The Kid Gloves Come Off

Now that it appears Senator Barack Obama has sewn up the nomination as the Democratic Party's presidential candidate, I think we can safely take off the kid gloves.

While I am not a great fan of John McCain, I think he'll make a much better president than Barack Obama for a number of reasons. I could probably go on ad nauseum about how Barack has got it exactly wrong on almost every count.

We've all heard his campaign speeches talking about how the American people are ready for a change. But have those same American people actually listened to what he proposes this 'change' would entail. Listening to some of his ideas I had a feeling of déjà vu, wondering where I'd heard some of them before. And then it came to me: Lyndon Baines Johnson's Great Society, where the government would take care of all our wants and needs. It was supposed to be the War On Poverty. Unfortunately poverty won. Taxes went up. Spending went up. Unemployment went up. And nearly three generations of the poor were trapped in poverty because the same government programs that were supposed to help them made it difficult, if not impossible, to get out of poverty.

This is but one proposal Barack Obama has for our nation.

He talks about how our economy is a shambles, in a deep recession. If this is the case, then it's one of the least burdensome recessions I can remember, especially since the unemployment rate during this 'recession' is lower than during the economic heyday of the Clinton Administration.

I guess one of my greatest gripes is that he talks in vague generalities about what he's going to do, creating “change”. The only thing he's been clear about is that he's going to let the Bush tax cuts expire, raising the taxes on the rich. Unfortunately I think he defines “rich” as “anyone with a job.”

We can expect a hit to the economy and to tax revenues when the tax breaks expire because billions will be sucked out of an economy that he says is in trouble. I don't know if he can explain how he can turn the economy around by pulling hundreds of billions of dollars out of the economy that would otherwise be spent by businesses and consumers to sustain the it. The numbers don't add up.

His promise for a quick withdrawal of US troops from Iraq is foolish and dangerous because it would leave the job in Iraq incomplete, giving our enemies and those of the people of Iraq just the boost they need to ramp up the death and destruction and, in time, replacing the democratically elected government with a theocratic dictatorship. I know I wouldn't want that to be part of my legacy if I were to become President of the United States. It doesn't matter if the choice to go to war against Iraq was right or wrong. We're there now and we need to finish the job, clean up our mess, and leave peace and prosperity in our wake rather than shattered dreams and sectarian violence.

There are plenty of other problems I have with Barack Obama and his promises for change, something I'll be delving into the closer we come to the election in November.