I've been completely unsuccessful in pinning down any Obama supporters on issues in the comment system.  So, I'm offering a challenge.

Name an issue on which Obama offers a solution that is right and that Clinton is wrong.  Please note the word solution.   I'm not interested in opinions about votes for/against the war, tax breaks for the rich &c.  You know the old saying, "Opinions are like a******s, everybody has one."
So, you could say, "I'm voting for Obama because his plan to solve <issue x> is better than Clinton's plan to solve <issue x>."  Then, in the interest of full disclosure, you can give the points of the Obama plan that are correct and the points of the Clinton plan that are incorrect. 
The idea behind the stipulation is just that opining that the Obama plan for healthcare is "better than" the Clinton plan, without backing up the opinion with facts, is pretty much the equivalent of my seven-year-old daughter saying she likes Hannah Montana "just because I like her" (which is an actual quote).

This could be a useful exercise in reeducation of an unreconstructed progressive. 

If Obama supporters succeed in creating a good thread of pro-Obama talking points on issues, then you also have a useful resource for future exchanges.  Of course, Clintonistas are free to log in the reverse opinions about Obama-bot claims.  But, my goal is to collect facts that show why he is going to be the greatest President since Abraham Lincoln (which seems the general consensus among supporters), based on the details of his stated plans.  As Alex Bennett remarked on his show this morning, "Everybody is for change.  But what are you going to change -- and how are you going to go about it?"

Thanks.

mp

I am confident that the point of introducing the so-called superdelegates into the conversation was to take the conversation off the "runaway train" discussion of the Obama candidacy.  Momentum is such a psychological aspect of any process, that I am sure that the Clinton campaign team recognized that they needed to get the press off that scent.  Unfortunately, they did such a bad job of turning the corner that they went up on the sidewalk and took out their own candidate in the process.

It is obvious to any rational person that the elected and party officials who are coming to the convention to help select a candidate are not going to do anything to damage the party or the selected candidate's prospects for election.  Come on, people!  Snap out of it.  These delegates are not going to "anoint" a candidate who can't win in November!  Doh!  I can hardly recall more conversation with less substance ... even George Bush is capable of injecting more common sense into a conversation than the people currently hyperventilating over the "superdelegate" "issue."

It's trivial to find cases in which the current system design would be genuinely useful.  One would be the case in which a candidate comes to the convention with the most delegates but during the course of the campaign has been substantially and irreparably damaged -- caught in flagrante, a drug bust, $100,000 of FBI sting money in the freezer, thinks aliens landed on his mansion lawn and kidnapped his daughter.  It also would be possible, in the current primary/caucus system, for a candidate to arrive at the convention with a plurality of delegates but who is himself/herself not a true representative of core Democratic values, is out of sync with the general population and is going to be unelectable in the general election.

The reason I am a Democrat is because I believe the party represents, broadly, my core views about the political life of the country.  I expect the party to advance those views -- and if the outcome of the Democratic primary/caucus process is to promote a segregationist into the national convention, I expect the party will have a process in place to counterbalance that obvious error.

A related item much in the news today is the seating of some delegates whose state party leadership violated Democratic Party rules.  The argument is made that these delegates should be seated because the primaries were held and party membership voted.  The party membership in those states should be outraged -- at their state leadership.  The state party leaders knew the rules and the penalty -- and adopted a "screw you, we don't care about the party" attitude.  Well, guess what, the rules were enforced.  

I am not sure what these individuals thought actually would happen -- that the national leadership would be too scared to enforce the rules. too weak ... I don't know.  But if you're doing 70 in a 50 and get a ticket, claims of special privilege don't wash much laundry.  No reason for them to get the washing done here, either.  If the membership and delegates in Florida and Michigan want a seat at the table, they should fire every member of their respective leadership teams involved in deliberately breaking party rules and then petition the national party, hat in hand.  They can point to the fact that the malefactors have been evicted as evidence of their sincere desire to be active members of the Democratic Party.

It is called a political party, it has rules, a platform and goals.  Chief among its goals is the election of officials who represent the electorate and implement the platform.  If the people in Florida and Michigan don't like the Democratic Party, they are free to try to change the rules and they are free to leave, and form their own party.  They are free to disobey those rules they find to their own inconvenience and be punished for the infraction.  

