Does it really matter if Obama didn’t write Dreams?
Commenter “Parker” asks a question I often see:
Does it matter who wrote Obama’s books? Even if Obama was not the author and it could be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt would the MSM care? Would the MSM cover such a story? Would the legions of Obama worshippers care? Its Obama’s association with people like Ayers, Dohrn, Wright, Pfleger, etc. that matters because that is what formed his socialist ideology and fuels his narcissistic personality. Ayers, etc. (and the MSM) are what psychologists term ”˜enablers’.
…In the end I don’t care who wrote Obama’s books, I want him out of the oval office come January 20, 2012.
So, would people care? My answer is that it depends on how strong and incontrovertible the proof is, and who the people are.
Anything less than a smoking gun would, just as Parker says, convince no one who is not already convinced that Obama is a poseur and an incompetent anyway, and therefore does not matter. But if extraordinarily strong evidence were to surface, it would cast waves of doubt through at least some people, the more naive ones who had truly believed in him as an intelligent and righteous man. Some of these people still exist, and some of them are independent swing voters, and so they matter quite a bit.
Trust is supported by a foundation that can come down all at once, like the proverbial house of cards. And although other political figures have certainly been shown to have had their books gostwritten—some have been up-front about this fact, while some have hidden it—no previous political figure’s ghostwritten book (at least to my knowledge) has had two characteristics that would be true of Obama’s: (a) the book is not incidental to their reputation, but instead is an important part of the evidence for their qualification for office; and (b) the ghostwriter is both an avowed terrorist and a person the politician has claimed to barely know.
In Obama’s case, each thing matters (at least, theoretically) more than usual, due to the suspicions already floating around that he is not all that qualified or experienced, and that he “palled around” with terrorists such as Ayers. He already has spent so much time denying those things that proof of them would be likely to hit quite a few people and cause a shockwave.
Once that sort of doubt is introduced about who Obama really is, and once his ability to lie with a straight face is fully perceived, there comes an almost inevitable speculation on just how many people were covering up for Obama and who these helpers and groomers might have been. If what was heretofore seen as a fringe element on the right (we could call them the “bookers” rather than the “birthers”) were to be proven correct, it opens the door to all sorts of other doubts about the information coming from the left and the MSM, and can cause a cascade of change.
How many people would actually have such an experience? I don’t know. I’ve written a great deal about the process of political change, and it’s my contention that only some people are capable of really taking in the information that would allow them to acknowledge they’ve been duped and/or mistaken, and to accept the need to revise their thinking. But real proof that Ayers wrote Dreams would be exactly the sort of catalyst that could spark such change in what I believe would be a significant number of people.
[NOTE: Although I’ve speculated here on “what if,” I don’t think definitive proof of this sort will ever be forthcoming.]
“Some of these people still exist, and some of them are independent swing voters, and so they matter quite a bit.”
Two classes here: white soccermom types who want the world to be nice and femimen who want the same. Turning either of these classes against the Big O of their lives will be well nigh impossible.
Imagine a world where stupidity was painful.
What a wonderful world that would be. Truly wonderful.
Back when Palin was being slandered on the attempted Gifford murder, Sergey wrote: Inability to understand metaphors is a clinical test for retarded development or utmost stupidity. Usually means that IQ is below 50. I can not believe that this is the case with media pundits, so they must just pretend that they do not understand what “death panels” or “blood libel” actually are metaphores in Palin’s speach.
So it doesn’t matter to media pundits whether or not Obama wrote “Dreams.” But who cares about them. What about the masses?
Another Sergey observation: “We are now in uncharted waters, nobody can predict how it will play out. But some Rubicon was crossed, that’s for sure. The state of mass consciousness sounds schizophrenic now, not only polarized, but disorganized and confused, common meaning of words is lost, and with it ability of opponents understand each other. Many ideological conflicts grow unresolved for decades, and now all of them piled up and aggravate each other. A decisive battle is ahead, its outcome unknown.”
I would suggest that it is very important for all those who are “disorganized and confused” to know facts. Indeed, the very purpose of Obama’s birther controversy may be to demand the acceptance of the confusion that goes with him. The lack of certainty aids Obama. Do not forget this. He is a murderer already. Consider his extreme stance on partial birth abortion. If we accept his lies, we will be forced to accept his murders.
Obama’s biographer wrote it and I believe his source was Michelle Obama.
