Got Hope?

warning - political post ahead - if you're not interested in my choice for president, or can't respond with logical discourse, you should click somewhere else.

Never before have I worn my political affiliations on my sleeve (or in this case, chest). But I did head over to Barack Obama's website today and buy a Got Hope? T-shirt. This is going to be a tight presidential race, and if I can help influence a couple of votes to the candidate of my preference by wearing a T-shirt, then I'm good for that.

I think it was unintentionally telling that almost all the T-shirts on the McCain website were white and boring, while the Obama website had a bunch of different colors and styles.

I'm just sayin'.

And for the record, I was at one time a McCain supporter. Back when he was a maverick and stood up to the party, I was all for him. I probably would have voted for McCain over Gore in 2000 had he not been torpedoed by the Bush campaign. But in the past eight years he seems to have lost a lot of things. His political balls, for one. I really do think if McCain is elected, it's another four years of the same behind the scenes assholes running the country that have been running it for the past eight years.

That's what I'm hoping for with this election - that Barack Obama wins and brings in new assholes to run things behind the scenes, and that maybe those assholes will do things a little more in line with the way I want things done. I have no illusions about one man's ability to run the country. I know it's all back-room deals and shady shit.

But this election is about putting people into the back room that line up with your views, and I think Obama's back-room guys are gonnea get fewer poor American boys killed in foreign countries than McCain's back-room guys. I hope that Obama's back-room guys will cut our dependence on foreign oil with a multi-pronged plan for drilling and developing new energy sources, rather than using a drill everywhere approach that will only hold us over for a few years. I hope that Obama's back-room guys will stay a little more the FUCK out of my life than the back-room guys who advocate smaller government but have done nothing but give the government more power for the past eight years.

Yes, I know Democrats are going to raise taxes. I want higher taxes.

No I am not insane.

Well, a little.

But there are things I want my government to do for me. I want them to pick up the garbage, educate the kids so they can count out my change properly at a store, handle the sewage, put a LOT of cops on the street, pay for new fire engines and have enough tanks and airplanes to defend our country in case of an attack.

Tanks, fire trucks and garbage trucks are expensive, and I want my government to have money to pay for them. And I want my government to spend less than it makes, so we don't have to borrow from other governments. If that means a "tax and spend" policy, that's a lot better in my eyes than a "borrow and spend" policy, which is what we've done for years.

So yes, I do think that Barack Obama will raise my taxes, and I'm not only voting for him in spite of that, I'm voting for him partly because of that. No, I don't trust him. If you trust anyone running for major political office in this country, you're insane. Jimmy Carter was the last trustworthy man to achieve the office of President, and you see how well that worked out. So I don't care if Obama is everything he claims to be, or everything his wife claims he is. I'm sure he's forgotten most of what it was like to grow up in a single-parent household and be broke, and I don't blame him for trying hard to do so. I don't expect him to be perfect. I don't want perfect, I just want the best man in the race.

And I think Barack Obama is that man. So he's got my vote. And $20.08 for a t-shirt.