But, stop the whining.  The member of the Democratic Parties in Florida and Michigan were not disenfranchised by the national Democratic Party, they were disenfranchised by their own state leaders.  They should address the issue at its source.

This is an extended response to the article entitled "What Israel Means to Me" by Amitai Etzioni reprinted a few days ago. I could not make up my mind to post a long comment and then the article disappeared.

And What This Article Means To Me

It means another apologia for a country that, no matter what, is considered above criticism.

"On July 16, an Israeli aircraft fired on a civilian home in the village of Aitaroun, killing 11 members of the al-Akhrass family, among them seven Canadian-Lebanese dual nationals who were vacationing in the village when the war began. Human Rights Watch independently interviewed three villagers who vigorously denied that the family had any connection to Hezbollah. Among the victims were children aged one, three, five and seven." -- Human Rights Watch Report

When an Israeli child is killed by a Katyusha rocket, it's an offense against nature; when the Israeli airforce blows 60 Lebanese women and children to kingdom come, it's "a regrettable incident." Where is the outrage in Israel, at these senseless deaths and at this horrific suffering? A pathetic few protesters, regarded with contempt by the great mass of the Israeli populace. Words cannot adequately express the extent of my disgust at this moral relativism and at the utter lack of conscience that produced it. I am physically ill just thinking about it.

Historically, the Hebrews wrested Palestine by violence from is original inhabitants. They, in turn, were kicked out by subsequent conquerors. "Israel" existed as a nation -- as an organized political unit -- for a scant few decades more than two millenia ago. By an historically remarkable turn of events, the desires of a few European-hating Jews meshed with the desires of Jew-hating European governments eager to solve their "Jewish Problem" by expatriating their Jewish populations. A violent seizure of land in Palestine was effected. In the 1920s, Ben-Gurion stated flatly that the Jews in Israel would pretend a desire for peace with the Arabs until the the new Jewish State was well-armed and well-established enough to drive them out. Since the first "commandos" landed and started killing inconvenient Arabs, it has been the intention of successive Israeli governments to drive Arabs out of "Eretz Yisrael." Olmert continues that tradition.

"Everyone in southern Lebanon is a terrorist and is connected to Hezbollah" -- Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon

"Every village from which a Katyusha is fired must be destroyed" -- Israeli general, quoted in Yedioth Ahronoth

"One who goes to sleep with rockets shouldn't be surprised if he doesn't wake up in the morning" -- Dan Gillerman, Israeli ambassador to the UN

At bottom, the "elephant in the room" is that the Israeli Zionists and their apologists regard Jews as "God's Chosen People" and believe that it absolutely does not matter to God what they do to non-Jews. Lebanese or Palestinian -- killing the innocent non-Jew is a PR problem, devoid of moral implication. Exactly out of this moral void comes the utter failure of the Israeli state. As the above quotations indicate, there is nothing "accidental" about the killing of civilians in southern Lebanon. Women and babies sleeping in an apartment building 300 meters from a Hezbollah rocket launcher will be killed, as a matter of course. Restrictions of that killing are imposed by what Israel calculates it can get away with as a political matter, in the context of the larger world. The Israeli government restrains its prediliction for fullblown, scorched-earth slaughter out of concern for its foreign aid packages. The country wouldn't survive six months if the US closed the money spigot.

I have sympathy for the innocent killed, in the case of Israel vs The Rest of the World, -- the innocent being 12 year-old Palestinian boys shot off the porch by indifferent Israel soldiers, Lebanese babies with their heads ripped off by Israeli bomb shrapnel, or young Israeli children blown to bits while riding on a bus, when a suicide bomber explodes himself. I have no sympathy with retired terrorists, self-styling themselves "commandos" or "freedom fighters," who in their day killed civilians with as much indifference as Hezbollah and the present Israeli government.

Nor do I sympathize with modern Israelis who, from the comfort of their apartments in Tel Aviv, endorse the continuous murder of non-Jewish families as a means of "protecting" Jewish families. To them, I say: You will continue to live in fear until you stop the killing. And that is as it should be. It is God's justice for a stiffnecked people who have turned their backs to God: "for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."