Me and Obama: changing minds (Part I)
My attitude towards Barack Obama has changed over time. As I wrote recently, some of the things I have to say about him now approach what once (and not all that long ago, either) had seemed like tinfoil hat territory.
How did this happen? How did I come to the point of agreeing that Obama is a socialist who only cares about our economy as a vehicle for income redistribution, has no interest in promoting or even supporting liberty either abroad or in this country and in fact considers liberty to be his bitter enemy, is intent on gaining more power for himself by rewarding his constituents with money earned by others, and wants to make America over into a European-style social welfare state at best and a Chavez-style banana republic at worst?
Hey, if I turn out to be wrong, I’ll be happy. I hope subsequent events prove me wrong. But I don’t think they will—at least, not if Obama has anything to say about it. If I do turn out to be wrong, I predict it will only be because enough people in the United States, and especially in Congress, decide to use their voting power to block Obama’s agenda, not because he’s changed his mind.
I was extremely reluctant to come to this point; I was dragged here kicking and screaming by the facts before my eyes. I’d been uneasy about Obama for quite a while, but I was absolutely determined to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, and I believe I did so. Take a look, for example, at the piece I wrote right after the election, on avoiding Obama Derangement Syndrome:
But I suggest that everyone stand back, take a deep breath, and wait. Wait, and observe. It will become clear enough as Obama chooses a Cabinet and advisers. And then it will become even more clear as he takes office and begins the work of government. More clarity will come as he handles the inevitable crises and tests that will occur on his watch.
The goal of each of us should be to react only to evidence, not fear.
Well, clarity has come. As with many cognitive changes (or you might say “evolutions”), my current position has been the result of an accretion of evidence rather than a single “aha!” moment, with certain incidents standing out as watersheds.
When I first encountered Barack Obama at the start of his campaign for president I hardly had a perception of him at all. Initially, what he said seemed bland and vague, couched in a relatively attractive and youthful package and delivered in that resonant baritone. The content was more “motivational speaker” than politician, a genre that doesn’t tend to appeal to me (actually, neither genre does). But I figured he wasn’t trying to appeal to me anyway; he was aiming at a younger, fuzzier, and/or more liberal audience.
Over time, as Obama continued to speak, it began to be clear that he had many liberal tendencies, but was either trying to hide them with a veneer of centrism, or had balanced them with actual centrism on certain issues. I wasn’t sure which it was.
As the campaign went on my unease built, but very slowly. At first many of my posts were of the “who’s the real Obama?” variety, discussing the strange blankness and the mixed messages that made it difficult to know what Obama would really be like once in office. Was Obama actually a Chauncey Gardiner sort of character? Was he as undecided as he sometimes sounded, and would he govern from the middle? Or was his tendency towards vague and shifting positions a carefully constructed ploy to allow him to appeal to the greatest number of voters possible? Was it essentially duplicitous, hiding his true intentions, which were far too radical for all but a small percentage of Americans?
That last idea was so extreme, so dreadful in its implications, and so different from the modus operandi of any other president in my lifetime (whether I supported them or not). I knew it was a possibility, but I rejected it: for now, I would regard Obama as innocent of that accusation until proven otherwise.
Obama’s narcissism soon became quite clear, however. That’s a trait so common among politicians as to be almost obligatory, but Obama brought it to new and disturbing heights, and used it and worked it to evoke a cult of personality in his followers. Then there was the matter of Obama’s past. This slowly began to be filled in, but again in a way that seemed murky and unclear. Reverend Wright, Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko; there were so many smoking guns and yet so little hard evidence of anything much, and Obama continued to bob and weave around them in ways that started to seem outright duplicitous.
That’s when I began to be aware of another phenomenon. Time and again, Obama would hit a snag and say something (for example, that Ayers was just a guy in the neighborhood, or that Obama had sat in Wright’s church for twenty years and yet hadn’t heard Wright’s offensive sermons) that seemed on the face of it to be—well, there’s no other way to put it—a brazen lie.
And it didn’t appear to matter to too many people. There were some bleats in the press on the Right, and even one or two in the MSM. But it seemed that few in the mainstream media really wanted to challenge this man in any way. Previously, the press had salivated at nearly everything in candidates’ pasts that seemed even remotely suspicious; now they refused to pursue leads about things that were highly suspicious, and even made excuses for them.
Of course, this was not totally new. I had only to remember the way the press had rejected the Swift Vets’ claims in 2004 by first ignoring their attempts to get coverage, and then when the Vets’ went beyond the press and directly to the people, by reviling the Vets and printing “refutations” of their claims that didn’t really address the points the Vets had made. This had been enough to disqualify the Vets in the eyes of people who were not paying attention to the details. But apparently enough people still believed the Vets that it furnished a margin for Bush in Kerry’s narrow defeat.
But what was happening with Obama and the MSM seemed different. With Kerry, there had been only one major topic for a press coverup: his Vietnam service. Other than this, what we saw with Kerry was what we were going to get. His history was so well known, his time in the public eye so lengthy, that we pretty much knew who this man was. We might not like what he was (I considered him an ultra-liberal blowhard and narcissist) or we might support him, but even those who were determined to vote for him mostly did so reluctantly and with eyes open, holding their noses and pulling the lever with a fairly clear sense of who Kerry was.
With Obama the areas of suspicious concern were so many that they were practically dizzying. Obama also had so little public record that the press had an even higher duty to inform, and yet it was shirking this task far more egregiously than it had before. And this was true even though, unlike Kerry, Obama wasn’t running against the hated Bush, but rather against the kinder gentler (and previous press darling himself) John McCain.
Over and over during the 2008 campaign, something else would come out about Obama that I thought might be the deal breaker. His secretiveness about his school records. His relationship with Acorn and Alinsky (not the man, but the strategy). His cold-blooded treatment of former mentor Alice Palmer and other candidates in his very first political race, which had been an open part of his history in Chicago and about which the Chicago Tribune had written an in-depth article back in April of 2007. All ignored or covered up or trivialized or excused.
For me the first major turning point during the campaign, the moment at which my growing but still vague uneasiness became more pointed, was in June of 2008, when Obama reversed his previous pledge on campaign financing—perhaps because this was not an association or an act of his in the past, but an act of his in the present.
Some people probably would not consider it all that important; it was disturbing, yes, but (as I wrote at the time), all politicians break promises of one sort or other. For me it was the way Obama did it that was so troubling, the obvious disconnect between his public persona and his actions. He’d been campaigning very much on who he was rather than on his record of accomplishments, and what this told us about who he was made my blood run cold. At the time I wrote:
It’s not just that [Obama] reneged, either—it’s how he reneged. Who’s to blame, according to Obama? Why, John McCain and the nasty Republicans, that’s who. James Joyner writes that this charge of Obama’s does take “a bit of gall.” I’d say it takes substantially more than a bit, as well as a heavy dose of the whining, blaming, audacity in which the holier-than-thou Obama tends to specialize.
There was something even more perturbing to me than what Obama was doing or even how he was doing it, and that was the reaction to him. The mainstream press (with only a few exceptions) seemed to take it in stride, mentioning it but not making a fuss about it, seeing it as a pragmatic decision. But what of Obama’s supporters? Would they not feel betrayed by his hypocrisy on campaign financing? After all, wasn’t his perceived trustworthiness, his business-as-unusual persona, a great part of what attracted them to him in the first place? Would this lack of integrity not make the scales fall from their eyes?
Once again, with just a few exceptions, the answer was a resounding “no.” It was merely seen as a clever move, a sign that Obama was a winner rather than a loser.
Yet another thought then came to me—the idea that this action of Obama’s had been a sort of test—not of him, but of us. In weighing whether to go ahead and refuse public financing, he had probably calculated that the extra money he’d have access to if he broke his pledge might be the key to his winning. So, although it would give his opponents further ammunition with which to criticize him, and might offend his base by showing that he was just a pol like any other after all, he felt it was probably worth the gamble. But his public’s reaction told him that there had been virtually no risk at all, and gave him a green light for future reversals and other cynical moves.
