Obama & Sons
That is, Daughters. Obama’s slip of the tongue—saying “my sons” when he has daughters—seems very odd indeed.
Does he have sons we don’t know about? Or perhaps he always wanted sons, and this is in the nature of a Freudian slip?
Or is the more pedestrian explanation the fact that the error isn’t quite as bad as it looks, because the substitution isn’t of “sons” for “daughters,” but of “my” for “your.” The original line was this:
I want women to control their own health choices, just like I want my daughters to have the same opportunities as your sons.
Obama said “my sons” instead, getting stuck in an echo of the phrase “my daughters” and making it symmetrical (“my daughters/my sons”) rather than oppositional (“my daughters/your sons”).
If anything, I think the slip is more a symptom of his increasing tension as a candidate than anything else. So I cut Obama some slack here—although something tells me I’m going to get a lot of disagreement on this one.
It might be a simple slip of the tongue. It might be a Freudian slip- or a a Kinsley gaffe. It is rather common that a father who has only daughters wishes he had a son- or sons. It is quite possible that the tension he is under caused it to come out. Or it simply might have been a slip of the tongue.
Which reminds me of Spoonerisms. One of my favorites is where “Three cheers for our queer old dean!” came out instead of “Three cheers for our dear old Queen!”
I don’t think Barry is as smart/good as some would like you to believe. He might be folding under the pressure, realizing he can’t BS his way all the way through this one.
From his handling of the country, he is in over his headl
Perhaps his sons look too much like Travon?
Chalk it up to fatigue, a naughty teleprompter, insomnia, pressure, boredom, nicotine withdrawal, or simple panic; whatever is involved BHO knows he is on shaky ground this time around. Or perhaps he is a bigamist and actually has two sons in one or two of those other 7 states. 😉
Iowahawk as a great parody of BHO on the campaign trail.
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/
Yep, the POThead POTus’s son would look and act just like Trayvon – what a glowing role model for our kids he is.
How far we have sunk.
That’s just weird. I think he’s tired, scared, and mad. He’s never had to take the criticism he’s getting and gonna continue to get in this campaign.
Concerning the issue he’s talking about, I’m not Catholic and don’t consider myself a religious fundamentalist. And I’m sure I’m gonna make a lot of people who read and comment on this blog angry with what I’m about to say, but I happen to believe a human being is created when a sperm fertilizes an egg. That human being deserves protection under the law and I don’t think it’s a matter of a woman’s “health choice”.
I *DO* think that contraception with the pill, condoms, etc. is good and a responsible thing to use. But it makes sense to me that these items are inexpensive enough that people can afford to pay for them themselves.
I chalked it up to fatigue and the robotic repetition of campaign speeches.
I also saw him giving a speech the other day and seeming to be a little out of it. His speech was slow and his eyelids were heavy. I actually wondered if he was under some influence, tranquilizers, sleeping pills, booze, or even something illicit. Whatever, he didn’t look his best.
texexec,
Personally, I see nothing to get angry about in your post. I agree that a human life begins at conception, and I’m basically agnostic. And I agree it is not a “health choice”. However, there are a few circumstances in which I feel abortion should be an available ‘choice’ up until the commencement of the 2nd trimester. After month 3, its unjustifiable homicide IMO.
Does he have sons in all 57-states? Are they Corpse Men..? Or, are they Equity Companies..? Orrrrrrrr…..So many, many possibilities with the constatntly evolving…or, was that ‘Morphing’..? Obam-Bam.
Meh. Tempest in a teapot. Probably a deliberate thing to get the opposition frothing and distracted, even.
>>> I’m gonna make a lot of people who read and comment on this blog angry with what I’m about to say, but I happen to believe a human being is created when a sperm fertilizes an egg
Naww, this blog isn’t a libtard blog.
I personally disagree with you, as I don’t believe there is an adequate concept of what “being a Human Being” means.
I could take you, hook you up to machines, cut out 90% of your brain.
What remains is, sorry, NOT “YOU”, even if it lives to the ripe old age of 120 hooked up to those machines.
OTOH, I take you, cut off your arms and legs and cut out your eyes and ears and tongue — horrific though your condition would be, YOU are still in that degraded shell.
