Zooser, are you truly curious, or just looking for information that confirms what you already believe you know? I have asked myself that question, because I hate the idea that I'm just following what someone's told me. Everything about economic policy must be filtered through the reality that congressional, and popular, approval must be attained. I feel like I must evaluate the candidates on what they've shown me so far. All I see with McCain is the "Let's throw enough sh!t at a wall and something will stick" strategy. I don't like it. It makes me nervous.

quote:

Originally posted by Zooser:
Isn't that also Obama's plan along with forced health care coverage and fines if you don't carry insurance?

Zoo.....I took the time to answer your question on disparity now please read it and understand what I said in the post.....

Oh crap, the sig is back.

and gone again, Ray there's a ghost in your signature.

quote:

Originally posted by happyface:
Zooser, are you truly curious, or just looking for information that confirms what you already believe you know? I have asked myself that question, because I hate the idea that I'm just following what someone's told me. Everything about economic policy must be filtered through the reality that congressional, and popular, approval must be attained. I feel like I must evaluate the candidates on what they've shown me so far. All I see with McCain is the "Let's throw enough sh!t at a wall and something will stick" strategy. I don't like it. It makes me nervous.

Happyface......you should be nervous and so should anyone that whats change for the better. Obama will win the election but I don't know if he can fix the wars and economic mess Bush and the Republicans have left us with.

ismileutoo, that is not what I am saying at all. I do not ignore the fact that they say McCain could increase the deficit, how is Obama going to keep his lower? Increase taxes would be one way. Gov does need to do some major budgeting. For example, there are so many gov grants that are used for useless bull, I agree that they need to cut spending, just like you or I would if we had to.

quote:

Originally posted by Magnificent Bastards.:
and gone again, Ray there's a ghost in your signature.

Hey MB.....what's up.....are you still around? I figured you would have left the country by now with Obama's big lead.

Nope, this is my country Ray.
Better or for worse.
I've traveled extensively and this is the best deal going.

quote:

Originally posted by Magnificent Bastards.:
Where does that stop though Ray?

And who says how much is too much?

Maybe a salary cap like the NFL?

MB...I don't know but I am sure it could be worked out to everyone's satisfaction. Remember build the middle class not the top. This is why you should put your differences aside and vote Obama.

I think a cap might do it Ray.
You got 100 million to spend from the CEO to the Mail Room.

Beau, sorry I didn't jump to respond to your post, however your not the only person on here that I talk to. Now to your post, let me see if I have this right, what your saying is we need to regulate things, redistribute the wealth etc.
Now your physic by saying Obama will win? Can you give me the lottery numbers to? How many elections have been wrong when it comes to polls? I don't have time to research that tonight, for I must go off to my low paying lower class job. Why should the ones who do well be made to share, it sounds a little like grade school. Bobby has two cupcakes and I don't have any, so make him share, that is not what America was built on.

Just curious...any posters on here without health insurance? Check out CDHP, Consumer Driven Health Plans, which is what McCain has in mind.
Me, personally, I can't afford to trade 5 grand for my 12 grand plan. Can you?
Health insurance affects every single one of us--whether you have it or not.

I am fortunate, I do have insurance through my employer, but if Obama's plan goes through that will go out the window. I don't like being told that I will be if I don't have insurance or anything like that. I do realize that there are alot of people who do not have health care, and that leads to another problem with illegal immigration. That is one of the largest uses of gov money when it comes to the uninsured.

One of the things that is really scaring me about an Obama presidency is the lack of a decent guy to play him on SNL.

We had Will Ferrel do George Bush and Darrell Hammond as Bill Clinton, both funny as hell.

This guy doing Obama sucks. I can't take four years of that.

Barack Obama's history in a nutshell. If you are truly interested in knowing why I voted for Barack Obama and why I think you should also.

Barack Obama was born August 4, 1961 and is the junior United States Senator from Illinois. He married in 1992 and has two daughters.

At the age of 10 Obama moved to Honolulu with his mother's family and attended school from the fifth grade until his graduation in 1979.

Following high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles, where he studied at Occidental College for two years. He then transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations.

Obama graduated with a B.A. from Columbia in 1983, then worked at Business International Corporation and New York Public Interest Research Group before moving to Chicago in 1985 to take a job as a community organizer.