From this experience, Obama learned to his pleasure (I don’t know whether it was to his surprise) that the press was so thoroughly behind him, and his many supporters so hypnotized by his spellbinding charisma, that he no longer had to be quite as careful as before. Audacity was going to pay off, big time.
It was all extremely worrisome, to be sure. But despite his history of Leftist associations, there was still no clear indication of what Obama would actually do in terms of policy if elected. He was a liberal, yes, but that was no surprise, and some of what he proposed sounded more middle of the road. Strong hints at his far Leftist orientation towards policy were to come later—although not much later.
[Continued in Part II.]
It still bothers me that Obama refuses to release his school transcripts and I still have questions about his birth certificate.
That being said I made a pledge to myself that from day one he was “my president” and I was giving him the total benefit of the doubt – one hundred percent. But it didn’t take long for that one hundred percent to start dropping quickly with the executive orders, stimulus package, the continued bailouts, etc.
As I have said here before – it’s actually brilliant the way his team is overloading the system and using fear tactics (gee who did the libs accuse of that?) to misdirect and ram this stuff through.
dane,
I don’t see the Pelosi, Reid, Obama ram it home strategy as brilliant so much as straight forward school yard thuggery. They’ve got the votes as the President likes to remind us–in a bipartisan spirit of course.
That the Cap and Tax vote was as close as it was is a testament to the bill’s complete awfullness, and to Pelosi et al’s incompetence.
No matter, Obama’s goal of utter chaos proceeds.
There is no “Obama-derangement-syndrome.” All of his actions point towards the sort of total control that the left projected onto Bush on a daily basis. His anti-west, anti-american attitude is right out front for all to see, from his poor treatment of the British and their crown to the attempt to put Chavez-lite back in power. Wait for it: the 2010 and 2012 elections will be poisoned; the most corrupt in our history.
There are many commenters who feared just such developments as early as 18 months ago, but Neo, as you wrote, they were considered to be in ‘tin-foil hat” territory. When such an avowed liberal as Helen Thomas begins to complain, it seems that Obama is materializing as the worst of our fears.
Yet, who could have convinced Helen Thomas of this 18 months ago? It has long been my contention that liberalism is generally steeped in emotion (“feel-good”). As such it is difficult to mount an intellectual argument to an emotional defense; they are two different playing fields.
I worry about bipartisanship; I think bipartisanship is simply both parties getting together to screw over the American taxpayer. As I age, I much prefer loyal opposition, but today we too often see opposition for its own sake. This has certainly been true of the Democratic positon on Iraq for the last 6 years.
In truth, we all become more intransigent in to our emotional positions the further from the center that we veer. How, then, are we ever to engage in a rational discussion? I can’t believe that times have changed so much that now is different from 50 years ago. How did people such as “Tip” O’Neill and Everett Dirksen accomplish rational discussion? Was that really a different more civil time, or was it just another myth?
http://www.teapartyday.com/Locations.aspx
Maybe not the most convenient day for the latest set of rallies, but maybe we should all set aside part of the holiday to attend one, if possible. It takes much more than blowing off steam on a blog post. If we’re within reasonable driving distance of a rally, but feel that our time off or with friends and family is too important to sacrifice, don’t our actions (or inaction) speak louder than our typed words?
Neo, for 51 years my wife has been the voice of reason in our household. Recently, she has taken to saying “I hate that man”. I never expected to hear such sentiments from her mouth.
We live in interesting times. I believe that 2010 is pivotal. If the electorate doesn’t turn back the clock in that election it could get very ugly down the road.
I think Tip O’Neill and Everett Dirksen accomplished rational discussion because it was a one-way street and the Republicans recognized and accepted that.
Now the tin-foil-hat is on the other foot!
Out here in the conservative wilderness, there is a real (non-violent, principled, patriotic and democratic) resistance hardening.
The righteous anger is becoming palpable.
I once read somewhere that Freud diagnosed Woodrow Wilson as clinically nuts. Unfortunately I don’t remember his grounds for saying so. Do you know anything about this, Neo, and are you watching this president professionally?
Neo–the sad thing is that, by the time enough people realize just exactly who and what Obama is, and–blinders off–see and recognize the Tyranny, whose structure Obama & Co. are very quickly assembling right before our very eyes, it will very likely be too late to take our individual freedoms and Democracy back, and certainly too late for any peaceful resolution.
First you have to be paying attention. Most people don’t, not because they are sheeple but because they have jobs, school conferences, and lawns to worry about. Obama is now trying intently to keep the details under the radar, but keep himself visible with the pleasant rhetoric – such as saying Putin has one foot in the old ways, as if that had always been the problem with Russia, easily treatable by following an inspirational new leader like Obama.
Obama is better-than-average at this split, and he has the advantage of a largely compliant media which wants him to succeed. I don’t see that as a stable situation for him, however. Not everyone is on board, and the craziest on the left may actually be some advantage, as they are used to shouting when they don’t get their way. Political popularity is a funny thing, and odd events can change the picture quickly. Opinion is likely to be swayed by something conservatives consider to be less important than some of the power grabs of the last five months. Things leak out.
If I read the poll numbers correctly, Obama’s are analogous to Bill Clinton’s when he was being impeached: half his support may be fanatic, but half is quite mild. (That is why Clinton kept citing the overall numbers that 60+% didn’t want him gone, obscuring the fact that about half of those didn’t think it would be tragic if he left, but merely had a mild preference). Obama’s numbers are larger than that, but similar – the “strongly approve” category has shrunk greatly.
I have two main worries: what damage Obama will do before we can elect a less-Democratic congress, and the tendency of the citizenry to believe they have averted a crisis by limiting the damage. A sea-change in 2010 would be nice, and limit the damage. But we are going to need a 60% majority in both houses, then the presidency back in 2012 to reverse this. (Because even many Republican politicians are not reliably conservative or libertarian) That is simply a very tall order – unprecedented by the GOP in our lifetimes.
As indicated on an earlier thread, I just read Whittaker Chambers’s Witness.
It’s chilling, and contemporary, because Chambers details how exactly how the hard left works, and once sensitized to the methodology, it’s apparent that the same techniques are in use today.
Seriously, anyone who hasn’t read it fairly recently is well-advised to do so.
Occam’s Beard: I am slowly plowing through it right now. It is so long, but really exceptional. I plan to write about it in a bit.
You are correct that much of it seems very contemporary.
We also had an unusual situation in which Obama’s race “inoculated” him, to some extent, against harsh probing and criticism from the MSM and the voting public. He was well aware of this and used it, brilliantly, to his advantage.
This is still working to his advantage. There are many, many people out there who are reluctant to find fault with the nation’s first black president.
The hardest thing for me is finding MSM stories on a lot of these things. I will tell the boyfriend something that Obama did (like the 57 states thing) and then I can’t find an MSM story to back it up. It’s very worrisome. It’s a deliberate attempt to marginalize his opposition.
Neo, One other related item to the campaign finance reversal, (not sure if you will address in part II) were the multiple reports of suspicious contributions through the internet, they seemed to tie together, e.g the multiple 10s and 20s of little amounts that flew under the radar from the same person, or many times, someone that didn’t exist at all, or using pre-paid cards that couldn’t be traced at all or verified that they originated inside the U.S.
That to me was an unbelievable scandal that was overlooked. Because of the laws they didn’t have to disclose the records but the few facts that leaked out should have spurred a federal investigation, it certainly would have if those allegations were made against a republican. It was an organized effort to skirt the law. Having this in place could have influenced that decision.
Neo, “Witness” is long, and some of the philosophical digressions are a bit tedious (if cathartic for the author), but most of the book is gripping and, as indicated, chilling, for its contemporary relevance.
Neo, an afterthought. I was struck by how critical a role Nixon played in Hiss’s downfall (according to Chambers’s account).
I have to wonder if the intensive and relentless coverage of Watergate by the New Yor Times and Washington Post – both identified by Chambers are strongly pro-Hiss (draw your own inferences here) was a form of belated payback.
Make that “as” strongly pro-Hiss.
