Reply #12: Here you go katty -

[Avalux]

a couple items, one written by Obama in 2005 and the next written by a student of Obama's. Gives you some insight into his character:

The bottom line is that our job is harder than the conservatives' job. After all, it's easy to articulate a belligerent foreign policy based solely on unilateral military action, a policy that sounds tough and acts dumb; it's harder to craft a foreign policy that's tough and smart. It's easy to dismantle government safety nets; it's harder to transform those safety nets so that they work for people and can be paid for. It's easy to embrace a theological absolutism; it's harder to find the right balance between the legitimate role of faith in our lives and the demands of our civic religion. But that's our job. And I firmly believe that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, or oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose. A polarized electorate that is turned off of politics, and easily dismisses both parties because of the nasty, dishonest tone of the debate, works perfectly well for those who seek to chip away at the very idea of government because, in the end, a cynical electorate is a selfish electorate.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/30/102745/165/500/...

Spring quarter of my second year, I took Voting Rights and Election Law as a seminar with Professor Obama. Now, let’s be clear: in a school with a lot of Somebodies – Richard Posner, Frank Easterbrook, Cass Sunstein and David Currie – he was a relative nobody, and even compared with other younger faculty, it was Larry Lessig and Elena Kagan who had more of the hype. But Obama was teaching a course in a subject I wanted to study – at a point when I realized that law school was too short to be spent in classes that felt obligatory – and that made it an easy decision.

And he was ... different. For one thing, better dressed. Sleek sweaters and blazers as opposed to ill-fitting, coffee-stained suits with mismatched ties. But he was also less formal, more relaxed – he never taught the class as though he knew the answers to all the questions he was posing and was just hiding the ball from us until we could find them. Confident, sure, but never cocky.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/20/12119/122

You may always go to his website to read where he stands on the issues:

http://www.barackobama.com/index.php

Make sure you inform yourself and weigh all options before deciding a candidate.
:hi: