How To Decide Who Should Be President of the US?

My email friends and I have some very spirited exchanges about politics bordering on acrimonious and sometimes going over the line. About half of them will vote for whomever the Pubs put up, 40% want the best candidate and 10% will vote for Obama. Those in the Pub camp keep pointing to government regulations as their deciding factor. The rest want someone who will be good for the economy primarily. They asked me for my opinion.



I stated that there are two factors that a President has great influence over that trump everything else. The first one is their ability to make war and the second is who they appoint for Supreme Court justice(s).

War will rack up debt faster than anything and in the long run will bankrupt a country faster than other things. It is also a tragic waste of lives. And, the wars the US fights in my lifetime have not been wars to protect our borders. No, they are wars to protect "our interests" we are told. Whose interests? The corporations.

Appointments to the Supreme Court have a long legacy. As we have seen from recent decisions like Citizens United and the handing of the Presidency to Bush II they can have profound impacts on the direction of the country. I could go on and on here, but, intelligent people understand how important the third branch of government is in the US. Infringement of personal freedoms will come down to how the court rules on important test cases like Guantanamo and other detentions without trial.

So, my vote will go to the candidate who is least likely to get the US in a war and will appoint moderate judges who are likely to uphold the constitution and Bill of Rights and not be activist.

Here is a post from the James Altucher blog This guy has opinions on everything. He is a very smart guy and has seemingly done everything from running hedge funds to writing investment books to authoring self-help books. Of course, I like what he wrote here because he agrees with me.

RON PAUL?
Travis Pavlik ‏ @tpavlik  When will America wake up to the realities that Ron Paul preaches?
ANSWER: I’m going to focus on the political item that I feel most strongly about that also Ron Paul preaches.
War.
There is not a single war in the history of the US (and before) that has ever helped me or protected my way of life.
But let’s look at the state of the world right now. In 2011 (and perhaps up until now) we spent some time bombing Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Egypt, and Yemen.
Yemen?
What the hell are we doing? Why are we killing babies? Why are we sending our babies (18 year olds) to get maimed and/or killed in a desert.

(Iraqi child casualty of US attack)

I posted an article about this that I then re-posted on perhaps the most liberal pro-peace website I could find. The amount of hate-comments I got was staggering. Over 300 when the average number of comments I got  on that site was about five.
So I simply responded: “ok, for all of you people that believe war is protecting my way of life, why don’t you enlist instead of telling 18 year old men and women to enlist and risk their lives. Why should a baby who has barely experienced life, risk their lives to protect me?”
And, of course, nobody responded. Nobody wanted to risk their life to protect my way of life or even their own way of life or the way of life of their children and their children’s eventual children.
Zero.
Meanwhile, we have military bases in 150 countries. We spend three trillion a year on all the maintenance of these bases. Not to mention untold millions in bribery and internal corruption.
And then here in the US we complain about our reliance on Middle Eastern oil without developing a reasonable energy program. We complain about rising healthcare costs. We complain (I complain) about rising education costs. So ok, the government seems to respond. “Let’s write a check”. To the military.
It doesn’t make sense.
If you want countries to work with us, then don’t bomb them. Trade with them. Make their citizens wealthier and happier. I know this is overly simplistic. But the rest is just not our problem. We never solved a single thing by bombing other people. We’ve only killed children.
I like that Ron Paul is the only candidate that wants to stop killing children. I actually think the Presidency overstepped its constitutional boundaries over 200 years ago so I am in favor of abolishing the Presidency. But I do like people who are against sending off US 18 year olds to die.