Well, it’s about time. What can one say except:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XSlrGlkM6o
Summer heat; cicadas sing
Ants diligently forage
Barack stomps @#$% out of ants; shrugs
Sorry to digress from the main thrust of this thread, but if you are really interested in the Hiss case or Soviet penetration of the US during the Cold War, you should read the new book by Haynes, Klehr and Vassiliev. Their review of KGB records which include internal documents in which the actual names of spies are used as opposed to just aliases firmly establishes that Alger Hiss and his brother Donald were in fact the spies that Chambers claimed they were.The title of the chapter in Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America is Alger Hiss:Case Closed.
Thanks, stu, I’ll check it out.
I now default to the position that all left-wingers accused of treason, espionage, and/or terrorism (e.g., Hiss, Sobell, the Rosenbergs, Sacco, Vanzetti, Ayers) on the basis of any substantial evidence are in fact guilty as sin.
stu, great tip! I’ve just been looking at the table of contents of the book.
Thanks OB enjoy the book. The irony in all this, is that Hiss was the establishment prodigy of the New Deal and Chambers the frumpy ex-Communist. Though Chambers writing has been called by some melodramatic, I think the times and his experiences justified his characterization of what was at stake. He was a brilliant writer and I was deeply touched by the book when I read it some 40+ years ago.
I agree, I think there’s no question that Obama is a man of the left and the left wants power, period. I do think, however, that for at least the next six months to a year, it would be more prudent for conservatives and Republicans to criticize the policies (strongly, vehemently) and the Democratic Congress (Pelosi, Reid, Barney Frank, Sen. Dodd.)
I agree that people want a black President to succeed. (Don’t we all?) And I think making criticism of Obama too personal, including, pointing out the obvious that he’s way too far left for this country, would be vulnerable to accusations that it’s a vendetta or we’re not giving a good man a chance to succeed. (Some not-too-informed moderates and independents would buy this argument.)
Left to his own devices, I think Obama will shortly fail, in a major way. Perhaps a foreign policy crisis that can’t be covered up or shrugged off (he handled Iran very poorly but didn’t get stung for it the way he ought to have) or the unemployment numbers and debt will continue to climb higher and someone will make a mistake and let the cat out of the bag that there’s no real health care program and, to the extent there is, it means rationing and loosing the good health care many people have now.
Based on the campaign and his early governing, it’s not that hard to imagine a time when Obama is unsure how to act or what to do and is stuttering in front of a camera.
Stick with criticizing policy until he fails publicly. But criticize hard. Cheney – who’s not in office and not well-liked – accomplished quite a bit, just from taking the guy on with the facts.
BTW, I’m just as worried about the future of our Republic as several other commenters seem to be. The Democrats look incredibly incompetent – with their majorities they ought to have accomplished a lot more of their agenda by now. I can easily imagine the Left (and Obama) acting in such a way that would make the American people recoil. What I have a much, much harder time imagining is a Republican party leading and leveraging that recoil.
The funny thing is everybody,
The Democrats have a HUGE opportunity that they are failing to seize.
They could actually pass solutions to the problems, and be in power as the pragmatic, solution oriented, intelligent leaders with common sense for the next generation.
But what they are doing in my mind is teaching young americans quickly how bad socialism is and how good the free markets are.
So many people learned a lot during this housing boom and bust. So many people will learn that along with Dodd, and Obama and Pelosi comes a deterioration of our way of life as capital flees and goes towards profitable ventures in other countries.
To not pay attention and not learn is proof that for some – liberalism is a mental disease.
Because it is always better to teach a man to fish than give him fish. That solution is born of love and compassion. Making more people dependent on the government does nothing for prosperity as a whole except squander it.
I think that there is a fundamental lie, a swindle upon which Obama’s house is built. I keep coming back to the threshold issue of whether Obama was even qualified, i.e. was a “natural born citizen,” as the Constitution requires, to run for office and, then, hold the office of President. In true Chicago style Obama and Co. have buried quite a few bodies, it seems to me, to close off this line of inquiry.
First and foremost is the effort by Obama and the DNC (with the Federal Elections Commission coming in with an amicus brief on Obama’s side in several cases) that has reportedly cost them somewhere between $800,000 and $1,000,000 dollars so far, to fight legal battles all the way up to the Supreme Court, to see to it that Obama does not have to produce his original long form birth certificate for inspection. Moreover, both the DNC and the FEC, the bodies that one would have thought had the duty to examine Obama’s birth certificate to see if he met the Constitutional requirement, both deny that either one has that responsibility; I guess that means that no one does. None of these courts wants to touch an issue with “major Constitutional crisis” written all over it and, so, they have all made the ludicrous ruling on the threshold issue of “standing” that the various plaintiffs —U.S. citizens all–did not have the standing i.e. had nothing at significant risk, were not sufficiently affected, to justify them being able to ask the courts to require Obama to produce his original birth certificate for inspection; none of these courts, Supreme Court included, want to get to a trial in which they might have to examine this document, which might as well be radioactive.
The very obvious conclusion from Obama and the DNC’s extraordinary and costly efforts to block production of Obama’s original birth certificate is that Obama’s birth certificate has something on it that would disqualify him, otherwise why would Obama not just reach into his bedroom drawer or his safe deposit box, produce it, and end all the controversy, and save a lot of effort and money as well? The best excuse that Obama supporters have been able to come up with to this simple question, is that all these costly and time consuming efforts are part of some brilliant Obama plan to keep his opponents “distracted” and fixated on a non-existent problem.
Several other items reinforce my conclusion that he is not a “natural born citizen,” and thus not qualified:
Back in 2005, it was reported, a law firm with connections to Obama was doing research on how to get around the Constitutional requirement that candidates must be “natural born citizens,” and their research resulted in an article advocating doing away with this requirement that appeared in Chicago’s Kent Law Review, titled “Amending the Natural Born Citizen Requirement: Globalization As the Impetus and the Obstacle,” Kent Law Review 2/22/2006 by Sarah P. Herlihy, J.D– an article that has since, it seems, been pulled from the Web. Then, we have Obama’s co-sponsorship, while in the Senate, along with Hilary, and from his remarks in the Congressional Record, a very uncharicteristically avuncular Senator Leahy–a mean tempered, hard left partisan , of a “Sense of the Senate” resolution to stipulate that Senator McCain, who was born to a father serving on active duty in the U.S. military, and at a hospital on a U.S. base in the Panama Canal Zone, was a “natural born citizen.”
This is very fishy for a number of reasons, chief among them that Obama basically phoned it in during his couple of years in the Senate, he was often out on the road “campaigning,” held no committee hearings of the subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee he chaired, and sponsored exactly one minor, routine bill, dealing with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, that became law in all that time. Yet, suddenly he showed up and became keenly interested in co-sponsoring a Sense of the Senate resolution dealing with the natural born citizen issue. Incidentally, in commenting on the fact that this clause has never been tested or written about to any great extent, this resolution unusually included one page with the “legal opinions”–a paragraph each– of two leading jurists–one conservative, one liberal–on this issue. All this I view as laying the groundwork, and insurance in case this issue assumed importance for Obama later on.
Then, of course there is his apparently fake Certificate of Live Birth, that was up on the Web–not the same thing or as informative, at all, as the long form original birth certificate would be, but cited by Obama supporters as proof of his birth in Hawaii. All this might be readily believed except for the fact that Obama’s maternal grandmother told all and sundry before the inauguration–until Obama’s people shut her up, that she and one of Obama’s half-sisters and one half-brother, who also affirmed that they were present, were in the delivery room in a Mombassa, Kenya hospital, where they witnessed Obama’s birth, a birth confirmed by hospital records. I note that, so far, no hospital records, no doctor or nurses statement affirming Obama’s birth at any hospital in Hawaii have ever been produced. Curiously, the MSM has never been very interested in these peculiar circumstances.
