It shouldn’t be surprising that Republicans, conservatives and libertarians oppose President Obama’s reelection (as you should), because Obama represents the opposite of everything Republicans, conservatives and libertarians stand for, or should stand for. (Beginning with fiscal discipline, the opposite of which is Obama’s proposed next federal budget.)

On the other hand, Obama’s three years and one month in office has given people of every political stripe reasons to not vote for him Nov. 6. (I’ve always said liberals should be at least as suspicious as conservatives and libertarians of the federal government. The federal government and our duly elected representatives brought us Jim Crow laws, the Vietnam War, government experiments that injected black men with syphilis, and the Chicago Police’s “police riot” during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, among other abuses of power.)

The following list comes from Dan from Squirrel Hill, Off-Grid Blogger and the Nachumist.

Do you consider yourself a supporter of civil liberties?

The ACLU accused Obama of violating the U.S. Constitution by having a U.S. citizen killed without judicial process. U.S. Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) said that Obama’s actions might be an impeachable offense.

Do you support drug legalization and oppose the war on drugs?

In May 2008, Obama campaign spokesperson Ben LaBolt said that Obama would end DEA raids on medical marijuana in states where it’s legal. However, in February 2010, DEA agents raided a medical marijuana grower in Highlands Ranch in Colorado, a state where medical marijuana is legal. Also in February 2010, DEA agents raided a medical marijuana dispensary in Culver City in California, a state where medical marijuana is legal. Furthermore, in July 2010, the DEA raided at least four medical marijuana growers in San Diego, California. Also in July 2010, the DEA raided a medical marijuana facility in Covelo, California. Then in September 2010, the DEA conducted raids on at least five medical marijuana dispensaries in Las Vegas,  in Nevada, a state where medical marijuana is legal.

Do you oppose the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act? From the Daily Caller:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, following a recent anti-piracy legislative debacle with SOPA and PIPA, will lead his second effort of 2012 to push Internet-regulating legislation, this time in the form of a new cybersecurity bill. The expected bill is the latest attempt by the Democrats to broadly expand the authority of executive branch agencies over the Internet. … The White House proposal recommended that the Department of Homeland Security be given broad regulatory authority for cybersecurity matters over civilian networks.

Do you consider yourself a clean-government type, opposed to big money in politics?

While running for President, Obama had promised that he would not have any lobbyists working in his administration. However, by February 2010, he had more than 40 lobbyists working in his administration. …

President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign identified its top fundraisers on Tuesday, including 61 people who each raised at least half a million dollars. Altogether, the more than 440 fundraisers collected at least $75 million to help Obama win a second term.

In December 2010, Transparency International reported that corruption was increasing faster in the U.S. than anywhere else except Cuba, Dominica, and Burkina Faso.

In June 2010, the New York Times reported that Obama administration officials had held hundreds of meetings with lobbyists at coffee houses near the White House, in order to avoid the disclosure requirements for White House visitors, and that these meetings “reveal a disconnect between the Obama administration’s public rhetoric — with Mr. Obama himself frequently thrashing big industries’ ‘battalions’ of lobbyists as enemies of reform — and the administration’s continuing, private dealings with them.”

On a conference call with members of President Obama’s 2012 reelection committee Monday evening, campaign manager Jim Messina announced that donors should start funding Priorities USA, the Democratic super PAC run by two former White House staffers, Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney.

Do you believe in the balance of powers between the executive and legislative branches?

In February 2009, U.S. Senator Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia) expressed concern that Obama’s dozens of czars might violate the U.S. Constitution, because they were not approved by the U.S. Senate. U.S. Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin) expressed a similar concern in September 2009.

Did you oppose the Iraq War during the George W. Bush administration?

In April 2009, antiwar activists who helped elect Obama accused him of using the same “off the books” funding as his predecessor George W. Bush when Obama requested an additional $83.4 billion from Congress for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – a provision which Obama had voted against when he was a Senator.

In May 2010, it was reported that the Obama administration had selected KBR, a former subsidiary of Halliburton, for a no-bid contract worth as much as $568 million through 2011 for military support services in Iraq, just hours after the Justice Department had said it would pursue a lawsuit accusing the Houston-based company of taking kickbacks from two subcontractors on Iraq-related work.

Do you believe presidents should follow the law when beginning military operations? From the New York Times:

The White House, pushing hard against criticism in Congress over the deepening air war in Libya, asserted Wednesday that President Obama had the authority to continue the military campaign without Congressional approval because American involvement fell short of full-blown hostilities.

