what are barack obama's flaws?

Via Sullivan via someone else, the future radical begins organizing:

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a15/NLinStPaul/Obama_strike.jpg

“It’s unrealistic,” Sheen told The Huffington Post Canada in a backroom at Montreal’s Theatre St-Denis after speaking at Free the Children’s latest We Day youth rally. “I wonder how many of those progressives are black? How many of those progressives understand historically what happened?

“There’s one face in that crowd that night in Lincoln Park that was the expression of absolute miraculous reality when Barack Obama took the stage with his family as president-elect. Did you see that night when they showed Jesse Jackson?” he asked, mentioning the civil rights icon who spoke earlier at the same event. “I wonder how disappointed Jesse is with Barack Obama?”

kind of hate this attitude, tbh. as though the mere fact of barack obama's race should silence all criticism of his presidency. something creepily quasi-racist in the implications.

“There’s one face in that crowd that night in Lincoln Park that was the expression of absolute miraculous reality when Barack Obama took the stage with his family as president-elect.

I don't know what Jesse Jackson was doing in Lincoln Park but Obama was in Grant Park that night.

“I wonder how many of those progressives are black? How many of those progressives understand historically what happened?"

Cornel West, Tavis Smiley and Adolph Reed (who called bullshit on Obama back in the mid-1990s) have progressive credentials at least as impressive as martin sheen's and none of them are enamored of President Change-We-Can-Believe-In. (whatever one makes of their critiques of Obama -- or themselves, for that matter -- the point is still that they're black, progressive and critical of Obama.)

jesse jackson's actually been moderately critical of obama.

We blacks were the first people embracing Obama, long before the people at expensive fundraisers were supporting him.

I don't think that's quite right--pretty sure Hillary still had the clear majority of black support before Iowa. Which I think I understand; it took Iowa to make it clear that Obama could win.

In some way...Bill Clinton had certain freedoms to address blacks and their issues because he was a white president. Obama, to the contrary, has to endure insults like no other previous president. Look at the coded language the Right is using against President Barack Obama. Openly calling him a liar in Congress, saying he is 'not a Christian, he was not born here, he is not one of us.' That makes addressing such issues trickier for the first African-American in the White House.

I don't bother saying so anymore, and I'm sure I'll regret saying so now, but I think that's exactly right. That's not at all to say that Obama is beyond criticism, or to disagree with contenderizer's post just above. I just wonder if his harshest critics on here bother factoring that in. It's like it's passe to even talk about it.

i agree, clemenza, and i do try to factor that in. IRL, i do try to combat the vile racially-tinged stuff that i hear (some of which isn't even all that well "coded"). that said, i don't see how that should stop anyone who objects to his Administration's abysmal civil liberties record or too-close ties to Wall Street from raising such objections.

That's fair.

Jonathan Chait of all people synopsizes last week's WaPo story about debt negotiations.

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/05/barack-obamas-old-girlfriends-get-dishy.html

I haven’t read “The Waste Land” for a year, and I never did bother to check all the footnotes. But I will hazard these statements — Eliot contains the same ecstatic vision which runs from Münzer to Yeats. However, he retains a grounding in the social reality/order of his time. Facing what he perceives as a choice between ecstatic chaos and lifeless mechanistic order, he accedes to maintaining a separation of asexual purity and brutal sexual reality. And he wears a stoical face before this. Read his essay on Tradition and the Individual Talent, as well as Four Quartets, when he’s less concerned with depicting moribund Europe, to catch a sense of what I speak. Remember how I said there’s a certain kind of conservatism which I respect more than bourgeois liberalism — Eliot is of this type. Of course, the dichotomy he maintains is reactionary, but it’s due to a deep fatalism, not ignorance. (Counter him with Yeats or Pound, who, arising from the same milieu, opted to support Hitler and Mussolini.) And this fatalism is born out of the relation between fertility and death, which I touched on in my last letter — life feeds on itself. A fatalism I share with the western tradition at times. You seem surprised at Eliot’s irreconcilable ambivalence; don’t you share this ambivalence yourself, Alex?

The full story.

I got a hard-on reading that passage, I admit.

man

was that written by buddy glass?

"I'd like to be eaten by wild animals."

I'd love to see Alex Trebek's response to that!

ANSWER!

