Obama is a cash machine. This guy is on a roll. I smell a landslide for the Progressives this election.
I would definitly augment those questions with ones about his stances on: A) The next generation of military equipment. He's vowed to spend hundreds of millions less on missles and other next-gen technologies. B) The reparations question. There is a tiered payment plan in that mind that would scare the hell out of you if you heard it. C) The non-renewing of leases for the oil community. When asked to explain, be prepared for a loop-de-loop concept that defies reality. But it is, in a word, interesting. D) The logic for the auto industry changes he sees. This is truly a piece of work as the changes (in his mind) are but a mere pen stroke away. E) The takeover and running of refineries by the government. There's a feeling that this is long overdue. The model he uses is Amtrak. F) His feeling on how to fix Medicare, Medicaid, and the phantom social security funding need. All those solution start with, "I'll propose a new tax on..." G) The questions on the public school system funding. Again, that answer starts with, "Oh that's not hard to fix. I'll tax...." H) The questions for his solutions on ports, shipping, airlines, home mortgages, crime, and all the micro-managing that he feels necessary can't stand the light of day nor the test of viablity for many. But you do need to hear them! I) NASA, please ask him. I was on the floor when I heard about this answer. Especially the part about turning that exploration over to a consortium of world powers. Using a major US funding component no less. To quote, "Sorta' like we do with NATO! The world needs to share in on the results to improve their country conditons." J) His effective delegation skills are evidenced where again? K) Two words, farm subsidies. Pick a point, develop three questions. Here's a area you wouldn't think to go to. Ask about the international farm subsidy concepts and how America can pay for them. Prepare to be amazed! While it's true these are but thoughts he has, are you aware of them? He's running for an office that would let him implement these things. Shouldn't you know what he wants to do. Don't stop at his stump answer, drill down (pun intended) just a bit deeper and examine your findings closely. Form the follow-up question on his answer and see just how thin that preperation is. Folks, he's never had a job! There is no vast well of personal experiences to draw upon. Obama really can't afford to have a meaningful hardcore Q&A session based on the meat of experience for honestly running a country. I could expose several more areas and points that would enlighten you to his thinking, but I'm not the opponent. You'd think with all that everyone is fearing in the world today, this (real questions) might have been a selection criterion for the office this year. Don't look to any in the press to bring up this type/line of questions. If they did, we'd have NO candidates. By the way, McCain isn't the swiftest operative here either so don't look for these thoughts and line of questions to form in that head either.
Canyonman, your description of Obama's flaws sounds spot-on to me, so since you seem to know how his mind works I have to ask: Do you think President Obama would finally put an end to drug prohibition (a policy rooted in anti African-American & Latino racism since inception)... or would he at least significantly de-claw some of the draconian enforcement & punishment methods (as seen in Europe)?
Great question! He has a duality answer. Surprised? The first one says absolutely nothing: The drug enforcement issue in this country is a function of poverty. The wealthy get treatment, the poor get jail and too many African Americans and Latino people are being sentenced wrongly. And it's all because they can't afford the best attorney's look selling drugs to our children is wrong, we all know that. My, administration, will look into changing the way we deal with drug addiction in the inner cities now I'm, not advocating that we let illegal activities go unpunished. I'm just saying that it's time we do things differently and I'll be pushing for CHANGE in that area, yes I will. All this was coupled with deliberate hand gestures and stern and concerned facial expressions. With so many runon's strung together, my mind started wandering the first time. Spun me clean around. I personally heard that one and I didn't realize that he hadn't said anything until later discussions with other folks who heard the same nothing. Figured it out as we verbally rebuilt the sentences. We were cracking up when we talked about how folks were just mesmerized by simply talking fast and removing proper punctuation. We were commenting on how many folks were saying things like, "He speaks so well" and, "Did you hear how he spoke on drugs?" Didn't say a damn thing! But that honestly works in the commuity. When pressed (into actually saying somethig), he intends to have the justice department prepare a study on changing sentencing guidelines as it relates to certain drug and drug related crimes (go figure what that means). From there, your guess is as good as mine what will happen. I personally think it's another exercise in political posturing. While the sentencing may not be balanced, in many instances it's the only way to clean up some of the community ills. Hey, isn't that what jail is supposed to do as a byproduct of locking the individuals up? Novel concept! Oh, and there's a real and simple reason that I do know how he thinks and what he feels about certain things (giggle)!