Did you oppose the Patriot Act, first enacted during the Bush administration? It’s still law. (And if you opposed Bush’s warmongering and then crowed over U.S. forces’ killing Osama bin Laden during Obama’s presidency, you are a hypocrite.) And civil libertarians should be screaming bloody murder about the National Defense Authorization Act.

Are you an environmentalist? Justify this from the London Daily Mail:

A study of pollution in 34 Chinese cities has found that the electricity generated by power stations to drive electric vehicles leads to more fine particle emissions than petrol-powered transport.

Do you support unions?

In November 2010, [Service Employees International Union Local 1199] United Healthcare Workers East announced that it would drop health insurance for the children of more than 30,000 low-wage home attendants. Mitra Behroozi, executive director of benefit and pension funds for 1199SEIU stated, “… new federal health-care reform legislation requires plans with dependent coverage to expand that coverage up to age 26… meeting this new requirement would be financially impossible.”

Early in his presidency, President Obama made disparaging remarks about business owners whose companies had corporate jets. … In Wichita, Kansas, the home of private aircraft manufacturing has suffered tremendously, as thousands of union employees employed by Cessna and Beechcraft have been laid off, not to mention the thousands of jobs affiliated with general aviation lost across the country including manufacturers, part suppliers, fuel, pilots, mechanics, FBO services and insurance providers. Additionally, due to the loss of significant sales, use, income environmental and aviation tax revenues, thousands of local, state and federal employee positions, many of which were union jobs, have disappeared.

The Keystone Pipeline was estimated to create or save 20,000 union jobs. But apparently to Obama environmentalists are more important than union workers. And apparently $5-per-gallon gas is OK by the Obama administration.

Are you concerned about the number of Americans without health insurance? Politico reports:

Fewer Americans received health insurance from their employer in 2011, continuing a trend that has seen the figure decline over the past three years. … Meanwhile, the number of Americans without any insurance has increased, climbing to 17.1 percent this year, compared with 14.8 percent in 2008.

Do you support public schools?

While living in Chicago and Washington D.C., Obama expressed his true opinion of America’s public education system by sending his own children to private schools.

Do you believe the “rich” should pay more in taxes and higher tax rates?

On September 12, 2008, Obama promised, “I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.” However, less than three months into his Presidency, he broke that promise when he raised the cigarette tax. Studies show that poor people are more likely to smoke than rich people.

Although Obama had campaigned against George W. Bush’s “tax cuts for the rich,” as President, Obama actually signed a two year extension of them.

Do you oppose bailouts and handouts for politically connected corporations?

While Senator, Obama had voted for the $700 TARP bank bailout bill, which included corporate welfare for AIG.  As President, Obama signed a stimulus bill that protected AIG bonuses. Prior to signing this bill, Obama had said, “when I’m president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.” However, after reading “line by line” and signing the stimulus bill that protected the AIG bonuses, Obama pretended to be shocked and outraged at the bonuses, and said, “Under these circumstances, it’s hard to understand how derivative traders at A.I.G. warranted any bonuses at all, much less $165 million in extra pay… How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat?” and also said that he would “pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses.”

Liberals are so completely in the tank for Obama that they won’t pay attention to evidence that Obama is hurting the liberal cause, any more than liberals of the 1990s opposed Clinton despite the fact that Clinton sold Democrats down the river whenever it politically suited him. Given how most second presidential terms go, Obama’s second term will be even more accomplishment-free than his first, unless voters are stupid enough to vote for Democrats along with Obama. If that is the case, then the first two years of Obama’s second term will be even worse than the first two years of his first term, until (in this scenario) voters regain their senses and fire Democrats as they did in 2010.

Meanwhile, there’s today’s scheduled meeting between Obama and Gov. Scott Walker at Master Lock in Milwaukee, observed thusly by the Troglopundit:

The question is: who should be the most outraged? The most shocked? The most demoralized? The hard core conservatives, because Walker is meeting with Comrade BO? Or the hard core liberals, because Obama is meeting with the Great Wisconsin Fascist?

I think I can honestly say, in complete objectivity: it’s the latter.

Sure, hard core Tea Party conservatives would prefer not to give Obama any hint of conservative acceptance leading up to November’s election, and a friendly meeting with Walker might just give him that. It might just give Obama some aura of bipartisanship.

Worse: it might give Obama a chance to take ownership of Wisconsin’s budgetary success.

On the other hand: it’ll force Obama to take ownership of Wisconsin’s budgetary success!

President Obama just released his own budget. He’s under increasing fire for his own economic “policies;” the skyrocketing national debt; stagnant unemployment numbers. He can’t very well come to Wisconsin and talk about how bad things are.

