What a waste of everybody's time. Poring over the minutiae of each candidate's every move and speech is useless, trivial and mind-numbing.

Obama the candidate would imprison Obama the teenager/young adult.

Until America stops making war on Americans, the slide toward totalitarianism will continue apace.

And that could possibly be even worse than Bush Lite. God help America if the Democratic ticket ends up with both Clinton and Obama. Sure, any Republican would be worse, but that's not saying much.

It would be great if Obama were really a different kind of politician, if his goal was really to try to unite America based on its commonalities rather than its differences. It would be great if he was trying to change how we play the game itself.

Unfortunately, though he talks a good talk, he has no real platform. He has no basis from which he can claim to want to change things... the only thing he has going for him is that his voting record isn't big enough for anyone to really be able to use it as evidence against him (yet).

He is exactly like the other candidates except that he's a more inspiring speaker. He has to be: He's got no platform to speak about, so he's got to fill those 35 minutes somehow.

While I read this article, it's 2:47 am, Jan 1st 2008. In Central Europe (Germany, to be precise).

The US, as usual a little backward, ( exactly between 6 and 9 hours behind us) is still firmly in the grips of 2007.

So, how can this article have a byline of 2008 in Chicago ?

Mr Shapiro must have a time machine.

Aside from, that, a nice (and deserved) attempt to remove some hot air from Mr Obama's political baloon.

It is from 2008 because Salon publishes its daily articles the evening before the technical date of publication.

Speaking as an old codger, he reminds me of John Kennedy, who was mostly more of the same, but was a purveyor of hope. I believe Obama is projecting the same feeling. This country is much more realistic now, but the yearning for something new is in the air.

As I write this letter here on the east coast of the US, it is 9:01pm. Somehow, the dateline and intro to the first sentence of the article written in the midwest:

Jan. 1, 2008 | PERRY, Iowa -- As Barack Obama hit the familiar chords of his stump speech in a gym here Tuesday morning...

...somehow begs the question, how can Obama deliver a Tuesday morning speech and Shapiro report on it on Monday evening at 8pm, Iowa time?

Whatever Salon does in the way of posting articles, surely the speech could not have been delivered yet.

Better Obama should have stayed vague, than get specific in his July "The War We Must Win" speech about moving US troops from Iraq to "the right battlefield in Pakistan and Afganistan."

That got him burned in effigy in Pakistan. He had rattled ground troops; the Pakstanis rattled nukes back at him.

As Chris Matthews said, any victory of Obama's in the early primaries will look like a big victory overseas. But better look at how overseas Muslims really see Obama, before deciding it would be a GOOD message to send them. (As well as rioting against his 'threat' of invasion, Pakistanis called him an 'ex-muslim' and a 'muslim atheist').

Kennedy ran on a platform of hardlining against the Soviets. He accused Nixon of being soft against America's enemies because Nixon was a part of an administration that had seen America ostensibly fall behind the USSR in the weapons race. Kennedy might remind you of Obama because he is young and attractive and articulate, but Kennedy certainly did not run on a platform of 'hope.'

So Obama is going aroufn announcing he wants to change the US po;itics. Very nice of him. And, how is he planning to do that? What are the actual changes that he will implement? Because I'll be damned if I have seen any mention of those.

And if we want to talkk of his record, let's do that. He is a guy who never had teh courage to vote on things, but has always taken the coward way out, by either voting"present" or not being at the vote. he did not vote against teh Iraq war, he just was conveniently not there. A cowardly opportunist, is this the guy that's supposed to bring change to the US politics? I doubt it.

When Kyl Liebermann was voted, was Obama there to act like someone with a spine? NO. He took yet again the coward's way out and chose to not be there.

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/

The conventional wisdom is that Obama is all inspiring hope and no substance, and I see people repeat that a lot, but somehow I feel like he has a platform when he has dozens of links and thousands of words of policy proposals on his website.

There are moderate independents and Republicans in this nation and in the Congress who agree with Obama about government accountability, healthcare reform, the minimum wage and the war. We will need their agreement to avoid filibusters and pass laws. Barack wants to reach out to them so that we can pass the reforms listed on his website. He thinks this will be more effective than the kind of partisan bickering that has produced the "general betray us" condemnation and the freedom fries resolution and other useless nonsense this decade. He believes that he is the one candidate who can reduce the level of partisanship and increase the level of productivity in Washington (and judging by the speeches of the other candidates, it seems he is the only candidate who is interested in reducing partisanship). Obama's support comes from people who agree with this approach. I think that's a pretty straightforward message, and I must respectfully disagree with Walter Shapiro's "elusive" and "vague" characterizations.

I'm still mystified by the assumption that Senator Obama is somehow going to charm Republicans into working across the aisle, joining hands with him, and singing a rousing (or calming) chorus of Kum Ba Yah. Since '94, the Repubicans have shown "0" propensity for compromising on anything and as long as they have the power to obstruct the will of the people in favor of their corporate masters and cronies, they will continue to do just that. What has amazed me is their willingness to block legislative initiatives that are overwhelmingly popular with a large plurality of the American people. Their "in your face" arrogance is rivaled only by their incompetence at anything other than obstruction. In that, I believe John Edwards is right; confronting these Bozos is the only way to move the ball down the field. Anything less, and we'll continue to get "more of the same" ... while looking whiney, weak, and impotent.