Lamaze class and Obama: the morning after
Whatever could the connection be between Lamaze class and President Obama?
When I was pregnant I went to Lamaze class to learn breathing and relaxation techniques that would help me during my delivery. I was a pretty good student. I practiced assiduously, and when my husband squeezed my hand (or whatever paltry exercise was supposed to simulate the pain of labor) I huffed and puffed right through it like a champ.
I made a tape of favorite music to soothe me between pains. I packed a little bag to take with me. In short, I was all prepared.
Except I wasn’t, as it turned out. Not at all. I don’t know about others, but for me Lamaze class turned out to be something between a cruel joke and a cruel lie.
I won’t bore you with the female equivalent of war stories. But let’s just say that the tools Lamaze class gave me were entirely inadequate to the task of dealing with the pain of labor and childbirth (which happened in my case to have included unrelieved back labor and the rather unusual situation of the delivery of a full-term infant in an unbroken sac filled with amniotic fluid. But I digress.)
What’s far more important, it turns out (surprise, surprise!) that labor is the least of the things for which a new mother needs to be prepared. After all, labor is short compared to eighteen or twenty-one years of raising a child.
For these I was almost totally unprepared, although in retrospect I think I stepped up to the plate quite nicely. But I remember wondering why everyone had seemed so focused on childbirth itself, as though that were an ending rather than just the beginning.
How does this relate to Obama? I think that he and his staff were focused mostly on the pregnancy and childbirth of the campaign and the election. It’s not that they paid no attention whatsoever to what would come after. But I’m not so sure they thought all that much about it.
Perhaps that’s true of many candidates. But for Obama and his staff, as competent as they were about the campaign, they seem so far to have been equally incompetent about governing.
I’m not just saying that because I disagree with nearly everything they’ve done—although I certainly do disagree with nearly everything they’ve done. It’s that they seem unfocused and naive. The vaunted “transparency” they promised not only has not been demonstrated, but instead a different sort of transparency has surfaced: the arrogance of their efforts to blame the American people for disagreeing with them, and the obviousness of their attempts to twist the economic forecasts in order to deceive the public about what’s happening and what the financial results (including needed taxes) of their proposed policies are likely to be.
Kyle-Anne Shiver chalks much of Obama’s problem up to his following the Alinsky playbook:
Alinsky’s power tactics are all about gaining power and have absolutely nothing to offer in the way of practical solutions for effective American governance. Even Alinsky alerted his acolytes to this glaring hole in the revolutionary garment he was devising…
So, when a politician jumps the gun and sprints for the presidential power-perch without first thinking through the country’s problems and trying to come up with some actual new things to try, he is sunk in a mudhole of his own making long before Inaugural Day.
Even supporters are getting frustrated at what seems to be the Obama adminstration’s incompetence and disorganization, as well as its lack of focus. Their concern is that Obama can’t “sell” his policies and get Congress and the American people onboard. For Obama opponents, these failures are reassuring, because they mean that Congress and the American public are starting to wise up to the far-Left nature of so much of the Obama agenda—perhaps in time to stop it.
Theres a lot to be said for playing defense in politics. Obama and company are gathering enemies to the liberal cause at break neck speed. Keep it up!
“… perhaps in time to stop it.”
They’re doing incredible damage until then. Case in point, American policy now concerning Columbia and Honduras; The democrats and the conspicuously slanted MSM, generally, have morphed into not less than national traitors. This is a great article; “But I digress.”, funniest line of the day….
We live in a good-news-bad-news sort of world.
The bad news is that Obama got elected. The good news is that he is so incompetent and overmatched that his poll numbers have tanked and he can’t get his bills through. The bad news is that he can still do a great deal of damage. The good news is that he’s getting so much pushback that he’s probably a one-term president.
And so forth.
I wish we could get some traction on Honduras the way we are KennedyCare (I can’t remember are we supposed to call it that or not?)
Meanwhile the Washington Post is still babbling about how Obama is playing “three-dimensional chess.”
For his part, Obama appears determined to enter relationships with his Cabinet members as a strategic participant. People who brief him say he is able to game out scenarios before the experts in the room, even on foreign policy, national security and other issues in which he had relatively little expertise before running for president.
Obama is approaching the issues as a game of “three-dimensional chess,” said John O. Brennan, an assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism. “It’s not kinetic checkers. And I think the approach in the past was kinetic checkers. There are moves that are made on the chess board that really have implications, so the president is always looking at those dimensions of it.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/27/AR2009082704192.html?hpid=topnews
I wouldn’t characterize Obama and his running dogs as “Unfocused and naive”. Their focus is totalitarian. Whether they are naive or not in their tactics remains to be seen. They may still get away with their crimes (against the Constitution, and the people). I am not persuaded (hopeful, but not persuaded) that the pushback shown by townhalls and Tea Parties will succeed.
Chavez didn’t succeed overnight either, but without doubt he has succeeded.
The Alinsky approach is one of moral instrumentalism with the glaring difficulty of there being no content to the goal all moral judgment is subordinated to, except “getting there”.
Hence the floundering. If voters decide an Administration does not pass the competence test, then that provides a reason to reject independent of political preferences. Particularly bad for standing among independent voters.
(Posted this on another thread but reposting it on this thread because it is much more appropriate here.)
This week Glenn Beck on Fox is connecting–in a major way-—some dots about our “Dear Leader” and his revolutionary cadre and their plans for us and America and—-although he is not staid and polished, and you might not like Beck’s delivery style (personally, I do like it)–he is right on the money, and is pointing to the same kinds of things I have been pointing out here for months, and is getting the word out to millions of viewers each day.
As I have argued here, most of America is using the customary, but fatally wrong “template” of the usual and ”good faith” to evaluate Obama and, by doing so, is blind to what is really happening. Moreover, since we have had no major instances of real “bad faith” to freedom, democracy and the Constitution by a President, no history of tyranny or dictatorship in this very fortunate country,* and no personal experience with how such a dictatorial regime is, step-by-step, constructed, we are almost incapable of believing that such a thing could happen here in the U.S., or of picking up and recognizing the signs. Yes, Obama’s approval ratings are slowly declining, as is support for his programs, but this does not mean that there has been the kind of major “revolution” in peoples thinking about Obama, his motives, his actions and his real plans that is absolutely essential if we are to be able to see, correctly evaluate and combat what is happening.
The “transformation” Obama & Co. are trying to force on America–akin to that of a parasitic wasp, that lays its eggs in another insect where they hatch and eat the host alive from the inside out–is not just the chaotic outcome of the bumbling of an ill-educated and clueless narcissist & and his hapless crew but is, rather, the carefully worked out, very deliberate plan, created and implemented by a whole host of far left organizations, think tanks, major corporations, unions, and assorted “fellow travelers,” opportunists and “running dogs.”
We are blind to the new structure that is being constructed–right before our eyes—around us, although refuges from communism and dictatorship here in the U.S. who post on the Web are increasingly alarmed at what their “antennae”–a sense vitally necessary in and sensitized to dictatorships—are picking up.
I realize that I am largely “preaching to the choir” here, but I do not know what else to do, other than to join in various protests, or to go over to some of the more liberal blogs and argue my points–my guess though is that, having drunk deeply of the Kool Aid, few of them will be shaken from their trance.
* But see the career of “the Kingfish,” Huey Long, Louisiana Governor (1929-32) and U.S. Senator (1932-1935).
I enjoy reading the Asia Times columnist Spengler (who has recently revealed himself as David Goldman and shares a blog with the always excellent Anchoress). In my book, Spengler is pretty darn sharp. Anyway a few months ago Spengler described Obama’s Middle East policy thusly:
This was the worst-designed scheme concocted by a Western strategist since Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery attacked the bridges at Arnhem in 1944, and it has blown up in Obama’s face.
I never got it how Obama was a brainiac playing 3-D chess. At this point I don’t see how others can continue that claim. Where have Obama’s foreign policy moves paid off? Since Obama put the onus on Israel to freeze the settlements, the usual Muslim suspects are back to sitting on their hands entirely. Meanwhile Iran is still on track to nuclear weapons. I could go on.
Here’s a tidbit from Israel:
A joke deriding United States President Barack Obama is making the rounds in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet, according to Aluf Benn, the normally well-informed diplomatic correspondent for the Ha’aretz newspaper: “What do Americans do when anything breaks down in their home – when the sink is blocked, the toilet overflows, or a fuse snaps? Simple: They ask Barack Obama to give a speech and the problem is solved.”
Nuts: The Spenger article link
Neo, this was a great post. I like the connection you made between the Lamaze mirage and what’s going on with Obama these days.
My husband and I were never able to attend Lamaze classes to prepare for the birth of our first child. Because he was always away on business trips, and I was suffering from complications, I had to live with my parents for the first five months of our pregnancy. After that I was on bed rest and strictly instructed not to budge, so classes were out of the question.