Q.E.D. — Being a Human Being isn’t about form.
I argue it’s about the thoughts inside, and, sorry, you can’t argue with me that a 4-cell blastocyst can have anything resembling “thoughts”.
You can argue that there’s a soul attached to the blastocyst but that’s a religious argument and The Law of this Nation is not, and should not, be specifically based in religious principles. By all indications, until the fetus has independent, advanced brainwaves — the closest we can currently come to reading “thoughts” — it’s not capable of being “human” regardless of its potential to become one. And that doesn’t occur until the second trimester, I believe.
Unless and until we somehow advance either the concept of “being a Human Being” or we find some earlier measure of brain activity that suggests actual independent thought by the fetus at an earlier time, we are left with the presumption that a fetus is not a Human Being deserving protection until somewhere in the second trimester.
NOW, don’t get this wrong — I see nothing wrong with believing that it begins at conception and following through on your faith to that end, in the sense of both not getting an abortion, not encouraging them personally, and not engaging in any activities (if, say, you’re a nurse) which run against those beliefs.
But it’s a question of Law, and, at this point, I’d argue that end of the first trimester is a good, rational dividing line given the currently available data.
Igotbupkis, Mike Adams made a point once that has stuck with me. He’s a hunter, and he said when he’s in the woods and sees something that might be a person, and might not be a person, he DOES NOT SHOOT. When I was pregnant with my son, I had an ultrasound at 11 weeks. He was a fully formed little person, rubbing his eyes and stretching. I was shocked, having expected a blob of cells. My point, and yours I think, is that we just don’t know. So shouldn’t we err on the side of caution?
To respond to the subject of Neo’s post, I’m chalking up Obama’s slip of the tongue to stress and fatigue, although I doubt a Republican candidate would receive the same consideration.
“I had an ultrasound at 11 weeks. He was a fully formed little person, rubbing his eyes and stretching.”
This is the touchstone. Somewhere around week 12 there is a tiny human being inside the womb. His or her’s life should never be taken lightly. As I posted above, I can understand several circumstances when abortion should be an available choice. But to label he or she as a fetus instead as a baby runs contrary to the concept of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as our founding principle. Human life begins at conception. The fertilized egg does not develop and become an oak tree, a toad, an antelope, a lemur, or a platypus. Left alone it will be a fully formed member of our species capable of breathing the atmosphere and pissing water.
This was not a gaffe. It’s clear that the Dog-Eater is trying to be seen as our “Dear Leader” tending to all of his children which, aside from being totally repulsive ought to make people feel very queasy.. He says “my” often when referring to many things about America. I remember a while back he even referred to the White House lawn as “my lawn”. This little expression that he’s now pushing of ‘my sons and daughters[]’ describing young Americans is pretty friggin scary. I’m not sure why anyone would think that this is not intentional. The Indonesian Imbecile is one of the dimmest bulbs around and makes tons of gaffes due to his mind-numbing idiocy, but nobody makes such a strange “gaffe” as talking about children he doesn’t have even once, let alone 4 times.
I would caution people not to underestimate what the Dog-Eater is saying. This isn’t funny. This isn’t a joke. This isn’t even related to his general stupidity. This is some scary, scary stuff. Never has America seen anything like this – mostly because American culture has no such concept, really. Only someone who is totally devoid of any American sensibilities (and bent on seeing America fundamentally deformed into a twisted Third World sort of dictatorship or personality cult) could even begin to think of speaking about all Americans as “his children”.
I weep for this nation – what’s left of it.
progressoverpeace beat me to it.
George Washington has been referred to as ‘father of his country’. Whether ‘my sons’ was a slip of speech or intentional, it may be another example of President Obama wanting to identify himself with presidents of the past.
progressoverpeace,
Thanks for putting BHO’s blathers into the above context. Now that you have shed light on “trying to be seen as our “Dear Leader” I find that I agree. Ever since the Clinton years I have cringed every time I hear a politician or pundit talk about “for the children”. In every instance my first thought is back away from my grandchildren asap or say hello to Mr. 30-06.
