Dennis Kucinich is such a badass!
Unfortunately he has absolutely no chance of even getting the nomination. When will America wake up?! He is by far the best candidate for our country. Allow me to tell you why by listing my top 10 favorite positions that he supports:
1. The immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.
2. A single-payer system of universal healthcare.
3. Free quality education, including college.
4. Immediate withdrawal from the World Trade Organization (WTO) and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
5. Repealing the USA PATRIOT Act. (That was such a huge mistake.)
6. Protecting a woman's right to choose.
7. Environmental renewal and clean energy, and ratifying the ABM Treaty and the Kyoto Protocol.
8. Creating a balance between workers and corporations.
9. Abolishing the death penalty and strengthening gun control.
10. Legalizing Medicinal Marijuana and decriminalizing non-medical possession. (Thats a damn good start.)
Okay, in some of those I squeezed in extra positions, because quite frankly, I support every single one of his positions. Except for the things that he has to say about making the legal drinking age 18 and the legal voting age 16. I think kids aren't quite mature enough (for the most part and generally speaking) or more importantly informed enough (yes, I know most adults aren't informed enough either) to vote at age 16...I would feel differently if we had government classes and classes on the constitution taught in school all throughout high school, but we don't...many uninformed 16 year olds would most likely vote based on myspace/facebook campaigning and thats just as dangerous as evangelicals voting based on religious preferences. As far as drinking goes, yeah, kids will drink if they want to drink, regardless of their age, but my feelings about this revolve mostly around the fact that I don't want to be surrounded with 18 year olds when I'm at a bar...Also, they should wait until their frontal lobes are more developed. Drinking often leads to enough bad decisions on its own...I realize that I lack a strong argument against this, but I'm feeling lazy and I'm sure most people (of legal drinking age) would agree on this,
Let me discuss the republicans a bit...I can summarize my thoughts saying simply, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney scare the shit out of me.
Just a few things about Romney that scare me (besides his cult religion, of which my parents were both members when I was born, but abandoned when I was about six years old):
1. He supports free trade
2. He is death penalty happy and believes torture is only torture if you define it as such.
3. He supports abstinence education and prayer in schools...and clearly he uses his religious beliefs as his logic for political policy, which I think is very wrong.
Huckabee is smart to campaign on The Colbert Report, but I'm not fooled.
Why is he a disastrous choice for President of the US? Quite simply, he wants to rewrite the constitution to fit God's standards...need I say more? Okay, I will give you five additional reasons why he is bad news bears:
1. He supports the war in Iraq and the troop surge
2. He is strongly anti-immigration...our country is hugely dependent on immigrant labor, and in addition to that, we are a country of immigrants!
3. He is against abortion, same-sex marriage and civil unions.
4. He supports creationism and the teaching of creationism in schools.
5. He supports the death penalty and the second amendment (right to bear arms).
I hate to put labels on people or groups, but on paper, republicans sound like the biggest haters ever...yet their personalities come across as sweet and charming, ex: Huckabee and my grandparents. Rarely do I feel so passionately about politics, but I have never seen my political positions so closely mirrored in a candidate as I have with Kucinich...I mean, he's right up there with JFK, RFK and MLK in my mind...which scares me, because all of those people were assassinated for what they believed in.