This one's not just for BlackVoices, but the entire blogosphere, hell, all the media.

After all the trash I've talked, after all the fun I've poked at the people involved in the political process, after all the people I've pissed off with my liberal rants, this is something I want people to take seriously. I'm coming straight out with my endorsement.

I'm voting for Barack Obama, and here's why. ...
Not only have the past eight years been a socioeconomic tempest for America, but so have 20 out of the last 28 years in our country. America has been riding a backward conservative wave since Jan. 20, 1981, the day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. People sing the praises of "The Great Communicator," but as far as I'm concerned he was The Great Fascist beginning with his subversion of the Black Panthers when he was governor of California. From this movement, patriotic conservatives somehow gave birth to their bastard offspring: ultra-conservatives.

It was his model that ultra-conservatives have used to fleece the working and middle classes and enrich the wealthiest quarter of our population. Backed by religious zealots like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and liars like James Dobson, Rush Limbaugh, the conservative movement destroyed the fabric of the Republican Party and became a cancer on what it once stood for, driving clear thinking liberals to the Democratic Party, which had actually once been known for its overt racism.

In time, ultra-conservatives molded a narrow minded platform for America that emboldened xenophobes, classists, fanatics, eugenists, and political imbeciles into one huge super right wing blob: indistinguishable, cold-hearted, thoughtless, arrogant, promoting the values of freedom, free markets and liberty but only for white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, heterosexual, able-bodied males. Everyone else was a coin-toss.

I say, no more.

We are ending the first decade of the 21st Century now. The world has changed from the idea that America is the center of the universe and the ideals of a few wealthy people is what is good for the entire planet. That may have worked when the world was split between a few wealthy countries and many, many agrarian economies. But now, what affects me here in New York can also affect a child who lives in Bhopal, India. The flowers your grandmother buys in Duluth, Minnesota, might keep a child in Bogota, Columbia in school for another year. The purchase of the computer on which you are reading this blog could help a miner in Congo raise money for a campaign that may eventually end the civil strife there.

When comparing the global view of the Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain, I see two vastly different outlooks.

On the one hand, McCain, despite his experience in Vietnam and his knowledge of foreign policy, supports a tough war stance. It is almost all defense, very little diplomacy. It purports more war in a world that is weary of it. Yes, it is necessary to defend our country from terrorists, but it is equally necessary to eliminate the reasons for terrorists to attack us in the first place. There is a reason that America is the object of hatred around the world, and it is not because these groups are inherently evil, but rather their pathology comes from a radical fundamentalism that is purported by dirty American hands (i.e., the support of the 1953 overthrowing of the sovereign ruler of Iran to install a pro-Western dictator, which in turn resulted in the 1979 coup by Islamic students, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad among them).

I have seen little from the McCain campaign to indicate that he understands much more than what has been purported by the ultraconservatives who only say that all Islam is evil and that it is just and holy to wage war on innocent people who live in the Middle East.

With that said, I have also seen little in the way of McCain's plan to capture the person we have been waging war against for the past seven years: Osama bin Laden. It is now clear that the Iraq war was a stupid mistake at best, and an arrogant, malevolent P.R. stunt by the Bush administration at worst that has cost the lives of thousands of American military men and women. It was based on an outright lie that was criminal and should have resulted in the impeachment of Bush and the prosecution of several people in his administration.

McCain brags that he supported and voted for the Iraq troop surge, and that it has worked. It is true that sectarian violence has diminished greatly since we put the troops there, but I fail to see how it has brought us any closer to capturing Osama bin Laden.

This is why, as I turn my focus to Obama, I can say that an emphasis on reducing and eventually removing troops from Iraq is not only smart but is a more prudent defensive move than waging more war in the Middle East. Obama seems to have a clear understanding that the situation on the ground is far more complicated than what is normally reported in the news media. The clashes in the various regions of Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and other Middle East nations go back thousands of years and snake between many, many ethnic groups. To expect that a heavy-handed approach will solve all the problems there and protect America is not only naive, but dangerous.

The understanding that the Iraq War has cost you as a taxpayer nearly $600 billion while the United States spirals into what is likely to be a long and tempestuous economic recession was part of Obama's early ground game. That the country is mired in a foreclosure crisis, as well as a banking crisis, a trade crisis and a fiscal crisis should indicate that a hunger crisis is just over the horizon. McCain and his supporters argue that Obama does not have the experience to handle both foreign policy issues and the economy as president.

But neither does McCain. Neither man has ever occupied the Oval Office. He only has his years in the Senate that come with mixed reviews. His track record shows nothing to indicate that he would do any better than Obama, but it does show that he makes impulsive decisions and has a problem listening to his advisers.

Obama, on the other hand has replaced his lack of experience with the experience of time-tested advisers, something that John F. Kennedy did almost immediately after he was elected in 1960. I would rather take a chance on that than with someone who has admitted that he does not know much about economics.

Obama's tax plan, while certainly not perfect, would do much more to help bring America's middle class -- the nation's financial engine -- to a point where spending would be more liquid and credit would be more solid, enabling people to get loans for homes, education and small businesses. Not everyone will benefit from his tax plan, and indeed there are those who will see no change at all. But the majority will, and combined with a health care plan that actually empowers people seeking medical service (rather than McCain's voucher that doesn't even pay for an overnight hospital stay), it is more likely that people will get healthy and stay healthy, which will keep them out of hospitals and eventually lower the cost of health care.

Some call it socialized medicine, but having witnessed the medical systems in other countries like the Netherlands and Canada, I see the reason they can pay for it is because the emphasis is on keeping people healthy, hence less need to use the health care system as frequently as we do in the States. Obama looks at health care proactively and that will result in a long run net savings on health.

I would be more apt to endorse McCain if this were 2000. In fact, I voted for him in the Michigan primary that year because I felt he was a much better Republican candidate than George Bush. Actually he still is, and after everything is said and done, I will be most glad that Bush can never do harm again to this country after Jan. 20, 2009.

But despite his service to the country, McCain's time has passed.

It is time for his generation to rest and leave it to a younger generation of leaders who understand the global technological marketplace, new environmental-focused industries, the elimination of race as concept but the embracing of cultures as a virtue, the possibility that poverty can be replaced with free markets, the disappearance of religion-based dogmatic politics and emergence of reason-based public policy. It is time for the United States to finally unite with the world. To eliminate fear of the future. To understand the potential in every living human being. To recognize human rights. To have a Republic that, in practice, respects the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" for every person; young or old, straight or gay, regardless of ethnic background, religion, creed or degree of wealth.

The presidential candidate that is most able to lead the nation to that end is Illinois Senator Barack Obama.

I encourage you to go to the polls and make him your choice as 44th President of the United States.