The result in one Massachusetts lawsuit says it is not. Clive McFarlane wrote a comment posted on the Worcester Telegram & Gazette web site titled “Birther’s True Colors are Showing” referring to attorney Robert Delle who in a telephone conversation with McFarlane had expressed a lack of confidence about the authenticity of the President’s birth certificate.
The dispute centered over a matter of interpretation of where the middle ground lies and whether it’s fair to label someone a birther because they say they can’t reach a conclusion about the birth certificate without some kind of further investigation or study.
Judge C. Jeffrey Kinder threw out the suit, finding that such statements centered on McFarlane’s interpretation of the phone conversation. You can read the story at The Docket: The news blog of Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly. Also the court stated that the newspaper cannot be sued for something a commenter says on the their web site. The Court said that it was alleged, but not shown, that McFarlane was an employee of the paper, something very likely given that the email address associated with the article was at the newspaper.
Further reading:
- Full text of the court’s opinion (cost $12)
Yes, anyone expressing doubts about Obama’s place of birth is by definition, a Birther.
No credible excuse remains for those doubts.
Anyone really unsure who is curious has a volume of info that can be googled in an instant. If their own subject biases lead them to only look at or listent to nutty sources like WND or Birther sites and not have the common sense to check actual official government sites, etc. then YES, they are a Birther.
If they are willing to just spout off and continue to have doubts without doing any research at all or simply taking what somebody whispered to them or sent them in a chain email at face value, then yes, they are gullible fools by nature and deserve to be tarnished with the Birther brush for regurgitating such irresponsible nonsense.
To my understanding, to prove libel, you have to prove the statement was false and caused damages. To declare/label someone a birther (or a believer in some other odious silliness) can certainly cause damages (lost reputation, business, reversal of political fortunes) … but how does a person prove the negative … that one is not a birther, but rather a rational Notabirther? You can’t prove / disprove a belief, unless the belief has been acted upon in documented fashion. I suppose the accused could challenge the accuser to produce a record of any birther-y statements. Volunteer for a lie detector test.
Why would a Notabirther have doubts over the documents Obama has produced? Isn’t that by definition conspirac-ish / birther-y thinking? I’m trying to imagine someone being confident Obama was born where he says he was, but suspecting that Obama, perhaps unable to produce legit documents because they were lost / destroyed by Hawaii, decided to produce fakes rather than explain the absence of the originals. If docs were missing, Hawaii would still provide the COLB … only a birther would demand more. Dude was a birther.
That being said, outing closet birthers (or closet cranks of other stripes), particularly those in public service, is not libel, it’s a public service!
Well said!
The original article by McFarlane
http://telegram.com/article/20110429/COLUMN44/104299841/1003/rss01&source=rss
So, he was expressing doubts about the certificate Obama got to shut up Trump. Not a birther? Hahaha! By the way, I do not know about the mooslim bit, but he definitely believes Obama is a Marxist:
http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/x550419254/One-candidate-for-Congress-runs-to-the-right
Is it not rather ironical how it is guys like Robert Delle who are suing newspapers for libel, while anyone can plainly see that they are the ones who are guilty of that same offense? For years now they have been libelling the former REPUBLICAN and JEWISH Governor of Hawaii and her administration of being complicit in keeping a usurper in the “White” House.
I know it will not happenm but just suppose Governor Lingle were to take the birfers’ admonishings “to be a man” to heart and were to sue Her Majesty Dr Orly Taitz ESQ DDS (WBUH in the DC) for libel, how long before Orly would cry out “political repression” and cite the first amendment. while she herself had no problem subpoenaing five foreign Ambassadors knowing full well that no Ambassador has the right to intervene in a US political question? To quote Marie Antoinette Orly Taitz wants to have her cake and eat it. More than once, of course.
Is Obama killing his gay friend Donald Young a conspiracy theory?
http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/2010/07/25/mom-of-murdered-obama-gay-lover-speaks-up/
Obviously, especially when it’s something promoted on a crank blog that heavily censors and bans dissenting opinion.
They’re baa-ack!
Don’t you mean allegedly or is bearing false witness your proud specialty?
Or is it MUCH more likely that Wayne Madsen is a raving lunatic spreading lies you desperately want to believe?
“In 2003 [Madsen] said that he had uncovered information linking the September 11 attacks to the government of Saudi Arabia as well as to Bush administration.”
“In 2005, [Madsen] wrote than an unidentified former CIA agent claimed that the USS Cole was actually hit by a Popeye cruise missile launched from an Israeli Dolphin-class submarine.”
“In a 2008 ArabNews article, Madsen is quoted as suggesting that the criminal prosecution of New York State governor Eliot Spitzer was partly due to the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.”
“On April 25, 2009, Madsen reported that some unidentified UN World Health Organization officials and scientists believed the 2009 new H1N1 strain of swine flu virus appeared to be the product of U.S. military sponsored gene splicing, as opposed to natural processes.”
“In July 2009, Madsen released a report saying there was a Q Group within the National Security Agency tasked with concealing US government involvement in 9/11.”
“[Madsen] has been described by many journalists including Andrew Sullivan at the Atlantic Monthly, CBS, and Salon as a conspiracy theorist.”
(source: various from wiki)
Yes, that’s correct.
Majority Will, nice list on Madsen’s credibility (rather lack of)
However Madsen is just following Birther rule 7:
#7 make stuff up
I am curious to know what you guys think about Obama and Donald Young. Do you believe they were lovers? There is evidence for it besides from Wayne Madsen.
NO.
There is no real “evidence”. None at all.
Just some sick, delusional fantasies from some very warped and damaged people.
It takes a certain level of twisted gullible to buy into such nonsense and baseless trash, merely on the say-so of disreputable characters and mere hearsay.
Agreed. And not worthy of any discussion.
Even if it were true, why would anyone who was not a racist, homophobic bigot care in the least?
Because Donald Young is dead. Did you read the article I linked to? http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/2010/07/25/mom-of-murdered-obama-gay-lover-speaks-up/
Sooooooo,.,,,, was everyone who Obama ever knew, who has since died, murdered by Obama?
Or are you birthers just guessing wildly at this one because it satisfies your hatred of both blacks AND gays?
Bingo!
You do realize you linked to an article written by a conspiracy nutbag, who quotes a supermarket tabloid, that prides itself on being “More outrageous than the National Enquirer”…..
Do you really expect us to take that at all seriously?
National Enquirer was the first with the John Edwards story. How did that pan out?
The article was quoting relatives of the murdered man, not space aliens.
You can believe the story isn’t true if it makes you feel better about Obama. Your attempts to debunk this conspiracy are pretty lame so far, and you seem more interested in attacking me rather than learning the truth. Surely there are some thinkers on this website, not just sheep?
BTW, the Dream From My Father / William Ayers ghostwriting is another conspiracy you guys should get going on debunking.
Start with this video by Jack Cashill:
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/298382-1
Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.
Where is Dr. Conspiracy?
> is another conspiracy you guys should get going on debunking
What’s that now, the “I give you 10,000 baseless idiocies to waste your time on” strategy? We must really scare you sh*tless with the previous debunkings of everything you birfers hold dear. You come across as really desperate with your “hey, can’t debunk this one, huh?” crap.
Why? That conspiracy has already been debunked. And your conspiracy in the article you linked to is so ridiculous, off-the-wall, and disreputable that it debunks itself.
Look, if you aren’t smart enough to understand that you shouldn’t believe literally everything you read then that’s your problem. The rest of the posters on this board who aren’t extremist nutjobs figured that out a long time ago.
Yes.
Yeah…but your comparison falls apart when you carry it through.
That a trash rag might have actually broken a legit story here and there during the course of their sordid history of wallowing in made up tabloid tales is hardly a defense of such sources.
What you seem to fail to grasp is what happens next, in those rare precious moments where they are onto a “real” story…
…Yeah, that’s right, actual media eventually picks up the story and runs with it as well. So your Edwards example is apples to oranges. Tabloids may have started the reporting, but only BECAUSE there was actual merit to that particular story, the rest of the media was all over it, albeit about a year later.
Sorry, but your lurid trash gay fantasies don’t hold up and the story was dumped long ago because it was nothing but trash and the originator of these tall tales proved to be an extremely uncredible source with nothing to back up his outrageous tales. He miserably failed a lie detector test on these charges and deserves to be taken no more seriously than someone claiming that Elvis’ ghost anal probed them last night…
The good Doctor has eviscerated Cashill’s mental waste products long ago. It’s on this site in the recent past. Please do your own research, start with the links on the right sidebar.
I haven’t given you 10,000 baseless idiocies. I have brought up two conspiracies for you:
1. Obama had a gay lover Donald Young, and Obama arranged a Chicago-style professional hit because he was scared and wanted to protect his chances to become president. There is tons of evidence of Obama being bisexual. It doesn’t get covered by the media, just like they don’t cover the fact that Obama didn’t produce anything while President of the Harvard Law Review. There is a lot about him the public doesn’t know! You guys don’t seem very curious either.
2. William Ayers ghost-wrote Dreams from My Father. Cashill’s video I posted above is the best way to get introduced to the evidence for that.
This website catalogs debunked conspiracy theories and so I thought I’d ask you guys to do it for those as well. As of now, it doesn’t seem you’ve done it for either of these.
Stanislaw claims #2 is debunked but pointed me to no evidence. I find that Cashill is the only who has done the most extensive research. So far, it is 1 for 1.
He also claims that the #1 article is ridiculous, but he doesn’t describe why. In any case, it was just an article I found that quoted Donald Young’s mom. There are others.
I read the few articles posted here about Cashill. None of it begins to debunk his research about Dreams. Some of the criticisms of Cashill are irrelevant, and unfair. When researching a topic where you don’t have perfect evidence, like Obama’s SSN, nor infinite investigative resources, you are forced to cut corners.
But in any case, there is not one word discussing the connections between Dreams and William Ayers so the idea that this website has debunked this topic (or Cashil’s research on it) is a silly statement.
You’re on your way.
Your ridiculous post is utter nonsense, desperate bigotry and political garbage. You need help.
“you are forced to cut corners”
So, that’s what the fools are using to justify their stupidity now. Pathetic.
While the site is called Obama Conspiracy Theories, it really focuses on eligibility questions more than anything else, which your two items aren’t. I have shown, however, that Cashill is not an honest reporter, so I don’t think anything he says warrants further attention.