So, when we got to the hospital and started having our baby, and the maternity nurse told us it was time to start using all the breathing techniques we’d learned about in class, we had to confess we had no idea what to do.
She was scandalized! But rallying, she gave us what she called the “short course,” and left us to it. When she came back to check on us a while later (hoo-hoo, hee-hee, etc.) my husband said “people actually go to class for this?
She laughed, and said “yeah, it is kind of silly, isn’t it?
The connection I draw between our story and the Obama administration is that they’re trying to sell us a bunch of stuff we don’t need, programs we can’t afford, and techniques we won’t find helpful.
(With sincere apologies to all the dudes on this thread.)
huxley – Yes, Obama is playing three-dimensional chess. And reality keeps jumping all his men and saying “King Me!”
At least we have a hope of stopping Obama because “Congress and the American public are starting to wise up”.
When my (now 20 y/o) daughter was acting up as an infant my wife would cry out in frustration pointing at her womb, “I’m going to put you back in there!”
KennedyCare (I can’t remember are we supposed to call it that or not?)
ChappaquidiCare. And when you’re no longer worth saving, you’ll get a choice of a pain pill or a ’67 Oldsmobile.
Neo, your comparison was very apt, but the real fault lies with the American people who were too willfully naive to believe his empty rhetoric, and too feckless and apathetic to see the obvious flaws in the candidate.
Obama’s incompetence and barely concealed radicalism comes as no surprise to me, nor I imagine to you nor anyone else who replies here.
If anything my surprise comes that he is even less competent than I, in my cynicism, expected. I assumed that he at least had some leadership potential and wasn’t so hopelessly ignorant about economics. I’m a computer nerd by trade and a science and math geek by interest, hardly an expert in economics, history, and politics and yet I still feel I understand these issues better than many of these so-called professionals running this country into the toilet.
Of course, part of the problem is discerning how much of Oba
I guess we truly have reached the proverbial end of democracy where the majority have finally decided to simply vote themselves the largesse of the country. Truly, 2008 was a Revolution of the Ignorant and Foolish, co-opted by the communists and socialists whose patience and determination over the past century have finally paid off.
We are the bad parents: We scheduled the Caesarian at a time of our convenience. Thanks to my wife’s uncanny X-Man X-factor healing abilities, she was home the next day and running the household things in 3 days. Hell, I spent most of the “paternity leave” golfing while she was e-mailing pictures of the kid and chatting with all the relatives (mine and hers)!
That’s a level of competence, toughness and abilities not seen in the Obamastration.
It’s a good metaphor….
Whoops. Somehow I accidently submitted before I was finished. The sentence that was cut off should read:
Of course, part of the problem is discerning how much of Obama’s actions are out of lack of experience, and how much are a smoke-screen for his less obvious and much more sinister ambitions. Truly, he makes me appreciate George W. Bush much more, and even Bill Clinton who could actually lead, even if it was often in the wrong direction.
@Gray: My wife didn’t the mutant healing power, but she did have an amazing ability to deliver quickly. She had about 6 hours of labor over 4 children. After a couple, we knew as soon as it started we needed to move fast! My mutant power was the ability to eat for two even though it wasn’t me who was pregnant.
Now our kids are teenagers and approaching teenagers, and they seem to have actually absorbed a few of the good morals and some of the sensible thinking we’ve tried to teach them. All I can say to other parents in the way of advice is keep working at it, they often absorb more than you realize.
One thing you mentioned – “arrogance of their efforts to blame the American people for disagreeing with them” – is a little weird.
They act like if you don’t say “Yes, Master” it’s tantamount to shooting at them.
Ref Lamaze Neo. My daughter has been an L&D nurse for a number of years. She says a very high percentage of the Lamaze graduates call for the epidural before it is over.
I sort of wish we could get an epidural to get us through the next four years.
Conceptjunkie–there is the rub. I see incompetence and I am heartened; except for the nagging thought that maybe it is a smoke screen, and the creation of ever more frightening crises is part of the plan. These thoughts tend to plague me in the dark of night; but in the light of day, I conclude that no, they are really as incompetent and out of touch as they seem.
But, what is truly scary is that there is a generation (my kid’s age) of whom a significant percentage seem to have bought into the idea that “compassionate” government must, truly must, ease all suffering and create a level society. I don’t know if they are going to wake up or not. These muddled middle class folks, united with the traditional lefties and dependent class, are a fairly large block.
But for Obama and his staff, as competent as they were about the campaign, they seem so far to have been equally incompetent about governing.
That is not a surprise. As far as I can tell, ∅bama’s only executive experience was chairing the Annenberg challenge, which consisted of dishing out ~$100 million, including matching funds, for research to improve the Chicago schools. Result of research: Annenberg schools had no difference in performance from non-Annenberg schools. All ∅bama did was dole out the pork: no results. Which made him a good Chicago pol, but an ineffectual executive.
Before the election, I constructed an experience metric for US Senators elected President: US Senate experience, Vice President experience, US Cabinet experience, House of Representatives experience, Military experience, Governor experience. There was one President who had the following metric: US Senator, with none of the others. That would be Warren Harding.
That experience metric also applies to ∅bama.
Like Sarah Palin said, a mayor is a community organizer with responsibilities, after being denigrated from the Democratic side as an “ex-mayor.”
As a lifelong bachelor, I’ll take your word for it on all the Lamaze stuff. The closest I ever came to that was when my sister and her husband had their son almost 30 years ago. I don’t know if they called it Lamaze back then, but they went through something like it that they later confided was essentially useless. I contrast this with what a lot of my former military colleagues said who’d been through SpecOps courses like Ranger School or BUDS before experiencing combat: The SpecOps courses were tougher, and definitely prepared them for the rigors of war. This reflects the military’s philosophy of “the more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war”. Most civilians never experience this.
I’ve not seen any evidence that Obama is playing 3D chess, or anything of the sort. On the contrary, I think he’s making it up as he goes along, never having had Saul Alinsky or anyone else tell him what to do next. He’s at sea, he’s rapidly losing the Blue Dogs and other moderate Democrats, as well as the independents, and he doesn’t seem to know what to do if the hypnotic power of “the voice” doesn’t work. I’m cautiously predicting a self-destructing presidency by the middle of next year. Unfortunately, we’re all going to have to live with it. At least I get to watch it happen from outside the U.S.
Folks, that FCC Diversity guy scares me -he praises Chavez for crying out loud!!!. And now we find out there is still a bill floating around that would give the President “emergency power” over the internet. Yikes!
I saw on drudge today there were earthquakes in Oklahoma and one of the Carolinas. Give them a repeat of that Earth Quake at New Madrid that caused the red River to flow backwards for a while and they will have their “excuse” for an emergency takeover.
The FCC guy : http://newsbusters.org/blogs/seton-motley/2009/08/28/video-fcc-diversity-czar-chavezs-venezuela-incredible-democratic-revol
Lamaze worm in spring
Governing … ah, heck w/it:
Obama sucks
That article I link to above was written by Seton Motley, who recently appeared on the Glenn Beck show. Motley is a regular contributer to “Newsbusters.org” – one of my other favorite sites in addition to Neo-Neocon.
I had been thinking the same thing recently… a friend asked years ago what I thought the left really wanted (and I’ve been thinking about the coversation a lot in the last few days). At the time I said I honestly don’t think they’ve thought it out. So, it sounds crude, but Limbaugh is sorta right. It leaves them trying to acquire power for its own sake (and blaming their outgroups when things don’t go right after they get it). It also means they try to push through 80 year old ideas like national healthcare without thinking it out (some, nonbrain dead, lefties have a few good healthcare ideas… but the rest don’t listen to them).
huxley Says:
“Meanwhile the Washington Post is still babbling about how Obama is playing “three-dimensional chess.””
Yeah, the lefties do love their dear leaders.
Look for Obama to come out with more rhetoric about needing to change the “partisan tone” in Washington and seeming conciliatory gestures to get Republicans and conservatives to help clean up his mess, “because, after all we are all Americans and we want what is best for the country.” Ted Kennedy is an example of what Obama will mean by “bipartisan.”
Expect more political theater, like the Kennedy staffers and friends gathered this afternoon on the steps of the Capitol, each clutching a little American flag. Expect any kind of framing of the emotional climate required to get the heads of well-intentioned simpletons moving up and down. Emotions are key here, not arguments.
We in the Opposition are going to need to be deaf to emotional appeals.
I’m actually feeling a lot better about the state of the country since the deflating of Obama’s aura. In fact, I’m feeling a certain sense of “Schadenfreude” about it, as Obama represented precisely the kind of candidate which a certain type of deluded liberal would be fond of voting for.
I remember when I was in college, often debating and discussing various issues with certain liberal fellow students. As someone who was not rigidly ideological, I had friends from all over the political spectrum. And I’ve encountered arrogance and delusion from all parts of the political spectrum. But there was a particular kind of delusion that was uniquely typical of certain liberals and leftists. It was the type of delusion whose symptoms included a certain self-important sense that they already knew all the answers and didnt really have to think too much… and this often came together with a surprising lack of actual study as to what it was they were talking about.
