Obama

[cos]

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is election day in 24 states, including: Massachusetts, California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Minnesota, Colorado, Arizona, Kansas, Arkansas, and other states where few of my readers live :)

I'm not gonna have a chance today to write a real post about why I endorse Obama, so here are some links to explain or illustrate why I support Obama.

• xkcd's endorsement of Obama
  
• Obama's speech on religion and politics to a religious audience. Long but excellent, watch the whole thing!
  
• Because it works! - Obama's conflict-resolution approach
  
• Former president of Chicago's NOW chapter on why she switched to Obama (short video)
  
• Goodbye to All That: Why Obama Matters (Andrew Sullivan)
  
• Endorsements from the Boston Globe and from Blue Mass Group
  
• The Choice - why progressives should choose Obama over Clinton
  
• Edit: Lawrence Lessig (EFF board member, founder of Creative Commons, Stanford Law professor) endorses Obama in this 20min video
  

Geek, Tech, Open Government

• Obama plans to have a Tech czar to "ensure government officials hold open meetings, broadcast live webcasts of those meetings, and use blogging software, wikis and open comments to communicate policies with Americans".
  
• Obama supports Net Neutrality - and understands why.
  
• xkcd's endorsement of Obama
  

War

• Obama's early opposition to the Iraq war
  
• Obama's 2002 speech on Iraq
  
• Get Your War On artist David Rees endorses Obama for his opposition to cluster bombs in civilian areas.
  

Rule of Law

• Obama's views on presidential power & the Constitution
  
• Lawyers for Guantanamo detainees endorse Obama en masse
  
• Judge him by his laws - "Consider a bill into which Obama clearly put his heart and soul. The problem he wanted to address was that too many confessions, rather than being voluntary, were coerced -- by beating the daylights out of the accused. Obama proposed requiring that interrogations and confessions be videotaped."
  

Comments

[japlady.livejournal.com]

correct me if I'm wrong but he intends to gut NASA

[cos]

I highly doubt it, and I've heard nothing of the sort.

... but since you mentioned it, I Googled around a bit and found a pretty good policy statement on space exploration from him.

[boutell.livejournal.com]

What's conspicuous by its absence is the manned Mars program. But I haven't heard tell of any other candidate getting behind that right now.

[cos]

Yeah, the feeling is that unmanned programs give a lot more value for the amount of money spent, in terms of hard science. Manned programs are very expensive and would come at the expense of a lot of other things. I think a manned Mars program could be valuable if it were a big national project like the original moon landings, but that we've got too many other better candidates for a big national science/tech rallying cry right now.

[japlady.livejournal.com]

http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/obamas_nasa_plan_gets_little_p.php

[japlady.livejournal.com]

That came from brian who works at NASA

http://brian1789.livejournal.com/

[japlady.livejournal.com]

http://www.space.com/news/071231-candidate-positions.html

[seborn.livejournal.com]

The comments on this post have a whole pile of links on space exploration, Obama, and Clinton.