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2011/03/deconstructing-jack-cashill/
We need a “Drake Equation” for birther conspiracies, or conspiracies in general.
Yeah, some things are so baseless and beyond stupid that they aren’t worthy of discussion.
We’re not going to waste time discussing whether Malcolm X or Elvis was Obama’s father either.
Nor even dumber stuff claiming that somehow his birth mother wasn’t his mother…
None of that schlock is worth discussion. Some smears and lies are just too outrageous and too unrealistic that it doesn’t bear mention.
Yet, there is the thread about Obama going to Mars. Are any Obama-related CTs somewhat baseful and on the nearer side of stupid? I say not.
Perhaps the goal could be to discuss stupid only once and refer any future mentions of same back to the singular discussion. Which seems to be Doc’s rule, and a good one.
Who can judge the stupid? Judging the topics here on their merits is …. well, without merit. 😉
But it might be fun to try! Hey, Doc, how about a new community rating system for the various themes on OCT? I further suggest the unit of measurement be called the ‘orly’. Usage: “The idea that Obama has a cranial surgery scar is ludcrous. I gotta go at least 8½ orlies on that!”
Majority Will says my post is nonsense, desperate bigotry and garbage. However, he doesn’t tell me why. I could add material for anything I write, but I’d need to know where. However, you guys can do the research as well, Google “Man’s Country” for example. Maybe some of you know people in Chicago. There is plenty of potential for data collection out there.
Regarding Obama’s SSN, it is basically impossible unless you have the power of subpoena to look at all of Obama’s financial records to see if he used an invalid SSN. Investigative journalism is not science, and so people who write about it should be held to a lesser standard.
I went through this post about Jack Cashill:
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2011/03/deconstructing-jack-cashill/
I don’t think it proves that Cashill is not honest, except perhaps the omitting relevant information, but that could be explained away because perhaps Cashill wasn’t aware of it, or did improper research.
Again, I’ll point out that this article is about Obama’s SSN, and so we don’t have perfect information, and there are thousands of records that would need to be put together to make certain and scientific statements. In some cases, research involves going to old buildings and asking people to dig up old checks. It is almost archeology!
I agree that the Dr. found good critiques in the article, and I’m sure Cashill would benefit from an editor such as him.
However, I think it is very unfair to say that nothing Cashill produces is valid because of those mistakes. Furthermore, his research on Dreams is much more researched, and he had better information (complete copies of Dreams and Ayers’ writings, biographies of Obama to correlate with, etc.)
It would be conspiratorial to ignore Cashill’s work because you find holes. Holes could be found in this website, in spite of all the good work.
It is not baseless to consider that Ayers wrote Dreams. I think if you bothered to read Ayers and Dreams, you’d come to a different conclusion. The bottom line is that Cashill is one of the only people who has done both.
I didn’t bring up Malcom X or Elvis. I brought up issues in which there is strong and credible evidence of truth. You guys seem to focus more on ridicule, ironic for a site like this.
The story of Herman Cain should remind you of the threat that ex-lovers can play in the life of a candidate.
Herman Cain was doing very well in the polls until some sexual harassment allegations came forward. And he dropped out immediately after the story of a women who had a longtime affair with him.
Every politician knows this, and when Obama ran for president, he had to clean up. He got scared. It could end his campaign, and guarantee the Republicans a win. It isn’t just about Obama, it is about the party as well.
In general, we know very little about Obama’s past. That should make your more curious. I think he has a purely manufactured image. He has almost no scholarly works. This website already has more work than what Obama has published at Harvard or at the University of Chicago. Does that evidence support Cashill’s thesis?
Then the simple rule that ought to be followed is “Innocent until proven guilty”. if we want to publically accuse someone of using a phony SSN, we need a lot more than, “Well you can’t prove it isn’t”.
Every poll showed Hillary beating any of the Republicans by a margin as large or larger than Obama.
He’s not a scholar and never really claimed to be . He was an Adjunct Instructor at U Chicago, which means he taught some classes while working at a law firm and then later as a state legislator. I have been an Adjunct Prof while working full-time in the biotech industry. It’s very common.
By the way, Romney, Santorum, Paul, etc. aren’t scholars. Gingrich failed to get tennure at a 3rd rate college. Only one President could qualify to be an academic scholar-Woodrow Wilson. So who do you plan to vote for?
This is investigative journalism, not a court of law, the standards are totally different. You have to believe something might be true or you won’t investigate it.
Your point about Hillary is irrelevant because it ignores the possibility that the story came out after the nomination was over.
If someone isn’t a a scholarly role, it doesn’t matter if they don’t produce scholarly works. See the point?
Investigative journalism as opposed to smear mongering starts with a premise and looks for evidence. A true investigative journalist, if he cannot find the evidence to support his case, doesn’t write the story and say, “Hey, it could be true, who knows? I couldn’t absolutely disprove it.”
And as I pointed out to you, Obama’s role at U Chicago was not scholarly. It was part-time non-tenure-track teaching position. There was no expectation that he produuce scholarly works. Nor is there for the Presidency. See the point? By the way, what law journal arrticles did Bill Clinton write as a law professor at Arkansas?
Regarding investigative journalism, I have no idea what you are talking about. Even assuming the allegations about Cashill written by the Doctor are true that he makes mistakes and is dishonest, it doesn’t make Cashill a smear merchant.
I looked up Bill Clinton’s bio. He was only affiliated with the university for 1 year. Obama joined in 1991 and left in 2004, that is plenty of time to produce something. Obama also worked for the Harvard Law review and produced hardly anything.
Maybe you were a mediocre professor, no one would care that you didn’t make papers. Obama we are told over and over is the smartest man to be President.
Anyway, we are in the weeds; if Obama didn’t write much before he wrote Dreams, that is only incomplete evidence that he didn’t write it either. As Cashill said, if hear about someone who has never hit a golf ball before shoots par, wouldn’t you assume something about that story did not make sense?
Obama’s sexual misbehavior and the fact that Ayers ghost-wrote Dreams are considered conspiracy theories. If this website won’t get involved, it would at least be good if the commenters are aware and maybe can do their own research. Don’t attack me or my incomplete evidence.
I’m not a desperate birther, I like finding the truth, hopefully like you. Unfortunately, Obama hasn’t responded to any questions about it, so we are left to websites like this to figure out why there are so many irregularities in Obama’s PDF.
So if error-prone and dishonest doesn’t make one a smear merchant, what does?
I can’t find a definitive statement as to exactly when Clinton severed his tie with the U Arkansas Law School. He didn’t get elected AG until 1976, so he must have done something between 1974 and 1976. As for Obama, according to U Chicago it was 1992-2004.
You need to understand how academia works. I have explained it before, but you didn’t get it, so i will try again. There are 2 types of faculty, tenure-track and non-tenure-track. Tenure-track both teach and do research and are expected to publish. Non-tenure-track only teach and are not expected to publish. Obama was non-tenure-track. He was only expected to teach. His teaching was good enough to earn him a promotion in 1996. According to the University, “Several times during his 12 years as a professor in the Law School, Obama was invited to join the faculty in a full-time tenure-track position, but he declined.” http://chicago.about.com/od/neighborhoodshistory/a/ObamaUofCLawSt.htm
Who says that? Not me. I don’t know which Presidents were the smartest, nor frankly does anyone. Nor does that have much to do with being good or bad in office. The most academically accomplished was certainly Woodrow Wilson, who was President of Princeton before moving to the White House. Was he a great President? Historians generally say no, though their opinions tend to change (they used to be very negative on Grant and now the opinions are quite positive). So, that entire question is irrelevant.
Everyone who ever wrote a book, wrote a first book. In many cases the first book was the author’s best and they spent the rest of their life trying to equal or suurpass it.
Cashill’s case that Ayers wrote it is incredibly weak. Cashill pretends that Ayers was some kind of great writer. What had he written at the time Obama was writing Dreams? A few radical tracts back in the 60s and a book about inner-city teachers published by Teachers College Press in 1989. Hardly the go-to guy foryour best-seller. Especially if you were at Harvard and could find dozens of well-known writers within a 1 mile radius.
There are literally an infinite number of truths. You can waste your time on trivial ones if you’d like. However, do remember that life is short.
Selling books that malign someone using misinformation and logical fallacy pretty much defines “smear merchant.” It’s trivially true.
Only an argumentative and obstinate birther would post, “why there are so many irregularities in Obama’s PDF”.
The state of Hawaii is the relevant authority and vouches for the President’s birth there on August 4th, 1961 from their original documentation.
A certified copy is a certified copy is a certified copy.
Chasing shadows into PDF layers of a scanned copy is asinine.
Unless anyone has actual, credible evidence* of the very serious accusation of malfeasance by the Hawaii Department of Health, their documentation is official, truthful and evidence for any and all legal purposes in the U.S.
Once again for the slow students in the back of the class who can’t seem to pay attention:
http://hawaii.gov/health/vital-records/obama.html
* This is a concept seemingly lost to the birther mind who prefer innuendo and illogical speculation from unqualified, politically and bigotry motivated sources to fit their rock solid confirmation bias and prejudices.
“Obama’s sexual misbehavior and the fact that Ayers ghost-wrote Dreams”
An unsubstantiated, steaming pile of crap like that stated as fact is one of many reasons why birthers aren’t taken seriously.
There are other posts on this website that have already taken apart that argument at length. If you want to read them, then go look for them. It is neither my job nor the job of anyone else to entertain your nonsense theories.
As to the Obama gay lover nonsense, even if Obama was or is gay or bisexual, so what? Which article of the Constitution states that the President must be straight? Which Supreme Court or Court of Appeals case that interprets the Constitution holds that the President must be straight?
And if you really aren’t sure why I think that what you wrote was ridiculous I will copy and paste it for you so that you can read it again:
…Obama arranged a Chicago-style professional hit because he was scared and wanted to protect his chances to become president.
That is stupid. If you want to believe that something like that happened despite the fact that there is no credible evidence to support it, then be my guest. If you want to believe that Earth is flat instead of round, then be my guest. If you want to believe that two plus two equals five, then be my guest. Just don’t get mad at the rest of us when we laugh at you because you aren’t smart enough to not believe in conspiracy theories.
