A friend of mine sent me a YouTube video (which I won't share here) showing interviews of Israelis supporting Barack Obama, saying he'd be a good friend to Israel, etc.

Huh? On what basis would anyone have confidence in such a thing, especially given his choice of explicitly anti-Semitic pastor as his spiritual mentor?

I responded to my friend that, putting it as succinctly as possible, while John McCain is a highly flawed candidate anyone who votes for Barack Obama is either a socialist or an idiot.

I was thinking about it after sending him that note, wondering whether I had been to harsh, but as I think about it I believe I was right on target.

For those who didn't believe people like me who have been saying for several months that Obama is a socialist, he told us himself with his "spread the wealth around" response to Joe the Plumber that he believes in one of the Communist Manifesto's principle "transition" tools to get from capitalism to communism, a steeply graduated or "progressive" income tax system.

To make matters worse, if Obama wins he'll have huge majorities in the House and Senate, both dominated by committed leftists and pawns of unions, such as Barney Frank.

Listen carefully to this, especially the last few seconds:

Obama and friends are screaming out to America that they want to redistribute income, something that in my opinion the average American understands is a recipe for economic disaster.

Given that the economy is the key issue of the day, it means that anyone who votes for Obama must either be a socialist or an idiot...or else too rich or too poor to care, but those people represent a very small percentage of our population.

I'm not saying that John McCain is a great candidate, or even that people should vote for him. As many of you know, I'm most likely to vote Libertarian again. (Don't bother with the "wasted vote" argument. It isn't a wasted vote for reasons I've explained before.)

But a vote for Barack Obama is, for most Americans, economic suicide.

As if his tax and spend plans and his health care plan weren't bad enough, don't forget about Obama's support for the "Employee Free Choice Act" which will eliminate the secret ballot required to unionize a company.

Here's Don Boudreaux on the subject:

Editor, The New York Post

Dear Editor:

Richard Epstein explains how the "Employee Free Choice Act," supported by Sen. Obama, will impose especially large burdens on small businesses - a fact at odds with Sen. Obama's pledge to promote such enterprises ("A Labor Dilemma for President Bam," Oct. 21). By raising employers' costs of hiring American workers, this Act will also increase off-shoring, another phenomenon that Sen. Obama loudly deplores.

The general lesson here is that politicians are akin to faith-healers. Both pose as wizards reciting crackpot recipes with charming words. The faith-healer dupes his customers into believing that he will suspend medical reality; the politician dupes voters into believing that he will suspend economic reality. Both are frauds.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030

As I've said many times before, John McCain is highly flawed, and the Republicans have only themselves to blame for the destruction of their brand. It is stunning that the public can believe that the Democrats would be better stewards of the economy than the Republicans. They don't believe it because the Democrats have given us reason to trust them but rather than the Republicans have been so bad that people have forgotten how bad Democrats are.

In any case, I'm feeling quite bitter as I watch idiot Americans support a candidate whose economic views I believe to be as truly anti-American as those of any major party candidate of my lifetime.

Someone should make millions selling bumper stickers that say "Don't Blame Me" with a picture of Obama and a bunch of unemployed people or America with chains around it.