He entered Harvard Law School in 1988. In 1990 he was elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. Obama graduated with a J.D. 2nd in his class from Harvard in 1991, then returned to Chicago where he headed a voter registration drive.

Obama taught constitutional law part-time at the University of Chicago Law School from 1993 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004.

Obama worked as an associate attorney from 1993 to 2002. After 1996, he worked at the firm only during the summer, when the Illinois Senate was not in session.

Obama worked as a community organizer, university lecturer, and lawyer before serving in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004.

In July 1995, Obama ran for the Illinois Senate from Chicago's 13th District, representing areas of Chicago's South Side, including Hyde Park-Kenwood and South Shore. Once elected, Obama gained bipartisan support for legislation reforming ethics and health care laws. He sponsored a law increasing tax credits for low-income workers, negotiated welfare reform, and promoted increased subsidies for childcare. Obama also led the passage of legislation mandating videotaping of homicide interrogations which was needed as many men of Illinois death row were later proved innocent.

Obama was reelected to the Illinois Senate in 1998, and again in 2002.

In January 2003, Obama became chairman of the Illinois Senate's Health and Human Services Committee when Democrats, after a decade in the minority, regained a majority. During his 2004 general election campaign for U.S. Senate, he won the endorsement of the Illinois Fraternal Order of Police, whose president credited Obama for his active engagement with police organizations in enacting death penalty reforms. Obama resigned from the Illinois Senate in November 2004 following his election to the US Senate.

He received over 52% of the vote in the March 2004 primary, emerging 29% ahead of his nearest Democratic rival. In the 2004 general election, Obama received 70% of the vote to Keyes's 27%, the largest electoral victory in Illinois history.

Obama was sworn in as a senator on January 4, 2005. The Senate historian lists him as the fifth African American Senator in U.S. history, and the third to have been popularly elected.

Below are Obama's achievements in his short three years in the Senate. Remarkable for a Junior Senator.

Obama cosponsored legislation to control conventional weapons and to promote greater public accountability in the use of federal funds. He made official government trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

He has sponsored legislation regarding lobbying and electoral fraud, climate change, nuclear terrorism, and care for returned U.S. military personnel. Obama has emphasized ending the war in Iraq, increasing energy independence, and providing universal health care as top national priorities. His accomplishments are explained more in detail below.

Obama took an active role in the Senate's drive for improved border security and immigration reform. In 2005, he cosponsored the "Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act" introduced by Republican John McCain of Arizona. He later added three amendments to the "Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act", which passed the Senate in May 2006, but failed to gain majority support in the House of Representatives.

In September 2006, Obama supported a related bill, the Secure Fence Act, authorizing construction of fencing and other security improvements along the United States–Mexico border. President Bush signed the Secure Fence Act into law in October 2006, calling it "an important step toward immigration reform."

Partnering with Republican Senators Richard Lugar of Indiana and then Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Obama successfully introduced two initiatives bearing his name. "Lugar-Obama" expanded the Nunn-Lugar cooperative threat reduction concept to conventional weapons, including shoulder-fired missiles and anti-personnel mines.

The "Coburn-Obama Transparency Act" authorized the establishment of USAspending.gov, a web search engine launched in December 2007 and run by the Office of Management and Budget. After Illinois residents complained of waste water contamination by a neighboring nuclear plant, Obama sponsored legislation requiring plant owners to notify state and local authorities of radioactive leaks. A compromise version of the bill was subsequently blocked by partisan disputes and later reintroduced.

In December 2006, President Bush signed into law the "Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act," marking the first federal legislation to be enacted with Obama as its primary sponsor.

In January 2007, Obama worked with Democrat Russ Feingold of Wisconsin to eliminate gifts of travel on corporate jets by lobbyists to members of Congress and require disclosure of bundled campaign contributions under the "Honest Leadership and Open Government Act," which was signed into law in September 2007.

He introduced S. 453, a bill to criminalize deceptive practices in federal elections, including fraudulent flyers and automated phone calls, as witnessed in the 2006 midterm elections. Obama's energy initiatives scored pluses and minuses with environmentalists, who welcomed his sponsorship with McCain of a climate change bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by two-thirds by 2050.

Later in 2007, Obama sponsored an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act adding safeguards for personality disorder military discharges, and calling for an official review following reports that the procedure had been used inappropriately to reduce government costs. He sponsored the "Iran Sanctions Enabling Act" supporting divestment of state pension funds from Iran's oil and gas industry, and joined Republican Chuck Hagel of Nebraska in introducing legislation to reduce risks of nuclear terrorism.

