Who should you vote for?

I'm going to take a bit of a departure from my typical staunch Libertarian viewpoint here, and write a completely non-partisan post here.

Who should you vote for?

I can't tell you who to vote for. That is a choice you must make for yourself. In making that choice, however, you must, now more than ever, be responsible in that choice. You must learn the issues. You must realize that there are far more candidates than just McCain and Obama. You must research the issues and find the candidate that is best suited to your desires for this country - it's quite likely that it won't be either McCain or Obama.

If you're an American with the true meaning of being American at heart, you likely want to preserve the Constitution, preserve your civil liberties and human rights, and abolish the (almost) Orwellian police state that seven years of Bush Jr. has brought about. Which candidate will do that for you? McCain? Probably not. He has a voting history that has shown increased support for George W. Bush over the years, and is running on platforms that will only continue the reign of terror. Obama? You might initially answer yes, but have you researched Joe Biden, his running mate? Biden has raped (or attempted to) the American public of privacy and civil rights since the mid-1990s. He is only a name away from total fascism. That says a lot about Obama. Can't vote for Obama now? Confused? Not sure who to vote for?

Vote for the candidate that best supports your politics. VoteSmart.org is a good place to start.

Does your candidate have a chance of winning? Who cares? The state I've been living in for over 25 years is known to be wildly Democratic in elections. My state will hand Obama all of its electorates. I will be voting third party. My vote is not wasted. It is cast in protest. With enough protest votes, a message can be sent to the government that the people are not happy with the politics of the two major parties. Additionally, if more people voted with their politics instead of their party lines, a third party candidate would have a great shot at winning. If everyone I had ever heard say, "I won't vote for [popular (technically not a) third party candidate with virtually no news coverage] because he has no chance of winning," just went out and voted for the man, he'd likely be the nominee, and a major political force.

Most Americans forget that this country didn't always have Democrats and Republicans as the two major parties. Both of them were once third parties, likely meeting the same resistance third parties meet today. George Washington, our first, and greatest, president, was a Federalist. This country has also seen the Whigs, Liberty Party, Free Soil Party, American Party, and Populist party as major parties. There is no reason that a third party cannot overtake one of the current major parties.

Vote for the best candidate for the job. Don't vote for the guy you'd like to have a beer with (you'll never have a beer with him). Don't vote for the guy your party promotes (chances are, his politics will destroy yours). Don't vote for the lesser of two evils (Cthulhu has a better chance of being the lesser of two evils this time around).

Vote for the best candidate for the job. Understand the issues. Understand the way the candidates feel about the issues. Understand how a candidate's way of tackling the issues will affect you.

Don't be a moron when voting. That's how we got George W. Bush in the first place.

Okay, so now we have a senile old coot and someone who thinks a fascist is a good running mate. Great choices, folks!

So, Barack Obama has chosen senator Joe Biden as his running mate. He now has absolutely no chance of getting my vote (the only other candidate, at this point, with less chance of getting my vote is McCain). Before any of you start blasting me by saying that Biden is a good VP candidate, make sure you know who you're supporting here.

Biden's track record for privacy, freedom, and national security has been dodgy at best. He has long been an advocate for the RIAA and MPAA (you know, the same people that are prosecuting 12 year old kids and innocent grandmothers for alleged music piracy). He drafted, in 1995, after the Oklahoma City bombing, a bill that essentially became the Patriot Act. In fact, when the original Patriot Act was passed into law, Biden claimed that he had written the exact same document in 1995 - and he had. Finally, Biden is poison for privacy. Phil Zimmerman, the creator of PGP, wrote and released PGP free of charge because of several of the anti-privacy bills that Biden was pushing at the time. Biden has since been an advocate of domestic spying, forcing technology companies to place governmental back doors into their "secure" products, and many attempts to completely ban encrypted data in electronic transactions (how many of you would do any online shopping or banking if SSL was banned, and every transaction you made left all of your personal information (including social security numbers, credit card numbers, PIN codes, etc) open for viewing by anyone who so chose to do it?).

Yes, this is the Joe Biden that Mr. Change himself is nominating as his VP. Bringing the "talents" of someone like Biden into office won't bring about change - unless that change happens to be the removal of the few freedoms we have left.

To recap, on one side, we have a highly charismatic candidate, touting change as his primary platform, with a thinly veiled fascist as a VP candidate. On the other side, we have an aging war veteran who is displaying symptoms of advanced PTSD and early Alzheimer's, who is so disconnected from the average American that he cannot even remember how many houses he owns.

Thank [insert your deity of choice] that there is still the option to write in a vote for Ron Paul. That's what I'm doing this year.

Fuck the Republicans. Fuck the Democrats. Fuck all of the bi-partisan bickering and the rush towards complete NAZI-esque fascism. I still believe in the Constitution. I still believe in the Declaration of Independence. I still believe in the Bill of Rights. Apparently our government no longer does.