Obama is wrong when he says: "We need to fix and improve our public schools, not throw our hands up and walk away from them"

Reasons to agree:

1. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. We have spent more and more money per student in public schools over the past 30 years, and our performance has only gotten worse.
   

Background: “We’ll make sure that every child in this country gets a world-class education from the day they’re born until the day they graduate from college. What McCain is offering amounts to little more than the same tired rhetoric about vouchers. We need to move beyond the same debate we’ve been having for the past 30 years when we haven’t gotten anything done. We need to fix & improve our public schools, not throw our hands up and walk away from them. We need to uphold the ideal of public education, but we also need reform. That’s why I’ve introduced a comprehensive strategy to recruit an army of new quality teachers to our communities--and to pay them more & give them more support. We’ll invest in early childhood education programs so that our kids don’t begin the race of life behind the starting line and offer a $4,000 tax credit to make college affordable for anyone who wants to go. Because as the NAACP knows better than anyone, the fight for social justice and economic justice begins in the classroom.” McCain-Obama speeches at 99th NAACP Convention Jul 12, 2008

Obama is right to want higher teaching standards

Reasons to agree:

1. Those students in Education departments across the country have had worse ACT, and SAT grades than other college departments. They even have worse grades than Criminal Justice departments (cops). It is sad that cops can know math, geography, history, and science, better than those that we put in charge of teaching our children. We need higher standards for teachers, if we are going to pay them more. I'm not saying every teacher is stupid. If you are a teacher, and you are offended, than you prove my point. You are stupid. The facts are the facts, and if you get mad because of the facts, than you are stupid. I'm from Idaho. I'm not offended when you say bad things about people from Idaho, in general, because I know that you are not talking about me specifically. Of course their are a lot of very smart people who are teachers. I thought about going into teaching. My father, whom I love and respect very much is a teacher. My mother in law is also a very good teacher. Two of my 3 brothers got degrees in teaching. Their is nothing wrong with teachers, with colleges of education, etc, we just need to raise their standards if we want our students to do better. 

"I’ll recruit an army of new teachers, pay them higher salaries and give them more support. In exchange, I’ll ask for higher standards and more accountability." ~ Barack Obama speech at 2008 Democratic National Convention Aug 27, 2008.

Obama is right that quitting high school is quitting on your country

Reasons to agree:

1. "In a global economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity--it is a prerequisite. And yet, we have one of the highest high school dropout rates of any industrialized nation. And half of the students who begin college never finish. This is a prescription for economic decline. So tonight, I ask every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training. This can be community college or a four-year school; vocational training or an apprenticeship. But every American will need to get more than a high school diploma. And dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It's not just quitting on yourself, it's quitting on your country. That's why we will provide the support necessary for all young Americans to complete college and meet a new goal: By 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world."  Source: 2009 State of the Union address Feb 24, 2009

Obama is melodramatic

Reasons to agree:

1. Obama said, "I got high [to] push questions of who I was out of my mind.” People do things for a lot of reasons. To say that he used drugs for one reason, because he was having problems with his racial identity, seems to be playing the melodramatic race card. I'm not saying that it might have been part of the reason that he used drugs, but to fully blame all his drug use with racial identity problems, like he did in his book, seems a little melodramatic.

2. Melodrama involves an oversimplified hero. Obama seems to see himself as a hero, in a very simplistic way. He wrote two or three autobiographies about himself, before he was even un unaccomplished senator. Now that he is president, he can write a few autobiogaphies, but he has already written two or three.

Obama is wrong on drugs

Reasons to agree:

1. When Obama said, “Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack though" (Dreams from My Father), he thought he would reach those who had used drugs and convence them to go straight. However he will have reached more straight kids and convinced them to use drugs, by making it sound cool, showing that he was able to beat it, and using their street names, as though he is still trying to have "street cred". 

Reasons to agree:

1. Obama is right that selling 15 tablets of Ecstasy should not be in the same class of felony as raping a woman at knifepoint.
   

Obama is right that selling 15 tablets of Ecstasy should not be in the same class of felony as raping a woman at knifepoint

Reasons to agree:

1.  The person who is buying the ecstasy wants to buy it.

Reasons to disagree:

Obama was wrong to vote no on mandatory death sentences for gang members who kill cops

Reasons to agree with Obama:

1. If you get killed because you made someone mad, or they want to steal your car, or because you were in the wrong place in the wrong time, that is one thing. But gangs are specifically targetting cops. We need them to be un-afraid of going into dangerous places. If they are not safe, than none of us are safe. It should be worse to kill cops, because they stand in the place of all of us in keeping our society together, and all that thin-blue-line stuff.

Background:

Q: On mandatory death sentences for gang members who kill cops you voted no. Would you explain?

OBAMA: [The proposed legislation] was entirely unnecessary and unconstitutional. It suggested that I could kill a police officer but because I’m not a gang member, I would be treated differently. I think both cases should be death penalty eligible.

KEYES: Senator Obama does not think it superfluous to have hate crimes legislation that adds a special animus to certain acts of violence already penalized against the law. But in order to convey against those certain acts a special category of deviation from society. The law provides a special message aimed at discouraging things considered especially harmful to a society and a community.

Source: Illinois Senate Debate #3: Barack Obama vs. Alan Keyes Oct 21, 2004