E.g. He followed up a promise to reduce dependency on foreign oil with a nice story about cars for everyone! Built in the US! For everyone! Not so much about making travel and city design saner and - oh dear - maybe even more European.
Also - clean coal? What is clean coal?
Considering the rest was all dare-to-dream, I thought the dreams weren't all that daring. And the foreign policy lines were downright scary and hawkish. He's smart enough to make negotiations with Putin, er, Medvedev, far more interesting than the clown show the Bush team have turned them into, but he also sounds too ideologically blinkered and too much of an exceptionalist to be good at effective realpolitik.
Still he is who he is, and while he's not Mr Aggressive Progressive, he's moving in a better direction.
The real enemy from now on won't be McCain, it's going to be the various corporate machines and their Washington puppets, who are going to be trying very hard to push the policy agenda back towards the right, even after a likely Dem win.
But I'm not sure if Migeru wanted to put that as a plus. If lying wouldn't be more effective in a campaign than telling the truth, anybody who cuts taxes, would have to explain, where to cut expenditures, too. Of course McCain's proposals are complete fantasy without any connection to reality, but when Obama doesn't want to cut military spending, and this is difficult, when he wants to escalate Afghanistan, he needs more tax income.
Some coal is cleaned at the source, before it's burned, as when a mountain top is cleanly stripped of its top. The part that is not cleaned is washed down into former stream beds, where the gentle water that used to flow there purifies the silt into paradisical farm lands where even farmer's wives in gingham dresses can grow gardens of organic coal potatoes.
What little dirt remains on washed coal is then burned, with some leaking into the atmosphere. But it does not damage, as it is heavier than air, and falls down either in the northeastern forests and lakes, or in the chasms of the Grand Canyon, so it doesn't affect people directly (except for the ones who continue to breathe.)
Clean coal also protects people from being overly stunned by the beauty of the Grand Canyon, as they don't have to be awed by a view of the other side anymore.
Go Barack "Energy is My Middle Name" Obama! "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin
