Dear Seth,

I know you voted in 2008 and since I'm traveling for a few days I wanted to remind you to vote next week. I think, in the long run, only stupid people don't vote. You know who I'm voting for. Still, if you were to vote for Governor Romney, that would be better than not voting at all. 

I wouldn't disown you.

Don't let anyone tell you voting doesn't  matter. I almost always vote for Democrats and for a variety of reasons. Under Obamacare, your sister could now get health insurance despite her pre-existing condition. We both know she has a good job with health care anyway. But there are plenty of type-1 diabetics out there and Americans with worse conditions and until President Obama pushed for reform these individuals were shit-out-of-luck.

(Hey, haven't I told you we both need to clean up our language?)

Listen to the right-wing guys, and they say, oooooo, this is "socialized medicine." And they're right. It's the same as Medicare, which Republicans blasted as "socialized medicine" way back in 1965. In this country I believe we ought to help out those who need it. We did it in 1965 for old folks. Now some of the people covered by Medicare want to deny similar care to others. That's a ridiculous position.

I'm also voting for Obama because the right-wing types think a woman should never be able to choose an abortion. I'm not a fan of abortion, but don't think others should tell a woman what she should do. Many of the guys in Mitt Romney's party think if your girlfriend was raped she should be required to continue the pregnancy. I say no way. The right-wing loses me when they say you can't have birth control in several forms, including "the morning after pill."  They say life begins at conception. They say they have religion on their side to support that position. Bah! They can't even agree on which book of religion is right.

Why else have I been voting Democratic most of my life? I don't like the way the Republicans treat the average worker. They want to crush unions, when the average union worker makes $10,000 more per year. I wish you worked in a union shop. I wish you made $10,000 more yearly. The right-wing guys say unions are terrible. I've seen the bad side of unions, but the good outweighs the bad. Unions give the regular guy some leverage in dealing with giant corporations. The right-wing guys say, well unions with their wage demands kill jobs. So we'll just ship those jobs to China. They don't think it hurts, though, if the average CEO makes 231 times what the average worker makes. The CEO wants big bucks. They think that's great. You want a raise. Ooooooo, trying to kill jobs in America. Then these same guys turn around, like Romney, and say they want to see you get better pay. 

They don't care a bit about you or any other regular worker.

A lot of politics comes down to opinion. To me the reasons to vote for Obama are clear. It took me a while, but I'm now in favor of gay marriage. I don't see how that hurts anyone else's marriage; and if a gay member of the military wants to marry, I say he's earned the privilege. I think the right-wing guys are full of crap on foreign policy, too. They said Obama was weak on Iran (which will be a threat if they get a nuclear weapon); but in the last debate Romney pretty much admitted his foreign policy boils down to "me, too. I'd do what Obama did. I'd just do it faster or better." You might have heard of the four dead American diplomats in Libya. That was really too bad. But earlier Obama took out Mohammar Qaddafi, the Libyan dictator, whose agents bombed Pan Am Flight 103 almost twenty-five years ago and killed 200 plus Americans; and he did that with the backing of all kinds of world nations and not one of our soldiers got killed. 

I'm still pissed at the GOP because I think they got us involved in an unnecessary war in Iraq and screwed up and didn't pay attention to the scumbags hiding out in Afghanistan. So all kinds of good, patriotic young American kids got killed. And who got us into that mess? Guys like Romney. Romney dodged the Vietnam War by going to France on a Mormon mission. Dick Cheney, the last GOP VP, talked tough when it came to foreign policy, but had five draft deferments in that same era. He could have served. He just didn't want to get his ass shot full of holes. Let some other guy get his ass shot full of holes, though, and guys like Romney and Cheney are all for that.

I could go on and talk about the environment, the terrible U. S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens' United, the religious intolerance on the right, and all kinds of other issues; but you get the idea. 

Vote on November 6. It makes a difference.

Love, Dad