"To think of Obama as a latter-day Kennedy is to practically beg for disappointment. We know how that story ends."

You people are getting slyer with your innuendo, but it's the same old same old...why do we know how that ends? They're not the same person - are they? I think Rupert Murdoch has quietly bought you out....

I think the point was not to get our hopes incredibly high. We'll get disappointed if Obama isn't perfect, even if he turns out to be otherwise great, and that could be a real problem.

As mentioned, "we're all human".

I am an Obama supporter, but his economic plan is nonsense. If he tried to provide (near) universal healthcare, a middle-class tax cut, a neocon-inpired escalation in Afghanistan, saber-rattling with Iran, and a "Wall Street is bad" philosophy, he'll make George Bush look like a fiscal conservative.

Obama's economic program would bankrupt the country

Don't you mean rebankrupt the country? Maybe double-bankrupt? I'm pretty sure we've been bankrupt for a while now.

The rhetoric that says that spending money is the same as losing money is deeply flawed. Almost any health care plan that gets people into the system before the point where they are in critical condition will ultimately save money. Preventative care costs more only in the near term.

Anyway, Obama is definitely not sable-rattling with Iran. It's an awfully strange comment to make considering that Obama caught flak for his willingness to negotiate with Iran.

This messs can only be fixed by recirculating our currency in our communities . As T Boone said we are sending large amounts of our currency abroad while we live on debt . There is a wall out there we are going to ram in to soon if we don't stop living off debt and start keeping our currency here . We live in an age of "NO LOYALITY" . We buy AMERICAN products less and less . People working for GM or Ford will take money earned and buy Toyotas . Just drive past one of the major AMERICAN auto plants and look at the number of competitor's cars in the employee's lot . T Boone has one good idea and FDR had another . WPA infrastructure . If only AMERICANS work in these areas we could see some light at the end .

What people fail to understand when they say that universal health care would "bankrupt" the country, is that the traditional health care we have now will do it too.

It's a death spiral. First, 30% or more of your health care premiums go to insurance companies, who pay vast staffs of people to decide what you do and don't get, and how much they'll pay, depending on your employer, your plan, your age, your pre-existing conditions, yadda yadda.

Then, add in the hospitals, which are funding their emergency rooms and psychiatric care (i.e. the chronically uninsured and/or mentally ill) by raising the costs for those who CAN pay. That psychiatric patient who the police picked up and delivered to the hospital, as a danger to herself and others? Do you think she has insurance? There's your $9 Tylenol, your $25 plastic pan, your $10 bottle of lotion. Your surgical procedure that cost 20% more than last year.

The costs rise. The insurance companies push back and cover less. Your premium goes up. Your employer drops health insurance. More people end up in the emergency room, which raises the costs for those who still have insurance. And down and down we all go.

Covering everyone, with properly delivered preventative care, would result in less cost for everyone. It's cheaper to manage diabetes for a lifetime than to amputate a leg or care for someone who has gone blind. It's cheaper to provide generic heart medication than to have someone in intensive care for a heart attack.

OK, seriously, how does anyone lump 'animal rights' in with "world poverty," "global warming," "imperialism," "religious fundamentalism," and "international trade with China." I'm not quite sure what the international trade with China is doing in that list either, though I can at least see some people objecting to that, but animal rights? What's wrong with that? I can see some things wrong with various people in the animal rights movements, but animal rights as a goal seems quite laudable to me. Is it meant to imply that the animal rights movement has some sort of negative economic effect? If so, that seems a little crazy, and a bald assertion as this deserves more justification.

If Obama is elected, one of the key benefits for the US will be a renewed goodwill in the world toward America. This will revive the soft power America traditionally enjoyed pre-Bush.

When it comes to the Middle East -the source of much of the instability in the world today- Obama has to steer clear of the Israel Lobby and its destructive influence which played a major role in leading the US to war in Iraq (and could yet lead to an even more destructive war with Iran if the Lobby gets its way).

Sadly the fact that Obama has Dennis Ross (a key Israel Lobby player) as his main Middle East adviser - having shunned people like Robert Malley who don't subscribe to the orthodoxy of the Lobby - doesn't bode well for the future.

God only knows if his plans will work. We have a real mess to deal with, but Obama at least seems to have the will to approach solutions. McCain, as Leonard so aptly puts it, has nothing, no idea, nothing new certainly. Frankly, on that basis alone, he should be out of the running for the job of president. We need to have someone who isn't totally disconnected from the economic reality we are facing in this country.

Our out-of-control military spending. We spend more than all the other developed nations combined on the military. This needs to change drastically.

I suggest we look at the percent GDP spent on defense by Russia and China, pick the average between the two, and make that our goal for our own military spending. There is NO reason whatsoever for the US to spend more than all other major nations combined on our military. Cut, cut, cut. Reduce, reduce, reduce.

Not only would major cuts in useless and destructive military spending (I hesitate to call it "defense" spending because most of the time we act offensively rather than defensively) cut our debt load, it would also free up billions of dollars for valuable programs such as rebuilding our infrastructure, CHANGING our infrastructure to be more eco-friendly (lots more and much better mass transit, for instance), provide job training for those who have lost their jobs, provide for UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE, and still allow for our overall spending to decrease. Imagine! Being able to rebuild our collapsing country, being able to re-invest in our people, and being able to secure the human right of healthcare, all while still reducing overall spending!

The deficit would decline and we could start paying down the debt AND we wouldn't be able to simply go all lone crazy cowboy and illegally invade and/or destroy other countries on a whim any longer! If we wanted to wipe out a people or their culture, we would actually have to get a bunch of other countries to agree to go along with us.

Obamanomics is hollow and assured of failure if it doesn't include substantial, real, and totally justifiable reductions in military spending.