Trivia aside, Impeach Obama:

http://www.nationofchange.org/real-politics-must-be-streets-constitutional-crimes-barack-obama-1335936844

Shan't

max's Occidental letters found

http://gawker.com/5907066/exclusive-my-occidental-college-love-letters

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/05/01/presidential-proclamation-loyalty-day-2012

this shit is like an onion article

this is just a W carryover, I think? So perfectly consistent.

it still kinda floors me that we have a 'flag day,' but 'loyalty day' might top even that.

ah, i thought it was a new holiday as indirect response to the M1GS. don't think about workers rights, focus on waving your flag and reciting the pledge etc

it's been around since 1921! I'm sure the date was no accident.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyalty_Day

yup, our great anticommunist holiday

well, labor day is too, kinda

agree w/ most of the article morbs posted except the crap about him having OBL killed so he couldn't reveal 'what really happened on 9-11.' jesus christ, this is why this kind of criticism gets marginalized.

More than two centuries ago, our Founders laid out a charter that assured the rule of law and the rights of man. Through times of tranquility and the throes of change, the Constitution has always guided our course toward fulfilling that most noble promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve the chance to pursue their full measure of happiness. America has carried on not only for the skill or vision of history's celebrated figures, but also for the generations who have remained blissfully unaware that we had a thing called "Loyalty Day." On Loyalty Day, we reflect on that Edenic state of unknowing, and press on in the long journey toward having to live with the knowledge of Loyalty Day.

In the years since our Constitution was penned and ratified, Americans have moved our Nation forward by embracing a commitment to each other, to the fundamental principles that unite us, and to the future we share. We weathered the storms of civil war and segregation, of conflicts that spanned continents. We overcame threats from within and without -- yet who can stand against this Loyalty Day? Not you, and not me. We upheld the spirit of service at the core of our democracy, and we widened the circle of opportunity not just for a privileged few, but for the ambitious many. If it comes down to ambitious many vs. privileged few I have to be honest, the smart money is going with the privileged few. Just so you know. Time and again, men and women achieved what seemed impossible by joining imagination to common purpose and necessity to courage. That legacy still burns brightly, like a flag on Loyalty Day.

Countless Americans demonstrate. Frankly, it gets on my nerves. Their actions help ensure prosperity for this generation and those yet to come, but I still feel like I have to do something about it. On Loyalty Day, we rededicate ourselves to having things like Loyalty Day, to the cornerstones of sloganeering, spin, and jingoism, and to the unending pursuit of...something, I don't know. I'll get back to you on it.

In order to recognize the American spirit of loyalty and the sacrifices that so many have made for our Nation, the Congress, by Public Law 85-529 as amended, has designated May 1 of each year as "Loyalty Day." On this day, let us ask ourselves, "Are we really doing this?"

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2012, as The Means of Production Should Rest in the Hands of the Workers Day. Lol pwned I actually meant Loyalty Day. This Loyalty Day, I call upon all the people of the United States to join in support of this national observance, whether by displaying the flag of the United States on a pin on their lapels, incontestably the surest indication of the secret truths of their hearts, or by looking at somebody else's flag pin and commenting favorably on it.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this first day of May, in the year of our Lord two thousand twelve, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-sixth. Thrash til death you assholes,

BARACK OBAMA

max's Occidental letters found

OK, so the main question I have here is: Why did Max forward the overdue notice to Ari? Did he check out the book for her? Did she promise to return it for him but didn't?

a question for historians

Edward Klein has a book out.

As Election Day approaches, President Obama is sharing a few important things about himself. He has mentioned more than once in recent weeks that he cooks “a really mean chili.” He has impressive musical pitch, he told an Iowa audience. He is “a surprisingly good pool player,” he informed an interviewer — not to mention (though he does) a doodler of unusual skill.

All in all, he joked at a recent New York fund-raiser with several famous basketball players in attendance, “it is very rare that I come to an event where I’m like the fifth or sixth most interesting person.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/03/us/politics/obama-plays-to-win-in-politics-and-everything-else.html?_r=1&ref=politics

haha damn you beat me

Haha this too https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/us/holder-rules-out-prosecutions-in-cia-interrogations.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

looking forward to lewis article on obama

that ny times article is the dumbest shit i have seen in a long time--of course someone who wants to be the president is obsessed with winning--Bush was the same way, Clinton, too. stupid.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/09/why-i-refuse-to-vote-for-barack-obama/262861/

conor friedersdorf sez no on greenwaldian/morbsian grounds

from Doug Henwood of the Left Business Observer, right after the first debate.

I think there’s a lot of the narcissist about Obama. There’s something chilly and empty about him. Unlike Bill Clinton, he doesn’t revel in human company. It makes him uncomfortable. He wants the rich and powerful to love him, but doesn’t care about the masses (unless they’re a remote but adoring crowd). Many people seem to bore him. It shows.

