40 Reasons not to Not Vote for Obama

I recently read an editorial blog post from a Conservative website, www.townhall.com. Shocked that I had found myself at such a part of the internet, I very nearly clicked out of the site immediately. However, instead I decided to methodically refute every point of the post. This is that breakdown.

One interesting fact which I think is worth noting before reading this, or the town hall, blog post, is that people on either side of the political spectrum who claim that a problem is simple and can be solved easily are often not paying attention to the larger picture. For example, liberal college students who claim that corporations are the biggest problem in America, and if only we could get rid of them we would solve all our countries problems, are very often missing the point. This conservative columnist seems to be positing that all the problems in the USA stem from the actions of one man with relatively little power; Barack Obama.

1. When You're in a sinking boat, should you keep trying to fix it despite massive holes, or switch boats? This is only a negative if I accept the premise that Obamacare is a negative thing.

2. The bailout is something which is problematic, because it didn't solve a problem after it happened. Greece is a country which was in the same fiscal situation as we were at the beginning of the year, so they were unable to borrow money for a stimulus. The money given to them by the EU did not go into fixing infrastructure, and instead went to building Museums. They are literally not playing their employees. Remember Y2k? how everybody thought that the world was going to end? In 1990, a computer programmer realized that banks interest rates WOULD CRASH if somebody didn't fix it, so he set about fixing it. Obviously, we can't know what would happen if the stimulus package (prepared by the federal reserve remember, nothing to do with Obama) didn't happen.

3. It is not fully known what Obamacare will do. However, I don't see why saying that everybody has to have health insurance means that there will be longer waits at hospitals. Treating the uninsured costs immense amounts of money. Why should we continue wasting money on that?

4. Anyone who says they want to Lower Taxes in the modern political climate is lying for political points. We are in a deep recession currently.

5. OK. I will get to an in depth assessment of the deficit in a later rebuttal.

6. Granted. Our credit rating is lower. Though I'd credit that to irresponsible business practices rather than a general problem with Obama's policies.

7. The logic here is inconsistent. Republicans were only able to pass the budgets because they countered every democratic proposal. Don't you remember 2010? When every single political point was gridlocked? Hell, do you remember when the Tea Party idiots blocked the raising of the debt ceiling?
The Australian deputy prime minister said two weeks ago "Lets be blunt: the biggest threat to the worlds largest economy are the cranks and crazies which have taken over the GOP"
A congress which won't work together is like an auto mechanic who bashes the more experienced auto mechanic over the head, while covering himself in oil and singing about what a great auto mechanic he is.

8. Alright, the national debt.
Obama called Bush unpatriotic for the USE of the debt. Bush used the debt to start two poorly planned wars, while national infrastructure crumbled. The national debt is not like a credit card. The national debt is more like the list of interested investors. In the past, the debt went higher in bad times and lower than good times. Today, since we are the global superpower, the debt keeps rising. The debt is like a tabulation of all the interested parties on the globe. The reason that China has so much of our debt is that they're particularly interested in our staying afloat. THAT is why Bush was unpatriotic, not because he raised the level of debt, every president over the last thirty years has done that. What the problem is is that he wielded the mighty tool unwisely.

9. 2/30 of the eco-friendly companies which Obama lent money to went under. Most of them are still going strong. The Tesla Car company is probably going to change the way we look at cars.
Ah, but I see that is not the objection raised. The objection is that Obama lent money to his campaign contributors. I don't see anything wrong with that, in the modern political economy. Sure, I don't like the way that works, but it is modern politics, and Willard won't do anything different. Solyndra was a company which knew that Obama was a person who would be more friendly to green energy, so they made a campaign contribution to him. Additionally, the main reason that Solyndra went out of business is that China was artificially lowering the prices of their solar panels. A truly capitalist company couldn't compete.

10. The US government has a 30% share in GM. GM is currently paying back the US government, with interest, just like the US government will pay back it's debts.

Whew! 1/4 of the way through! There's a lot of murky economic thinking, and regurgitating talking points. I'm guessing the guy's going to start repeating himself

11. Granted. What's the old saying? Hire a thief to catch a thief?

12. Definitely. Not going to try to defend that.

13. I, like many nerds, feel very strongly about this one. However, I do believe that Space is not a place for the government. Sure, it's great for national unity and that sort of thing, but since the Challenger disaster, the US has lost the taste for manned space flight. Space is going to be the domain of the private sector, and there are already companies stepping up to the plate on that matter. I look forward to the retirement community on the moon in 50 years.
Unmanned spaceflight is a much more politically safe maneuver. With the Earth's "Junk Belt" growing every year, it's not safe to send Americans into space, where tiny pieces of paint can kill.

14. And Willard puts out a different plan every couple weeks. Quantity over quality?

15. There's an old story about a turtle on a post. The turtle doesn't know for sure how he got there, but he's damn proud of it. He keeps looking down at his turtle friends and saying "Come on, I flew up here, why can't you?" Similarly, no businessman has a real idea about how he became so successful.

16. Granted. I don't know too much about the BP oil spill, but I do know that BP is being held accountable.

17. ok. cash for clunkers was a universal failure. Granted.