Books are ghost-written for celebrities who may not be the greatest of writers. At the time Obama was contracted to write “Dreams”, he was unknown outside of academic circles. It was only his writing skills and academic achievement that got him the book contract, not his (nonexistent) celebrity.
If unknown Obama couldn’t write, what sense or point was there giving him a book contract? It makes as much sense as giving my cat a book contract and hiring a ghost writer.
Do birthers completely lack common sense and critical thinking skills?
Yes.
I forgot the mention how stupid it is to tie Ayers into the ghost-written book conspiracy as well. It couldn’t just be an anonymous ghost-writer, could it? It had to be the right-wing’s main boogyman of Obama’s past. Convenient how these conspiracies dovetail into each other.
As others have mentioned, Ayers had written nothing of great consequence at that time. Publishers have plenty of ghost-writers on speed-dial, yet they let Obama’s “friend” do it? Why?
I would think they must have needed another ghost-writer to help Ayers Ghost-write the book.
(Maybe the second ghost-writer who helped Ayers was Louis Farrakhan? Makes just as much sense.)
Just like Obama’s dad, if not Obama Sr, couldn’t just be some anonymous dude his mother met. It has to be Malcolm X or “Scary Communist” Frank Davis.
Can’t birthers see the trend in these stupid theories?
Not to mention the inherent homophobia in referring to it as “sexual misbehavior.” Why does that not surprise me?
Ummm no.
Famous- and successful authors- who became known for their first published works:
J.K. Rowlings- Harry Potter- thats right the author of one of the best selling book series of all time doesn’t appear to have published anything prior to her first Harry Potter book- should we assume she had a ‘ghost writer’?
Frank McCourt- Angela’s Ashes- he won a Pulitzer prize for the autobiography he wrote after retiring from teaching. Do you assume he had a ghost writer?
I am sure I could think up more, but those two just happened to be two of my favorite authors (Frank McCourt by the way was delightful- had a chance to watch him discuss his books).
Angela’s Ashes was a fantastic book- a style and rhythm that was obviously not written by a ghost-writer. Just as in Obama’s case, why give a book contract to unknown Frank McCourt to write an autobiography if he, in fact, couldn’t write?
(not that you or anyone suggested such a thing, sfjeff, just trying to beat home the absurdity of hiring a ghost-writer to write a book for an unknown author. But I still don’t think the birther mind can grasp such nuance.)
Is that a question?
I
In all fairness, I knew the answer before I asked it!
😉
Whether someone is a smear merchant depends on the degree. Everyone makes mistakes, especially in blog postings. It is incorrect to say Cashill is error-prone. It is also incorrect to discount books because you find holes in his casual writings. Supposing he was a cartoonist, would you hold that against him? Cashill is a serious thinker and calling him a smear merchant is to greatly overstate the significance of the mistakes you found.
In Wikipedia, it said Clinton worked for the U of Arkansas for 1 year. Obama was in the academic world a lot longer. Clinton has been primarily a politician.
I understand how academia works. I have many friends in it. Everyone I know is involved with writing papers at some point except the most junior of people. If Obama was such an intellectual who spent so much time in academia, we should expect some work!
Many people say Obama is very smart. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLjVh3iMTZM Not sure how you haven’t noticed.
Ayers is a great writer. Guessing you haven’t read Fugitive Days. Obama was in Chicago when working on his book. Cashill’s evidence is very sophisticated. You can only think his case is weak if you haven’t read his book. Not very scientific.
I only bring up two issues: whether Obama ordered the hit of his lover Donald Young, and whether Obama wrote Dreams. These are not trivial topics.
Of course there are irregularities in Obama’s PDF. It takes a lot of pages to debunk all the questions as has been done here.
The story of how Obama got his first book contract has been researched and documented by Cashill. The ghost-writing clause was not a part of the contract. It couldn’t have been anonymous because it wasn’t handled by the publisher.
There is a big difference in sophistication between JK Rowling and Dreams. I cannot read Rowling because it is for children. The writing of Dreams is of a different caliber. It is like comparing mini-golf to regular golf.
Cashill’s point isn’t that someone couldn’t have written their first book and become famous. But that this person must have spent a lot of time honing their craft of writing. There is an analogy between writing at the level of Dreams and playing golf. Surely for someone to write a legal brief would require years of training, correct?
Cashill claims Ayers was Obama’s mentor.
Where’s any credible evidence that Ayers was Obama’s mentor?
We? Do you represent a specific group of people or are you speaking for your employer?
You seem to have a MAJOR reading comprehension problem.
You are insane! He wrote some academic books on teaching and a memoir. That doesn’t make him Fitzgerald or Orwell or Hemingway. He was far from the best writer in Chicago at the time-Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow lived there. Now HE was great. In fact, if not for his mildly interesting (to some) past no one would have published Ayers, beyond his academic stuff.
Yes, Rowling is an international phenomenon who has spawned an entire industry. An entire generation has grown up with her characters as among the most important figures in their lives. People of all ages lined up for days to buy her books.
Dreams was an interesting memoir that got some brief attention when it was published. Of course many more people read it when Obama ran for the White House, but that hardly makes it great literature.
Please refrain from practicing literary criticism without a licennse. You only invite ridicule and we here are happy to oblige.
As for your opinions on Obama’s academic career, the faculty and administration at University of Chicago were so happy with his work that they promoted hiim and asked hiim ‘several times” to become a full-time tenure-track professor. The students in his classes consistently found him an excellent teacher. But, you know better. Better than those who worked with him and studied with him. How did you become so all-knowing?
Even if those topics aren’t trivial, there’s no credible evidence to support any of them. The issue of whether the Earth is actually flat as opposed to round isn’t a trivial topic but that doesn’t mean that there’s any factual support for the position. The sooner you understand, that the sooner the rest of us stop ridiculing you.
You should apply for a job writing for Colbert. A serious thinker? You mean like the late Chris Hitchens, or the late Vaclav Havel or Paul Krugman? I mean, what are your standards for “serious thinker”. Apparently any 4th rate hack with a 5th rate rag (or a 5th rate hack with a 4th rate rag) qualifies in your book. I’m old enough to remember William F Buckley and the days when conservatives upheld standards. Today’s bunch would surely make him glad to be dead.
KevinSB: You’re very adept at one thing — setting up straw men. “Obama we are told over and over is the smartest man to be President.”
Where? When? By whom? Please cite specific publications, individuals, dates.
To this day, I had never heard or read anyone saying this until I read your post.
And I immodestly assert that I’m far above average in keeping up with current events.
I’ve not noticed anyone asserting that Mr. Obama is smarter than Jefferson, Madison, Lincioln, the Adamses — or Bill Clinton, for that matter.
What people say, and I’m convinced accurately, is that here is one smart dude. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law, after all. And that’s just an established fact, and he didn’t do it through his profs padding his grades. The didn’t, couldn’t have, due to Harvard :Law’s blilnd grading systerm. In case you haven’t heard, it works like this: A student turns in papers identifying him/her by number only.
Please dispense with the generalities with no evidence to back up, already.
Yes, yes you are.
Agreed!
Cashill is a joke. Sorry, but yes, doing a single major stupid act of fraud alone can be enought to utterly damage one’s credibility for good.
Cahshill’s lame and blatent photo-shop smear of young Obama with his grandparents was such an utter and obvious failure and con job – that alone has utterly killed any credibility he might have had.
He’s done. Toast. Forever relegated to hack smear merchant and not worthy of being paid attention to by any serious person.
Same for Trump and his talking about running for President. Only fools will follow.
Sorry, but there is no good “degree” of being an intentional liar and making up smears of others. Once you’ve done that, you’re a smear merchant. It only goes downhill from there. Someone who repeatedly does such bad behavior has upgraded themselves to hack con artist and pathological liar. But all “degrees” of this are bad and damage one’s credibility.
See, now you are already changing your argument. Before you claimed that he’s the “smartest” person *ever* to be President.
That is a very different statement and argument than “Many people say Obama is very smart”.
Of course he’s smart. Of course many people view him as such. He’s got the speaking ability and resume to justify people feeling that way about him. No surprise and no controvery there.
But for you to claim that:
Well, you were rightly called out for making that claim up. I don’t know who is “telling you” that…but I sure haven’t heard that being said.
If you truly can’t distinguish the difference between saying someone is “very smart” and saying they are the “smartest”…well, then obviously, you must not be very “smart” yourself.
But you know what is really going on here. You got caught making up over-inflated exaggerations and instead of being “smart” about it and just realizing that you need to behave more honestly, you stupdily decided to double-down on being defensive on it and try to shift the goal posts entirely…
You deserve to be called out and mocked for this. Learn better personal behaviors and stop digging yourself a deeper hole, please. Because yes, you are doing yourself increasing “degrees” of damage to your credibility.
No. They are obnoxious and unfounded smears.
There is no credible evidence of any relationship between Obama and Donald Young.
That you start right out and call him his “lover” is an unfounded smear and lie.
You can’t make that statement unless you have the proof to back it up, and you don’t.
Same with throwing accusations that he didn’t write his own book. Same with casting aspersions on his academic record.
Who are you and why are you qualified to make such snap judgments and why should your uninformed nobody opinion matter?
You seem to forget the basic rule – extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
If you don’t have the evidence and proof to back up what you say, you should never insinuate it it the first place.
Because merely shooting off your mouth without being able back it up is a form of lying. So yes, that makes YOU a smear merchant and a liar. And an obvious Concern Troll.
Worry about your own credibility here. Your attempts to “tarnish” the president fail, because you simply are some anonymous blowhard smear merchant on the internet and have nothing to back up what you say. The only person you are able to really “tarnish” here is yourself and your own image.
Someone has to be extremely lacking in any personal integrity or honor to behave as irresponsibly and base as you. Why should anyone want to be around or pay attention to someone who behaves and acts like you?
That’s a major insult to the quality writing staff at The Colbert Show. Heck, that suggestion is an insult to show writers everywhere.
All we’re dealing with is a blatently obvious Concern Troll. These fools think they are clever and are too dumb to realize that everyone’s on to them and their con game fairly quickly. None of them seem to be any good at it either. Its like every incompetent dumb@ss with a keyboard thinks the keyboard alone can suddenly make them clever…
If they had actual talent and weren’t just run of the mill blowhards, they’d be at least able to make a solid argument and have something of real substance to back up their whines.
