Obama/McCain specific ideas for change?

Obama and McCain both publish this information on their websites.

Also, Obama publishes a Blueprint for Change, available here in PDF format.

There you go.

Lets ask the people in Chicago, and the kids in Africa….Obama had plans for them didn’t he?

Last I checked, Obama was immensely popular in Chicago…the latest Rassumussen reports have him up by 15 points in Illinois.

And in addition to the Obamania in general I read about that they are experiencing in Kenya (they even have an Obama beer), I found this report from an Austrailian radio show

Edmond Roy reports.

EDMOND ROY: The world may never really ignore a US presidential contest but to suggest that there’s been a surge of interest at Barak Obama’s accession to the Democratic nomination is an understatement.

News stories from around the globe featured pictures and speeches of the self styled ‘skinny black kid from the south side of Chicago’ as their lead story of the day. And in a reflection of just how popular he is around the world, even Iran’s state controlled television showed footage of the Senator making a speech behind a podium carrying the words ‘change.’

And change is at the heart of this attraction. Barack Obama is after all a minority African-American who spent his formative years in the developing world. He was also perceived to be the underdog; attributes not normally associated with US presidential candidates.

But nowhere has his victory been more anticipated and welcomed with unbridled glee than in the Kenyan village of Kogelo where his 85-year-old grandmother, Sarah Obama, still lives.

SARAH OBAMA (translated): I feel very happy, I have no worries and I am not the only one who feels this way. All the Kenyan people are happy too. He is a child of Kenya.

EDMOND ROY: He may be the child of Kenya in his grandmother’s eyes but others are also queuing up to claim him. In Indonesia, where he spent four years in elementary school, his former classmate, Soni Gondokusumo was revelling in his association with the man who would be president.

SONI GONDOKUSUMO (translated): His friends here pray, ‘good luck Barry, keep fighting to become the President of the United States’.

EDMOND ROY: And with success comes responsibility and anticipation.

SUPPORTER (translated): Obama is the right person because he will bring a wind of change in America especially regarding the US invasion of Iraq. These kind of things should be able to be minimised by Obama in time. I hope Obama will bring peace in the Middle East.

EDMOND ROY: In Africa, they believe, like much of the developing world this could be the beginning of a new era. Omar Alieu Touray is Gambia’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.

OMAR ALIEU TOURAY: Barack Obama is the pride of Africa, I mean he is an American of African descent and certainly we are all very proud of him and we are proud of the American people for selecting him, particularly the Democratic voters because it has shown us that race is not as important as it would be in this case.

EDMOND ROY: The same sentiment from Ahmadou Babagana, Director for Agriculture for the African Union.

AHMADOU BABAGANA: Well from what we have seen I think it’s going to bring a lot of good to the American image in particular. I think we have seen Barack Obama perform in the TV and we can see that he is a very brilliant politician so far from what we have seen him argue in the debates we are very impressed so we are hoping that change in real terms as he is preaching, now will come.

EDMOND ROY: For much of the world, the sentiment is the same, at a time when the image of the United States aboard has been seriously dented.

Senator Obama may have strong support in the developing world because of his underdog status, but in Europe it is the anti-Bush sentiment that appears to be working in his favour. In the Middle East, his colour is deeply symbolic.

As the son of an African and a white woman from Kansas, Senator Obama represents a welcome generational and stylistic change for America. And as ever, his family was right on the message.

OBAMA’S UNCLE: The message I’m having is for those people who have been doubting if Barack can make a good President. I believe Barack has got all that it takes to make a good President and I think they better just give him chance and I think he’s going to deliver.

EDMOND ROY: Senator Obama’s uncle, Said Obama, in Nairobi.

So, I’m not really sure what cheebdragon’s comment was supposed to mean. I know that Sean Hannity loves to make hay about how some relative of Obama’s doesn’t make very much money so why doesn’t Obama send him some of his wealth, but if you consider Sean Hannity to be a credible source, you’re a lost cause.

