So I figured I might as well write up something. I'm not going to go off and bash either candidate for any length of time, even though both scare the hell out of me. Obama's ideas fail to recognize the simple fact that Washington is corporate controlled. We need a freaking Teddy Roosevelt in the office again before we can begin to hope for what Obama is promising he'll do as president. As for McCain, Johnny-come-around-and-support-the-guy-who-made-him-out-to-be-the-freaking-Manchurian-Candidate (yes, that's a lot of hyphens) has chosen a woman VP candidate that has less experience than Obama, when another governor, i.e. Perry, would have been a better choice because said governor knows all about cleaning up George W. Bush's mess. That, and McCain is obviously a wuss when it comes to standing up to his party, seeing as he originally wanted to choose Joe Lieberman. We don't need a guy who only sees half the equation, and we don't need a guy who sees the entire problem and comes up with the wrong solutions. If people voted the issues (and not just ONE ISSUE, i.e. "Oh, he's pro-choice. Screw that, I'm voting for the other guy because he's against abortion," or "Oh, he's for gay marriage. Good, I'll choose him," or, "Oh, he's a solid Christian, so I should support his presidency because no good Christian politician could possibly fall to bribery.") instead of supporting a party because they want to go with somebody they "know" is going to win, Ralph Nader and Bob Barr would probably be getting more votes, simply because they actually are willing to campaign on the issues instead of solely on charisma. Novel concept, I know.

Either way, bullet-point why I support Ralph Nader:

- He wants to reverse US policy in the Middle East. McCain is talking of staying in Iraq "until the job is done", a statement nebulous in its very nature, and echoing Bush quite heavily. Obama's talking eighteen months until withdrawal. The Democrats were in power for TWO YEARS and didn't do so much as pass a resolution forcing the President in to a withdrawal timetable. What makes anybody think they'll be any different with Obama in office. Nader wants us out in six months to a year, as far as military aid goes, and further elections held before we withdraw. As for the Palestine/Israel solution, he wants to censure the Israelis for their military actions against the Palestinians, including blockading the Gaza Strip, and he wants to reach a two-state solution, or at least establish an independent Palestinian state. (I find it ironic that back in 1948, nobody thought to just give Bavaria or Bohemia to the Jews, forcing all the Germans there to move in to what was left of Germany, as a way to punish the society that supported the Holocaust, instead of punishing people who had done nothing wrong. You have to hate the UN sometimes.) Seems to me that it's diplomacy with a freaking huge stick.

- He's pro-union. The real problem with unions these days is that the few that are still left are desperate to keep a grip on what little power they have, so they abuse it to the fullest extent, protecting union workers that don't do their jobs, being unreasonable in negotiations, and taking money that they don't deserve from companies that entered in to agreements with the unions in good faith. If Taft-Hartley were repealed, giving more liberty to people to form unions (point of irony - the Republicans are running ads in Colorado trying to make the Democrats look like the bad guys in the union issues when the Republicans don't even want unions to exist), unions wouldn't feel so threatened, and they might actually be able to stimulate both the economy and workers' rights. It's one of those Tarkin things - the more tightly you squeeze, the more opposition you have. And if the unions that are left feel more and more pressure, they're going to screw with the system.

- He wants to adopt a system known as the National Initiative. Obama says that he wants people realize the citizenry's ability to change the system in Washington. Nader is proposing and would allow for the way to do it - put simply, if enough private citizens get together and bring forth an issue, it can be put on the national agenda. If enough people petition for a national vote on the issue, then it is brought to the national table. Congress has no right to filibuster it or dismiss it, and if it is constitutional, and it receives a majority vote, it passes. The President has no right to veto it, as, instead of overriding a representative democracy, he would be overriding the entire country, which should not be within the President's sphere of power. It allows for people to elect politicians which they believe have the best character, and vote on the issues in a separate sphere.

- He wants to do a lot of things in regards to corporate actions. For example, he wants to crack down on corporate crimes. If a company's top officials commit crimes that cause the company to fold, they don't get off with millions of dollars - they pay off the pensions of their employees. They also don't get off scott free from serving jail time - he wants to increase the Justice Department's corporate prosecution branch s that we can actually handle corporate criminal cases. If a company has repeatedly broken the law, and remains in business, they get no government contracts whatsoever. He wants to end offshore reincorporation so that companies can not simply brush off paying taxes on their profits. He wants to eliminate conflicts of interest in Wall Street trading. And in an interesting twist, he wants to let the share holders in the company decide who the members of the executive board should be - and it makes sense, seeing as they're the people controlling a company in which the shareholders have a vested interest. He wants to reduce runaway executive salaries. People that screw up their job shouldn't be able to walk away with $106 million after losing the company five times that much while lower-level employees barely scrape out a living. He also wants to eliminate corporate welfare/payouts for industries (for example, oil) with proven profitability and no chance of going in to the red any time soon.

- In a separate issue, he wants to end corporate personhood, requiring all companies operating within the United States to get federal charters to continue existence. Screw up enough times, you lose your charter, and therefore your right to do business in the country. Right now, corporations practically control certain parts of the government. Nader thinks it's time to turn things around.

- He wants to adopt a system similar to the NHS in the UK, with all citizens in the US having their health care bought and paid for (mostly) by their taxes. That's not on the board for either candidate, because, guess what, it's the simplest solution. Why should the government have to deal with hundreds of different insurance plans, like Obama's system would do. Obviously, the status quo, which is what McCain supports, isn't working all that well either. Just one national plan covering medically necessary services - that's Nader's idea. And any doctor in the country would be a viable doctor.

I don't quite agree with his ideas on tort law, if only because they would also be applied to the medical field, and I believe that health care is getting more expensive due to frivolous malpractice suits, but hey, if I voted for McCain or Obama, I would support even fewer of their ideas. Plus, with the National Initiative, I would be able to oppose a few of Nader's motions. He's just the best candidate available, because while Obama's rhetoric sounds nice, Nader's plans would do what Obama says his campaign can do - bring hope back to the American citizenry.