…in which he was apparently supposed to tour, and the hoi polloi were supposed to listen. A roundup.
[Late morning update]
An interesting comment on Stephen Green’s post at PJM:
Obama hasn’t had to do one thing in his entire life, and he is still the most powerful man in the world. Think about it: Lincoln was an obscure country lawyer with a horrible marriage and failed in his attempt to win a Senate seat. Churchill faced multiple failures – he was rejected by the British people before they turned to him in 1939. Eisenhower was an insignificant colonel in his 40′s before WWII. Truman failed in business and was considered a non-entity before FDR died. Reagan failed to win the presidency his first time and was scorned by the national media. All became the top political leader in the world. Everybody else is stopped at the level of supervisor, or county clerk, or VP of Sales. Everybody faces failure in his or her life.
Nobody, NOBODY skates through life like the Boy King has. Nobody in the last 200 years that is.
Read the whole thing.
Absolutely brilliant. No ordinary mortal skates through life like that, not without considerable help from people in high places. His path through life was paved with gold and strewn with rose petals.
Something very ominous is and has been going on.
Definitely read the whole thing.
I know a few people who have skated through JUST like that. Someone or a group of someone’s held their hand, walked them along, opened doors, set them in the path of money, privilege and power.
With only one exception, these people who I have worked for, have worked for me, people with whom I attended school, I repeat with ONLY one exception these people are worthless, self-serving, trouble making drains on society.
I see little to make me think I need to add Obama to my singular decent person list.
Oddly, most of these worthless clowns are only children or, like Barry Soetoro, have half siblings spread out by either a father or mother who understood little about commitment or child rearing, and the clown in question was raised by grand-parents or other family members.
He’ll drag us down with him I fear.
Now I have Steve Martin’s “King Tut” stuck in my head. (There’s a line about the “boy king” in there.”
Did Obama ever eat a crocodile?
Grooming of promising politicians is fairly common, I’d say. For example, John Kerry and G. W. Bush both were heavily groomed. At least, Bush was groomed by having him run businesses. I’d say that Nixon and JFK are more examples of this.
Needless to say, signs of heavy political grooming is a negative sign for me. It indicates two things, first, that jobs which superficially sound tough (such as Kerry’s work in the mid 70s to try a major organized crime figure or Bush’s stint as a National Guard pilot) may be dumbed down a lot behind the scenes. Second, it signals obligation for the politician. No groomer goes through that kind of trouble out of generosity.
Yeah, But Bush actually had to learn to fly that plane, because failure to do so could lead to actual real death. If Obama had had to serve, in the National Guard or any branch of the military, you can bet his handlers would have coaxed a cushy yet impressive-sounding position for him somewhere that meant he would maybe have been in danger of getting a paper cut.
Also, I don’t know about Kerry, but Bush’s “grooming” seemed to mostly be due to filial affection and the tendency of sons to want to follow in their father’s footsteps. I know we don’t like nepotism in this country but running for president because your dad had been one at least has a certain human charm.
Obama on the other hand seems to have been “groomed” the way Madison Avenue sets up an ad campaign. His help came from sources other than his family; his family mostly seemed to have served as a kind of laboratory for the creation of a certain type of progressive paragon, that could then be “used” in whatever certain forces deemed needful. He certainly seems to treat his relatives like lab assistants rather than loved ones. His father seems to have served as a sort of Ho-Chi-Minh-like revered but distant spiritual mentor rather than a father figure. The pushing of Obama towards the presidency, considering his background, doesn’t seem to have come from anything human.
Everybody faces failure in his or her life.
George H.W. Bush ran for the Senate and lost. Bill Clinton ran for Congress and lost. George W. Bush ran for Congress and lost. It seems that all of our recent presidents lost a race for national office. And while you’d never know it from this article, Obama did as well.
Undistinguished record in Law School
Name a politician who had a more distinguished record in law school. Green clearly won’t let reality intrude on his argument.
The pushing of Obama towards the presidency, considering his background, doesn’t seem to have come from anything human.
No doubt he’s working for Skynet.
Alan Henderson:
You mean “King Putt”, right?
And while you’d never know it from this article, Obama did as well.
What office was that, pray tell? The congressional one where His Handlers didn’t get the incumbent buried in scandal? (Bobby Rush?)
Name a politician who had a more distinguished record…
“more” implies a quantitative comparison, one not possible when He and His Handlers won’t let us see any of His academic records.
“Name a politician who had a more distinguished record in law school. Green clearly won’t let reality intrude on his argument.”
You have got to be kidding me.
“No doubt he’s working for Skynet.”
And then you refer to some science fiction movie. You do know that “Skynet” is a made-up fictional thing, don’t you?
Jim isn’t just continuing to drink the koolaid — he’s marinating in it.
“more” implies a quantitative comparison, one not possible when He and His Handlers won’t let us see any of His academic records.
Distinguished: made conspicuous by excellence; noted; eminent; famous
Can you think of another politician’s law school record that was more conspicuous by excellence, noted, eminent and/or famous? Obama was the subject of national newspaper profiles and was approached to write a memoir while he was still in law school. If Obama’s record was not distinguished, the word has no meaning.