For example, I remember this particular friend of mine, altogether a good friend and decent human being, who often dealt with discussions by simply mouthing verbatim the “talking points” that he would hear from certain liberal sources. This person was like a walking, talking pamphlet for… name your liberal group…. the ACLU, NOW, People for the American Way… what have you. And he would do this with an utter sense of certainty that he was on the “right side of the argument.” No need to think any further or deeper on the matter. But then when you would ask him intelligent questions about his view, using good logic, and making reference to actual factual truths, he would frequently be caught in this “deer in the headlights” look… he would just utterly freeze as if he didnt know what to say.
Of course, as his friend, I would just have the mercy to not press the matter and move on to something else. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t utterly annoying to find such naivete and cluelessness in someone who was intelligent enough to know better, and who had the resources at his disposal to actually learn more about the matters he would comment on. I often wondered what enountering the “real world” did to this person’s blinkered views.
But that clueless, unthinking, reflexive adherence to liberal dogma, all the while dismissing out of hand any opposing views… and all the while being utterly un-educated about what it is they supposedly stand for… this was typical of a certain type of liberal I often ran into. And which I still run into as a professional. And it was precisely this type of liberal which would have been drawn to the Obama campaign like a moth to a flame. I can easily see these types going “ga ga” over the whole hope, change, “yes we can” nonesense, and feeling superior as they pulled the lever for their annointed one, and watched the landslide on election day.
Well, now it is becoming increasingly apparent that their emperor has no clothes, the peasants are revolting, and its raining on what should have been their parade . . . and I’ve got a nice big grin on my face.
This is the first time in Obama’s adult life where simply “being” Obama is not enough. He’s never actually done anything. Other than talk.
So now, it isn’t enough to simply be or to talk his standard BS. He has to “do”. And the “doing” part is a damn sight harder than he ever imagined.
Remember the reports that he needed a vacation after about 6 weeks? He was worn out. Yet, he’s let Congress do all the legislative work. After all, he’d never done any when he was in the Senate.
Any president would find it difficult at first to deal with the pressures of being president. BO-zo has to deal with them while also dealing with any serious expectations for the first time in his life.
“..BO-zo has to deal with them while also dealing with any serious expectations for the first time in his life”.
And Bo-zo (I am SO stealing that) is failing miserably on every count. The right, he never had, the left, he is pissing off more and more as time goes on due to his utter inability to actually implement any of their agenda, and the moderates and independents are saying “WTF?” with increasing frequency and volume. No, it does not bode well for the remaining 3 1/2 years that he has remaining in this term. If the GOP can nominate a even a halfway decent candidate (not a guarantee, by any means), we shouldn’t have to worry about a second term. I only hope it’s not too late by then.
remaining…remaining. Nice repetitive redundancy you have there, Walt. Read the sentence next time…
What is so hard to figure out?
Read the executive orders.
Read the bills that have already passed. Look at the czars – the commissars – and understand their utility as distractions augments their individual missions to contribute to the collapse of the system.
This administration is destined to be a horrific failure in the eyes of 90% of America. The 10% cheering every step closer to the abyss understand implicitly that the mission is destruction and nothing else.
Stop pretending it’s just politics Stop chuckling about the latest dumbass PR script the media tosses out.
Don’t read the media. Read the bills, the regulations, and the orders.
It’s an attack. Not an administration.
Obama reminds me of Robert Redford in the wonderful film, “The Candidate.” At the end of the movie, Redford’s character (a “community organizer” who’d never done anything else) sits in his limo after having won the election and compromising every principle he ever held dear. He turns to his campaign manager and asks, “What do I do now?”
He didn’t have a clue what winning really meant.
“Meanwhile the Washington Post is still babbling about how Obama is playing “three-dimensional chess.””
I’ll buy that – but then I do not think the person saying this understands why either.
Chess is not really a game of logic and forethought, it is a game of memorizing moves and counter moves. Those that play with pure logic/forethought tend to loose badly unless they are *highly* skilled and then, well, meet a decently skilled actual chess player and they loose every time. Chess has a fairly small amount of moves that can lead to victory, that is why once processing power and memory in computers became large enough and cheap enough you could get one to reliably tie/beat the best chess players out there.
I got to be an OK chess player by memorizing a few hundred patterns and what they were applied against and then relying on logic/forethought. That was enough that unless the other person really was a good chess player (that is, new a few more steps in the whole move/counter chain) it left me in such a dominate position that it was hard to loose. It took a specialize *real* computer chess program to beat me.
This also means that it doesn’t take much for one player to dominate another. A few ranks and you might as well never play that person.
However checkers has an absolute HUGE amount of moves that can result in a win. So many that you can not memorize a win. Indeed up until a draw/win/loose it *always* remains a challenge as the number of possible moves stays incredibly high. The only way to play is through logic/forethought. While checkers is easier to play at lower levels (less rules) at the higher end it is MUCH more difficult.
Really, it seems to be fairly fitting there – I do not think Obama really knows what to do once he runs out of some structured moves/countermoves – if it isn’t “checkmate” at move 16 Uh Oh!
But then I guess “kinetic checkers” could be something else. Moving Checkers doesn’t make much sense and neither wikipedia or google know what they are either.
I have decided that Obama never thought he would win the nomination, let alone the election. I think his plan was to build a bigger name for himself in order to have his “creds” ready for a go at the 2012 election. When the MSM jumped on his bandwagon and off of Hillary’s, (they never would have climbed on McCain’s), it was a little late to renege.
He was ill-prepared, obviously, had no solid plans for issues, foreign or domestic; hence, his poor choices for cabinet positions, his lack of staff in other key slots, his mishandling of the Middle East, Honduras, Venezuela, etc., etc.
I do agree with Oldflyer (above) that in the dark of night I too wonder if it’s all just a plan to develop more chaos so that Obama can “Rahm-atize” the nation and let no chaos go to waste. It certainly appears to be possible. How many banks need to go under? How much debt needs to be racked up? How many industries nationalized or small businesses closed or handcuffed? And how many freedoms lost before the dreaded suspicion becomes undeniably true? God help us.
strcpy: I played tournament chess for several years with much devotion and some success. You seem to be describing the importance of learning an opening repertoire.
True, that is essential for tournament play, and is generally a decisive advantage over those who play informally and do not know the openings. But I would hardly say that chess is not a game of logic and forethought.
If your opponent deviates from the standard opening lines you had better be able to apply the principles and do the calculations properly. And in any event the opening is followed by the middle game and endgame which are entirely principles and calculations.
Furthermore, in tournament chess high rated players lose to players with ratings several hundred points lower with surprising frequency, though overall the high rated players will win more often and that’s why they are highly rated.
In any event, 3-D chess as Brennan uses it seems to be a metaphor for Obama’s superior insight in seeing more dimensions to a problem than previous presidents rather than an awareness of opening theory. As Obama has demonstrated time and again, he knows little history, i.e. how the geopolitical game has been played before.
So far we have seen no fruits to Obama’s insight, other than increasing boldness on the part of our adversaries and increasing nervousness on the part of our allies.
So Brennan’s hyperbole and WaPo’s willingness to repeat it uncritically strike me as testaments to Obama’s charisma, his ability to dazzle people without substance or achievement. That Obama can do and it is the foundation of his success.
So far, however, there is no sign that it works on the geopolitical chessboard.
It’s not really Obama, is it…..
As has been stated many times in many places, he was selected. Hillary – strangely – turned and walked into the shadows to re-emerge as secretary of state. Why? To be out of it on the home scene, where she failed once already, yet still in the middle of the international scene where Obama is dumb as a stump. A salt and pepper man with a Muslim background and organizing skills (as long as he is surrounded by his handlers) who comes from the left is a cohesive element for what the left is trying to accomplish, while being a sacrificial zinc at the same time, if necessary. The race card is more effective than the womanized card, because Billy boy is loved too much. Witness the “I Miss Bill” T-shirts that were around during the campaigns. Outside of his usefulness on the talk circuit and occasional hostage rescue, for which he is held in reserve, the power brokers don’t want him front and center anymore.
Bill is socialist, but Hillary much more so. And as I have said numerous times, because I believe it to be so, these people think it will affect them only in the manner that they will call the shots for the rest of us, having the best for themselves, with us taking what we are given……..back.
I beg to differ. There’s trouble in paradise.
And I agree with the statement above it was all about getting elected – just like it’s now about getting these bills (changes) passed. The rest will be dealt with as it happens, a shell game. They have no idea how to effectively get these changes across, so have been pushing fast and hard. The “Internet” has become broadband providers for the most part. Many, like me, have phone, cable TV and Internet service all tied up in one. Easy to shut that down with one switch, eh?
TmjUtah above has summed it up very nicely in one phrase:
ITS AN ATTACK, NOT AN ADMINISTRATION!
The hour is late.
