Politics Stinks, 2008
2007-07-22 18:47 - Opinion
I've never voted. I've never even registered to vote. Why? Because A) I'm not really educated enough to have an intelligent vote but even more so, B) all the candidates stink. A while back, a friend had introduced me to Ron Paul, and at first, I was excited. Of course, Digg has to show me this big chart of quick reference detail about where the candidates all stand.
So, Ron Paul opposes: abortion rights, stem cell research, Kyoto (!), bans on assault weapons, background checks for guns, net neutrality, gay rights, and universal health care. On the other hand, he supports: ANWR drilling. Blech.
If I count up everything in that chart (and trust it all as being true and accurate), I discover some (mildly) surprising things. I agree most with some guy I've never heard of, Dennis Kucinich, with 19 of 24 issues. (I skipped three.) Second and third are Hillary Clinton at 17 (the surprising thing) and John Edwards at 16, another almost no name to me. (Good old Ron Paul agrees with me on just 11 points, running very middle-of-the-pack.) A nifty coincidence: Kucinich is the only one of those top three smart enough to (probably, hire someone to) create a web site without a pointless splash page. Though, his whole site is little more than a splash page.
Rounding out the bottom, four candidates are tied for third place with only 3 agreements. Second place is a no-name to me, Mike Huckabee and dead last, with an appalling single agreement (death penalty) is Duncan Hunter. If that's how wildly the candidates vary, I guess I should pretend that a single vote matters, and get ready to cast mine.
2007-07-26 13:57 - kathaclysm
Here's a great place to get a more in-depth look at what exactly the candidates are voting for or against:
http://www.ontheissues.org
Being that I'm all for Ron Paul, I'll use him as an example to point out that while it may seem as if he's against abortion & embryonic stem-cell research, I think his voting record reveals that he's mostly against federal-funding for the above (he's against federal funding for a lot of things) while not opposing them in-and-of-themselves.