I noted also that statement by the relevant government officials in Hawaii, solidly in the control of the Democratic Party, which stated that Obama did have a certificate of birth on file as Hawaiian law required, but would not say a word about what was in it or release it, citing “privacy concerns.” Similar “privacy concerns” have been cited by various officials who have withheld Obama’s medical record, his undergraduate and graduate records, his scholarship records, and his law school records, as well. Meanwhile, during al these years of controversy Obama supporters and the MSM have been ignoring this whole host of bothersome evidence and, instead, have been concentrating on mocking those who have raised very natural questions–doubters–as “Birthers.”
Something stinks to high heaven here.
Wolla, I agree that something is fishy, but I don’t think it is in our interests to pursue it. It’s too easy to make those raising this point look like 9/11 Truthers. Obama’s election is a done deal now, and even if I had proof that his candidacy was fraudulent, I’d be reluctant to discredit his Presidency (and by extension, the office itself) by publishing it. (Unless and until he does something really outrageous, which I hope he doesn’t.)
Having said that, the birth certificate issue obviously has something to it. You want to see mine? No problem. I couldn’t care less. I’m sure that’s the case with everyone here. But Obama’s is literally a better kept secret than that of the A-bomb.
At a minimum, even if Obama were born in Hawaii, the birth certificate must contain something embarrassing (e.g., illegitimate birth, someone else as father, or at least proof that his mother was underaged at the time of conception – the current chronology has her legal by a week!).
It’s curiously reminiscent of Kerry’s military records, which obviously also contained treasure of some sort (if not a less than honorable discharge, perhaps another kind of discharge associated with “socializing” in Far East naval bases /g).
We can’t make it about Obama.
We have to use this opportunity to teach.
Teach people about how opportunity leads to prosperity. How taxes and regulations diminish opportunity. How subsidizing bad choices leads to disaster and how we need to take responsibility for our own lives.
The safety net should be for the non-able bodied and elderly.
To the extent that the Democrats are expanding the social safety net to include just about everybody but the rich leads to poverty for all – dilutes the safety net and creates and environment where poor choices are rewarded.
Really this is all common sense. We can appeal to people’s common sense.
It doesn’t have to be about Obama as the entire Democrat party is leading us this way.
the critical number to avert is too late
nothing will stop him
and we may find all the other countries arrayed against us.
I agree – it’s a teaching opportunity.
We’re having that now in California, with the state issuing IOUs for cash it doesn’t have, we’re experiencing a sort of capitalist neotony. We’re effectively returning to the early days of modern capitalism, when fiat currencies were first introduced.
I’ve been explaining to my family (especially the kids) how the value of the IOUs (or any fiat currency) depends on the faith people have that the government will actually make good on its promises. When people doubt that faith – as they should here – they discount the fiat currency from face value. In the absence of a sound plan to cut spending, no one will take the IOUs at face value. (Raising taxes alone won’t do it, because everyone knows the legislature will just spend us right back into the same situation we’re in now. The legislature has to grasp the nettle.)
Furthermore, we can now see clearly the damage Obama did by abrogating the contractual obligations to automotive industry lenders. Might he bail out California, on condition that the state burn IOU holders? Sure, why not – they’re creditors of a bankrupt favored entity, just like those who lended to the auto industry. It’s entirely possible.
Things will get worse before they get better, but at least we can use the present mess as a living laboratory to teach others why exactly liberal policies in the long term do not and cannot work, never have, and never will.
I’m all for discussing strategies for dealing with the ongoing train wreck of America under Obama and the Dems.
However, I also understand neo’s desire to explore the mystery of Obama and how we have come to understand him.
Obama is one for the books — the strangest president ever.
True.
He’s kind of politics’ answer to Michael Jackson.
Judith:
I do not want a black President to succeed. His blackness is irrelevant to me, though it is not to the >90% of Afro-Ams who voted for him because of his blackness. What black Americans needed was that the first black President be a President for all Americans. That’s not what we got. As the resentment of Obama builds, it will have a spillover that will damage race relations seriously. I see that around me already.
As far as O and Leftists are concerned, he’s succeeding famously…at destroying the foundations of this country.
I’m saying that while WE can see the weirdness surrounding Obama, stating some of these things too loudly turns people off and makes them defensive.
Instead we need to use the opportunity to teach.
I love this post btw. Nothing wrong with this post so don’t get me wrong. It states what I feel whole-heartedly.
I too on election day thought positive thoughts because so many people decided to love this country all of a sudden. I thought wow. What an opportunity to really get this country going forward. The disappointing moves that the Democrats and Obama has made have been VERY disappointing.
It’s as if they know the reverse of economics…..
We MUST teach macroeconomics 101. We have to.
Baklava,
Oh, I think lots of people have unwittingly signed up for the lab course. Not so many for the lecture.
I’m curious to read Part II of this, Neo.
I also started cautiously in regard to my views of Obama. Part of that is because it has always been my nature to respond to things cautiously. Part of it is also because I see myself as a center-right Republican, not far right. As such, I simply (but respectfully) have found myself sometimes in disagreement with fellow Republicans who are farther right. For example, I was supportive of John McCain back when he was a target of many who felt he was not conervative enough. As such, i was not initially responsive to those who sounded the alarm about Obama as if his being in office would automatically lead to some hard-core socialist result.
I was also someone who, while disagreeing with the Clintons on many matters, found it disagreeable that Hillary should be called (as some have called her) “Hitlery.” I found this just as offensive and “over the top” as when those on the left called President Bush by the epithet “BusHitler.” Suffice it to say that I had heard enough outrageous talk from both sides, that when talk radio hosts started calling our present president “Chairman Maobama,” my initial reaction was to consider it another childish round of namecalling. Just because I didnt vote for someone didn’t mean the guy was the epitomy of evil.
But, I, too, find myself increasingly troubled by Obama. Actually, as I think of it, its not just Obama. Its the whole situation of having a president like Obama, who indeed appears to be both quite ideologically motivated to the left, as well as naive and inexperienced….. that along with the fact that we now also have the most ideologically left-of-center Democratically elected congress in history. I think both together is what scares me most…. its the making of a catastrophe in the same way that a very strong hurricaine coupled with faulty levees can create something quite horrible.
The fact that we now have a very far left Democrat controlled congress passing gargantuan bills without even reading them, sometimes in a manner that is clearly an attempt to get them passed without anyone having a chance to raise a voice of protest, is very troubling. The fact that Obama is all too willing to sign them into law, without much review, because thats what his ideologocal orientation motivates him to do, is doubly troubling.
And… let me add… the fact that so much of the media and so much of the American people seem so taken with his glib smile and glib talk….. yes, thats scary indeed.
Tom Says:
July 2nd, 2009 at 9:54 pm
I remember saying during the Rev. Wright brouhaha at least a year ago, that Obama’s campaign had already set race relations back 30 years.
I think it’s even worse now. From what I’ve heard, about 95% of black voters voted for him. I don’t necessarily begrudge them the opportunity of voting for a black man for President, but I have to wonder how many of them are having second thoughts about Obama? I haven’t heard of any.
When you have 95% of any race of voters voting for someone of their race, well, that certainly looks like racism to me. The same people would have voted for Al Sharpton if he had won the Democratic nomination. Strictly because of his skin color.
But I don’t blame blacks for elevating Obama to the White House. That was the fault of guilt-ridden white liberals.
Baklava: macroeconomics, critical thinking, and civics. The three most important courses for kids to take. But I don’t think they’re taught at all any more as a rule.
rickl: actually, John Kerry received 88% of the black vote in the 2004 election. Blacks vote overwhelmingly Democrat. Obama increased this a bit, but just a bit. It was close to unanimous even before Obama, so it’s not just a racial thing.
Neo, this is going to probably be dismissed as carping by some but there is a contingent of Obama enablers whom you’ve left out. There is also the so-called social conservatives. These are folks that follow personalities such as Limbaugh, Coulter and Ingraham — celebrities who have assumed the mantle of gatekeepers of the GOP and who all incessantly bad-mouthed McCain. Don’t tell me it didn’t have an effect — a lot of people listen to them.