Visiting Master Lock will force him to say good things about Wisconsin’s economy. He’ll have to tout the positives, or else admit his own economic “policies” are total crap. It’s looking up, he’ll have to say, smiling, in Wisconsin! With Walker by his side, he’ll have to tell America how well things are going here!

Right before the recall election.

The Obama administration is not the only government that wants more of your money, reports Salt Lake City’s Deseret News:

“No one should live below a certain income level,” stated Milos Koterec, President of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. “Everyone should be able to access at least basic health services, primary education, housing, water, sanitation and other essential services.”

These services were presented at the forum as basic human rights equal to the rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

The money to fund these services may come from a new world tax.

“We will need a modest but long-term way to finance this transformation,” stated Jens Wandel, Deputy Director of the United Nations Development Program. “One idea which we could consider is a minimal financial transaction tax (of .005 percent). This will create $40 billion in revenue.”

“It is absolutely essential to establish controls on capital movements and financial speculation,” said Ambassador Jorge Valero, the current Chairman of the Commission on Social Development. He called for “progressive policies of taxation” that would require “those who earn more to pay more taxes.”

Valero’s speech to the forum focused on capitalism as the source of the world financial problems.

When asked where she expected the money to provide all needy people with a basic income, healthcare, education and housing would come from, Fatima Rodrigo, one of the presenters at the forum, mentioned the “very small tax of .005 percent.”

She added, “There is plenty of money, we just need to stop spending it on militaries and wars.”

David McElroy demolishes the whole idea in two sentences:

The people proposing the tax promise it will be very tiny and only raise about $40 billion. Once such a monster is set in place, though, do you honestly believe there’s any limit to how big it will grow?

That’s independent of the fact that the UN has no taxing authority. The only way this tax can be instituted is if UN countries agree to tax themselves and then send the proceeds to the UN. I can see President Obama agreeing to the tax; I cannot see the House of Representatives passing it, and any senator who votes for a UN tax should be impeached.

This is also independent of the fact that promoting the general welfare, to quote the U.S. Constitution, is the responsibility of national governments, or even levels lower than national government:

“Despite the global exhortations of the United Nations, the most successful development efforts clearly arise from grass-roots initiatives, often at the individual or family level,” claims Vincenzina Santoro, an international economist, in a new book on the family and the Millennium Development Goals.

A report by the secretary-general on poverty eradication includes other methods for helping rural farmers increase their profit margin and their ability to be more self-reliant. The report says, “key among these is improving yields by ensuring that farmers have better access to high-yielding crop varieties, fertilizers, credit, markets and rural infrastructure.”

What is stopping poor countries from improving themselves is those countries’ incompetent or corrupt governments. A worldwide tax to take from the haves to give to the have-nots’ oppressors will only give more money to those who have created and sustained poverty in the first place.

This brings up a larger point in the mind of Jonah Goldberg:

I’ve never quite understood the idealistic enthusiasm people have for the United Nations. First of all, it’s a club pretty much anyone can join so long as you have a government, internationally accepted borders, and someone is willing to vouch for your existence. As far as organizations go, that’s a pretty low bar — like a club exclusively for humans with a pulse.

The whole thing stinks from the top down. The Security Council isn’t a democratic entity; it’s based on brute force. Russia and China became permanent members when they were totalitarian dictatorships. They have seats because they are powerful, not because they are decent or wise or democratic. And the same is true for us. Our seat was bought with might, not right.

I think part of the confusion stems from a category error. We tend to anthropomorphize countries, talking about them as if they were people. U.N. members vote for stuff, so people think the U.N. is somehow democratic in more than a procedural way. But that’s not true. There’s nothing in the U.N. Charter — at least nothing that has any binding power — that says a government has to be democratic or even care for the welfare of its people. When the ambassador from North Korea claims to speak for his people at the U.N., it has no more moral legitimacy than a serial killer speaking for the victims he has locked in his basement.

Goldberg has an alternative:

Sure, the U.N. does good things from time to time, but that is because good nations want to see good things done.

What would be so terrible about giving those good nations someplace else to meet? And by good, I mean democratic. A league, or concert, of democracies wouldn’t replace the U.N., but it would offer some much-needed competition. …

A permanent global clubhouse for democracies based on shared principles would make aiding growing movements easier and offer a nice incentive for nations to earn membership in a club with loftier standards than mere existence.

A league of actual democracies, or democratic republics such as ours, could be created to promote not just political freedom, but economic freedom as well.