I don’t believe, absent some remarkable unifying and animating force–say religion, or very strong ideology, or a great deal of fear–(see for example the Communist Party) that a large conspiracy can effectively remain working and undetected for decades. What I find truly remarkable is that in the case of Obama’s obscured and fabricated background–that presumably required the work and cooperation and, then, the subsequent silence of a lot of different people for it to succeed–there has been no real “leakage.”
Apparently Obama & Co. started airbrushing, cleaning up, and fabricating his background and back trail quite some time ago; yes, records have been kept from public view–but they must have been seen by quite a few people along the way, and people who one would suppose would have come into daily contact with Obama have not come forward except in a very few obviously scripted instances; no revelations in sensational books, no explosive interviews on talk radio, on websites, or during lectures–nothing, not even anonymously. Even the dozen or so people who have recently been prosecuted for sneaking a look at Obama’s passport files or at his college scholarship paperwork have been uniformly silent about what they found or did not find and, on the other hand, places like the two possible Honolulu hospitals where Obama was supposedly born and any staff who might have worked there then have been very reticent, when one would think they would be chomping at the bit to declare that the great Obama was born at their facility.
Those who do offer a competing “narrative,” like Obama’s Muslim Kenyan paternal grandmother and half sister, who proudly told one and all–until they were apparently muzzled–that they were present and witnessed it when Obama was born in a Mombasa, Kenya hospital, are derided, shouted down, or ignored, and no one in the MSM wants to report on what Obama’s fellow students and friends from his childhood in Indonesia have to say about him in any detail, because it might spoil the “narrative’ that they have created.
After subtracting those who have ideological reasons not to speak, or who fear that their part in the creation and facilitation of Obama’s “legend”–if revealed–might get them in some sort of hot water, I’m wondering if there might not also be some people who might fear that, if they talked, they might end up like Vince Foster did, in Ft. Marcy Park.
Stan says: “Obama’s biographer wrote it and I believe his source was Michelle Obama.”
Well that’s a new one. Everybody else thinks Bill Ayers ghost wrote it.
I’m afraid I have to agree with Gerard, any independent that hasn’t already turned on Obama probably isn’t for turning short of a full-on-war/depression. Because…you know…”Republicans are mean-spirited” .
Wolla Dalbo – I made a comment on yesterday’s post on the same subject to the same effect. You’re getting at something this really disturbing.
Like you, I am actually constitutionally suspicious of all conspiracy theories. I don’t know if I would call this a conspiracy so much as a manifest example of the difference between the left and the right. The left applies militancy and religious devotion to politics; the right, relatively speaking, does not.
Hence, with our first far left president the militancy and the Gnostic asceticism (restraining normal tendencies to leaking, back-biting, divulging inside secrets, etc.) are in full flourish. I don’t expect the truth about any of this stuff, never mind the author of Dreams, to ever be revealed. The historians will guard the ramparts, and the occasional industrious conservative such as Stanley Kurtz will only be able to get so far. The leftists hold the keys, and they might as well have swallowed them.
What creeps me out is the kind of Bolshevik mentality that we see, yet again, at work in the left’s dismembering of Lee Stranahan. It’s the same mentality that will ensure we never learn many of the not insignificant details of Obama’s life.
That’s what we’re up against. We better be smart, for we will not be as ruthless.
Neo says,
“Once that sort of doubt is introduced about who Obama really is, and once his ability to lie with a straight face is fully perceived, there comes an almost inevitable speculation on just how many people were covering up for Obama and who these helpers and groomers might have been.”
Neo, the MSM failed to vet Obama in ’08. There was ample evidence (Wright god damn America, the Ayers-Dohrn Weathermen crew, Pfleger, etc.) available about who Obama really is but it was either purposefully ignored or if not ignored explained away. I contend the same would be the case if irrefutable evidence shows Ayers wrote Dreams of My Father.
kolnai says,
“That’s what we’re up against. We better be smart, for we will not be as ruthless.”
Precisely.
Soviet of Washington says,
“I’m afraid I have to agree with Gerard, any independent that hasn’t already turned on Obama probably isn’t for turning short of a full-on-war/depression. Because…you know…”Republicans are mean-spirited”
To quote Slick Willy, “Its the economy, stupid.”
The republicans had better get behind a candidate who understands this and knows how to lay out a succinct program for dealing with it. Otherwise, as you state, it will take a great catastrophe to loosen Obama’s smarmy grip.
Pawlenty (he of blame Palin fame) again demonstrates why he is not presidential timbre.
