Holy Buck, Fatman!

On January 8, I officially, after much reading and homework, decided to support Senator Barack Obama for President. I looked carefully at each candidates websites, read their solutions to our countries problems and decided that Obama has the best solutions to the mess that BushCo created.

There has been some serious fighting going on among dems over who is better: Hilliary or Barack?
Except all I keep reading all over the damn blogosphere are the same fucking memes: Obama is unqualified and Hillary is a woman and therefore not a strong enough to “handle” the Job.

Both of those arguments are utter Bullshit and really present nothing in way real solutions. If someone wants to state their case on their chosen candidate, please give me some real examples of what they might try to do when they get into the Oval office.

There are a few issues that both Clinton and Obama see eye to eye on: Iraq, education, healthcare. I believe that they both would make some serious headway on these issues and both would be a good choice for the Dem Ticket in November.

It’s when you start to dig further into the nitty gritty of issues effecting the Economy, Intellectual Property, technology and the internet, The Subprime Mortgage mess and extending further benefits to the working families of America, Hillary falls short and Obama runs away with it.

I spend a lot of time reading and writing about issues that have been effecting the economy, specifically, the mess that Atrios refers to as “Big Shitpile”. Big shit pile was allowed to happen because in 1999 a very important regulatory law was repealed to pave the way for banks to own investment houses and own “Collaterized debt obligations” which allowed banks to issue bonds to investors against a mixed pool of assets .  The assets in this case  was a bunch of home loans. Two very attractive things about these CDO’s were the fact that they were meant to minimize risk and –pay attention now—weren’t on the banks books. (can you smell that?!?!?! it smells like Enron!)

Essentially, our home loans were pooled together in a sort of “mutual fund” type packaging and bought and sold on wall street by fat cat investors looking to make a quick buck. They made money based on the probability that we would be able to pay our loans back through either refinancing or selling (flipping?)  the home. Actually living in the home and paying the mortgage off within, say, 30 years or so seemed irrelevant.  What these greedy investors failed to understand was that real estate prices had been driven to unsustainable levels and creative financing would be the downfall of these new investment products. Investors were betting on the fact that you and I could repay our mortgages even after ARMS had reset. They kinda bet wrong. Now, congress critters are scrambling to bail out the homeowner—sort of. What they REALLY want to do is bail out the Banks and shitty investment houses because of their bad bonds, products and assorted other fancy schmancy investment thingy. If the homeowner can continue to pay these overpriced and terrible mortgages, then the the fat cat investors won’t loose their shirts and have to declare bankruptcy. How was all this possible? Well—President Clinton signed the repeal of the Glass Steagal Act in November of 1999. getting rid of this last bit of regulation was the start of all of this. Do I believe that Hillary will be like her husband and continue to be very cozy with Real Estate and Big banks/Investment houses? Yes. It’s right there in her Economic Policy page. Her solutions are the same ones that we’ve been handed in the last few months of this major economic debacle. Nothing new here, please move along.

Obama doesn’t want to just bail the homeowner out. He wants to STOP Subprime predatory lending practices, reform the horrible bankruptcy laws that do not allow people to  get out of these nasty arrangements. His Tax cut to offset payroll taxes will put money back into our pockets almost immediately. It’s what we need right away, not a check a few months from now. His Mortgage plans to add tax credits, streamline the disclosures  and other major reforms will also bolster his plan to invest in American infrastructure, through Technology investment. Technology, after all seems like the new Blue collar.

Hillary does talk about investing in research and development as an investment into the future of American industry. However, she all but neglects the entire tech industry and focuses solely on scientific research. While that is very important to our existing infrastructure, it’s not the only thing that we need. The nod to extend broadband access is fine, but we need more investment and tax breaks to keep tech firms from making decisions to outsource.

Obama understands technology better then any of the candidates. He is the ONLY one that addresses the need to keep the internet free—He advocates Net Neutrality!!! EVERY SINGLE major  blogger should be asking their chosen candidate where they stand on Net Neutrality! Where does Clinton stand? I don’t see it mentioned on her issues page. If someone can tell me where she stands and why it isn’t a major part of her innovation agenda I will stand corrected.

I’ve thought about this for a while. I was pretty pissed about the act of pandering Obama using the ex gay idiot. I realized something, though. There is NO perfect candidate. There is only the one that exemplifies the issues that are most important to the success of my family. To me, Obama represents the best chance of getting something done. No, he’s not going to wave his magic wand of hope and fix all the transgressions of the past 30 years. (we’ve had a rough 30 years of Status Quo) Based on his bipartisan work in the Illinois State Legislator, I think he can bridge the gap created by the current administration, push the religious lunatics back to the fringe where they belong and start to work with people—not against them.

Please visit some other wonderfully written bloggy endorsements of Obama for more great reasons why, Yes, We Can!