...you don't talk about policy. Instead, you write long articles defending Obama against <iq>absurd allegations that he has no specific policy initiatives</iq> without mentioning a single one of them yourself. The article <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/02/7411/" source="Common Dreams" author="Bethany Woolman">The Obama Generation - He’s No Pied Piper</a> is a typical, information-free example---packed with adulation, but containing no substance. <bq>Obama’s presidential campaign is inspiring a new generation of leaders. [...] the true genius in the Obama campaign [...] is [in] inspiring our better angels, catalyzing our inner healing power. He takes the grief, the sense of powerlessness, the outrage, and inspires us to turn it into hope. [...] it is Obama’s intelligent and heartfelt approach to change that resonates [...] [h]e is the full package- charisma and content, wit and wisdom, energy and experience. [...] Generation O is fired up, and ready to go.</bq> What starts as a denunciation of quickly devolves into one proof after another that, at least in the case of this author, support for Obama is based on a gut feeling that he will <iq>heal the nation's soul</iq>, rather than any concrete overlap of opinions on policy. Policy, in fact, is nowhere to be found because the author likely has no more than a passing acquiantance with Obama's actual positions on important issues. The article, instead of proving its thesis, proves the opposite; it evinces exactly the kind of starry-eyed adulation for which cults are known. As with many other staunch supporters of Obama, discussion centers around how terrible Bush is at being president and how it's impossible to imagine Obama doing any of the horrible things for which Bush is justly blamed (the Iraq War, Katrina, etc.). Reference to Obama's actually policy positions will bear out this opinion, to some degree. Obama, however is not against war with Pakistan<fn> or Iran and is also not willing to negotiate without nuclear weapons <iq>on the table</iq>, as American politicians are so fond of saying. Obama is a strong proponent of the military, favoring expansion above and beyond the ludicrously high funding levels enjoyed today. He has not swayed from these positions, and has only consolidated his position further to the right as the campaign continues. This flies in the face of the touchy-feely claims made by Obama supporters, who are more interested in once again being able to feel good about America. It's easy to understand why: realism is far less heartening and good deal more tiring than idealism. <hr> <ft><a href="http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/01/7400/" source="Common Dreams" author="Alan Block">Democrats Offer Only Shallow Changes</a> quotes Obama several times, with a relatively aggressive toward Pakistan, Russia and Iraq (when asked whether he would "go back in" were Al Qaeda to consolidate in Iraq, he responded with a resounding "yes" rather than denounce the question as ridiculous). As the author concludes, <bq>[I]t’s dispiriting that neither [Clinton nor Obama] is ready even to begin the process of questioning whether the United States needs to keep troops in so many countries of the world or to view the rest of the world as merely a province of the United States, cosseted by the watchful eye of the Mother Eagle.</bq> Indeed it is. Indeed it is.</ft>