I think he really intended to say “our” daughters and “our” sons.
>>>and sees something that might be a person, and might not be a person, he DOES NOT SHOOT.
We’re already going with that just by the trimester/brain wave argument. Frankly, I’d accept an argument as worthy of consideration about post-natal abortion.
I wouldn’t AGREE with it, but it could be argued on merits depending on what your criteria was for THOUGHT. Whether a newborn is even capable of anything vaguely resembling human thought is easily debatable… by backing up to mere brain waves you’re already well into “might be” territory.
Again, I’m not arguing for post-natal abortion by any means — I’m saying that human thought is what defines a Human Being, nothing less, outside of religious arguments. Backing up to mere independent brainwaves in fetus with human DNA is already well before anything resembling human thought is likely to be there, so you’re already satisfying your “precautionary” principle.
And frankly, I have enough Faith in God that if He really, really wants a human to be alive, He will find a way to Make It So… if that baby was meant to be born, He will give the parents reason to have the child.
>>> When I was pregnant with my son, I had an ultrasound at 11 weeks. He was a fully formed little person, rubbing his eyes and stretching.
You’re anthropomorphizing, and even more critically, doing so as a parent, hardly an objective source of opinion. I’ve seen freakin’ ultrasound. Even the best of them can hardly produce the “picture” you describe, much less identify the kind of detail (“rubbing his eyes and stretching”) you believe you saw.
Humans attribute all manner of human-like behavior to animals that just ain’t there. It’s one of our biggest strengths and/or flaws, depending on the situation. It gives us a connection to all life, which is good, but it also causes us to assume a rationality that just ain’t there… and that is even more applicable to something that looks fairly human in form and which we are already predisposed to believe is a full human, instead of a potential one.
Again: This isn’t so much an argument that you’re Wrong…. it’s one that your belief is a matter of belief and Faith, not of justifiable reasoning from given facts.
As a result, we shouldn’t allow that to direct us in Law — it should be a matter of Mores.
By all means, return the social stigma to abortions and “cheap sex” to discourage both. But don’t try and fix this problem by LAW. It’s not a problem that’s ready to be solved by Law. We just don’t know enough, or have a clear enough aggregate social belief in any aspect of the idea to make Law out of it. We don’t even have a vaguely significant social agreement on the things that make Life precious, or who gets to decide when it comes to Life that we actually agree is “Life”.
Because otherwise we’d allow self-euthanizing after appropriate care is taken to discern it’s a rational action on the part of the one who is choosing to die.
There are a HUGE mass of social questions about what, precisely, is “Human Life” and what, precisely, makes “Human Life Worth Living” We have to open the debate on all these, and get to some kind of halfway decent consensus on what the answers are, before we’re ready to codify those things as Law.
>>> Human life begins at conception. The fertilized egg does not develop and become an oak tree, a toad, an antelope, a lemur, or a platypus. Left alone it will be a fully formed member of our species capable of breathing the atmosphere and pissing water.
The potential for being human does not make one human, any more than the potential to be an expert skydiver makes me an expert skydiver. Only with time does that potential change to become reality.
Moreover, if we assume that “human life begins at conception”, then Nature/God aborts far more than humans do. The number of fertilized eggs that don’t make it to implantation, or which are fertilized too early to implant, or which implant too late, or which otherwise don’t even make it to the point where the mother is aware of its existence before the body spontaneously aborts is notably larger than the number actually born. What of them?
Suppose it could be shown that a woman who drank, say, caffeine was 10x more likely to spontaneously “abort” one of these fertilized eggs.
Are you going to then outlaw all caffeine consumption by females?
Because it’s GOT to be “all” if you do, since a woman can’t readily predict if she’s got an ova ready to be fertilized… and sperm HAS been known to remain viability for days, if not weeks, though less and less with time.
Suppose it’s only a 10% chance that it triggers one of these spontaneous abortions. Is that enough?
Don’t claim caffeine doesn’t do that — it doesn’t need to be caffeine — there’s probably some connection between a thousand otherwise innocuous behaviors that might be linked — even slightly — to a woman’s spontaneously aborting. That’s a pretty fine hormonal balance, and it doesn’t take a lot to upset it.