But then Green doesn’t seem to care much about what words mean. His piece is full of assertions that he either can’t prove (Poor grades in high school, Poor grades at Occidental, Poor grades at Columbia, we’ll have an accomplished writer finish it for you), or which are known to be false (No published articles at Harvard, not a top student, Too lazy to publish any articles in your appointed position or even edit the work of others, Having trouble in the Senate because it takes working 3 or 4 hours a day; no problem, here’s a plumb speaking role in the 2004 Democratic Convention [“they” must have a time machine…], a tillion dollar spending bill, we’ll have Harry Reid write a health care takeover).
he’s marinating in it
Rand, you just posted as “interesting” an article full of obvious falsehoods. Surely you don’t think Obama was tapped to give the 2004 DNC speech because he was already “having trouble in the Senate”? [Reminder: Obama’s Senate term began in 2005]. And yet you tell people to be sure to “read the whole thing.” Do facts not matter to you?
You might check on what you’re marinating in.
“Can you think of another politician’s law school record that was more conspicuous by excellence, noted, eminent and/or famous? Obama was the subject of national newspaper profiles and was approached to write a memoir while he was still in law school. If Obama’s record was not distinguished, the word has no meaning.”
Hmmm…Hillary Rodham Clinton? Just to pick one at random.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_clinton
😉
And I do not know how you can claim BHO’s law school record was “conspicuous by excellence” unless you have seen his grades. Excellent grades are normally a key part of anyone’s claim to have had an excellent school record…unless we’re only counting how few times the student had to stay after school or do extra homework for being tardy, unruly, that sort of thing.
I’m sorry, but nobody in his thirties is normally “approached” to “write his memoir.” Especially someone who has led a life as basically dull as Obama. Really — don’t be fooled by the fact that he lived in cool places like Indonesia and Hawaii as a kid; just living someplace more interesting to progressives than “Middle America” doesn’t mean your life there will be interesting and worth writing about. From what I gather, all the interesting stuff happened before Obama was born. His father was an African student in America in an era when “diversity” meant more than one type of pickle on the condiment tray. His mother was a white women who married a black man at a time when such unions were quite rare. Etc.
Obama, on the other hand, went wherever his mother took him, went to school, was raised in a nice home by his lefty grandparents, smoked some weed, had a white girlfriend for a while, went to college, got married, had kids, and so on. I have never heard anything about his life before become president that made me think “Ooh, his early experiences were so varied and interesting that it’s a good thing he wrote that memoir early on!” He sounds like an average American kid like a lot of the ones I went to high school with.
PS: I wonder how Jim knows what a spectacular student he was. No one else seems to want to talk about his actual academic record. I suspect that’s because it was unimpressive — probably good enough for an averagely bright person, but not for someone who has been built up into the Messiah-like genius that his followers have done.
I skipped most of Jim’s diatribe once I read, “Name a politician who had a more distinguished record in law school.” in reference to Obama. Indeed, as Andrea notes, how can one claim Obama had a distinguished record when Obama has refused to release said record?
Hmmm…Hillary Rodham Clinton?
She didn’t even make law review.
how can one claim Obama had a distinguished record when Obama has refused to release said record?
That’s like saying that you don’t know whether the National League MVP had an exceptional season unless you know his batting average. Obama’s public record — the fact that he was chosen for Harvard Law Review, and graduated magna cum laude — distinguishes his record from that of most law students. And that’s before you factor in the testimonials from faculty and authors of the review articles he edited, or the fact that his peers elected him to lead the law review.
The interesting thing is that Rand, Andrea, Leland, etc. are sufficiently warped by Obama-hate that they can’t accept even plain, well-documented facts about his life [see also: birthers]. Instead Rand reads the series of lies in the linked-to article, and nods his head, and encourages everyone else to read the whole thing.
I don’t hate Obama.
I don’t hate Obama either. What I hate is the credential-loving, false-front-accepting, slavish adulation lavished on him by his followers, which they expect people with a normal level of skepticism to emulate. Just because he “was accepted to the Harvard Law Revue” and “graduated magna cum laude” doesn’t mean jack shit in the real world. It’s what you do with your fancy rewards once you leave the protective ivy-clad walls of academia that matters, and quite frankly nothing Obama has done has impressed me that he’s smarter than the average human. Even less smart — remember his jibe at car insurance companies? I mean, when I first bought a new car I made the same mistake about collision insurance that he did (not realizing that’s what I’d need if I wanted my car paid for in case of an accident); but I actually learned otherwise — I didn’t save up my “experience” to use later as an anecdote to slam insurance companies for being “unfair.” But you know, I didn’t go to Harvard and get a fancy degree, so nothing I learn means anything.
How can we forget George W. Bush? He served in Skull and Bones (a far more famous institution than the Harvard Law Review) and had decent grades. I second Hillary Clinton who was politically active throughout her academic career. Bill Clinton wasn’t too shabby either (Rhodes scholarship plus good grades). But somehow Obama is supposed to be the best choice because and only because he ran his school’s legal rag for a bit.
I really wonder why Jim continues to post, but he provides a never ending stream of entertainment by doing so.
“how can one claim Obama had a distinguished record when Obama has refused to release said record?
That’s like saying that you don’t know whether the National League MVP had an exceptional season unless you know his batting average.”
Jim, you got us all on that one. You are absolutely, 100-percent correct. If the National League MVP was a pitcher, none of us would need to know his batting average to recognize whether he had had an exceptional season and truly deserved to be MVP.
Nice try on that trap…better luck next time!