Dear Reader,

Hello again!

My name is Chris Colvin.

Four years ago, I debunked all the lies, distortions, and hypocrisy at the 2004 Republican Convention.

This year, I'm going to deal with both conventions.

If anyone accuses me of partisan bias, I refer you to my Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi.

Ready? Let's go.

Lies at the Democratic National Convention

Senator Teddy Kennedy of Massachusetts

"We are told that Barack Obama believes too much in an America of high purpose and bold endeavor."

We are? This is the first time I've ever heard anyone make that accusation. I am not aware of any public figure who has said such a thing.

Lies at the Republican National Convention

Congressman John Boehner of Ohio

"Republicans have come to St. Paul driven by our belief that country should come before politics, and government should serve the people -not the other way around."

Really? The Republicans believe that our country is more important than the Republican Party? The Republicans believe the government should serve the people?

In that case, why did Congressman Boehner and the overwhelming majority of Republicans in Congress -- including John McCain -- applaud as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney violated all ten articles of the Bill of Rights and the first three articles of the Constitution? (The details can be found in my essay George W. Bush Versus the Bill of Rights.)

Our founding fathers established our Constitution in 1789. Our Constitution is a blueprint for democracy, for checks and balances, for a government that serves the people. We are a republic, not a kingdom. Bush and Cheney, on the other hand, aspire to be kings in all but name. Let me explain.

If the Republicans want the government to serve the people, why did they do nothing when Bush proudly issued an executive order unconstitutionally giving our tax dollars to his favorite religious organizations in his first week in office? (Source: The White House.)

If the Republicans want the government to serve the people, why did they do nothing when Bush illegally and unconstitutionally diverted funds from defending our nation against al-Qaeda (the September 11th terrorists) in order to prepare to attack Saddam Hussein? Congress would not approve the use of force against Saddam until three months later. Saddam was a brutal dictator, but he had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or terrorism. Iraq was no threat to the United States.

If the Republicans want the government to serve the people, why did they pass the so-called Protect America Act -- a law that violated the Fourth Amendment by empowering the President to wiretap any American phone call without first obtaining a search warrant? Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the President already had the power to wiretap terrorists -- but Bush, by his own admission, had been spying on ordinary Americans for years. (Source: The White House.)

When Bush's torture memos were exposed, John McCain authored -- and Congress approved -- a new law governing interrogations, despite Bush's threats to veto it. If the Republicans want the government to serve the people, why did they do nothing when Bush and Cheney wrote a signing statement claiming the authority to break that law whenever they felt like it?

Torture is the ultimate act of tyranny, for someone broken under torture will say whatever the torturer wants to hear in order to make the pain stop.

"Under the leadership of Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin, Republicans are returning to our roots and reclaiming our mantle as the party of reform...the party America needs us to be... Sky-high gas prices and soaring health costs are squeezing them from both ends. We're dangerously dependent on foreign oil, while radical jihadists lurk in the shadows, seeking our destruction."

Reform. Right. Under six years of Republican control of the Presidency and Congress, Exxon-Mobil -- the world's largest oil company -- showed the largest profits of any corporation in human history, and the price of gas in the United States more than doubled, from $1.50/gallon to $4/gallon. (Source: CNN.) Yes, we're dependent on foreign oil -- and during the six years of monolithic Republican control of the government, things got worse, not better.

The Republicans don't intend to reform government. It was their pro-corporate policies that created the soaring health costs and gas prices.

"But when they [Americans] look at the Democratic Congress, they see politicians more interested in taking care of themselves."

I can't argue with that one. Bush and Cheney have violated the Constitution and have used signing statements to break 1200 laws. The Republican and Democratic members of Congress, for the most part, have sat by and watched. Only a few members of Congress -- led by Congressman Dennis Kucinich and Congressman Robert Wexler -- have obeyed their oaths of office to uphold the Constitution and tried to impeach the President and Vice President who have clearly committed "high crimes and misdemeanors."

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that most Americans have never heard of Kucinich or Wexler. But the refusal of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to defend the Constitution against a President and Vice President who have broken its laws dozens of times has left me -- and 91% of Americans -- disgusted with Congress. That's why I'm supporting "peace mom" Cindy Sheehan in her run against Pelosi.

Both political parties are corrupt. They aren't interested in advancing any agenda other than gaining power. They're not interested in popular opinion. They're not interested in upholding the Constitution, the foundation of all American law.

Based on the record, however, the Republicans are worse. The Democrats may be cowards, but it's the Republicans who cheered as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney wiretapped Americans without first obtaining search warrants. (Source: The New York Times.)

It was a top Republican -- Karl Rove -- who called Senator Dick Durbin a traitor for condemning torture as un-American. (Source: The Washington Post.) The Democrats are self-serving, but in the last twenty years they have shown that they do less damage to our country than the Republicans do.

Torture is evil. If torture is not wrong, nothing is wrong. For giving Bush and Cheney their blind, unquestioning loyalty, the Republican Party has become the party of torture.

"They see Democrats peddling the same old policies, destroying jobs and driving health costs through the roof: more lawsuits, more government, higher taxes. Washington today is broken. The Democratic Congress has become its symbol."

Under the leadership of Congressman Boehner, the Republican Congress -- who worked in lock-step with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to advance the reactionary Republicans' agenda from 2001 through 2006 -- presided over the first net loss of jobs since the Great Depression. (Source: The Guardian.) They let the health care companies' lobbyists write the laws that drove costs through the roof. (Source: The Washington Monthly.) They created the largest government in history. (Source: The American Conservative.) Bush and Cheney's government spies on Americans without search warrants.

Boehner's right that Washington is broken. Six years of monolithic Republican control broke it. Eight years of Boehner's blind obedience to Bush and Cheney broke it. The soaring health costs are exactly what the Republicans wanted. An enormous government is exactly what the Republicans wanted.

The Democrats are also partially responsible, because they sat on the sidelines and did nothing as the Republicans broke the government. As American voters, we have to force Washington to change. We must all vote for candidates because of what they stand for -- not because of their party affiliation.

I urge all Americans to vote for Barack Obama for President, and to consider third-party candidates for other offices. I'll explain my reasons below.

"With John McCain, Republicans have fought for an "all-of-the-above" energy strategy to lower gas prices and end our dangerous dependence on foreign oil."

This isn't true. According to the AFL-CIO, McCain has promised to give another $3.8 billion in tax breaks to the richest oil corporations in history.

John McCain wants to go to war with Iran. Imagine gas that cost $12 per gallon. That's what a war with Iran would mean. (Source: the BBC)

Congressman Boehner, in the last eight years, the Republicans have shown their true colors. You have no intention of putting our country before politics. You have no intention of ending our dependency on oil, foreign or domestic. You've created more government than Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson ever did. Enough is enough.

Former Senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee

"Speaking of the vice presidential nominee, what a breath of fresh air Governor Sarah Palin is. She is from a small town, with small town values, but that's not good enough for those folks who are attacking her and her family."

On Friday, August 29, John McCain announced he wanted Sarah Palin to be the next Vice President.

I'd never heard of her.

I'm no fan of Senator Biden of Delaware -- the Democrats' Vice Presidential nominee -- but at least I know who he is. He's been in the Senate for over thirty years, and despite my own reservations about him, he's certainly qualified to be President.

I had to look Sarah Palin up on Wikipedia. As far as "folks are attacking her and her family," well, let's look at her record.

(I'm writing this on Wednesday, September 3, so I've known who Sarah Palin is for exactly six days. I haven't had any time to do independent research, so I'll just include Wikipedia's highlights.)

In 1997, then-Mayor Palin fired her town librarian because the library had "morally or socially objectionable" books on the shelves. The town rallied behind the librarian, who was then re-hired.

Does anyone want to live in a country where the government censors library books and fires librarians?

Governor Palin's husband is apparently a member of a group that wants Alaska to break off from the United States and become its own country.

In 1988, the Republicans disparaged Michael Dukakis' patriotism for upholding a court order that held that people could not be forced to say the pledge of allegiance if they didn't want to. In 2008, the Republicans have nominated a family who doesn't believe that America is "one nation, under God, indivisible." Do Republicans believe in the pledge of allegiance, or don't they? Or do they only invoke it when it's politically convenient?

Ms. Palin is mired in an abuse-of-power scandal. She has been accused of firing Alaska's public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, on a personal vendetta. Why did she do this? Monegan refused to fire her sister's ex-husband. (Source: Consortium News.)

Governor Palin is pro-life. The majority of the people in this country are pro-choice.

I'm also pro-choice. Even though I agree that abortion is wrong, I believe the government has no business making a family's medical decisions for them. I'm also pro-choice because the pro-life lobby won't stop with abortion. They want to ban most forms of contraception. A proponent of this belief is Mike Leavitt, the Secretary of Health and Human Services and a member of George W. Bush's cabinet.

Also, the majority of pro-life people agree that abortion should be permitted in cases of rape. Governor Palin disagrees. In her opinion, if a teenage girl is raped, the government should step in and force her to carry the rapist's child to term -- regardless of the girl's wishes, those of her parents, her family, or her church.

Governor Palin, sometimes abortion is the lesser of two evils.

John McCain -- who once believed that abortion should be permitted in cases of rape -- has backed away from that position in favor of Palin's. (Source: ABC News.)

Ms. Palin also believes that Creationism should be taught in school science classes.

Creationism is the belief that the universe was created in six days, exactly the way it is described in the book of Genesis. Many Creationists believe, therefore, that the scientific evidence regarding the Earth's age (about 4.5 billion years, according to Wikipedia) is wrong.

Many Christians believe that the six days referred to in Genesis are metaphorical. St. Peter believed so as well: in his Second Epistle, he wrote:

"Be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day."

However, some Creationists want their religious beliefs -- that the universe was created as-is, in exactly six twenty-four hour days -- taught in science classes.

Governor Palin believes that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, and therefore dinosaurs and people must have been alive at the same time. In reality, dinosaurs became extinct 65,000,000 years ago, as any school child can tell you. (Source: Los Angeles Times.)

I was raised by Creationist parents. They taught me that empirical science belongs in science class, and religion belongs in church. Science is what can be proved or disproved with experiment and observation. Religion is about faith accompanying reason. It wouldn't be reasonable for parents to insist that their churches teach science in Sunday school. Nor is it fair for Creationists to insist that schools teach the parents' religious beliefs in science classes. Who would choose whose beliefs to teach?

Governor Palin has a right to her opinion, but the majority of the American public disagrees with her. In the United States, it's unconstitutional for the schools to teach one set of religious beliefs in preference to another. If we're going to teach religion in science class as well as teaching science, then we must teach the beliefs of all religions. We would have to teach every possible interpretation of the Genesis creation story as is taught by every Christian denomination -- the ones that believe the six days are meant metaphorically, and those that believe the six days are meant literally. We would also have to teach Hindu and Native American creation myths.

As James Madison wrote, "Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects?"

Senator Thompson, Governor Palin doesn't share the values common to the rest of the country. No one wants the government to choose which religions get favored status and which don't. No one wants the government to start firing librarians or burning books. And even those of us who believe that abortion is wrong understand that banning it altogether would make matters worse, especially for rape survivors.

Senator Thompson then speaks about John McCain:

"He has been to Iraq eight times since 2003. He went seeking truth, not publicity."

When he was there, McCain said Baghdad was safe. According to the New York Times, McCain wore a bullet-proof vest, was surrounded by over a hundred soldiers, and had a helicopter escort.

"At a point when the war in Iraq was going badly and the public lost confidence, John stood up and called for more troops. And now we are winning."

When will we know when we've won? John McCain is on record saying he wouldn't mind if the occupation of Iraq lasted a hundred years.

What do the Iraqis think? The Iraqi Prime Minister, the Iraqi Parliament, and most of the Iraqi people want us to leave. According to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki:

"US presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about sixteen months. That, we think, would be the right time frame for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes." (Source: CNN.)

Does forcing the Iraqi people to accept an occupation they don't want, in violation of democracy, count as "winning"?

"Because John McCain stood up our country is better off."

How has John McCain stood up?

One of McCain's finest achievements is the McCain Amendment, a law that forbids torture. McCain pushed Congress to pass this bill because Bush and Cheney had broken the anti-torture laws already on the books.

However, when signing that law, George W. Bush wrote in a signing statement that he would not enforce it, and subsequently challenged the law in court. (Source: the Boston Globe.)

On February 3, 2005, John McCain voted for Alberto Gonzales to become Attorney General of the United States. (source: C-Span.) According to the Washington Post, Gonzales had been deeply involved in writing the Bush Administration's Torture Memos.

In other words, John McCain trusted George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Alberto Gonzales to uphold the anti-torture statute McCain wrote -- even though Bush, Cheney, and Gonzales had been the ones to violate our anti-torture laws in the first place.

John McCain has certainly stood up for important issues in the past, such as campaign finance reform. However, after endorsing George W. Bush's candidacy in 2000, McCain became his most enthusiastic supporter -- even when Bush broke laws and trampled the Constitution. McCain the maverick became McCain the cheerleader.

Thompson then attacks Barack Obama.

"To deal with these challenges the Democrats present a history making nominee for president... Together, they would take on these urgent challenges with protectionism, higher taxes and an even bigger bureaucracy."

Despite Republican efforts to paint Obama as a Lyndon Johnson-style tax-and-spend liberal Democrat, that's not what Obama's about. Here's what Obama actually said about raising taxes:

"Unlike John McCain, I will stop giving tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America. I will eliminate capital gains taxes for the small businesses and the start-ups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow. I will cut taxes - cut taxes - for 95% of all working families, because in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle-class." (Source: the Democratic Convention.)

I'm probably naive. The idea that Republicans cut taxes and that Democrats tax-and-spend is probably too deeply ingrained in the American psyche for me to change with one essay.

I can only point to the facts. President Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress actually balanced the budget. George W. Bush then came to power, and in every year since 2003 he has shattered the record for creating the largest deficits of any government in human history. Bush and his Republican allies spent more than any Democrat ever did; but instead of tax-and-spend, it's borrow-and-spend. As a result, the United States is now so deeply in debt that the dollar's value has plunged and our economy's in trouble. (Source: the BBC.) Look at this Yahoo Finance calculator to see the dollar's performance against the euro and the British pound.

When I go to fill up my car, I often find myself waiting in long lines for affordable gas -- much as my parents did in the 1970's. Back then, they had a term for high unemployment and high inflation: stagflation.

Barack Obama doesn't want to repair Bush's damage by raising taxes. Later on in this essay we'll read George W. Bush say that McCain will "make the tax relief permanent."

The "tax relief" that Bush talks about all the time didn't really help the majority of Americans. I will quote Professor Paul Krugman's complete explanation later on in this essay, but in a nutshell, Bush's "tax relief" was heavily slanted towards those with incomes greater than $200,000 per year. According to Krugman, "While Bush's tax cuts shaved only a few hundred dollars off the tax bills of most Americans, they saved the richest one percent more than $44,000 on average." (Source: Rolling Stone.)

When Congress passed the "tax relief" for millionaires that Bush asked for, they set the "tax relief" to expire in 2010. Obama's plan is a simple one: let it expire.

The law will automatically revert to the tax codes we had under the Clinton Administration, where those making over $250,000 paid a slightly higher percentage. Why does Obama want to do this? Because Clinton's program worked. Under Clinton, everyone got richer, including the rich people. Under Bush, the rich have gotten richer while the rest of us got poorer. (Source: Barack Obama's Website.)

"My friends, we need a leader who stands on principle."

We do, and that man is not John McCain.

I once voted for and admired John McCain. In my open letters to him, I asked him to reclaim Republican values from the perversions and lies of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Instead, McCain voted to confirm Alberto Gonzales, an author of the Torture Memos, and then expected Gonzales to enforce the same anti-torture laws he'd already broken. (!) McCain called Dick Cheney a "steady, experienced, public-spirited man" -- when Cheney has been at the center of an effort to accumulate dictatorial powers for the President. (Source: Frontline.) McCain even said Cheney would serve in the McCain Administration in some capacity. (Source: The Atlantic.)

When I voted for John McCain in March 2000, I believed he was a leader who would stand on principle.

He has not.

But I never dreamed McCain would applaud George W. Bush as much as he has. McCain has been Bush's cheerleader.

Bush dismissed American intelligence reports that Saddam Hussein had no significant weapons of mass destruction. Instead, Bush (and McCain) believed the claims of convicted embezzler Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi defector codenamed "Curveball" - a known fabricator and notorious drunkard. Armed with their propaganda, Bush championed evidence he knew wasn't true (such as the African uranium forgeries) in order to scare people into supporting his attack on Iraq.

Before the war even began, dozens of experts challenged the Bush-Cheney party line that Saddam supported al-Qaeda. They did this because they knew the facts: Osama Bin Laden was allied with anti-Saddam rebels. But Bush ignored the experts. What did John McCain say?

"The government of Saddam Hussein is a clear and present danger to the United States of America...

"He has developed stocks of germs and toxins in sufficient quantities to kill the entire population of the Earth multiple times. He has placed weapons laden with these poisons on alert to fire at his neighbors within minutes, not hours, and has devolved authority to fire them to subordinates. He develops nuclear weapons with which he would hold his neighbors and us hostage...

"Given this reality, containment and deterrence and international inspections will work no better than the Maginot Line did 62 years ago...

"His character, his ambition, and his record make clear that he will never accept the intrusive inspections that, by depriving him of his arsenal of dangerous weapons, would deprive him of his power.

"Saddam Hussein is on a crash course to construct a nuclear weapon - as he was in 1981 when Israel preemptively destroyed his reactor at Osirak, enabling U.S. forces to go into Iraq a decade later without the threat of nuclear attack, and as he was in 1990, when he thought development of such a weapon, if completed in time, would have deterred American military action against him, allowing him to secure his control over his neighbors and dominate the region.

"Saddam has masterfully manipulated the international weapons inspections regime over the course of a decade, enabling him to remain in power with his weapons of mass destruction intact, and growing in lethality.

"Saddam Hussein's regime cannot be contained, deterred, or accommodated. Containment has failed. It failed to halt Saddam's attacks on five sovereign nations. The sanctions regime has collapsed...

"Saddam Hussein unquestionably has strong incentives to cooperate with al Qaeda...."

McCain was absolutely correct when he said Saddam was a lawless tyrant who had butchered his own citizens. However, McCain was dead wrong regarding Saddam's arsenal. Saddam was not a present danger, and the evidence against him was far from clear. The weapons inspections destroyed his biological weapons; his rockets didn't have the range to reach the United States. President Bush, senior, and President Clinton pursued a policy of containment. That policy worked, despite McCain's claims otherwise.

Saddam once held nuclear ambitions, but the weapons inspectors had destroyed what remained of his development program. His weapons of mass destruction no longer existed. The United Nations sanctions were still in effect. Saddam was still a tyrant in his own country, but he had not attacked any other country in thirteen years. Moreover, despite Saddam's terrible crimes against his own people, he wasn't suicidal. Saddam would never have cooperated with a terrorist organization that was supporting rebels against him.

After Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, it became common knowledge that Saddam was not an ally of al-Qaeda and he had no weapons of mass destruction. What did John McCain say about that?

"I believe as strongly today as ever, the mission was necessary, achievable and noble... For his determination to undertake it, and for his unflagging resolve to see it through to a just end, President Bush deserves not only our support, but our admiration." (Source: the Republican National Convention of 2004.)

Some principle.

Some maverick.

Barack Obama was then serving in the Illinois state legislature. He was unknown nationally and had no power to influence national policy. However, he stood up and gave a speech -- a speech that was very different from John McCain's.

Obama said:

"After September 11, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this administration's pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again.

"What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne...

"I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

"But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors...and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

"I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.

"I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda...

"You want a fight, President Bush? Let's finish the fight with Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings...

"Let's fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells.

"You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil through an energy policy that doesn't simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil." (Source: About.com.)

Obama and McCain agreed that Saddam was a murdering tyrant. But in all other points, Obama was completely right, and McCain was completely wrong.

I voted for McCain because I believed in Republican values of personal liberty and small government. To my disgust, McCain applauded as Bush and Cheney wiretapped Americans' phone calls without search warrants and created the largest government bureaucracy in American history.

As George Lucas wrote in his film Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith:

"This is how liberty dies -- with thunderous applause."

Thompson continues:

"We salute his [McCain's] character and his courage. His spirit of independence, and his drive for reform. His vision to bring security and peace in our time, and continued prosperity for America and all her citizens."

McCain's character: he voted for the so-called PATRIOT Act.

He also voted for the Military Commissions Act, a law denying anyone the President declares to be an "enemy combatant" the right to challenge his detention in court. (In other words, if the government arrests you by mistake, you can't get a court order to make them let you go.) The Military Commissions Act also requires the President to abide by the Geneva Conventions -- BUT it gives the President complete authority to decide whether or not the Conventions apply. (Source: Salon Magazine.)

McCain's spirit of independence: he's voted with the Republican party line 95% of the time.

McCain's vision to bring security and peace: he wants to continue the occupation of Iraq for 100 years, even though most of the Iraqi people want us to leave.

As Gandhi said, "Just as a man would not cherish living in a body other than his own, so do nations not like to live under other nations, however noble and great the latter may be."

We supposedly invaded Iraq to overthrow a dictator and establish democracy. The only way to uphold American values is to listen to what the Iraqi people want and bring our troops home. We need our soldiers here to protect our nation from terrorists -- not to occupy another country whose people don't want us there.

Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut

"My Democratic friends know all about John's record of independence and accomplishment. Maybe that's why some of them are spending so much time and so much money trying to convince voters that John McCain is someone else. I'm here, as a Democrat myself, to tell you: Don't be fooled. God only made one John McCain, and he is his own man."

There are so many misstatements in that paragraph that I scarcely know where to begin.

Senator Lieberman, John McCain's record speaks for itself. John McCain isn't George W. Bush or Dick Cheney, but by his own admission he has voted with them far more than he opposed them. McCain said:

"The fact is that I have agreed with President Bush far more than I have disagreed. And on the transcendent issues, the most important issues of our day, I have been totally in agreement and support of President Bush... My support of President Bush has been active and very impassioned on issues that are important to the American people. And I'm particularly talking about the war on terror, the war in Iraq, national security... fiscal discipline..." (Source: YouTube.)

Senator, you're not a Democrat. You left the Democratic party after you lost the 2006 primary to an anti-war challenger. You then ran for re-election as an independent, and you won -- with the support of many Republicans. (Source: Joe Lieberman's Web Page.)

Your colleague, Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont, left the Republican Party in 2001. Why? Among other things, the Republicans passed education laws but refused to provide enough funding for them to be effective.

Jeffords reasoned that the Republican party, under the leadership of Bush and Cheney, had moved so far to the extreme right wing that he was unable to support it.

A few months after Jeffords' departure, Bush began illegally wiretapping Americans' phone calls without search warrants. Bush would soon declare that anyone he decided was an "enemy combatant" could be imprisoned forever, without proof, charge, counsel, trial, judge, or jury.

And then, in 2003, Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein from giving weapons he didn't have to terrorists who wanted to kill him.

John McCain didn't object to any of this. Senator Lieberman thought the war in Iraq was such a good idea that he left the Democratic Party.

I never dreamed that the man I voted for in March 2000 would roll over and play dead as his President broke the law and tore up our Constitution.

I know McCain isn't Bush. But, because McCain did nothing when Bush declared himself above the law, I have every reason to believe McCain will also use the powers of the Presidency to commit crimes -- just as Bush and Cheney have.

"If John McCain was just another go-along partisan politician, he never would have taken on corrupt Republican lobbyists, or big corporations that were cheating the American people, or powerful colleagues in Congress who were wasting taxpayer money. But he did!"

He did? Are you sure? John McCain's campaign staff is full of lobbyists. (Source: ABC News.)

"When others wanted to retreat in defeat from the field of battle, when Barack Obama was voting to cut off funding for our troops on the ground, John McCain had the courage to stand against the tide of public opinion and support the surge..."

That isn't true. Barack Obama never voted to cut off funding for troops on the ground. Obama did vote for the Reid-Feingold resolutions that would have set timetables for bringing the troops home, but the White House and John McCain opposed them -- even though the Iraqi parliament had asked for them and a majority of Americans supported them. Thanks in part to John McCain, the timetable resolutions didn't make it through Congress.

As far as the surge goes, Bush decided to send more troops to Iraq even after the Iraq Study Group -- chaired by Bush's long-time friend, former Secretary of State Jim Baker -- recommended against it.

Baker's report read:

"Sustained increases in U.S. troop levels would not solve the fundamental cause of violence in Iraq, which is the absence of national reconciliation... Meanwhile, America's military capacity is stretched thin: we do not have the troops or equipment to make a substantial, sustained increase in our troop presence. Increased deployments to Iraq would also necessarily hamper our ability to provide adequate resources for our efforts in Afghanistan or respond to crises around the world."

Lieberman continues:

"But you can always count on him [McCain] to be straight with you about where he stands, and to stand for what he thinks is right regardless of politics."

What I've seen is the McCain Amendment, which clarified American anti-torture laws after Bush and Cheney's Torture Memos re-interpreted the law. (For instance, according to The Nation Magazine, the Geneva Conventions were declared "quaint" and "obsolete." The "drowning torture" technique was renamed "waterboarding" so it would no longer be considered "torture.") After Bush threatened to veto the McCain Amendment, McCain pushed it through Congress anyway. Bush then signed it -- then wrote in a signing statement that he wouldn't enforce it. But McCain thought he had won, so he let the matter drop -- even when Bush challenged the law in court.

McCain subsequently voted for Alberto Gonzales -- one of the men who had conspired to commit torture -- to be in charge of preventing torture.

Sorry, Senator Lieberman. John McCain did not stand up for American values and personal dignity when our nation desperately needed a Republican who would. He wrote an anti-torture law, but refused to challenge the legitimacy of the President who refused to enforce it. The law that bears John McCain's name was a symbolic gesture that accomplished nothing.

"As President, you can count on John McCain to be a restless reformer, who will clean up Washington and get our government working again for you!"

Why should I believe that? McCain has had eight years to defend the Constitution as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney tore it to pieces. Instead of upholding the law, McCain has voted the party line, again and again. He had the chance to clean up Washington, and did nothing.

"This year, when you vote for President, vote for the person you believe is best for the country, not for the party you happen to belong to."

I intend to. Both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are corrupt. But I'm going to vote for Barack Obama, because the Democrats are the lesser evil.

George W. Bush, former head of Arbusto Energy

"I know what it takes to be President. In these past eight years, I've sat at the Resolute desk and reviewed the daily intelligence briefings, the threat assessments, and reports from our commanders on the front lines. I've stood in the ruins of buildings knocked down by killers, and promised the survivors I would never let them down. I know the hard choices that fall solely to a President. John McCain's life has prepared him to make those choices. He is ready to lead this nation."

Ah, the irony.

George W. Bush took office in January, 2001. When he didn't like the intelligence briefings and the threat assessments he was handed -- warnings that a little-known terrorist organization called al-Qaeda was planning a major attack -- he ignored them. (Source: TruthOut.)

After the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, Bush insisted that Iraq must have been involved -- so he sent the intelligence analysts back again and again to look over the same evidence to find proof of Iraq's involvement. (Source: The Washington Post.)

"I... promised the survivors I would never let them down."

Right, and you promised to capture Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive." (Source: USA Today.)

"He [McCain] is ready to lead this nation."

You didn't think so in 2000, when your presidential campaign was in danger of losing to John McCain. So, in South Carolina, your campaign hired telemarketers to make push polls.

What are push polls? Here's an example. A pro-Bush telemarketer makes a phone call to a registered Republican.

"Hello?" says the Republican.

"Hello, I'm taking a poll," says the pro-Bush telemarketer. "Who do you think you'll vote for in the primary?"

"John McCain," says the Republican.

"What if I told you that John McCain is mentally imbalanced from the time he was tortured as a prisoner of war?" the pro-Bush telemarketer asks. "Or that he had an illegitimate daughter by a black prostitute?"

These push polls were the brain child of Bush's best friend, Karl Rove.

John McCain actually does have an adopted daughter with dark skin. She was born in Bangladesh, a country next to India.

McCain was far more ready to lead this nation in 2000 than Bush was -- so Bush used dirty tricks to spread slander, lies, and racist smears. (Source: The Nation.)

Despite this abhorrent treatment, McCain endorsed Bush's presidential bid and became Bush's greatest supporter.

Mr. Bush, you're happy to endorse Senator McCain now. Eight years ago, you didn't hesitate to use smears and dirty tricks to derail his candidacy -- back when he was in your way.

"We've seen John McCain's commitment to principle in our Nation's Capital."

Right, because he's done everything you asked and done everything you wanted -- except agree with you that you have the authority to torture prisoners.

But you found a way to do it anyway. When you signed the McCain Amendment that should have forced you to stop torturing, you simply announced that you wouldn't abide by it. John McCain, the loyal Republican, looked the other way.

"As President, he will stand up to the high tax crowd in Congress, and make the tax relief permanent."

Mr. Bush, you've been President for eight years, and you still have no idea how our government works. The President can neither raise nor lower taxes. Only Congress can do that.

