I am more than willing to support or critique Obama on an issue as I did in the energy policy thread IF you asked about a specific issue or policy, but I feel your thread subject is too broad to have a cohesive thread AND you didn't lay your thoughts out first. Those are the reasons I didn't answer this thread.

You also said, "No bias, please" and I am highly biased. We are ALL biased.

But, in the spirit of what I think are your intentions, I will submit a post.

The Issue: Veterans' Affairs

There is a serious problem with the way this country treats its people after they have proudly and bravely served our country. The wounded aren't treated with the care they deserve and the benefits veterans receive are not close to adequate.

According to the

Veterans have no legal right to specific types of medical care, the Bush administration argues in a lawsuit accusing the government of illegally denying mental health treatment to some troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The arguments, filed Wednesday in federal court in San Francisco, strike at the heart of a lawsuit filed on behalf of veterans that claims the health care system for returning troops provides little recourse when the government rejects their medical claims.

Allow All Veterans Back into the VA: One of Obama's first acts will be reversing the 2003 ban on enrolling modest-income veterans, which has denied care to a million veterans.
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Combat Homelessness among Our Nation's Veterans: Obama will establish a national "zero tolerance" policy for veterans falling into homelessness by expanding proven programs and launching innovative services to prevent veterans from falling into homelessness.
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Improve Mental Health Treatment: Obama will improve mental health care at every stage of military service. He will recruit more health professionals, improve screening, offer more support to families and make PTSD benefits claims fairer.

But organizations that have followed the senator's voting record have noted that McCain's actions are rarely in line with the interests of veterans' organizations. In 2006, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America gave Senator McCain a failing grade of "D" based on his voting record.

The same year, McCain supported the interests of the Disabled American Veterans just 20 percent of the time. The main reason for the low scores is a consistent pattern by Senator McCain of voting against appropriating money for veterans' health care and disability payments.

According to Disabled American Veterans, McCain voted almost a dozen separate times against spending additional money on veterans' health care in 2005 and 2006, even as hundreds of thousands of soldiers and Marines were returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and filing disability claims with the Department of Veterans Affairs.

S Amdt 2634 to S 2020: To provide an additional $500,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2006 through 2010, to be used for readjustment counseling, related mental health services, and treatment and rehabilitative services for veterans with mental illness, post-traumatic stress disorder, or substance use disorder.

“Let me be clear: Senators Menendez, Feingold, and I are not proposing to strike the program from the bill. But this system should be revisited after a reasonable amount of time to determine whether it’s working, how it can be improved, and whether we should return to the current family and employer based system that has worked so well.”

“We live in a global economy, and I do believe that America will be strengthened if we welcome more immigrants who have mastered science and engineering. But, we cannot weaken the very essence of what America is by turning our backs on immigrants who want to reunite with their family members, or immigrants who have a willingness to work hard but who may not have the right graduate degrees.”

“This is not who we are as a country. Should those without graduate degrees who spoke Italian or Polish or German, instead of English, have been turned back at Ellis Island? Should the immigrants from Asia who arrived at Angel Island to build our railroads have been told that they could only come for two years because they had no hope of passing a points test? How many of our ancestors would have been allowed to enter the U.S. under this new system?”

“Character and work ethic have long defined generations of immigrants to America. But these qualities are beyond the scope of this bill’s points system. It tells us nothing about what people who have been without opportunity can achieve once they are here. It tells us nothing about the potential of their children to serve and to lead. We are Americans. We do not have a caste or class based society, and we do not need a caste or class based immigration system.”

“In short, the points system raises some serious concerns for me. Now, I’m willing to defer to those senators who negotiated this provision and say we should give this a try. But I’m not willing to say that this untested system should be made virtually permanent. For that reason, I urge my colleagues to support this common-sense amendment to sunset this points system after five years so we can examine its effectiveness and necessity.”