Patterico’s Voter Guide
Here is my voter guide.
I’ll start with judicial races, since that’s the place where my input is likely most meaningful.
Office 94: C. Edward Mack v. Michael J. O’Gara
Vote for Michael O’Gara.
Office 84: Pat Connolly v. Lori-Ann C. Jones
Vote for Pat Connolly.
Office 72: Hilleri Grossman Merritt vs. Steven A. Simons
Vote for Hilleri Merritt.
Office 82: Cynthia Loo vs. Thomas Rubinson
Vote for Tom Rubinson.
Office 154: Rocky L. Crabb vs. Michael V. Jesic
Vote for Michael Jesic.
President: John McCain
I don’t have time to write a lengthy screed in favor of McCain. Suffice it to say I will be voting against Barack Obama more than I will be voting for John McCain. Obama is a good man who believes in some truly scary things — like partial-birth abortion, for example. If he is elected, he will be my President. And I will likely fight him tooth and nail on virtually everything he tries to do.
It’s not foreordained that McCain will lose. Stranger things have happened. I sure as hell am not going down without a fight — and you shouldn’t either.
Propositions
Now, for the California propositions. I know a lot of you aren’t California readers, but there are some interesting issues tucked away in these various propositions, so I hope you’ll find it interesting.
In many cases, I have devoted a separate post to the proposition in question; I’ll alert you if that’s the case. If you don’t find my one-or-two line argument persuasive, check out my fuller post in every case where I have written one.
Proposition 1A: No
Proposition 1A is a $19 billion bond for high-speed rail. I basically never vote for bonds. Next!
Proposition 2: Yes
This post of mine makes the case for this proposition. In it, I have embedded a video. Please, please watch it. I feel so strongly about this, I am going to embed it again here.
As I said in that post:
The awful conditions of the hens depicted in the video will not all be solved by Proposition 2. But if you skip ahead to around 4:04, you’ll get some sense of the overcrowded conditions that this proposition is designed to outlaw.
We’re told that there are health risks from Proposition 2. It appears clear to me that there are potential health risks from eating eggs that have been covered in blood due to untreated prolapsed egg vents; or eggs crawling with mites due to the filthy conditions of these cages; or eggs laid in cages filled with the rotting corpses of hens, or filled with sick hens with untreated open infections.
Proposition 3: No
I agree with JRM: “It’s $2 billion for a children’s hospital bond. I like children. I like medical care. We don’t have $2 billion, so let’s not spend it.”
Proposition 4: Yes
Children need their parents’ permission to take aspirin at school. This proposition doesn’t even require parental permission for an abortion; it just requires notification. And it provides plenty of work-arounds when such notification is inappropriate. Only pro-abortion zealots (and those they have fooled) oppose this proposition. My post in favor of it is here.
Proposition 5: No
I had a long screed about how dangerous this proposition is, but from this point forward, about an hour’s worth of work on this post got eaten, and I don’t have time to recreate it. From this point forward I’m linking and being very brief. Please vote no.
Proposition 6: Yes
This post increases public safety in many ways, including making bail more difficult for violent illegal aliens. My post in support of this proposition is here.
Proposition 7: No
Everybody hates this thing, including organizations that are in favor of renewable sources of energy. Vote no.
Proposition 8: No
There is no good reason to discriminate against gays. Allowing them to marry will stabilize their relationships like it stabilizes ours. Vote no.
Proposition 9: No
This proposition has too many potential unintended consequences that can’t easily be reversed if it is passed by initiative.
Proposition 10: No
This is a T. Boone Pickens boondoggle.
Proposition 11: Yes
We could leave Democrats in control of redistricting, or we could do this. I say we do this.
Proposition 12: No
Another bond. I don’t like bonds.
Comments were turned off by accident, probably in the same fiasco that ate the post. They’re on now.
Patterico (cc3b34) — 11/4/2008 @ 6:20 amNot even James? 🙂
Scott Jacobs (d3a6ec) — 11/4/2008 @ 6:33 am> Proposition 12: No
Another bond. I don’t like bonds.
Dude. These type of bonds have always been paid off by the home owners targetted by these bonds. They’ve been issued for decades and there’s never been a problem with them.
Arthur (183282) — 11/4/2008 @ 6:54 amPatrick, I didn’t know it at the time I voted (absentee) but I’m glad to be on the other side from these guys.
The tolerance we can expect from Obama and friends.
Mike K (2cf494) — 11/4/2008 @ 6:59 amI respect your reasons for voting No on 8, but I don’t see how they are an argument about marriage. They look more like arguments in favor of DP’s which will remain unchanged by voting Yes on 8.
