The Yes We Can high

It'll happen eventually, Obama fever will subside in all of us; but today I'm excited. I'm worried that if Obama delivers anything short of a miracle recovery for the United States, he won't live up to the lofty expectations people have for him. But I wanted to lay out my more realistic goals for the first 4 years of his presidency.

Abortion: Reverse this < http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/18/america/abort.php > and do this: < http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/19/obama.abortion/index.html >

Re-legalize partial birth abortions. This is the most retarded type of abortion to outlaw. No one uses a partial birth abortion as a form of birth control; after 9 months, they've decided to have the child. These are only done when there has been a complication in the birth and the health and life of the mother is in question.

Also related to abortion is that Obama now can appoint judges to the supreme court to protect abortion. So I encourage judges to retire in the next 4-8 years so we can get some young liberals in there.

The Economy:
Job creation is Obama's stated goal which is admirable but, I would really like to see spending reduced to manageable levels by the last 2 years of his presidency. Hopefully the money we've been spending on war can be used on infrastructure improvements in the domestic economy and spending doesn't have to go through the roof.
I'm still undecided about how I feel about the auto bailout. In a vacuum, it makes more economic sense to just write unemployment checks to everyone who would lose their job because it would cost less and other industries could utilize the talents of the workers and engineers. But I understand the pride these people take in working for a living and producing goods. If foreign car companies can stay successful building factories in the US, I have hope that the US companies can too (maybe I'm being to much of a Sap).

Education (/economy) -Because my mom teaches basic skills at a community college, I have a unique prospective on how little trades are funded. Building up the basic math and reading skills of the blue collar workforce is an area that gets overlooked because high school grads are pushed into college when many just don't belong there either because they're not motivated or just don't have the skills necessary to compete. So in addition to making sure k-12 schools are properly funded (but not with bloated budgets), continuing education for people who aren't rocket scientists is important too.

Environment: Identify attainable goals for emissions pollution. Give companies and industries defined targets and reward companies who achieve these goals.

Investment: At this point, the only thing the US sells to other countries are weapons and pharmaceuticals. We need to recapture some of the more cutting edge energy technologies and start exporting. If the US government is going to invest, make sure its in things we can sell to the rest of the world.

Gay Marriage: My feelings on this subject are well documented. Obama said on the campaign trail that he was against gay marriage but I didn't believe him. He knew that if he said he was for gay marriage, the election would have been about gay marriage and he would have lost (but then he asked Rick Warren to read his invocation and made me not so sure again). Anyway, It would be a dream to see him legalize gay marriage but expecting that would be folly. I would love to see at least some measures that make it harder to outlaw gay marriage such as making marriages that take place in a state that allows gay marriage legal in states that don't allow gay marriage and forcing insurance companies and the like to treat the people as officially married.

War: Leaving when we clearly aren't wanted is the best thing that can happen here. We owe the Iraqi people money to rebuild their infrastructure after we bombed the shit out of it but we need to remove our troop ground presence in the next 12 months. In countries where we know there are credible threats to US security, negotiate with the individual countries to allow the US to send in small operative units to disrupt terror operations without a full blown invasion. I believe this is the tactic that needs to continue in Afghanistan. Clearly this won't work in Iran because they hate us. Economic sanctions against countries that sponsor or harbor terrorists (reducing our dependency on foreign oil wouldn't hurt either).

And funding the PB rec centers so they can keep their lights on at night so I can play basketball after work!!

Go Obama!

Addendum: Two more websites to check out.

www.whitehouse.gov

www.whitehouse.org