I don’t know how many times on the blogs during the campaign that I saw conservative commentors offer the opinion that it would be better if Obama won — the reasoning being that his inevitable failures after taking office would create a right-leaning backlash among the voters next time — and at least that awful RINO, McCain, wouldn’t get into the Whitehouse. It’s a cliché but it’s a good cliché: Be careful what you wish for.
Then of course there’s the Althouses and McArdles — educated writers who should have known better because, unlike figures such as Paul Krugman or Jane Hamsher, they profess not to be invested in a Leftist agenda and thus do not have that excuse — but who blithely admit to voting for Obama and who will probably rationalize their lapses of integrity until they are carried off into the night.
At the next Presidential election — whoever the Republican candidates may be — let us all vow to not let childish resentments get in the way of our judgement.
On the whole race topic, I have an interesting story.
I recently talked with my neighbor who used to be a public prosecutor in Detroit. She told me about one case when she was vetting the jury and she found one juror that she was particularly interested in. This juror was a small-business owner, a mother, and her brother had been a policeman who had been killed on the job. Basically, this woman was the exact type of juror that the prosecution wanted to secure a conviction.
However, this juror went up to my neighbor and asked her why she had been included in the jury. My neighbor responded that the juror was exactly what the prosecution needed. However the juror said, quite frankly, “But I’m black!”
My neighbor, “So what?”
– “Well, the defendant’s black.”
My neighbor was gobsmacked, “Are you telling me that you would vote not guilty just based on the color of his skin?”
– “Well, yes!”
After this, my neighbor talked to the judge, who was a black man, and asked him the same question. After much consternation and confusion, the judge said the exact same thing.
We’ve got a serious problem with our societal conception of justice and fairness. It’s obvious that race and culture are still issues because people still vote and think in tribes. It’s the logical conclusion of multiculturalism.
In addition to economics education, I submit that we should teach people that multiculturalism and pluralism are not the same. In fact, multiculturalism will ultimately lead to the end of pluralism.
Grackle–if there are 2010 and 2012 elections.
With a President so unscrupulous, so power hungry and with so little regard for the niceties and constraints of the Constitution, and with his repeated attempts–now successful–to fund vote fixing, false registration maker ACORN with billions of dollars, and involving them, recently, too in the hiring of all Census enumerators–the Census being the mechanism used to determine the number of Congressional district and their boundaries, as well as the distribution of federal funds to teach state– what makes you think that under Obama we will ever have a reasonably honest and fair election again?
Neo, I think that there’s a lesson here. When someone makes a series of predictions and turns out to be right on each one, that person should be taken seriously. The strong conservatives who ‘doubted’ The One have, these days, a good track record, and deserve to be heard.
I’m saying that while WE can see the weirdness surrounding Obama, stating some of these things too loudly turns people off and makes them defensive.
Baklava — To be sure and I would make the same argument in spades when various posters here go on about physically removing Obama and his minions from Washington — whatever that means.
However, at some point the discussion on this blog and in similar places, is simply us concerned citizens trying to figure out what’s happening versus the best strategy for fixing it.
We assume a some amount of privacy, that what we are saying is entre nous, between us, and is not our outreach for persuading those on the other side.
The percentages of blacks who voted for Obama -95%- were not appreciably different than the percentage of blacks who voted for Kerry- 88%- or Gore – 90%. Blacks are yellow-dog Democrats.
Another way to look at blacks voting for Obama is to compare it to Irish-Americans voting for JFK. Many Irish-Americans voted for JFK because “he’s one of our own.” Similarly with blacks.
The issue with blacks is the same as with all voters: inform them of how Obama is trying to pull a fast one. People are burned out and tired of politics, which gives Obama the advantage to do his thing when no one is paying attention.
When Obama crashes and burns, my opinion is that most people will view him as a far leftist, @$$OO£££, the sidekick of Billy Ayers, rather than as a N@#$.
However I predict that one consequence of his crashing and burning will be the death of affirmative action. People will look at what happened with him, and realize that what is most important is hiring someone who is competent. This will especially affect the guilt-ridden white liberals. IMHO, most of these guilt-ridden white liberals are also yellow-dog Democrats who would likewise have voted for Kerry etc.
Not too many guilt-ridden white liberals ever vote for Rethuglicans.
Baklava: macroeconomics, critical thinking, and civics. The three most important courses for kids to take. But I don’t think they’re taught at all any more as a rule. — neo
neo — I would throw in microeconomics too, i.e. being educated in one’s personal finances.
I never got a course in that, but when I was a young adult I had no backstop. If I screwed up, I was out on the street and I knew it.
I own my own house with 75% equity, I have a mortgage payment plus taxes smaller than comparable rent and I have a large buffer in various accounts. Nonetheless I eat out rarely, I don’t go to bars, I don’t travel, I belabor most of my purchases, and I drive a 1996 Saturn.
grackle: I didn’t leave the conservative enablers out. I dealt with them in February of 2008.
When Obama crashes and burns, my opinion is that most people will view him as a far leftist, @$$OO£££, the sidekick of Billy Ayers, rather than as a N@#$.
Gringo — I understand where you’re coming from and I salute you, but disagree. When Obama crashes, as he will, it will set back race relations thirty or forty years and not without reason.
The blacks who have risen to the top during this period are, with few exceptions, rotten and weak. They have played the game of white guilt. They have become mayors, governors, and even president of Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, Sacramento, Massachussets and the United States, and they have done an abominable job.
I don’t consider myself a racist, but I will look long and very hard before I vote for a black ever again. Again, not because of racism, but because I must ask myself, what games did this black candidate play to put himself or herself on the ballot?
On the birth certificate question, I wonder whether the Hawaii long form birth certificate at that time had a box for “Religion.” I can’t find mine, but maybe Occam’s Beard can find his. All I have is the short form that looks a lot like what Mr. Obama’s campaign published.
This is sheer speculation on my part, but if Mr. Obama had been identified as a Muslim, that would explain the embarrassment factor in the context of the election. That would be a lot simpler explanation.
For my part, I find the notion that Mr. Obama is not a natural born US citizen to be implausible in the extreme. Nor do I think that being born in Kenya, Panama or anywhere else to a US citizen would disqualify a candidate in any case. I think the constitutional requirement is intended to prevent a President who was not a citizen at birth, but I will await correction from someone skilled in this area of the law.
What a bunch of paranoiacs. Do people really still wonder about this birth certificate? You mean you really think that every employee of the hospital he was born in, every state employee of Hawaii, and everyone in the media and politics and government of Illinois are all part of a vast conspiracy to hide a long form birth certificate?
Think about it. How disconnected from reality do you have to be to still be fixated on that debunked little rumor?
JTK — I don’t know about Obama’s birth certificate and I’m not particularly concerned about it.
However, I am certain that your claim that “every employee of the hospital he was born in, every state employee of Hawaii, and everyone in the media and politics and government of Illinois are all part of a vast conspiracy to hide a long form birth certificate” is a stupid overstatement.
Furthermore, brushing off the birth certificate controversy would be far more straightforward if Obama had been straightforward about almost any of his other written records — grades, courses, tuition, papers — in his extremely peculiar career.
The birth certificate story is a metonymy for a pattern of stories where things that should be transparent are covered over, of assertions that can’t be true (for example, that Mr. Obama never knew about his Chicago church’s radical demagoguery), of statements that seem to mislead more that clarify, and for sense that Mr. Obama is exotic and alien.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant, but I doubt Mr. Obama and his handlers will want much sunlight here, or on his college transcript, for example. Unnecessary secrecy makes people suspicious.
Oh yes, I remember that little cafe au lait kid born 47 years ago. How could I forget him? It was obvious then that someday he’d be President, or possibly middleweight champ, maybe MVP in the NBA, so all of us hospital employees paid close attention, because this was clearly going to be important half a century later. In fact, I remember what I had for lunch that day, as anyone would. I ate it underneath a star that appeared in the East, after I shooed away three bearded geezers bearing gold, frankincense, and myrrh, whatever that is.
