Three reasons to consider Canada

Reason #1:
Vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin said, and I quote, "Our national leaders are sending them [our soldiers] out on a task that is from God...That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God's plan." Apparently, the crazy Muslims that claimed America is starting a religious war with them are not so crazy. Welcome back to the use of God's name to justify killing people. Oh wait. We never stopped. Sorry. I thought maybe we had learned that we shouldn't do that. My bad. The terrorists used it to justify terror and now we're using it to justify our actions. Anyone else see the stupidity in that? Apparently, God is somehow pro-American and pro-war. Last time I read it, the Bible said neither of those things. In fact, I'm pretty sure it said (paraphrased) "turn the other cheek", "what you do to the meekest you do to me", and "love your neighbor even if he wrongs you". If I needed one reason to not vote for McCain, this would be a good one. Religious superiority and borderline fanatacism and zealotry have no place in a country that ostensibly practices "freedom of religion". In no way did God ever come down and say to America "you're special, now show the rest of the world, by force of necessary". Lincoln said it best: "The question is not is God on our side, but rather are we on God's side?" I think even a cursory glance at our actions compared to our Biblical conception of God will answer that question. If not then you're not paying close enough attention.

Reason #2:
Cheney decided to kick in with his opinion and declared the Russian war against Georgia as "illegitimate". Meanwhile, he's defending our own illegitimate actions in Iraq. By illegitimate, both myself and Cheney are referring to unilateral, non-international military occupations of foreign powers. Once again, I shake my head and wonder why it's acceptable in politics and in elected officials to take completely opposite stances on the same issue and be praised for it. When your approval ratings actually reach single digits, you shouldn't be allowed within 100 miles of Washington D.C.

Reason #3:
Karl Rove. Enough said, but I've got more. Karl spent weeks hammering Barack's list of vice presidential candidates as too inexperienced and used the argument that one of them was "only the governor of the 101st largest city in the U.S." as a reason to disqualify him from the vice presidency. Tuesday, Rove had the audacity to claim that Palin's leadership of the 2nd largest city in Alaska qualified her to run the U.S., both on the domestic and international front, in event of the president's inability to do so. Just a fun fact: the second largest city in Alaska has a population of ~9,780 people. So leading a city of 10,000 provides more experience than a city of roughly 202,000? Give me a fucking break. It doesn't matter anyway because she was mayor of the 9th largest city in Alaska, not the 2nd largest. I'm not saying she's not qualified because it was only 10,000 people. I'm just saying that if city size is going to be your barometer, then maybe the former mayor of the 1st largest city in Alaska would have been a better choice. Population, city growth, economy and economic growth, level of public services...all these things are more important that "2nd largest" or "101st largest". By Rove's logic, we should elect the leader of Sitka, Alaska because it has more land area than New York City (even though New York has a major financial sector and an international presence). These types of half-truths and logical fallacies should be considered unethical, particularly amongst people that know better but are more interested in maintaining control than in being honest. You can make plenty of good arguments about why Palin is a good candidate without setting up straw-man arguments- she was elected governor of Alaska (population 670,000) after all. This type of behavior suggests that your candidate is too weak to stand up to scrutiny of her voting record and political stances. But hell, Karl Rove has made a career out of public bull-shitting. Maybe this is what the country deserves for not calling our public figures on their behavior.

That's all for now. The next post will examine Sarah Palin in more depth, particularly her stances on issues beyond abortion and gun control (which you won't get from the media). I'm going to do this will all four candidates. Mostly for my own education. But also in the hopes of adding something to the debate amongst the five people that bother to read this. You can't have a good election or political discussion without at least a basic knowledge of where the candidates stand on many issues, not just the hot button topics on Fox News and MSNBC.