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/03/29/pawlenty-obama-was-born-in-the-usa/
Pawlenty states he believes Obama was born in the USA. That’s not the issue! The issue is the rule of law.
Pawlenty is a coward!
Neo,
We all see the world through our window. We may not be islands, but we are peninsulas. We often think that what is obvious to us is obvious to others. (I should know better at age 63, but I find myself from time to time surprised that others fail to see what I see right before my very nose.)
I think this is involved in your hope that others will have an ‘awakening’ if only they could see what you see; namely the media generated image of Obama is a fraud. But as you have documented, your own awakening was brought about by a great tragedy which caused you to examine your beliefs in an honest manner. In that you are rare.
There is one reason why this would be a potentially important thing to establish: Mr. Obama and his sycophants have claimed that Mr. Ayers is, variously, only some guy who lives in the same neighborhood, or just some guy who lives in the same neighborhood whose kids happened to go to the same school (many years apart). Their point, of course, is that unrepentant domestic terrorist Ayers and Obama are barely acquainted. Despite the fact that there is substantial evidence to suggest that this is false, proving this connection could cause some to sit up and take notice.
Apparently Obama & Co. started airbrushing, cleaning up, and fabricating his background and back trail quite some time ago
Yes, exactly. His legend was in the making decades ago; it was not created retrospectively. This is what makes me suspect that he is the product of a Red farm system.
It’s not the active promulgation of the narrative; it’s the airbrushing that took place years and years ago that makes the antennae twitch.
People in Witness Protection have more of a back story than this joker. Do they seriously expect us to believe that the man walked among us for 47 years and effectively no one remembers him from back when? No one from high school, no one from college, no one from law school? Who the hell was his roommate at Occidental? No teacher remembers him? No neighbor? Nobody? No transcripts? No passport? Nothing? Please.
It stinks. It is reminiscent of the old Soviet era airbrushing out some now disgraced Politburo member from May Day photos – perhaps because it is people of the same political persuasion doing the airbrushing in both cases.
Stan says: “Obama’s biographer wrote it and I believe his source was Michelle Obama.”
Stan, read Michelle’s senior thesis from Princeton and then tell me that. Michelle makes “Barry” look like William F. Buckley, Jr. I doubt that she could write a shopping list without assistance. Her literary skills ran no further than “Subject. Verb. Object. Repeat” while she parroted racial grievance theology. She could, perhaps, write a children’s book.
We had better be smart, because we will not be as ruthless!
Well there’s an assumption that ruthlessness is effective under all situations. Brownshirting has less purchase here than pre-Nazi Germany. Likewise the ruthless assassins and anarchists. (Remember “I will kill Frick” turned popular opinion against the strikers in the Homestead strike of 1892. See Link)
And, there’s a better type of ruthlessness exemplified by Palin and Bachman and O’keefe and myriads of tea partiers.
And we have the greatest advantage of all which Lincoln spoke of: that right makes might and that a benevolent Creator does indeed see and influence events.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Strike
Mike McDaniel–According to various things that have been unearthed and that have been published in articles that are out there on the Internet but nowhere to be found in the MSM, Obama was hired by Ayers (with help from the then single lawyer Michelle (say, why did she have to relinquish her law license, as did Obama?) to run the total failure that was the $100 plus million dollar Annenberg Challenge in Chicago, and Ayers and Obama worked very closely and shared an office together during that three or four year time span, and Ayer’s good buddy, Maoist Mike Klonsky, who just happened to have an office at the same address, was the recipient of quite a few bucks from the Challenge, as were many other far Left, ideologically oriented people and organizations, like the “cooperative” that was teaching blacks in Chicago to celebrate “Juneteenth”–the day that celebrates when slaves were freed in Texas, instead of the Fourth of July. Ayer’s father, by the way, was the very wealthy and influential head of Con Edison, and has been called the “Godfather of Chicago Politics.” Yet, none of these things were ever explored by the MSM.
Say, just how did Ayers and Dohrn stay on the run, undetected for the eight years or so that they were “on the lamb”?
Obama’s first campaign for public office in Chicago started at a dinner party for prospective backers and donors held at the house of unrepentant urban terrorist Ayers and his equally unrepentant terrorist wife Bernadine Dohrn. Reportedly, the Obamas and Ayers and Dohrn also babysat each other’s children. There is still an open murder investigation as to who among the Weatherman placed the bomb that killed a Chicago policeman, with Ayers and Dorhn often mentioned as major suspects.
