Common Sense Politics

This is the second of two Presidential candidate’s assessments, this one about Barack Obama. Like we did with Senator McCain, Common Sense Politics will not go into deep detail when it comes to his background and upbringing but will instead focus more on recent history and events in his life. Anybody who wants greater detail on his early life should simply use search engines and other such information sources.

Barack Hussein Obama II was born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, his father was a foreign student from Kenya and his mother was Ann Dunham from Kansas, they met as students at the University of Hawaii but divorced after a few years of marriage. After her divorce, Ann Dunham met and married Lolo Soetoro from Indonesia and in 1967, when Barack was only six years old, they moved to Indonesia where Obama attended local schools in Jakarta until he was ten years old. In 1971, he was sent back to Honolulu where he lived with his maternal grandparents until his high school graduation in 1979. The only reason we write this is to better understand his rather eventful early years and youth, moving and living in Indonesia and then returning to Hawaii.

After two years at Occidental College in Los Angeles, he transferred to Columbia University in New York where in 1983 he earned his B.A. in political science. In 1985, Obama moved to Chicago to work as a community organizer for three years as director of the Developing Communities Project, a church-based community organization. In 1988, he entered Harvard Law School where he graduated with a J.D. magna cum laude in 1991 and returned to Chicago, working for several law firms and writing/publishing a book “Dreams from my Father”. He entered politics in the mid 90’s and was elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1997 until he ran in 2004 for the United States Senate and won by a large margin. He has been a U.S. Senator since January 4, 2005.

In the late 80’s, he joined the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and was a member until his recent disassociation for political expediency. Obama claims, that the Reverend Jeremiah Wright while introducing him to loving Jesus Christ, became his spiritual advisor, mentor and longtime friend over a period of nearly twenty years. Barack Obama met his wife Michelle in Chicago and they got married in 1992 at this church and they also had their two daughters baptized by Rev. Wright. A perfectly normal religious background until earlier this year when some of the more hate filled and outrageous sermons by Rev. Wright were shown on television and the public was stunned, to say the least, see our article on March 21 entitled “The Hate Rants of Obama’s Pastor“. Mr. Obama has tried to tell everybody that he was never present when the Reverend made those statements. Eventually after the Rev. Wright went public with more televised speeches, Obama disavowed his association with him and also left the Trinity United Church of Christ.

We find it truly mindboggling and unbelievable that a man running for the office of President will act more like a slick used car salesman than someone that is hoping to lead a county.  Sorry if this offends any used car salespeople, but you know what we mean.  We even hope that integrity and honesty is now pursued for these auto sales positions, but we certainly expect America’s leaders to possess undeniable and unquestionable integrity and honesty.  The world is filled with people whose emotions guide their belief system.  We are just asking that emotions be replaced with accuracy and integrity when leading America. Let’s be real, he wants us to believe that in many hundreds of sermons over twenty years time, the good pastor never said anything outrageous that would have offended him, Barack Obama. For clarification, this church is based on so called Black Liberation Theology, a form of liberation theology not well known throughout America that is centered on past oppression of blacks by whites. You can read their mission statement and more details by using search engines.

Why is that really important? Barack Obama is a brilliant orator, he can hold his audiences during his speeches in awe, his followers are madly in love with him and are totally committed to getting him elected President of the United States of America.

The reason this is very important is the fact that very little is known about the Senator, Unlike John McCain who has been known to Americans for more than 35 years when he was released from Vietnam prisons, Barack Obama has just recently arrived on the national scene. In fact, he was not even well known before he declared his intentions to seek the Presidency in February of last year. And while he was not at first considered a serious candidate among the nearly dozen Democrats, he is now the presumptuous nominee of the Democrat Party. Should he win in November, he will be our President for at least four years and we believe a much closer look at him, his programs and his proposals is warranted.

Barack Obama’s campaign theme is “Change we can believe in”. At first site, a really very ‘catchy’ sound bite, no doubt about it. As we have experienced during the past 18 months, the Democrats in Congress ran in November 2006 on “It is time for a change” and as we have stated in recent articles, we know now what that change has brought us. Change is by definition a transformation or conversion from something currently existing. But change does not automatically mean that things will change for the better. There are right changes and there are wrong changes. As a people, there is no way that we all agree on what changes are right and which ones are wrong. So, therefore, promoting change cannot possible be considered a good thing by great numbers of people and has to be considered nothing more than a campaign slogan without any true meaning.  If change is the end goal, then Barack might be the man for the job, as he not only speaks about such change but also changes his beliefs regularly.  Maybe a more fitting slogan would be “Beliefs are what I will change.”  These will be spelled out in future articles.

Barack Obama has said that he was against the war in Iraq before it started and he claims that as his major foreign policy credential. He took this position when he was a Senator in Illinois and nobody knew him or heard from him. As things turn around for the better now in Iraq, he has lately been somewhat more silent about bringing the troops home as soon as he is President. On domestic policy, Obama is promoting major themes from the Democrat Party playbook of class warfare: Taxing the rich and giving breaks to the poor! When it comes to energy and high gasoline prices at the pump, he does not want to drill more domestically or build more nuclear power plants or pursue other energy producing schemes (other than windmills and solar power) but wants to convert America into a “green” country and have everybody use less energy.

If it were not so important and serious right now, this would be wonderful material for Saturday Night Life and other comedy shows and movies. We have to seriously question the naivety of Senator Obama. How is the trucking industry, our major transporter of goods and supplies in America going to change to solar and wind power or use less gasoline in their jobs?

 There are two points to be made: First, if they do not have adequate gasoline supplies for transporting the goods, we will face food shortages in a short time as we have not seen them since the Great Depression. Second, with prices for gas and diesel skyrocketing, everything will become more expensive. Does Senator Obama understand this? We do not think so!

We here at this Common Sense Politics strongly believe that Barack Obama is nothing more than a very liberal politician who is riding a tsunami of popularity only because he is an incredibly great speaker/orator, supported by a biased media who cheers him on. You put him on stage in front of a crowd with a teleprompter and he will deliver a wonderful speech with which he wows the audience. But so were many others in the past. No comparison intended but Adolf Hitler and his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels were great speakers as well and they could enthuse 70 or more million Germans about 63 to 78 years ago, ask any German over 85 years of age, they will confirm it.

Barack Obama’s proposals for America are ideologically liberal: Its class warfare when he wants to tax the “Rich”, punish people and companies who make a lot of money, he proposes universal health care in America and other changes with empty rhetoric, no specifics. He is for change and promises hope, he has said that he wants to meet unconditionally with dictators around the world (Iran, North Korea, Venezuela etc) and he blames the Bush administration for everything he disagrees with. And he is now attempting to link his opponent John McCain as a candidate who represents the ‘third term’ of the George W. Bush presidency. To us here at Common Sense Politics, he requires a lot more scrutiny before November 4, his proposals need to be looked at much more analytical, his constant flip-flopping on positions such as the recent change in campaign financing (going now for private funding of his campaign in stead of public funding) is the trait of a typical opportunistic candidate who makes decisions on political expediency and then explaining it away by blaming others for those flip-flops. What kind of President will he be? We will find out should he be elected.  What price will we have to pay for his Presidency?  We guess, the price paid will cost America trillions of dollars and many individual rights and freedoms!  Stay Tuned.