Let me follow up here, and explain why a little inaccuracy is acceptable:
When reading a map, I don't turn off my brain.
So -- if I have a set of directions starting from a slightly inaccurate starting point, I look at my environment, I look at the map, I figure out where I'm really at, determine how the given directions need to be modified, and get to driving. It's not as good as the real thing, sure -- but it works well enough to stop me from needing a dedicated GPS unit, and that's good enough. If it saves me that $400, "essentially useless" it ain't.
What DRM? Sure, the iPhone will play content "protected" by Apple's DRM, but it certainly doesn't require it. The only thing that bugs me is that it doesn't play vorbis, and the interface for adding/removing content is locked down unless it's jailbroken.
And it has plenty of merits -- namely, a WebKit-based browser with a multitouch interface, and a multitouch-centric Google Maps interface. Those two features do it for me -- I've been waiting for years for a phone-based web browser that doesn't suck (and as far as I'm concerned, Mobile Safari delivers), and the mapping interface is good enough (and the cell-tower-based location finding is accurate enough) that I no longer have a car-based GPS unit on my wishlist, which makes up for the cost of the phone quite nicely. The only other thing I care about is being able to write my own apps for it, and I'll have that in three weeks.
People who make a different decision from you may not be completely wrong; they may just have different priorities. I love my iPhone -- but before I switched from my Blackberry 8700, I had the data plan turned off after deciding that the web browser sucked too much to be worth my money and that I had no interest in push-based email delivery. (Why'd I buy a Blackberry, then? Battery life, Bluetooth 2.0 support, and lack of a camera were my priorities at the time). If you wouldn't make the same decision with your Blackberry, we obviously have different values on which we're basing our judgement re phones -- so it's understandable that different conclusions can be reached.
Has nothing to do with the cryptosystem in use -- we're talking about block-layer encryption. If your entire block device is unlocked, it's unlocked, no matter how strong the cryptography may be.
Now, I'm sure it's *possible* to have keys owned by a specific process which are accessible all the way down to the block layer of the filesystem (and to prevent any processes not having a valid key from being able to make any syscalls against that FS), but I don't know of anyone implementing that [as part of a block-layer disk encryption product]. If your definition of "halfway decent" excludes every product available, it's set a little high, isn't it?
FYI -- I think I mentioned this elsewhere in the thread -- but on doing more research, it turned out that the Obama-is-against-all-semiautomatic-weapons meme came from a checkbox Obama punched in a 1998 survey of the state legislature, so it's not something where he had a chance to elaborate his position; I think that elaboration has pretty much happened more recently when folks have asked him questions during his red-state campaigning, hence the answers I gave above.
One I think is well-informed, but intelligent people can disagree.
Certainly -- but it behooves one to be well-informed. Where's the list of Presidents who were first Senators from New York?
There's enough true things to crucify Hillary on that it does little good -- and make those of us who are opposed to her look bad -- to manufacture more. I agree with you that she seems to care more about the position of President as an end in and of itself than about the good she can do there... but if that argument is to be made to folks who don't believe it, it needs to be backed by the record, and those making the assertion need to have that record ready to point to.
I can point at things in Hillary's record that reasonable people will agree are fearmongering, or pandering, or playing to the think-of-the-children crowd... so I describe her in public as such. I can point to polls that make her out to be an extremely divisive figure... so I describe her in public as such. To go beyond the supported evidence, on the other hand, makes all of our opinions just look that much more questionable.
I don't know about people who couldn't possibly figure out any way to fill up their tank at all, but I've met folks who can drive just fine (with a modified, hand-controls-only vehicle) whose disabilities would have made filling up the tank a significant hassle.
Think "wheelchair lift". If your lift exits on the same side your gas tank is on, that's a whole set of problems -- and even if it doesn't (and the space on the other side isn't being used by other vehicles as a pull-through lane), you've got to have enough room between your vehicle and the pump for your chair, not to mention the regular hassle involved in getting in and out. Right now, there's the "Call Attendant" button... but having the pump's robotics do everything for you would be much better.