You could use this claim to argue this point through a wide array of really really insane control-factors over what women are allowed to do.
Suppose actually remaining in bed 24/7 increased by 90% the chance of one of these fertilized eggs making it to successful implantation…?
Are you ready to be required by law — on pain of murder — to be bedridden between menarche and menopause?
Yes, I’m taking it to absurd lengths, but that’s part of the point — defining a “fertilized egg” as a human life is already past the point of absurd lengths. I have no problems whatsoever with you believing that. I just say it has no business being Law
At what point is “enough”? More critically:Who decides?
I make slips of the tongue similar to that all the time; caused by lack of sleep. I can’t even imagine all the stupid things I would say if I was a politician. Give the poor embattled president a break on this one and please criticize him where it means something.
Obama is left-handed. He might be slightly dyslexic and prone to such gaffes if not completely focused on what he is reading. Interestingly many recent presidents have been left-handed. It might be that left-handers have an edge in other ways because of the challenge of adapting to a right-handed world and perhaps also because they think a little differently.
Steve: I’m a lefty too.
Have you ever found yourself reading a story to a child, and found that you weren’t really thinking about what you were reading, just speaking the words aloud?
Obama likely does that when he reads his speeches.
“Are you going to then outlaw all caffeine consumption by females?”
What a hoot! I’m not sure which is more appropriate; an award for logical absurdity or solipsism. Respectfully, because many of your posts are spot on and very intelligent, you are taking your philosophy to the twilight zone or you are engaged in solipsism.
I’m not a conservative, except when it comes to other people’s money and adherence to the strict rule of law of the land called the Constitution. Live free and pursue your own ideal of happiness; do what you want, believe what you want, copulate freely except with minors, and any other activity that does not harm others without just cause.
But if I understand you (which I may be too dull to comprehend your logic) it seems that if society follows your line of reasoning to the end, its okay to kill a baby postpartum for the health of the mother. That is exactly what we see being proposed in the UK and by radical feminists here at home. Hell, lets just line those bothersome kindergarteners up against the wall if they can’t follow directions and hose them down with an AK. After all, they are not fully developed human beings. They might as well be an oak tree, a toad, an antelope, a lemur, or a platypus, and lets throw in Trig for good measure so as to not be species chauvinistic.
He took his inspiration, his spiritual guidance, and the title of one book from Jeremiah Wright. And he never heard one damn thing Wright said.
So maybe this time he said the right thing and we just didn’t hear it.
Way too much CHOOM.
Actually, IGotBupkis doesn’t go as far as he might. A number of bioethicists argue the case for infanticide, and Peter Singer is well-known for his argument that mentally impaired children are not human and can be killed. The Nazis went quite a bit further and killed adults as well as children for all sorts of physical and mental defects.
Personally, if you are going to start killing people (or fetuses,whatever) I want to choose who, when and how.
he Dog-Eater is trying to be seen as our “Dear Leader” tending to all of his children
Late entry. This was my thought too, of a piece with his comment about troops fighting for HIM.
Obama is left-handed. He might be slightly dyslexic and prone to such gaffes if not completely focused on what he is reading.
Hey! Lay off us lefties! I get enough of that “lefties are nuts” from my teammates.
No, Neo, no. Obama and Sons is a gas station in a little town called Wehigh in Hawaii. They sell cowpies and cheap gas and they have a weiner vending machine as well as a Pez dispening machine that sells little Nancy Pelosi Pez and Harry Reid Pez and DWS Pez. They say the owner lives in the back, alone, ever since his wife and family left him some time in late 2017. He has no known relatives.
@Texexec:
Texexec, I appreciate your statement and I agree with it. However, you go on to say that contraception, and you specifically mention the Pill, is a good thing. You do realize, don’t you, that the Pill and other similar drugs often work _after_ conception by prohibiting the embryo from being able to emplant? Doesn’t that make it murder, by your own definition?
Please consider that.
@IGotBupkis, Legally Defined Cyberbully in All 57 States:
You disagree with texexec’s (and my) definition. Fair enough.