"He will invest in the energy technologies of tomorrow -- and lift the ban on drilling for America's offshore oil today."

He will? His record speaks otherwise. In the last eight years, McCain has followed Bush's lead and voted against new energy technologies. (Source: The Huffington Post.)

Offshore drilling? As Congressman Ed Markey wrote in the New York Times,

"President Bush [has asked] Congress to end the federal ban on offshore oil and gas drilling along much of America's continental shelf.

"This is worse than a dumb idea. It is cruelly misleading. It will make only a modest difference, at best, to prices at the pump, and even then the benefits will be years away. It greatly exaggerates America's leverage over world oil prices... It diverts the public from the tough decisions that need to be made about conservation.

"...A lot of people have been... genuinely hurt by $4-a-gallon gas. But their suffering will not be relieved by drilling in restricted areas off the coasts of New Jersey or Virginia or California. The Energy Information Administration says that even if both coasts were opened, prices would not begin to drop until 2030. The only real beneficiaries will be the oil companies that are trying to lock up every last acre of public land before [Bush and] Cheney exit the political stage.

"A lesser fiction, perpetrated by the oil companies... is that huge deposits of oil and gas on federal land have been closed off and industry has had one hand tied behind its back by environmentalists, Democrats and the offshore protections in place for 25 years.

"The numbers suggest otherwise. Of the 36 billion barrels of oil believed to lie on federal land, mainly in the Rocky Mountain West and Alaska, almost two-thirds are accessible or will be after various land-use and environmental reviews. And of the 89 billion barrels of recoverable oil believed to lie offshore, the federal Mineral Management Service says fourth-fifths is open to industry, mostly in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaskan waters.

"Clearly, the oil companies are not starved for resources. Further, they [aren't] doing as much as they could with the land to which they've already laid claim. Separate studies by the House Committee on Natural Resources and the Wilderness Society, a conservation group, show that [68 million] acres of federal land being leased by the oil companies onshore and off are not being used to produce energy."

George W. Bush continues:

"No matter what the issue, this man is honest and speaks straight from the heart."

I'm more concerned with McCain's comprehension than his honesty. In the last few months, McCain has condemned Russian pressure on Czechoslovakia -- a country that hasn't existed since 1991. (Source: Wikipedia.)

He also talked about the Iraq-Pakistan border. They don't have a common border.

McCain even said Iran's government was training al-Qaeda in Iraq, until Joe Lieberman (who was standing next to him at the time) corrected him.

There is no way the Iranians would ever train al-Qaeda. The Iranians are Shiite Muslim extremists. Al-Qaeda are Wahabi Muslim extremists. Wahabism is a radical branch of Sunni Islam. As we've seen from the civil war in Iraq, Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims hate each other. Neither branch considers the other to be true Muslims. The idea of Shiite Iran supporting Wahabi al-Qaeda is absurd -- they're too busy shooting at each other.

McCain couldn't even remember how many houses he owns. (It's seven.)

Anyway, what would George W. Bush know about being honest? He claimed Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Africa, even though he had been advised this wasn't true. Bush even claimed that no one thought that hurricane Katrina would destroy New Orleans' levees, even though he'd been warned of that four days earlier.

"The Democrats had taken control of Congress and were threatening to cut off funds for our troops."

That isn't true. No Democrat ever suggested we abandon our troops in Iraq. Instead, Senators Reid and Feingold suggested that we should have a timetable for withdrawing from Iraq -- because that's what the American people were demanding, and that's what the Iraqi parliament asked for. (Source: CBS News.) Unfortunately, the Congressional Democratic leadership sided with the Republicans, and instead of trying to bring our troops home, they gave Bush and Cheney all the funding they needed to continue the occupation through 2009.

"In the face of calls for retreat, I ordered a surge of forces into Iraq."

Calls for retreat? Interesting. Your good friend, Jim Baker, chaired the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.

The panel's recommendations read:

"Sustained increases in U.S. troop levels would not solve the fundamental cause of violence in Iraq, which is the absence of national reconciliation... Meanwhile, America's military capacity is stretched thin: we do not have the troops or equipment to make a substantial, sustained increase in our troop presence. Increased deployments to Iraq would also necessarily hamper our ability to provide adequate resources for our efforts in Afghanistan or respond to crises around the world."

In response, you said:

"We benefited from the thoughtful recommendations of the Iraq Study Group... So I've committed more than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq." (Source: The White House.)

Sorry, Mr. Bush -- no one has advocated a "retreat" from Iraq. Instead, most Americans have realized that Iraq was not a threat, and have noticed that Saddam Hussein has been executed. Our troops have accomplished their mission, and it is time for them to come home. It's not in America's interest to continue occupying a country where most of the population wants us to leave. But you're doing the same thing you've been doing ever since you decided to invade Iraq. Anyone who has the nerve to counter your propaganda with the facts is labeled unpatriotic, a defeatist, or a traitor.

"He told them he would rather lose an election than see his country lose a war. That is the kind of courage and vision we need in our next Commander-in-Chief."

Well, I hope so.

In 2001, we were attacked by al-Qaeda terrorists operating out of Afghanistan. They were close allies with the Wahabist warlords then ruling Afghanistan, the Taliban.

With American help, the so-called Northern Alliance overthrew the Taliban in the next few months.

In 2003, George W. Bush claimed Saddam Hussein was "an ally of al-Qaeda," which was clearly untrue: al-Qaeda was arming anti-Saddam rebels. Bush also claimed that Iraq had active nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs, and was about to give these weapons to al-Qaeda. (Source: The White House.) He made these claims even though he'd been repeatedly warned that the intelligence was suspect and unreliable. (Source: The New York Times.)

The experts warned that, if America invaded, Iraq might well collapse into a civil war. These warnings included a report from the Brookings Institute; Robert Fisk, a reporter for the leading British newspaper, the Independent; an association of British doctors; and the CIA. Other warnings came from Senators Robert Byrd and Joe Biden. (Source: ThinkProgress.org.)

Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq anyway, and -- despite Bush's insistence that success was just around the corner -- a civil war resulted.

While our troops have been fighting in Iraq, the Taliban has reconquered half of Afghanistan.

So: instead of finishing the fight with al-Qaeda, Bush decided to attack another country that had nothing to do with international terrorism. John McCain is on record saying he'd like to continue the occupation of Iraq for 100 years. He is also on record saying that we should go to war with Iran.

We're already fighting two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Iran is larger than both those countries put together. We have the best armed forces in the world, but they can't fight three wars at the same time. What we need is a president like Barack Obama -- a president who wants to defeat Iran with aggressive diplomacy instead of brute force. Bush's use of brute force in Iraq sent over 4,000 American troops to their deaths in a war with a country that had not attacked us and posed no threat. (Source: Iraq Coalition Casualties.) 30,000 American troops have come back wounded or missing limbs. According to the United Nations, over three million Iraqis have been killed, wounded, or forced to flee their homes. (Source: Wikipedia.)

My friends, the central issue of this election is what to do about Iran.

As far as evil countries go, Iran is about as bad as you can get. Barack Obama wants to contain Iran using sanctions and aggressive diplomacy. John McCain wants go to war with Iran, even though our armed forces are already stretched to their limit in Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm a patriot, but I know even the best military in the world cannot do the impossible. We simply do not have the resources to go to war with Iran at this time.

These are difficult words to write. I used to admire John McCain, and once voted for him. But our entire military has been committed to the war in Iraq, and while they've been there, the Taliban has reconquered half of Afghanistan.

And now John McCain wants to go to war with Iran, a country three times bigger than Iraq! Attacking Iran while occupying Iraq and fighting the Taliban would be the greatest military blunder in American history. Going to war with Iran would triple the price of oil (Source: the BBC) and strengthen al-Qaeda. (Source: the Oxford Research Group.) Imagine gas that costs $12 per gallon!

I'm sorry to say that John McCain is dead wrong. Iran must be contained -- with sanctions and diplomacy, not war.

"My fellow citizens, we live in a dangerous world. And we need a President who understands the lessons of September the 11th, 2001: that to protect America, we must stay on the offense, stop attacks before they happen, and not wait to be hit again. The man we need is John McCain."

The problem here is hubris. It has never occurred to George W. Bush that brute force isn't the only option. We can stop Iranian aggression with allies, sanctions and diplomacy. We can stop Iranian aggression without going to war. We have defeated Iranian aggression without war ever since the days of President Reagan. Reagan's strategy works.

And since I'm at it, I might as well point out that Iraq never posed any kind of threat to us. They had no weapons of mass destruction and were not allied with al-Qaeda. We need a President who understands the lessons of the Iraq war, the same lessons as we learned in Vietnam. We must only go to war as a last resort. We must only use pre-emptive strikes against nations that pose a threat. We must look realistically at the facts, not pick and choose which intelligence to believe. We must not ignore intelligence just because we don't want to hear it. We must only send our troops to war with a realistic plan to win the peace.

We need a competent President who will look at the facts before making decisions. We need an intelligent President who opposed the invasion of Iraq before it began. We need a President who understood what ten million anti-war protesters around the globe also understood, that Iraq did not pose a threat to the United States. We need Barack Obama.

Back in 2002, I knew that Bush was lying about Saddam Hussein being an ally of Osama Bin Laden, and I did everything I could to prevent the war in Iraq from taking place.

I'm an ordinary guy, and my efforts did not amount to much. I marched in anti-war protests. I wrote to my Senators and Congressmen. I even wrote to George W. Bush -- but lo and behold, Bush didn't care about the facts, and he certainly doesn't care about public opinion. In 2004, I wanted a candidate like Governor Dean or Congressman Kucinich who was at least as smart as I was. Instead, we got Senator John Kerry.

John Kerry is a good man, but it takes a special kind of politician to run against the worst president in American history and lose.

Senator Obama wasn't my first choice for the Democratic nominee, but he was one of the three Democratic candidates who had the courage to say that attacking Iraq would do more harm than good. As such, I can honestly support him, even though I disagree with him on some issues. (In 2004, I supported John Kerry, even though he was wrong to vote for the Iraq war in the first place. My reasoning was that Bush and Cheney had to be stopped before any more American troops died because of their lies. Obama is actually a stronger candidate than Kerry was.)

This year, I would have preferred a Richardson-Kucinich ticket, but I'm happy to support the Obama-Biden ticket. Obama wants to bring our troops home from Iraq responsibly, and contain Iran with diplomacy. McCain wants to continue occupying Iraq for a hundred years, and start a war with Iran. It apparently hasn't occurred to McCain that we can't invade Iran while our troops are occupying Iraq.

I'm sorry, Mr. Bush, and I'm sorry, Mr. McCain. It wasn't patriotic to send 4,000 of our troops to their deaths in Iraq under false pretenses. It's not patriotic to go to war with Iran when our objectives can be achieved without firing a shot. And it's certainly not patriotic to ask our troops to fight three wars when there's a better way.

"America will have a strong and principled Vice President in the Governor of the great state of Alaska, Sarah Palin."

Governor Palin has demonstrated one of the strongest principles of the Bush Administration: hypocrisy.

As commentator Ted Anthony wrote for the Associated Press:

"For two days, the chorus from Republicans on TV news and in the halls of the convention has been resounding: Back off and let the Palin family be. Yet Wednesday found the following scenes unfolding:

"Sarah Palin's pregnant, unmarried 17-year-old daughter and probable future son-in-law stood in a nationally televised, politically packaged airport receiving line to meet and greet the Republican candidate for president...

"Bristol Palin and her 18-year-old boyfriend, Levi Johnston, sat and held hands as they watched the Alaska governor deliver an acceptance speech that, in its opening minutes, focused heavily on her family and children. Later, the family - including Johnston - ascended the stage, basked in an extended ovation and waved.

"Huh? The Republican message about the Palin offspring comes across as contradictory: Hey, media, leave those kids alone - so we can use them as we see fit...

"If you doubt this scenario, consider this: On Wednesday morning, a teenage boy from Alaska stood in a receiving line on an airport tarmac, being glad-handed by the potential next president of the United States - because he got his girlfriend pregnant. TV cameras were lined up in advance. The mind boggles.

"Either the children are out of bounds, and you don't put them in the photo ops, or you don't complain when somebody wants to talk about them. You can't have it both ways," said John Matviko, a professor at West Liberty State College in West Virginia and editor of "The American President in Popular Culture."

"Right now, it looks like they're being used by the campaign more than the media are using them," [Matviko] said.

"Candidates open themselves to charges of hypocrisy if they demand the ability to boast but reject the attention that can ensue when the road gets rougher."

The problem here is that McCain and Palin -- along with Bush, Cheney, and the other leaders of the Republican party -- believe in abstinence-only sex education. (Source: US News and World Report.)

In Congress, McCain has voted against programs to reduce teen pregnancy. Palin has written, "The explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support." (Source: the Associated Press.)

Let me get this straight. I thought the Republicans were the party of traditional family values. Republicans are vocal that teenagers are not supposed to have sex -- much less start having babies -- before they get married.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, John McCain himself has given speeches condemning promiscuity. The Republican Party platform reads:

"We renew our call for replacing 'family planning' programs for teens with increased funding for abstinence education, which teaches abstinence until marriage as the responsible and expected standard of behavior."

That's on page 45. The Republican platform goes on to say:

"Republicans recognize the importance of having in the home a father and a mother who are married. The two-parent family still provides the best environment of stability, discipline, responsibility, and character. Children in homes without fathers are more likely to commit a crime, drop out of school, become violent, become teen parents, use illegal drugs, become mired in poverty, or have emotional or behavioral problems."

That's on page 53.

What's going on here? If promiscuity is acceptable in Governor Palin's family, why is it wrong for everyone else? Is that why the Republicans don't want us to talk about Palin's family?

Can you imagine what would have happened to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign if Chelsea Clinton were unmarried and pregnant? Can you imagine what the Republicans would have said then?

My sincerest apologies to Miss Clinton and her family for even suggesting such a thing might be possible, but I hope they'd agree that the Republicans' double standard is blatantly unfair.

"I'm optimistic because I have faith in freedom's power to lift up all of God's children, and lead this world to a future of peace."

Longshanks desires peace?

Flippancy aside, I pray that God will lead us to peace. For his part, Bush led us to war with Iraq -- a war that there was no need to fight, and that has done terrible damage to our national security. What kind of hypocrisy is this?

John McCain wants to go to war with Iran. War with Iran would triple the price of oil and strengthen al-Qaeda. If you want a future of peace, don't vote for him.

Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani of New York

"Barack Obama has never led anything. Nothing. Nada."

Obama is one of 100 lawmakers who sit in the United States Senate. There are only two Senators who are leaders: the leader of the Senate Democrats, Harry Reid, and the leader of the Senate Republicans, Mitch McConnell.