…Or at least they’d have a clue that they are nothing but a tired retread of the same schtick hundreds of others have tried and failed with before them, repeatedly. I think that’s the saddest part about them. Not only are they bad at Concern Trolling, but they aren’t even original and they’re trying a routine that failed repeatedly several years ago…
G-I think that calling Jack Cashill a “serious thinker” and Bill Ayers “a great writer” is kind of Colbertian. Not to mention extolling “Dreams From my Father” as more significant than Harry Potter. I must have missed the lines at the bookstores when “Dreams” went on sale, not to mention the megablockbuster series of movies.
Whether Ayers “mentored” Obama is quite irrelevant. Let’s stay more focused.
By we, I meant the citizenry.
Of course Ayers wasn’t the only smart writer in a massive city like Chicago. I never said he was the best. But people say Dreams is the best book written by a President. That is a different standard. Also, people increase their popularity by writing more books.
The points you list about Rowling are all interesting but totally irrelevant. Dreams has gotten massive attention. It was very highly rated by reviewers. There is plenty of evidence that it was the key to him getting elected. I’m too bored to find them, but if you don’t think Dreams was considered great literature, I can say you are clueless to what the elite in our country think and have been saying.
I know you guys are happy to ridicule. It doesn’t bother me, as your opinion of me is meaningless because I know more than you all on the specific literary and other topics at hand.
Maybe Obama got promoted, but what about his scholarly works? I haven’t seen lots of public statements by students or friends or ex-lovers, or family members. I know he’s got Reggie Love who he calls his brother, and 2 or 3 illegal aliens and his half-brother with a shack. I never hear from them what they thought of Obama. I’m saying after spending so much time in academia, where is the evidence of genius and scholarship? I’m not all-knowing, I’m missing knowledge.
There is absolutely credible evidence to support Obama being a lover to Donald Young, and the fact that Ayers wrote dreams. I will include these links again:
1. Dreams: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/298382-1
2. Donald Young: http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/2010/07/25/mom-of-murdered-obama-gay-lover-speaks-up/
I believe it is fair to say that both serve as credible evidence for the theories.
Of course there are other serious thinks in this world, but Cashill is one as well. Do you even know his biography? http://www.cashill.com/about/index.htm I’ll bet you are unfamiliar with all he has done. It is impressive. It is unscientific of you to just assert he is an idiot. Buckely would enjoy conversing with Cashill. You are arrogant and judgmental about someone you know very little. Maybe you’ve read Bellow, but that doesn’t mean you can speak so authoritatively about everyone in this world.
If you weren’t aware how many times we were told Obama is the greatest thing ever, you are quite out of it. He was on the cover of Time magazine countless times. Late-nite comics made jokes — about how smart Obama was. You guys act like the statement that the media told us Obama was smart is a conspiracy theory. Here is one quote:
Presidential historian Michael Beschloss, a regular on PBS’s Newshour show, says Obama’s IQ is “off the charts” and that he is “probably the smartest guy ever to become president,”
But seriously, there are countless to be found. I lived it so it is very boring to me to dig it up, but all I can say is that I guess you never remember any of the Time cover stories of that period, to pick but one news source.
Cashill isn’t a smear merchant. As he explains, he accidentally got into the topic of investigating Dreams. He had no agenda, it was pure happenstance. He goes only where his research and intellect and editors take him. Unfortunately because he is exploring a topic only interesting to conspiracy theorists, he doesn’t get a world-class support network. He’s not a pathological liar, did you read the Doctor’s critiques? Most of it are nitpicks. That doesn’t make him worthless.
I’m not changing my argument. I say he that we have been told Obama is both a genius AND the smartest guy to be President, which is by the way in very good company when you consider the 200+ year history. Bush was only one of them.
I don’t think I’m digging deeper into holes. So far, I think you’ve found basically no flaws in my points. I don’t feel I’ve needed to admit a mistake yet. We are in the middle of the discussion. I suggest you don’t decide yet who is winning.
I do have proof for everything I claim. This is not my first post. I posted again in this post two links that quite well support the claims but to say I’ve got no evidence just means you are joining the debate late and haven’t read the posts above. More than that, it means you aren’t familiar with any of the OTHER credible evidence on these topics. It is as if you hadn’t even heard of the conspiracy before. So if your starting position is that you are unfamiliar with this topic, I am quite likely to win a debate on whether it is possibly credible. So I realize I’m simply trying to get you to consider the possibility. Good luck with that.
No.
It isn’t irrelevant at all. You gushed over Jack Cashill’s credentials and said he was a serious thinker.
Now you’re moving the goalposts which is cowardly.
KevinSB: Cashill is a serious thinker and calling him a smear merchant is to greatly overstate the significance of the mistakes you found.
Cashill claims Ayers was Obama’s mentor.
Where’s any credible evidence that Ayers was Obama’s mentor?
Is Cashill lying?
Do you care if he’s lying especially since he seems to a favorite source for your dubious declarations of fact?
You represent the interests of the citizenry? Was there just a mysterious phone call or a full ceremony?
No, by “we” you mean “you”.
Sorry, but the “citizenry” comprises over 300 million people – myself and the others on this blog included. Your concerns seem to be the concerns of only a small fringe minority of voices. Do not presume to speak for the rest of us, who don’t share those concerns. The clearest indication of whether any of this merited concern was the last election. That was pretty decisive and shows a margin of over 9.5 million people “not caring”. Sorry.
So yes, you need to try to stay more focused. So far your posts have been anything but that. The only thing you’ve said here that is correct is that “whether Ayers mentored’ Obama is quite irrelevant .
Who are “these people” saying that? Sorry, again, sounds like a made-up argument coming only from your own head.
Yeah, so what? Nothing wrong or unusual with that. Good for him. Any author would want their book to get massive attention and high ratings. That’s something to be proud of and strive for. Again, sounds like a good thing to me. Not sure why it bothers you so much… unless you are bitter or jealous, that is.
Again, you are caught making massive exaggerations and demonstrating that you are too lazy and incapable of defending the mere blowhard statements you make.
“Key to him being elected?” Seriously? You need to stop exaggerating so much. Is it likely to have been a mere factor in some of the people’s votes? Yes, of course. But there are many reasons and factors that go into voting for a candidate. *duh* An elementary school student could figure that out.
Your ludicrous exaggeration suggests that a major portion of nearly 69.5 million voters that chose him did so because he wrote a best-selling book. That’s just laughable. Further, why exactly is it an issue if a lot of pundits or “elite” as you like to say read or liked it? That matters and means what exactly? Oh right, it is just more irrelevant sour grapes from you offered in a huff of empty bloviating.
Sorry, here I thought you were trying to “focus” and make a point. Silly me, you are just still having a private tantrum.
Simple rule – if you don’t want ridicule, don’t act ridiculous.
If you are roundly being mocked, maybe that should start to sink in and tell you something… it’s not everyone else – it is YOU.
Obviously, it *does* bother you. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be spending all your time whining like a baby about it and now demonstrating the pathetic obvious insecurity tactic of having to try to convince others that you are somehow smart or knowledgeable.
Clue for you – if you have to tell others you are smart, then you are not.
It either comes across in one’s ability to make points and back them up all on its own, or it doesn’t, and reveals them to be nothing but a pretentious blowhard twit. So far, you’ve only sold yourself as the latter. So yes, other than being a source of amusement and coming across as a joke, you give no one any reason to value your opinion or take you seriously. Sorry. Develop better habits and maybe you won’t stick your foot in your mouth so much.
Now, I’m still waiting for you to actually “focus” as you said in your premise and say something. So far, all you’ve done is throw an infantile tantrum and make yourself look even less serious than before.
“I’m too bored to find them”
The quality of birther troll around here is dropping fast.
Where is the serious thought? I know you were too bored to find them. I would be too reading WND.
That tends to happen when you are President.
Buckley wouldn’t have let Cashill shine his shoes. He worked his whole life to get the conspiracy theorists out of the conservative movement.
But let me ask you a question about your obsession with whther Obama is brilliant or not. Suppose he is? Would that make you more or less likely to vote for him?
Answer a simple question – WHY does any of this matter? How does this have anything to do with his ability to be President? Sorry, it just doesn’t. Not at all.
You seem awfully insecure and bitter…so I’m sure you care and that a tiny fringe of desperately bitter people like you care. But really, you only care because you suffer from ODS and desperately wish you can have some sort of dirt or excuse to smear a President you can’t accept.
In other words, the simple tantrums and childish tantrums of a bunch of jealous, dead-ender sore-losers. Nothing more.
The rest of us and the majority of the citizenry, however. Meh. Doesn’t seem to be a concern at all. Sucks to be you.
Sorry, but none of those come across as “credible” sources. Just a bunch of bitter sleaze merchants with poor reputations. It only works on you, because you are bitter and desperately gullible to swallow any yellow journalism and rumor-mill mud you can latch onto. The world is full of inconsequential A-holes making up stories and lies about others. You and your “sources” fit fully in that category.
As already explained, Cashill has fully discredited himself and no one here values him as a reference or source at all. Couldn’t care less what else he’s done in the past. It only takes one massive smear-merchant debacle to kill one’s reputation from that point forward. See: Donald Trump.
In the broader public, such tabloid trash is appropriately discounted and ignored. You’re not going to get anywhere here trying to “defend” those sources. It simply is a dead argument.
We know you support them. We utterly find them worthless and slimy and have a very low opinion of anyone gullible enough to buy into them. So all you can accomplish here is looking foolish in our eyes and being mocked as a gullible clown. End of Story. So, mission accomplished for you there. You might as well move on to something else, as those are clear dead-ends here.
Again with your exaggeration! “Greatest thing ever”… I only seem to hear such hyperbole like that come out of the mouths of obviously bitter and jealous people like you.
Of course he’s smart. Of course he’s been on the cover of Time magazine numerous times. As have all Presidents and many public figures. Those are good things.
You just can’t stand a popular and successful figure, can you?
That’s what this is really all about: You irrationally hate Obama and simply can’t stand that he’s popular, liked by many and successful.
Obviously, you are extremely bothered because a few people have opinions that are extremely high of him. Michael Beschloss and others are certainly entitled to their own opinions and they can personally view him as the “smartest” or “bestest” in the world all they want. That is their right, as is the right of every individual out there. There is no law against, nor is there anything wrong with that.
Bottom line – all this comes down to is that in your petty little hate and jealousy, you can’t *stand* or accept that others have opinions that differ from you…especially that there are lots of people out there that love Obama and think very highly of him. Awww…sucks to be you. Guess what, that is fully those individuals’ rights to love him all they want. If they want to think he walks on water or is the greatest president they’ve ever known, that is their right.
But that is a far cry from the exaggerations of “everyone” is saying or doing something, like you keep crying about. That’s just silly talk and shows that you are not a serious person and don’t have a serious complaint.
Obviously, you can’t handle the Constitutional freedoms enshrined in this country and are too insecure in your own life that you are bothered and fret over the simple real world fact that many people’s opinions and tastes differ from their own. *waaaah*. Sounds like you’re going to be bitter and unhappy for the rest of your life with that childish and irrational attitude. Sucks to be you.
All you’ve done is dig yourself deeper into holes. The problem is you come here, thinking that discussion is some sort of childish “game” instead of a way for adults to exchange ideas and information in a reasonable matter.
It is not about “winning”…but in terms of how someone carries themselves and leaves and impression, well, clearly you’ve “lost”. And you’ve done it all to yourself.
So yeah, keep being too clueless to get it and be the sound of one-hand clapping for yourself…
…and unable to grasp why everyone else just laughs and sees you as an inconsequential clown.
Sorry, but there’s been very little so far that qualifies as any real “debate”. You’ve just spouted off a bunch of blow-hard wild claims and offered conjecture and irrelevant opinion and pushed only rumor-mill level smears.
In terms of making credible points that are founded in solid credible evidence, fact or consequence to the topics at hand – NADA.
We’re pretty familiar with the whole range of both conspiracy nonsense out there on this broad topic as well as the low-end tabloid smears that swirl around the Birther toilet.
The former have been thoroughly debunked by evidence, facts and have no legal support in our laws.
The latter are so utterly not-credible, crazy and often pathetically sleazy that they simple don’t merit anyone’s serious attention or discussion and are beneath being worthy of paying attention to.
Agreed. We’re seeing a lot more pop out, as they start frothing in fury and fear at the thought of Obama be re-elected…
…But as you said, so far, there is nothing at all new in what they have to say or the blatent and lazy troll tactics they use to try to push it.
Much of this is the same ground that they were trying to push several years ago… it went nowhere then…how can they be so stupid to think these dead-horses will trot out smelling any better now?
It is hard to be polite and sympathetic when we’re dealing with a bunch of repetitive twits, incapable of doing anything other than throw a long, rambling and poo-slinging hissy fit.
Hey Trolls: We get it, you don’t like Obama and you wish to call him Mr. Poopy Pants at the top of your lungs all day long… Take your bitter crushed sore-loser fee-fees somewhere else where people might care. No sympathy here.
Even John McCain said today that “President Obama will turn things around”
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/clip-of-the-day-mccain-forgets-romneys-name.php?ref=fpa
ROTFLMAO!
Now simple gaffes and slips of the tongue like that are just plain light-heated fun. I’m sure the comedians and the Obama campaign will have a good natured field-day from that one.
😉
Oops, meant to say light-hearted in the prior post…not light-heated… 🙂
The whole Ayers / Obama mentorship question is so irrelevant. Mentorship is a matter of degrees. That is one of those infinite truths that we could investigate but I am not interested in.
Regarding we / you / citizenry, etc. I believe you forgot the original topic. It had to do with whether Obama should have produced papers for all of his time in academia. I asked should we expect he would have produce papers? If you don’t like my word “we” you can trivially change the sentence to not include it! The point is that Obama should have produced things with his name on it. I can’t speak for 300 million other people on many topics, but to expect someone brilliant to produce academic works in academic settings is not so unusual. Not every issue would be polled as 50-50.
I’m not bitter or jealous about the success of Dreams. I was pointing out that it was very successful and highly regarded, which I was using as foundation for other points.
Like the fact that Dreams was a key to Obama getting elected. Basically every important media person in DC read it. It was out there from the beginning, before the convention speeches and the Greek columns. It was partially why he was given a prime speaking slot in the 2004 convention. Books help make politicians. Look at Barry Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative. That is still read and quoted today. And remember Dreams wasn’t just a good book, it was the best book written by a President and got rave reviews.
Of course Obama did other things, all those notable laws he passed. He also mobilized an effective machine during the 2008 campaign and made many promises.
I never said that everyone read his book, although his sales give him a very massive salary. However, the elites in our country read it. And from that, they each decided to make it their plan to sell him to the American people. Informal groupthink played a role. You could consider the whole “Obama is a genius” conspiracy theory as another one to be investigated, but I think it is better to ask more pointed questions like “Did Ayers help write Dreams?” That is much more specific, yet important.
I don’t care if I get ridiculed. I just read your words in a pass, and write down the holes in your thinking, skipping over the points already covered, or insults. Note that I can’t prevent ridicule. I can only focus on being accurate. Someone can be ridiculed even though they are correct. So preventing ridicule is not in my hands. I just point it out because ridicule is another way you are wrong, and because asking me to prevent ridicule is impossible. So you screw up twice in one sentence.
I never told anyone I was smart. I’m not asking you to evaluate my opinion. You keep making it about me, which is another mistake.
Really if you think I’m making up the idea that Dreams was considered great literature by the elites in our country, I can just say that you are clueless.
The serious thought by Cashill is in his 7 books of non-fiction. It is also in his PhD from Purdue, his public speaking (http://www.cashill.com/professional/publicspeaking.htm) Etc.
Obama was on the cover of Time many times BEFORE he was president. It was how he got elected. People were fainting at rallies. This wall all based on an aura around Obama.
I have talked with Buckley so I think I can speak for him better than you. He would find Cashill interesting. Have you read any of Buckley’s books? How many times have you read National Review? I really think that you are way out of your league in speaking for Buckley. Why don’t you pick someone more your speed like Michael Moore?
I don’t have an obsession about whether Obama is brilliant. I only have an obsession about the fact that we were TOLD he is brilliant. It is that thinking which prevents people from bother to investigate his past. Why would a brilliant person even need a ghost-writer? No point either seeing his grades if we know they will be good. A brilliant person doesn’t need to have passed laws, or done anything apparently. His campaign was all about the future.
It doesn’t surprise me you find Cashill worthless. There is an edifice of ignorance in this society. All I can say is that you are a fool to discount his evidence and being unable to look past mistakes that you find. I find mistakes in many posts by others and yet I don’t call you worthless.
I am sorry if you mock me. It means that you are too closed-minded to actually consider the points I’m making. You are locking out reason wrt me, just as you have done with Cashill.
I’m not exaggerating to say that we were told Obama was the greatest thing ever. You think it comes only out of my mouth because you don’t remember all the ways we were told it years ago. “No drama Obama” Remember that meme? Were you sentient in 2007?
I don’t hate Obama. I find it interesting how much you write about me. It is all nonsense, but I don’t care what you think about me so I will skip it.
The number of books dosn’t make him a serious thinker. Nor does him speaking somewhere Quote me 3 paragraphs that display serious thought. You’re a big fan, so it shouldn’t be hard.
He was a serious candidate. i don’t follow time, but I bet Hillary and McCain were also on alot in 2008. Romney will be this year when he gets the nomination. He may have been already-I don’t read Time.
Proof???
Now, i would like a straight answer. Forget about 2008. It’s history. This is 2012. Who are you supporting and why?
If you won’t answer that, then the conversation is over.
What a load of crap. Your patronizing and goalpost moving b.s. won’t work here.
The number of books, and their topics, are good evidence Cashill’s a serious thinker. Why don’t you go read the table of contents of all of his books and then come back and tell me if you are sure he is not credible. I’ll wait.
Even better than paragraphs of his words are paragraphs of people saying he’s brilliant.
http://www.cashill.com/professional/publicspeaking.htm
Seriously you don’t know much about Cashill because your hate and pre-conceived opinions and have prevented you from investigating it.
Here is an article to demonstrate his serious thinking:
http://www.cashill.com/intellect_fraud/four_curious_errors.htm
It is nonsense to say Hillary and McCain were treated like Obama. McCain was on less than a handful of times. And the coverage was much less positive. Guarantee that the GOP nominee will not be on Time the way Obama was. Seriously if you didn’t notice how Obama was a cultural phenomenon, I can easily say you weren’t watching. Children in high schools were wearing his t-shirts.
My proof that Buckley would find Cashill interesting is here:
http://www.cashill.com/professional/publicspeaking.htm
I can give more, but why don’t you read those quotes first.
I don’t see why it matters regarding Donald Young and Dreams who I will support in 2012. Anyway, my answer is that a manager at 7-11 would be better than Obama. In addition to his lack of scholarship, what he did learn is lots of Marxism and other things which didn’t prepare him to be president. Perhaps that sounds like another conspiracy theory to you. Here is an article about that: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/02/meeting_young_obama.html
ou are the one who brought up the issue of mentorship. I never made any claims about mentoring, so how can I have moved the goalpost on a topic I didn’t get into?
ROTFL…
You claim Cashill is a serious thinker. I used the example of his statement that Ayers was a mentor to the President to illustrate the point that he spews b.s. without credible evidence.
You can’t seriously be too stupid to have not understood this.
You keep dodging Cashill’s idiotic assertion. That’s goalpost moving.
“Mentorship is a matter of degrees.”
And that’s just asinine.
Concern trolling is too.
Passive aggressive insults aren’t as clever as you think.
Odd- you say you can’t read JK Rowling because ‘it is for Children’ and then say that the writing of Dreams is a different caliber- how do you even know that?
Seriously- you ‘can’t’ read Harry Potter because ‘it is for children’? What strange form of reading disorder makes you unable to read it? Because I have, my wife has, and most of our friends have. I have also read “Dreams” and frankly I think Harry Potter is a better read.
But you completely skipped over Frank McCourt’s autobiography- Angela’s Ashes- which I also read, and is far, far superior to Dreams.
It was Frank’s very first book, and won him the Pulitzer prize and fame and fortune.
Frank Cashill was speculating, based upon very foolish assumptions, and assumptions it is not difficult to find clear examples that refute.