Quit trying to squeeze and jam your observations about Obama & Co.–like jamming a size 10 foot into the size 3 shoes that have always fit before–into the wrong set of shoes, because they don’t and won’t fit.
But pick up that set of “Red,” dictator brand size 10’s a lot of people–Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Chavez and so many others have worn and loved–and all those size 10 observations fit very comfortably.
huxley Says:
August 29th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
…
I never got it how Obama was a brainiac playing 3-D chess. At this point I don’t see how others can continue that claim.
I think this is what you get when even his supporters cannot see a clue in what he’s doing and end up with the choice of recognizing that they were hopelessly wrong in supporting him, or deciding that his brilliance is way above their pay grade.
I suspect the first choice would be contrary to human nature.
–
stumbley Says:
August 30th, 2009 at 1:56 am
Obama reminds me of Robert Redford in the wonderful film, “The Candidate”.
I’ve made this very observation several times before, so, naturally, I think you’re dead on.
🙂
Sorry to say this but what you described as a Lamaze class is not a real Lamaze class – but you took a class calling itself something it wasn’t ……
maybe there are still parallels – Obama being blamed for things that are not really related to his administration?
I’m still unimpressed with those who are arguing that Obama is incompetent, or that he even cares about opinion polls and elections. I’m with Wolla Dalbo and TmjUtah here.
I still believe that he isn’t trying to “fix” the economy at all. His ultimate objective is the destruction and impoverishment of the American middle class. (See Stalin vs. the Kulaks.) Additionally, Obama may even be a puppet of foreign interests. I don’t know who. Soros, Russia, China, the Saudis, maybe? I do know that he got an awful lot of foreign money during his campaign. They may even regard him as expendable, once he outlives his usefulness.
Once America is destroyed as an economic power, the way will be clear for a world government. I don’t know the exact form such a world government will take, but I’m quite sure it won’t be based on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The default state of human society is tyranny: a tiny, rich, and usually hereditary elite lording it over the impoverished masses. The middle class was largely a creation of capitalism and the American system. I have no doubt that elites all over the world would like to iron out that historical anomaly.
I forgot to add: At the risk of violating Godwin’s Law, there were many intelligent Germans in the 20s and early 30s who regarded Hitler as a blowhard and a buffoon.
rickl: I don’t think you get what I mean by “incompetent.” I agree with you (and I’ve written about this many times, most notable here) and Wolla Dalbo, etc., that Obama is a far Leftist who is not trying to “fix” the economy. I believe that the leader who resembles him most today is Hugo Chavez, in terms of his goals.
But I also think that he is somewhat incompetent so far in achieving them. He showed his hand too early, and has alerted the more moderate wings in Congress and the American people, at least somewhat. He seems to lack the votes to do what he’s trying to do, at least for now, and yet he’s going ahead. Instead of ingratiating himself with the opposition and cajoling them to come onboard, he’s been insulting and alienating them. And his lies are very obvious about the economy, so even more people have come to distrust him. Plus, he’s appointed people (Gibbs, Axelrod, Emanuel) who alienate the public and even to a certain degree the press by their personalities.
All of this is what I mean by “incompetent.” I hope his incompetence continues, because it’s the only thing that might save us.
MaryM: I have no idea what you’re talking about. It was a very real Lamaze class, taught at a hospital by a certified Lamaze instructor. I went for many weeks in the last months of my pregnancy. We did more than I’ve described in this post, of course, but all of it was relatively worthless.
rickl Says:
August 30th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
I’m still unimpressed with those who are arguing that Obama is incompetent, or that he even cares about opinion polls and elections. I’m with Wolla Dalbo and TmjUtah here.
Ok, it’s possible that the three of you may be right.
But, my gut feeling is that we have a “WYSIWYG” president (Programmers from pre-Windows days will recognize that as “What You See Is What You Get”.); so far in over his head that he no longer even knows which way is up.
I feel that “Occam’s Razor” almost demands that interpretation.
–
huxley:
I see you played tournament chess. Good for you! I tried that for a little while in my teenage years, with so-so results. Eventually I realized that my talent wasn’t equal to my ambition, so I got burned out and gave it up.
Even though I don’t play much nowadays, it’s still a great game and I love it. Today I mostly play against my computer. The Mac OSX operating system comes with a chess program. I don’t know what level it plays at, but it’s a damn sight higher than my level. That thing is brutal. 😉
I’ve never played 3-D chess, and I suspect that the person quoted hasn’t either. It probably just sounded like a good phrase and feeds into the meme that Obama is some kind of genius who is operating at a much higher level than the rest of us ignorant proles.
I don’t take as radical a stance as Wollo D and others on Obama, nor am I concerned with prescriptions about how I should think about him or how I should write.
I haven’t seen that Wollo D et al have made their case about Obama. They cannot read minds and they don’t sit in on insider meetings with O. and his top advisers. They have access to same basic information the rest of us have and it’s not a lot to go on.
I have faith in our people and our institutions that we will defeat Obama, whatever his designs are.
neo-neocon Says:
August 30th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
OK, I see what you’re saying. I sure hope you’re right.
I guess we’ll learn more when Congress reconvenes and we see whether or not they will try to ram through the socialized medicine bill.
huxley: Re Obama, it will be far better for the opposition to be too early rather than too late.
We must act on the signals we have before us. There will be no chance at convicting him when we are beyond a reasonable doubt.
“I haven’t seen that Wollo D et al have made their case about Obama. They cannot read minds and they don’t sit in on insider meetings with O. and his top advisers. They have access to same basic information the rest of us have and it’s not a lot to go on.”
You can still find Rev. Wright’s greatest hits out there on the internet. It’s not nearly as easy as it was before the campaign, but there are still hours of “Goddamn America” for those interested in two decades of background.
Mr. Obama’s ghost-written political biographies are masterpieces of branding. They were intended to prepare the willing to overlook the obvious, and they succeeded beyond Obama’s handlers’ wildest dreams. I think the biggest surprise for the Obama camp was the total media immunization granted so early in the game.
I don’t imply conspiracy further than noting that Obama has never been a leader. He’s been a player inside a rigged system inside a small but lucrative political fiefdom… but he’s never been a standard bearer. As a player he’s attracted a broad swathe of hangers-on representing both the ideologues as well as the opportunists. Around this starry eyed campus communist there are those that straddle the hack/philoshoper line – Emmanuel and Axelrod, for instance – and then there is the entire plantation culture of entrenched Democrat incumbent royalty bent on maintaining the endless populist brouhaha that they created to enrich themselves. But the real, damning historical catastrophe is that we see this administration arrive in power at a time when forty years of dedicated social engineering aimed at divorcing the individual from responsibility for his own citizenship has undeniably neared success.
Godwin alert: Hitler explained in book form exactly what he was about in 1925… and the world waited for more data – in the interest of being fair- right up until September, 1939.
Read Obama’s books. Read the writings and lectures of the czars. Read the real CV’s of the administration and you’ll find a lot more Weathermen than Minutemen.
The Democrat legislative majority are hacks and drones. The administration is staffed by communists, Chavistas, Castro admirers, virulent racists, and social engineers that Pol Pot would readily understand. The free press is free for now… as long as they stick to the narrative.
A man is the product of his life’s journey. There is NO possibility that Mr. Obama arrived in the White House with a warm and fuzzy for the U.S. Constitution. Fortunately for him, Rules for Radicals explicitly instructs that an oath means nothing unless to aid his higher aim of revolution.
RTFM – Das Kapital, Rules for Radicals, Dreams…
2010 is our best chance to lessen the impact of the Obama agenda.
If we don’t break Washington’s culture of entitlement and corruption via the ballot in 2010 we won’t get much of a chance later.
Health care, TARP, and everything else is misdirection as Americorps, ACORN, and the administration prepare to completely subvert the election process via manipulation of the census, amnesty, and fraud.
Obama’s made history. At last a dog caught the car.
Now what?
Neo-neocon, you have a wonderful way of getting your point across. You never fail to amaze me with your writing.
“True, that is essential for tournament play, and is generally a decisive advantage over those who play informally and do not know the openings. But I would hardly say that chess is not a game of logic and forethought.”
I say that because Big Blue was *not* a machine that tried to “think” – it was simply a machine that had nearly every possible move mapped. At each stage it did a tree traversal and found the path the highest percentage chance of winning. Really really really simple and very very very effective. You can *not* do that in checkers, chess is deceptive in that the rules are highly complex.
“If your opponent deviates from the standard opening lines you had better be able to apply the principles and do the calculations properly. And in any event the opening is followed by the middle game and endgame which are entirely principles and calculations.”
See Big Blue. Ever watch one of those Grandmaster play 30 people at a time? Really think they are not simply doing the same thing? If you memorize enough then there really isn’t much an opponent can do, there are not really that many combination out there (even if you include *all* possible ones) and most fall into some category that matters more than the very specifics.
Again, this is ultimately how a computer deals with playing chess and why it generally can beat so many people – not logic and forethought.
