Why Obama / Why Not McCain?

[MiccyNarc]

I do not support McCain, I do not support Obama, and while yes, Obama IS the lesser of two evils, he's still evil. I will not be voting for either. I have neither the motivation nor time to get involved in a long winded political debate, but I'm a Libertarian, I believe in free market and I don't believe the government is a charity organization or a nanny.
TL;DR version: **** Obama, **** McCain, **** em all.

 

[No Limit]

Well if you believe Obama is the lesser of the 2 evils you need to suck it up and vote for him. A 3rd party will not win this election, you know this as well as I do. That means you should do everything you can to make sure the best of your 2 choices wins.

 

[MiccyNarc]

Well if you believe Obama is the lesser of the 2 evils you need to suck it up and vote for him. A 3rd party will not win this election, you know this as well as I do. That means you should do everything you can to make sure the best of your 2 choices wins.

And Obama will not lose New York. I see no reason to compromise my principles and vote for a man I despise. If I was in a swing state, I would consider it, but a 3rd party will win the election before New York goes to a Republican. I will not compromise my principles and vote for someone that I can't stand.

 

[The_E]

Because mccain sucks and obama does not

 

[No Limit]

And Obama will not lose New York. I see no reason to compromise my principles and vote for a man I despise. If I was in a swing state, I would consider it, but a 3rd party will win the election before New York goes to a Republican. I will not compromise my principles and vote for someone that I can't stand.

That's fair enough.

 

[repiV]

As a tangental aside, I'd really like to see you justify this some time (not the big brother bit, that's true enough). Fully argued, with sources, and using a sensible definition of socialism. Best not to discuss it at length in this thread, but if you ever get the time to create a new one...

As you know, I don't really do essays and sources and shit (unless it's about bikes ). That's really more of a chore than a laugh, and there's a reason I didn't go to uni. In any case, you can put it in its own thread if you like but I don't really want to create one.

Socialism as it exists today, not only in the UK but in Europe and elsewhere, boils down essentially to two things - empowerment of the state over the individual and dependence of the individual upon the state. All supported by a veritable army of unaccountable quangos and overpaid bean counters.

The first obvious indication that we live under a leftist government is that taxation has doubled since they got into power, more alarmingly hardly anyone even knows that because none of the new taxes are obvious. This, evidently, is empowerment of the state at the expense of the individual.

The second is that slightly more is spent on benefits every year than is taken in income tax. It's utterly outrageous. As a working person with a good job paying more than the regional average, I very much struggle to survive right now (I had 67p in my account the day before payday, I spend very little and there are things I urgently need which I simply cannot afford to buy) - it angers me then to know that the 200 quid which disappears from my paycheque each month (not even counting national insurance) goes straight to those who don't work. Imagine if you were earning 100k and saw 40 THOUSAND get taken from you every single year and given away to scroungers.

You really are better off on benefits. My dad gets 800 quid a month, and he doesn't have to pay rent or council tax. He also lives in a four bedroom house provided for him with my brother in a desirable area that is probably worth three quarters of a million.
He is one of the people who actually deserves benefits (rare, in my experience) but he certainly doesn't need such a colossal amount of cash and a house which even most rich families couldn't afford. With few outgoings, most of that is completely disposable income. On the other hand, I have almost no disposable income at all.

It's at that stage where there is no point in people on benefits getting a job, because they would be far worse off. The benefits system is like a black hole from which you cannot escape, and it is of very little use to productive members of society who need an occassional hand as I found out when I couldn't work due to my accident. Hell, I didn't even want handouts. The government has a scheme called Access to Work, under which they will pay up to 28k(!) a year to enable disabled people to go to work. All I asked for was a cab each way so I could earn some money again and they didn't want to know because my disability was only temporary. Net contributors are punished and permanent drains on the economy are rewarded.

The upshot of this is that the government has an enormous client state of welfare claimants who are utterly dependent on their handouts - due not in most cases to their own helplessness, but to the very way in which the system works. A client state who will always vote Labour so they get to keep their benefits. This is at the expense of, and an insult to, working people.


Jeez, that ended up taking me ages to write and I haven't even scratched the surface. I'll come back and add to it at a time that isn't nearly midnight on a weekday, but suffice to say there is much, much more to add - the state funnelling money to unaccountable quangos, creating thousands upon thousands of vastly overpaid public sector non-jobs just for the sake of creating them, using public money in order to commission documentaries which show the government's policies in a good light, suppressing freedom of mobility through vicious anti-car politics, freedom of assembly by making laws against protests and the right to privacy via the many Stalinist means the state has to spy on us. Just for starters.

In many ways this government would be the envy of the USSR.