Have you seen the numbers for youth turnout in Obama's favor in the primaries? It's huge; the youth vote is what won him Iowa, and that's in a primary -- young people never vote in primaries, if the consensus has it right. See TIME's take on the subject.
Barack represents something different -- considerate consensus-building rather than win-at-any-cost, an opportunity to heal the country's political divides rather than dig them deeper while still getting big things done -- and to the generation that recognized their own thoughts in John Mayer's "Waiting on the World to Change", that difference is huge.
It feels silly to be responding to an AC, but let me leave it at this:
By your claim that Obama is a symbol whose meaning is controlled by others, I take it to mean that you believe that Obama stands for nothing but "change", and that the details of that change aren't something he's worked out or publicly proclaimed. This is absolutely, entirely untrue.
Go buy or borrow a copy of The Audacity of Hope, and read it. Listen to his more serious speeches -- the ones talking about specific issues, as opposed to general positioning; his 2002 speech on the Iraq war is a standout, but there are plenty more. Let me know when you're done if you still think Obama is a content-free symbol. Otherwise, you're just parroting talking points -- and are a tool yourself.
Really? Two out of every three Americans are unhappy with Hillary Clinton's job performance?
No, but a very large number of Americans are unhappy with Hillary Clinton -- even if it's nothing but an unfounded personal preference, her negative numbers are well upwards of 40% -- and I assure you that of those, a great many are as virulently anti-Clinton as you and I are anti-Bush.
The fact is, more Democrats support Clinton than Obama.
Really? The numbers I'm hearing say "statistical tie" -- and anyhow, the job of President is to lead more than just Democrats.
And if you actually think that Obama has mass appeal to the same conservative Republicans who dislike Hillary, well, it's quite possible that a large cross-section of them would never vote for an African American candidate under any circumstances anyway, isn't it?
Sooner than they'd vote for Hillary, by a long shot. It's not just gender; Hillary is remembered from the Clintons' first stay in the White House, and not always fondly. I was right-leaning at the time, and recall the impression quite well. On the other hand, my father (a lifelong evangelical Republican who has never once crossed over) is planning to vote for Obama this year, and I hear of more like him.
Looking at the way independent voters split in the primaries, it's clear that Obama has more support among America as a whole; the question is whether the strong left will choose the candidate who will fight winner-take-all for their cause (and take no mind of enemies made or divisions deepened), or the candidate who will try to change the tone of discourse. Call me naive -- but I'm ready for a Democratic party which knows how to respectfully disagree, for a Democratic party that can accomplish its goals -- finance reform, universal healthcare, and others -- without making the Republicans (who are, by and large, well-meaning Americans as much as anyone) out to be bigots looking to quash their fellows' freedoms in the name of their religious preferences. (Now, are some Republicans trying to legislate morality? Certainly, there are -- but falsely painting the entire party that way does no-one any good, except for those trying to energize the hardcore Democratic base). I'm ready for something different. I'm ready for Obama.
...but there are a lot more young people who are tired of being made to feel as if they're political nonpersons, a worthless demographic that never actually gets out the vote.
Have you seen the number of young voters Obama's brought out to the primaries? I'm not worried about the bigots... not at all.
I'm not terribly fond of candidates who put a message of "I'm the only person who can bring us together" out there like Obama has
Do you really think Hillary can? Consider her negative poll numbers; granted, they may not be entirely justified, but that doesn't change the fact that they're there. (I also think that "the only person" is a not-entirely-fair caricature of the message, as he strongly prefers to frame it in positive terms). Obama has a history of striking considered compromises (look at the death penalty legislation when he was a state senator for a prime example) and is equally at ease speaking to evangelicals (whose language he speaks fluently -- which not many Democratic candidates can do) and to the traditional left. His history as a constitutional law professor and civil rights lawyer is also encouraging.
