain for better or worse.  Now everyone else needs to get out a vote as well.  Its the only way you can make a difference.  The video below expresses a lot of the ways I feel too. 

Lastly on a side note, the Federal Ballot I used had spelled Vice President as Vise President.  I couldn’t find a copy of it to show here as its already been corrected in the PDF, etc, but I thought it was a statement on the state of education in this country.