To answer the question, lefteh said all that needs to really be said. Though I’ll say that McCain pretty much said the same things GW said in his 2000 nomination speech about working across party lines, bringing change to Warshington…er, sorry, I mean Washington my friends. Karl Rove also recently said that if he were running Bush for a 3rd term, he’d have to style a “change” message for him as well, in a year like this you HAVE to use the mantra of change, whether you mean it or not. Rove has as much as admitted that the Republicans have no real desire for change, unless you mean changes like outlawing abortion and giving even MORE tax cuts to people who don’t need them and shifting even MORE of the tax burden to the local level via reduced aid to states, cities and counties which results in more tax collections and less services at the local level for the people who can least afford to shoulder those burdens. Or if you mean change in the sense that after Iraq, we attack Iran, then Syria so we can effectively control the Middle East…yeah, that kind of change they’re sincere about.

Obama’s change would be a fundamental shift from a trickle down economic system (give all the tax breaks to the wealthiest captains of industries so they can create jobs which won’t be needed because there won’t be any money at the bottom rung to purchase the newly minted goods and services created by these new jobs)...i.e. supply side economics to a bottom up economic system (put more money in the pockets of people who will in turn spend it, boosting demand and creating more jobs to meet the demand), i.e. demand side economics.

The second big change Obama wants….to reinstitute pay as you go rules, in other words, you don’t borrow and spend the way the Bush administration does…you balance the budget, period…and you either have to get more revenue or make cuts somewhere to afford it instead of constantly swelling the national debt.

Third big change would be to change our politics, create a financing system that shuts out lobbyists and allows people to run a campaign on the facts and not on personal attacks.

Fourth big change would be to move us to complete energy independence from middle eastern oil within 10 years. To be fair, McCain says he’ll do this as well, but his top priority is as they said at the convention “drill, baby drill”, which a) would not produce enough oil to support our addiction for more than a few days, b) would not reap benefits for 8 years, c) would create potential environmental hazards and d) would leave us with yet another sense of complacency and allow his administration to not push forth very agressively with the other options on the table.

chee——there are plans for you too….

Dale I was talking about the botanical garden that he promised englewood several years ago…..and the promise he made to a school in kenya, 2 years later and $0 from Obama…....

Doesn’t really matter, either way I won’t be voting for him.

Cheeb,

Though you’re right that it doesn’t matter…I’m not going to convince you and you’re not going to convince me, I have to say I didn’t know what you were referencing, simply because I don’t really follow all the conservative blogs and such, or wherever you found these things.

So I searched on them, here’s what I found.

Re the botanical garden, seems as though he promised a developer $100,000 to build a botanical garden, he came through on the promise, and the developer never produced the garden. As a legislator, Obama didn’t see his role as the one to follow up on the appropriation once it was made. My understanding of the role of a Senator makes me think this is a tenable position. Seems to me he followed through on his promise, someone else did not, I have a hard time placing too much fault.

As for the promise in regards to the school in Kenya, I determined that this came to light because of a conservative, evangelical Christian, pro-life, military veteran who became a media curiosity (and thus got more attention than she otherwise would have) because her father and Obama’s father both came to America on the same boat lift. Anyway, she has railed against black loyalty to Democrats, as she’s a conservative Republican herself, and due to her resentment of Obama’s popularity in the black community and her connections to the same Kenyan village, she caught wind of what she decided was a promise made in 2006 to the school to give them some funding. However, what he said was, and I quote, “Hopefully, I can provide some assistance in the future to this school and all that it can be.” I don’t know about you, but when I see the words “hopefully I can” it does not mean the same as “I will immediately.” I’m guessing Obama has been rather busy since August of 2006, gee I wonder why? OK, he becomes President and does nothing, well that’s different…kind of hard to say, “I’m the President of the most powerful country in the world, but I have no power to help you.”

Either way, these are things that could reflect “minimally” poorly on Obama IF you were looking to assume the worst and never give the benefit of the doubt. But for my money, even if I WERE to assume the worst, if that’s the WORST you can come up with on a politician, that’s kind of pathetic. it kind of falls in line with “Obama once served on a board of directors with someone who did something very bad when Obama was eight years old.”

And personally, as an American who cherishes his right to free thought, I’m FAR more afraid of someone who went into a library to inquire about how to go about banning books she didn’t approve of once she became the Governor of that state.

As always, excellent research and well stated, Dale.

GA Dale.

almost as stupid as the rumors about palin that have been going around….

I don’t need to subscribe to the whack job conspiracy theories about Palin. I don’t know and don’t care if she had an affair (seems that’s only a problem if you’re a Democrat anyway). If the rumors about her daughter being the mother of her baby are true, I’d say it’s important insomuch as it indicates her honesty (or lack thereof), and that this rumor being one that was not new at the time she was picked (even if we 100% assume it’s not true) indicates that McCain didn’t do the proper vetting (along with the other evidence like the fact that he didn’t even check her hometown newspaper archives), and there is a lot of circumstantial evidence to suggest this is at least a possibility. But to be fair, it is all circumstantial evidence and no one who knows her, even those who know her and don’t like her, generally say that rumor is not true, so I’m more than willing to say, OK, I’ll remove that from consideration in evaluating her. But whereas the rumors about her infidelity are stupid (even if they are real because they don’t matter), this at least has some basis for the speculation. But OK, I’ll concede these are just rumors, at least the things Cheeb posted are facts, albeit not ones that are likely to sway anyone (nor should they).

But I look at Palin this way…I don’t agree with her ideology, and I don’t find her experience to be of sufficient quality that I’d feel safe with her one 72 year old heartbeat away from the Presidency. I am pro-choice, she is pro-life EVEN in cases of rape or incest. To make matters worse, she speaks of how it was her daughter’s choice, yet she wants to give that choice to her daughter and take it away from everyone else. I don’t like that she is using her being against the bridge to nowhere when she campaigned in favor of it. I don’t like that she tried to get the local library to ban books she didn’t approve of. I don’t like that she sued to keep polar bears off the endangered species list because it would affect oil drilling. I don’t like that she wants to teach creationism in schools (I think creationism is BS, but at best it’s a theory, even if it’s not BS). I don’t like tha tshe presents herself as against pork-barrel spending when she got $4,000 per resident in pork as mayor of Wasilla. I think she is ideologically dangerous, and by accounts of people who have run afoul of her, it seems that she’s not much into details, she’s very much my way or the highway and is vengeful against those who give her trouble. In other words, she is EVERYTHING I don’t like about GW Bush. And none of that is rumor.

Yet she has an 80% approval rating.

those are some pretty half-assed “facts” about palin…...

winblowzxp – actually its in the 60s, it was in the 80s for a while, but things soured pretty quickly.

cheebdragon – are you questioning the robustness of the support for the facts, are you questioning the validity of the facts, or are you questioning whether you think they’re important…hard to tell what you mean by half-assed. If you want, I’d be more than happy to provide a complete list of reasons I personally think Palin is a dangerous ideogogue complete with links?

Dale—chee thinks that a woman cannot decide for her self on reproductive choices. Chee wants the Supreme court to mandate what a woman can and cannot do with her body—that is what conservative women believe, that the Supreme Court should “mandate God’s Will”. God forbid that a woman should be able to make her own reproductive choices.

Well, allengreen, I am completely in agreement with you on Palin on everything you’ve said here and elsewhere, though I haven’t heard Cheeb say exactly what you said in regards to herself to be fair. I think these arguments we have are winnable with facts and therefor we don’t need to attack or put words in the mouths of those who disagree with us, I’ll leave that up to McCain and Palin (and pretty much everyone who spoke at the RNC)...unsubstantiated attacks are their fortay, not mine.

I hope you are right dale, I’m just getting that 2004 feeling about this election—one thing I have learned (I’m an old fart) “Never underestimate the stupidity of the American People”.

I hope I am wrong this time.

dale- your facts were only half correct….for example, you said she tried to get library books banned that she didn’t approve of…and that is not the entire truth….
I’ll explain in a few minutes when I get home so I don’t have to type with my thumb anymore….

As a resident of not just Alaska but Wasilla, I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time since the announcement that she’d been selected checking and rechecking “facts”. It’s easy to say, oh, well, she just asked how to ban books, she didn’t actually ban any, but it’s also important to know that the reason she backed down was because the request created such a furor in the town. The “hockey mom” did, however, manage to get a “hockey arena” built in town that was on property where she didn’t get a clear title to, which just cost the city another $1.3 million recently. Hockey/sports arena=good, bad management=bad.

Sarah’s neither saint nor sinner. She lives in the same neighborhood that I do and is very personable, someone I enjoy hanging out with, and I deplored the very personal attacks regarding Trig early on. But, based on my own knowledge and research, I’m genuinely sorry to say that I won’t be voting for the McCain-Palin ticket. I mean, how cool would it be to be able to say for a change that you actually know someone in a position of power? Depending on the outcome of TrooperGate, I might vote for her as our Governor again, not sure, but at least I’m pretty certain her lack of broad knowledge and thoughtfulness in this position won’t get us into a war or make us the laughing stock of the world.

Bottom line, however, despite all this talk about Sarah Palin, the thing that shouted the loudest to me was “What was McCain thinking?” This isn’t really about Sarah, it’s about McCain. If Sarah was the best the Republicans had to offer, then someone needs to fully explain to me, “Why Sarah?” Why not Condi Rice or one of the many other women that I would be proud to call my vice president? What qualifications does Sarah have that they don’t? To me, this speaks to McCain’s thought processes, his inability to be a real maverick and put his “Country First,” not the election.

From Time magazine, a quote from John Stein, one of the co-founders of “Watch on Wasilla” (along with Palin and several others), a group which was ostensibly formed to bring a police force to the small town….

“She asked the library how she could go about banning books,” he says, “because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them.”

So I guess you could say “she only asked how to do it, she didn’t actually try,” but I would argue, why ask how to do something if you don’t want to know how to do it? And you could also argue that it was “some voters” who thought the books had inappropriate language in them, but I’d say to that, whether it’s Palin’s values she’s trying to force down everyone else’s throats, or the values of certain voters who support her, it really doesn’t matter. This is America, this is not something you do, period.

And it’s great to see someone on here who actually knows Palin. Thanks for interjecting AlaskaTundra! Even though I suspect you and I come at it from different ideological viewpoints (i.e. it sounds like you don’t share some of the concerns I have about McCain and would have supported him if Condi was on the ticket whereas I would never have supported McCain as he’s become too conservative and has shown an appalling lack of integrity since running for President…though I would have voted for the McCain I knew in 2000), it sounds like we share some of the same concerns about Palin.

I’d be curious to know what your take is on the being for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it…was that a politically motivated shift which should really disqualify her from trying use it as a campaign talking point, or from a local perspective is there validity to what she is saying now (seems pretty much everyone in the media is characterizing it as an out and out lie, which is also alarming).

Actually, I’m a registered Democrat (which makes me a “maverick” in the very Republican Alaska) but very much a moderate. Sometimes I’m a liberal conservative, other times a conservative liberal, but in general I’m in the middle. That said, in general I’m pretty non-political and had I given it any thought probably should have more accurately registerd as “undecided”.

It wasn’t until convention time that I really started to give the candidates a closer look. I’m not sure I’d have gone for McCain no matter who the VP was, but honestly can’t say. I’d been leaning Obama just on issues and general temperament. Even if I didn’t know anything else about Sarah Palin, tho, her sheer lack of experience on a national field was enough to dampen my initial, “How cool, maybe I’ll get an invite to the White House” reaction.

I need to head out right now but will try to get back and address the Bridge to Nowhere issue later. She was definitely very much for it originally.

Hey AlaskaTundra – Thanks for giving us the true dope.

@cheeb—So Palin did not attempt to have fired a 7 year Librarian who refused to support the banning of the list of books? We can type with a rabbit’s foot but it will not change the facts, and while you are entitled to your own reality, you are not entitled to your own facts.
http://www.adn.com/sarah-palin/story/515512.html

I cannot wait to read your response.