Interracial & Interfaith Relationships

It looks as if history has been made and we have Barack Obama as President of the USA. Share your thought on this new chapter in history.

Personally, I have many reservations about this. I have yet to hear him say anything about what he will change (or influence change) in education (I'm a teacher) and health care. I also have the line "If you want to bring down a country, start from within" going through my head.

To over-simplify the concept, I feel as if a Coca-Cola executive has been hired to work for Pepsi - how do you know the secret recipe is safe?

Changes I would like to see in education:

• More testing of the children and grouping them where necessary. Stop trying to mainstream the special-ed kids into a regular classroom.
• Get rid of poor teachers who basically just sit and read the newspaper because they have tenure and can't be fired. (Yes, they DO exist!)
• Work to make the parents more involved in their child's education. Many parents do work 2 and 3 jobs, but they can check homework and make a small effort at least.

I have other thoughts, but since I have to get up early, I just listed the big ones that concern me.

I think his 'unknown' factor works in his favor as well. I had a girl in my class whose father is the athletic director at school, and he was telling me that he didn't want his daughter in the other 1st grade, and he CERTAINLY didn't want the now-principal (who used to teach 1st) near her either. So when I was hired, he came up  to school to meet me - he felt more comfortable with someone he didn't know because of the lack of pre-conceived notions, bias, etc.

Things were going well until the principal decided to use whatever influence she has over her boss to get rid of me. But that's another story for another time.

I'm a bit reserved about the decision --- First, I have a little different concept of why we are in the economic and world situation we currently are in.  It really has very little to do with the president and a whole lot to do with Congress.  The president can do very little on his own.  We have 2-1/2 years listening to this manager's sales pitch, but we allow the real voters get elected with very little reasoning.  It is one of my pet peeves in the whole election process --- when I ask people who they are voting for state representative or for senate or house of representatives, I typically get a blank look and say that they are more concerned about the presidential election.  What???!!!  Most people don't understand that the president is not in the legislative branch of government - he can't make any laws!  Ok, I'm getting off the point here.

I'd have to say that I would like him to start with education ---- get some dialoug going on either getting rid of NCLB or reworking the darn thing.  Get some guidelines in there regarding teacher qualifications and some standards that teachers have to meet.  In our school district, we have a pretty easy time getting rid of those teachers that do not belong in the classroom but I do realize that this is not universal.  Just "down the street" we have one of the worst school systems in the nation - Milwaukee School System.  That system is so broken it isn't even funny and it seems that no one in the state legislature cares. 

The second area to work on, in my opinion, is healthcare.  I'm not totally convinced that this is a federal government issue.  I see it as being more a state government issue than a federal government issue.  I'd like to see the federal gov. make some guidelines that each state must fall within and then let each state make up their own policies on how they are going to meet these goals.  I don't see why we can't have some type of system where we all pay into ---- like a giant self-insurance policy.  Currently, my company is self-insured.  You can't tell me that my payments would stay the same or get larger if we would actually combine companies together and have 100,000 enrollees.  That is just a matter of economics. 

I am glad that we have decided to go in a different direction.  I'm also hoping that Obama can do something with the idea of reaching across the isle.  As most of us who are in IR or IF relationships know, you can't have any meaningful discussions or make any meaningful decisions without cooperation.   We haven't had real cooperation for many years.

I'm seeing this whole thing from outside me not even being American and not living in US, but nowaday, the US election is probably seen as the most important in the world, especially because of all the foreign policy issue and the 8 past years which I think were pretty much a fiasco on that level.

I didn't get to follow the campaign close anough so I really don't know what to expect from Obama. BUT I'm having a good feeling for several reasons, first he is young and after so many older presidents it's a positive change in my yes, we need young peoples to take actions, people who knows what the young and working class might go through, someone who has a fresh view of what the world is today so they can think of inovative solutions rather than continue doing what everybody before them has done, and in that respect I think Obama might be the guy. Sure he might not keep all his campaign promises and will face critics (all presidents did), but I think he fairly won his chance to make a difference in this world and I'm eager to see what will happen, if he end up being a big mistake, well he certainly wouldn't be the first and I hope America will have then the decency not to blame it on his race.