Posted on 01/18/2007 1:11:23 PM PST by shrinkermd
...“I’ve been struck by how hungry we are for a different kind of politics.”
"...But is Obama’s brand of politics really all that different? Obama is a party-line Democrat, the 18th-most-liberal member of the Senate, according to the nonpartisan National Journal, which in 2005 gave him a higher liberal rating (82.5) than Hillary Clinton (78.5). Half the Democrats in the Senate voted for Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, even Pat Leahy and Russ Feingold. But not Barack Obama...
"...In November 2003, he told the Chicago Sun-Times that had he been in the Senate, he would’ve voted against the famous $87.5 billion supplemental appropriations bill for Iraq and Afghanistan. “I think it enables the Bush administration to continue on a flawed policy without being accountable to the American people or to the troops who are making sacrifices,” he said.
"...He has voted against private gun ownership, mandatory sentencing and the death penalty. He voted no on prohibiting lawsuits against gun manufacturers. He says he would’ve voted no to authorize going to war in Iraq. He has voted against oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but supports mandated ethanol use and raising fuel economy standards.
(Excerpt) Read more at epaper.investors.com ...
Presently, he is leading in polls because he is fiercely antiwar and this is the main theme of the Democrat nut roots wing of the party.
But increasingly, I see another dynamic entering which is hard to pin down and describe.
He has the hallmarks of a developing "charlatan" or mountebank. A fake, a phoney but a person giving people what they want more than any thing else--meaning to their lives. See the below quotes:
"...Mystery is essential to the impostor. Above everything else, the charlatan must avoid straightforward reasoning and simplicity of expression: too clear and direct a light would quickly destroy the spell he exerts, through eloquent ambiguity, over his victims. In all ages, the voice of the humbug has exercised a peculiar fascination -- it is his chief weapon. But though he has to speak and write continuously, his announcements are best couched in indefinite phrases, opaque and susceptible of many interpretations, like the words of Subtle, the alchemist in Ben Jonson's play of that name." [Grete de Francesco (translated from the German by Miriam Beard -- Yale University Press, 1939)]
"..The charlatan achieves his great power by simply opening a possibility for men to believe what they already want to believe. His choicest audience would be composed of the semiliterate, those who had exchanged their common sense for a little distorted in- formation and had encountered science and education at some time, though briefly and unsuccessfully. This was the audience, easily intoxicated by visions, that sought the charlatan quite as eagerly as he looked for it: the half educated wanted no really learned leader, nor would they listen to one wholly ignorant. Their needs were ideally met by the counterfeiter of knowledge, who served up a rehash of science in a form that suited their appetite. A half-educated man need not be a charlatan, but most charlatans have been half-educated men.
Now the above two paragraphs are descriptions by de Francesco of a medical, snake oil charlaton note how they fit Obama's current swooning public. They want to be deceived. Just pointing out his extraordinary liberal, voting record is not going to work. Sooner or later someone has to consistently point out his charlaton characteristics.
PS: Unfortunately, Grete de Francesco's book is out of print. It was published in English in 1939. He was Swiss.
He is a phony.
And if anyone ever tells you that he's moderate, after you finish laughing, remember to tell them that Barack Hussein Obama voted to oppose medical care for babies born alive after a botched abortion.
As I was reading your definitions I was somehow reminded of Slick Willie.
Hitlery will take care of any threat facing her. The Clintonistas are just gearing up.
sw
An "Oreo" cookie?
Sure that stuff sells in America. Most of the American people have become so spoiled and dumbed down that they will fall for about anything. They have it the best in the world and any little inconvenience "offends" them and they act like spoiled brats. When the fall comes, it will be HUGE.
You're right, Baynative. It sure worked for Clinton.
But he's phony as the day is long and it wouldn't surprise me if he converted back to Islam once he's in the WH.
After they lionized him, they can't very easily vote for anyone else, can they?
Oh really? I hadn't heard that. Interesting.
I think Obama will end up being her VP.
I suppose if you read Gladwell's blink, you could argue he's tall enough (shades of Harding, eh?)
Well you know what they say, "Once you go Barak, you'll never go back."
Mr. Obama may serve as Mrs. Clintons lawn jockey.
She has his f,b,i, file.
So do you think Bayh will end up running?
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