Yet, Obama was allowed to get away with saying that Ayers was, like “Mister Rogers,” “just a guy who lives in my neighborhood,” etc., etc., etc.
“Yet, Obama was allowed to get away with saying that Ayers was, like “Mister Rogers,” “just a guy who lives in my neighborhood,” etc., etc., etc.”
That is why there could be a verifiably accurate video of Obama holding hands with Ayers at a picnic while barbecuing babies and the MSM would explain that it was a black cultural thing we gun clinging, ignorant white trash can’t understand, ergo we are racists.
Occam says,
“People in Witness Protection have more of a back story than this joker. Do they seriously expect us to believe that the man walked among us for 47 years and effectively no one remembers him from back when?”
They don’t care about what you or I or anyone else at neo-neocon believes. We are not the target, although we are the ultimate target. By that I mean they know that most people will accept the MSM narrative at face value as long as American Idol is still on the boob tube, the unemployment checks keep coming, and the sky does not fall. That is where their propaganda is aimed. We, the independent thinkers, have to be marginalized and then hunted down if they can gain complete power. ‘They’ know we can not be persuaded. We are the enemy.
Another reason to detest Pawlenty: He’s a wonder boy, another Herbert Hoover.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/52054.html
Excited over six sigma. What a dork. And here’s the goal Tim: We don’t want to reform government. We want to eliminate it.
Parker: rare, perhaps, but not alone.
What’s more, 9/11 was the impetus for me taking a greater interest in current events. The change, though, took several years of reading different media sources online. It was quite gradual, and only complete two years or so after 9/11.
The fix for Pawlenty is in. He is an “insider” and as much of the problem as the solution. Remember why we are where we are: The failure of Republicans to stick to principles, character, and the Constitution.
http://nationaljournal.com/InsidersPoll/gop-insiders-say-romney-s-still-number-one-20110329
Of course, Sarah Palin is ranked low enough to try and convince us she can’t win.
May there not come a time when we’re going to have to say that the problem isn’t deception and we’re going to have to realize even if the truth were made completely known it wouldn’t matter because the problem isn’t just getting out the truth, the problem is that the outed facts would generate not outrage but support or apathy.
Parker wrote:
“Neo, the MSM failed to vet Obama in ‘08. There was ample evidence (Wright god damn America, the Ayers-Dohrn Weathermen crew, Pfleger, etc.) available about who Obama really is but it was either purposefully ignored or if not ignored explained away. I contend the same would be the case if irrefutable evidence shows Ayers wrote Dreams of My Father.”
Bingo. We forget that we DID have slam-bang, irrefutable proof that Obama belonged for many years to a racist, anti-American church, and venerated its leading “light” as a mentor. A speech, a media apologia, and a defenestration later, et voila – scandal gone. They could, and would, easily do the same with any “proof” of the Booker thesis.
Agreed, too, on the centrality of the economy. But we better have a candidate and a GOP establishment ready to go after Obama’s mendacity, not about his past and his books, but about Obamacare, the budget, the war in Libya, the stimulus, and so forth.
That would require someone who is fluent in budgetese and the (so to speak) semantic tricks often used by those who game the system. PLUS that someone must be able to do it Hemingway style, telling the whole story in six words:
“For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.”
Perhaps like this:
“Notice: Economy, blue, 1938, poor condition.”
In other words: What is the essence of our economic success? What model has stymied it? Why does its “progress” look so old and regressive? Why is it so afflicted?
Basic questions, have the answers on rapid fire, on notice for all.
Which candidate is up to it? Yikes.
kolnai says, “Agreed, too, on the centrality of the economy. But we better have a candidate and a GOP establishment ready to go after Obama’s mendacity, not about his past and his books, but about Obamacare, the budget, the war in Libya, the stimulus, and so forth.”
Yes, there is nothing to gain from going after Obama’s past. It is all about those items you mention. IMO the gop establishment is a large part of the problem. They see a clear strike to the throat but refuse to commit because they are more interested in appearing on the Sunday morning ‘new’ programs and attending PC cocktail parties.
I neglected to put my 2 dollars and 2 cents on this one:
“Which candidate is up to it? Yikes.”
Herman Cain is my leading contender right now.
Towards the end of this YouTube video, the poster of this video claims this is an admission by Ayers that he wrote one of Obama’s books. Looks to me like a bit of humor and nothing more:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfIZDYm0a54&feature=player_embedded
Otiose: you’re a little behind the times, I’m afraid. See this.
