my thoughts about Obama, including his stance on guns
Barack Obama: His chief issue is Civil Rights. He cites pay inequalities between men and women, hate crimes on the rise, efforts to suppress the minority vote and disparities in the justice system. His plan is to strengthen civil rights enforcement, combat employment discrimination, expand hate crime statutes, end racial profiling and expand use of drug courts. I would personally love to see more explaination behind these one sentence plans because more than a few sound like "feel good" plans that attack societal problems but his plans are just to "combat" and "expand" without going further in explanation. On the economy he sounds more Republican than McCain or Bush with his plan to provide tax cuts, simplify and reform income taxes, increase trade, support job creation and invest in US Manufactoring. He seems to have said more in his economy issue than McCain could coneptualize but Obama goes into further details that enact social changes tied to the economy such as "deploy next generation broadband" internet, boost renewable energy, invest in rural areas, create universal mortgage credit, create fund to help homeowners avoid foreclosures, protect against caregiver discrimination and expand flexible work arrangements. Well, boosting internet and small towns sounds great but how will that really help? Boosting renewable energy also sounds good but how, which type and with what money? Furthermore, how would the government go about making businesses have flexible work arrangements or take affirmative action any further? His stance on education is to "place key emphasis at early care and education for infants", pour more money into No Child Left Behind, make the first $4000 of college education free as well as recruit, prepare, retain and reward teachers. Sounds great but I just have to wonder where all of this money would come from and hear more indepth plans on how he is going to reform No Child Left Behind. His Border Security stance would be to secure our borders, remove incentives to enter illegally, inprove our immigration system and work with Mexico. His plan would be to beef up security "at our ports of entry", increase the number of immigrants coming to America, remove incentives to enter illegally by "cracking down on employers" and finally to make illegal immigrants already here pay a fine, learn english and go to the back of the immigration line. First of all how would or should employers verify citizenship status that can%u2019t be falsified? Does he mean that he will turn business owners into unpaid immigration controllers? How is securing our borders at points of entry going to stop illegal acts of crossing the border and the smuggling of illegal items? No answers to be found...yet. Barack’s foreign policy deserves some attention for he advocated leaving Iraq on a time table, pressing the Iraqie leaders to make peace and "launch the most aggressive diplomatic effort to reach stability in Iraq and the Middle East". He also advocates diplomacy with Iran and discourages threats towards Iran and Syria. He makes the same song and dance about pushing for Palestinian-Israeli peace as the past Presidents have: "Barack Obama has consistently supported foreign assistance to Israel. He defends and supports the annual foreign aid package that involves both military and economic assistance to Israel and has advocated increased foreign aid budgets to ensure that these funding priorities are met." Agree or disagree, the most prominent stance Obama takes in his Foreign Policy issue is that Bush and Cheney are at the root of all the problems. It seems like Barack Obama has a lot to say about Civil Rights and injustices but really lacks on issues of civil liberties, personal wealth, personal freedom, the ability to self-determination and privacy. Personally I see a lack of second amendment support, but this is me and as always saves this issue for last. He just addresses "Sportsmen" and does not mention guns anywhere to be seen but implies that hunting is all that guns are good for in his general usage of "persuit of sport" but clearly does not grasp the fact that gun are more than just hunting tools, yet are also used in competition, shooting fun, self protection, home defense and, as the founding fathers intended, to be used when tyranny runs rampant. He does have a lot more to offer than McCain in the way of expressing more issues, having more issues and more plans but curiously remains mute on certain plans and issues such as Currency valuation, civil liberties, Patriot Act, US Infrastructure, US Sovereignty and the Second Amendment.
This Obama character is one strange guy, he comes out of left field, no one knows him, he has little experience, his closest friends spew racist or muslim hate and coupled with the fact that he does not like to give interviews he also stumbles and is not confident enough when at "Town Hall Meetings" doing Q and A.
:bier: