I make no bones about it, I am voting Obama, and I want you to do the same.  To really get into it, I personally think that the current political system only represents the 25% of Americans on the left and the 25% on the right; the 50% majority in the middle do not have a good candidate or party.  I am personally for:

• Fiscal responsibility. To me, this means that you only spend what you have, you do not enter into or deepen your debt load.
• Small government.  For me, this means less government spending and agencies and red tape, not “de-regulation” as a blanket ideology.  Regulation of Wall Street and executive salaries would have helped prevent the current meltdown.
• Appropriate taxation.  I personally am all for a flat sales tax with no income tax, but rather than start that fight, I’ll just stick to wanting a system wherein those who make more are taxed proportionately.
• Universal health care.  “Socialism” is such a swear word in America, but honestly, shut the f**k up.  People are dying, and every other developed nation can’t be horribly wrong on this issue.  We are being brought to our knees as a nation, and this needs fixing.
• Diplomacy. Unilateral preemptive strikes do not a stable world create.
• Civil Liberties.  Let people get abortions, practice their religions, get married, whatever they want.  As long as they are not causing real harm to others, who cares?
• Energy independence.  This means electric cars, right now.  Power them using solar, wind, nuclear, and wave technologies.  Sure, it will mean increased coal burning for a while while these power generation capabilities come online, but the sum total will be less than the output of the gas cars, or the energy that will have to go into fueling hydrogen cars.  Put a solar panel on every single roof in America, then see how much coal we really need.

My list goes on, but these are the big issues.  And honestly, neither candidate really feeds all of those needs.  Obama will do some things that I will not like, if elected.  But of the two choices, he is consistently proving to be the better option.  If for no other reason, look at how these two men are running their campaigns.  Obama has stayed calm and cool, when on the attack he has remained respectful.  McCain has dragged his campaign down into the muck, with lies, half-truths, and repeated ugly attacks.  His surrogates have incited hatred and fear all up and down the Nation, preying on the American fear of Terrorism instead of offering hope.  The picture below was actually released on an official GOP site in California:

Honestly, these are intensely dangerous times; our economy will probably not survive this collapse.  I say this because I do not think the system itself is viable- Wall Street controls our entire country, and they have created a house of cards filled with imaginary ways of making profit.  And the banks are saying thanks for the cash, but we probably won’t be using it, as sitting on it will serve our interests better.  We need hope, not hate.  This crisis will not be averted by flexing our might, it is our financial Cuban Missile Crisis (not, as Buffet said, Pearl Harbor), and we need a calm, steady, hopeful hand at the helm.  Not a warmonger and someone who just cannot wait for the world to be destroyed.  Please dear god, I’m not ready for the end of days.  Vote hope, not hate in ’08.