A few points.
First, I thought I was pretty cynical, but I am still amazed at the depths to which our MSM has sunk. Not only have they betrayed and made a mockery of their pretense at “professionalism” and “journalistic ethics,” but the MSM–almost to a man–by looking the other way and by not investigating and publicizing just who and what Obama really was and is, has very thoroughly betrayed our democratic Republic, our country, and every person in it.
Second, for me the chief indicator of just what a cold, heartless, and unfeeling creature Obama is was his arguing and voting against, while an Illinois State Senator, an Illinois bill that was, to the letter, exactly the same as Federal law already on the books—that required doctors and nurses to provide supportive medical care to children born alive after botched late term abortions. Obama was present for and heard testimony that the current practice was often to put such babies alone in a closet or a room with a door, so that the doctors and nurses would not hear its cries as–cold and alone–it slowly died and, yet, he still argued against and voted several times to defeat this bill, on the grounds that providing such supportive care would be an “undue burden” on the doctors, nurses, and facilities involved.
As more information about his life and education, the people around him, and his associations and actions slowly leaks out, it is looking more and more like Obama was likely a “Red Diaper baby,” groomed from an early age in the hope that he would come to occupy some sort of leadership position, and that he is, as some have titled him, a “Manchurian Candidate,” or the “20th Hijacker,” or a “Trojan Horse,” intent on destroying America.
I hate to think it might be true, but perhaps some of the commenters above are right, and no matter who Obama really is, how many lies he has told, what he has done, or what he intends to do, not enough people in America are alarmed enough or see these things as going so badly that they will vote him out of office.
The Republicans in Congress, even those just elected with Tea Party support, have been a major disappointment and are far, far too timid in their actions and proposals. They need to be out there every day, talking to and educating voters, and raising voter’s awareness about just how perilous our situation is and how radical and draconian the solutions will need to be, if they are going to be able to pull us back from the brink and to slowly restore us to health. But, they are apparently afraid to say this, and to try to educate the American people. They apparently think that the battle is already lost, and that the majority of the American people are so used to sucking on the Government teat that they will never give it up, make major sacrifices, and stand, once again, on their own two feet.
Finally, I wish I saw someone on the horizon who would be an opponent wily and strong enough to beat Obama, and a candidate who had an appreciation for just how perilous our condition is and is likely to become, and who was talking about this perilous situation, and presenting, and arguing for the kinds of extraordinarily radical and strong steps that will be needed to pull us back from the brink of the cliff that Obama & Co. have aimed us for and are pushing us over with all their might. But, no one is really talking about or offering such proposals; afraid, I presume, that if they do so that will doom their chances of being elected. But, such unflinching, brutally honest, and straight, tough talk about our enormously dangerous and precarious situation, and the drastic solutions needed to get us back on track are what, in my judgment, are needed.
Wolla Dalbo – you’ve just stated several of the concerns that lead me to my pessimistic take on things.
I think the Tea Partiers, and congressional Republicans too, are in a very tough spot. Public opinion is at best with them – at least in principle – by a razor thin margin. But in actuality public opinion is like a seven-tongued Typhon, and we should acknowledge, if only to not be too sanguine, that it makes taking the tough measures you and I would like to see an unduly iffy endeavor.
Basically, picture yourself as a GOP legislator. In principle, you get all this support from public opinion – various results showing people disapprove of Democrats on nearly all issues, a widespread dissatisfaction with the direction of the country, an overwhelming concern with fiscal issues, etc. – and you get a little emboldened. Then you take a gander in a northwesterly direction and see Wisconsin, where a governor and a legislature just elected to undertake the bold measures you’re feeling emboldened to push yourself are tanking in the polls. Mr. Prosser is, unfortunately, probably going to lose the election for the state Supreme Court. The Democrats are likely to take back the senate, and Gov. Walker himself will probably face a recall election in a year. By which time, it seems, the Supreme Court will have invalidated every tough piece of legislation they pushed through.
Now you’re a bit less emboldened. You take a look at Ohio, and see Gov. Kasich’s poll numbers tanking. You recall the mid-90’s government shutdown which had ugly results for the congressional GOP. And suddenly, given all of the preceding, the “in principle” support begins to look like “in practice” opposition.
Richard Weaver wrote a book called “The Ethics of Rhetoric,” and in that book he wrote that bad rhetoric (sophistry) is characterized by the use of “God words” and “Devil words.” These are words that convey strong positive or negative feelings, but militate against and suppress rational thought.
