arc of time

i have had very little interaction with former georgia senator max cleland. other than almost running me over as he wheeled out of the men’s room at reagan airport in d.c. back when he was not a “former” senator, max cleland and i have never been close.

but that hasn’t stopped him from repeatedly calling my house, along with representatives of the public employees union, the georgia democratic party and some woman who identified herself as my neighbor whose call was paid for by the democratic senatorial campaign committee. not surprisingly all of these calls were designed to tell me what a miserable person saxby chambliss was and that “jim martin will be a partner for barack obama in washington.” they are all particularly fond of that phrase.

wtf??

i thought microtargeting was all the rage in politics these days. let’s review my record quickly –

with the exception of 2000 when i flirted with libertarianism i have voted in every single republican presidential primary since i first started voting in 1992. this year i gave money to both john mccain’s primary and general election campaigns. additionally i donated money to the republican national committee as well as the fulton county republican party. all of this is a matter of public record and exists in numerous databases.

what is not a matter of public record, but probably ought to be clear from all of the above is that i have NEVER since the first time i pulled a voting lever voted for a democrat for state or national office. when confronted with a democrat running unopposed or a republican i am incapable of voting for (ala sonny perdue) i write in a friend of mine or vote for a libertarian.

so given that, what do you think the odds are that a taped phone call from max cleland or some public employee union goombah is going to get me to vote for jim martin?

i’ll answer the rhetorical question for you. rapidly approaching zero.

i thought they were microtargeting these days. why do i keep getting these phone calls?

the wsj as usual does a much better job of eloquently explaining what i was trying to point out.

joe the plumber vs. senator government indeed.

it seems these days that about the only reason you will here some people give for any opposition to barack obama is race, fear or being “duped.” of course, this is absurd and there are plenty of reasons beyond any of these why anyone, and in particular a center-rightist like i consider myself wouldn’t vote for him. this is just the chronicle of some of my thoughts on why i would never vote for obama. i am not posting this to try to change anyone’s mind in the election but rather simply to show that there are principled and real reasons for not voting for him that transcend race or fear. it is mainly the frustration with the idea that any dislike of obama is racially-tinged that i am posting this and it’s second part (probably tomorrow.)

i want to leave aside the biggest reason, which is that someone can really, really like the other candidate (this is one of my reasons) because for me there are reasons why i wouldn’t vote for obama no matter who the other candidate was. in fact, if mike huckabee had been running the odds are i would have voted for bob barr or written my dad in.

this post will deal with ideology. i will not vote for a candidate whose ideology is fundamentally opposed to my own. this is the reason why every two years i engage in the exercise of picking someone to write in in opposition to john lewis and i truly believe that john lewis is an american hero.

ideology stands as the main reason i will never be able to vote for obama. on too many issues down the line, his ideology stands in complete contrast to mine. really, i only need one example to suffice. let me pick tax policy. anyone who has paid attention to the campaign has heard obama tout his promise of a “tax cut” for 95 percent of americans. you would think as a center-right tax cutter i would be all for this (minus the tax increase on the ‘wealthy. i never like that’.)

of course the devil is in the details and obama’s tax cut is nothing of the sort. a tax cut is a cut in the marginal rate of income tax a tax payer pays and this is not what obama has proposed, which you just have to look at the numbers to grasp. more than one-third of all tax filers have no income tax liability at all – they get all of their withholding back or more. let that sink in for a minute. they pay NO income tax.

so how then can obama propose a tax cut for all these people? simple, it is really a “refundable tax credit.” this means you get the money no matter what your income tax liability is, even if it is zero. i am fundamentally opposed to this. i do not believe it is the role or function of government to take money from one taxpayer and redistribute it to another. also, i think everyone of voting age with income should pay income taxes. even if it’s $20, i don’t think anyone should get away free. we should all contribute something to our government.

there are more examples but this one will suffice, since i could absolutely never vote for a candidate proposing what obama has.

additionally i think it is fair to ask the question of what obama’s associations say about his ideology. i don’t believe that obama’s associations with bill ayers, jeremiah wright, or acorn in and of themselves disqualify him from being president. nor do i think they mean that he shares all of the beliefs and is responsible for the actions or words of these people. i recognize that someone on the center left or even very liberal will look at these groups and people much different from me since they are closer to them on the spectrum

BUT, much like looking at a republican candidate who attended jerry falwell’s church, taught seminars at the heritage foundation, got money from richard mellon scaife and hung out with the montana freeman would say something about that candidate’s comfort in far-right circles, i think it is fair for a center-right voter like me to look at these associations of obama’s and determine that he is way too comfortable in these far-left circles than i would want my president to be.

let me reiterate, i don’t believe that obama shares all the beliefs of these people and organizations or embraces their methods (i do think the ayers relationship says a lot about judgement – which i am planning to cover in part two). again, as a center-right voter these associations speak of a familiarity and comfort with far-left groups in a way that many middle-road democratic candidates (like the clintons) don’t necessarily have.

all of this reflects the idea that for me at least, obama is fundamentally at odds ideologically with many things that i believe in.

i have a part two to this that will deal with some issues of character that i certainly didn’t believe obama had when he first announced but i have come to regard with ever-increasing suspicion.

(i am crossing my fingers and leaving comments on on this post. if you want to disagree please be respectful)

i was all set to write a long and detailed post about how mad i was over creative loafing’s blogging about the palin pick – i had links and counter arguments – and the searches showing zero or almost no coverage on the site of jeremiah wright, bill ayers or tony rezko.

then i realized, i really need to thank them.

i mean after all it was all of that sort of ‘reporting’ that ended up stirring up those crazy right-wingers whose enthusiasm is so important to getting my candidate into the white house.

so, thanks guys. appreciate the assist.

someone tore the mccain sticker off of the back window of my car.

seriously.

are we all ten year olds in this country now?

wow.

first, can i just say that my acumen this time around has been pretty scary.

first i decided that mccain would be my guy way back in december when he had a wing and a prayer. and then, against a ton of odds, john actually pulled it off.

then, when deciding who i would like to see as veep, i did a bunch of research and decided on sarah palin, the little known governor of alaska.

wow.

and today, it’s going to be mccain-palin. i am pretty shocked and pretty damn happy about this.

earlier this week i posted about how i was banning myself from reading any election news whatsoever. i have faithfully not read any election news or looked at any polls since then.

this morning was my one day a week to actually peruse some election news. i took a look at the headlines and the major polls over at real clear politics, read through the insanely complicated statistical analysis at fivethirtyeight.com and then closed everything up for the next seven days.

how refreshing.

following a suggestion from nassim nicholas taleb’s fooled by randomness (a pick of the week if i have ever seen one or get around to writing them again) i have put myself on an information ban regarding the presidential election.

i have decided that most of the “daily” reporting on the presidential election is just noise anyway and my obsession with reading it isn’t doing me any good.

it doesn’t help that these days the news is all bad for my candidate.

so sorry real clear politics, fivethirtyeight.com and others, you will be losing my daily eyeballs.

fwiw – i gave up on political blogs (even one that agree with me) a long time ago.