Cassity: Some reasons to vote for Obama (not really)

Every living adult American (and some of the dead ones in and around Chicago) who embraces their civic duties will soon face a major decision: How should we vote Nov. 6?

As local issues have been covered ad nauseum by me and others of late, I’ll focus my attention on national and statewide matters of import.

If you believe that paying more than twice as much for gas than you did when Barack Obama was elected president is OK, and you hope it goes even higher, because if this administration gets another four years, it most certainly will, vote Obama-Biden.

If you believe that Obama’s Middle East policy — “It’s all our fault, please forgive us” — has improved our standing in that part of the world, in spite of the fact that 27 countries in the region are in flames, and another world war is no longer an unthinkable eventuality, vote Obama-Biden.

If you believe that coal, oil and natural gas are foul-smelling, nasty and hateful things, which pollute the environment and cause every malady known to man and that we should outlaw them in favor of windmills and solar farms, despite the fact that those unproven energy sources will continue to impose enormous increases in costs to the American public, be sure to vote Obama-Biden.

If you believe that more than $5 trillion in new debt, increasing more than $1 trillion a year isn’t nearly as important as seeing every single page of Mitt Romney’s tax returns from the beginning of time, it’s Obama-Biden for you.

If you believe we really ought to provide our chief executive with a $1-billion dollar airplane, complete with pilots and staff, to take him to and from golf outings and fundraisers and little parties with celebrities, then it’s absolutely certain that you have to vote for Obama-Biden.

If you believe that waterboarding is torture, but zapping a guy and his whole family and all his friends with a missile from a drone controlled by someone with a joystick from a basement in Cincinnati is just fine, vote Obama-Biden.

If you believe an unemployment rate of near 8%, and in reality more like 17%, even after Obama promised that if he got nearly $1 trillion in new stimulus money from us, the taxpayers, he’d guarantee to have that rate down to 5.4% by now, is quite OK, then you need some more Obama-Biden.

If you believe that picking and choosing which laws to enforce and which to simply ignore, like no longer enforcing the Defense of Marriage Act, or our immigration laws, or the Second Amendment, is the way things ought to be, then vote Obama-Biden.

If you think that freedom of speech is a really good idea, so long as it doesn’t offend your sensibilities, then vote Obama-Biden early and often.

On a statewide level, if you believe that California would be doing just fine if it had just a teensy weensy bit more taxes from all those evil, stinking “rich” people, despite the fact that we are taxed more than all but three other states, and that another bump in income and sales taxes is entirely reasonable, despite the fact that our taxes will then be the highest in the nation, by far, then emphatically vote Yes on Measure 30 (tax increase for education).

And if you think that unions are doing their members a really big favor by collecting their dues via paycheck deductions, so their members don’t have to go to all the trouble of actually mailing them in, then be sure to vote against Measure 32 (which would end mandatory payroll deductions for unionized employees).

I trust these recommendations will prove helpful. No thanks are necessary. It’s what I do.

CHUCK CASSITY is a longtime Costa Mesa resident active in education, youth sports and other causes. His column appears every other Friday.