And now it seems that the situation is one where the words that we need to convey and stimulate critical and rational thought – “balanced budget,” “free enterprise,” “getting spending under control,” “growing the economy” (aside: I hate that phrase) – have become “God words.” Contrariwise, the terms we need to convey what’s wrong – “deficits,” “looming debt crisis,” “out-of-control spending,” “government takeover of x,y,z” – have become “Devil words.”
Which means that you as a legislator get a sense that these phrases really don’t have any meaning for most people – they’re God words and Devil words, words or phrases that stimulate emotion and put thought on ice. But they are exactly the words and phrases you need to make your case. Whenever you step outside the terms themselves and get down to specifics, you step on someone’s rights or entitlements, or their sense of altruism, or compassion, or justice, or what have you.
And now you realize this is a real pickle: One side of the American heart is in a general way with the GOP; the other side in all specifics is with the Democrats. Yes, people don’t necessarily want a deluge of positive liberal policies, but they definitely do not want any negative cutting off of the liberal spigot.
You’re trying to figure out, in short, how to keep the public with you notionally – because winning elections, much as we hate to admit it, IS important – and at the same time take steps to do what you know should be done. Without total power, which the GOP is very far from having, you simply cannot be uncompromising, at least at this moment.
You know that there will come a time when the ship either has to plug its holes or sink – and then risking all is all that can be done. But is it right now? The next CR? The next budget? You, as a GOP legislator, know that there is no chance of fulfilling your duty with legislation until the GOP controls the government. If you risk all now and lose, then in a sense that would itself be a dereliction of duty – a failure of prudence. On the other hand, you have to risk SOMETHING, or else whatever solid base you have will start abandoning you, your party, either for a third party or for sheer apathy.
What I’m getting at is that it’s much too simple to just shove off blame on cowardly legislators, although it is true enough that there is plenty of cowardice to go around in Congress. We the people are complicit in bringing about this sad, but human all too human, state of affairs. The centralized and more directly democratic mode of government is also at fault. The problem is ever bit as structural and impersonal as it is emotional and intensely personal.
I have lost none of my faith in the Madisonian system. What I have trouble seeing is to what extent our system is still Madisonian. It seems as though we’ve reached a point where the reality corresponds as little to the ideal (the Constitution) as it ever has. We still speak the language of the ideal, but while it used to be piety with no little basis in reality, today it seems to be increasingly mere piety.
I don’t want to overstate my case, but when all the qualifications are noted, I still come down to the preceding paragraph. One could agree with it and still maintain that we will find some way to pull through; and I think that in some sense we probably will. But what will be when we pull through? Is being Britain acceptable? I don’t think so.
So it’s not that we’re heading for another civil war or going to wind up like Belorus. My definition of the end of the Madisonian system is when we can say, “We’re like Britain was in 2011.” I think we’re well on our way, probably irreversibly.
Still and all – we must fight. To quote my favorite line from one of my favorite conservative thinkers, James Fitzjames Stephen,
“The waters are out and no human force can turn them back, but I do not see why as we go with the stream we need sing Hallelujah to the river god.”
Obama’s people are scaring the liver out of anyone and everyone who might be tempted to spill the beans about him.
That’s the only explanation. As a friend of mine noted, the Obamathugs went after a lawyer prosecuting a case against the Dictator, and he was told that they would destroy his business, slander him to everyone, and make sure that he never worked again.
He had a family to provide for, and employees. He resigned.
I call this ruthless SOB a dictator because he urinates on the law. And does whatever he damn pleases.
Kolnai, I think you’re being a tad pessimistic, though your points are well taken. Yes, the flaccid citizenry are chiefly to blame, and the high quotient of Moochers.
But we all thought the USSR would last forever, just like Eastern Airlines. Both collapsed, and the thunderous roar of the USSR’s collapse in 1991 is one I’ll never forget. My family were at the beach, staring at the news in utter disbelief. How could the Evil Empire, like Barad-dur, suddenly and catastrophically fail, disintegrating into rubble?
But it did. Entropy will hit the irrational nutjobs harder than it does the clear-eyed rationalists.
In other words, our enemies have a host of Achilles’ heels. We just need to keep attacking, relentlessly.
At last…
CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN!!
LOL.
I believe you need only look to New Jersey to see what happens when you back up the rhetoric with action.
Christie’s numbers were UP the last I heard.
There’s an ultimate and right response to the question, “Does it really matter if Obama didn’t write Dreams?” and it is this:
What would you teach your children?