I certainly can't disagree that there are a lot of Obama supporters doing Hillary-bashing. Perhaps it's because a good number of those folks who are members of Hillary's negative numbers end up in the Obama camp? That's certainly the case for me, even though I'd still be supporting Obama if I didn't dislike Hillary. If she wins the nomination, I'll vote 3rd party, as I've had enough of her fearmongering, think-of-the-children, divisive, anti-tech, pandering politics; supporting even symbolic anti-flag-burning legislation and doing photo ops with Jack Thompson earned her a black mark in my book long before Obama became a household name.
There can be a difference between how a polititian intends to act and how they think their stance will affect their election chances.
Yup. Being moderate on gun control (compared to Clinton) doesn't help him with the hardcore Democratic base, while being strongly in favor of gun control (compared to your average NRA member) doesn't help him with the oft-Libertarian-leaning moderates he'd like to court. It's not necessarily an easy line to walk, which is why I can understand him not bringing the subject up too loudly or often... though while his web site is still silent, it seems to be coming up more now that he's campaigning in some traditionally red Super Tuesday states.
Mind you, back in 1998 in the IL state legislature, Obama was much more loudly and publicly in favor of very strong gun control than he is now, and I think that he's indirectly supporting his intent to allow gun bans in inner cities (discussed in The Audacity of Hope) by leaving that course action to the state and local legislatures -- having stated that he supports allowing local government to enact gun control measures more strict than the federal standards should they so choose. That said, some of his recent statements directly contradict the boxes he checked on the 1998 State National Legislative Political Awareness Test -- and I think it's reasonable, when assessing an individual's position, to take the words that come out of their mouth to mean more than boxes checked on a form-based survey of their positions, and to acknowledge that people can change their minds on things over the course of a decade.
More recently, he's supported legislation (which Clinton voted against) to prevent the government from confiscating legitimately owned firearms in disaster areas (as happened post-Katrina), and he's publicly stated during his campaigning that he won't support legislation which confiscates firearms which one already owns (though this leaves room open to ban trafficking or sale).
So -- he's surely not going to get the NRA's support, but the hardcore anti-gun types aren't likely to be happy with his positions either. Personally, I'm opposed to gun control (other than, 'ya know, hitting what you shoot at) -- but I'm no single-issue voter, and I think that the places where I support Obama far outweigh the areas in which we differ.
Yes, it does. They just happen to be the same as the male pronouns.
Ehh... no. Thinking about the statement I was making, I could have easily made it about two hypothetical politicians -- and actually, I should have -- but I had in mind two very specific politicians (though admittedly I was speaking in terms intended to provide a more general tone), and in that case (with specific people in mind), using the male pronoun to refer to a female individual is not accepted usage.
Stop trying to live your life to the drum beat of political correctness.
I live my life as I see fit, and I'll thank you to leave me to do so.
Incidentally, it's A Person Paper by Douglas Hofstadter that convinced me to think seriously about gender inequalities in language. I've also dabbled in Lojban from time to time, which is interesting inasmuch as it allows one strict control over the information expressed.
That the Clinton campaign has nothing to do with the fact that I don't like what he said and think it's a bad analysis.
I certainly see a lot of people who identify themselves as "Reagan Republicans", and think that a President needs to be pretty darned effective at representing a change in direction to strike that kind of chord. That said, let's agree to disagree on that one -- my involvement in politics in that part of my life didn't go past watching the evening news, so I'm not really in a position to make a call one way or the other.
He hasn't done anything remarkable in the Senate other than use it as a stepping stone to running for president.
To quote from this essay (which I strongly urge you to read in full):
So my little data point is: while Obama has not proposed his Cosmic Plan for World Peace, he has proposed a lot of interesting legislation on important but undercovered topics. I can't remember another freshman Senator who so routinely pops up when I'm doing research on some non-sexy but important topic, and pops up because he has proposed something genuinely good.
If Obama were in fact simply preening himself for the Presidency, this hardly seems like the kind of legislation on which he'd spend his time.
