Obama in a nutshell

A cum laude graduate of the Harvard Law School had "unremarkable grades." Damn I'd hate to hear what the article's author would say about my academic background, which by the way my family was pretty damned proud of back in the day.
 
Crocket, if you had continued reading the article, this is what the author had to day (and I'm not agreeing with it. I am only passing along the author's note): A lot of readers have written in asking me how I came to the conclusion that Obama was an unremarkable student and that he benefited from affirmative action. Three reasons:

1) As reported by The New York Sun: "A spokesman for the university, Brian Connolly, confirmed that Mr. Obama spent two years at Columbia College and graduated in 1983 with a major in political science. He did not receive honors..." In spite of not receiving honors as an undergrad, Obama was nevertheless admitted to Harvard Law. Why?

2) Obama himself has written he was a poor student as a young man. As the Baltimore Sun reported, in:

"'Obama's book 'Dreams from My Father,'....the president recalled a time in his life...when he started to drift away from the path of success. 'I had learned not to care,' Obama wrote. '... Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it.' But his mother confronted him about his behavior. 'Don't you think you're being a little casual about your future?" she asked him, according to the book. '... One of your friends was just arrested for drug possession. Your grades are slipping. You haven't even started on your college applications.'"

3) Most damning to me is the president's unwillingness to make his transcripts public. If Obama had really been a stellar student with impeccable grades as an undergrad, is there any doubt they would have been made public by now and trumpeted on the front page of the New York Times as proof of his brilliance? To me it all adds up to affirmative action.
 
Ah -- it's the affirmative action angle -- rather than my rich an prominent forebears ensured my access to terrific education and career opportunities as evidence by recent Republican nominees Bush and McCain. Honestly, the fact that Bush and McCain were comparatively unstellar performers as undergrads should in no way diminish their subsequent careers of remarkable achievement. Likewise any tarnishes on Obama's academic record are pretty much wiped clear in my book by graduating cum laude at Harvard Law. Einstein wasn't exactly a stellar student in German public schools if I remember reading correctly.
 
I see the office of the Presidency in a much different light than Podhoretz. As such, I think his article misses the boat. Maybe Podhoretz is right and I'm wrong, but here's my assessment of Obama in a rather length nutshell.

The public's perception of the Presidential job description is one thing. Unfortunately for the nation, the actual duties have morphed into something quite different.

When the President is sworn into office, he takes an oath to uphold the Constitution. This document is the law of the land and the President is supposedly in charge of enforcing the law and protecting the nation's citizens. In reality, from Clinton to Bush to Obama, we've seen the Presidency appoint to the Attorney General office Janet Reno, John Ashcroft, and Eric Holder. Any serious research indicates that these men (and I include Janet Reno unless someone can prove Reno is a woman) were chosen not to enforce the Constitution, but to protect the Executive Branch and the powerful corporate/banking interests that lobby and fund the political parties. Thus the actual job description for the modern day President is not necessarily to serve the citizens of the United States, but rather the power interests including the governmental bureaucracies and the powerful corporations. The oath of office is merely for show. Sadly, it means nothing.

In the past decade. we've seen whistle blowers punished, while powerful banks involved with money laundering (Wells Fargo) and falsifying documents (practically all the big banks) received bailouts. We've seen billions of dollars squandered and unaccounted for in Iraq (Bush). We've seen Obama recklessly hand out billions of dollars away to cronies only to see their companies fold (Solyndra). Was this stupidity or incompetence? I think not. This is corruption. The fact that it goes unpunished and largely unreported on shows just how compromised the system has become.

Podhoretz's article points out Obama's shady background; his association with Ayers and Wright, his failure/reluctance to disclose birth records and grades, etc. Isn't this what one would expect if you were looking for a mafia don? And that's my point. The primary function of the Office of the Presidency is to conduct business as a mafia don. Obama fits the bill.

With Bush, we saw the Presidency use signing statements to bypass legislation. Under the Obama Presidency, signing statements have accelerated, contrary to what Obama campaigned on.

