Tuesday, February 26, 2008

An American Icon



The newest addition to American Pop Culture just may be our next President. A lot has been said about Obama's lack of experience and lack of any campaign platform. In fact the best line I heard this past week was John McCain's, where he called Barack Obama's campaign, "an eloquent but empty call for change". We here at the Blogway Boys are not going to just jump on the bandwagon and pile onto Sen Obama ... we are going to do our research.

So where do I go to find out the Senator's positions? The obvious place is his website, after all if I wanted people to know where I stood ... I would definitely put all my positions on my website. Sure enough, on his very slick web page (one that I am actually jealous of, since mine looks like do-do compared to it), once you get past all the attention grabbing calls for "Change", there is an issues drop-down menu with 20 issues plus a category entitled additional issues with 6 more. I was delighted ... this would be the easiest research I had ever done.

So with great anticipation, I opened the first one entitled, "Fiscal" and downloaded the 3-page PDF file. Wow, I thought, this guy is good ... he can solve the nations' fiscal crises in 3 pages. Well actually 2 pages, since the first one was a cover sheet ... Well one page, the second one was merely a quote from one of his speeches (triple-spaced and taking up half the page, with the remainder of the page giving a summary and an explanation of the problem). Well actually not quite a page since the last fifth of the final page gave a synopsis of his voting record. Now the meat of the rest of the issue page was that we need to cut pork-barrel spending, reverse the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy (though he didn't define wealthy), reinstate pay as you go rules in Congress, make government spending more accountable and efficient, end wasteful government spending, end tax haven abuse, and close special interest corporate loopholes.

I looked at this in shock, o-kay, I could get behind some of the policies ... but nowhere did he say how he would do them. Is he under the assumption that when he becomes POTUS that he can fix all of these things by official fiat? My mind immediately wandered to Sen Clinton's speech where she spoke about the heavens opening up and the celestial choir starting.

Every one of the positions on his website were full of beautiful ideas and ideals ... but not much in the way of how he was going to accomplish them, much less how he was going to pay for it. He also says that he is going to cut taxes on the poor, middle class and elderly. Everything will be perfect in "Obama-Land".

Looking through his voting record, he does seem to practice what he preaches, he voted against giving telecommunications companies immunity for co-operating with the federal government, he voted for pay as you go amendments and against the war in Iraq. He voted against funding the war and he voted for time-tables for troop withdrawals. Now I disagree with all of these votes ... but have to give the man credit for his consistency. The problem I have is he has missed a lot of votes (he has actually missed more than he has cast). I don't know if this is because he had no opinion on them, or if it was because he thought that by voting his conscience that it would hurt him politically ... or if he was just too busy running for President.

Anyway that you look at it, Obama doesn't have a plan ... just empty rhetoric. If he was competing on Dancing With The Stars, he would get my vote ... but for President, I would prefer Hillary (I can't believe I just said that).

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9 comments:

WomanHonorThyself said...

I can not believe it has come down to this..argggggggggg!

Right Truth said...

I'm with you. I never in this world thought I would prefer Hillary as president, but ...

Obama is scary. I think McCain could beat Hillary and apparently the polls agree. But I don't really like him. This is the first election in my life where all the candidates SUCK.

Debbie Hamilton
Right Truth

Dardin Soto said...

Make that a giant sucking sound Debbie,...
Paul, thanks for this summary. I was aching to peek at the Barack site and i can know say I have... :)
(by the way, thanks for the correction on the Chevy Aveo)

Ottavio (Otto) Marasco said...

John McCain is far from a true conservative and I do not believe he will unite Republicans, fair enough, but as many have asked, who would Reagan vote for? Said one blogger, Ken at The Liberal Lie, the Conservative Truth,

”I’ll tell you. He would vote for the GOP nominee, John McCain and then FIGHT for Conservative principles”, he went on “I am not a McCain fan but I do know this. Being a Conservative does not mean to sit on my principles and whine because the guy I wanted did not get the nomination, so I just won’t vote. Being a Conservative means FIGHTING for those principles even if the one we must fight is the nominee of my party. I would rather fight McCain 30% of the time than fight Hillary/Obama 100% of the time.

I would put it slightly different, I would rather fight McCain 30% of the time than fight Hillary 75% of the time and Obama 100% of the time.

buffalodick said...

Jimmy Carter got elected because nobody knew anything about him on a national scale- elected by default...

Paul Champagne said...

angel ... but it has come down to this ... I don't know if it is a reflection of the political naivity of the American people or something more insidious. I think it is probably from 8 years of the Dems consistantly harping on every decision by this administration, that this obsiquious call for "CHANGE" has everyone echoing it like lemmings in lock-step headed for the slaughter.

debbie ... the only thing I can say is that McCain is 10 times better than Hillary and a 1000 times better than Obama.

truth-pain ... It is almost impossible to know where things are manufactured anymore. While the Chevy Aveo is manufactured in Korea, using Korean parts and workers and contributing very little to America ... The Isuzu Ascender is manufactured in the USA, using about 80% American parts and UAW workers. Who woulda thunk it?

ai ... McCain is a true Conservative in foreign policy and economics. I know he voted against the original Bush tax cuts, but that is because he wanted to cut some government spending to counteract the effect on the deficit. If we had done that, we may not be in the situation we now find ourselves (but then again we might be worse off). McCain does not want to rescind the tax cuts (he feels that once taxes are cut, reversing that cut is a tax increase ... and I think we can all agree with that). It is socially that most Conservatives have a problem with him. I really don't have that big a problem with his social ideas ... I understand that he is looking at the "big-picture" and is not trying to force his views on the public. The biggest problem I had was on immigration, and he did state, "O-kay, I get it ... enforcement first", and I believe him.

buffalo ... Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton both. Maybe Hillary is having so much trouble because people do know her.

Terri@SteelMagnolia said...

I finally got on!


Obama scares me!!!!

My husband said that it's b/c of McCain/Feingold that our candidates suck so bad this time around.
Thanks Juan McCain.

I really did want Fred. Too bad.

Tapline said...

Good post.....I think I'll go with McCain, If he votes for Constitutionist judges. I do not what liberal judges.....Thats not what they are in the Supreme Court for. They are there to interpret the constitution...Not look at what Europe thinks or internationalist.thinking......I ramble....stay well....

Unknown said...

For all I dislike McCain, I can't have one of the dems. But, like you said, between the two dems, I'd rather have *shudder* Hillary.