I approached the game from a CS point of view because I found it interesting that the computer could play so well. I thought there would be some neat AI in there – nope, just noting that this specific choice has 3045 failures and this one has 6512 successes so take the latter. How well it played depended entirely on how much of the space it had mapped and how long you let it explore branches. “opening”, “mid”, and “end” are basically there because we can not have that level of perfect recall and eventually have to rely on intuition, its not hard to find books by grandmaster talking about how far into mid game and sometimes end they know gambits – that is why they are ranked that high.
“Furthermore, in tournament chess high rated players lose to players with ratings several hundred points lower with surprising frequency, though overall the high rated players will win more often and that’s why they are highly rated.”
While several hundred points isn’t something to sneeze at, its also not that much. Top ranked checkers players (and, like chess, there are some out there) will occasionally loose to unranked because the game is MUCH more susceptible to simply a mistake in logic. It’s also why computers tend to be comparatively poor at playing checkers – it takes an adaptive learning system that is fairly difficult to write to regularly beat a skilled player. There actually *is* AI underneath it.
And then, of course, we have the whole game of Go if you *really* want something that can not be memorized and requires logic and foresight. It is amusing that in general the simpler the rules the more logic the games tend, more complex ones tend to limit the space of possible games fairly small even though they are harder to learn.
Of course you have to be smart *and* have a great deal of intuition to play 3d Chess, after all how else did Kirk beat Spock so many times?
Promises always beat facts for the gullible. Obama’s campaign was about being a fiscal conservative (“we will go through the budget line by line”, and “we will reduce Bush’s sky-high deficits”). He promised a world in increasing wages and prosperity financed by taking a bit more from the rich.
Shannon Love at Chicago Boyz:
==========
The left doesn’t have a developed system of thought regarding the economy. They can’t actually explain why the real world political process will make better decisions than the free-market. Instead, they point to any reversals in the real economy, regardless of cause, and assert that in their imaginations leftist politicians could have done better.”
“Leftists create elaborate fantasies. Then everyone else must argue for reality against the fantasies. The real-world system always comes out worse.
==========
Politicians show time and again that they can win elections by promising anything. Unfortunately, the public continues to believe that is is only this politician who is fooling them. The next one will deliver on his promises.
My Fantasy Beats Your Reality
rickl: Computer chess has come so far that you can buy a program for $60 (Fritz) that will run on a current PC and can play at the world champion level.
You can download programs for free that will usually beat masters in tournament conditions and are even more lethal at speed chess.
It takes about five to ten years of serious sustained effort for a very talented player to reach master. Most tournament players top out well below expert. Experienced tournament players can dispatch informal players just about every time.
Supposing it is even more evil, more planned out, than we imagine. Suppose it’s not paranoia, but intuition that some are believing those very things. The world nations do seem to be lining up more and more. And it sure as hell isn’t in the form of democratic republics.
strcpy: I know how Deep Blue and other chess programs work.
I’m taking issue with your claim that “Chess is not really a game of logic and forethought, it is a game of memorizing moves and counter moves.”
I spent about eight years studying the game, playing in tournaments, and paying attention to chess in the larger sense. I disagree with much of what you say but this isn’t the place for that discussion.
It’s also why computers tend to be comparatively poor at playing checkers…
This is simply untrue. Computer programs were outplaying top checkers players long before chess players. At this point there is a checkers program so powerful that has been proven that it won’t ever lose. See Computer Checkers Program Is Invincible.
It is true that checkers programs that attempt to play by AI are poor, but that is also true of chess programs.
You can still find Rev. Wright’s greatest hits out there on the internet
TmjUtah: Yes, I am familiar with Rev. Wright and all that you mention. Nonetheless I have not reached the same conclusions that you have, or more accurately the conclusions I have reached are more tentative.
huxley, you do believe that Obama is a Leftist who is up to no good. You just don’t have enough evidence to conclude that he is part of a conspiracy out to wreck the country and bring about totalitarian Marxist rule.
What’s your idea about his next move? I insist we should always worry more about his next move than about the current one. I say this not because I think he has a master plan or is playing 3 dimensional chess or any such rot: instead, he and people like him have a general sense of where they want to go and they look for tactics that come to hand to get them there.
In the strategy world, this is known as “looking for loose bricks.” I think he is opportunistic and tactical, and so we need to spend our time thinking about where an opportunistic and tactical crowd is likely to go next. The purpose is the defeat them tactically and to take tactical methods out of their hands. At the same time, we should be continuing to look for and occupy strategic high ground with our allies and potential allies.
“I think he is opportunistic and tactical, and so we need to spend our time thinking about where an opportunistic and tactical crowd is likely to go next.”
Even ten years ago, people like Obama would be safely ensconced in academia with their buddies Churchill, Chomsky, and West, except that Obama wouldn’t ever appear outside of social circles or as a footnote, since he has never been interested in publishing contributions to dogma.
The inherent fault in a constitutional republic is that the design is basically defenseless against abandonment of civic virtue. Obama and his ilk haven’t won anything – they’ve occupied abandoned ground.
IF we had government run on the Constitutional limits, with the actual exercise of power limited to the enumerated duties of the government and no more… totalitarianism of the state would be an impossibility.
The state would not have the reach, nor the resources, to begin to be a threat. That is no longer the case, and has arguably not been the case since at least the Wilson administration.
huxley –
You and I are exercising freedom to disagree here.
Treasure the moment. It’s not going to last.
TmjUtah, I don’t think we should walk around saying “Woe is me.” Rasmussen Reports says 52% disapprove of Obama. He stands at -10 today, Strongly Approve minus Strongly disapprove. So people out there are paying attention. Michael Barone says the basic asymmetry is that there are maybe 20% progressives among the 40% self-identifying as Democrats, while there are significantly more people who self-identify as “conservative” than who self-identify as “Republican.” So there are more Democrats than progressives and more conservatives than Republicans.
A fair number of independents (who are disproportionately conservative on national security), and some Republicans, got fooled for a few weeks last fall amid a prefect storm of multiple hysterias. They are coming to their senses. I think the Democrats are going to get creamed in the midterm elections. 57% say today that the entire Congress should be turned out.
Oblio: Obama’s next move will tell us much. Whatever his larger plans may be, he is opportunistic and tactical.
He may come out swinging on health care, twist arms, put a bit of stick about, push for a reconciliation vote, and win. Then he and the Dem congress will really face the music.
Or he may take a breath, drop the public option, and get something sweet and dangerous passed a la Krauthammer.
But neither way will really tell us how radical he is. We may never know. I believe Obama will be stopped short of his goals, however radical they are.
TmjUtah: I find that kind of self-certainty offputting and unpersuasive.
Oblio: @ 8:12. Yes!
In just seven months 42% of likely voters strongly disapprove of Obama. That’s down from 16% after he became president.
Even if it’s his heart desire, Obama can’t wreck the country and turn it down into a totalitarian leftist playground for the likes of Bill Ayers & Co. with those kind of numbers.
It’s a little late to disapprove of the man responsible for upholding the Constitution after giving him the power to destroy it.
His next move? Simple. He’s not coming out in a red shirt and announcing a revolution.
He’ll just convene another quiet west wing meeting with the czars who will write more bland regulations adding cost to business, restrict development, and penalize industry and individual asimption of risk.
Hell, this strategy is designed to give the media the opportunity to console and shield from blame the architect of the coming catstrophe. It will be blame Boosh, blame capitalism, blame anyone but the man who tripled the federal deficit while killing any vestige of free markets.
It isn’t checkers or chess. It’s Bowery shoulder striking right out of a bad B movie.
Take your time figuring it out. We’ve got months of waiting and hand wringing over the fate of socialized health care. The rest of the stimulus money nobody seems to hear about is heading out to buy precincts, counties, and entire cities.
Take your time. Great ambitions depend on just that happening.
2010. Last call.
the first rule for dealing drugs is don’t do your own shit.in politics it is don’t believe your own propaganda.to me all this BS about O is like fingernails on a chalk board.It is obvious that O is a mediocrity, genius is a retroactive term, first you do something brilliant that nobody saw coming(if you could see it as brilliant before it happened you’d be a genius too) then you get labeled a genius.It would appear that the result of himself’s first actions will be to drive the US (and the rest of the free world) off a cliff. Hope’n’change.
If Obama shows how far he would like to go, he’s done, and he taking the party down with him. I thought he would back away on health as Krauthammer suggests, but the CIA business suggests he’s doubling down. Unless that’s a feint to keep the Left mollified and to change the subject while he disengages.
My point is, we need to make the Democrats pay on the CIA enhanced interrogations investigation. We need to take that one on frontally. Cheney is going after Obama, that the right move for him. The rest of us should focus on Holder.
TmjUtah, I hope you are walking the precincts for the local Republican candidates. (Of course, if you are in Utah, you are pretty safe already.)
Obonga does not, repeat not, care that a majority of polled Americans disapproves of him. What’re they gonna do about it? Vote him out? Look at his first 6 months and understand how much irreversible damage the O and his running dogs can do in 4 years.