With Bush, we saw government the Executive Branch torture detainees, wiretap American citizens, and conduct searches without warrants. Under Obama, despite promises to the contrary, we've seen these practices accelerate.

Under Bush, the Secretary of Treasury - former Goldmanite Hank Paulson - was allowed to extort hundreds of billions of dollars from the US Treasury to bailout the banking system and AIG. The recipients of the bailouts knowingly committed acts of fraud (and still do) with respect to forging documents and misrepresenting information. This subsequently induced the ongoing global economic morass. We were told no crimes were committed. Obama was elected with the understanding he would clean up the mess. Not only has he not followed through on his promise, Obama has rewarded and followed the the same corrupt bankers/economist that caused the problem. People like Jon Corzine, Tim Geithner, Robert Rubin, and Larry Summers all profited immensely from the schemes their respective companies perpetrated which led to the near collapse of the economy.

Besides serving the bureaucracies and corporate powers, the President's other major duty is to persuade the American people that he serves them. In order to pull this off, the President has to be able to lie with no conscience, speak eloquently, and relate to the common man (on a pseudo level). Obama fits the bill. Recently, when it was pointed out that a character in his book did not actually exist, Obama countered the discovery by stating that the character was a composite of several people. Everyone knows he is an effective public speaker. His knowledge of sports and participation in basketball help him relate to things the general public know well.

In summation, Obama is not fit to serve as President when held to the standard we learned in school; upholding the Constitution and governing effectively by striving to serve the citizens of the United States.

But when taking a more jaded view - one that I believe is more accurate - Obama is extremely qualified to serve as President. He is intelligent, duplicitous, and is a reflection of the corrupt system that now controls government. Choosing Romney won't change much. If he was any different than Obama, he would not have advanced as far as he has.

Podhoretz stated that liberalism, white guilt, and perhaps affirmative action is the primary reason that Obama was elected. I'd say that these things were merely the tools used by a now corrupt system in order to get Obama in office. The same system will use other tools to get Romney or the next Bush in office. The system is broken. How else can years of Executive corruption exponentially increase without any arrests, checks, or balances?
 
Agreed Musburger that corruption is alive and well. It's thriving. But, presupposing (sadly) that it will exist to some extent is the norm these days. That said, there is a huge difference in the agenda and objectives of those that occupy the oval office. Obama is a product of the radical left, many of which hate the country and all it represents. Our stature, for lack of a better term, on the world stage has dropped dramatically under obama's reign. Never have we had a president that harbors as much disgust and contempt for our military, capitalism, and traditional values long-held by the majority of Americans. If corruption is the name of the game, and I agree that is is to a point, one can still make a comparison of executives and leadership based on the general mood and condition of the nation under each watch. A perfect example would be the Reagan administration. Certainly there must have been a substantial amount of political corruption during his terms, but there also existed a great deal of leadership that seems to be absent today. Obama possesses absolutely no leadership skills. In other words, there are no positives to offset the negatives. I'm not saying that Reagan was without faults. I'm just using him as an example to illustrate the fact that we can, in spite of political shennanigans of those we elect, still place people in office that do tend to have the best interests of the nation as their major objective. Such in not the case now.

I also think that the main purpose of the article was to explain the rise to power of a person that has such a questionable track record on so many major issues. The baggage he brought with him to the presidency makes one wonder how such a person could garner so many votes. I think he hit the nail on the head.

Yes, it would be nice if we could purge the corruption, but we may have passed the point of no return. What we can do is elect officials who, regardless of the current political climate, can display the type of leadership and guidance that the American public can have confidence in. Obama is nowhere close.

That said, I cannot at this time, make a reasonable assertion regarding the gender of Janet Reno. Perhaps she is just confused.
 
Good thread. I agree with much on here but disagree without the same. President Obama has changed course in many areas. I think he has had to be more moderate in many ways in his first term due to the economy. In addition the weight of being the first Black President of the USA has made him feel he must win reelection or his Presidency will be viewed as a failure no mater what and that will not be a good thing for Black Americans. He has tried to make more changes but the filibuster, or threat thereof, has required 60 votes in the Senate to get anything passed. This is why we saw more progress in the first 2 years of his Presidency and again he was being more moderate due ot the economy and being his first term.

