In this first exchange, my responses of September 18 are worked into her original email of September 17 replying to the Obama bio I sent her September 16. Got it? Let's go!
Alright, point by point...
...and thanks, by the way, because I can't really discuss politics at
length with Amber, and I'm preaching to the choir with pretty much
everyone else I know. It's fun...Upon entering his website, I do not find any mention of discrimination
Thank you for this information, but can you tell me why the issue most
important to him on his web site is discrimination?
or affirmative action anywhere on the front page. When you go into the
issues section of the website, of the 24 major issues of which he
explains his plans and policies, the first one is Civil Rights. Aside
from the fact that the topic of Civil Rights covers women, gay and
lesbian, minorities, etc., the reason it's number one on the list is
because they're listed in alphabetical order.
The big three issues I've heard, read, and seen Obama concentrate on
are restoring the economy
(http://www.barackobama.com/issues/economy/ ), ending the war in Iraq
(http://www.barackobama.com/issues/iraq/ ), and universal healthcare
(http://www.barackobama.com/issues/healthcare/ ).Obama on affirmative action: ""I still believe in affirmative action
In the world today
with all the issues that are facing ALL Americans, the issue that is
most important to him is discrimination. I don't want to see us go back
to the earlier policies where business and colleges alike were forced to
hire and accept unqualified applicants to make up the correct quota.
as a means of overcoming both historic and potentially current
discrimination, but I think that it can't be a quota system and it
can't be something that is simply applied without looking at the whole
person, whether that person is black, or white, or Hispanic, male or
female. What we want to do is make sure that people who've been locked
out of opportunity are going to be able to walk through those doors of
opportunity in the future."Of those 24 + issues that get their own in-depth explanation, I
I am not saying that I totally disagree with everything that is on his
web site but it is scary that he doesn't seem to address the priorities
that I feel the country needs first.
thought he covered all the bases. If there was a topic you didn't
think received the proper amount of attention, let me know, and I'm
sure I can find something about his thoughts on the subject.Of course, that's a judgement call on your part. Keep in mind that
I did not agree with his call to renewal speech and felt that his
thoughts on faith in politics were spoken just because he needed to say
something not because he felt it....
that particular speech was given in 2006, on his own time, before he
began his presidential campaign. It's not something he was doing to
pander or try to appeal to the religious folk. I just hope you're not
being influenced by the slurs like "he's secretly a Muslim" and so on.
He's actually a bit more religious than I'd prefer. I'm sure you know
the story of how after graduating law school, rather than going to the
big money job on Wall St., he went to Chicago and worked with the poor
as a community organizer, which apparently is now a bad thing,
according to Giuliani and Palin. Anyway, it was working with local
churches and the like that he got serious about his faith, long before
he began his political career.I understand where you're coming from. I personally think Obama what
I am just totally frightened right now, because I don't think either
candidate is the ideal candidate to address the current issues facing
Americans.
it takes. I'm an optimist - as the saying goes, I vote for my hopes
rather than against my fears. That's unfortunately what I see McCain
trying to do - scare me into voting against Obama, rather than explain
why I should vote for McCain. That's basically what his campaign has
been doing the past few weeks - throwing as many lies and smears
against the wall as they can - not caring what sticks, rather, just
trying to throw another before the previous has slid down and been
utterly disproven. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a McCain hater. Up
until his primary campaign ran itself into the ground last winter, he
truly was a man of integrity, even if I did disagree with him. But in
order to win his nomination and the presidency, he has sacrificed
everything that made him the politician he was by putting
win-at-any-cost Bush people in charge of his campaign. At this point,
they will do and say anything to win. Case in point - taking up
Obama's 'change' theme, as if the Republican party wasn't in charge of
all three branches of government the past 8 years.NAFTA was crap. I agree. But the economy when he left office was
It is my belief that one of the reasons the US economy is the way it is
today was due to Clinton's foreign trade policies. It turned the
country around and created the ability for other countries to reduce
prices so drastically that most American's could not continue to stay
competitive with US goods.
Too many companies are now foreign companies that have European work
restrictions and policies. As an example, to be competitive we are now
a French company and have to deal with the right to work act in France,
the European restrictions that we have can not reduce head count in some
countries because we have to maintain the work force for a year. This
results in higher US unemployment.