I too was suspicious of Obama from the beginning because he kept talking about change and what is it that he wants to change my brain waves I mean come on I know HAARP and DARPA are up to weird stuff but is that it? Oblio is right he’s probably an alien but definitely exotic have you ever heard of a half moon man half Kenyan craaaaazy!!! I don’t think he’s a Muslim though because I bet that moon cake is haram and he eats a lot of moon cake which as I said is not as delicious as it sounds.
Gringo and Huxley are right I don’t like blacks either but they’re better than GREYS if you know what I mean, blacks they watch me all the time and I think they watch me while I sleep with cameras in my bedroom I tried to find them all but you know how sneaky they can be so I don’t vote for black people either but it’s not because I’m racist but because they took away my vote after the conviction so I can’t be racist if I can’t vote for them right? but I’ll tell you about the races I hate: alien races does that make me a racist?
I don’t think that Cake or (Cakee) is as foolish as he is trying to sound.
Jeez, sock puppet invasion….
I probably should have said, “Secrecy makes people suspicious. Unwarranted secrecy makes them even more so.”
Since I learned of Obama’s relationship with Rev Wright and his racist church, I have been alarmed about Obama.
I’m still not eager — God rest FredHjr’s soul — to jump on the “Obama is a Marxist” bandwagon. But, like neo, in recent weeks my attitude was broken through another threshold.
I’m somewhat old-fashioned. Forget Marxism. I wonder if Obama is evil.
Once you grant that Obama is intelligent, then you must take what he says and what he does seriously. Obama has been so deceptive in statements and hostile to democracy and freedom that I have to wonder.
I doubt that Mr. Obama has enough character to be Evil, as opposed to being narcissistic, weak, complacent, and arrogant. He still seems like an empty, if extremely well-tailored, suit.
Not Evil with a capital E, I grant you, but closer to Arendt’s Banality of Evil.
Arendt put her finger on the bizarre juxtaposition of bureaucratic methods in the service of genocide, of people without passion pushing papers without an iota of recognition of the humanity of their victims. I have a hard time seeing Mr. Obama in that phrase. He is too much like the people with whom I went to college. I’ve known people like him my whole life.
“I’m saying that while WE can see the weirdness surrounding Obama, stating some of these things too loudly turns people off and makes them defensive.”
And this is exactly what got us to where we are today! How challenged are you, neo? Go read Ali Sina at Faith Freedom about Obama. He has three good articles up there that have been there for over a year. (At least the 1st one has.)
You and yours labeled me and others directly as tin foil hatters for thinking Obama was:
Not eligible to be POTUS. (Never proved he is.)
Possibly a Muslim. (Never proved he isn’t.)
A racist. (See Rev. Wright)
A socialist or communist a la Alinsky or Gramisci.
Would lie, cheat or steal to be elected or reelected. (http://www.end22.com/) + Campaign financing lies.
But, here we are. Now do you believe us? He has thrown Honduras under the bus. Don’t be lazy, go to Powerline and read what is said there. Or The Return of Scipio. Or Atlas Shrugs. The 0bamanation has sided with the socialist/communist thugs: The Castro’s, Chavez and Ortega.
Obama is a Fascist: Facism is the state ownership of the means of production, simply. (Lose the shortsighted image of Hitler until earned. It won’t be too long.)
Chrysler & GM nationalized.
Main banks nationalized.
Media run by the state. (Though not owned outright the lickspittles in the press are so far gone it doesn’t matter.)
1/6th of the economy to be state run = Healthcare “reform”. (Scare quotes on purpose.)
Energy system controlled via state regulation = Cap’N Tax – Soon in a Congress near you.
How much more do you need? The Republic is in dire straits. Do you really think that the 2010 or 2012 elections will be on the up and up? I don’t.
God help us all.
Robohobo you say Possibly a Muslim it is very much more definite than that. In one of his books Obambi tells a story about school life in Indonesia and says’ I was chastised by the teacher for pulling faces in KORANIC STUDIES’ . Now the revelation is not that Obambi has always been a buffoon but that he took Koranic Studies. You see in Indonesian schools ONLY Muslims take Koranic studies indeed if they tried to get Indonesian Christian children to take it there would be riots and blood on the streets. Indonesian Christians have been persecuted, oppressed and discriminated against by Muslims for hundreds of years and are therfore very very protective of their young. So out of his OWN mouth he confirms he was a practicing Muslim which makes his statement ‘I have ALWAYS been a Christian’ a blatant LIE.
So now you know the caliber and character of the LIAR Messiah that dumb Americans voted for.
On a not too unrelated topic. In the USA 89% of violent crimes are committed by Blacks and Hispanics however if you were an Alien visitor and judged planet earth on the outpourings of Hollywood and TV you would conclude the following:-
1) All violent crimes are committed by American or foreign Whites especially Brits or French.
2) Blacks are the most dominant, intelligent race in America as all Police Chiefs, City Mayors , Heads of Companies, Computer experts, scientists, cookie but extremely intelligent individuals and every hero’s bestest most true friend ever and now the President the LIAR Messiah are INVARIABLY Black.
Think I am joking read this
NBC’s Law & Order:
Entertainment Serving the Elite
By Nicholas Stix
Throughout history elites have used narratives, usually based on actual events, to shape and control the picture of the world they impose on the societies they rule. Sometimes those narratives depict the heroism of ancestors in the hopes that a dramatic retelling of past exploits will motivate young listeners to emulate them in behalf of the elites. In societies ruled by more ideologically inclined elites, those tales often take the form of morality plays that shape and mold the outlook, values, and judgments of the ruled.
Here in the U.S., elites use the corporate entertainment industry and its vast television audiences to shape the outlook of their constituent populations. But instead of using truthful narratives, American elites resort to lies and distortions so that actual events can be twisted and bent to conform to the propaganda needs of their left-wing ideology.
Consider the case of NBC’s Law & Order, an extremely popular television show. L&O’s left-wing producer, Dick Wolf, controls a stable of five crime-oriented shows (also Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, L.A. Dragnet and Crime & Punishment), making him one of the most powerful men in television. For years, Law & Order, which is filmed in Manhattan, advertised its episodes as being “ripped from the headlines,” a claim Wolf and star Jerry Ohrbach still make in interviews. But instead of depicting reality, Wolf’s scriptwriters take high-profile crimes committed by blacks, and replace the bad guys with whites, even inventing white racist criminals that bear no relation to anything seen in New York during the past 100 years.
And so, even though more than 89 percent of suspects in violent crimes are black or Hispanic according to NYPD crime reports, L&O presents a looking-glass world in the grip of a white crime wave. In “Teenage Wasteland,” an episode that originally aired on February 7, 2001, the true case of a group of black teenagers who ordered Chinese food, and murdered the delivery man, is turned into a group of middle-class, white kids. “Myth of Fingerprints” (November 14, 2001) tells of a white, female forensics chief whose years of false testimony has sent many innocent men to jail.
One of those innocents was murdered in prison, resulting in the official’s conviction for manslaughter. “Fingerprints” was loosely based on the real case of former Oklahoma City supervising forensic chemist Joyce Gilchrist, nicknamed “black magic,” for her seeming forensic wizardry. Gilchrist’s lab techniques and court testimony had come under scrutiny by federal and state authorities. Critics charged she gave false testimony causing 23 men to be sentenced to death, eleven of whom were executed. Joyce Gilchrist is black, but unlike the fictional white official, was never prosecuted, though she was fired for alleged “flawed casework” and mismanagement.
Seven months after the October, 2002 Washington, D.C. sniper case was closed with the arrest of suspects John Muhammad and Lee Malvo, L&O dramatized the case, but with the shooter as a white man! (”Sheltered”; May 14, 2003.) “Smoke” (May 21, 2003) opens with the death of a child, whose adoptive father, a famous entertainer, had dropped him, while dangling him from a hotel room window. The detectives eventually discover that the entertainer would also arrange for underage boys to accompany him to his mansion, where he would sexually violate them. When I told a not particularly media-savvy neighbor who is the mother of four small children that story line, she immediately said, “Michael Jackson!” But on L&O, the character was depicted as a white comedian. Remember the Danny Almonte case? Almonte was the 14-year-old Dominican fraud who – through the connivance of his father, Felipe de Jesus Almonte, and Bronx-based, Dominican Little League coach Rolando Paulino – passed himself off as a 12-year-old, in order to play in the 2001 Little League championships. But in “Foul Play” (May 1, 2002), the coach magically becomes a blond-haired, white man, who is somehow convicted of a murder committed by the player’s father.