Obama does not appear to support an outright ban on semiautomatic weapons, but rather a ban based on clip size. In this interview, when asked how the Virginia Tech shootings could change the discussion on gun control:
Obama: "It's early to make a full assessment on how this changes our politics and the public mood. I think all of us are still just overwhelmed with grief for the families and for Virginia Tech and obviously people here remember what happened at the university and how painful it can be (a reference to the shootings at the University of Iowa). I do think that the evidence so far at least indicates that you've got a young man who was mentally deranged, was identified as such, was temporarily committed and was still able to obtain handguns and so one critical question is, 'What happened to our background check system? Why did it fail?' and it seems like we should be able to come to some bipartisan agreement on making that background system, background check system work. The second area which may be fought by the NRA, but I think has to be looked at is the availability of 19-round clips. I'm a strong believer in the rights of hunters and sportsmen to have firearms. I'm a believe in homeowners having a firearms to protect their home and their family. It's hard for me to find a rationale for a 19-clip semi-automatic. I said at a forum earlier this week, 'If you need 19 rounds to shoot a deer, you probably shouldn't be hunting' and so that I think is something that we should be able to have a reasonable conversation about."
It starts with semi-automatic but where does it end?
Actually, I'm not even sure it starts with semi-automatics. See my retraction here, as I was unable to find a reliable, unbiased source which agreed with that position.
Obama's official, supported position on gun control appears to be simply that existing laws should be enforced, and that municipalities should be able to override federal law with more stringent restrictions should they choose to do so.
Nothing. I don't agree with this purported position on this issue... but in trying to find some solid basis to back it up, I'm actually having quite a bit of trouble doing so.
The only supported positions I can find vis-a-vis Obama's position on gun control:
Existing laws should be enforced
Municipalities should be able to impose their own gun control laws, overriding federal standards
Obama will not support any law seeking to remove guns from their existing, legitimate owners
Either way, it's not a topic he considers a high priority -- which is good, because it's one where I (and a great many other people) agree with him substantially.
I'm not accusing you of making anything up. I can, however, point out that gun control is much higher on Clinton's agenda than Obama's, and that Obama has made it quite clear that he doesn't support forcing existing gun owners to relinquish their weapons, and that I personally doubt that he would make an issue of it in his tenure as President anyhow, given that the higher-priority items on his agenda require bipartisan support.
The "issues" list on his web site doesn't even have gun control as a bullet point; that's how low-priority it is.
My understanding was that it was a technical term -- but having only a shotgun in my house, I'm not particularly well-informed. A post discussing some of Obama's positions is here. I haven't been able to find a reliable (non-biased) source for the Obama's anti-semi-automatic position, but it is clear that he wants to enforce existing laws and to make sure that individual cities aren't blocked from having their own gun laws which are more restrictive than the federal laws.
Either way, gun control is not even remotely close to the top of his agenda, even if he were looking at supporting legislation on the topic from the Presidential bully pulpit (which, again -- he's trying to go for bipartisanship, and this is a good way to ruin that, so I don't see this issue being pushed) he's stated in the past that whatever gun control legislation he develops would not require existing owners to relinquish their weapons.
Yup. I've a few of his plans for trimming the budget, and not all are things that would be popular -- for instance, he's talking about serious cuts at NASA (mothballing work on the Constellation program) to fund his education plan. Obviously, nobody who cares about science likes cutting NASA -- but then, something's gotta give.
Now, that said, I remember back when we got a big democrat in the White House and we had a huge deficit and all the Republicans said the sky was falling and our economy would never recover... and it did, and the government actually managed to run a surplus for a while, until we got a neocon in office. Granted, that surplus was due in large part to smoke and mirrors, but it's a lot better than not even being able to show a smoke-and-mirrors surplus, isn't it? So -- I don't think the economy is an absolutely insurmountable problem, as long as it's addressed, and addressed seriously by folks willing to make hard decisions that will make constituents unhappy. Obama does have as part of his platform enforcement of pay-as-you-go rules, elimination of large classes of corporate subsidies, and increasing the social security income cap. Obviously, that's not enough to fix what's broken -- but in conjunction with having specific cuts planned to support his educational and healthcare programs, it's not a bad place to start.