The anti-Chavez Venezuelans opposed him with vigor, within the laws. Did ’em a lot of good, No?
We are seeing our future unfold before our own eyes. We are not in the stands or on the sidelines, watching the course of a curious and malicious game. We are on the field, the refs (media) have been bought off, and we stand to lose, big time. Like the pre-Columbian Mayan ballcourt teams–the defeated team was killed in toto after each game.
To extend & modify your analogy…I don’t think the focus of the Obama-ites was on the pregnancy, but on an earlier stage. This is like a 19th century British novel in which the male protagonist wants to seduce the heroine into marrying him **even though he doesn’t like her very much**. Why does he want her? (a)she’s considered very desirable, and winning her will be very prestigious (b)she comes with a huge dowry, and (c)one she marries him, he will have total control over her, and can make her behave as he wants her to.
Oblio –
I was a state delegate for two years, and was proud to participate.
We got rid of Cannon two years too late. Bennett is a Steele Republican, always was. Uncle Orrin does not much harm, but he’s way, way past his sell by date.
The Utah State Republican Party is more disconnected from the conservative movement than is the national party. Jason Chavetz hosted a town meeting here in Provo last week and all but compared his twenty point win against Cannon to Palin’s victories in Alaska – and he’s right about that.
What we are against dwarfs the parties; in truth, neither national party can make any pretense for any purpose for existing beyond padding its own turf. They are not parts of any solution.
Obama has already shown that he can make ruthless use the rules of the game to win. The primary example being his first attempt at public office, in which he used people he taught to register voters to go into the Chicago voter registration records and disqualify so many voters that all of his Democratic primary opponent’s candidacies were tossed out, and Obama won by default.
For the upcoming 2010 and 2012 elections the key, it seems to me, will be the combined effects of Obama’s control of the Census, fraudulent voter registration and turn out efforts, and the rulings in close/disputed elections by the various Secretaries of State, who will play a decisive role in determining who won various close elections in 2010 and 2012.
It has already been remarked by some observers that the Democrats placed special emphasis on electing friendly Secretaries of State in as many of the 50 states as possible; we see an example of how useful this can be in the contested Senate election in Minnesota.
So far, Obama has nominated an expert in and advocate of “sampling” to be the head of Census, in which, it is argued, if would only be fair if “uncounted” people–citizens or not–are to be counted using sampling procedures; an advantage, no doubt, to big East and West Coast cities where Obama support is strong that will increase Democratic representation and votes in Congress and diminish that of Republicans. Obama has also managed to get some $5 to $8 billion in public funding–with the help of some Republicans, it might be added–voted into public law for ACORN, and vastly expanded “community service” organizations like Americorps; that will surely allow Democrats to increase their fraudulent voter registration efforts. And Democrats have seen to it that many Secretaries of State are Democratic officials.
What more can be asked for to increase the number of Democratic districts represented in Congress and Democratic voting power, to rig the upcoming elections, and to have state election officials rule in the Democrat’s favor in any disputed–and I am sure there will be a bumper crop–elections, to insure that Democrats continue to keep their control of Congress, and that Obama will have a second term, no matter how fraudulent, and no matter how overwhelming the opposition and votes against them from citizens might be.
rickl–I agree that Obama may just be a puppet.
The fact is that, with so much of his background a blank, a fiction, or a mystery, so many dots unconnected–that the never to be forgiven MSM has refused to even look at or investigate, or has actively covered up–we cannot really be sure who may really be “running him.”
It seems self evident that a lot of our many enemies’ interests–Muslims, Communists, Black Nationalists, and opportunists like George Soros, in seeing the U.S. weakened, destroyed or overtaken by a “revolution” coincide here:
Muslims-who see “unbelievers,” the West and particularly the U.S. as the chief obstacles to their conquest of the world for Allah and Islam–would certainly like to see the U.S. weakened or gone, and Obama has multiple and strong Muslim connections: his biological father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., was a Muslim (and Socialist), his mother’s second husband Lolo Soetoro was also a Muslim, in fact virtually all of Obama’s paternal family–from the predominantly Muslim Luo tribe in Kenya–are Muslims (although, during the campaign, Obama’s campaign website (here http://www.barackobama.com/factcheck/2007/11/12/obama_has_never_been_a_muslim_1.php) and some MSM outlets ( see, for instance Obama’s grandmother Sarah’s quote in the New York Times of 2007 that “I am a strong believer of the Islamic faith,” http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/us/politics/30obama.html?ex=1335585600&en=f901477fd875c685&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all)
but by 2008-deep in the campaign–the USA Today story saying that she was a “Christian” (http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-03-05-obama-kin_N.htm) tried to cover her Muslim faith up, the fact is that she was also quoted elsewhere as saying that she was a “strong Muslim,” and was reported to be going on the required trip to Mecca–the Hajj, that is one of the Five Pillars of Islam (see http://www.arabianbusiness.com/553813-hydar-chief-accompany-obamas-grandmother-on-haj- and http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=96940)
and some other family members, like his half brother Obongo, are very militant Muslims (Obongo wants Obama to “liberate himself from the poisoning influences of European culture.” (see http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c0e_1239753974).
cont’d
From roughly ages 6 to 10 Obama was educated as a Muslim (see http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/pipes_obama_muslim/2008/10/09/138898.html)
–Obama, now named Barry Soetoro, was a member of an Indonesian Muslim family, took obligatory Muslim religious classes in school and, according to fellow students, was serious enough about Islam to take extra Qur’anic recitation classes (mengaji), and visit the Mosque with his stepfather (see http://www.theobamafile.com/ObamaEducation.htm)
–(all things denied or minimized, of course, until Obama pulled out the Muslim card again in his deep bow and scrape to Saudi Arabian King Abdullah, and in Obama’s speech to the Muslim world from Cairo). Let us not forget that Obama’s minister, “spiritual mentor,’ “political advisor” and “close personal friend” for 20 years (until videos of Wright’s sermons surfaced, and all these titles became “inoperative”), the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was formerly a Muslim. Then, there is the fact that in 1981, between his time at Occidental college and the time he started to attend Columbia, Obama was somehow able to travel to Pakistan and was admitted to Pakistan at a time when the militant Muslim regime in charge then was not admitting westerners into that country. Obama wrote that his chosen roommates at Columbia were both Muslims. In addition, we might note stories that a militant black nationalist turned Muslim, Khalid Al-Mansour, and a close financial advisor to Saudi Arabian billionaire Sheik Talal bin Alwaleed (see http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022571.php and also http://www.newsmax.com/timmerman/obama_sutton_saudi/2008/09/03/127490.html)
was soliciting letters of recommendation and tuition funds for Obama’s attendance at Harvard Law and, finally, there is Obama’s admitted friendships with Edward Said and “ex-PLO Operative” Rashid Khalidi–neither friends of the West. Finally, there was Obama’s little reported trip to Kenya while he was a sitting U.S. Senator, to spend several days campaigning for his fellow Luo tribesman and “cousin” Marxist and Muslim Raila Odinga, called by some “the Butcher of Kenya,” for the violent acts of the mobs of his machete wielding supporters, a Raila Odinga who, proof turned up, signed an agreement to impose Islam on majority Christian Kenya in return for Muslim leaders delivering the vote of Kenya’s Muslim minority (http://newsbusters.org/blogs/kerry-picket/2008/10/12/when-will-msm-report-obamas-support-kenyan-tyrant-raila-odinga) and whose angry followers, many Muslims, killed, attacked with machetes and burnt out quite a few Kenyans, mostly Christians, after Odinga lost his bid for President. News reports say that, so interested was Obama in Odinga’s campagn, that he even detailed a staff member to keep track of events in Raila Odinga’s campaign after Obama returned to the U.S. (http://www.traditionalvalues.org/modules.php?sid=3436).
cont’d
Why don’t we start with Obama’s “free thinking” mother, Stanley, and Obama’s dissatisfied, unsuccessful grandfather–a pot smoking, frequenter of low down bars and “dreamer,” who thought he had been given a raw deal, who from Obamas own writings and other things that have been written, appear to definitely have been on the Left–how far Left we are never told.
Then we have the far, hard Left/Communists who would also dearly love the U.S. to fail. First, comes Obama’s beloved “mentor” from perhaps age 10 to 17, “angry black man,” apparently an “active” member of the Communist Party (with quite a thick FBI and HUAC file and someone who “took the fifth” before a Senate investigating Committee), newspaperman, and self-admitted “pervert,” Frank Marshall Davis (see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/2601914/Frank-Marshall-Davis-alleged-Communist-was-early-influence-on-Barack-Obama.html here http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/2086366/the-long-march-to-the-white-house.thtml and, especially, see here http://www.usasurvival.org/marshall.fbi.files.html).
