Barack has positions, but no actual plans as of yet that I've seen.

Which parts of the issues breakdowns on his website are you having trouble reading?

Uh, first off -- I have not a care in the world who you vote for, so you can get off that horse.

Secondly, I'm sorry if you think that people directing you towards information you demonstrate not having had access to with your words is somehow "rude and arrogant". I don't know how someone can feel so threatened by a web link that they find it "arrogant", but...whatever.

Finally, if you had bothered to read past the first item (very telling that you didn't choose an example from anything but the first item on the first issue heading, btw), you'd see that plenty of things on the list that describe lots of specific actions to be taken. Just because you chose one that describes a view and a standard instead of an action, doesn't mean those actions don't exist. For instance, from further down on the page:


Obama will sign into law his legislation that establishes harsh penalties for those who have engaged in voter fraud and provides voters who have been misinformed with accurate and full information so they can vote.
End Racial Profiling

Obama will ban racial profiling by federal law enforcement agencies and provide federal incentives to state and local police departments to prohibit the practice.
Reduce Crime Recidivism by Providing Ex-Offender Support

Obama will provide job training, substance abuse and mental health counseling to ex-offenders, so that they are successfully re-integrated into society. Obama will also create a prison-to-work incentive program to improve ex-offender employment and job retention rates.
Eliminate Sentencing Disparities

Obama believes the disparity between sentencing crack and powder-based cocaine is wrong and should be completely eliminated.


Obama will give first-time, non-violent offenders a chance to serve their sentence, where appropriate, in the type of drug rehabilitation programs that have proven to work better than a prison term in changing bad behavior.


Those are all actionable plans, are they not?

Furthermore, he goes into much of his material in great detail -- certainly greater detail than should be necessary at this point in the race:

Obama will cut income taxes by $1,000 for working families to offset the payroll tax they pay.

* Provide a Tax Cut for Working Families: Obama will restore fairness to the tax code and provide 150 million workers the tax relief they need. Obama will create a new "Making Work Pay" tax credit of up to $500 per person, or $1,000 per working family. The "Making Work Pay" tax credit will completely eliminate income taxes for 10 million Americans.
* Simplify Tax Filings for Middle Class Americans: Obama will dramatically simplify tax filings so that millions of Americans will be able to do their taxes in less than five minutes. Obama will ensure that the IRS uses the information it already gets from banks and employers to give taxpayers the option of pre-filled tax forms to verify, sign and return. Experts estimate that the Obama proposal will save Americans up to 200 million total hours of work and aggravation and up to $2 billion in tax preparer fees.


I'm not sure why people are so invested in this "Obama's an idiot with no plans" meme that they've tried to bin on the Senator, but one thing they all have in common is that they really don't want the info once you show it to them. They'll willfully ignore it if they have to. Is it really that painful to be disabused of your fanciful notions about a candidate? You don't see pro-Obama folks saying Hillary "doesn't have any ideas", do you? They just criticize her positions and record, that's all.

Maybe it's because it's easier to patronize some young black guy, I don't know. That insulting attitude's the one you ought to worry about, not "mine".

Is that your standard response to anyone who points out an error? "you're mean, I'm taking my ball and going home!"

PLEASE -- DON'T VOTE FOR OBAMA. I'm BEGGING you not to vote for him. Get as many people as you CAN not to vote for him, okay? In return, just stop saying things that are demonstrably false about him. Deal?


And btw, I didn't say YOU were racist, I said many of the people who have this patronizing attitude towards the Senator (also state Senator and Constitutional Law professor of 10 years) -- might not do so if he were an old white man. He's gone into no less detail than Dennis Kucinich or Chris Dodd (or McCain, for that matter, who doesn't even make up for the lack of detail in his personal appearances with, you know, charisma or anything) -- yet I haven't heard a peep about them. Interesting, no?


P.S.: The link at the bottom of the very page you criticized above? Goes into even more excruciating detail about the section you ridiculed.

Edited at 2008-02-14 01:03 am (UTC)

Sorry -- all the articles I've read just say he "taught law school" for 10 years -- you are probably right, it wasn't specified. I guess I was using the term "professor" in the looser sense, not as the title "Professor".

It might be because he went back to community organizing in the poor neighborhoods of Chicago when he left Harvard, instead of going into big-money corporate law somewhere like, say, Wal-Mart. If I was at Harvard and had big-money plans when I left, I'd be a lot more motivated to publish.

All that just makes me believe him more when he says his aspirations to the Presidency weren't lifelong.

I had a few extra minutes at work, so I looked up references to his time teaching Constitutional Law. It seems that even students and other faculty used the terms "professor" and "senior lecturer" (which was technically what Obama actually was) pretty interchangeably.

Also, here's an interview from yesterday where a top foreign policy adviser calls him "a professor of Constitutional Law" as well. Also not capitalized, of course.

But you make a valid point, as officially he did not attain full tenure as a Professor, taking a leave of absence when it was offered.