However, the logical conclusion of defining “being human” at some point between conception and birth is that there is some point in the development of a fetus that she isn’t human one moment, but she is human the next moment.
What criteria do you use to make this distinction? A heartbeat? Detectable brain waves? Unique fingerprints? All those happen in the first trimester. Viability? The age at which a fetus is viable is decreasing with every passing year. Would you define someone’s humanity in terms of the medical technology his mother has access to? Or to be more blunt, would you base someone’s humanity on how much money her parents have? What happens when, as will probably be the case in the next several decades when the age of viability extends into the first trimester? What happens to the definition of “human” based on such a criterion when a human being can be conceived and gestated entirely ex utero?
In fact, the criterion you seem to pin the most importance on is the existence of “thoughts”, which is, of course, totally undefinable. How can you prove a person is thinking? What about someone in a coma? What about those people who were declared to be in a persistent vegetative state who nonetheless recovered and were able to regain consciousness? It’s rare, but it happens.
I think the argument that 4-cell blastocyst isn’t “thinking” can safely be made but for the metaphysical argument you acknowledge, but what about the 11-week old embryo whose brainwaves are detectable, yet who fall short of your “second trimester” threshold? And what about brainwaves that are not yet detectable? That 11-week threshold could diminish significantly as our technological ability to detect these sorts of things increases. Detectable brainwaves imply, at a minimum, sensation.
I think we can both agree that there is an ontological distinction between animals, which can also sense, and humans, but does human sensation alone imply thought? And if not, why not? Or is an 11-week old embryo merely an animal? Does it even make sense to consider that something which is not human can become human without a fundamentally existential change such as happens at the moment of conception? If we accept that this is possible, is the converse possible? This implies that something which is human can become something which is not human, without death occurring. Are you prepared to explain how this can happen? Did it happen to, say, Terry Schiavo?
If we deny that the genesis of “being human” occurs at conception, at which point the genetic, and therefore biological distinctiveness of the embryo is formed, and its development into a fully functioning human being is assured given the natural processes inherent in its cells and the appropriate environment (i.e., a womb) (as well as, of course, the absence of external or internal disease which could prevent its viability), then we must, especially for the sake of law, which requires such precise definitions, explain in some detail unequivocally when and how such a transition from “non-human” to “human” occurs.
Does such a transition occur at a biological level? Can you describe a situation where N functioning neurons are incapable of thought but N+1 functioning neurons are? Or does this transition happen at the chemical level? Is there some threshold of neurotransmitters that allow said neurons to think, beneath which no thought occurs? Is it some combination of the two? Or does this transition happen, as has been posited by Roger Penrose (and which I find to be a plausible theory) at the quantum level? If so, it would be, by its nature, undetectable not only in practice, but in theory, and therefore entirely undefinable for any given instance! If you place any importance at all on the significance of being human, how can you be willing to define so imprecisely and unknowably?
And what, to get to the crux of the biscuit, is “thought” anyway?
I think in fact your definition was reached backwards by trying to rationalize a definition of humanity that fits with the legal and moral distinctions you have already decided upon: Abortion of the unborn who “look like” people is wrong, which is intuitive to all but the most hardened liberals, but abortion of a weird little “unthinking” blob or worm, despite being biologically identical to that so-called “baby”, but for a period of development, is morally acceptable.
Just how many angels can dance on the head of that pin which is your definition of who is, and who is not, human?
@Occam said: Hey! Lay off us lefties! I get enough of that “lefties are nuts” from my teammates.
Testify, brutha! I’m perfectly fine, and my crazy, left-handed wife can attest to that.
A significant number of my closest friends all through my life have been lefties as well. I’ve always wondered if that was just coincidence or there’s some reason for it.
Even more interestingly, none of our four kids is a leftie.
@ConceptJunkie
You said: “Texexec, I appreciate your statement and I agree with it. However, you go on to say that contraception, and you specifically mention the Pill, is a good thing. You do realize, don’t you, that the Pill and other similar drugs often work _after_ conception by prohibiting the embryo from being able to emplant? Doesn’t that make it murder, by your own definition?
