After a little more reflection I want to add some clarifications:

I know there’s not much substance up there about why I don’t like Obama much. Rest assured, there’s a lot more to it than energy policy. I disagree with Obama’s stance on Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan (and foreign policy in general), his stance on hate crimes legislation (punish crimes, not motivation), ethanol (the aforementioned white hot rage topic; I’ll go into detail later), and his position on immigration is pure vaporware and does nothing to address some of the biggest landmines and thorny issues caused by current US immigration policy today.

Furthermore, I want to emphasize that I dislike Obama, Hillary, and McCain almost equally. I know McCain is unpredictable which is a bad trait to have in a presidential candidate. I lean towards McCain only because Congress is leaning towards Democrat control. I’m pretty pissed at both parties at the moment and I figure the best way to limit the damage is to have the whole legislative sausage machine as gridlocked as possible.

For the record I did say that the idea of red states and blue states is actively evil and wrong; remember that nearly the entire country went for Ronald Reagan not that long ago. Polarization is extremely toxic and corrosive to our political and civil life. We can disagree on every single political issue but still be friends (and if you don’t believe that, look at the lasting and deep friendship between justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader-Ginsberg. Politics is a teensy little part of life, it just gets blown out of proportion by the media.

As for the upcoming election, I have to say I’m in the anybody but Obama crowd. I’ll rant about McCain and Hillary at the end of this comment for a bit, so if that’s your thing, stick around.

I’m not happy with the idea of voting for Obama for two simple reasons. First, he’s got this Change thing going on, maybe you noticed? That’s nice and all, but you almost never hear him say what we’re going to change TO. I’m not happy (<—-understatement!) with the current administration, but things could be a hell of a lot worse than what we currently have. I’m distrustful of any politician who gets elected on a cult of personality instead of their position on the issues, because it means they have a mandate to… what exactly? Be themselves? Everyone has a different idea of what Obama is going to do when he’s elected because everyone projects their feelings and hopes on to him.

It reminds me of how all of my Democrat friends were close personal buddies with John Kerry. If you listened to his speeches and read the statements on his web page, you might have been astonished to note that Kerry was far harsher in his comments on gay marriage. Let me repeat that (although I know you won’t believe me): George Bush was to the left of John Kerry on gay marriage, at least if you listened to their respective speeches on the issue.

When I brought this up with my Democrat friends, they all said “Oh, Kerry is just saying that for the rubes, he’s just saying that to get elected.” Really? You have some personal friendship with John Kerry? Because everything he’s said so far leads me to believe that he’s John “Homos are ruining our marriages” Kerry. So he just lying to us to get elected? That’s even worse!

Anyway, my point is that I have no idea what Obama is going to do if he’s elected. Maybe he’s been trying to tell us but it’s not coming across, and I mean, come on. I listen to NPR on a semi-regular basis, you’d think they’d at least mention something concrete. It’s all Change change hope change, change change Bush ruined the country, hope, change.

So, I decided to (just now) read through Obama’s issue pages on his website. And now we get to the second reason I’m upset about Obama: From what specifics I can find, he’s on the opposite side of several of my hot-button issues. Obama was right about the gas tax holiday, I’ll give him that. And he’s right on a few other minor points. But most of what I see I don’t like.

I was planning on reading through most of his issues pages one at a time and commenting on them. But the white hot incandescent rage I felt when I read the first one was enough. If stupidity was energy we’d have enough in this ONE PAGE to supply our entire nation’s needs for YEARS. Coincidentally, the page in question is the page on Energy. Let’s take these bullet points one at a time.

“Reduce Carbon Emissions 80 Percent by 2050″: note that his plan is to reduce emissions by 80 percent from 1990s levels. If he means this literally, it’s laughable.