And as for the hard decisions on what to cut -- part of the advantage of Obama's national unity push is to be able to get support for the hard decisions, so it'll be possible to get the political will to fix what's broke when it comes time to do so, even when that'll mean some tough sacrifices. I think he'll be a lot more effective at getting bipartisan buy-in when hard decisions need to be made than the candidate with the ridiculously high negative ratings coming out of the polls.
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Let me follow up here, and explain why a little inaccuracy is acceptable:
When reading a map, I don't turn off my brain.
So -- if I have a set of directions starting from a slightly inaccurate starting point, I look at my environment, I look at the map, I figure out where I'm really at, determine how the given directions need to be modified, and get to driving. It's not as good as the real thing, sure -- but it works well enough to stop me from needing a dedicated GPS unit, and that's good enough. If it saves me that $400, "essentially useless" it ain't.
Of course I'm aware of its level of accuracy -- I used it for getting around Dallas on a business trip last week. It's more than good enough.
What DRM? Sure, the iPhone will play content "protected" by Apple's DRM, but it certainly doesn't require it. The only thing that bugs me is that it doesn't play vorbis, and the interface for adding/removing content is locked down unless it's jailbroken.
And it has plenty of merits -- namely, a WebKit-based browser with a multitouch interface, and a multitouch-centric Google Maps interface. Those two features do it for me -- I've been waiting for years for a phone-based web browser that doesn't suck (and as far as I'm concerned, Mobile Safari delivers), and the mapping interface is good enough (and the cell-tower-based location finding is accurate enough) that I no longer have a car-based GPS unit on my wishlist, which makes up for the cost of the phone quite nicely. The only other thing I care about is being able to write my own apps for it, and I'll have that in three weeks.
People who make a different decision from you may not be completely wrong; they may just have different priorities. I love my iPhone -- but before I switched from my Blackberry 8700, I had the data plan turned off after deciding that the web browser sucked too much to be worth my money and that I had no interest in push-based email delivery. (Why'd I buy a Blackberry, then? Battery life, Bluetooth 2.0 support, and lack of a camera were my priorities at the time). If you wouldn't make the same decision with your Blackberry, we obviously have different values on which we're basing our judgement re phones -- so it's understandable that different conclusions can be reached.
One sick of phones having nearly-useless web browsers, when the only phone with a useful one is locked.
Sometimes pragmatism wins.
Has nothing to do with the cryptosystem in use -- we're talking about block-layer encryption. If your entire block device is unlocked, it's unlocked, no matter how strong the cryptography may be.
Now, I'm sure it's *possible* to have keys owned by a specific process which are accessible all the way down to the block layer of the filesystem (and to prevent any processes not having a valid key from being able to make any syscalls against that FS), but I don't know of anyone implementing that [as part of a block-layer disk encryption product]. If your definition of "halfway decent" excludes every product available, it's set a little high, isn't it?
Perhaps you've heard of this thing called "rounding"?
If you're going by the summary, that's not much data to use making a call either way.
FYI -- I think I mentioned this elsewhere in the thread -- but on doing more research, it turned out that the Obama-is-against-all-semiautomatic-weapons meme came from a checkbox Obama punched in a 1998 survey of the state legislature, so it's not something where he had a chance to elaborate his position; I think that elaboration has pretty much happened more recently when folks have asked him questions during his red-state campaigning, hence the answers I gave above.
There's enough true things to crucify Hillary on that it does little good -- and make those of us who are opposed to her look bad -- to manufacture more. I agree with you that she seems to care more about the position of President as an end in and of itself than about the good she can do there... but if that argument is to be made to folks who don't believe it, it needs to be backed by the record, and those making the assertion need to have that record ready to point to.
I can point at things in Hillary's record that reasonable people will agree are fearmongering, or pandering, or playing to the think-of-the-children crowd... so I describe her in public as such. I can point to polls that make her out to be an extremely divisive figure... so I describe her in public as such. To go beyond the supported evidence, on the other hand, makes all of our opinions just look that much more questionable.