L&O’s creative team must read some interesting publications, since many of their “ripped from the headlines” stories never happened, but suit any left-winger’s paranoid fantasies quite well. Consider their obsession with non-existent, murderous white supremacists, whom they depict as besieging Manhattan. In “Open Season” (November 20, 2002), a William Kunstler-like defense attorney is murdered while celebrating the acquittal of a guilty-as-hell black defendant for shooting a white policeman. The killer, a member of a white supremacist group, then uses his defense attorney to unwittingly pass along information to his co-conspirators, who murder a prosecutor in another state. The defense attorney is charged with aiding and abetting the supremacists, before she is shot by a female supremacist. The real basis of the episode was the indictment of radical attorney, Lynne Stewart, of consciously aiding and abetting Moslem terrorist Sheik Abdul Rahman, the convicted ringleader of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In “Prejudice” (December 12, 2001), a racist, white real estate agent progresses from writing a letter to his co-op board in an effort to keep an interracial couple out of his building, to flashing a gun at a black colleague, to murdering a black man who beat him to a taxi. Such a case would have been fantastic in 1951, let alone in 2001. In “Genius” (April 2, 2003), a white, violence-embracing ex-con-writer stabs a white cabby to death. Viewers are then given mixed messages, as the cab driver turns out to be a fugitive, white supremacist racial murderer.
In another surreal L&O touch, ordinary black New Yorkers are repeatedly shown to be victims powerful white overseers. In “Kid Pro Quo” (April 30, 2003), the dedicated director of admissions at a tony private school is murdered by her corrupt racist boss. The victim sought to get a deserving but poor black girl admitted, but was overridden by the boss, who’d taken a bribe to accept the inferior child of a Jewish pornographer. And then there’s the homophobia angle. In the real world, Manhattan is, like San Francisco, one of the most gay-friendly areas in America. But not in L&O’s alternate universe. In “Girl Most Likely” (March 27, 2002), a private school student murders her lesbian lover, in order to hide the fact that she is gay. Last, but not least, comes xenophobia. In “Patriot” (May 22, 2002), a pale, blonde-haired former special forces officer kills a Moslem immigrant he had surveilled, and whom he suspected of being a terrorist. The prosecutor presents the imaginary patriot as a fire-breathing, chest-thumping, jingoist monster, even as the story suggests that the dead man really was a terrorist.
Now beginning its fourteenth season, Law & Order, a top-rated show and perennial Emmy nominee for Outstanding Drama Series, serves as a willing tool for the elites’ culture war against Middle American whites. No wonder it receives awards and recognition from its corporate masters.
I ran across a recent article by an writer named Nancy Salvato (see http://tinyurl.com/mgtkof), that gathered together quotes from the founding fathers and other major American political thinkers on the reasons for the “natural born citizen” requirement, and their primary reasons were twofold; to guard against a President whose first allegiance might not be to America, who was too influenced by another nation or foreign ideas, and, second, to guard against a President who, being foreign born, raised and/or educated, might not have the necessary experience with, grasp, and deep knowledge, appreciation and fundamental belief in American history, our political system and it’s values, our particular customs, traditions and ways of doing things.
Seems to me that in Obama, we have the President those founders were trying to prevent from coming to power in America. Many have noted Obama’s faulty grasp of history–American and otherwise, his Muslim roots, his odd tone–would any other President have replied to criticism by saying harshly “I won”?, his disregard for the Constitution and it’s constraints that grows more obvious and ominous by the day, and his obvious preference for leftist leaders and ideas, not to mention his distaste, if not worse, for whites–“white greed rules a world in need,” indeed.
P.S.–The recent article I pointed out (http://tinyurl.com/l3mccw), and that Neo kindly picked up on, whose author said that Obama had the viewpoints, attitudes and took the actions of an “African colonial,” and that this was his cultural identity, is also consistent with my comment above.
Oblio,
It is my understanding that, in order to be president, one must be born on American soil. This would include military installations and embassies. Any number of my cousins in England (father was American) who were citizens could not have run for president.
Unnecessary secrecy makes people suspicious.
It also makes opponents waste time, energy and more importantly, credibility, on various conspiracy theories: He’s secretly a Muslim, he’s a ‘Manchurian Candidate’, he was born in Africa and not in Hawaii, etc.
Such kookery only serves to discredit his opposition. There’s not going to be any shortcut to an Obama-free Whitehouse, no magic wand that once waived which will rid us of him. It’s going to require a firm hold on reality and arguing against his policies on their merits in order to convince the American public.
Arguing from facts and policy is fine for wonks. Most people aren’t. The boneheads who make up the electorate think in pictures, sound bites and mindless slogans. They are an electronic mob formed by mass communications, but a mob nonetheless.
The Obama-made disasters will come aplenty, but they alone won’t be enough. We will need to label them. “Bush lied, people died” is the gold standard here. Short, simple, and easy for 100 million magpies to repeat.
Going back to the “blacks vote for Democrats overwhelming numbers” theme that we discussed last night, I can’t help but wonder:
Most big cities are run by entrenched Democrat political machines.
ACORN has been active in those areas for at least 20 years.
Many inner-city precincts routinely show more votes cast than the number of registered voters.
Democrats immediately scream “Racism!” whenever anyone suggests requiring that voters produce ID at the polls.
If the endemic vote fraud in urban areas was magically removed somehow, wouldn’t it be interesting if we discovered that blacks only vote Democrat about 60-40 instead of 90-10?
“IN overwhelming numbers”
Baklava said,
What the left are teaching young American’s is, “quickly how bad socialism is and how good free markets are.”
I agree. Therein lies the silver lining. In spite of the brilliant use of the chaos that the “state of crisis” has afforded him, little cracks are beginning to show in his facade.
Here in California they have begun issueing IOU’s to pay the bills. The debt and defict are out of control. Yet, there is Pelosi on the floor of congress twisting arms on a vote to restrict water going to farmers in the San Joaquin valley. Why is this important? Because agriculture is the #1 industry in a state with the eighth largest economy in the world. This is Pelosis’ state! Yet she is siding with environmentalists, (and a small minnow like fish), over the economy and people. Some 80,000 people have lost their jobs with small ag towns nearing 50% unemployment. The water is there but the fed’s won’t release it as crops die and people suffer.
July 1 there were 10,000 people at a “water rally” at the city hall in Fresno. My guess is that 7,000 of those were Mexican farm workers. They are righteously pissed off and believe me, they are seeing the hypocricy of the liberals who they have always voted for. They know who is betraying them! (these are legal citizens who vote). The Latino Water Coalition, headed by comedian and actor Paul Rodriguez is now statewide and spreading!
The point is that all of this heavy-handed big government intervention will hopefully give us an opening to redefine just what made this country great appealing not only to the young, but to others who have never been open to hearing the message.
I wish that blacks would see the hypocricy too.
The Latino Water Coalition, headed by comedian and actor Paul Rodriguez is now statewide and spreading!
Nascent anti-Progressive movements like this are good and should be encouraged as much as possible, especially since it comes from within the fastest growing voting bloc in the US, the Latinos. It would help immensely if key conservatives would quit demagoging on the immigration issue.
Latinos are potentially a gold-plated bunch of votes against Progressivism. Why? Because they are naturally family-oriented, naturally patriotic and very much into entrepreneur-ship. They are the very definition of “family values,” no need to rehabilitate them to those values because they are inculcated into the culture itself. If only the rabid anti-immigration folks would leave off alienating them so that groups like the Latino Water Coalition could grow into a national movements … But noooo … so far, with the Latino vote and the GOP it’s been one step forward, two steps backward …
Getting rid of Obama, Pelosi, etc. would be a lot easier if the GOP, social conservatives and conspiracy theorists would quit passing ammunition to the enemy. Wake up, Republicans!
What the left are teaching young American’s is, “quickly how bad socialism is and how good free markets are.”
This is the passive argument of, ‘All we have to do is nothing because the Left will do our work for us.’ WRONG!
What the Right has to do to win the vote of young Americans is to actively promote a philosophy of limited government, a free market economy and a strong national defense — attractive, vote-getting principles that have been shunted aside in recent years in favor of the siren call of demagoguery.
The Left hasn’t won the MSM, the Congress, the Presidency, the Universities, the intellectuals and the majority of voters because the vote was rigged by ACORN or because its philosophy was particularly appealing but also because the Right has made some huge strategic and tactical blunders. And is continuing to make those same mistakes. Such demeaning spectacles as Michael Steele having to apologize to Rush Limbaugh sends a message to young Americans and the message is not pretty.
Oblio–The key issue here is that U.S. laws, regulations and practices regarding the U.S. citizenship status of children born to an American mother and to a father who is a foreigner and the place of birth is in a foreign country are not static and set in stone, they have varied over time. It is just not, if the mother is American the child is automatically American, as many posters take for Gospel.
If Obama was indeed born in Kenya, lawyer Philip J. Berg argues that under the particular set of U.S. laws and regulations in effect at that time, the American mother would have had to have been 18–Obama’s mother was 17 and several months shy of 18 on the day of his birth, and such an American mother would also have had to have met the legal requirement of having spent a certain number of years in the U.S. before her 18th birthday–which she did not do. So, in this scenario, an Obama born in Kenya assumed the citizenship of his Kenyan father.
According to Berg again, one of the other problems is that when Obama’s mother married her second husband, Lolo Soetoro, and took Obama with her to live in Indonesia, if Obama was indeed an American citizen at this point in time, he may well have lost his American citizenship when Lolo Soetoro acknowledged him as his son, which he would have had to do in order to be able to enroll Obama, now named Barry Soetoro, in public schools in predominantly Muslim Indonesia–then under control of a hardline Muslim regime–which Lolo did when he registered him as a Muslim. At this point in time Obama would have been a citizen of Indonesia according to the U.S. laws and regulations then current.
On reentering the U.S., Obama would have had to apply to become a naturalized American citizen: he could not regain “natural born citizen” status.
The Obama-made disasters will come aplenty, but they alone won’t be enough. We will need to label them. “Bush lied, people died” is the gold standard here. Short, simple, and easy for 100 million magpies to repeat.
I see much merit in trying to think up ways to publicize Obama-fostered disasters. Snappy slogans are good. But to be effective there has to be a basis for them in reality.
Yes, I know “Bush lied, people died” was itself based on a lie but it was a lie nurtured by the MSM until it became the conventional wisdom. A pundit like Juan Williams can now casually state that the Iraq War was based on subterfuge without fear of being called on it — he knows that most folks accept it — Hell, he probably believes it himself … And to think I used to believe that pundits were smarter than the rest of us …
The Right will not have that type of assistance; the slogans of the Right will have to be based on factual analysis(by policy wonks — who else?) in order to have any kind of traction, otherwise the MSM will quickly consign them to the dustbin. We have to get used to the idea that we are going to be playing with certain handicaps from the git-go.
Slogans:
Democrats are idiots. America suffers.
Democrats don’t know squat.
Friends don’t let friends vote Democrat.
Democrats aren’t interested in prosperity. Vote Republican.
Democrats Bankrupt
Democrats – Subsidizing personal irresponsibility
Democrats mean a weaker nation
Democrats bad. Strong nation good.
Democrats. Illogical.
Democrats are for fascism, socialism, anything big governmentism
Democrats Lie People Die
Of course there are the Ben Nelson’s, Zell Miller’s, Moynihan’s, Lieberman’s, etc…..
But it isn’t about Obama. It is about the policies that Democrats including Obama make.
Democrats are idiots. America suffers.
Close but not quite there in conception.
How about this: Obama is a fool and the Mullahs’ tool.
Keep it directed at Obama personally, otherwise you make Democrats who might be inclined to turn on Obama too defensive to get the message. And its got to rhyme and have good meter. Example: Tippecanoe and Tyler too. Good. But try saying, Tyler and Tippecanoe too. See? Meter makes a big difference.
grackle: go to Part II and see why I don’t think slogans will do it. At least, not yet, and maybe never.
How about
Obambi LIED and Democracy DIED
That has a nice ring to it and whats more its TRUE.
Some may ask how I know about Indonesia well apart from having lived there for about 10 years I have had two Indonesian wives both Muslim and in the intervening period girlfriends some of whom were Indonesian Christians . So I know both sides of the story and have indeed witnessed many Christian/Muslim riots ( although they try to pretend these are just ethnic disputes not religious its just coincidental one side is Christian and the other Muslim LOL) on the streets in Jakarta on much more flimsy excuses than children being brainwashed by Muslims. I also know the school system having two children educated there and knowing some of the many foreign teachers who teach there. So when I tell you that Obambi MUST have been a practicing Muslim while he was in Indonesia I know what I am talking about.
neo, I just plowed through both of your posts, and your thoughts parallel mine in so many ways. I still find the deeper implications of your thinking difficult to accept, however. I really have too deep an “it can’t happen here” persona ingrained in my own makeup, I guess.
I really don’t listen to anything that the President says, but I pay close attention to what he does. I’ve been happy about the positioning re Guantanamo (I expected them to just cut these thugs loose, actually) and our responsibilities in Iraq/Afghanistan, compared to what I had expected. However, there are too many tells, and you’ve hit on many of them. The clearest was the Honduras situation. Almost as if the primary goal is to stay in power a long time and not let the events of the rest of the world get in the way of that. Leverage the organs of the state to provide the maximum long term benefit to the base, and to hell with the rest. Hmmm… More cynical than even I had imagined. Very much a “big man” approach, with the purpose of making more people dependent on the state for their daily bread, which can then be withheld for asking the wrong kinds of questions. Keep a close eye on the second and twenty-second amendments to the Constitution.
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Re: ‘All this might be readily believed except for the fact that Obama’s maternal grandmother told all and sundry before the inauguration–until Obama’s people shut her up, that she and one of Obama’s half-sisters and one half-brother, who .”
A small point to start. The Kenya side of the family is the paternal side, and the grandmother you are referring to is the paternal grandmother. Neither she nor any other relative ever said that he was born in Kenya. The paternal grandmother actually said that he was born in Hawaii.
Listen to the complete tape (http://www.obamacrimes.info/Telephone_Interview_with_Sarah_Hussein_Obama_10-16-08.mp3) Be sure to listen for at least five minutes and 15 seconds until after the answer to the question “Wherabouts was he born?” The answer was “America, Hawaii.”
If it is too difficult to listen to the complete tape, here is a transcript. http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/obamatranscriptlulu109.pdf
Again, look for the answer to the question Whereabouts was he born?
Re: “also affirmed that they were present, were in the delivery room in a Mombassa, Kenya hospital, where they witnessed Obama’s birth, a birth confirmed by hospital records.”
No they did not say that, and there are no records in Mombassa or anywhere else that shows that Obama was born in Kenya or that his mother ever traveled to Kenya (She would have had to get a Yellow Fever shot to do it, and that is bad during pregnancy).
In Hawaii, however, there is an official birth certificate showing that Obama was born in Hawaii, and two officials of the state Department of Health looked into the file and stated that they saw an original birth certificate in the file. That must be a Hawaii birth certificate because in 1961 Hawaii did not allow foreign birth certificates to be filed in birth files.
Re: “he may well have lost his American citizenship when Lolo Soetoro acknowledged him as his son, which he would have had to do in order to be able to enroll Obama, now named Barry Soetoro, in public schools in predominantly Muslim Indonesia.’
Both the US government and the Indonesia government have now said that Obama was never an Indonesian citizen. http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/strunk-answer.pdf
and the State Department also said in the same legal filing that Obama was never adopted by Soetoro.
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