Wolla Dalbo, the one talking the straightest and toughest is Donald Trump.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/52208.html
Obama’s polling woes!
Don’t worry about Prosser or Kaisch. They are front line troops, point men. The real bellwether is someone like Obama who is not a point man, who is indeed the exact opposite as has been noted.
America’s gut is turning sour on Obama and welfare. The opposition, of course, ramps it up. The politics of personal destruction are engaged to hither unknown levels. And that will be their undoing. A good test is going to be Weiner. If his style of arrogance and hypocrisy is successful, then New York deserves what it gets.
“”You’re trying to figure out, in short, how to keep the public with you notionally – because winning elections, much as we hate to admit it, IS important””
kolnai
What comes first, a rational government or a rational public that elects the government? I contend it is the latter. And with 53% voting just two years ago for a marxist leaning leader who spent twenty years in a racist church, we can safely say the public is irrational.
While we pretend to be waiting on a courageous conservative to show up to save us, what we’re really waiting for is the people to come to their senses. And that won’t happen until the inflation we all know is coming from the actions of this administration finally gets here in full bloom.
You know, mulling things over, I am starting to wonder–what with the level of American’s dependency on government at an all time high, a reported 40 million people on food stamps, an actual unemployment rate of something like 17%, 13% of homes now reported to be “unoccupied,” millions of homeowners foreclosed on and millions more “under water,” with only 50% of citizens paying any taxes at all, our dumbed down educational system and an Academia occupied and controlled by the Left–all teaching their students the messages of Leftist, hate America propaganda, our failing economy and industrial system, a perhaps fatally weakened dollar, a MSM that has become Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth,” a “Gangster Government” in power that is running roughshod over the Constitution and a judiciary and court system dominated by the Left, an increasingly decadent culture, and massive numbers of illegal aliens changing the entire fabric of California and the Southwest and elsewhere–if somewhere along the line the basic worldview and character of a sufficient number of our citizens has changed, so that we can not longer be sure that the majority of the people in this country still want the kind of government and policies that we used to have; relatively honest government, the Constitution and the rule of law, and policies that stressed Judeo-Christian values and ethics–self reliance, discipline, honest, hard work, individual rights, private property, and obeying the law.
Profiles in Courage, and the subsequent Pulitzer Prize, played a major role in shaping the political identity of John Kennedy. I was stunned to learn – many yers later – that some members of the prize committee knew that Ted Sorensen had ghost written it and voted the award anyway. It certainly changed the way I thought about JFK and the media gatekeepers. Some people will have a similar response to clear proof with regard to Obama’s authorship.
Joseph: but at least Kennedy had Sorenson as his ghostwriter, not terrorist leftist Ayers.
“Second, for me the chief indicator of just what a cold, heartless, and unfeeling creature Obama is was his arguing and voting against, while an Illinois State Senator, an Illinois bill that was, to the letter, exactly the same as Federal law already on the books–that required doctors and nurses to provide supportive medical care to children born alive after botched late term abortions. Obama was present for and heard testimony that the current practice was often to put such babies alone in a closet or a room with a door, so that the doctors and nurses would not hear its cries as–cold and alone—it slowly died and, yet, he still argued against and voted several times to defeat this bill, on the grounds that providing such supportive care would be an “undue burden” on the doctors, nurses, and facilities involved.”
Proof positive that the left side of the spectrum are not the compassionate ones they pretend to be. The reality is that they are the first ones to turn cannibal when the going gets tough. Note: I am open to the idea that abortion in the first trimester should be legal, after that I say no, and definitely a big no in the final trimester.
Walla Dalbo says, “… a candidate who had an appreciation for just how perilous our condition is and is likely to become, and who was talking about this perilous situation, and presenting, and arguing for the kinds of extraordinarily radical and strong steps that will be needed to pull us back from the brink of the cliff that Obama & Co. have aimed us for and are pushing us over with all their might. But, no one is really talking about or offering such proposals; afraid, I presume, that if they do so that will doom their chances of being elected. But, such unflinching, brutally honest, and straight, tough talk about our enormously dangerous and precarious situation, and the drastic solutions needed to get us back on track are what, in my judgment, are needed.”
That is the problem and it takes a leader, someone who is willing to take the heat and tell the truth however unpleasant the truth may be. IMO it has to be someone outside the same old DC in crowd. Palin, Cain, West, Watts, Rubio, Daniels, Bachmann and Christie come to mind. But of those I have mentioned; only Palin, Cain, Christie, and West have the personal forcefulness to carry the message. (I see Bachmann as damaged goods, even more so than Palin.)