A provision from the Obama-Hagel bill was passed by Congress in December 2007 as an amendment to the State-Foreign Operations appropriations bill. Obama also sponsored a Senate amendment to the State Children's Health Insurance Program providing one year of job protection for family members caring for soldiers with combat-related injuries. The legislation passed both houses of Congress with bipartisan majorities, but was blocked from becoming law by President Bush in October 2007.

Obama held assignments on the Senate Committees for Foreign Relations, Environment and Public Works and Veterans' Affairs through December 2006.

In January 2007, he left the Environment and Public Works committee and took additional assignments with Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. He also became Chairman of the Senate's subcommittee on European Affairs.

As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Obama has made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. In August 2005, he traveled to Russia, Ukraine, and Azerbaijan. The trip focused on strategies to control the world's supply of conventional weapons, biological weapons, and weapons of mass destruction as a first defense against terrorist attacks.

Following meetings with U.S. military in Kuwait and Iraq in January 2006, he visited Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian territories. At a meeting with Palestinian students two weeks before Hamas won the legislative election, Obama warned that "the U.S. will never recognize winning Hamas candidates unless the group renounces its fundamental mission to eliminate Israel."

He left for his third official trip in August 2006, traveling to South Africa, Kenya, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Chad. In a speech at the University of Nairobi, he spoke about political corruption and ethnic rivalries. The speech touched off controversy among Kenyan leaders, some formally challenging Obama's remarks as unfair and improper, others defending his positions.

Since announcing his presidential campaign Obama has emphasized ending the Iraq War,increasing energy independence, and providing universal health care as his top three priorities.

Obama's campaign raised 58 million dollars during the first half of 2007, topping all other candidates and exceeding previous records for the first six months of any year before an election year. Small donors, those contributing in increments of less than $200, accounted for $16.4 million of Obama's record-breaking total, more than any other Democratic candidate. In the first month of 2008, his campaign brought in $36.8 million, the most ever raised in one month by a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries.

Amidst concerns for his safety as the first black candidate seen as having a viable chance of being elected president, the U.S. government assigned Secret Service protection to Obama 18 months before the general election.

At the Tax Policy Center in September 2007, he blamed special interests for distorting the U.S. tax code. His plan would eliminate taxes for senior citizens with incomes of less than $50,000 a year, repeal income tax cuts for those making over $250,000 as well as the capital gains and dividends tax cut, close corporate tax loopholes, lift the $102,000 cap on Social Security taxes, restrict offshore tax havens, and simplify filing of income tax returns by pre-filling wage and bank information already collected by the IRS.

Announcing his presidential campaign's energy plan in October 2007, Obama proposed a cap and trade auction system to restrict carbon emissions and a 10 year program of investments in new energy sources to reduce U.S. dependence on imported oil.

Obama proposed that all pollution credits must be auctioned, with no grandfathering of credits for oil and gas companies, and the spending of the revenue obtained on energy development and economic transition costs.

Obama was an early opponent of the Bush administration's policies on Iraq. On October 2, 2002, the day Bush and Congress agreed on the joint resolution authorizing the Iraq War, Obama addressed the first high-profile Chicago anti-Iraq War rally in Federal Plaza, speaking out against it.

On March 16, 2003, the day President Bush issued his 48-hour ultimatum to Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Obama addressed the largest Chicago anti-Iraq War rally to date in Daley Plaza and told the crowd "It's not too late" to stop the war, but it was and now we are in a terrible mess.

Obama sought to make his early public opposition to the Iraq War before it started a major issue in his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign to distinguish himself from his Democratic primary rivals who supported the resolution authorizing the Iraq War, and in his 2008 U.S. Presidential campaign, to distinguish himself from four Democratic primary rivals who voted for the resolution authorizing the war, one was Hillary Clinton.

Obama loves to play basketball, a sport he participated in as a member of his high school's varsity team. Before announcing his presidential candidacy, he began a well-publicized effort to quit smoking.
Asked to name a "hidden talent," Obama answered: "I'm a pretty good poker player."

Obama joined Trinity United Church of Christ in 1988. A megachurch with 8,000 members, Trinity is the largest congregation in the United Church of Christ. He was baptisted Christain in 1988.