As a non-Obama fan, I must say that his very left wing policies of gun control, socialized health care and "redistribution" are all very marxist. I do not feel like footing the bill for everyone to have coverage, regardless how noble the idea is. In reality it would not be feasible given how much everyone is taxed as it is, and then on top of that the taxes for the health care that Obama wants to give everyone.
Social programs are for the most part a drain on our communities and society as they only give a fake scaffolding and a temporary fix to the many problems that our society has allowed to occur.
Okay, wait a second. I have no qualms with people who haven't taken an undergraduate course in political economics or in some way studied the ideas of Marx. That's fine. Not everyone needs to study that. But it bugs me when people start labeling people and policies as "Marxist" when they are a long, long way from any such thing. It's one thing to say that it's an idea that you disagree with, and to explain why, or even to say that it's too far to the left of your position for you to be comfortable with it, but to smear policy proposals and - more importantly in campaign season - the policy proponents as "Marxist" or "socialist" is just absurd. Let's make the most of this teaching moment, ok??
Start here:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-obama-chicago-socialist,0,4048540.story
and then move on to this:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/oct2008/pers-o23.shtml
The majority of scholarly, principled, well-studied Marxists and socialists hardly feel that Obama is one of their own. If anything, they feel antipathy towards him (as well as Mr. McCain). So, let's knock off the lame, grade-school-level attempts to revive the McCarthy era. The socialists are hardly going to be pleased if Obama gets into the White House.
The reference has a newspaper article about the amount of money Obama wants to give to the world to end "extreme poverty". Why is it our duty? We messed Iraq up, the least we could do is to help put it back together. The "redistribute" that you talk about isn't the same as I am talking about. He wants to give the tax money back to those who pay little to nothing into our system so they can afford to have the same nice things that I, as a fish counter worker, work hard for. I make $9.50 an hour selling fish and meat to pay for what I have. Then I get taxed, then I pay union dues. So, if anything, I am more of a "worker" than not. Why would I not want to have Obama as a president? Because I am not wanting to pay even more so that the bums and lazy asses I see when I ride the bus can have the same things as me without working.
Who handed him his Harvard paid education? How did he pay for all of that stuff? He wasn't from an ordinary family. His family had money too. McCain isn't in my opinion a great candidate, just marginally better.
Your reference links to an unsigned article on the WorldNetDaily site. WorldNetDaily is hardly a newspaper in any sense. It's about as far right as the socialist website that I linked to is left. They don't produce news, they produce reactionary propaganda, pure and simple.
What union are you a member of, ToastedOats? You do realize, no, that Obama has received far more union endorsements than has McCain?
As for Obama's family having money, well, perhaps - most families have some money. I highly doubt that Obama's had as much as McCain's. From humble Wiki:
"Obama entered Harvard Law School in late 1988. At the end of his first year, he was selected, based on his grades and a writing competition, as an editor of the Harvard Law Review.[20] In February 1990, in his second year, he was elected president of the Law Review, a full-time volunteer position functioning as editor-in-chief and supervising the Law Review's staff of eighty editors."
It seems to me that he excelled in his schooling based largely on merit. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to find out that he received at least a few merit-based scholarships.
---- As for the original question, I'm inclined to vote for Obama because, while I think that he won't bring nearly the change - in a LEFTward direction - that is needed for the U.S., I do think that whatever he does will represent a slower momentum to America's downfall (as in, off a cliff), as compared to McCain, who is really only promising more war. I'm tempted to vote 3rd party, but I can see that it's really a choice between these two, and for God's sake, we don't need another Republican in the Oval Office, least of all one who has had such a consistently pro-Bush record over the last few years...
btw, Obama wasn't my first choice during the Dem primaries (but neither was Hillary).