On Lawn (04b503) — 11/4/2008 @ 7:37 amKudos on your support for proposition 2. Poultry, eggs, milk and beef are far and away the industries that, in my opinion, reflect the darkest of human tendencies — laziness, short-sightedness, and willingness to look away from utter tragedy and horror if it in any small way benefits us. Living things eat other living things, and there’s nothing morally wrong with that. But the way humans eat other living things, via industrial meat and diary production, has become similar to the way the worst, most incidious viruses eat other living things — long, slow, painful, torturous deaths in which we completely take over and enslave our prey.
People who stick their heads in the sand and pretend everything is fine in these industries reflect mankind’s worst tendancies. The fact that you aren’t one of those people speaks well for you.
Phil (6d9f2f) — 11/4/2008 @ 7:53 am“There is no good reason to discriminate against gays. Allowing them to marry will stabilize their relationships like it stabilizes ours. Vote no.”
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It isn’t discrimination it’s a refusal to redefine a rather common sense definition of marriage, and I think that a very good and important reason is that if marriage is redefined then it will expose more children to homosexual ideologies through the public schools. Having redefined marriage, could you tell a teacher that he can’t have a picture of the happy married couple on the wall of his kindergarten class? Is it not common for the significant other of a teacher to occasionally come by to hand off car keys or a check book or to go out to lunch? Do we really want the woman’s wife to be introduced to a room full of elementary school children? Well, how could we possibly object having made a law stating that two inherently different situations are the same?
Isn’t this a legitimate concern?
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Aaron (0825c6) — 11/4/2008 @ 9:38 amHaving said that. I do appreciate the views and informative postings of our host, and I believe that his stance on Prop 8, however much I obviously disagree, is based on his innermost convictions and compassion for others. I also appreciate that I am able to publicly disagree with him on his own turf.
Patterico,
Maybe I’m alone (but I don’t think so), but I never saw any convincing arguments on:
1. Why redefining marriage will stop at allowing same-sex couples, rather than open the gates to challenge for polygamy and perhaps other “arrangements differing from the norm”.
2. The concern of what will happen to freedom of speech, freedom of religious expression, and freedom of parents to exercise their responsibility to raise their children in their own moral framework.
If you feel same-sex marriage is equally legitimate and anyone who feels that “homosexuality is wrong” is wrong and they don’t deserve to teach their children such a notion than I guess these two concerns are not an issue. For anyone who “just wants to see the gay people do what they want” those consequences need to be a concern.
I’m not talking about freedom to be abusive or even disrespectful, I’m talking about the freedom to hold a moral position that is not treated as hate speech or the equivalent, especially in a public school setting. (Unless, of course, forcing parents who do not agree with same-sex marriage to take their children out of public school- while that is still allowed- is OK with you.
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 11/4/2008 @ 9:53 amSay goodbye to such a quaint notion on Jan. 9th.
JD (5b4781) — 11/4/2008 @ 10:02 amPure nonsense — an argument from emotion, not from what would be best for society. I guess we should next try to stabilize polygamous relationships? What’s next?
Richard Romano (b96fd9) — 11/4/2008 @ 2:05 pmPhil wrote:
So, I take it you appreciate the fact Sarah Palin is the opposite of that — getting meat the old-fashioned way … shooting it herself.
L.N. Smithee (a0b21b) — 11/4/2008 @ 2:46 pm“Rocky L. Crabb”? he sounds like a character on SpongeBob SquarePants.
L.N. Smithee (a0b21b) — 11/4/2008 @ 2:47 pmSo, I take it you appreciate the fact Sarah Palin is the opposite of that — getting meat the old-fashioned way … shooting it herself.
I have never, and would never, knock Palin for being a hunter. If you’re going to eat meat, killing it yourself is by far the most moral way to do it (unless you’re incredibly clumsy and try to do it with your bare hands).
Phil (3b1633) — 11/4/2008 @ 6:52 pmI think patterico completely misses the point on the gay “marriage” issue. First of all, marriage is a religious ritual in which the STATE has piggy backed laws concerning this ritual. Second, to cast the argument in terms of discrimination buys into the propaganda of gay arguments.
Let’s be honest here, the discrimination argument will not wash when there are other ways the STATE can join gay unions within a legal framework.
What gay’s REALLY seek here by hi-jacking the term “marriage” is, it will legitimize their union/lifestyle in the eyes of society at large
james conrad (6bb6e6) — 11/5/2008 @ 3:49 am[…] there are plenty of others who are sincere — look at right-wing bloggers AllahPundit and Patterico, the first of whom would have voted against the proposition (he doesn’t live in CA) and the […]
Eric Berlin » Blog Archive » The coming sequel to Prop 8 (46a9f6) — 11/10/2008 @ 7:33 am