Please consider that. ”
Man oh man, it’s very complicated defining what a human being is and what murdering one is isn’t it? Your point is well made and my stating that “The Pill” is OK while defining contraception as the point when a human being is created isn’t logically consistent.
By going back to contraception being when a human being is created, I was hoping to avoid all the complications of requiring certain things (brain waves, etc) to happen before one becomes human. I know all that is very complicated and highly subjective.
I suppose I could add a second requirement to creation of a human being…that the fertilized egg be imbedded but that puts me on a very slippery slope, logically.
I suppose I COULD go even further back time wise and process wise in my logic and say that to use a condom to prevent all those sperm cells (who really, really “want” to fertilize an egg} from “hitting their target” is improper intervention in the process of creating a human being.
I guess I’ll just have to throw up my hands in exasperation and say one has to use common sense and one’s own sense of what’s right or wrong, but skew that thinking towards conception being the safest, reasonable definition of when human life begins. In other words, follow the example of LisaM above and DON’T SHOOT when in doubt.
I do hope that most of us would agree that partial birth abortion is barbaric brutality. It’s my understanding that Obama essentially approved of that when he was an Illinois state senator and maybe even later in his career.
Bupkis, You may have seen freakin’ ultrasound, but you didn’t see mine. And the other two people in the room also think they saw what I think I saw. Your argument was based on cognitive ability. I made no claims that my son was pondering the nature of the universe at 11 weeks. Just that he was fully formed.
Vladimir Putin shows off military hardware in Victory Day parade
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/05/09/vladimir-putin-shows-off-military-hardware-in-victory-day-parade/
new nuclear missiles
a military build up
change to first strike doctrine
and a beautiful old fashioned parade, with hammer and sickle.
if Germany held a big parade under a swastika, would y’all think it different?
hint… if they stopped being communists, then why march under hammer and sickle? why welcome a few thousand new kids into young pioneers?
Obama smoked too much weed before reading the teleprompter!
Personally, I think he just spoke what his alien masters from the Greater Magellanic Cloud told hm to say. via the fillings in his teeth (see http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/657/is-it-possible-to-hear-radio-broadcasts-through-your-teeth ).
Neo, I’m perfectly willing to consider this a harmless slip of the tongue; ditto for the “57 states” nonsense. (In context, it’s clear that he meant to say 47.) Our Dear President has said enough things that were NOT slips (e.g. “I believe that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody”) that we need not dwell on the small stuff.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t put much of anything past the guy at this point. We already know that he lies like a carpet, that he reinvents his past to suit his fancies of the moment, that he sees no problem in flatly contradicting himself without shame and without apology. If a 2013 tell-all biography produced proof that he had three wives, fourteen children, and a gay lover on the side, I don’t think I’d be much surprised.
M of Hollywood: bravo!!
In re abortion: a fundamental aspect of the problem here is the need for sharp, clear boundaries, and the conspicuous lack of them. It would be great if there were a fundamental change, obvious to all, at 3 months… but there isn’t. The only such boundaries we have are conception and birth, neither of which are satisfactory. (Heck, as some people here have pointed out, abortion in the 14th trimester has been advocated too.)
Frankly, I wish the State could stay out of this one. Sure, the State has an interest in seeing that a murderer is caught and punished (to prevent vigilante justice, to try for a more level playing field of justice between rich and poor etc.). Does the State really have a vested interest in seeing that embryos are carried to term, and thus treating some abortions as murder? Why?
If a Catholic family wants to teach its children that all abortion is murder, let them. If another family trumpets the “right” to terminate pregnancies at will, with or without the consent of the father, let them; they’re weeding themselves out of the population anyway. I think it’s wrong and indescribably sad, but I don’t think it’s my duty to prevent them from doing such things because I feel that way.
If we’ve learned anything from Roe v. Wade, it’s that there will not be a national consensus on this issue. We’ve had a generation and more to build one, and we haven’t been able to do it. Unless we’re willing to fight a Civil War over it, we’re going to have to live with one another here.
Nicotine is always the bad part of cigarette smoking aside from the cancerous compounds that you can find on the smoke itself.:
My very own web site
http://www.foodsupplementdigest.com/overdose-of-melatonin-in-children/