I don't know about people who couldn't possibly figure out any way to fill up their tank at all, but I've met folks who can drive just fine (with a modified, hand-controls-only vehicle) whose disabilities would have made filling up the tank a significant hassle.
Think "wheelchair lift". If your lift exits on the same side your gas tank is on, that's a whole set of problems -- and even if it doesn't (and the space on the other side isn't being used by other vehicles as a pull-through lane), you've got to have enough room between your vehicle and the pump for your chair, not to mention the regular hassle involved in getting in and out. Right now, there's the "Call Attendant" button... but having the pump's robotics do everything for you would be much better.
Have you seen the numbers for youth turnout in Obama's favor in the primaries? It's huge; the youth vote is what won him Iowa, and that's in a primary -- young people never vote in primaries, if the consensus has it right. See TIME's take on the subject.
Barack represents something different -- considerate consensus-building rather than win-at-any-cost, an opportunity to heal the country's political divides rather than dig them deeper while still getting big things done -- and to the generation that recognized their own thoughts in John Mayer's "Waiting on the World to Change", that difference is huge.
It feels silly to be responding to an AC, but let me leave it at this:
By your claim that Obama is a symbol whose meaning is controlled by others, I take it to mean that you believe that Obama stands for nothing but "change", and that the details of that change aren't something he's worked out or publicly proclaimed. This is absolutely, entirely untrue.
Go buy or borrow a copy of The Audacity of Hope, and read it. Listen to his more serious speeches -- the ones talking about specific issues, as opposed to general positioning; his 2002 speech on the Iraq war is a standout, but there are plenty more. Let me know when you're done if you still think Obama is a content-free symbol. Otherwise, you're just parroting talking points -- and are a tool yourself.
Looking at the way independent voters split in the primaries, it's clear that Obama has more support among America as a whole; the question is whether the strong left will choose the candidate who will fight winner-take-all for their cause (and take no mind of enemies made or divisions deepened), or the candidate who will try to change the tone of discourse. Call me naive -- but I'm ready for a Democratic party which knows how to respectfully disagree, for a Democratic party that can accomplish its goals -- finance reform, universal healthcare, and others -- without making the Republicans (who are, by and large, well-meaning Americans as much as anyone) out to be bigots looking to quash their fellows' freedoms in the name of their religious preferences. (Now, are some Republicans trying to legislate morality? Certainly, there are -- but falsely painting the entire party that way does no-one any good, except for those trying to energize the hardcore Democratic base). I'm ready for something different. I'm ready for Obama.
...but there are a lot more young people who are tired of being made to feel as if they're political nonpersons, a worthless demographic that never actually gets out the vote.
Have you seen the number of young voters Obama's brought out to the primaries? I'm not worried about the bigots... not at all.
I certainly can't disagree that there are a lot of Obama supporters doing Hillary-bashing. Perhaps it's because a good number of those folks who are members of Hillary's negative numbers end up in the Obama camp? That's certainly the case for me, even though I'd still be supporting Obama if I didn't dislike Hillary. If she wins the nomination, I'll vote 3rd party, as I've had enough of her fearmongering, think-of-the-children, divisive, anti-tech, pandering politics; supporting even symbolic anti-flag-burning legislation and doing photo ops with Jack Thompson earned her a black mark in my book long before Obama became a household name.
Mind you, back in 1998 in the IL state legislature, Obama was much more loudly and publicly in favor of very strong gun control than he is now, and I think that he's indirectly supporting his intent to allow gun bans in inner cities (discussed in The Audacity of Hope) by leaving that course action to the state and local legislatures -- having stated that he supports allowing local government to enact gun control measures more strict than the federal standards should they so choose. That said, some of his recent statements directly contradict the boxes he checked on the 1998 State National Legislative Political Awareness Test -- and I think it's reasonable, when assessing an individual's position, to take the words that come out of their mouth to mean more than boxes checked on a form-based survey of their positions, and to acknowledge that people can change their minds on things over the course of a decade.