In retrospect if he had not focused as much on healthcare early on he could have gotten more done. I think down the road that his how is Presidency will be viewed. They will say, yes you got healthcare, but you ended up with a compromised bill that wasn't what your voters really wanted, and you left so much else on the table.
 
Musburger pretty much nailed it. I think the state of the economy pretty well guaranteed that a Democrat was going to win. However, the bailout was very unpopular at the time, and I think that had McCain voted against it, the race would have been significantly closer.

First, it would have given him a large boost of credibility when he told people he wasn't just a third term of George W. Bush.

Second, he could have used it against Obama in some key states that were getting economically hammered while the financial fat cats were getting bailed out by the taxpayer.

Would it have made a difference in the result? Probably not. I think it may have cost Obama North Carolina, Indiana, Florida, Ohio, and Virginia, which would have made the eleciton much closer.

What's sad is that the public wanted to strongly repudiate George W. Bush, but for the most part, they got a third term of George W. Bush.
 
In a nutshell, BO took his filibuster proof majority in the senate and wasted his HC vision by basically giving everyone from the free marketers to the single payers something they didn't want.

In a nutshell, he outsourced his HC plan to the two most partisan and disdainful leaders he could - Pilosi and Reid.

He claims he reached out to Rs (and perhaps he did) but any bipartisanship got cock blocked by the Pelosi-Reid axis and Obama didn't have the stones to tell them to F off.

He's trending toward getting routed in November.
 
The problem is that the alternative the Republicans are offering is Mitt Romney, who has no core beliefs whatsoever and who will, in fact, profess to believe anything if he thinks it will help him win election.

I read on Politico that the Obama team has put together a "devastating" series of video clips in which Romney flip-flops seven times over about a 20-year period. Apparently, the entire commercial consists of nothing but clips with dates attached to them.


We're ******.
 
Not that I am Presidential material by any standard, the argument about Ivy's is dumb. I got out of HS not giving a damn about going to college. I aced the Military exam which was pretty easy. I had really high SAT scores but did not even understand how financial aid helped or could help. I was not ready.

I joined the Army and ended up in an elite unit, The Honor Guard in Washington D.C. I took classes when I could at a couple of schools in the D.C. area. Before getting out I got accepted to William and Mary and a few others. Not chump schools.

Before I left the Capital area, years after H.S. and with more than two years of college under my belt I applied to some schools I felt were out of my reach just to see what happened. Well, they loved my essay and my past. They felt that I would add to the composition and diversity. I was offered some financial aid as well but not completely. Later I found ways that would have supplemented any short in funding.

They were: Brown, Columbia and Penn as well as UVA, William and Mary again (but under probation having deferred before). I ended up moving back to Texas needing a change.

Me, a kid who waited years to actually pursue an education and not deemed a minority nor attended an Ivy for undergrad got in. It happens. They would not be the institutions they are with just one type of student or one background.

It's a weak argument and needs to be reigned in from intelligent discourse. If I qualified, Obama damned well could have and then some. I voted for the guy last election but he was not my first choice to run in the Dem ticket. He is by far not my choice this time around and will most likely vote Libertarian or 3rd party. It won't be Obama and damned sure won't be Romney.

We need to turn our system on its *** and as long as people vote for the lesser of two evils we continue to hose ourselves. It's disgusting the lack of balls we have and the flippant nature of the public. One election cycle and we could send a message, open up our system and maybe, for once, make our politicians accountable. Maybe I am just a dreamer but I do know what we have continues on a downward suck spiral. At least that is my opinion.

Threads like this for Bush sucked and this does too.
 
I worked at a restaurant next to Reno's condo at the time. This is when I lived in D.C. I want to say she was always very nice, always smiled and said hello when walking by. But, she did sort of have manly traits and we used to play this game figuring out whose *** she could kick.

She's a class individual all the way and a person I respect but um, yeah.
 
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