Giuliani argues that Obama is not a leader because he is not Harry Reid. By that logic, John McCain is not a leader because he is not Mitch McConnell.

"Governor Palin represents a new generation. She's already one of the most successful governors in America - and the most popular. And she already has more executive experience than the entire Democratic ticket."

Riiiiiiight. Ms. Palin has been Governor of Alaska for just under two years. Barack Obama has been in the Senate for just under four years. Obama's running-mate, Joe Biden, has been in the Senate for thirty-five years. Given that McCain's only been a Senator for twenty-one years, Biden actually has more experience than McCain, Obama and Palin put together.

McCain voted to attack Iraq based on false pretenses. Obviously, great experience does not equal good judgment.

"We are still the party that is willing to fight for freedom at home and around the world. We are the party that wants to expand individual freedom and economic freedom... because we believe that the secret of America's success is not central government, it is self-government."

The Republican fight for freedom? Freedom from illegal government surveillance, for instance? What about freedom of assembly? John Ashcroft's FBI has been infiltrating peaceful anti-war protests.

How about freedom of the press? Earlier this week, award-winning reporter Amy Goodman and two producers were arrested outside the Republican convention while they were trying to cover anti-war protests. (Source: Democracy Now. If you really want to get your blood boiling, watch the video.)

What happens to freedom when the government can torture suspects into confessing? (Source: the New York Times.)

What about the right to legal counsel? The right to trial?

Republicans believe in self-government? If that were true, they'd respect the wishes of the Iraqi people who overwhelmingly want us to leave. Instead, Mayor Giuliani urges us to vote for a man who wants to occupy Iraq for a hundred years. Staying in Iraq violates every principle of self-government. Mayor Giuliani, make up your mind. Either you believe in self-government or you don't. You can't have it both ways.

"...No one can look at John McCain and say that he is not ready to be Commander in Chief."

I don't question McCain's experience. I question his politics. McCain is running on the ludicrous premise that Bush's disastrous occupation in Iraq was a good idea -- not (as retired General William Odom, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and former President-Elect Al Gore have said) the worst foreign policy mistake in American history. Moreover, we are also fighting a war in Afghanistan -- and McCain wants to go to war with Iran as well!

Attacking Iran when we're already occupying Iraq and fighting in Afghanistan would be a disaster so enormous it would make the war in Iraq look insignificant.

"During their convention, the Democrats rarely mentioned the attacks of September 11."

That's not true, and I'll cite some examples a little later in this essay.

Joe Biden has pointed out that Giuliani talks about nothing but 9/11.

"If Barack Obama had been President, there would have been no troop surge and our troops would have been withdrawn in defeat."

Withdrawing our troops isn't defeat. It isn't surrender. It's democracy.

Our troops have accomplished their mission: they overthrew Saddam's regime, and he has been executed. The new Iraqi prime minister, the new Iraqi parliament, and most of the Iraqi people want us to leave. 70% of the American people agree with this.

Giuliani and McCain want us to defy the Iraqi people and stay forever. Mr. Mayor, do you or do you not believe in democracy?

"When Russia rolled over Georgia, John McCain knew exactly how to respond. Having been to that part of the world many times and having developed a clear worldview over many years, John knew where he stood. Within hours, he established a very strong, informed position that let the world know exactly how he'll respond as President. At exactly the right time, John McCain said, 'We're all Georgians.'"

And Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili replied, "Well, very nice, you know, very cheering for us to hear that, but OK, it's time to pass from this. From words to deeds." (Source: CNN)

There is no easy answer about how the United States should deal with the Russian-Georgian conflict. (According to the Christian Science Monitor, the new President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, has been mediating peace talks.) However, there's one thing I am sure of. We are already fighting wars in Iraq AND Afghanistan. Mayor Giuliani, we can't go to war with Russia too!

Presidents Reagan, Bush (senior), and Clinton brought an end to the Cold War without firing a shot. But Giuliani wants to attack Russia. How many wars will it take before these people are satisfied? How many more American soldiers must die because of an arrogant foreign policy? The President is supposed to support our troops, not volunteer other people's sons and daughters to fight in reckless and unnecessary wars.

"Here's some free advice: Sen. Obama, next time just call John McCain."

Maybe he will.

In a 2007 speech, Obama said:

"I'll turn the page on the imperial presidency that treats national security as a partisan issue - not an American issue. I will call for a standing, bipartisan Consultative Group of congressional leaders on national security. I will meet with this Consultative Group every month, and consult with them before taking major military action. The buck will stop with me. But these discussions have to take place on a bipartisan basis, and support for these decisions will be stronger if they draw on bipartisan counsel. We're not going to secure this country unless we turn the page on the conventional thinking that says politics is just about beating the other side." (Source: Council on Foreign Relations.)

Obama has already announced his intention to consult Republican leaders before making national security decisions, as well he should.

You won't see any such pledge from Republicans. In 2000, George W. Bush was awarded the Presidency after the closest election in American history. Instead of honoring the bipartisanship he extolled in the campaign, he pursued policies beholden to the reactionary wing of the Republican party. This was far to the right of the policies Senator McCain championed at the time, though McCain later changed some of his positions to support Bush. Later on in this essay, you'll read Mitt Romney say that we must "throw out the big government liberals."

Since he came to power, George W. Bush has instituted policies from the extreme right wing of the Republican party, and Congress has generally been subservient. But this isn't enough for Romney. He doesn't want anyone who disagrees with him to even have a voice in government. Democracy, anyone?

Professor Paul Krugman is a Nobel prize-winning economist. He wrote: "A leader who has the political power to pretend that he's infallible, and uses that power to avoid ever admitting mistakes, eventually makes mistakes so large that they can't be covered up." (Source: The New York Times.)

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have attacked individual freedom, and the overwhelming majority of Republican officials have cheered them on. As Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." If the government can spy on any American without a search warrant, we're not free. If the government can arrest anyone, anywhere, and imprison them forever, without ever charging them with a crime, we're not free. If a suspect is never allowed a lawyer, we're not free. If a suspect can be tortured into making a false confession, and those "confessions" are admissible at trial, we're not free.

The party of Bush and Cheney -- the party of Giuliani and McCain -- has no interest in fighting for anyone's freedom. Cheney's goal for the last eight years has to make government operate in secret, with no accountability to the people who elected it. (Source: CBS News.) If McCain had a problem with this, he wouldn't want Cheney in his administration. (Source: The Atlantic.) Instead, McCain has been Bush and Cheney's top cheerleader.

"We are the party that believes unapologetically in America's essential greatness - that we are a shining city on the hill, a beacon of freedom that inspires people everywhere to reach for a better world."

As William Faulkner said: "We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it." Giuliani's party -- the party of Bush, Cheney and McCain -- neither advocates nor champions freedom.

The Democrats aren't much better, but there are Democrats who tried to stop Bush from invading Iraq. There are Democrats who tried to stop the so-called PATRIOT Act and the Military Commissions Act. Barack Obama is one of those Democrats, and I'm going to vote for him.

Former Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas

"Maybe the most dangerous threat of an Obama presidency is that he would continue to give madmen the benefit of the doubt. If he's wrong just once, we will pay a heavy price."

If wanting to use diplomacy and sanctions to contain Iran is "to give madmen the benefit of the doubt," then Ronald Reagan was wrong, George Bush, senior, was wrong, and Bill Clinton was wrong.

Huckabee agrees with George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and John McCain that brute force is always the best solution. Look how well brute force has worked for us in Iraq! More than 4,000 families are paying the heaviest price because Bush decided the U.N. weapons inspectors were wrong.

So let me get this straight. Anyone who thinks starting a war with Iran would be a bad idea wants to "give madmen the benefit of the doubt." So, anyone who thinks we can contain Iran without going to war -- anyone who agrees with Ronald Reagan -- is wrong.

Why is going to war with Iran a bad idea? Well, for one thing, it's three times larger than Iraq. Second, our troops are already fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Third, our military is exhausted. (Source: The Guardian.) Fourth, don't we owe it to our soldiers to at least try to find a diplomatic solution before asking them to put their lives on the line? Fifth, the war with Iraq increased our gas prices from $1.50/gallon to $4/gallon. Going to war with Iran would drive prices up to $12/gallon. (Source: the BBC.)

According to Huckabee, we should use our exhausted military to start a new war when we're already fighting two other wars. Consequently, anyone who thinks we should continue to use the Reagan-Bush-Clinton policy of containing Iran with diplomacy and sanctions is wrong.

George Orwell once wrote a novel titled 1984. In it, the free world had been conquered by a totalitarian dictatorship. The fictitious ruling party of Orwell's story had a slogan: "War is Peace." Governor Huckabee's slogan could be "Sanity is Insanity."

Abel Maldonado

"You've heard from Senator Obama himself all the massive amounts of new spending he plans. To get the money, he says he will tax the rich. There aren't that many rich! Watch out, America, when someone says he's going to tax the rich, you can always bet the middle class will get hit."

You'd be surprised. Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman is a regular contributor to the New York Times. He wrote:

"While Bush's tax cuts shaved only a few hundred dollars off the tax bills of most Americans, they saved the richest one percent more than $44,000 on average. In fact, once all of Bush's tax cuts take effect, it is estimated that those with incomes of more than $200,000 a year -- the richest five percent of the population -- will pocket almost half of the money. Those who make less than $75,000 a year -- eighty percent of America -- will receive barely a quarter of the cuts...

"What is happening under Bush is something entirely unprecedented: For the first time in our history, so much growth is being siphoned off to a small, wealthy minority that most Americans are failing to gain ground even during a time of economic growth.

"In 1969, General Motors was the country's [second] largest corporation... GM paid its chief executive, James M. Roche, a salary of $795,000 -- the equivalent of $4.2 million today, adjusting for inflation. At the time, that was considered very high. But nobody denied that ordinary GM workers were paid pretty well. The average paycheck for production workers in the auto industry was almost $8,000 -- more than $45,000 today. GM workers... were considered solidly in the middle class.

"Today, Wal-Mart is America's largest corporation, with 1.3 million employees. H. Lee Scott, its chairman, is paid almost $23 million -- more than five times Roche's inflation-adjusted salary. Yet Scott's compensation excites relatively little comment, since it's not exceptional for the CEO of a large corporation these days. The wages paid to Wal-Mart's workers, on the other hand, do attract attention, because they are low even by current standards. On average, Wal-Mart's non-supervisory employees are paid $18,000 a year, far less than half what GM workers were paid thirty-five years ago, adjusted for inflation." (Source: Rolling Stone.)

So, yes, there aren't that many rich, compared to the rest of us -- but that's not the issue. The issue is that the wealthiest one percent of the nation is taking in 23% of all income generated in America. The last time this was the case was 1928. (Source: The San Francisco Chronicle.)

The government should not be in the business of playing Robin Hood and redistributing wealth. However, if we have to pay taxes, our taxation system should be as fair as possible for everyone. But Bush, Cheney, and the Republican Congress had a different idea. Under the current tax laws, the more money you make, the less taxes you pay. That's not just unfair -- it's ridiculous.

Renee Amoore

"If you are sick of paying high prices at the pump and want us to be able to drill here at home instead of being at the mercy of foreign suppliers, then you are a McCain voter."

The high prices at the pump are a result of having two former oil executives in the White House. Though Bush and Cheney have given lip service to reducing dependence on foreign oil, they've done nothing about it -- even though they've had a Congress that gladly gave them everything they asked for. John McCain has been one of their strongest supporters.

"If you want common sense energy policies that increase use of alternative energy without increasing food prices, then you are a McCain voter."

You are? In that case, John McCain isn't a McCain voter! He has strongly opposed alternative energy sources.

Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota

"In this election and in Washington we face leaders of the Democrat party who care so much about working families that they almost do something, but don't."

That's not true. When the Democrats took control of Congress in 2006, they raised the minimum wage for the first time in a decade.

Regarding leaders who almost did something: in the Senate, we had a courageous leader who almost stopped George W. Bush when he insisted he had the authority to break the law and order torture.

John McCain wrote a new law against torture, and when Bush threatened to veto that law, John McCain pushed it through the Senate with a veto-proof margin. Bush then signed it -- but wrote his intention to break the new law whenever he wanted.

That was good enough for John McCain. His law against torture almost worked.

"In this presidential election, we have the chance to elect a man who does not just talk about problems and how much he cares, but who will actually do something to solve them."

Senator Coleman, the candidate you're talking about is not John McCain. He really wanted to stop torture -- but he entrusted the task of preventing torture to the very people who had conspired to commit torture. That's like putting Al Capone in charge of enforcing prohibition.

"Barack Obama ... thinks he can grow the economy by raising taxes, which is like using Roundup Ready to grow your garden."

That isn't true. What Obama actually said was:

"Unlike John McCain, I will stop giving tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America. I will eliminate capital gains taxes for the small businesses and the start-ups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow. I will cut taxes - cut taxes - for 95% of all working families, because in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle-class." (Source: the Democratic Convention Website.)

As I noted above, Obama simply plans to let Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy expire in 2010, which is what Congress always intended. This means those making over $250,000 per year will see their taxes return to the levels they paid under the Clinton administration -- a period where everyone's incomes went up.

Obama does propose other changes to the tax code, and CNN contrasted his plan with McCain's in this video. In essence:

1. If you're making between $38,000/year and $66,000/year, McCain's tax plan will save you about $300 on your taxes. Obama's plan will save you $1000.
2. If you're making between $66,000/year and $112,000/year, McCain will save you $1000, and Obama will save you $1200.
3. If you make between $112,000/year and $161,000/year, McCain's plan starts getting better for you. You'd save $2600. Obama only saves you $2200. Note that, under both candidates, you've still seen your taxes go down.
4. If you're making over $2.9 million dollars per year, John McCain will lower your taxes by $270,000. Obama will indeed raise your taxes by $700,000. Still, if you're making almost three million dollars a year, you can afford it! Under Obama, millionaires would still be paying less in taxes than they did under Reagan.

Obama's complete economic plan is available on his website. The plan does include other details: for instance, senior citizens who make less than $50,000/year won't have to pay income taxes any more. (Retirement, here I come!)

Of course, the crux of the matter is that the President doesn't actually have any control over the tax laws. Those are all controlled by Congress. Just because Obama proposes these things, there's no guarantee that Congress will implement his proposals. In the last eight years, the Republican Congress, for the most part, gave Bush everything he asked for. In Clinton's first two years in office, the Democratic Congress didn't show him anything approaching that kind of loyalty -- which doubtlessly contributed to the Democrats being voted out of power in 1994.

The phenomenal economic success of the Clinton years came from the Democratic President working together with the Republican Congress to balance the budget. This increased everyone's wealth. Even the multimillionaires who were paying more taxes saw their incomes go up.