18. What that... uh, Chuck Norris quote fails to illustrate, is that Obama uses force in a more directed manner, using it in a way which targets combatants rather than countries. That Editorial article also states that America is more secure than it was 10 years ago. The Washington post is a conservative paper (owned by a Korean Christian who literally believes that he is the new messiah), so I will take their statistics with a grain of salt. However, there's no denying that Obama brings some respectability to the title of president.

19. The only way that Obama has been divisive is that the Tea Party blocks every democratic proposal, so that people have to bend over backwards to cater to their insane and uninformed needs.

20. This is not a critique.

Yeah, these are definitely getting easier as time goes on.

21. Obama stated that he found acceptance for gay marriage through study of the work of Jesus Christ. The Golden Rule, accept the outcast, and so on. Maybe there are some so called Christians in this country who could learn something from the president.

22. That is not what the objection is over. Either the author of that blog post misunderstood the controversy, or is intentionally misleading. I'm leaning toward the first option however. What the Obama administration mandated is that all hospital workers be COVERED by the insurance for contraceptives. This is not mandating that these Catholic Hospitals perform abortions or anything, just that the people who work there have to be covered under their insurance policies. I understand why they don't want to pay slightly more money and are crying about religion, but if people don't believe in contraceptives, they don't have to use them. Not everyone employed by Catholic institutions are Catholic.

23. I'm honestly having problems understanding what the objection here is. He's just talking demographics, that's how the elections work.

24. That statement is 100% accurate

25. That was a case of a junior officer whose daddy was on the force fucking up and thinking he was in a spy movie. The kid bought his gear from RADIOSHACK and the batteries died. Frankly, nothing to do with Obama.

26. This is not true. Illegal aliens can't do lots of things, and it's incredibly expensive to try to round up and deport them.

27. I'll Agree, this may be a mistake. However, I also think that somebody who's the son or daughter of someone who decided to sneak into the country should have at least the opportunity of the American dream, rather than pushing them into the arms of the Drug Cartels.

28. OK. Why do we need a giant, pointless fence again?

29. Last time I checked it was doing well. Lowest employment in months, check.

30. Studies have shown that the pipeline would only reduce prices at the gas pump by about 10 cents. Additionally, in the future oil will be an important strategic resource. Do you really want to waste it now?

It seems like this guy had 10 or 12 reasonable points, and just wanted to expand them into 40 points to get more blog hits.

31. I'm sorry, how is helping people have food a bad thing? Again, the president doesn't have a "jobs" button under his desk.

32. For every one homeless family in America, there are eight empty houses. The banks literally can't sell the houses quickly enough. I don't know what the solution to this problem is, but it's certainly not complaining about house prices. That bubble has burst.

33. That's just a number. I have literally no idea what it represents.

34. We live in a global economy. If Spain falls, Europe falls, and America falls. We're the tipping point of the world economy currently. we can't just abandon the countries which depend on us because we don't feel like it.

35. Johnson Control inc is a company that works on sustainable housing and automotives, while at the same time working with local communities to teach high schoolers. It's a great company, and needed help growing. I'm for spending that money, because it is an investment which I'm sure will be paid off.

36. There is a department policy not to negotiate with terrorists, since it only encourages them. There is no such policy concerning economic terrorists, and maybe there should be. However, the investment banks were holding the economy hostage, and there was very little we could do on the matter.

37. That is what Obama promised. However, we've moved into a new stage of the economy, where more people are permanently unemployed. A large amount of the labor pool has been moved overseas, and that which remains is often extremely mechanized. Again, there is no "jobs" button which Obama is just choosing not to press. We're in the Midst of an economic storm.

38. "Ah, I bet nobody will read this many reasons not to vote for Barack Obama. The people who want to vote for Romney will cheer and leave around #20, and the people who are voting for Obama are just going to dismiss this as bullshit. I can probably complain about jobs again, as if the president has some ability to control jobs."

39. The only ability that the president has concerning the economy is filling investors with faith that he won't run the country into the ground before their investments can pay off.

40. A recent poll said that most Americans believe we ARE better off than we were four years ago.

I think it's quite interesting the sort of things which this blogger did not put in his list. Obama didn't close down Guantanimo. Nobody knows how many casualties there are in the drone war. However, my opponent merely mentioned a few details which the president does not actually have control over, and acted like he had a plausible argument. I would call him a small minded bigot but that is an insult to small minded bigots.
In conclusion, I believe that in the future the Democratic party will be the truly conservative party, perhaps the new reformed Whigs, and the GOP will be a minor inconvenience next to it. Another party will rise up and be great, and I'll probably still vote democrat. The age of the Conservative Christian is drawing to an end.40 Reasons Not to Not Vote for Obama.

The Social Science Marketplace: Today, liberal artscolleges are producing a high v...

The Social Science Marketplace: Today, liberal artscolleges are producing a high v...: Today, liberal arts colleges are producing a high volume of people who cannot find a job in the field which they specialized in. For many a...

Today, liberal arts colleges are producing a high volume of people who cannot find a job in the field which they specialized in. For many art majors, this is not a major impediment, for their craft can be practiced outside of a strictly academic setting. However, for thousands of students, skills were learned which were extremely valid in academia, but wither like a tree branch without light when in the private sector. The goal of this blog is to bring the social scientists together, to practice and even hone their intellectual skills outside of the academic setting. The scope of this website is intentionally broad, so that linguists can post next to modern political theorists.