My Decision Has Been Made

   Though I doubt it comes as a surprise to anyone that has read any of my past posts, I am totally committed to casting my vote in November for Obama/Biden.

   During the primaries, on the Republican side, I clearly connected the most with Ron Paul (for the revolutionary change he represented/represents) and John McCain for his bipartisan record and moderate stand on most issues. The deal breaker for me with McCain, of course, was his unyielding, unapologetic support of the Iraq war. I hate to even contemplate being labeled a single-issue voter, however, but the war is a big one. Except for energy independence, which any rational person will tell you is closely tied to the war, Iraq is my number one concern because it is damaging us in so many ways.

   Now McCain has picked his vice presidential running mate and, in so doing, has sealed the case against him in my mind.

   Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, is closer to my age than anyone else on either party's ticket, has a family, is ambitious, and female - all attributes I consider positive.

   But she is far more conservative than even he is - strictly anti-choice and pro-drilling in ANWR.

   So while I consider the ethics investigation being conducted against her, the fact that she has been governor (of a state with 660,000 residents) a whole year and a half, and that she has zero foreign policy experience, unfortunate, the previous paragraph's sentence is all I need to know she is not in line with my beliefs.

   It has been well-documented that she is a Roman Catholic, that she and her husband have five kids, the most recent one having Down Syndrome. Her most recent family news has been the revelation that her 17-year-old, unmarried daughter is 5 months pregnant.

   Much has been made by both the Obama/Biden and the McCain/Palin campaigns about family being out-of-bounds and while I agree that blasting people's families, and certainly their minor children, in the media is not what people should be focused on, it actually IS very relevant to me.

   Because here is what this tells me about Sarah Palin. She, per traditional Catholic beliefs, does not personally believe in using birth control, hence the five kids. She does not believe in abortion under any circumstance (she allowed herself to get pregnant at 43 or 44, an age at which women have become increasingly prone to bearing babies with birth defects), evidenced by the fact that she knew during her pregnancy that her youngest son would be born with Down Syndrome. And she apparently preached abstinence only to her daughter, despite the well-documented fact that teenage kids from religious families have the same hormonal urges as those from non-religious families. Moral to this whole story - she puts religious beliefs ahead of common sense. And exhibits very suspect judgment.

   Maybe this explains why she actually thinks women that were Hillary Clinton supporters will now support her, nevermind that she has completely opposite views to Clinton on most traditionally "female issues."

   Now, I'm sure she is a good person, as I believe McCain to be, and even George W. Bush probably is (if not terribly bright and ridiculously stubborn). In fact, only Dick Cheney strikes me as someone in the current administration that truly is a bad person. But do I want her as the vice president? And further, do I want her as the next-in-line to the Oval Office should something render a President McCain incapacitated or dead?

   That answer, is clearly "No!"