Then, come Communists (Bill coyly says with a small “c”), Weathermen leaders and unrepentant urban terrorists Bill Ayers (Weatherman co-founder and son of the rich and immensely powerful “Godfather of Chicago politics,” Tom Ayers, Chairman of Con Edison) and his wife Bernadine Dohrn, who launched Obama’s political career in Chicago at a dinner at their house. Ayers, some reports say with help from Obama’s future wife, Lawyer Michelle Robinson, choose Obama to be the Director the Annenberg Challenge in Chicago (http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obama-ayers-and-the-annenberg-challenge-cover-up/ and http://theindependentview.com/?tag=chicago-annenberg-challenge) on which Ayers and Obama worked together on a daily basis for some 4 years, carefully directing $100 million dollars or more (some sources say $200 million or more) to far left ideological and black identity politics based organizations whose efforts–all agreed afterward–totally failed to improve Chicago’s abysmal schools in any way; when asked during the campaign about any “executive experience” he had, Obama never mentioned this long lasting and clearly relevant experience, preferring, instead, to say that his running his campaign was his relevant “executive experience.”
cont’d– final part
It should also not be forgotten that the racist and profoundly anti-white “Black Liberation Theology” (see quotes about the “white devils” by the Rev. James Cone, creator of this theology here http://www.qando.net/details.aspx?entry=8159) preached at the Rev. Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC) was Marxist based, that Frank Marshall Davis, Obama’s beloved mentor of his teen age years, and that Khalid Al-Mansour who “mentored Huey Newton and the Black Panthers,” were no friends of whites.
Then, we come to billionaire George Soros, whose finger seems to be in every leftist pie, would dearly love to see America weakened or fail, and make billions more in the process. Most of the far left groups supporting Obama, writing the legislation he is pushing, and supplying many of the members of his administration are, in one way or another, ultimately connected to Soros’ money.
So take your pick any, a combination, or all.
Wolla Dalbo, wow, super compilation of some of the most important facts, thank-you for the effort. The biggest traitors in this country now are the MSM who have abdicated their fiduciary responsibility, knowingly glossing over and ignoring the reality, as you have superbly presented in your last several posts. I’m copying your posts for future reference…
Obonga does not, repeat not, care that a majority of polled Americans disapproves of him. What’re they gonna do about it?
But he has to care in the pragmatic sense.
If his poll numbers remained way up, the Blue Dogs and some Republicans would have been reluctant to cross him, then cap’n’trade and Obamacare would likely have passed before the August recess like the big stimulus bill passed at the beginning of his term.
Unless one believes that Obama is going stage a Seven Days In May sort of coup and successfully declare himself El President Por Vida, he has to work with Congress to get things done. Obama may not care what the American people thing, but Congress does, esp those running next year.
This gets to neo’s charge of incompetence. Obama has handled his big bills and many other details in a slapdash, insensitive way that alarms large swathes of voters, thus endangers Obama’s agenda, and it wasn’t rocket science to see these problems coming.
Obama and his people are blinded by their ideology and by the cult of personality around Obama. This blindess is a big weakness.
“I spent about eight years studying the game, playing in tournaments, and paying attention to chess in the larger sense. I disagree with much of what you say but this isn’t the place for that discussion.”
Why not? At this point we have all said the same thing over and over, not really anything to do but either argue the same things or go off topic.
*shrug* I studied chess as an AI problem in the late 90’s early 2000’s whilst at the university. It really wasn’t an interesting problem at that point because it was simply a matter of when computing power and storage got high enough a 60 dollar program will beat anyone and the outcome against itself is fairly random. If, as you say, that it is now the case that a 60 dollar program beats pretty much anyone (and I’ll more than buy that) then I wouldn’t be surprised. Checkers was MUCH more interesting because it relied on more than simply some tree traversal algorithm.
The top levels of humans mostly play that way too. I do agree that the medium and low level players use a great deal of logic and such, they do not have the crutch of memorization. However, the game in and of itself is fairly limited. So I do not know that I’m totally disagreeing with you as you are playing against another person, not a computer.
“This is simply untrue. Computer programs were outplaying top checkers players long before chess players. At this point there is a checkers program so powerful that has been proven that it won’t ever lose. See Computer Checkers Program Is Invincible.”
I’m aware of those and that is a different issue. Sadly humans are actually fairly predictable and do not use a great deal of the space that checkers have available (same thing with Go, which no matter how you look at it is the hardest game of the three). This is, again, a computer vs a human issue not an inherent value of the game.
Lets put it this way – are you familiar with the Halting Problem? It is basically that we can construct certain claims to be such that we show they create a pradox and are, thusly, wrong. The halting Problem is semi-complex (though most people with even a moderate grasp of logic can follow it, deriving it is difficult), but in this case not so much.
Their “proofs” as such, didn’t go over as big as they thought they would for this and other problems. They were interesting ans useful, but not as far reaching as they wanted.
For instance what happens when to “unbeatable” computers compete? Does the universe end? Nope, turns out that whilst that study is useful against human players it is not so much against the game mechanics itself. Computers are still terribly bad about playing checkers and unless they take advantage of certain consistencies human have they do poorly. Chess, not so much – they play well and can fairly reliably predict who will win, checkers went back to fairly random when the the irresistible force met another one.
“It is true that checkers programs that attempt to play by AI are poor, but that is also true of chess programs.”
True, but then the chess programs are even worse as the game itself is not one of logic and foresight.
strcpy: Yes, I know about the Halting Problem and lots of other stuff too, but this ain’t the place.
Back to Obama — after a long string of Sorry cards, most of which he dealt himself, Obama needs a win right now.
It’s not going to come externally. The numbers on the economy remain mostly poor to terrible. There is no foreign policy news on the horizon that Obama will want credit for.
He and his team will have to make that win, but what could it be? Holder’s investigation of the CIA is a distraction that won’t go anywhere and may still boomerang on them. Obama can’t give any more inspirational speeches — everyone but the choir is tired of them and at this point his speeches expose his hollowness. Attacking voters was a bad idea in the first place. There aren’t many targets — Limbaugh, Palin etc — left to personalize and attack. The race card has been overplayed and blew up on him super bad last time.
I think he’ll do something sneaky with healthcare, trying to look bipartisan and statesman-like, and try to get it passed that way. We need to be on our toes.
I find much of what is being said here pretty much fascinating, as usual. One can follow links and piece situations together until blue in the face.
The fact remains too many Americans have guns. Until they do something about that, they cannot be 100% successful. It is my belief, at the end of the day, that it really is that simple. I am reminded of what Lenin said about ballot and bullets.
And if the ca-ca hits the fan, Americans with guns will head for the mayors’ offices, the state capitols, and then D.C. You know, start where you are, and then spread out. That, folks, is what THEY are afraid of.
Not that I am fond of taxes, but if things were in proper perspective, wouldn’t the percentages of our taxes be reversed? Most going local, then state, then federal? Shouldn’t local and state allocate money to federal, based on what our local representatives feel our federal government needs? The federal government is a monster that will not obey. We need to starve it. Right now, it’s starving us.
long life obama!
TmjUtah, it’s frustrating when the party leaders go wobbly. When need some with a strong enough sense of their own identity that they won’t count on Liberals across the aisle and in the media liking them to justify themselves. We need some leaders like the Duke of Wellington, who answered his press critics by saying “Publish and Be Damned.”
Cheney is doing that right now, and the pigeons are scattering. We should all have his back.
Nice summary, Wallo Dalbo. It suggests we should understand Decolonialism as Obama’s mater narrative. That gives important insight into his mind and next steps.
That’s “master narrative,” of course.
I actually like the idea of a “mater narrative,” which of course would include all the loony leftist ism-ism Obama inherited from his mom. Yeah, it fits!
Left to his own devices, I imagine that reparations to blacks and other minorities would be part of Obama’s agenda.
huxley–in fact, if you look closely at the diagram that Republicans made of the bureaucratic and regulatory structure that would be created by the Health Care Reform package, you will see that there are two or three entities created by the bill which are directly concerned with affirmative action and doling out reparations to blacks.
With regard to medical schools, page 909, of the House bill states:
“In awarding grants or contracts under this section, the (HHS) secretary shall give preference to entities that have a demonstrated record of the following: . . . training individuals who are from underrepresented minority groups or disadvantaged backgrounds.”
Section 224, says the Secretary (of HHS) “shall design and implement the payment mechanisms and policies under this section in a manner that – (1) seeks to . . . reduce health disparities (including racial, ethnic and other disparities).”
This bureaucracy would, in effect, take over medical school education and hospital administration, and if your medical school got any government funds–and who doesn’t these days–you would be required to admit a certain percentage and graduate a certain percentage of blacks, similarly, if you were a hospital you would have to have a certain percentage of blacks on your staff and treat a certain percentage of minorities or face penalties.
Truly, these bills are the gift that keeps on giving.
This morning Obama slipped down a point on Rasmussen to yet another new low: 46%-53% (Approve-Disapprove).
Whatever else he may be, Obama is a politician. Precipitatively declining popularity is a new experience for him and one that he can’t like personally or politically.