Can any candidate tell the unvarnished truth, propose the extraordinarily unpleasant curative medicine, and get elected in our current situation?
The likelihood that anyone who tells the truth about our perilous situation, and who advocates the array of drastic reductions in spending, in the size and scope of government, drastically scaling back or eliminating various government departments, agencies, and programs and, above all, entitlements, that will be required to pull us back from the brink will scare off so many voters as to destroy his/her chances of being elected by what it appears is a citizenry largely addicted to and dependent on government benefits–a recent report estimated that 1/3 of all income in the U.S. came, in one way or the other, from the government–means that any candidate hoping to pull us back from the brink will have to either have to pull off the almost impossible task of, from the get go, successfully selling major sacrifice and austerity or, more likely, have to do exactly what Obama did–lie his ass off about what he intends to do once in office in order to get into office, so that he can then unleash his real, draconian policies.
If sugar coating the truth is the option, then such a candidate would have to project a kind of general reassuring, optimistic, Reaganesque belief that it is “sunrise in America,” outline a few, more moderate, key ideas/proposals but, be pretty short on most of the specifics; present an acorn but don’t describe what the fully grown tree would look like. Moreover, such a candidate will, of necessity, also have to be a master at using the Internet and the “undermedia” to get his message across, in the face of massive and universal opposition from the Left and its “lackeys and running dogs” in the MSM.
Is there anyone with the required vision, savvy, and backbone who can truly sell and run on a platform of major sacrifice and austerity? So far, I don’t see such a master salesman, most likely candidates–if they are talking cuts at all–are talking small (and totally inadequate and ineffective) cuts around the edges, not the meat axe approach that will be necessary, and while Gov. Christie is doing good work, he strikes me as more of an “art of the possible” man, and less of the “take no prisoners,” “Battle Hymn of the Republic” kind of President I believe we desperately need right now, for what will have to be not just a small campaign but, in order to work, a long, drawn-out Crusade.
Have things gotten so bad that we have descended into almost an “Eloi” vs. “Morlock” situation?
Looking over the situation, are we really talking about finding a more benign demagogue to oppose our current malevolent demagogue?
How do we enact the drastic reforms necessary, pull up just short of the precipice, while keeping the country together and still retaining our democratic Republic and our Constitution?
From my perspective, we have steered so far off course that the traditional United States and its Constitution that we departed from long, long ago are now below the horizon and lost to sight, and the cumulative economic and social problems we face today are almost insurmountable, but are invisible to or denied by the great majority of Americans who get their news from the MSM, Academia, the latest TV commentator, or the untutored and semi-literate, doped-up ramblings of the latest TV “personality” or Hollywood “star.”
Other than the many Communists and fellow travelers who were recruited as a result of the supposed “failure” of the American dream–so vividly illustrated by the Great Depression–and the various dictators and forms of Fascism, National Socialism, and Communism that were held up by elements in our Press and Academia in the 1930s and thereafter as better alternatives that really worked, the Left’s message was not bought to any great extent by the mass of U.S. citizenry of the WWII era.
So, the Left has not only “reframed” and repackaged its message, but it has also spent six plus decades–via our educational system and Academia, the MSM, Hollywood, books, plays, music, art, TV shows, “popular culture,” and even government and law–in propagandizing, conditioning and transforming the American people–the audience who would be listening to any arguments the Left and their opponents might make today as to whether our ship of State should continue on its present course to Utopia and the fabled “Fountain of Youth,” or the “Seven Cites of Gold,” or whether we should turn back and fight our way through heavy weather to find the United States and its Constitution that we departed from long ago.
And while I believe that the kinds of austerity and sacrifice I have been writing about above could have been sold to and accepted by that earlier, much more realistic, hardened, supposedly “unsophisticated” and less well “educated” WWII era citizenry, I doubt that the much transformed audience of today–softer, more pampered, and unused to real sacrifice, supposedly more widely “educated” but, ironically, (and deliberately made so) less knowledgeable about and grounded in true American history and the Constitution, less literate and numerate, less able to dissect an argument, less knowledgeable about economics and the capitalist system, less rooted in American tradition and history, and much less proud of them–would or will buy the painful and arduous struggle that will be necessary if they are to have any hope of real, solid recovery, and future freedom and prosperity.
Rant off.