Climate change: Participate fully in the sequel to the Kyoto protocol. Heavily stimulate research into alternative energy. Appoint Al Gore to whatever position he can do most good at.

Privacy/security: Redress the insane imbalance which has been created here. Pipe dreams would be disbanding DHS, smacking down the TSA. Stop illegal wiretapping and all the crazy 1984 schemes. Mostly what I'm hoping for is a saner approach in the USA trickling down to the rest of the Western world, whose leaders have been far too happy headlong rushing into this ravine, following the USA. (Or in the case of the UK, leading the way.) (This is actually the one aspect where I'm really not very hopeful; I just hope Obama can surprise me.)

Technology: Net neutrality, stop giving in to the MAFIAA. (Idem with trickling down to the rest of the western world.)

Foreign policy: Extract the USA from the messes it's currently in without making the situation worse. Mostly not getting into any new messes. Leaving the Middle East be for eight years as a first step on the long road to taking away the hatred of the USA there (it'll take a generation or two). Spending lots of money on stimulating education and rebuilding - locally! (No Halliburton!)

Internal US: Health care, economy, etc. Being the best president ever, showing people that their hope was not misplaced, starting the long process of taking away the politics of fear and hatred (it'll take a generation or two). Showing people who're currently firmly entrenched in the Republican mindset that things can really be better, that "socialism" isn't a curse word, and that everyone benefits from some common institutions. Pipe dreams would be changing the political landscape to get rid off the current two-party system, the electoral college, filibustering, rider bills and all kinds of pork.

As an addendum to my post above, this is about hope. I believe the potential for all of it is there, and none of it by itself (other than the pipe dreams) is out of the question.
Still, I do realize this is still in many ways the real world.
I like the way John Scalzi put it:

4. Your next president is going to disappoint you. Barack Obama does not fart cinnamon-scented rainbows. He is not trailed by angels and unicorns. Reality does not reshape itself to his wishes. Dude’s a human being, and a politician, and he’s going to have to work with other human beings who are also politicians. Per point 2, some things you want him to do he won’t be able to do, and some of the things you want him to do he won’t want to do, so they won’t get done. He will make mistakes. He will make errors. He will be caught flat-footed from time to time. He will be challenged by antagonists, foreign and domestic, who will have an interest in seeing him faceplant. He will piss most people off. His approval rating will drop below 50%. He is going to disappoint you. Get used to the idea.

5. Last night’s election didn’t change the country; it offered a chance for the country to change. Which is something Obama himself pointed out last night, because he’s a smart man like that. He will effect some of that change through the power of the presidency, and through his relationship with Congress, but ultimately what will change things is whether people want change and are willing to work for it. Elections are the easy part, basically. Now comes the work. As the saying goes, you have been offered a country, if you can keep it. It’s up to you more than it’s up to your next president.

I  mostly just hope this is a signal of happier times ahead, I could do with some peace and prosperity for a while.

My apathy toward the election is pretty strong..  There's not a lot that was going to change either way.

The center of my world right now is Iraq.  I've been here a little while now, and will be here for the foreseeable future, with any luck, I'll be back home sometime in Spring.. otherwise, it might be summer.

There is no easy graceful way for us to withdraw instantly.  The Iraqi security forces are now responsible for 12 of the 18 provinces, and getting better every day.  But they simply don't have certain capabilities we have, yet.  Even if the "regular" U.S. forces pull out in the next year, I'd probably still be here, just dealing with bosses with funny accents, through translators, and my security would go all to hell.

If Obama were to pull us out of the war ASAP, we would see this country collapse, and a worse situation arise than what there was before hand.  Going in may have been a mistake, pulling out now would be even worse of one.  My one caveat to that is, if their assembly doesn't pass a forces agreement with us, then we need to pull out in an agreeable fashion with their politicians.  A failure to respect the sovereignty of their elected assembly would devastate both our and their credibility.

All in all, if he's going to pull us out of here, it needs to be in an orderly fashion, and not look like we're running away, tail tucked.  To many people have fought to long and to hard for that.  It would be the tremendous insult.  I've not been here long myself, but I take our performance and what happens out here very personally.  Set up a checklist, agreeable with the Iraqi parliament, and let them control how quickly they accomplish checklist items, when they achieve one of those milestones, we pull that contingent.  Checkpoint by checkpoint till we're out.


Anyways, when we're done here, we're just going to Afghanistan instead. With that in mind, part of me says "it doesn't matter".  A lot of us are going to be spending a lot of time over here in Asia for a while.

I think that as President, Obama is going to take getting out of Iraq very very seriously, and that he will do it in a responsible manner. In fact, I think that's going to be one of the first things that a majority of his supporters are going to be upset about, that he won't redeploy the military as quick as they'd like. Because everything we've seen about how he makes decisions is that he speaks to the experts on a subject and demands the unvarnished truth...and then makes a decision about what to do. Before we see everyone home from Iraq, quite a few of them will go to Afghanistan to try and get that mess stabilized. What will most likely happen is that as the Iraqis take more and more control of their own country, Obama will direct Petraeus to move troops to Afghanistan, and then as that country stabilizes, CentCom will bring brigades home. I think that an Obama administration is going to also deploy a sizable diplomatic contingent to quite a few places in the Middle East, to do the hard lifting on that end which has been neglected for so long under the Bushcheney junta. That will smooth things so that the military redeployment/withdrawal can be done as safely as possible.

As for Obama getting pushed around by the MIC...I seriously doubt that. Yes I'm an Obama supporter but I haven't drank the kool-aid to the point where I think he's infallible. Everything I've seen of him leads me to believe that he is far from a pushover or weakling to be controlled. The quiet, calm exterior hides an interior of steel with him, and it's one of the things about him I admire. Corruptible? I don't agree, buma. All the information available about this man and how he's lived his entire life point to someone who seems to be particularly incorruptible. Granted, never say never and all that, but honestly? I think it's very very very unlikely he'll be corrupted by anyone.

When it comes to stuff like the OK to use the military within the country's borders, or the warrentless wiretapping, or all the signing statements that Bush did...I have a feeling that Obama is going to have a huge core of Constitutional experts going through everything with a fine-toothed comb, and examining what is needed to be done to mitigate the damage. Another big reason I became an Obama supporter was the fact that he taught Constitutional law for over a decade at the University of Chicago law school. We need a Constitutional law expert in the White House, and we got one. The Bushcheney junta did everything in their power to gut the foundation of our government, in what I think was nothing less than a behind-the-scenes coup attempt. My biggest fear leading up to Nov 4, 2008 was that there would be some sort of 'terrorist attack' and that martial law would be declared, the election put 'on hold' and we'd no longer be the US of A. Yes, I tend towards conspiracy theorist tendencies, but I do try to keep them under control. :) Luckily, the world doesn't follow my worst-case scenarios, so we actually got to have a normal election. Obama's background is what makes me believe that he'll do what it takes to repair the Constitution, even if it takes all 4 years of his (first) term.

Last edited by dragondawn (2008-11-05 23:32:31)

No need to apologize for sounding grumpy. Since you've been able to vote there hasn't seemed to be a lot of hope out there. Will things change? Maybe, maybe not. Thing is, if people think things have changed, then they feel it and act accordingly, for the most part. What the rest of us have to do is be the one that makes sure that someone who promised hope and change actually brings it.

Yesterday, I spent most of my evening looking for posts and blogs and articles like this one, stuff that talked about what people hoped for from Obama. I found some really interesting stuff. But the most disheartening was at Fox News.

As an example I found this at a place called Alternet. It's an article with a bunch of different opinions by people in various fields. There are comments and a lot of them are really well thought out.

http://www.alternet.org/election08/1061 … d_running/


It was late at night when I found the article at Fox News. It had a good title "YOU DECIDE: What Is Most Important Thing Obama Needs to Do in His First 30 Days?" I thought it would be filled with thoughtful and interesting comments from the right. You know, stuff that made you go, "Huh. Never thought of that. Must learn more." But it was more like, "Black Evil Antichrist Terrorist Communist Muslim Must Resign!!!!" It was horrifying.  I had no idea the hate was so intense. It disturbed me so badly that I had nightmares. Seriously. I woke up feeling terribly guilty for thinking socialised medicare was a good thing.

http://foxforum.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/ … cide_1105/




@Xeno-- nice to have a viewpoint from over there. I like what you say. I don't think Obama is just gonna up and pull everyone out by the end of January, unless the Iraqis want it that way. From what I understand (mind you this does come from Fox News) he has a solid plan to pull the troops out slowly in a reasonable manner taking into consideration all the difficulties inherent to such a situation.

my first question about those fox threads is whether not those are actual civilians or...

well... naw, trying to suppress the paranoia... it's going to be OK.

in a social theory class i had today i got to express my fear of blind faith in my generation and a lot of people agreed. a couple people gave that whole 'but he's going to improve our image,' thing, and that was expected, but like a couple of you have said, he may just enhance public awareness and activism because the major morale now seems to be 'hopeful' and all that.

i do, however, HOPE that people don't think their personal duties to participate in local politics, reduce their carbon footprints, and generally practice tolerance and kindness and good old things like that, that these things have all faded away because mr. messiah is going to take care of them.

i'm beginning to think, for no GOOD reason, that obama may have just got more centrist/right because if you look at the centrist narrative as historical narrative, you begin to realize that the most accurate portrayal of terrorism, socialism, capitalism and other ideas, is so far distorted by the centrist american narrative, that you can't veer that far without losing people in a narrative formula that causes cognative dissonance. i meant to say that earlier. shit the suboxine is kicking in i'll be back later.

Oh, and Xeno? Check your PMs.

It's taken a couple of days for it to start to sink in that it really happened.  :)  I'm still not sure I quite believe it. he he  Luckily it was too big of a landslide for the Republicans to fix this time so they contented themselves to fix the Alaska elections[what's more plausible: turnout was down 10+% because an Alaskan was running for VP and the republicans massively overperformed the polls, or a 100,000 Democratic votes were 'lost'].  Still holding out hope for Begich and Franken and Martin though.

today it struck me simply because there was a picture of a black family approaching the white house.

i mean. really?

then i became a little more optimistic.

let him destroy the middle east and lie about everything he said. i mean. at absolute worst. but otherwise, man, what a symbol.