What’s the point in talking about a year that isn’t already?  I really have no point in all of this but I try to make it a habbit to have “closure” with every year that passed.  And I must admit that the only closure I had this year is coming to terms with my own arteur intellectual inclination.  But who cares about that?

You would care to know that 2008 was so memorable to me because:

The Eraserheads played a reunion concert and Ely Buendia had a heart attack!

Heath Ledger died.

The Beijing Olympics was so moving.

Did you know that Lav Diaz, a native of Mindanao, won the prestigious Orizzonti Prize Film Award from the Venice Film Festival? (Who cares, right?)

Gay Marriage was legalized in California AND illegalized through Proposition 8. (What irony!)

Gaza conflict erupted.

Barack Obama wins the US Presidential race.

Okay, it’s not a big deal.  My point is, new things are so much more interesting.  This year included.

Just so we’re clear, kids, I am not a US registered voter nor am I a citizen yet. My mom’s Republican husband is voting for McCain (despite initially rooting for the more formidable Ron Paul), naturally with the intention of keeping Obama from winning the presidency. If you are a registered American voter, I advise you to vote for Obama instead and let me tell why you shouldn’t vote McCain.

If you are voting McCain, you will give the presidency the political leverage to continue to spend more money on the expensive and highly unethical war in Iraq.  As Nicholas Kristof of NY Times had put:

An American President who keeps troops in Iraq indefinitely, fulinates about Islamic terrorism, inclines toward military solutions and antagonizes other nations is an excellent recruiting tool. In contrast, an African-American president with a Muslim gradnfather and a penchant for building bridges rather than blowing them up would give Al Qaida recruiters fits.

If you are voting McCain, the likely chance that your ability to afford medical services will not change from the way they are now.  Under McCain’s policy, it will result to Americans still battling with self-interested insurance companies rather than government securing that the insurance is not a question but a right. McCain proposes that the US government should have nothing to do with insurance and is leaving your health care in the hands of those who wish to make money out of you.  Good luck.

If you are voting McCain, you will be backing a leader who is hesitant in sending foreign aid where the world needs it, panders to the interest of private corporations and has a little or no humanitarian world view.

Finally, if you are voting McCain, you will give the government the power to withhold or insufficiently subsidize important government responsibilities apart from health care, and that is education, advanced medical research and improved domestic welfare.

Listen to the Global preference, a cry for reason.   You are not only voting for an American leader but a world power.  Understand the gravity of your choice and how it impacts people across the globe.  Sense the desperation for renewal in American leadership and political narrative.

Vote Obama. Vote Change.