[FoRK] How Barack lost my vote forever

[Jeff Bone]

On Apr 23, 2008, at 5:11 PM, Russell Turpin wrote:

> Jeff Bone:
>> Generally speaking the man's a cipher...
>
> That seems an odd criticism of someone who wrote a couple of books
> on his views, one prior to becoming a politician. There aren't many
> politicians who start as authors.

You really believe that Obama actually wrote those books himself?

Hmm.

My point is this;  I've read every one of the policy and issues white  
papers on his website.  Haven't bothered with the books, but I doubt  
there's much policy substance in e.g. the story about his father, and  
I doubt he wrote much of them in the first place;  and frankly I see  
the need, should there be one, for book-length treatises to explain  
simple basic policy positions as a significant flaw in this candidate,  
more evidence that the information-theoretic density of his speech is  
troublingly low.  And as I said before, I don't find the details that  
he's presented in the papers particularly deep, and where there are  
details, and where there are clues about the basic biases that this  
man possesses that will inform his governance...  I am not  
particularly encouraged.

Furthermore, just listen to him speak.  Past the rhetoric, it's vexing  
the lengths to which this man goes to avoid substance and maintain  
vague affability.  I can see that quickly becoming just as grating as  
the present gibbering chimp's inability to string together more than a  
dozen syllables without error.

Remember how Bush sold himself as a moderate, a "uniter not a  
divider?"  Enter Obama, the post-politics non-partisan politician-of- 
Hope.  Uh-huh...  Fool me once...  When an interviewer does  
occasionally manage to corner Obama into making a value judgment,  
hints of the far-left attitude come through.  We willfully ignored the  
clues w/ Bush;  I'm unwilling to do so w/ Obama.

> But the desire for real

> socialism is an extreme minority viewpoint. There is a reason that
> Kucinich went down in flames. And it wasn't his wife.

And there you have it.  My thesis is that there's not as much distance  
between this guy and Kucinich as you think;  this guy's much more the  
far-left crypto-candidate than you're giving him credit for.  AND I'll  
support that assertion with the observation that when I raised  
equivalent points re: Bush vis-a-vis the extreme right and neocons,  
significantly earlier than most, various folks around here were quite  
vocal about telling me how wrong and "crazy" I was.  And look where we  
are today.

We'll see.

jb