Then Bush came to power, and the Republican Congress gave him everything he asked for. They merrily reversed the tax reforms that had brought so much prosperity during the Clinton years. They instituted massive tax cuts for millionaires; the economy fell into recession and the deficits skyrocketed. Bush's first treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, protested this to the President, and Dick Cheney had him fired. (Source: The Price of Loyalty.)

The bottom line is: no matter who's President, it's Congress who decides who pays what in taxes. If you want the tax code changed, write your Congressman and your Senators!

Coleman continues:

"We need drilling and oil shale and nuclear and clean coal and more conservation and renewables now."

Senator Coleman says that Obama opposes these things, and he's dead wrong. What Obama actually said was:

"As President, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power. I'll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America. I'll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars. And I'll invest 150 billion dollars over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy - wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an investment that will lead to new industries and five million new jobs that pay well and can't ever be outsourced." (source: The Democratic Convention.)

Coleman continues:

"America needs to go all in and gain our independence from foreign oil."

Absolutely. From 2001 to 2006, the Republicans controlled the Presidency and the Congress. Senators Coleman and McCain enthusiastically supported the Bush Administration in all their policies. The result of those policies was to make us MORE dependent on foreign oil. (Source: Newswire.) You want us to give you four more years to dig us deeper into that hole? You've got to be kidding.

"The main thing is jobs. Barack Obama will tax them away and John McCain will build them here at home."

Wrong again. What Obama actually said was:

"Unlike John McCain, I will stop giving tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America. I will eliminate capital gains taxes for the small businesses and the start-ups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow." (Source: DNC.)

Carly Fiorina

This is the woman who destroyed Compaq and was fired by Hewlett-Packard's board of directors. (Source: Wikipedia.)

"I know John McCain... He will create a cap and trade system that will encourage the development of alternative energy sources. He will help advance clean coal technology and nuclear power."

What are you talking about? In the Senate, John McCain has consistently voted against all those things. (Source: Center for American Progress.)

"I know John McCain. He will demand that the federal government be transparent and accountable to the American people."

For the last eight years, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have done everything in their power to make the government opaque and unaccountable to the American people. Bush and Cheney fought tooth-and-nail to prevent the creation of the September 11th Commission. Cheney still will not disclose which oil industry lobbyists and executives he met with to craft his energy policy. (Source: NPR.) Bush and Cheney have done everything from re-classifying declassified material to making Presidential records top secret indefinitely.

John McCain was their enthusiastic supporter in the Senate, and I never heard him object to any of this. In fact, McCain wants Cheney in his administration. (Source: The Atlantic.) Either way, McCain could not possibly disapprove of Cheney's behavior. McCain has no intention of demanding a "transparent and accountable" government.

"He [McCain] will eliminate wasteful spending, veto bills laden with pork, and achieve a balanced budget by 2013."

John McCain wants to eliminate wasteful spending? The war in Iraq has cost $575 billion. Do you have any idea how much it would cost to go to war with Iran, a country three times larger than Iraq?

"Veto bills laden with pork?" If John McCain really believed in that, he would not have chosen Governor Palin to be our next Vice President. According to the Associated Press, Palin has asked Congress for more pork than any over governor.

John McCain wants to balance the budget? But he's voted for every budget George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have asked for -- budgets that shattered the record for the largest deficits of any government in human history several years in a row! (Source: NPR)

"John McCain will bring our troops home with victory and with honor."

What are you talking about? John McCain strongly opposes bringing our troops home. He is on record saying he wants the occupation of Iraq to go on for a hundred years!

Ms. Fiorina, did John McCain know about any of the promises you were going to make on his behalf? He doesn't stand for these things, and he hasn't voted for these things.

Do you really "know John McCain" as well as you think you do?

Michael Steele

"So, do you want to put your country first? Then let's change our tax code to confiscate less of our hard earned paychecks so more and more families may actually know what it's like to save for the future."

Good idea. Unfortunately, the tax codes proposed by the Bush Administration and passed by the Republican Congress -- that John McCain voted for -- actually cut taxes for the wealthiest one percent of Americans. A tax code "where the more you make, the less you pay" isn't fair to the other 99% of us. The rest of us only saw minor changes in our tax rates.

If Mr. Steele wants more families to save more of our hard earned paychecks, he should vote for Barack Obama.

Former Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts

"Liberals would replace opportunity with dependency... It's time for the party of big ideas, not the party of Big Brother!"

The phrase "Big Brother" comes from George Orwell's novel 1984. "Big Brother" is the leader of the totalitarian state that has taken over a third of the world -- a government inspired by the Soviet Union under Stalin. In the novel, the country is covered in posters that read "Big Brother is watching you!"

How have Bush and Cheney used the presidency? They ordered the National Security Agency to illegally wiretap Americans' phone calls without first getting search warrants. (Source: Wikipedia.) As Senator Russ Feingold pointed out, the President already had the legal authority to wiretap suspected terrorists' phone calls -- but chose to break the law anyway in order to spy on the rest of us.

The Republicans' so-called PATRIOT Act empowers the FBI to search people's library records. (Source: the New York Times.) While they were at it, John Ashcroft's FBI counter-terrorism department infiltrated peaceful anti-war protests. (Thanks again to the New York Times.)

In Orwell's novel, the totalitarian state tortures people. The first American leader to ban torture was George Washington -- but Bush and Cheney threw out two hundred years of American legal tradition, claiming that the President has the authority to break our laws against torture at his discretion. As I've noted above, John McCain championed a law that would prevent this -- and then turned a blind eye when Bush and Cheney proceeded to break that law as well.

There is a party of Big Brother in this nation, and it's not the liberals.

Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan would never have countenanced this. But under the leadership of Bush and Cheney, the Republican party has become the party of Big Brother -- and John McCain has been their most enthusiastic cheerleader.

"Is a Supreme Court liberal or conservative that awards Guantanamo terrorists with constitution rights? It's liberal!"

Those words sicken me.

One of the fundamental human liberties enshrined in our Constitution is the right of someone arrested to go to court and present his case that they got the wrong man.

According to the governor, anyone the President accuses of being a terrorist must be a terrorist -- so they should be thrown into Guantanamo Bay prison and stay there, forever. The President doesn't need proof. He doesn't need to provide the accused terrorist with a public defender. The accused terrorist doesn't get a trial, judge, or jury. The President is always right, so he alone has the ability to determine who is a terrorist and who isn't. The President alone has the authority to decide who should be in prison and who should be free.

But the President could never make a mistake, could he?

Consider the case of Khalid El-Masri. He's a German citizen who was arrested in Macedonia and flown to Afghanistan, where he was thrown in prison by the CIA. (You think conditions are bad in an American prison? America is the richest nation in the world. Now imagine prison conditions in one of the poorest countries in the world.) After he'd been beaten and brutalized for four months, the CIA realized they'd got the wrong man -- they'd wanted Khalid Al-Masri. Khalid El-Masri was taken from prison, thrown on a plane, and dumped on a road in rural Albania -- with no explanation. (Source: Wikipedia.)

So: what if Alberto Gonzales became President, and he accused Mitt Romney of being a terrorist? If anyone the President accuses of being a terrorist has no constitutional rights, then there would be nothing to stop Gonzales from kidnapping Romney and sending him to Guantanamo Bay -- where he would stay in prison, forever.

Governor Romney, the difference between us and Saddam Hussein is that Americans believe in due process for everyone. In our country, criminals and terrorists get fair trials, where their crimes are proved in public and they are fairly convicted.

"We need change all right - change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington -- throw out the big government liberals and elect John McCain!"

WHAT big government liberals? For the first six years of the twenty-first century, the government was run by reactionary Republicans -- George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in the White House, Trent Lott and Bill Frist in the Senate, and Tom DeLay in the House. You can't get more conservative than that. There were liberals serving in Congress at the time, but they had no power.

Maybe Romney means anyone who wants big government is a liberal! In that case, voters should throw out those "liberal" Republicans, including John McCain. During those six years of solid Republican control, the size of our government bureaucracy grew to its largest in American history. The Republicans used their power to create the biggest deficits we've ever had. And Romney says the problem is "liberals."

If the reactionary Republicans had any desire to fix these problems, they would take responsibility for them -- and they would have fixed them during their six years of dominance. Look what they did with absolute power when they had it! This state of affairs is exactly what they want -- an enormous, all-powerful government that intrudes on civil liberties and empowers mega-corporations at the expense of the rest of us.

"Opportunity rises when children are raised in homes and schools that are free from pornography, promiscuity and drugs..."

Homes and schools that are free from promiscuity? I thought the Republicans didn't want us to discuss Governor Palin's daughter.

"The right course is the one championed by Ronald Reagan 30 years ago, and by John McCain today. It is to rein in government spending..."

Governor Romney doesn't know much about history, does he? Ronald Reagan presided over a massive increase in government spending, although he wasn't the only one responsible for this. John McCain has spent the last eight years applauding as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the obedient Republican-controlled Congress racked up the largest deficits in history. The Senate didn't need a cheerleader. It needed a patriot.

"Did you hear any Democrats talk last week about the threat from radical, violent Jihad?"

Well, let's see.

Robert Wexler: "On Bush and McCain's watch, we have witnessed the growing influence of a belligerent Iran that has destabilized the Middle East and threatens our ally, Israel."

Bill Richardson: "With America fighting two wars, the 9/11 terrorists still at large, Iran pursuing nuclear weapons and Russia in Georgia, America needs a president who gets it right the first time."

Elijah Cummings: "Was the Bush Administration ready to fight the right war on terror in Afghanistan in pursuit of those who did our nation harm? No. Was the Bush Administration ready to prevent the civil war in Iraq resulting from a disastrous invasion? No... And now look at our world:.. The Taliban is rejuvenated in Afghanistan. Pakistan is unstable. Iran is a growing threat."

Jay Rockefeller: "Our next president will inherit a long list of challenges: war in Iraq and Afghanistan, global confrontation with al-Qaida, the re-emergence of a belligerent Russia, and the wholly unacceptable nuclear ambitions of Iran. And I ask you, shouldn't we have captured Osama bin Laden by now?"

Harry Reid: "Tasked with cutting off funding to terrorists, [Bush] slept on duty while oil shortages worsened, oil prices soared, and dollars by the ton were delivered to terrorists' banks in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela."

Evan Bayh: "Under George Bush, the Middle East has become more troubled. That hurts America and endangers our ally, Israel, which has been forced to confront a resurgent Hamas, an emboldened Hezbollah and an Iran determined to get nuclear weapons."

Judith McHale: "We will end the war in Iraq, defeat al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and focus on preventing the use and spread of weapons of mass destruction."

John Estrada: "Barack Obama had the judgment to know our forces should have been focused on Afghanistan where they could have been fighting terrorism at its core after 9/11."

Steny Hoyer: "Americans want a single-minded focus on terrorists' defeat and al-Qaida's total destruction, not decades of American troops in Baghdad."

Romney continues:

"John McCain hit the nail on the head: radical violent Islam is evil, and he will defeat it!"

No, he didn't. John McCain enthusiastically supported the invasion of Iraq, which William Odom, Madeleine Albright, and Al Gore have all called the worst foreign policy disaster in American history. Why? Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator, but he had nothing to do with radical Islam. Saddam Hussein claimed to be a Muslim, but he killed any Muslims who dared to stand up to him. Osama Bin Laden has committed atrocities in the name of Wahabi Islam. Saddam Hussein committed atrocities in the name of Saddam Hussein.

The fact of the matter is: we need moderate Muslims as allies in order to defeat radical violent Islam. Because we invaded Iraq under false pretenses, moderate Muslims don't trust America.

Romney is repeating the megalomania of the Bush Administration. Because we were attacked by violent extremists, we must immediately go to war against all dictatorships anywhere in the world, whether or not they have anything to do with the people who attacked us.

America is the most powerful nation in the world, but we have to face reality. There are dozens of dictatorships around the world, but we can't fight them all singlehandedly and simultaneously. We need allies, and we need strategies other than brute force.

"We will strengthen our economy and keep us from being held hostage by Putin, Chavez and Ahmadinejad."

We are already fighting wars in Iraq AND Afghanistan. We can't go to war with Russia, Venezuela and Iran as well!

Governor Romney, let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, a handsome man on horseback rode up, and said: "We have enemies to fight. These enemies have murdered thousands. These enemies want to kill us. These enemies are evil! In order to defeat them, we must suspend the Constitution and the rule of law. That's the only way to fight evil!"

Would you follow him?

If so, let me remind you what Gandhi said:

"Satan's successes are the greatest when he appears with the name of God on his lips."

Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska

"I am honored to be considered for the nomination for Vice President of the United States."

If John McCain thinks that Barack Obama doesn't have enough experience to be President, then why choose someone who has less experience?

Did Hillary Clinton's presidential run have anything to do with McCain choosing Governor Palin?

If so, why didn't he choose a more experienced female Republican leader, like Senator Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina? Or Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine? How about Christine Todd Whitman, or Governor Linda Lingle of Hawaii?

My own theory -- and this is just a theory, mind you -- is that McCain chose Palin for the same reason that George Bush, senior, chose Dan Quayle.

George Bush, senior, was a moderate. He needed a conservative Republican to balance the ticket -- so he chose Dan Quayle, a man 23 years his junior. As Vice President, Quayle was able to voice his opinion, which endeared him to the conservatives -- but he had little real power. More to the point, Quayle always deferred to the elder Bush, and spoke of him with a reverence bordering on hero-worship.

I submit that history has repeated itself. Palin is 28 years younger than McCain, and is even more conservative than he is. I'm guessing that Palin's conservatism will endear her to the party's reactionary right -- but that she will always defer to her boss.

We'll see.

"It was just a year ago when all the experts in Washington counted out our nominee because he refused to hedge his commitment to the security of the country he loves."

If he wants to enhance our security, he should immediately change his position and bring our troops home from Iraq.

"Senator McCain also promises to use the power of veto in defense of the public interest - and as a chief executive, I can assure you it works."

President Bush did not veto a single bill during his first five years as President.

I never heard John McCain object once.

(I can't say anything about Governor Palin, because I'd never heard of her before last Friday.)

According to Wikipedia, Bush started using his veto power to:

1. Stop the government from researching stem cells;
2. Stop the government from helping states pay for uninsured children's medical bills;
3. Stop a proposal that would have prevented the CIA from using the "waterboarding" torture method on prisoners;

And so forth.

"To the families of special-needs children all across this country, I have a message: For years, you sought to make America a more welcoming place for your sons and daughters. I pledge to you that if we are elected, you will have a friend and advocate in the White House."

Really? You've done the opposite as Governor of Alaska. You cut the funds for special-needs schools in half. (Source: the Huffington Post.)

"A writer observed: "We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity, and dignity." I know just the kind of people that writer had in mind when he praised Harry Truman. I grew up with those people."

America, this is your wake up call. In 1948, Harry Truman said: "The Republican candidate and the Republican Congress do not trust the people. They just work along at their old problem of trying to fool the people into voting for the interests of the few."

The world has changed immeasurably in the last sixty years. The Republican party has not. They are still the party of billionaires and mega-corporations.

Who is the writer Palin quotes, anyway?

He was a journalist named Westbrook Pegler. According to Wikipedia, Pegler was an admitted racist and anti-Semite, and openly called for the assassinations of Franklin Roosevelt and Robert Kennedy.

"I told the Congress 'thanks, but no thanks,' for that Bridge to Nowhere."

Not exactly.

According to Wikipedia, when Sarah Palin was running for Governor, she strongly supported building a bridge from Ketchikan to Gravina Island.

When elected Governor, Palin decided not to build it after all.

What was it that George W. Bush said four years ago?

"The only consistent about my opponent's position is that he's been inconsistent. He changes positions. And you cannot change positions in this war on terror if you expect to win." (Source: Bush's debate with John Kerry.)

Actions speak louder than words. So, Governor Palin: we already know that you break your campaign promises. How many do you really intend to keep?

"Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America's energy problems - as if we all didn't know that already. But the fact that drilling won't solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all."

Well, Barack Obama doesn't plan to do nothing. He wants to invest in other energy sources.

"As President, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power. I'll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America. I'll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars. And I'll invest 150 billion dollars over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy - wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an investment that will lead to new industries and five million new jobs that pay well and can't ever be outsourced." (Source: Democratic National Convention.)

Palin is right when she says drilling won't solve every problem. It's worse. According to Congressman Ed Markey, drilling won't solve ANY problems.

Offshore drilling wouldn't do anything to combat high gas prices. Consumers wouldn't see any change for years. However, offshore drilling would make the oil companies richer. The reason Congressman Markey opposes leasing more lands for offshore drilling is because the oil companies have not started drilling on the areas they've already leased. The whole "offshore drilling" scheme has one purpose only: to make the oil companies richer.

"What exactly is our opponent's plan? What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he's done turning back the waters and healing the planet?"

You want specifics? He gave you all the specifics you could want in his convention speech. (His economic plan is on his website.)

If you want to know what Obama stands for, listen to what he says and look at his record. With Obama, his deeds generally match his words. That hasn't always been the case with Ms. Palin's brief tenure as Governor of Alaska.

"[Obama's] answer is to make government bigger ... take more of your money ..."

Wrong.

What does Obama really stand for?

"I will eliminate capital gains taxes for the small businesses and the start-ups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow. I will cut taxes - cut taxes - for 95% of all working families. Because in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle-class." (Source: DNC.)

As I noted above, Obama will actually cut taxes for those making under $250,000 per year. Clinton kept his promise not to raise the average person's taxes. Obama will keep that promise too. How do I know? Because Obama is following Clinton's formula, and that formula works. Obama doesn't need to raise taxes on average Americans in order to implement his reforms. He doesn't need to.

Governor Palin then accuses Obama of wanting

"... to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world."

There's a joke: what's the difference between Iraq and Vietnam?

George W. Bush had a plan to get out of Vietnam.

Seriously: Governor Palin has called the war in Iraq "a task from God." It is Bush's war in Iraq -- a war strongly supported by John McCain -- that has seriously weakened America's interests and power abroad.

Here's why.

In 1984, President Reagan and his defense secretary, Caspar Weinberger, announced the so-called Weinberger Doctrine regarding how America should use military force. Its tenets, according to Wikipedia, are:

1. The United States should not commit forces to combat unless the vital national interests of the United States or its allies are involved.
2. U.S. troops should only be committed wholeheartedly and with the clear intention of winning. Otherwise, troops should not be committed.
3. U.S. combat troops should be committed only with clearly defined political and military objectives and with the capacity to accomplish those objectives.
4. The relationship between the objectives and the size and composition of the forces committed should be continually reassessed and adjusted if necessary.
5. U.S. troops should not be committed to battle without a "reasonable assurance" of the support of U.S. public opinion and Congress.
6. The commitment of U.S. troops should be considered only as a last resort.

Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq violated all six of Reagan's principles. Future historians may well use the war in Iraq as a point-by-point example of what not to do if you want to win a war.

1. Iraq was no threat to the United States. When Colin Powell made his presentation to the United Nations, he called for war based on two premises: first, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and second, that Iraq was allied with Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. (Source: The White House.)

   The first premise -- that of Iraq's arsenal -- was based heavily on information provided by Ahmed Chalabi, whom I mentioned earlier. Chalabi, a convicted embezzler, was leader of the Iraqi National Congress. They were a group of Iraqi exiles who heavily lobbied the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein for them. Chalabi himself left Iraq as a child and never returned until Saddam's regime had been overthrown. According to Frontline, most Iraqis had never heard of Chalabi.

   The rest of the intelligence -- such as the supposed mobile biological weapons labs -- was heavily based on the claims of "Curveball," an Iraqi defector living in Germany. German intelligence had already concluded that Curveball -- an alcoholic -- had never been a weapons technician (as he claimed) and had made up the whole thing.

   Bush, Cheney, Powell, and Rumsfeld repeated Chalabi's propaganda and Curveball's fabrications even though the CIA had advised them that the intelligence was highly suspect and could not be verified. Bush even insisted that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger -- even though the "proof" was an obvious forgery. Bush insisted that Saddam's aluminum tubes were to be used for nuclear weapons, even though the experts in the Energy Department said the tubes weren't suitable for that.

   Powell's second premise -- that Saddam and Bin Laden were allies -- was an obvious lie. There is no way Bush and Powell could have been ignorant of this -- they had all the resources of the United States government available to them!

   Actually, Bin Laden did have allies in Iraq. These allies were anti-Saddam rebels. (Source: the September 11th Commission.)

2. Our troops were committed with the intent to conquer, and the conquest of Iraq took three weeks. Over 4,000 of our troops have been killed since the conquest because we're trying to occupy a country where most of the people want us to leave.

   According to Frontline, the State Department has experts whose job it is to rebuild shattered countries. The original American administrator of Iraq, General Jay Garner, was fired for asking those experts for help. He was replaced by Donald Rumsfeld's friend, Paul Bremer. Bremer knew nothing about Iraq, and made several huge blunders. These included:
   

   1. Laying off everyone in the Iraqi armed forces. 400,000 armed soldiers were suddenly unemployed. Governor Palin, do you have any idea what it's like to be unemployed when you have a family to feed?
   2. Almost everyone in the Iraqi government was fired, because they had worked for Saddam Hussein. This was a good idea in principle: we didn't want Saddam's lackeys working in the new government, and some of them certainly collaborated with Saddam's crimes. However, Saddam had been dictator for thirty years. The result of Bremer's order was that anyone who knew anything about Iraq and how to govern it was not allowed to work in government.

      Another example: Veteran journalist Bob Woodward's book State of Denial details how all Iraqi teachers who were members of Saddam's political party were fired. The problem was, under Saddam's regime, anyone who wished to be a teacher was forced to join his party. When Bremer fired the teachers, there was no one to replace them.

   3. Bremer hired foreign companies to take control of Iraq's oil, the country's only major resource.
   4. He even closed down some Iraqi newspapers. The Iraqis -- who knew that America stands for freedom of the press -- felt betrayed.
   5. The Abu Ghraib torture scandal didn't help, either.

   If you want to turn a native population against you and destroy any hope of a successful occupation, that's exactly how to do it.

3. The Bremer-Rumsfeld policies I outlined above made our soldiers' jobs much harder. The troops that had liberated the country were now seen as a foreign power that had disbanded the army, disbanded the government, fired the police, closed the newspapers, seized the oil, and tortured prisoners. How were our troops supposed to occupy Iraq when the Bremer-Rumsfeld policies were destroying the country?

4. For three years, Bush consistently refused to send more troops. He and Rumsfeld had an ideology, and stuck to that ideology regardless of the facts. For instance, in June, 2005, Bush said:

   "Some Americans ask me, if completing the mission is so important, why don't you send more troops? If our commanders on the ground say we need more troops, I will send them. But our commanders tell me they have the number of troops they need to do their job." (Source: The White House.)

   The next day, Joe Biden replied, "I'm going to send him the phone numbers of the very generals and flag officers that I met on Memorial Day when I was in Iraq. There's not enough force on the ground now to mount a real counterinsurgency."

5. As it became clear that Bush was going to order an invasion of Iraq regardless of the facts, thousands of U.S. citizens took to the streets trying to make him listen.

   The protesters wanted America to focus on destroying al-Qaeda, not start another war. Instead, Bush was dead set on invading a country that hadn't been involved in the tragedy of September 11th. Bush ignored his fellow citizens, and pushed his war through Congress with fear-mongering. Bush claimed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and was about to give them to al-Qaeda. Millions of us knew that Saddam and al-Qaeda were enemies, but the President and Congress wouldn't listen.

   By 2006, the rest of the country had figured this out, along with an even bigger whopper: Iraq had no WMD. Bush must have known this the whole time -- or, at the very least, he had relied upon dubious guesswork instead of real proof. (See the Downing Street Memo.) Bush and Cheney lied about everything, including the claim that the war in Iraq had something to do with the struggle against terrorists. If Bush truly saw the war against terrorists and the war in Iraq as a struggle of good against evil, he would not have had to lie in order to make his case.

6. In December 2002, Saddam Hussein agreed to resume United Nations weapons inspections. (One of the inspectors, Scott Ritter, was a Marine intelligence officer.) The inspectors said they'd found no proof that Iraq had WMD. Bush refused to believe this, and ordered an invasion anyway. War was his first resort, not his last resort.

In other words, Bush took the successful conquest of Iraq and turned it into a disastrous occupation. The result of this occupation: we alienated key allies. America lost honor, respect, and prestige around the world. The Taliban has reconquered half of Afghanistan. Osama Bin Laden has escaped capture. Worst of all, our armed services are "broken," making us unable to respond to crises like the Russian invasion of Georgia.

John McCain wants to continue all these policies.

Over 4,000 Americans have died because Bush duped us into starting an unnecessary war. Rumsfeld and Bremer disastrously mismanaged the occupation of Iraq, and we are down by $575 billion. McCain praised Rumsfeld and spoke highly of him when he retired in 2006.

"Secretary Rumsfeld... deserves Americans' respect and gratitude for his many years of public service." (Source: USA Today.)

Bob Woodward gives a complete accounting of the hundreds of stupid mistakes made by Rumsfeld and Bremer in his book State of Denial. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney -- with John McCain as their cheerleader -- have done more than any other administration in recent history to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world.

Barack Obama was one of the few American leaders to oppose the war in Iraq before it began. He was in the Illinois state legislature at the time. Obama wants to rebuild America's strength by bringing our troops home by the summer of 2010. (Source: BarackObama.com)

Palin continues:

"America needs more energy ... our opponent is against producing it."

Again, I quote:

"As President, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power. I'll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America. I'll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars. And I'll invest 150 billion dollars over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy - wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an investment that will lead to new industries and five million new jobs that pay well and can't ever be outsourced." (Source: Democratic National Convention.)

In other words, Obama is NOT against producing more energy. Finding alternative sources of fuel is not "against producing it" -- it's exactly the solution we need.

"Victory in Iraq is finally in sight ... he [Obama] wants to forfeit."

70% of Americans think our troops have done their job in Iraq. 70% of us think it's time for our troops to come home. (Source: USA Today.) But according to Governor Palin, we all want to "forfeit." Governor Palin, you just lost the election.

"Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America ... he's worried that someone won't read them their rights?"

More to the point: Do you think we should tear up our Constitution in order to fight terrorists? That's what Hitler said, too. Governor Palin, it is the rule of law that enables us to defeat terrorists. If we commit war crimes in order to fight terrorists, we're no better than they are. That's exactly what Osama Bin Laden wants. Are you prepared to give it to him?

"Government is too big ... he [Obama] wants to grow it."

The reason government is too big is that the Republican party -- who used to be the party of small government -- had complete control over the government from 2001 to 2006. We have a reactionary as President. At his side is Dick Cheney, one of the smartest and most ruthless American politicians in living memory. Cheney is determined to return to the Nixon era and make the President as powerful as possible, destroying our system of checks and balances in the process. (Source: Time Magazine.) Congress was led by Tom DeLay, Trent Lott, and Bill Frist. They happily gave Bush and Cheney everything they wanted, then rolled over and played dead. The Republicans created the largest government bureaucracy in American history. Not only did John McCain cheer them on the whole time, he wants Cheney to continue on as a member of the McCain Administration. (Source: The Atlantic.)

"Congress spends too much ... he [Obama] promises more."

Again, the Republicans started with a surplus in 2001, and by 2004 they had created the largest deficits of any government in human history. The deficit has grown every year since. Congress does spend too much, especially on the war in Iraq. The fault lies solely and completely with the Republicans, who had complete control of the government at the time.

"Taxes are too high ... he [Obama] wants to raise them. His tax increases are the fine print in his economic plan, and let me be specific. The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes ... raise payroll taxes ... raise investment income taxes ... raise the death tax ... raise business taxes ... and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars. My sister Heather and her husband have just built a service station that's now opened for business - like millions of others who run small businesses. How are they going to be any better off if taxes go up? Or maybe you're trying to keep your job at a plant in Michigan or Ohio ... or create jobs with clean coal from Pennsylvania or West Virginia ... or keep a small farm in the family right here in Minnesota. How are you going to be better off if our opponent adds a massive tax burden to the American economy?"

Nothing of what she says about Obama's goals is true. Again, I quote:

"I will eliminate capital gains taxes for the small businesses and the start-ups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow. I will cut taxes - cut taxes - for 95% of all working families. Because in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle-class." (Source: DNC.)

Those, Governor Palin, are the facts. Before last Friday I'd never heard of you. On the basis of this one speech, I know exactly what you are: a George W. Bush Republican who willingly and knowingly creates a huge disaster, then blames someone else. Your selective memory regarding the "bridge to nowhere" marks you as a flip-flopper. Your falsehood about being a friend to special needs children marks you as a hypocrite. Your belief that abortion should be banned even in cases of rape marks you as an extremist.

"Our nominee [McCain] doesn't run with the Washington herd."

He doesn't? You haven't looked at his voting record, have you?

McCain has voted for practically everything Bush has done, from running up the largest deficits in human history to tearing up the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Bush is McCain's hero, and McCain has cheered Bush on every step of the way. (Source: YouTube.)

The only exception was when McCain made a sincere effort to stop Bush from torturing people. McCain failed. Bush wrote, for the record, that he would not let one more law stop him from "interrogating" suspects however he saw fit. (Source: Republican Senator Arlen Specter.)

These "interrogations" involve torture -- such as the brutal "drowning torture" that the Bush Administration renamed "waterboarding." (Source: MSNBC.) Bush thinks he can honestly say "We do not torture" and "Torture has not occurred" because he renamed the technique.

"He [McCain is] a man who's there to serve his country, and not just his party."

McCain was like that before Bush came to power. Since then, McCain has been Bush's biggest cheerleader. You think the war in Iraq was a good idea? You think wiretapping Americans' phone calls without search warrants is a good idea? You think the largest deficits in history are a good idea? That's where eight years of McCain's votes helped Bush take us.

Governor Palin claims to be a friend to special-needs children, but she cut their school funding in half.

After strongly supporting the "Bridge to Nowhere," she decided not to build it after all -- and spent the money Congress gave her on something else. Does anyone remember "read my lips: no new taxes?"

Palin strongly supports drilling along America's coastlines. This would make the richest oil companies in history even richer, but we wouldn't see any reduction in gas prices until 2030.

She claims Barack Obama is a Lyndon Johnson tax-and-spend Democrat. The reality? Obama is a Bill Clinton Democrat. He wants to cut taxes for the 90% of Americans who make less than $250,000 per year.

Even though 70% of Americans want a responsible withdrawal from Iraq, Palin wants to continue the occupation forever.

McCain and Palin are counting on the American public being too stupid to realize they're being lied to. As Paul Krugman wrote,

"The Bush campaign's lies in 2000 were artful - you needed some grasp of arithmetic to realize that you were being conned. This year, however, the McCain campaign keeps making assertions that anyone with an Internet connection can disprove in a minute, and repeating these assertions over and over again...

"How a politician campaigns tells you a lot about how he or she would govern.

"I'm talking... about the relationship between the character of a campaign and that of the administration that follows. Thus, the deceptive and dishonest 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign provided an all-too-revealing preview of things to come. In fact, my early suspicion that we were being misled about the threat from Iraq came from the way the political tactics being used to sell the war resembled the tactics that had earlier been used to sell the Bush tax cuts.

"And now the team that hopes to form the next administration is running a campaign that makes Bush-Cheney 2000 look like something out of a civics class. What does that say about how that team would run the country?" (Source: The Economist's View.)

If Palin and McCain have no problem lying to you now, what do you think they'll do once elected?

Cindy McCain

"I was walking through the streets of Dhaka, Bangladesh, surrounded by terrible poverty and the devastation of a cyclone. All around me were the children, and the desperate faces of their mothers. The pain was overwhelming ... and I felt helpless. But then I visited an orphanage begun by Mother Teresa, and two very sick little girls captured my heart. There was something I could do. I could take them home. And so I did. Today both of those girls are healthy and happy. And one of them you just met: our beautiful daughter, Bridget."

That's an inspiring story, and I have no doubt that Mrs. McCain means every word of it. I don't doubt that she and her husband love their children, the ones they bore together and the one they adopted. I have no doubt that they have compassion for children (and adults) the world over.

There is one thing that concerns me, though. As I cited above, in 2000 John McCain was running for the Republican nomination for President against Governor George W. Bush of Texas. Working in the campaign was Bush's best friend, Karl Rove.

When it looked like Bush was in danger of losing the South Carolina primary to McCain, Rove spread the false rumor that Bridget McCain is actually John McCain's illegitimate daughter, the product of adultery with a black prostitute. (Source: Esquire Magazine.)

Bush won the primary. McCain eventually withdrew from the contest -- and he endorsed Bush.

McCain subsequently hired Karl Rove to work for his 2008 presidential campaign.

If I had a daughter of my own, I would have nothing but contempt for a man who had slandered her when she was seven years old.

And I would never let him anywhere near her, much less give him a job.

Senator John McCain of Arizona

"We're going to win this election. And after we've won, we're going to reach out our hand to any willing patriot, make this government start working for you again, and get this country back on the road to prosperity and peace."

Senator McCain, you've had eight years to insist that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney "make this government start working for you again, and get this country back on the road to prosperity and peace." Thanks to Bush and Cheney, our government is now completely divorced from the public will, the public good, and the public interest. Al-Qaeda attacked us on September 11th, 2001 -- and we could have destroyed al-Qaeda by now if Bush hadn't invaded Iraq. If you want the government to represent the people, and if you want peace, why didn't you speak up before now?

"And let me offer an advance warning to the old, big spending, do nothing, me first, country second Washington crowd: change is coming."

Senator McCain, that "old, big spending, do nothing, me first, country second Washington crowd" -- led by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, Frist, Lott, DeLay, and others -- had complete control of Washington for the first six years of the Bush Presidency. You applauded everything they did, and voted for everything they wanted. If you don't believe in the big-spending do-nothing Washington crowd, why didn't you speak up before now?

If you want to cut government spending, why not bring our troops home from Iraq? Bush's tax cuts for millionaires meant we did not have enough revenue to invade Iraq, so he borrowed billions from China in order to do so. The cost of occupying Iraq almost equals the entire federal budget deficit. If you want to cut government spending, do what 70% of Americans want and 90% of Iraqis want -- end the occupation!

"And when we tell you we're going to change Washington, and stop leaving our country's problems for some unluckier generation to fix, you can count on it. We've got a record of doing just that, and the strength, experience, judgment and backbone to keep our word to you."

Senator McCain, how do you want to change Washington? You have voted with the all-powerful Bush White House and Republican-dominated Congress consistently for the last eight years. If you want "change" now, what is it you want to change? Are there any votes you regret?

Do you regret voting for the tax cuts Bush proposed for millionaires? (Source: Americans for Tax Reform.) Do you regret helping him cause the largest deficits in history? Since you voted us into this current mess, why should we believe you're going to suddenly grow a backbone? If you think we shouldn't leave "our country's problems for some unluckier generation to fix," why didn't you speak up before now?

"I don't work for a party. I don't work for a special interest. I don't work for myself. I work for you."

Bush and Cheney have led the most irresponsible administration in American history, and you voted for their proposals 90% of the time. You even said that Cheney would have a place in the McCain Administration. (Source: The Atlantic.) If you don't work for the party of Bush and Cheney, why did you endorse them and vote however they asked? If you work for us, why didn't you speak up before now?

"I've fought big spenders in both parties, who waste your money on things you neither need nor want..."

Actually, Senator, your record shows that you've voted with the White House and the Republican majority to spend the most money of any American government in history. 95% of Americans did not benefit from the tax cuts for millionaires you voted for. The war in Iraq has cost $575 billion, which the government had to borrow from other countries. That money could have been spent to give every American high school student a college education. It could have been spent to strengthen New Orleans' levees. But you voted to borrow money and spend it on invading a country that posed no threat. If you don't support the big spending, why did you vote for it, and why didn't you condemn it before now?

You sound like John Kerry: you voted for big spending before you gave a speech against it.

"I fight to restore the pride and principles of our party. We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us. We lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the temptations of corruption. We lost their trust when rather than reform government, both parties made it bigger... We lost their trust, when we valued our power over our principles. We're going to change that."

Senator McCain, you voted along with the Republican majority when they increased the federal bureaucracy. You cheered George W. Bush when he gave lip service to ending our dependence on foreign oil, but neither of you did anything about it.

You yourself are one of the Republicans who was changed by Washington. You abandoned your principles -- the principles I voted for in 2000 -- in order to stand by two men who have betrayed everything the Republican Party once stood for.

In 2007, Bush commuted the sentence of Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, who had illegally revealed the identity of an undercover CIA agent and was caught lying about it. (Source: Wikipedia.)

Betraying our country to punish an American patriot and her husband -- fellow Republicans, no less -- is the pinnacle of corruption. But you didn't speak out about Bush's actions at the time. Instead, you said "I happen to be one who admires Scooter Libby. I think he was a dedicated servant." (Source: the Democratic Party.)

Bush and Cheney don't have any principles other than accumulating power for its own sake, and you said you want Cheney in your administration. (Source: The Atlantic.) The person you've chosen to be Vice President, Governor Palin, is the antithesis of change. If you disagree with the policies of Bush and Cheney, why didn't you speak up before now?

"We believe in low taxes; spending discipline, and open markets."

If you believe in spending discipline, why did you vote to rack up the largest deficits in history? If you think borrowing billions to fight an unneccessary war is wrong, why didn't you speak up before now?

"We believe in a strong defense..."

Senator McCain, the disaster in Iraq has broken our armed services. If you want a strong defense, why do you want to use our broken services to start a war with Iran? The solution isn't war. It's containment, using strong diplomacy and tough sanctions. Our military depends on our men and women in uniform, 4,000 of whom have died in Iraq. If you want a realistic national defense instead of Bush's megalomaniacal belligerence, why didn't you speak up before now?

"...the rule of law..."

Senator McCain, you applauded as Bush and Cheney have used the powers of the presidency to destroy the rule of law. Bush and Cheney claim to be above laws. One of the first things Bush did upon taking office was to order the Environmental Protection Agency to stop enforcing anti-pollution laws.

Bush and Cheney think that Congress and the courts are impotent. I have written to you several times over the past eight years imploring you to stand up to them. I even mailed you a copy of my essay George W. Bush Versus the Bill of Rights, detailing how Bush and Cheney have torn our Constitution to shreds.

How do you reconcile your belief in the rule of law with Mitt Romney's question "Is a Supreme Court liberal or conservative that awards Guantanamo terrorists with constitution rights?" Romney is mocking one of the most fundamental American values, that no one can be imprisoned without proof. Do you agree with him?

How do you reconcile your belief in the rule of law with Govenor Palin's remark that "Obama's... worried that someone won't read them their rights"? Do you agree that a single person -- the President -- should be the sole arbitrator of who is a terrorist and who isn't? Do you think that George W. Bush and John Ashcroft were right to send the FBI counter-terrorism department to infiltrate peaceful anti-war protests? Bush and Ashcroft couldn't tell the difference between terrorists and pacifists. Can you?

Either we'll respect the rule of law, or we'll commit crimes. You can't have it both ways.

Senator, back in the day when Bill Frist and Dick Cheney tried to stop filibusters in the Senate and Tom DeLay and Mark Foley became the symbols of Republican corruption in the House, you were one of the few Republicans that Americans still respected and trusted. Senator McCain, if you believe in the rule of law, why didn't you speak up before now?

Senator, as much as I'd like to believe you, your actions speak louder than your words. You've got "a record of doing just that."

"We believe in the values of families, neighborhoods and communities."

Like teenagers should get married before having babies?

Either you believe that Sarah Palin is the perfect American mom with the perfect American family, or you believe that teenagers should practice abstinence. You can't have it both ways.

Anyway, if you truly believe in the values of families, neighborhoods and communities, don't those values include telling the truth? Deceit is George W. Bush's standard operating procedure. If you think politicians should stand up for values, why didn't you speak up before now?

"Government that doesn't make your choices for you, but works to make sure you have more choices to make for yourself."

Oh, for crying out loud.

Senator McCain, you are pro-life. That means that, instead of a woman having the final say on whether or not she should carry an embryo to term, the government should decide for her. Your running-mate thinks that abortion should be outlawed even in cases of rape.

You have supported efforts to empower the government to decide who is allowed to marry whom. Surely an adult couple who wants to get married should make that decision themselves?

Senator, your own positions on marriage and abortion give the lie to your words. Individual Americans want to marry the person they love without the government telling them they can't. They want to be able to choose whether or not to have a baby without the government interfering. How can you say you don't want Government to make our choices for us when you want the government to take those choices away?

Senator McCain, you can't have it both ways. If you don't believe that individuals should make their own life choices, stop claiming that you do.

"I will cut government spending. He [Obama] will increase it."

Journalist David Corn noted: "Many analysts and journalists have repeatedly noted that Obama's economic plan would cut income taxes far more than McCain['s] for Americans below the top 1 percent."

Senator McCain, for the last eight years, you have voted with the party line and created the biggest-spending government in American history. If you thought this was a bad idea, why did you vote for it? If you want to cut government spending, why didn't you speak up before now?

"We're going to help workers who've lost a job that won't come back, find a new one that won't go away."

Okay. How are you doing to do this and cut spending at the same time?

Currently, millionaires are paying a smaller percentage of their incomes in taxes than the rest of us. Those tax codes are set to expire in 2010, and all Barack Obama plans to do is let them expire. When that happens, the tax codes will revert to the way they were under Clinton. The millionaires will go back to paying a slightly higher percentage. Moreover, the economy under Clinton was so prosperous that the millionaires' incomes grew substantially, just like everyone else's. The millionaires were making so much that they probably didn't even notice that they were paying more in taxes.

Clinton presided over a strong, growing economy. Bush decided to cut taxes for mega-corporations and millionaires. We now have the largest deficits in history, and Bush has presided over economic quandary after economic debacle after economic disaster. Senator McCain, you can't establish a national job placement service if you're not going to bring in any more revenue. The money has to come from somewhere.

You may not like Obama's plan, but at least his makes sense.

"Senator Obama thinks we can achieve energy independence without more drilling and without more nuclear power."

That's not true. Again, I quote:

"As President, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power." (Source: DNC.)

According to Greenpeace, Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Sierra Club, and Republicans for Environmental Protection, nuclear power is a bad idea, period. Both Obama and McCain support it.

"Iran remains the chief state sponsor of terrorism and on the path to acquiring nuclear weapons... we can't turn a blind eye to aggression and international lawlessness that threatens the peace and stability of the world and the security of the American people."

McCain stops short of calling for war with Iran, as he has in the past. So, Senator, do you still want to start a war with Iran, or are you backing away from that belligerent rhetoric?

"We face many threats in this dangerous world, but I'm not afraid of them."

I am afraid -- afraid of your belligerence. We can defeat Iran, and we can do it with containment, sanctions, and diplomacy. We can do it by rebuilding bridges with the allies that Bush and Rumsfeld scoffed at. We can defeat Iran without going to war with them.

When George W. Bush invaded Iraq, we saw what happened when bravado triumphs over common sense. 4,000 American soldiers have died in that needless war, a war that has made America less safe. We must triumph over fear -- but recklessness and hubris are not the answer.

"The constant partisan rancor that stops us from solving these problems isn't a cause, it's a symptom. It's what happens when people go to Washington to work for themselves and not you. Again and again, I've worked with members of both parties to fix problems that need to be fixed. That's how I will govern as President. I will reach out my hand to anyone to help me get this country moving again... I will ask Democrats and Independents to serve with me."