I know Obama doesn’t mean it literally, but let’s just look at what an 80 percent reduction in emissions really means. What 80 percent of your lifestyle from the 1990s are you willing to give up? Get rid of your cell phones, internet, probably your computer, and your safer heavier cars (which use more electricity and use more gas to get from point A to point B). That will get you to the 90s, now take out 80 percent of what’s left. Yes, this is a rough approximation but it’s pretty accurate. Here’s an easy way: chuck your air conditioner, television, dishwasher, washer and dryer and a few light bulbs. That’s about 80 percent of your power bill, according to my back of the envelope calculation. I don’t know how you’ll use 80 percent less natural gas, maybe keep the thermostat at 55 degrees and eat a lot of salads, oh, and use 80 percent less hot water. Don’t forget to drive 80 percent less to keep your gas costs down too.

Alternatively, if you don’t like your neighbors, you can get rid of 80 percent of them to keep yourself from having to wash all your clothes by hand. (better make it 82 percent so you can keep your iPhone.)

You can argue that magical yet-to-be-invented clean technologies will reduce this percentage. Even if the real figure is 20 percent (hahaha!) think of this: look at your lifestyle right now. Now, figure out a way to reduce your carbon footprint by 20 percent. Think of what that means. It means you have to use 20 percent less energy for every way you use energy.

You have to hand wash 1 load out of every five and dry it on the clothesline in your backyard (you might find a 20 percent more efficient washer but you’re not going to find a 20 percent more efficient dryer). Spend 20 percent less time reading blogs on the internet. Use your cellphone 20 percent less. Drive 20 percent less. Use 20 percent less hot water. Listen to 20 percent less music. Wash the dishes by hand and turn off the air conditioner 1 day out of 5. I suspect it would do me good to eat 20 percent less, but then I’d have to figure out a way to cook with 20 percent less energy too. Watch 20 percent less TV and rent 20 percent less netflix movies. Play 20 percent less video games. Go out to eat 20 percent less often with your friends. Drink 20 percent less coffee and 20 percent less wine. Buy 20 percent fewer clothes. You can have as much sex as you want but you have to use 20 percent fewer condoms and birth control pills.

My point is, every aspect of your life you want to keep at your current level of consumption means you have to give up even more of something else.

Of course, as I said, Obama doesn’t mean this. You can keep your iPhone. Obama wants to reduce carbon emissions via a cap and trade system. I’m really skeptical about how this would work in real life, and this comment is already getting ridiculously long, so I’ll refrain from ripping into the problems with cap and trade systems. With a cap and trade system, if we were to flatline our emissions as of today, to reduce our effective emissions SOMEONE in the world has to reduce their emissions in an amount equivalent to our 80 percent emissions. Assume no one cheats the system. That means that we force the rest of the world to reduce their emissions to keep ours artificially high. This too is ridiculous.

Okay, all this ranting and that was one bullet. I didn’t even get to the white hot rage part of the page. I’ll have to save that for another post. I did promise you some Hillary and McCain ranting though so here you go:

Hillary: Almost as bad as Obama, and, oh God, not another 4 years of the Clintons. I rate a Hillary presidency as “Suck Badly” and Obama as “Suck Very Badly.”

McCain: The BEST he could do at this point is raise my opinion of him to “Indifference”. If he’s elected he has a 5 percent chance of “Meh”, a 90 percent chance of “Suck”, and a 5 percent chance of “SUCK VERY VERY BADLY WHY THE HELL DIDN’T YOU VOTE FOR DICK CHENEY”.

Natalie Portman recently said that it was nice to have an election where one could choose which candidate they really liked from a number of good choices, instead of having to vote for which one the hated the least. I don’t know which country she was talking about, but if she was talking about the upcoming US election, I couldn’t disagree more.

OK, while I admit that the leadership that McCain has shown in the Senate in recent years isn’t at all to my liking, how — and this is not a rhetorical question — does Obama’s personality and leadership (as you perceive them) lead you to think he’d be a better president? I’d love to be more sanguine about our choices at this point.

Seconded. I live in a swing state. I have voted Republican in every election of my life. I am seriously considering voting for Obama over McCain. There is no doubt I would vote McCain over Clinton.

My support of Obama is not about this issues. On the issues, I’m still very much a Conservative Republican. But I think I am to the point where I care more about the person and their leadership than about the specifics of their platform.

Of course, this is all anecdotal, but I know a lot of people here in Iowa who have similar sentiments.

PS – It was good seeing you guys this weekend. Thanks for coming out!