strong. The average middle class family rose by $7,000. Under
Republican control it lowered by $2,000. I can throw plenty of stats
at you, but the main point is the reason we're paying $4 for a gallon
of gas, the housing market's in the crapper, and Wall St. has had the
worst week since 9/11 is, in my opinion, due to de-regulation. The
price of oil is no longer a supply-and-demand deal, it's just another
commodity gambled on by speculators on Wall St. The housing market
crashed because companies were making money off selling mortgage
securities, so they gave out as many mortgages as they could by either
lying to people about the terms or purposefully giving them to people
who had no ability to repay them. De-regulation was, until of course a
few months ago, a central tenet of the conservative philosphy, and
much of the de-regulation legislation of the late-90's and early 00's
was spear-headed by Phil Graham and John McCain, the former the
current economic advisor to latter. There was a good article about
MCain's history and brand new opinions on the matter at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/ .09/16/AR2008091603732.html? hpid=topnews
The main part:
"A decade ago, Sen. John McCain embraced legislation to broadly
deregulate the banking and insurance industries, helping to sweep
aside a thicket of rules established over decades in favor of a less
restricted financial marketplace that proponents said would result in
greater economic growth. Now, as the Bush administration scrambles to
prevent the collapse of the American International Group (AIG), the
nation's largest insurance company, and stabilize a tumultuous Wall
Street, the Republican presidential nominee is scrambling to recast
himself as a champion of regulation to end "reckless conduct,
corruption and unbridled greed" on Wall Street. "
And back to NAFTA, unlike the people in charge for the past 8 years,
Obama wants to work with Canada and Mexico to amend NAFTA and fix the
flaws that were not apparent until it was put into action, including
the measures that made it so easy for companies to ship jobs overseas.
But hey, speaking of unintended consequences, the dollar is so far in
the crapper right now some of those jobs are actually moving BACK.
But anyway, if you know why Clinton's foreign policy is behind the
price of oil, the crap housing market, and the recent failures of some
of the biggest banks on Wall st., please let me know.Ultimately, I want you to vote for whomever you feel is the best man
So can you also research McCain and send me data on his background.
Because I am not going to be one sided. The following votes occurred in
the senate between 2006 and 2007.
for the job of leader of the free world. If I can help inform your
decision, awesome. Likewise, I'm never opposed to hearing a different
point of view. If you find something I might not have heard, send it
my way.This is pretty obscure, so I may not have found everything about this
Obama supported increasing spending by $4 billion for Low Income Home
Energy Assistance and funded this by increasing taxes by an additional
$7.2 billion where McCain opposed this action. I disagree with Obama's
plan here.
bill. From what I understand, this was a bipartisan bill introduced in
December 2007. At the time, energy costs rose by 22%, and since Bush
took office the number of eligible recipients (low-income, seniors,
etc.) rose by 37%. Naturally, Bush actually reduced the funding of
this two-decade old program. Congress approved $2.4 billion for the
program, but Bush vetoed it. The bipartisan bill (3 Democrats, 2
Republicans) proposed $1 billion in funding. That's .92 percent of the
discretionary spending that year. I don't know if this passed, and I
saw nothing resembling the numbers you quoted - if you have a source,
let me know. But pretty much anytime you see someone claim Obama's
going to raise taxes, it's because his plan involves repealing the
same Bush tax cuts that McCain was against before he was for them, the
same Bush tax cuts that only affected the top 5% of the richest people
in the country, the same Bush tax cuts that were put in place to fix a
problem that didn't exist and were kept in place after we went to war
and resulted in hundreds of billions of deficit spending and in part
the mess we're facing today.Speak of the devil. Yeah, those tax cuts. McCain voted against them,
McCain supported extending $70 billion in tax cuts through 2010?
Background: The tax cuts included reducing capital gains and dividends
taxes, expensing business depreciations, and extending and increasing
alternative minimum tax exemptions while Obama opposed this action.
and was against making them permanent, right up until, well, he
started running for the presidency. Again, Obama doesn't want to raise
taxes, he wants to remove the irresponsible Bush tax cuts and go back
to the tax rates we had in those affected areas during the Clinton
administration. The other 95% of Americans would get a tax cut. Again,
Obama goes into his tax strategies at length here:
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/economy/ . And for a completely
independent and nonpartisan analysis of both candidate's tax plans,
you can visit here:
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/UploadedPDF/411741_ .updated_candidates.pdf
It's long, but all you really need to know is in the first page or
two.Pretty much. This is not a McCain/Obama thing so much as it is a
McCain favored requiring voters to present photo identification at the
polls in order to vote while Obama opposed this. I think he felt it
would hinder many minority voters.
Republican/Democrat thing, and this is an issue that has popped up
throughout the country. Basically, both sides know that the poor and
the elderly, especially minorities, tend to vote Democrat. Both sides
also know that the poor at times either can't afford a state ID or
don't need one, especially urban poor who don't drive and rely on
public transportation. Likewise, some elderly get to a point where
they don't need or can't use a driver's license. Republicans claim
this is to prevent voter fraud, yet Democrats point out that there has
been no instance of voter frausd in modern times that this would
solve. Basically, it is a constitutionally questionable requirement to
vote that would address a problem that doesn't exist, and would only
affect Democratic votes.Again, this is one of the issues that McCain has historically been
Obama did not support a bill authorizing offshore drilling for oil in
about 8 million acres of the eastern Gulf of Mexico but McCain did.
against before he was for it. Granted, there wasn't such a dire need
until recently, but the timing is suspicious. As late as May he was
saying what he and every expert and government agency in the know have
been saying: "[W]ith those resources, which would take years to
develop, you would only postpone or temporarily relieve our dependency
on fossil fuels," McCain said when asked about offshore drilling. "We
are going to have to go to alternative energy, and the exploitation of
existing reserves of oil, natural gas, even coal, and we can develop
clean coal technology, are all great things. But we also have to
devote our efforts, in my view, to alternative energy sources, which
is the ultimate answer to our long-term energy needs, and we need it
sooner rather than later."