Somehow I doubt the media will be interested in any of this, although the voters certainly should be. You touched on a recurrent theme of his, namely that America should commit itself to funding all these global initiatives. He sponsored a law that would force us to spend a specified percentage of GDP on foreign aid. Basically, the model for all these is the UN: The US pays the bills, corrupt third world elites pocket the money.
All the democrat candidates were against the war, even those who had been for it. All were for surrending immediately to al qaeda. If you think Obama's appeal somehow was in his policy nuances, you haven't been paying attention. It's like saying CNBC viewers really appreciate Erin's insight on the markets.
Obama distanced himself from the major candidates by never voting for the war. This really hurt both Hillary and Edwards. They had to back peddle big time, and Hillary completely screwed up by not really saying she had made a mistake. Try to remember how things went on the time line. The Hollywood crowd came out to endorse Obama. Oprah, Geffin, etc. The hard left was against Hillary from the beginning, and Obama picked up the bid and momentum in Iowa. This was not about race. Hillary's position on the Iraq war, her stilted delivery answering questions, etc. hurt her. Obama didn't stumble until later into the campaign, and by that time it was too late. Oh, and Dean was behind Obama, 4 sure. This was not about race, it was about the Iraq war, and the anti Hillary movement. If Obama was white, the same result would have been seen.
There's a definite flaw in this theory. The African American community would not have turned out in the numbers (especially in the primary) nor would his candidacy have received the capital from the Internet from that same community. The same African Americans, especially the women, overwhelmingly would have went for Hilary. That being the case, the current democratic candidate would be Hilary. There really is one reason that she didn't get their votes this time. The only white male (currently) who could have taken the African American vote away from her, is married to her. Yes, an overwhelmingly large piece of my community is a molith!
There is no proof of what you say, pure conjecture. Do you forget the primary in 2004? Tell me you don't remember how that went. Focus on race is the happens by those who think about race more than they think about the man or woman under the skin.
The drivers license for illegals flap in the debate was a big turning point for Clinton even though Obama has an identical (actually a more liberal) position. That being said you act as if this was a blowout. It was really little more than a tie. In fact if the Dem's used the same winner take all formula as the GOP, Clinton would've been the nominee. Obama also got lucky on the timing of Wright. The story went national on or about March 12th and the next primary wasn't until over a month later in PA. If Wright had been disclosed a few weeks earlier it's doubtful Obama would've swept Super Tuesday. As is Obama won only 3 of the 9 primaries post Wright and none by Super Tuesday type margins. (in his 3 late wins he was under 60% in each) The positive effect of Obama's race cannot be understated. In non-caucus races he won only 4 states (Utah, Montana, Vermont and Oregon) with a majority of non-black voters. Even in liberal, educated Connecticut (which Obama won) he failed to receive a majority of whites. In the Deep South where he virtually swept Clinton, blacks made up between 27-35% of voters. It's awfully difficult for a candidate to win when they start out behind 30-2 before the first non-black vote is counted. Naturally folks will speculate that anti-black whites mitigated Obama's virtual unanimous totals from black voters. I disagree. We're not talking about a GE we're talking Democrats. The typical segregationist in South Carolina doesn't pull a Democrat primary ballot no matter who is running. If anything he'd be stigmatized by identifying his party as Dem. Even white guy's like Gore and Kerry fail to get more than a quarter to a third of the vote among Southern whites.(no Democrat has carried the National white vote since Johnson in 1964!) For every white who voted against Obama based on race there was easilly another white or more who voted for Obama strictly because of his race. Obama's difficulty attracting white voters in the primaries is because of his extremely liberal policies. Even pre-Wright Obama only did so-so with white voters. The media seems to ignore that those âuneducated, low income whitesâ are not essentially liberal. They're merely less conservative than Republicans, particularly on economic issues. No doubt McCain will receive support from many of those voters. The real untold story in this campaign was gender.