Thou Shall Not Vote, Thou Shall Not Have Opinion?!

This is my response to the comments I recieved on my
In Light of Both Conventions entry and the thought thats since I haven't voted before, my opinions are somehow void and should be discarded. It was brought up multiple times and I started to respond in the comment section, but I got going and decided to just make a formal blog response to them. Beyond this point is the comment that actually made me respond, and my response...

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 10/16/2008 - 08:34.

Your complaints about politics are not of any value, since you remove yourself from the process by not voting. Just as I have nothing to say about abortion because I don't have a uterus, you have nothing to say about politics because you don't vote.

Politics may be a joke, but politicians affect your life. Affect who is selected and vote.

Fuck, I forgot to swear. Oh, hey, that's better.

Here is my formal response to those who say my opinions are void because I haven't voted:

Voting didn't effect my life before Bush came into office. There has been one presidential election since I turned 18 in December of 2002, and that was obviously Bush versus Kerry. You can say I should have voted all you want, however I was out of the country and traveling quite a bit, so obtaining an absentee ballot would have been quite tricky. Plus, I mean come one...John Kerry...that is who Democrats decide they want to try to change the course of the country?! They deserved to lose the election.

I'm definitely not going to vote for state stuff, or local stuff, because I could really give a shit. If I get fed up with state and local stuff I just move somewhere that I like better. I can't make dumb rednecks less dumb by voting. However, changing my citizenship is much more difficult, and trust me I tried. Then again I haven't bitched about state matters or local matters (besides that I think everyone is dumb). Therefore Presidential elections are much more important to me. Here are a few reasons...

1) Economy If the dollar sucks, it's harder to travel!

2) Foreign Relations I would rather enjoy being liked right off the bat when I come to a country as opposed to convincing the locals that I hate Americans as well, and that is why I am in their country.

I'm not going to go into full detail on economic and foreign relations importance other than those one liners, perhaps I will devote another blog to them

3) Gay Rights, Abortion, and Social Acceptance I'm not gay, I don't have a uterus and I have very few social acceptance problems seeing as I am white (though the atheist thing bothers people). However, being as I am socially accepted in America, it seems that every hick racist feels comfortable unloading their dumb ass ideals on me (not that I don't have my own presumably dumb ideals and by dumb ideals I mean that people should be able to believe in what the want, fuck male or females no matter what sex they are, and just generally not be looked down upon because of their race.)

Now that doesn't give you a pass for being a bad stereotype. I think "gangstas" are just as fucking useless as anyone else who thinks they are useless, but it has nothing to do with race. I dislike all "gangstas" equally no matter their race. It's not my fault that there are seemingly more African American "gangstas".

4) Energy and Technology I'm sure by now we already have the capabilities to make cars that get over 100 miles a gallon, unfortunately the oil companies have such a stronghold on car manufactures that anyone trying to mainstream something like that would be drowned out. It has finally come to the point that if we don't figure out ways to curb our oil issues, we are going to be significantly dependent on countries that are growing less and less fond of us. This bullshit on drill more here is retarded. Yes we should probably drill more, but like everyone already knows it won't save us.

Issues with public transportation are tricky in America since everything is very spread out especially in the middle and southern parts of the US. The rail system is almost obsolete as far as public transit. I know it would be highly difficult to set up something for state to state travel via train like Europe has country to country travel, as I would imagine (and I have not read anything to verify this) all the countries are responsible for their rail system financially. Some of those rail systems run better than others, but the system has set it up so that traveling and diversity are such an easy thing to accomplish. It would be trickier for the US considering the cost from state to state would be much more expensive since all the finance comes from one economy. I have zero clue on whether setting up a better more efficient train system would be effective in the US, people here seem less inclined to travel and visit places. At this point I am just rambling.

Basically we are left with having to make travel by car much more efficient, and we need to figure it out within the US. I'm not saying that we need to not trade with Korea or Japan, but for the sake of our economy and keeping jobs in the US, we need to be able to produce these products efficiently within our borders.

Left Wing or Right Wing

I'm completely liberal on social issues in America. I believe in equal rights for gays, I'm pro-choice, fairly anti war, anti bible thumping etc etc. The basic left wing package you could say. However when it comes to fiscal policies I fit somewhere in the middle. I believe businesses are the key to our financial success, and bringing as much foreign business in can only benefit us. Unfortunately we seem to ship much more business to foreign countries and allow for tax breaks for people who ship jobs overseas. We should not be rewarding people for doing this, and we should be setting up tax breaks for foreign companies setting up in the US who are employing US citizens. I'm not saying businesses shouldn't be allowed to ship jobs to foreign countries, but there needs to be balance. They need to be given more taxes and not tax breaks.

Then their is the taxation of single individuals, and the ground up versus top down approach. While I believe that higher income should pay a little more than the middle down, I don't think it should be to the point of class warfare. Lower income people need the breaks, but there is a better way of doing it then raising taxes on the +250k income makes by such a substantial amount.

We need to be strict on welfare and make sure everyone one on it isn't just taking their free ride at the expense of everyone who goes out and works their asses off. I guess this kind of fall in the middle on fiscal and social politics, as I think that welfare abuse is costing us tax dollars we could put to better use, and having sympathy for people who actually need it. I'm all for helping someone who got in a rough spot and needs time to get back on track, even up to a couple years, but once that time frame is up you need to figure your shit out. There has to be some program to wain people off welfare as opposed to dropping them completely though.

There are just so many aspects of politics that it is hard to say I'm completely liberal, or completely conservative.

All I know is that the next President has to be able to break the oil companies and force some kind change for the country. People are so up in arms about Democrats being socialists and wanting to kill the free market, truth is the free market is very abusable by financial giants who have political pull. Then there are the liberals who blame the conservatives financial ideals completely for our economic issues when it is more their social politics causing problems. The only thing I can say is that I hope politicians will stop letting people get away with raping and pillaging our country because they finance their campaigns (aka lobbyists) while leaving us holding nothing but our testicles.