Secrete Ballot

Bear with me as I post one more entry about politics. For what it'll be woth to you -- you make the call -- at least this post will have a pay off.

I won't even make you wait for it: I've decided to vote for Barack Obama on November 4.

Reaching this decision has not been easy. I have no great faith in Obama's ability to affect the positive changes he preaches. I'm on blog record as a critic of the very "change" agenda, and of Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Still and all (to use a regratably anachronistic phrase), I have come to accept the hard reality that I have to vote against my generally right-center mind-set because Obama has less of a history of acting against the best interests and the foundational freedoms of the Unied States of America.

Yes, John McCain as a naval officer proved himself to be a hero of the highest order. As a politician, however, McCain has been graft-prone and a champion of the single greatest restriction on political speach ever enacted in this country, the McCain-Feingold Act. It is because he has a public record that MccCain is disqualified from receiving my vote. Who knew that lack of experience was a qualification for the presidency? But there you are.

I can't say I'll be thrilled with casting my ballot for Obama-Biden. Obama's wrongheadedness about the use of the U.S. military to squelch worldwide terrorism, his vote for the FISA reauthorization, and his reneging on his promise to use only public financing for his campaign show him to be a dunderhead and a hypocrite of the order of any national elected official. Offsetting those negatives are the man himself and his willingness to admit that he is not perfect. Who else is the American dream more than Obama? And I grok the fact that he smoked some dope and ran some streets. 'Bout time we had a baller prez.

So who is getting vote, and why?

P.S. All politics is local. Hence, I'll be voting to keep Thelma Drake from returning to Washington.