He has to do something dramatic when his vacation is officially over next week.
Good spotting, WD!
Again, we are in a race for America: how fast can Obama get his agenda through before his own unpopularity dooms it? I think he is just one more, but clearly has one more, setback away from failure. So the end of the year will be interesting since nothing is now assured and everything is in play.
–Victor David Hanson
In my little summary above I forgot to mention that–just by coincidence I’m sure– another co-founder of the Weathermen, Jeff Jones (see http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=106653) , is now head of the New York chapter of the “Apollo Alliance” which, according to none other than Harry Reid, helped to write (read wrote) the stimulus package (http://www.foxnews.com/search-results/m/25516152/the-apollo-alliance.htm) and out of which came black nationalist and self-admitted “Communist” Van Jones, founder of the revolutionary STORM organization (Standing Together to Organize A Revolutionary Movement) (see http://spectator.org/blog/2009/08/29/van-jones-and-his-stormtrooper ); Jones is the Czar who is now in charge of directing money to “ “green jobs.”
My, how, in the world of Obama, things do come full circle.
I might add a reference to the “Bradley Effect”, named after the black mayor of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley some years ago.
The discrepancy between how he polled and election returns was described as those being polled didn’t want to seem like racists–if they were, or because any other difference with Bradley was cast as racism–so they lied about how they intended to vote, which was, for one reason or another, against him.
There are a number of zero’s supporters who may–I think I have to be cautious here–have come to doubt. But they can’t publicly admit it because the climbdown would be over the vile, vicious, vitriolic ways in which they treated McCain’s supporters.
I say there are some of zero’s supporters who, better late than never, can be affected by reality. Oh, hell, maybe there’s not that many.
But, anyway, of them, should there be any, we may be finding a version of the Bradley effect, where they continue to pretend to support the guy in order to avoid admitting they were not only wrong, but nastily wrong, while intending to vote against his party and his interests.
I suppose we could hold a convention of folks like that in a phone booth, but some is better than none.
br549
It’s hard to tell how much stock to put in on-line bluster–not very much at all would be safest–but there’s one reference I see from time to time.
I can’t recall the name, but it might be “Oath Keepers”. Something like that.
They are cops and ex-soldiers who remind each other that the oath included “…uphold, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same…..”
The reference is to the “…domestic…” description of some potential enemies.
As a general rule, they don’t like zero, his policies, his cronies, his tactics, or his origins. They think the Constitution may be being violated (more than usual).
As I say, there may be nothing to it but as I recall the Oath, there were no exceptions for the times when you get shot.
These are serious guys.
I at first thought that this might be a spoof from the Onion, but apparently this is real, and in full, flaming Elmer Gantry mode the Obama website ‘Organizing For America” is calling all those who oppose Obama health care reform legislation “the heirs of Osama Bin Laden” who are “on a bullet train to the Devil”(http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/ ), telling Obama supporters:
”Just remember: We Are The Super-Heroes Who Yes WE DID, and YES, WE SHALL commence administering Super-Hero Karate Chops, beginning now.”
Who wrote this drivel, some bible-thumping, pre-teen mutant ninja turtle freak?
Here is the direct link to this web site posting: (http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/healthcareorganizingevent/gpk4cj)
huxley Says:
“True, but then the chess programs are even worse as the game itself is not one of logic and foresight.”
I’d be interested in how you would sum up chess (if it is not logic and foresight, what is it?).
My bias being against chess since I can never win at it. 🙂 And in favor of go, as I can not recall ever loosing at it.
Thomass: That’s strcpy’s claim, not mine. I disagreed but didn’t want to pursue the discussion since it is off-topic.
huxley Says:
“I think he’ll do something sneaky with healthcare, trying to look bipartisan and statesman-like, and try to get it passed that way. We need to be on our toes.”
Yeah, if republicans had any brains they’d demand any new bill be:
1) Short
2) In plain English.
No more 1000+ page bills in impenetrable gobbly gook.
I read California laws now and then on line and they’re easy reading…. there is no reason laws can not be easy to understand.
Here’s something depressing. I’ve been talking how Obama needs a win. Mary O’Grady at WSJ agrees then suggests that Team Obama will find that win in Honduras:
This administration needs a win. Or more accurately, it can’t bear another loss right now. Most especially it can’t afford to be defeated by the government of a puny Central American country that doesn’t seem to know its place in the world and dares to defy the imperial orders of Uncle Sam.
I’m referring, of course, to Honduras,
Obama vs. Honduran Democracy
Huxley,
it could turn into another loss (ah la healthcare ‘reform’)… once word got out of what happened down there (not really a coup, but probably the prevention of one by a communist)… it could go very badly for Obama…
So much for looking to history…
Thomass: You’ve got a point. Even if the US and OAS manage to force Zelaya on Honduras, few Americans this side of Bill Ayers are going to celebrate. Assuming Americans notice — it’s not a big ticket item on the front page.
However, if the Hondurans manage to hold out, it’s another checkmarked failure for the Obama administration, despite Obama’s savant-like 3-D chess abilities.
Obama’s hard leftiness aside, a lot of people on his side are wondering at his effectiveness, as well they should.
huxley Says:
“Thomass: You’ve got a point. Even if the US and OAS manage to force Zelaya on Honduras, few Americans this side of Bill Ayers are going to celebrate. Assuming Americans notice”
The real pain of the tea party movement to the left will not be protests; it will be the forming of new communication networks of people conscious of their opposition to the left’s program… they in turn can work on getting the message out beyond their group/s to moderates.
It could be a conservative version of moveon before long.
Obama & Co. are trying to Blitz us, hit us with so many new threats from all sides that we will be confused, and unable to pick out those threats that are major from those that are not, those that need immediate attention from those that do not.
From my perspective, I think the next items we should be concerned about are, first, attempts by the FCC’s new far Left Chavezista “diversity czar” Mark Lloyd (see http://www.examiner.com/x-3704-Columbia-Conservative-Examiner~y2009m8d27-FCC-diversity-czar-proves-Obama-govt-has-declared-war-on-America and here http://www.rightpundits.com/?p=4608) to shut down dissenting media on the Right via his newly proposed 100% annual tax on private broadcasters. And, second, Senator Rockefeller’s revised bill, S. 773, to give the White House the ability to shut down portions of the Internet at will in an “emergency” (see http://blogs.computerworld.com/14627/obamas_emergency_powers_over_internet_cybersecurity_bill_s_773).
The extra-Constitutional Czars are a particularly insidious development, since by their appointments–by the way, unchallenged in any effective or full-throated way that I am aware of by anybody in authority–no lawsuits–no hearings, no letters to the WH demanding answers–Obama has set up his own “shadow government,” unvetted by Congress, immune so far from Congressional scrutiny or oversight–as if anyone in the Democratic majority would dare to call them to accounts or allow Republicans to do so–and accountable to no one but Obama. News that Czars, like the new FCC diversity Czar, want to act through regulation rather than law makes it harder, I believe, for Congress to challenge their actions.
Amidst all these threatening developments, we might also reflect on Glenn Beck’s notion that all of the high visibility threats we see are just showy, glittery “distractions,” designed to fix our attention on them, and away from Obama’s other hand, which is busy performing the real tasks of his totalitarian revolution, out of easy visibility.
Your point about not being prepared for the 18 to 20 years after childbirth was well taken. I would add that the first two years of a childs life are CRUCIAL. If the infant isn’t nurtured properly for those first two years he/she could face a lifetime of low self-esteem and an inability to handle stress. I’ve just now made this discovery about myself. Read Sue Gerhardt’s ‘Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby’s Brain’ for more info on this important subject.
I think he’ll do something sneaky with healthcare, trying to look bipartisan and statesman-like, and try to get it passed that way. We need to be on our toes.
Yes, any passed bill will be a victory for Obama.
It will allow the MSM to have a victory to spin in Obama’s direction: “statesmanlike,” “bipartisan,” “compromiser,” “practical decision-maker,” etc.
Such a bill would be a framework on which to incrementally over time to add provisions such as death counseling(or “end of life” counseling if you prefer), paying doctors to take certain treatment strategies, a “public option” designed to drain customers away from private insurance, government boards and panels to decide who receives treatment, and what types of treatment they may receive, government-dictated rationing and many other unwise provisions they may be able to cook up in their socialist minds.
The Republicans should hold out for tort reform. That, in itself, could prevent any bill from being passed — considering how much weight trial lawyers carry among the Democrats.
The Republicans should loudly and publicly offer to compromise on insurance reform, but only benign reforms such as allowing insurance commerce across state borders, standardization of insurance administrative forms and terminology, and ending frivolous insurance policy recisions and frivolous pre-existing condition insurance rulings.
The best thing for healthcare in this country at this time would probably be no legislation at all. Some sane healthcare reform might be possible under a Republican-controlled Congress but as long as Obama is in office and Congress is controlled by the Democrats any reforms are almost certain to contain poison pills.
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