.... of course

Obama Urges Renewed Alliance With Europe in Berlin Speech - America’s Election HQ

Throw shit at the wall and see if any of it sticks...

You see this kind of thing (though I don't think it applies to Steve) when someone makes up his mind about something and then sets about retroactively justifying it. That is, they have no problem with elitism at all - they have a problem with Obama and therefore will criticize anything and everything about him. The idea is that it is all these traits that make them view him in an unfavorable light, but the reality is that they simply opted to do so from the get-go and are digging for ways to justify the initial, irrational impulse. My favorite so far has been that Obama is a bad man because he's popular and confident that he can win. I'm waiting for something about his ears being far too big for serving as POTUS next.

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

You're fuckin' joking, right?

Obama was elected to the Senate in 2004, and was sworn in in January 2005. Only two short years later, he annouces he's running for the Presidency, and he's been, pretty much, campaigning non-stop since them.

What did he do in the Senate (as a junior Senator) in those two years, that makes him so fucking wonderful?

I applaud him for his fortitude and his sense of the need to better himself. Harvard? Columbia? That's major league, man. Law Professor? That's pretty sweet.

But it doesn't mean he should be President...

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Obama's New "57 State Patriotic Pin":




Sayeth John Drake - 10/13/08: "OK, you're right, I admit to LYING"

Hmmm .... I wonder what the requirement is?

• Columbia University and Harvard Law School
• community organizer and civil rights attorney
• law professor at University of Chicago Law School
• Illinois state Senator
• U.S. Senator
• first African American to be a major party's nominee for President of the United States

... that's not such a bad cv .... imho.

I wasn't making the case that he's wonderful, I was stating where he's at in his life. Becoming a U.S. Senator is an accomplishment in itself, but in Obama's short time, he did have a few accomplishments (the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, for example)

I do have to admit that he is relatively inexperienced as a politician. In many ways, in comparison to McCain's career.... Obama is the young promising rookie who seems to have a lot of natural talent while McCain is the older, tested veteran who's seen it all.

An argument can be made that either is an advantage. But I think, almost always, the tendency is to spend time evaluating the rookie.... that's why Obama's getting so much press... That's why this election campaign is a referendum on his capability and potential.


Nope. It doesn't automatically qualify him. It's just some of the stuff on his resume. In many ways, his interview is happening now. He's being tested in every press conference and every speech and soon, every debate, to see how he can handle it. To many people, the jury is still out on him until they see more. As it should be.

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Congratulations President-Elect Obama

He was born into the middle classes, and is where he is partly because of his middle class education. He is not self made. It's scary that the middle class lawyer and academic is suddenly cast as completely fresh and unique solely because of his race.

What truly amazes me, is that even some smart Americans can become "suckers" for a candidate such as Obama, who suffers from a severe case of "hubrism". A candidate who is packaged, marketed and distributed as a post-era JFK replica and whom many Americans ended up falling for the bullshit.

I have spent hours shaking my head in wonderment, over how just guillible Americans really are. A country who have spent so much of their time policing the world, you would think that they would clean up their own backyard first.

All candidates are packaged and marketed according to what has been called "low information signals" in recent years (I forget who coined this term). This is why candidates kiss babies, pose for photos drinking the working man's beer, and other pandering wastes of time. And really, is packaging Obama as the next JFK any different than the last POTUS, a spoiled rich kid packaged as a cowboy-boot wearing, ranching everyman?

Sadly, politicians come to us more as products and marketing gimmicks than as people with ideas that may or may not have merits. Americans don't "fall for it" - we demand it. We demand irrelevancies and pap from our political figures in one way or another, almost exclusively.

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

He is self-made.

You can't get into Harvard of Columbia without excellent grades. You can't afford to pay outright for either school as a middle class person and have to take student loans (as Obama did). You don't become president of the Harvard Law Review unless you earn the respect of your collegues...etc...etc.

This may seem a Clintonian thing to say, but if Obama was solely depending on the fact that he's black for all his support, Jesse Jackson would have been the first president.

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Congratulations President-Elect Obama

I see. Now people from the middle class should be dismissed. Sorry Bill Gates, everything you've accomplished doesn't mean anything now.

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Is our children learning? -George W. Bush

"I think—tide turning—see, as I remember—I was raised in the desert, but tides kind of—it's easy to see a tide turn—did I say those words?"—Washington, D.C., June 14, 2006

"[T]he illiteracy level of our children are appalling."—Washington, D.C., Jan. 23, 2004

Yes, someone with the ability to communicate so well with the rest of the world is someone to be worried about.

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I am glad that you brought up this comparison.

Obama is a perfect blue-print of our current President George Bush. And this is the reason why we cannot afford to make this back to back poor decision of electing a questionable candidate for President. When Bush was a candidate, there were a bunch of question marks, but they were ignored. I would like to believe that Americans are smarter than this, when it comes to hiring someone for the biggest job in the world. But it does not look good, for the possibility of a President, who actually understand policies, foreign and domestic issues.

It however looks great for a candidate who is touting hype, that is camoflaged as political knowledge.

Yep - here here!

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You can appreciate what Obama has done, and whether or not he should be the next POTUS is debateable. Just don't refer to him as self made or unique. He's a middle class lawyer, academic and politician. He's the exact same as most of the political classes and the self styled elites. There seems to be a large number of people who see his race (a marginal factor, at most) as something which makes him unique and means he will be different.

There's so much self-loathing on this thread. It's like Americans don't know how to react to actually having someone go abroad that people can't wait to meet because he reminds them precisely that he isn't Bush.

We forget what Bush and what former Presidents do on upcoming elections. The people are always hungry for qualities they feel are lacking in the outgoing President. Remember what Bush ran on? "Uniter not a Divider". But the minute he got into office he ruled with a heavy hand, not listening to any dissenting opinions, insisting on punching holes in the wall instead of stopping and thinking.

What does Obama have? Everything Bush appears to lack, apparently, or at least that's the projection that's put on him by people.