And the charms of the narcissist wear badly over time. All the marvelous things his fans projected on him in 2008 have faded. He’s no longer the man of their fantasies. And that shows too.

Which is not unrelated to a more political problem. Unlike Franklin Roosevelt, who famously said that he welcomed the hatred of the rich, Obama wants to flatter them.... FDR came out of the aristocracy, and had the confidence to step on the fancy toes of the rich now and then. Obama came out of nowhere, was groomed for success by elite institutions throughout his impressive rise, and no doubt wants some of those nice shoes for himself.

More broadly, the political problem of the Democrats is that they’re a party of capital that has to pretend for electoral reasons sometimes that it’s not....

What do liberals stand for these days? Damned if I know. It’s not a philosophy you can express in aphorisms. (Yeah, politics are complex, and slogans are simple, but if you’ve got a passionately held set of beliefs you can manage that contradiction.) Too many qualifications and contradictions. They can’t just say less war and more equality, because they like some wars and want to bore you with just war theory to explain the morality of drone attacks, and worry about optimal tax rates and incentives. Join an empty philosophy to an empty personality and you get a very flat and meandering performance in debate.

Romney believes in money. Obama believes in nothing.

http://lbo-news.com/2012/10/04/why-obama-lost-the-debate/

from today's begging-for-cash email: "If you're proud to be on the President's team, give him a virtual high five -- donate $4 today."

Even Mr. Obama’s speech has changed a bit, close observers say. Though he still disdains Washington, he often sounds less like a disapproving outsider and more like a participant. One former aide was startled to hear Mr. Obama use “impact” as a verb, a particular tendency in the capital.

I'm glad we had a president aware of this.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/us/politics/after-4-years-friends-see-shifts-in-obamas.html?ref=politics&_r=0

"impact" (v) is disgusting savagery

admittedly takes a backseat to police statism & war crimes

oh that's vile

Signs that read “Deer Crossing” and the like are going to continue to pop up throughout our country including Avon Lake, but who are these signs for? Deer cannot read, do not obey the law and probably will cross where they wish. Although adorable companions, it is hard to remember the last time that the news reported an animal talking, thinking or providing significant input for the benefit of society. Yet, these signs cost taxpayers like so much of government.

Dogs, cats, whales, seals and deer are animals that might enhance a human’s life, but all cannot read, write or think. They are animals. Yes, people dress them, buy them extravagant blinge and do other strange things with them; however, animals are not human. They are on this earth like trees to make humans’ lives better. As humans we must be kind to them, eat them when hungry, feed them when they are, but remember they are here to enhance our lives. Besides, it appears that this gesture of kindness to animals does not extend human to human. This President’s Obamacare appears to welcome abortion of innocent babies. It is painful to think that there are those who cry for seals while Obamacare never blinks an eye at abortion.

Somewhere the advancement of society has been limited by animals and the unscientific malarkey of loons. America has had to halt drilling, construction, experiments for medicine and cosmetics and much that might benefit humans.

Yes, signs are important-- to humans; “Stop” signs, and others are more than just costly decorations scattered along the roadways. However, depending on the school district, most humans can read them, but animals not so much.

Was that in the SOTU address? Cuz I don't remember it there.

"blinge"?

Check her blog: http://www.theprickleypear.com/

Rich ain't bad.
Unless your parents literally gave you the farm and several million dollars, you are not the one percent that President Obama is working to devalue and destroy. Most of us have settled for working hard to earn our paychecks and then the government taxes and steals most of our money.
It used to be that liberals would pit conservatives against the population by using the race card. Discrimination as it relates to sex, age and race might be an issue, but last I heard this President is part Black and part White and, probably, an American citizen, who received 51 percent of the American vote. So it appears race is a non-issue.

With those three discrimination labels less important, now there’s a worse label that Jesse and Al most likely will travel first class to stomp down--”rich.” Unbelievable. Getting people fired up about “rich” rather than jobs, taxes, health care, billions spent by this Administration on failed plans, failed projects seems to be the new plan. Who could ever have imagined an American President devaluing hard work and the American Dream?

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and suggest "Deer Crossing" and other signs located on a road are for the operators of road-bound vehicles. I'm not really sure why that is such a difficult concept to grasp.

Words are fun and worth clearly stating, in English if in America, and with an opinion that is yours because it’s good to have an opinion.

and, probably, an American citizen

i guess we've just gotten so numb by Birther craziness -- and Teabag craziness has exceeded even Birther craziness -- that we just let this one slide w/t comment.

Fuck this guy:

http://rt.com/usa/monsanto-bill-blunt-agriculture-006/

fuck a house and a senate more like, tho he's still a dick for signing it.