Junto Boys

AN ARMY OF ONE

I drafted the following summary to point a couple of Obama voting friends to, because I thought it would be cowardly of me not to tell them.

---------------

Dear Undecided or Obama Supporter,

I have followed this election pretty closely for more than a year, and following are some of the many reasons why I cannot vote for Obama and hope that he does not win. I hope you will consider these points before you cast your vote.

On the Economy and Taxes:

1. He wants to impose new regulations on a number of industries. Regulations consume, they do not produce. Only the lawyers win. For example, it won't be profitable to build a new coal plant or nuclear plant under Obama so no one will do it. Heavy regulation makes US industries non-competitive in a global economy. It adds cost without increasing production.

2. "Windfall profit taxes" = "spread the wealth around." Taking somebody's money simply because they have enough already is the philosophy at the root of many of his policies. Profit motive is what drives economic growth in the US and why we are so entrepreneurial and successful. Punishing success does not create new successes. Obama wants to make us Europe. That would be bad. He is cutting away at what has made America great.

3. Bush's tax cuts will go away -- that is, be allowed to expire. When you remove a tax cut, that is an effective tax increase. You can't wordsmith your way around simple math.

4. Obama will expand government generally. As I said, government consumes, it does not produce. More government requires more tax revenue to run it. Moreover, national defense is about the only thing the government does well, and that's the one thing he is determined to cut.

5. He was AWOL on the economic crisis. He disappeared from view and criticized McCain for taking a leadership role in trying to forge a solution. (I am not defending the solution, just noting Obama's behavior during the crisis. His instincts are to retreat, and talk.)

6. On what basis do Americans consider him qualified to lead on economic issues? What in his professional background gives him any qualifications in that area? What has he said or done that demonstrate good understanding or good instincts on economic matters? Whenever he is forced to go into any detail about his policies, he demonstrates that his thinking is exactly wrong on the issues and what makes the economy tick.

On War and the Military:

1. Obama rooted for America to lose in Iraq and voted that way.

2. Obama has only criticized Bush; he has never articulated what he would have done instead.

3. When faced with a real foreign policy situation that called for a response--Russia's invasion of Georgia--he punted.

4. He pretends to have shown courage by opposing the war in Iraq. Quite the contrary. His liberal district in Illinois overwhelmingly opposed the war. To do otherwise would have required courage and conviction.

5. When pressed to answer whether he was glad that the surge worked, all he could muster was an acknowledgement that the surge "succeeded beyond anyone's expectations." Even that was not true. McCain supported it despite real political risk and tremendous opposition.

6. Obama's pledge to meet "without preconditions" with enemy leaders was beyond naive. He has a history of emboldening our enemies through his careless words and soft positions.

7. He is on record as wanting to cut 25% from military spending. It was one of the rare times that I heard him get specific about something. That is the wrong thing to be passionate about. Peace through strength will be more effective than peace through talking about peace.

8. Republican leadership has averted a terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11. No one on 9/12 would have predicted zero attacks over the next seven years. In terms of bottom line success, our efforts abroad and at home have been highly successful in terms of killing enemies, thwarting attacks and minimizing the loss of American lives. I have no such confidence in Democratic leadership based on their past track record and current rhetoric.

On his Accomplishments:

1. He doesn't have any. The only thing he has succeeded at is getting elected and becoming popular.

2. He has no significant legislative accomplishments to point to in Illinois or in the US Senate. None. He is a talker, not a doer.

3. He got elected in Illinois by gaming the system and getting his opponents removed from the ballot. He got the Democratic nomination by gaming the system, winning the caucuses and losing the popular vote.

4. He is a great speaker. But when the emotions pass and you read the transcript, he didn't say anything. Hope and change and come together and spirit of unity and a rising sun on the horizon, that says nothing about how he will govern. His actual record has been highly partisan, his positions extreme and wrong.

5. He has turned race into a tremendous advantage in his life, taking advantage of affirmative action and political correctness at every turn. His campaign now does the same. His race makes him untouchable in many ways but does not make him the best choice for President.

On his Character and Substance:

1. Obama believes the Constitution is lacking. He said the other day that the Constitution tells us what the government must not do, but not what the government must do for us. That is by design. The implications of what he is saying are profound and all bad. The founders limited the powers of the federal government on purpose. Obama plans a major power grab that flies in the
face of the clear intent of the Constitution and 50 million people are just smiling and waving.

2. He voted "present" more than 100 times in the Illinois legislature. He refuses to take a position when at all possible.

3. He has a consistent record of rewarding his supporters with taxpayers' money.

4. He lied about taking federal campaign funding.

5. He lied about his relationship with Rev. Wright. He marinated in "Black Liberation Theology" for twenty years. Twenty years. The short form on Black Liberation Theology is that white European Christianity is the source of all evil. All of his mentors are America haters.

6. He lied about his relationship with Bill Ayers and that crowd, and Tony Rezko and that crowd, and the Chicago political machine crowd, and communist Frank Marshall and that crowd, and a host of other unsavory characters who have greatly influenced his worldview. He is either a stealth candidate, and people don't know what he's really all about, or worse, they do know and don't care. Stanley Kurtz has done good reporting on his nefarious Chicago connections.

7. The media has been shamefully complicit in burying all unflattering coverage of him.

8. His campaign has lied in ad after ad, about others and about himself.

9. He changed a number of his positions right after securing the Democratic nomination. The shifts were political and transparent and no one called him on it.

10. His ties to ACORN are substantial and well documented. ACORN has been perpetrating systematic voter registration fraud in key swing states for years, in an effort to obscure actual vote fraud, and more importantly to skew the voter registration numbers and thereby the polling models and thereby the polling results and thereby the news coverage, making his support seem broader and deeper than it is, thereby suppressing Republican turnout. Democratic leadership tried to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to ACORN through the first bailout bill. The upshot is that they want to use my money to create permanent political advantages for themselves. The corruption is incredible in its brazenness.

11. Obama is a cold individual. His opposition to the Born Alive Act, which provides medical care to babies who survive abortion procedures, is indefensible.

12. His candidacy is devoid of character references. Kerry had his band of brothers. McCain has Lieberman and Graham, his good friends in the Senate. Where is Obama's inner circle? They are all hidden because of who they are and what they say when you hand them a microphone. His own wife his been silenced and hidden away. His Kenyan relatives have been silenced. Where are the people who know him?-- his relatives, his teachers, his co-workers, his pastor, his mentor, his business associates, his bosses, his neighbors, his friends. . . Where are they? The only people who speak out for this guy are his campaign spokespersons and his political surrogates. That is disturbing to me.

13. In the same vein, the lack of a paper trial on this guy is amazing. He was president of the Harvard Law Review but didn't write anything. There is no documentation on the guy, even down to his birth certificate which is under lock and key in Hawai'i, never seen by the public. His family history is shrouded in mystery.

14. His campaign contributions are riddled with fraud from foreign donors, bundlers, fake names/addresses, etc. The American Thinker blog has done extensive reporting on this. (They also investigated McCain's records and found them clean.)

15. He wants to give my money away but is stingy with his own. His charitable giving has been very low over the years, well below the national average of 2.2% of income.

And that's just a short list. I think an Obama presidency combined with highly liberal Congressional leadership will be a bad thing for America and for the world which needs strong, principled leadership from us, and I think a lot of people are voting for Obama without the benefit of much information about him. My support for McCain is lukewarm at best, but I think a President Obama would be a very bad thing.

NOTE TO JUNTO BOYS: Please suggest edits and improvements to this post so I can clean up anything that lacks intellectual rigor before I invite others to view it.