More recently, he's supported legislation (which Clinton voted against) to prevent the government from confiscating legitimately owned firearms in disaster areas (as happened post-Katrina), and he's publicly stated during his campaigning that he won't support legislation which confiscates firearms which one already owns (though this leaves room open to ban trafficking or sale).
So -- he's surely not going to get the NRA's support, but the hardcore anti-gun types aren't likely to be happy with his positions either. Personally, I'm opposed to gun control (other than, 'ya know, hitting what you shoot at) -- but I'm no single-issue voter, and I think that the places where I support Obama far outweigh the areas in which we differ.
Incidentally, it's A Person Paper by Douglas Hofstadter that convinced me to think seriously about gender inequalities in language. I've also dabbled in Lojban from time to time, which is interesting inasmuch as it allows one strict control over the information expressed.
He's talked about it, I just had to do some digging. See recent replies elsewhere in this thread.
Obama's official, supported position on gun control appears to be simply that existing laws should be enforced, and that municipalities should be able to override federal law with more stringent restrictions should they choose to do so.
gah; typo; see subject.
The only supported positions I can find vis-a-vis Obama's position on gun control:
- Existing laws should be enforced
- Municipalities should be able to impose their own gun control laws, overriding federal standards
- Obama will not support any law seeking to remove guns from their existing, legitimate owners
Either way, it's not a topic he considers a high priority -- which is good, because it's one where I (and a great many other people) agree with him substantially.I'm not accusing you of making anything up. I can, however, point out that gun control is much higher on Clinton's agenda than Obama's, and that Obama has made it quite clear that he doesn't support forcing existing gun owners to relinquish their weapons, and that I personally doubt that he would make an issue of it in his tenure as President anyhow, given that the higher-priority items on his agenda require bipartisan support.
The "issues" list on his web site doesn't even have gun control as a bullet point; that's how low-priority it is.
My understanding was that it was a technical term -- but having only a shotgun in my house, I'm not particularly well-informed. A post discussing some of Obama's positions is here. I haven't been able to find a reliable (non-biased) source for the Obama's anti-semi-automatic position, but it is clear that he wants to enforce existing laws and to make sure that individual cities aren't blocked from having their own gun laws which are more restrictive than the federal laws.
Either way, gun control is not even remotely close to the top of his agenda, even if he were looking at supporting legislation on the topic from the Presidential bully pulpit (which, again -- he's trying to go for bipartisanship, and this is a good way to ruin that, so I don't see this issue being pushed) he's stated in the past that whatever gun control legislation he develops would not require existing owners to relinquish their weapons.
Yup. I've a few of his plans for trimming the budget, and not all are things that would be popular -- for instance, he's talking about serious cuts at NASA (mothballing work on the Constellation program) to fund his education plan. Obviously, nobody who cares about science likes cutting NASA -- but then, something's gotta give.
Now, that said, I remember back when we got a big democrat in the White House and we had a huge deficit and all the Republicans said the sky was falling and our economy would never recover... and it did, and the government actually managed to run a surplus for a while, until we got a neocon in office. Granted, that surplus was due in large part to smoke and mirrors, but it's a lot better than not even being able to show a smoke-and-mirrors surplus, isn't it? So -- I don't think the economy is an absolutely insurmountable problem, as long as it's addressed, and addressed seriously by folks willing to make hard decisions that will make constituents unhappy. Obama does have as part of his platform enforcement of pay-as-you-go rules, elimination of large classes of corporate subsidies, and increasing the social security income cap. Obviously, that's not enough to fix what's broken -- but in conjunction with having specific cuts planned to support his educational and healthcare programs, it's not a bad place to start.
And as for the hard decisions on what to cut -- part of the advantage of Obama's national unity push is to be able to get support for the hard decisions, so it'll be possible to get the political will to fix what's broke when it comes time to do so, even when that'll mean some tough sacrifices. I think he'll be a lot more effective at getting bipartisan buy-in when hard decisions need to be made than the candidate with the ridiculously high negative ratings coming out of the polls.