Senator McCain, if you really want to stop the "constant partisan rancor," why didn't you put a muzzle on Mitt Romney?

George W. Bush also promised bipartisanship when he was running for President in 2000, and he won the White House after the closest election in history. As President, Bush quickly showed he had no intention of building bipartisan cooperation. He even instituted policies so extreme that moderate Republicans, like Senator Jim Jeffords, were driven out of the party.

In 2000, Bush pretended to be a bipartisan moderate in order to conceal his reactionary ideology.

Obviously, John McCain is not George W. Bush, and he's not personally responsible for Bush's right-wing fanaticism. But if McCain thought Bush should have used bipartisanship and compromise, why didn't he speak up before now?

"My administration will set a new standard for transparency and accountability."

With your applause, Dick Cheney set a new standard for unprecedented secrecy. If you think this was wrong, why didn't you speak up before now, and why do you want Cheney in your administration? (Source: The Atlantic.)

In his speech, John McCain didn't even mention his failed efforts to stop the Bush Administration from torturing people. To his credit, McCain did try to stand up for human dignity. (Bush thanked his cheerleader-in-chief by pretending to sign McCain's bill.) Torturing anyone, even a suspected terrorist, demeans the torturer as much as it does the victim.

To his credit, McCain has pledged to scale back a few of the worst excesses of the Bush-Cheney regime. But, as I've pointed out, McCain did not protest those excesses when they happened. He didn't mention Bush's unconstitutional practice of choosing which religious charities get our tax dollars and which don't. He didn't protest when Bush ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to stop protecting the environment. He didn't even mention Bush's spying on Americans without a search warrant. As he refused to condemn these lawless acts, there is no reason to believe he won't follow Bush's precedent and commit the same crimes himself. His selection of Governor Palin is another indicator: her views are even more closely aligned with Bush's than his own.

I have seen nothing to suggest that, as President, John McCain would break the precedent Bush and Cheney set. I have seen nothing to suggest that John McCain would uphold the Constitution. Instead, I have every reason to believe that, as McCain's campaign promises are belied by his own voting record, McCain will continue on the path that leads to fascism.

Jay Love

"I will be proud to help him [McCain] fulfill our conservative values, fighting for the sanctity of life, the right to own a gun, and lower taxes."

John McCain voted for the so-called PATRIOT Act. According to Gun Owners of America, under the PATRIOT Act, any organization of gun owners can be deemed "terrorist." If McCain supports the right to own a gun, he should read the bills he votes for.

John McCain supports the war in Iraq. McCain even wants to start a war with Iran. The purpose of war is to kill people. That's the diametric opposite to "fighting for the sanctity of life."

"Democrats, led by Nancy Pelosi and her allies are obsessed with an ultra-liberal agenda."

Actually, the facts are these: about half the Democrats in Congress -- including Speaker Pelosi -- are obsessed with an ultra-conservative agenda. They have voted to give President Bush everything he wants, including the authority to spy on Americans without search warrants. Upholding the Constitution isn't a liberal or conservative cause. It's not a Democratic or Republican cause. It's an American cause, and both major political parties have failed.

"Democrats... say NO to protecting the life of the unborn."

Whatever you think about abortion, the facts are these. If it's important to protect the life of the unborn, surely it's even more important to protect the life and the health of babies after they have been born, right?

George W. Bush -- a president who never vetoed anything in five years -- vetoed a bill to increase children's health insurance. (Source: MSNBC.)

McCain supported this veto.

So let me get this straight. Republicans believe in protecting the life of the unborn -- but once the baby's born, his or her health doesn't matter.

We shouldn't have to choose between protecting the unborn and insuring our children.

As Barack Obama said,

"We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country." (Source: DNC.)

Congresswoman Mary Fallin of Oklahoma

"We cannot afford a president who thinks you can negotiate with evil."

Ronald Reagan rightly called the Soviet Union "the evil empire."

But Reagan negotiated with the Soviet Union, and those negotiations produced the ground-breaking INF arms control treaty. (Source: the State Department.)

Today, Republican Congresswomen get up on stage and say that Ronald Reagan was wrong, and that negotiating with the Soviet Union to reduce the number of nuclear weapons was a mistake. This is why I left the Republican party.

"Who do you trust to defend your children against the haters and killers whose only creed is evil?"

I think our first objective should be to destroy al-Qaeda, the terrorists who attacked us on September 11th.

Even though Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with that, John McCain applauded Bush's decision to attack Iraq.

I used to trust John McCain. I can do so no longer. I cannot trust a man who cheered as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney made claims they knew weren't true in order to start a war.

"It takes character to put country first."

It also takes character to stand up to lies. In late 2002, McCain faced a test of character when he voted to authorize George W. Bush to attack Iraq. Senators Robert Byrd, Lincoln Chafee, Dick Durbin, Russ Feingold, Jim Jeffords, and Teddy Kennedy looked at the same evidence and drew the correct conclusion -- that Iraq was not a threat. Those six -- and a few others -- voted against the war in Iraq.

John McCain went along with it.

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina

"In our visits to Iraq, we saw the situation deteriorate. The troops we met.. had such respect and admiration for Senator McCain they felt comfortable giving him something he knows a lot about -- Straight Talk.

"They said -- Senator McCain, this ain't working. John heard their message and put their interests ahead of his own. He came back to Washington and told everyone, including Republicans - we must change course. For his honesty, some accused him of being disloyal. But John McCain's loyalties have always been to his country and to our men and women in uniform. Not a political party."

In his memoir, A World Transformed, George Bush, senior, wrote the following:

"Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs...

"We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under the circumstances, there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."

That's why George Bush, senior, did not invade Iraq. That's why Clinton didn't do it. That's why dozens of experts and millions of anti-war protesters said Bush shouldn't do it. They knew Iraq was not allied with al-Qaeda. Furthermore, they knew that if we invaded, Iraq would have a civil war.

Iraq has three major factions: the Shiites (who have religious ties to Iran), the Sunnis (who were in power during Saddam's dictatorship), and the Kurds.

If John McCain had listened to the experts in 2002, he would have known that if we invaded Iraq, the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds would start killing each other.

George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq. A few months later, the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds started killing each other.

John McCain tried to salvage the situation by sending more troops. However, it isn't our soldiers' job to put their lives on the line in order to fix someone else's civil war!

John McCain's mistake was voting for the war in the first place. If he had stood up to Bush when he had the chance, he might have been able to prevent the invasion of Iraq. The 4,000 American soldiers killed there would still be alive. Maybe Osama Bin Laden would have been captured or killed; maybe the Taliban would be a distant memory.

When it really mattered, John McCain's loyalty to his party -- and to his reactionary, megalomaniacal, belligerent President -- led him to vote to send American troops into harm's way because of a lie. McCain's call for more troops attacked the symptom, but not the disease. The real problem wasn't that Bush was trying to occupy Iraq with too few troops. The real problem was that Bush was trying to occupy Iraq.

Remember what the Iraq Study Group concluded?

"Sustained increases in U.S. troop levels would not solve the fundamental cause of violence in Iraq, which is the absence of national reconciliation... Meanwhile, America's military capacity is stretched thin..."

Senator Graham continues:

"...Losing in Iraq would have been a nightmare for America. Al' Qaeda would have claimed victory over our nation."

The only problem with this statement is that the war in Iraq has nothing to do with al-Qaeda. There are Wahabi terrorists in Iraq, but they're dwarfed by the Shiite majority -- who would kill them on sight.

"Those who predicted failure, voted to cut off funding for our troops, and played politics with our national security will be footnotes in history."

No one in the Senate ever proposed cutting off funding for our troops. Senator Feingold did propose that any more funding for the war be spent on bringing our troops home, but Bush vetoed that idea.

"Those who predicted failure?" To paraphrase Santayana, they create a civil war, they call it success.

"America is safer by winning in Iraq - A Muslim nation in the heart of the Arab world that rejects Al Qaeda."

Actually, ALL the Muslim nations in the Arab world reject al-Qaeda. The only country that currently sympathizes with al-Qaeda is Sudan. The Taliban is closely allied with al-Qaeda, but they only control half of Afghanistan.

"A place in the Middle East where a woman can finally have a say about her children's future."

Actually, in the new Iraq, women have less rights than they did under Saddam's dictatorship. (Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer.)

"Not once was Barack Obama's eloquent voice ever raised in support of Victory in Iraq. Not once was it used to rally our troops in battle."

So, Senator Graham, what would you prefer? That whenever the President lies to justify an unnecessary war, people just shut up? Whenever a President sends our troops into danger under false pretenses, we just applaud him loyally, as you and Senator McCain did? Have you raised your voice in support of victory in Afghanistan? Or do you agree with Senator McCain that we should continue the occupation of Iraq for a hundred years even though most of the population wants us to leave?

70% of Americans and 90% of Iraqis want the occupation to end. The Iraqi prime minister and the Iraqi parliament want it to end. Continuing the occupation in defiance of the Iraqi people isn't "victory." It's madness.

"We should all be grateful that Barack Obama was unable to defeat the surge... He failed..."

Senator Graham, Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and was not an ally of al-Qaeda. Dozens of experts warned that if we invaded Iraq, a civil war would follow. For his part, George W. Bush claimed the war would be easy. Barack Obama, Robert Byrd, Lincoln Chafee, Dick Durbin, Russ Feingold, Jim Jeffords, Teddy Kennedy and others saw through Bush's lies, and they tried to stop Bush from starting the war. Tragically, they failed.

Senator Graham, did you even try to stop this terrible war?

You claim to support our men and women in uniform, but you have done nothing to save them from fighting and dying because of a lie.

Former Governor Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania

"Who but John McCain understands that America's security and prosperity will - now and forever more - be tied to the security and prosperity of the rest of the world?"

Does John McCain really understand that? I don't recall John McCain speaking out against the anti-French backlash when President Chirac advised us against invading Iraq. Remember "Freedom Fries?"

Of course, the French were right. Iraq wasn't an ally of al-Qaeda, and Iraq didn't have any weapons of mass destruction.

Sorry, Governor. In order to lead the world to security and prosperity, we need allies we can trust. We need allies who share our values. We can't do it alone.

France is our oldest ally. They tried to stop us from making a terrible mistake, and in return, we demonized them. Had we listened to our allies, the 4,000 American troops who died in Iraq would still be alive.

"Let us elect a public servant who refuses to think in terms of red versus blue - but only in terms of red, white and blue."

What does Barack Obama think about that? Well, in 2004, Obama told the Democratic Convention:

"There is not a liberal America and a conservative America - there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America - there's the United States of America.

"We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States.

"There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the Stars and Stripes, all of us defending the United States of America." (Source: The Washington Post)

Mitt Romney had a very different sentiment. The problem, according to Romney, is liberals. I quote:

"Is a Supreme Court liberal or conservative that awards Guantanamo terrorists with constitution rights? It's liberal! Is a government liberal or conservative that puts the interests of the teachers union ahead of the needs of our children? -- It's liberal! Is a Congress liberal or conservative that stops nuclear power plants and off-shore drilling, making us more and more dependent on Middle East tyrants? -- It's liberal! Is government spending - excluding inflation - liberal or conservative if it doubles since 1980? -- It's liberal! We need change all right - change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington -- throw out the big government liberals and elect John McCain!"

Governor Ridge, if you and John McCain don't think in terms of red versus blue, why did you allow Governor Romney to make that speech, full of deceit and venom? The Supreme Court has seven Republicans and two Democrats. It isn't liberal. From 1994 to 2006 Congress was dominated by Republicans. It wasn't liberal. Today, the Senate is split fifty-fifty. That's not liberal. Nonetheless, Romney blames liberals for every problem, and advocates throwing out all the liberals. If that's not red versus blue, what is?

Conclusion

At the Republican convention, much was made about McCain's heroism in Vietnam and his years of torture as a prisoner of war. McCain is a war hero, and deserves our respect and admiration for his service.

When John McCain joined the military, he swore an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. He swore that oath again when taking office as a member of the U.S. Senate.

Our Constitution has been under threat many times in our nation's history. We faced a British invasion in 1812. Our country almost broke apart during the Civil War. During World War II, we fought the forces of racism and fascism on both sides of the globe.

But never before -- not even under Nixon -- has the United States had a President and Vice President who showed such contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law. Bush and Cheney have used the power of their great offices to attack freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of religion. They have spied on Americans without search warrants, eroded the right to bear arms, and denied prisoners the right to fair trials. They intervened in a Florida family's private medical decisions and proposed a Constitutional amendment to regulate who is allowed to marry whom. They unconstitutionally suspended the writ of habeas corpus, abandoned the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty and the Geneva Conventions, and illegally revealed the identity of an undercover CIA officer for partisan gain.

In December 2000, George W. Bush said: "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier...just as long as I'm the dictator." (Source: YouTube.)

Bush wasn't kidding. As I noted above, Bush and Cheney went on to use the Presidency to commit crimes. Because of this, two courageous Republican Senators -- Jim Jeffords and Lincoln Chafee -- left the party in protest.

John McCain applauded Bush and Cheney, and used his Senate votes to give them almost everything they asked for. He has said nothing regarding their crimes, and I can only assume that his silence is approval. McCain had his chance to defend the Constitution, and he failed. He was too busy being Bush's cheerleader.

McCain recently said: "If I were dictator, which I always aspire to be, I would write it [the bailout bill] a little bit differently." Watch the video -- he certainly doesn't sound like he's joking. Bush said the same thing right before taking office, and look at what kind of President he turned out to be.

McCain's record in the Senate from 1987 to 2000 suggested he was the kind of man who would uphold the law as President, which is why I voted for him in 2000. But his Senate record from 2001 to the present shows a fanatical support for Bush and Cheney, even when they approved torture and tore the Bill of Rights to shreds. McCain had eight years to act, and he did nothing.

Who is John McCain, really? Is he a Reagan Republican or a George W. Bush Republican?

John McCain chose Governor Palin to be the next Vice President. Palin is an extremist who wants to rip up the Constitution in order to fight terrorists. She doesn't understand that the law is our greatest weapon against terror. Palin wants to outlaw abortion, even in cases of rape. She wants Creationism taught in science classes, and she doesn't believe the overwhelming evidence that carbon pollution causes global warming. She wants to continue the unpopular war in Iraq forever, and because she believes that war is "a task from God," she will never change her mind. It doesn't matter to her what the facts are or what the public wants.

McCain cheered as George W. Bush launched a reckless and counterproductive war that needlessly killed over 4,000 American soldiers. He wants to go to war with Iran, and even wants Dick Cheney to have a role in his administration. Would President McCain continue down Bush's path, the path that leads to fascism?

I cannot take that chance.

I'm voting for Barack Obama.

My name is Chris Colvin, and I wrote this essay.