Thursday, October 16, 2008

The debate

I watched the debate last night. I am still an undecided voter so I was watching this debate rather closely.

Healthcare is a big deal to me. Obama seemed to have more plans in mind than McCain did to solve the problem. I didn't really follow what Obama meant when he was talking about how he was going to help people who are NOT covered by their employer and have to pay for their own coverage. I disagree with McCain's want to tax employer healthcare. That'd only make things worse in my opinion.

Education was ok. No big deciding factor for me. I did however like when Obama finished his speech about education, he said that it is also up to parents. He said something like: Parents have to put away the video games and instill good educational values to their kids. Very true and that alone would solve so many of the problems.

Abortion. I am pro-life and like that McCain is. At least Obama said he would consider banning partial birth abortion as long at it had exceptions like danger to the health of the mother. I agree more with McCain on this issue though.

Regarding Joe The Plumber, I know they are talking about the small businessman and it was interesting but it doesn't really affect me too much. I'm not a small businessman and I don't make over 250,000 so I would not be taxed by Obama's plan. I was interested that they spent so much time on him. McCain kept asking why Obama would raise any taxes at all in this economic crisis that we are in. But Obama would only raise it for the top 5% of the country which isn't too bad. He'd then use the money to "spread the wealth". BUT on the other hand, these people have worked hard to earn this money. Why should they be punished with higher taxes for being successful? I look at all these people milking the welfare system because they don't want to do any work and feel bad that it's the small businessman that has to pick up the slack. It is similar to the housing/mortgage crisis. Why should I have to pick up the pieces for other people who bought a house when they couldn't afford it? So I don't know.... there are pluses and minuses. I guess overall I should think about what would be best for me. And for this, I want to hear more about the Joe Sixpacks (middle class) rather than Joe The Plumbers (small businessman making more than 250,000). I hope I'm not totally missing the point and seeing all of this completely wrong. I have a tendency to do that sometimes.

Great line: "I'm not George Bush. If you wanted to run against George Bush you should have run four years ago" -McCain. However, how much does he differ? How much would he really change within his party? Would he continue with Bush's foreign policies or change a lot about it? They touched on free trade and talked about foreign oil but I wish they would have talked about their thoughts on the war a little more and the troops overseas. I would rather they talked about that than their blabbing on about negative campaigning.

So who am I going to vote for? I don't know yet. My vote won't really count too much anyway, this is an Obama state. I'm really interested on voting for the California propositions. Especially 2 and 8.

6 Comments:

At 10:26 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

You made some pretty good observations. It's hard to know who to vote for. New York is an Obama state too.

 
At 4:38 PM, Blogger Drew said...

Just my two cents (and I'm voting for Obama so take that for what it's worth):

Abortion is such a divisive issue, no one is ever going to agree on anything. That's why Obama's answer makes more sense: instead of endlessly arguing over abortion and getting nowhere, we should try to lessen the need for abortions. Make it so people don't need to get them because they're not having unwanted babies in the first place.

As for taxes, what Obama wants to do is repeal a couple of the tax cuts that Bush (and Congress) has implemented, bringing taxes for those upper income people back to what they were in the 90s. Most everyone else would pay less taxes.

I wonder if some wacko will come on here now and write a big angry comment, like with the smoking posts.

 
At 5:18 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Its a good sum up. I agree with your mom on that.

I am not going to write my thoughts here because I just did on my blog under comments.

But yah, voting Obama. I hope that you can come to a conclusion on who to vote for.

 
At 4:07 PM, Blogger The Hilmeister said...

Yep, a lot of good points. I generally don't agree 100% with any one candidate, but this election seems even more shades-of-grey than usual (to me, anyway - NOT to a lot of people I know). They both have quite a few strengths and weaknesses. I'm trying to see it as objectively and unemotionally as possible, and that can be challenging when so many people are fired up about it wherever you go.

 
At 8:05 PM, Blogger Ray said...

While I certainly listen to the specific proposals, I also keep in mind that it's Congress that really decides what gets done and what doesn't ...

In my mind, one of the more important aspects to the all of this is to see HOW the campaign is run ... it gives us a 'window' into how that candidate will govern.

Obama (my choice) has run an exceptionally disciplined campaign, highly organized, involving all manner of citizen, and using many new technologies (he has an iPhone app!). He's certainly not immune to the 'distortions of fact' that all politicians are prone to, but that's just politics. For instance, Obama bashed McCain for his support of privatizing Social Security, saying that senior citizens would've been screwed. In fact, senior citizens would never have been allowed to have their retirement $$$ in the Stock Market.

The McCain campaign, on the other hand, appears to have fallen apart at the seams. It's devolved from thoughtful and focused to vicious and disjointed. In addition to the normal factual distortions, McCain/Palin seem more than willing to just make things up. What's worse (to me) is that a number of the things that they blame on Obama are things that they've done themselves! For instance, McCain's claim that Obama voted against money for the troops when McCain did also!

Sorry to rant ... hopefully, I'm not the wacko that Drew is expecting!

 
At 11:03 AM, Blogger Michele said...

I know who I'm voting for. And everyone else knows too. Yay, one more week!!!!

 

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