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), in their Annual
Energy Outlook 2007, reported: "The projections in the OCS access case
indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf
regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and
natural gas production or prices before 2030." McCain first voiced his
support for off-shore drilling while at a conference of the big-oil
companies, and he's been pushing the drilling ever since. Keep in
mind, although the companies are begging for rights to drill closer to
shore, they currently have the rights to explore and drill on millions
of acres of ocean floor. They just don't want to, as it would be
easier for them to drill closer to shore. Also, there are just a few
refineries in the U.S. that have been operating at max capacity for
years. Until we build more refineries, it doesn't matter if we have
oil coming out of our faucets, it won't do anything to the supply of
gasoline.
Finally, Obama is okay with allowing environmentally responsible
drilling provided it is part of a comprehensive energy plan that's
focused on getting us off of foreign oil and developing alternative
fuels.McCain supported allowing small businesses to pool their employees inObama's healthcare plan is detailed here:
order to provide group health insurance for employees whereas Obama did
not support this issue.
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/healthcare/ . Rather than a few
patchwork solutions, Obama is going to make quality, affordable, and
portable health insurance available to everyone. When it comes to this
particular issue, small business health insurance for employees,
"Barack Obama and Joe Biden will create a Small Business Health Tax
Credit to provide small businesses with a refundable tax credit of up
to 50 percent on premiums paid by small businesses on behalf of their
employees. This new credit will provide a strong incentive to small
businesses to offer high quality health care to their workers and help
improve the competitiveness of America's small businesses". Like most
of these issues, it's not that Obama or McCain doesn't support what
the idea behind what the other is doing, it's just they have what they
think is a better solution. I think 'allowing' companies to offer
group health insurance is not as good a solution as offering those
same companies a 50% tax credit on the same insurance policies.Agreed. If you have a particular site you were looking at that you
I can continue looking into all of the votes that occurred in the past
years but as you can see it goes both ways.
pulled these votes from, I'd like to take a look. I'm assuming it's a
McCain site or something, because rather than comparing the respective
candidate's positions, it simply points out Obama didn't vote like the
Republican candidate for president, who, by the way, voted in line
with Bush policies 95% of the time last year. Just thought I'd throw
that in there.Okay, that threw me for a loop there. I NEVER heard anything about
You can look at what each candidate supported in the past and see if you agree with the actions or not. In my opinion McCain is has been supporting issues of the economy whereas Obama has only addressed trust in the government, video taping of death row inmates and faith in politics.
video-taping death row inmates in this campaign. Ever. But then I did
some research, and the only thing I could find was legislation from
when Obama was still in Illinois. Background: After a study fired 11
people who were wrongly imprisoned and on death row in Illinois, the
governor put a moratorium on the death penalty. A number of people who
'confessed' were later found to be innocent. Their confessions were
coerced or just downright forged. One of the proposals to address this
particular fault in the system was the mandatory videotaping of
criminal confessions to show in court and remove all doubt as to the
state of mind and condition of the subject confessing. The article I
got this from is here:
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=shutting_ .down_death_row
Again, if you're referring to something else, let me know, as this is
new to me.
I honestly don't know what qualifications or proposals McCain has when
it comes to the economy. He's said himself that he doesn't understand
it, and his key economic adviser is Phil Grahmm, the man behind the
de-regulation at the root of most of the problems we're having now and
who claimed we're in a mental recession, and those who claim the
economy's not doing so hot are 'whiners'. Watch it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_2YRxW34-4 Looking at their tax
policies side-by-side
(http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/UploadedPDF/411741_ ,updated_candidates.pdf
again, page 8), you can see that Obama's policies would help more
people, and more importantly would help you, Judy Coffey, more than
John McCain's. As far as trust in the goverment, that's a bad thing?
After 8 years of Bush, I'd like to be able to trust my leaders. I'd
like America to once again be the beacon of freedom and liberty and
human and civil rights it was just 8 years ago. I want to believe in
my country again. Land of the free, home of the brave, that sort of
thing. Again, I'm an optimist.Umm, again, that's been his primary focus, especially as things have
Although Obama did push for
state income tax credit and more recognition for alternative energy
sources, his basic support was not for economic improvement...
worsened the past few weeks. Just check out the .pdf and his economy
issue explanation.Glad to. If I see anything else worth sending, I'm more than happy to
So can you research both sides?
share, and I'm more than happy to look at wherever it is you're
looking at.
Thanks Smalley
Thanks, Smalley. Hopefully, if nothing else, I'm making you a more
informed voter, which is always good, and this is helping me
articulate my thoughts on these things better as well. I'm all for
keeping this dialogue open right up until the election, if you're up
for it.
Bob.
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