But I wonder why you are so eager for Obama’s book to be ghost written, and why you so desperately want to believe that Obama had a gay lover, and had him killed.
Especially since a researcher who developed software to find similarities, has concluded that there is not much evidence supporting Cashill.
Speculation versus science. And given the average birther’s dislike for science, reason, or logic, I am not too surprised.
NO! NO! NO! People saying he’s brilliant is not how you convince us. We here are critiical thinkers. We don’t let others do our thinking for us. Quote the man’s own works. Why is that so hard?
That’s garbage. Where are the serious ideas? And by the way, if you asked me whether Sandberg said hog butcher to the world or for the world, I would have to look it up.. I have heard many people say “Hog butcher to the world”. It was the job of whoever ediited the book at the publishers.to get t right, and they screwed up.
What does that have to do with Buckley? Where is the proof that YOU spoke to Buckley as you claimed?
And, please name the 7-11 manager you plan to vote for. Why is it so hard to get a name out of you?
“The number of books, and their topics, are good evidence Cashill’s a serious thinker”
It shows that Cashill is a serious conservative who enjoys conspiracy theories
No he doesn’t. What part of the rights of privacy and personal decision do you not understand?
People have the right to ask. He doesn’t have to respond. Simple as that.
Neither you nor anyone else has any legal right nor entitlement to see that stuff, no matter how curious you are. It simply is not a requirement nor a condition for him to hold office.
Simple as that.
Goldwater’s book was ghost-written. As was Profiles in Courage.
And when you deconstruct his name you get cash and shill. 😛
*rolls eyes* Conspiracy! Oh puh-lease…
STOP RIGHT THERE. Ok, I’m starting to see the long list of justifications and excuses you are winding through here…so let’s just cut to the chase –
WHAT this really comes down to is simply that you can’t *stand* the fact that an overwhelming majority of Americans voted FOR him and that he got elected.
For whatever personal reason, that is just an unacceptible reality to face for you, isn’t it?
Therefore, you are desperate to see a “Conspiracy” or come up with *any* possible reason to explain it away…because you just can’t deal with the reality that it HAPPENED. You just simply can’t stand that people chose to vote that way…and there was many, many, many of them that did
That’s all this really comes down to for you. Be honest.
Nice try, G. An honest birther is as scarce as hen’s teeth.
“If Obama was such an avid reader in College, why have none of his former books come forward to testify to that?”
Just thought I’d consolidate the stupidity from the last couple of days into one worthless innuendo.
Who are you trying to convince? Yourself? Obviously, you have some severe hang-ups about Obama, or you wouldn’t be here endlessly obsessing…. Just saying.
*Obviously* it bothers you *immensely* that he’s successful and had a quick rise to the most prestigious job position in the world.
All of your peculiar “concerns” really come across as nothing more than sour-grapes and/or jealousy. Your description of “conspiracy” of people obtaining various success and accolades and rising to power is unusual *HOW* exactly??? Oh, that’s right. It’s not. Sure, not all politicians can achieve success that quickly, but life is full of rising stars too. Of course, in order to go far, you need to get “establishment” and moneyed types excited or interested in you and behind you. *DUH* That’s not a “conspiracy”. That’s pretty much the typical way it happens.
Finally, it is one thing for you to have these *concerns* about his past for a first time candidate…but the man WON the job. (You have the right to be curious, but NO, you are NOT entitled to getting answers – sorry. Just the way the world works and always has.) And he won, quite definitively and overwhelmingly, mind you. THAT of course is what REALLY bugs you.
Look, I’ve hired a lot of people. I may care about certain background info, when I’m vetting them for a job. However, as any HR Department will tell you, there are *a lot* of areas of their past and personal life that I *cannot* legally inquire about, no matter how curious I am. The candidate can offer such details, but they certainly don’t have to, as most of that is simply NOT pertinent to the actual job. More importantly, once I’ve hired them, ALL that matters is evaluating their actual JOB performance. When they are up for evaluation or promotion, THAT is the only thing I can legitimately and legally base it on. Simple as that. Pretty similar to the voting decision for the highest office in the land.
There you go again, Concern Trolling. You phrase things improperly – your statement here *implies* he had a ghost-writer. When there is simply no proof that he did and he claims he wrote the book himself and there is no serious reason to doubt his claim.
So therefore, again, you are being an intentional smear merchant and dishonest liar here. If you have NO proof, your slimy insinuations are unjustified. Learn how to properly have a conversation and phrase things. Saying, “is it possible” is VASTLY DIFFERENT from a directly-phrased implication that he had one.
*That* is the dishonest method of communication you continue to employee over and over again here which just makes you come across like a douche-bag. No, that is not name calling, that is an accurate description of your behavior. Learn to act more responsible with your word choice. Simple as that.
Second, again, this is nothing but a worthless “Concern Troll” meme because tons of prominent political figures publish ghost-written books ALL THE TIME! Therefore, you are not only making unfounded allegations and insinuation, even MORE pathetic is that you are just having some whiney cry-baby tantrum over something that is neither unusual NOR atypical and therefore, would NOT be an issue or concern, regardless.
OK, I did a survey of TIME covers.
In 2006, Obama had 1 cover, Hillary Clinton had 1 cover.
In 2007, O/1 solo; H/1 solo; Mitt/1 solo.
In 2008, pre-August: O/3 solo, 2 composite; H/1 solo, 2 comp; McCain/1 solo.
In 2008, post-August, pre-election: O/2 solo, 5 comp; McCain/1 solo, 5 comp; Palin/1 solo; Biden/0
The Republican nomination was tied up on March 5 while the Democratic nomination wasn’t certain until June 3. So 2008 post-Aug was Repub and Dem were both 2 solo, 5 comp. 2008 pre-Aug the contest was O v H, and Obama had 2 more covers (one on his childhood, one on race). Whether that’s overwhelming Obama all the time is a personal opinion. My guess is that 1. Obama sold more mags, and 2. many of the covers people remember were post-election.
Which is fully within our right to view him that way.
You seem to have serious problems being able to deal with a world in which you can’t control everyone’s opinions and decisions. Tough cookies there. Welcome to the real world, princess.
We’ve already covered Cashill and he’s old news here. There are quite a few blog articles and commentary that cover him on here and explain why he’s been debunked and discredited and why we feel that way. If it bothers you and you don’t understand why we think he’s a worthless hack and fraud and smear merchant, who has entirely lost ALL credibility, then read that analysis and debunking of him that’s already been done here. They are easy to find and search for on this blog.
Yes you are! Again, you just can’t help yourself and double-down on the stupid, don’t you?
You have chosen yourself to simply take a lot of words of various individuals, understandably expressing praise and excitement and perceiving that as “BEST THING EVER…EVERYONE SAYS SO..ZOMG!!!”
Again, a completely overblown exaggeration of the reality. Are there likely a number of people out there who think he’s the “greatest thing since Sliced Bread”. Most assuredly. Everyone has some very intense and passionate fans. Sarah Palin has such fans. Ron Paul has such fans. Reagan has such fans to this day. Heck, Justin Bieber has such fans.
So again, you seem to be all hot-and-bothered and getting your little panties into a bunch because a dynamic candidate was popular and a certain number of the people who responded to him, responded to him very favorably.
Again, those are all individuals with their own rights to become fans or fall in love with any candidate of their choice. They certainly don’t represent everybody, nor do they necessarily translate to represent the vast and overwhelming majority of voters that chose Obama.
Nor is it in any way “Obama’s fault” that some people are really drawn to him. Nor is it in any way unexpected or atypical for any candidate to evoke some passionate responses and get people who are really behind him. Welcome to reality and how ALL politics work. Heck, welcome to human behavior 101 on just about any category of interest or topic!
So again, as there is nothing unusual or “Obama’s fault” on anything within this entire silly line of reasoning by you…just own up to what this all comes down to – SOUR GRAPES BY YOU.
You truly, truly can’t stand and can’t handle that he’s liked and popular and successful and yes, won the election. THAT is what this is really all about for you.
Of course I remember all of 2007-2008. I remember it all well. I lived through it and was paying attention the entire time. You seem to be desperate to try to revision it into something other than what it was…and obviously still can’t let go and deal with the results. The election was over 3 years ago…time for you to let it go.
Oh, Puh-lease! If you weren’t obsessively fixated in being unable to “accept” Obama, then you wouldn’t be here preening on about it endlessly. You woudn’t be spending all your time obsessing and “wondering” about his private life and desperately wishing that… *if only he could be found with some sort of dirt or scandal in his past…if only… .
If you weren’t such a deep-seated ODS sufferer, you wouldn’t be Trolling the internet to find strangers to vent to about Obama. Instead, you’d be doing something productive with your life or spending your time online talking about something else.
Whether “hate” is too strong a word for the enmity you feel towards Obama, I don’t know.
It is clearly ODS and it is clearly a fixation and an obsession and it is clearly a strong negative emotional reaction of yours.
We only bother writing about you because you came here and said stuff. You initiated, we merely responded to your points. That is all. Simple as that.
Our opinions of you are only based upon the impression that you yourself have created and left behind. Cause and effect. Simple as that.
Finally had a chance to read a few of the Donald Young links. I’m a bit disturbed by the reporting on the Wayne Madsen report: there is no solid sourcing, just unattributed gossip and innuendo. The list of allegedly gay prominent figures makes no sense. I expected more solid facts.
And why would I care what someone else thinks about Cashill, Buckley or otherwise?
Sorry, I make up my own mind on things and from Cahsill’s poor behaviors and actions over the past year – that’s simply enough for me to judge him on the quality of man he is today. I could care less about his past either nor his past achivements.
I simply utterly find him in contempt on that alone and that is enough for me to utterly have no interest and place no value on anything he says and does. Why would I waste my time reading or looking at any of the prior work of someone I currently have no respect for at all?
Why do I care if anyone else has a different opinion of him than I do? My opinion is my right and mine alone. Mine is an informed opinion, based on the critera I have applied and deem necessary – evaluation of his recent smear merchant photo-shop fakery alone was enough for me to make my judgment call on him. That’s it. That’s all I need.
You seem to live in a world of needing to care what other’s think in order for you to make a decision. I don’t. I’m not some follower or sheep who has to care what someone else thinks in order to make my own decisions and be comfortable with them.
Yes, the world is full of people like you. But it is also full of people like me. Deal with it.
So what? Your point is the person that *won* the election happened to be the one who was the most successful and garnished the most positive views and support during their campaign… ***SHOCK***
..Sort of how the whole campaign and winning thing goes, isn’t it? I mean, that’s part of the whole point.
But to claim that the coverage was somehow “unfair” is nonsense and just sour grapes from a sore-loser’s perspective.
It simply works like this – all the candidates in top contention got lots of coverage and questions during the campaign – both positive AND negative. All of them faced many uncomfortable and challenging questions and situations while they were in the spotlight.
Those candidates who do better at dealing with those questions and handling those criticims end up quieting a lot of those concerns by doing so and the topic of conversation generally moves on to other things. Those that can’t handle it as well tend to invoke further negative criticism and struggle to get beyond those issues. Those that are better at handling such pressure and who don’t have as much “true” baggage to weigh them down end up doing better and succeeding better and obtaining more support and often stronger suppor to boot.
That’s how the process works. Nothing unusual there. Not at all. Welcome to just about every major election process in terms of how it plays out. This one just happened to take place on a longer and bigger scale than most. And that is simply do to the fact that the world is more of a 24/7 media coverage cycle than it was prior to then and that the 2008 cycle started in early 2007 for most of the candidates and therefore was a longer one than typical as well. But other than that, nothing unexpected or out of the ordinary in how it played out and how candidate’s own behaviors and skills impacted that dynamic.
Hey, now that’s an opinion that you are certainly free to hold and I don’t care or have a problem with you feeling that way.
You are free to vote for whomever you want. Welcome to America and how it works!
NO ONE is making you vote for Obama. NO ONE is preventing you from voting for someone else. NO ONE has a problem with you simply not wanting to vote for Obama at all.
You simply don’t have to make up all these sad justifications and excuses for why you don’t want to vote for him. You simply are free to vote how you choose. Period. End of Story.
What YOU seem to have a problem with is that you certainly seem bothered by other people invoking their own rights and voting for choices that differ from yours. You don’t seem to have much respect for others’ rights, do you?
Yeah, that pretty much sums up the mindset and values of these fools.
Sure fits, doesn’t it…
True ‘dat!
You love the loaded, leading question.
The only answer your question demands:
Why, indeed? Therefore, he must not be brilliant because he needed a ghost writer.
It’s like asking, “why would a birther troll need to be paid to post if he was so certain in his beliefs in the first place?” That’s a loaded question asserting that the poster must be a troll and is being paid only because I said so. Do I have proof of payment? Of course not. It’s just asking a question, right?
Setting people up with the answer you demand is truly pathetic.
Your idiotic, unsubstantiated assertions don’t make them fact, buttercup. Lots of birthers make the same idiotic assertions as you. That doesn’t magically make a lie into something true just because you and others who agree with you say so.
And argumentum ad verecundiam is not credible evidence either especially when your authority is a partisan hack with a transparent political agenda.
I don’t think you understand the concepts of credible or evidence.
“I don’t have an obsession about whether Obama is brilliant. I only have an obsession about the fact that we were TOLD he is brilliant.”
At least you admit you have issues. That’s the first step. Get help.
Yup, that’s about as sane as claiming there must be something fishy about Jesus – I mean, he gets all this favourable coverage, he’s given a free pass about his birth certificate, and hey, where are his former girlfriends, there isn’t *one* who ever stepped forward! And his mother who could’ve spilled the beans “ascended to heaven”, yeah right. 😉
(I mean, if birfers claim Obama is the left’s “messiah”, let’s at least exploit the analogy. ;))
Here are my latest responses.
I’m not interested in discussing whether Ayers “mentored” Obama. I’m not dodging, I’m keeping focused on crisper questions.
I’ve read 2-3rds of Rowling’s first book. You have to read something to declare you don’t like it, and I did. Lots of people read it, and lots listen to Justin Bieber. it is said that to become a cultural phenomenon, you need to appeal to teenage girls. I daresay Dreams can be very popular but with writing of a different timber.
I didn’t read Angela’s Ashes so I can’t compare to Dreams.
I don’t have any desperation or wanting any of these things to be true. It is only that I have heard about these topics, and then investigated them with an open-minded and without hatred for Cashill or anyone else. Many of you get hung up on me and on your judgemental opinions of Cashill and so can’t consider with an open mind.
There was software that analyzed Dreams. But it wasn’t conclusive. Software that didn’t prove a connection doesn’t mean there isn’t one. You can take two pictures of yourself on different days and with different poses and see if a computer will recognize you as being the same person but it will often get it wrong. And comparing books is even harder in some ways. Best way to make comparisons is to use the computer in the human brain.
People saying Cashill is brilliant (http://www.cashill.com/professional/publicspeaking.htm) is evidence that he is. Of course you can also other sources of evidence like his own writing, but it is absolutely a valid form of evidence.
I’m not sure what standard you expect out of Cashill, all I can say is that I think this article shows that he meets the standard (http://www.cashill.com/intellect_fraud/four_curious_errors.htm) The point in that article isn’t that the editor got some things wrong, it is that both books have the same mistakes. I don’t think you carefully read that article.
I don’t have an Internet link that proves I met Buckley. He was a public figure for many years, so it isn’t an outrageous claim. I only bring it up because someone here presumed to speak for Buckley.
I’ll vote for any 7-11 manager over Obama. Go to your local one and learn their name if you really want names.
I agree that one book of Cashill’s is a conspiracy theory, but even there you will find evidence of research and intelligence. Some conspiracy theories are proven true, it takes people to find out which ones.
I read the page on thefogbow that had quotes from Obama contemporaries. I discount a number of various reasons, some actually hint at his longterm Marxist radicalism, some say nothing about his intellect, etc. Furthermore, I’ve heard from a former colleague that during his job editing the newsletter he was considered a show-horse more than a work-horse. So even when one much younger women says he did a good job, that is not the best proof. Etc. People frequently confuse is confidence / arrogance with competence.
Anyway, my point is that there aren’t a lot of people who have gone widely public about Obama. None of the names are household figures. In some of the biographies of Obama, they talk about how he flailed for a long time while writing Dreams. In fact, he had to get a second book deal because so much time had passed. So even with the evidence on thefogbow, there is still plenty of strong evidence to counter the assertion of his great brilliance. There were more interviews of John McCain’s mom than Obama’s grandparents. This in spite of the fact that McCain overall got much less media attention. I don’t think they were ever interviewed once. I can only assume that they could potentially contribute things damaging to the campaign. I’ve heard more from Obama’s illegal alien relatives and half-brother in the shack than the people who raised Obama.
I know Obama signed his name to a few things with Larry Tribe, but my understanding was that Tribe had done most of the scholarship and they were friends.
There are professors who claimed Obama’s intelligence but note that colleges are highly political and professors tend to like people who stroke their egos even if they aren’t the smartest. Obama was also one of the only black people in both places, so he got treated better. Also note that Occidental is a very liberal school that taught Marxism. At Harvard Law Review, my understanding is he wrote something to the Harvard Law newspaper, and signed his name to something that was a group effort, but in general didn’t produce much for someone of his extreme brilliance. He didn’t do much in the State Senate or in the US Senate either. So I’m not holding my breath waiting for some massive trove.
I know that Conscience was ghost-written for Goldwater. Point is that books play a massive role in politicians becoming a political phenomenon, and Dreams served it for Obama. That is why it matters that he didn’t write it.
I’m not angry that Obama got elected. Your attempts to be my shrink are silly and wrong. I investigate topics because I think they might be accurate and they are interesting. I’m not jealous he had gay lovers, or had a popular book.
There is proof of my statements around Donald Young and Dreams. For you to say there isn’t is flatly wrong. Therefore, I’m not a smear merchant.
I research Time magazine covers very briefly:
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2008/12/17/4432215-obama-appeared-on-half-of-time-covers
That one article says Obama was on the cover of HALF of Time’s issues for 2008. If you want to debate whether Obama got ridiculously favorable coverage before he got elected, you will lose. You seem very clueless if you are unaware of even this basic fact.
I know that some research around Obama’s homosexual past involves anonymous sources. I can only suggest you try to publish stories with his ex-lovers and see how easy it is to get them to go public. Look what happened to Joe the Plumber, and all he did was ask a question!
G admits he hates Cashill. This is why he knows so little about him.
Calling Obama a Marxist is not name calling. It is a historically accurate term. I repeat that this article is good evidence of his Marxist past (http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/02/meeting_young_obama.html) but there are many others. Alinsky was a Marxist. Obama had radicals mentoring him his whole life from a very young age. If you don’t like the word Marxist, you need to get over your hangup and learn more about Obama.
I am working on therapy for my hatred of the media. Part of it involves pointing out to people like you that the media bias exists. I’m guessing none of you read God and Man at Yale? That’s a book from the early 1950s that demonstrates the bias. Or any of the other books on this topic, and don’t remember the 2008 coverage, etc.
I’ll end with a quote from Buckley written in the first issue of National Review. The media bias that helped Obama existed before him.
——–
There never was an age of conformity quite like this one, or a camaraderie quite like the Liberals’. Drop a little itching powder in Jimmy Wechsler’s bath and before he has scratched himself for the third time, Arthur Schlesinger will have denounced you in a dozen books and speeches, Archibald MacLeish will have written ten heroic cantos about our age of terror, Harper’s will have published them, and everyone in sight will have been nominated for a Freedom Award. Conservatives in this country — at least those who have not made their peace with the New Deal, and there is serious question whether there are others — are non-licensed nonconformists; and this is dangerous business in a Liberal world, as every editor of this magazine can readily show by pointing to his scars. Radical conservatives in this country have an interesting time of it, for when they are not being suppressed or mutilated by the Liberals, they are being ignored or humiliated by a great many of those of the well-fed Right, whose ignorance and amorality have never been exaggerated for the same reason that one cannot exaggerate infinity.
i told you that if you refused to say who or what you are FOR, rather than who you are against, the conversation would be over. It is.
Well said.
I just found a fun quote from a poster on another site:
“Arguing with an idiot is a Sisyphean task – laughing at them is more effective and satisfying.”
The Story of an Unlikely Hypothesis (and a Fine Book)
(excerpt) On Sunday 26th October 2008, just nine days before what promised to be an historic US Presidential election, I received an urgent call from Bob, a man close to a Republican Congressman in the American West. He wanted to enlist my services in an effort to prove a scandalous allegation against Barack Obama, which – if justified – would surely impact on his prospects in that election. Namely, that his famous 1995 memoir, Dreams from my Father, on which so much of his reputation was built, was in fact authored largely by Bill Ayers, a Vietnam-era domestic terrorist. It became clear that this allegation had been circulating with increasing speed in the US, on websites, blogs and radio talk shows, and was gathering significant numbers of supporters. Several “stylometric” analyses of the texts had been done, claiming to find significant patterns in the writings of Obama and Ayers to back up the hypothesis. A Washington press conference was already planned for the next week, just in time to sow doubt in the minds of undecided voters before the election … (For a continuation of this strange story, see The Sunday Times, 2nd November 2008 and also the resulting front page Sunday Times news story.)
After submitting this story, in response to the interest it has generated, I have prepared the following analysis, which will I hope make clear how I see things in regard to the Ayers allegation made by Jack Cashill, an American author. In short, I feel very confident that it is false. In view of what I have found, and the intrinsic unlikelihood of the hypothesis, I would be very surprised indeed if anything came to light to reverse this verdict. I hope that interested visitors to this site, whether Democrat or Republican or indeed entirely independent of American politics, will be pleased to discover that the next leader of the free world did not apparently get his impressive first book written by Bill Ayers!
(source: http://www.philocomp.net/humanities/dreams)
Yeah, that pretty much covers it.
It showed no evidence of a connection, and showed how other books were closer to Dreams, that Ayer’s book for example. Of course, in science there is no absolute proof, anything remains tentative and subject to future rebuttal. However, so far there appears to be NO substantive scientific evidence that Ayers somehow wrote “Dreams”.
If you believe otherwise, the I suggest you share your analysis with us and explain to us why you believe the data merits such a conclusion.
Surely you will be up to such a task?
Me saying I’m brilliant is evidence that I am, but it’s not objective evidence, nor substantive evidence. It’s anecdotal evidence, and it’s tainted by bias. Which is why no court is ever going to take only my word for my brilliance, nor will any reasonable person.
That fact that you can make the claim that anecdotes taken from Cashill’s own website, regarding his own brilliance, are somehow evidence of any value of his “brilliance, shows to me that you are probably not capable of understanding what objective evidence is. The fact that you’re a birther only serves to help confirm that conclusion.
Yep. That pretty much sums it up.
– KevinSB
I noticed you were posting over on this thread and getting a lot of responses simliar to the ones I’ve received. It looks to me like many of these liberal posters don’t have much imagination or variety when it comes to responding to intelligent, objective research on Obama.
I’m the author of the “Meeting Young Obama” article you cite regarding young Obama’s Marxist ideology. As far as I’m concerned, my take on young Obama and his friends was confirmed by a liberal, David Remnick in The Bridge. I knew many of the young leftists at Occidental College including the Obama friend who was co-president of the Democrat Socialist Alliance when it hung up a banner on the Occidental College quad featuring Karl Marx. I can verify – consistent with Remnick – that Obama’s Oxy roommate, Hasan Chandoo was a Marxist and that Obama’s friend Caroline Boss was also a Marxist.
Boss is one of my old girlfriends from my college and graduate school days. I just don’t have much interest in the gay murder issue in Chicago. I’m very interested, however, in why there appears to be no independent collaboration of young Obama’s interest in girls. I saw the young Obama on and off campus and I don’t remember any girls around him, certainly none sitting on his lap in pairs as Lisa Jack – the young Obama photographer – asserts. The story that appears consistent with the available evidence is that Obama made up stories about girlfriends in Dreams in order to write a book that would make him look good with the electorate in Chicago.
The most vivid story about a girlfriend now appears to be a match with Bill Ayer’s girlfriend Diane Oughton – she had green eyes and her wealthy family owned a farm with a lake on it. The most amazing correspondence between Bill Ayer’s writing and the work in Dreams, in my view, are the nautical references. Bill Ayers is a former merchant marine who would be expected to understand nautical matters. Obama has zero ties to sailing, boats, ships or other nautical matters.
In my experience, an independent, objective observer does better on cites like this if you have at least one libertarian or conservative supporter. I’ll be happy to join in when I see you posting here – if it is allowed by the management.
No. That would be Profiles in Courage by John Fitzgerald Kennedy with input from Ted Sorenson.
Sorenson confirms that he provided, at Kennedy’s request, much of the research for the book, and on occasion some of the words in some of the sentences, but had almost no input whatsoever on the first and last chapters. Kennedy acknowledged Sorenson’s work with a generous stipend.
The work that Sorenson undertook for Profiles in Courage is best described as Primary Researcher and Editor.
My wife has done similar work for several authors. There is no way in the world you could describe her as a ‘ghost writer’; she wouldn’t know where to begin.
Drew continues to show absence of the qualities that would be required for a successful academic career, I believe.
Some 7-11 managers might be various combination’s of Black/Gay/Muslim, so I am pretty sure you wouldn’t vote for ANY 7-11 manager.
Oh, and please respond to Majority Will’s link devastating the false claims of Photoshop-fraudster Cashill that “dreams” had a ghost writer…
*Whew*! Thanks you, MW, for freely sharing such powerful insight. Just when I was truly beginning to take pleasure in the struggle itself, I know see that I can just say @^%* it and laugh at the stupid rock instead. Eat it, Camus!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_Sisyphus
Kevin, unfortunately ther are no 7-11s in my city … in fact I don’t believe there are any in my state … a suspicion http://www.7eleven.com confirms. SO, does it have to be a 7-11, or were you using one chain as a proxy for an entire industry, in which case a manger of any convenience store will count? Independents OK, too, or does it have to be chain? And what about former, or can we only vote for those currently in the field?
If former managers are cool, that really simplifies it for me. I can just write myself in! Yay!
Oh, wait, this dictatorship of a jurisdiction I live in doesn’t allow “3rd” parties, much less write-ins. Still waiting to hear back on the Constitutionality of all that.
Anyway, thanks for the thought, Kevin.
It may be a stereotype, but one not totally lacking in truth, that a great many convenience store managers are immigrants. So, in saying that you would accept ANY of them, you are thus accepting the notion that immigrants should not be barred from the Presidency. That is the first (and likely the only) point on which you and I agree.
“I like Newt the most.”
That explains a lot.
We agree on a lot. I’ve also made a number of points correcting your mistakes that we should now agree on. Here are a few:
The story of Obama having a gay lover coming out after the convention, after he had defeated Hillary, would have been damaging to Obama and the Democrat party. IF Obama had a gay lover, there would be a motivation to make him disappear.
Whether Ayers wrote Dreams and Obama had sex with Donald Young is not one of those trivial infinite truths.
Obama has a very small paper trail of academic writing. Comparing Clinton’s 1 year in academia to Obama’s 13 is not valid.
Obama was promoted by the media and his past ignored. As William Buckley said, the leftward tilt of the elites in this country goes back a long time. Obama is just the current messiah.
I can speak for Bill Buckley better than you.
You are only superficially familiar with Cashill’s career and specifically his evidence for Ayers writing Dreams.
You are not familiar with Obama’s Marxist beliefs, homosexual acts, or the black liberation theology and homosexuality practised in his Chicago church.
We have established a lot of common ground. This is just a partial list.
Nope. The only thing I agree with is that Obama spent longer in academia than Clinton. because that is the only factual statement in there.
Not having read a huge number of memoirs, I can’t say. Can you? Besides, I live very near a tidal river (the Hudson) and walk along it very frequenty, including areas where other tidal streams flow into i, so that idea seems very ordinary to me. If I wrote my memoirs, I might put something about that in them.
Besides, if a book published in 2001 bore some passing similarities to one published in 1995, most reasonable people would conclude that the author of the 2001 book read the 1995 book and was influenced by it concsiously or unconsciously.
As for Newt, does he have help writing his books?
Well then, we can agree that you’ve done an incomplete and terrible job rebutting the corrections I’ve made to your inaccuracies.
We agree on a lot, but you are unable to admit it because you are not the scientist you think you are.
Lets try another tack, since Kevin doesn’t really seem to be getting it.
KevinSB:
Let’s assume the ridiculous for a moment, and pretend that Obama is a Marxist.
If he is a Marxist, would that somehow preclude him from POTUS eligibility?
Is it illegal to be a Marxist in the US?
Is it illegal for a President to be a Marxist?
Excellent questions! Here’s another to throw out there for the confused birthers.
Would being a blatant hypocrite and secretly cheating on your wife while angrily and adamantly pushing for the prosecution and resignation of a President for alleged adultery make a candidate ineligible for POTUS?
Of course not.
Here’s a quick question for you. How many times did the loser of the Superbowl appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated? And further, how many times did the loser of the NFC championship appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated?
Not into football? How many time did the loser of the World Series appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated? And further, how many times did the loser of the National League Championship Series appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated?
Didn’t you once say that Obama was a great community organizer for the Republican Party?
Nice try John. I realize that your incurable insecurites force you to make up endless excuses for your own failings and that explains why you can’t grasp any real world dynamics at play.
So now, you need to pretend that you are simply being faced with a bogeyman of pure “liberal” opposition and those poor liberals are simply being closed-minded and mean to you…
Sorry, but the truth doesn’t match up to your fantasy, yet again. It is quite obvious to anyone who actually follows and pays attention to the dialogue here that the regular posters are comprised of a variety of views and backgrounds all across the ideological spectrum – political, religious or otherwise.
From the political perspective, that includes a number of conservatives, Republicans, Libertarians and independents in addition to liberal or Democratic voices. A number of the regulars are quite openly opposed to Obama on legitimate areas of poltical difference and neither voted for him last time nor plan to consider him as an option for their vote in the coming election.
Yet all those voices somehow are able to interact and dialog here in an adult manner and deal with differences of opinion or POV by being able to back up and support their positions with valid evidence. They are able to all treat each other fairly well overall and don’t engender the same problems that only Trolls of your ilk receive.
There is a simple reason for that, which you sadly seem incapable of learning. They generally are able to adhere to proper conduct and honest dialogue. They are able to back up their positions. They have the social skills to know how to interact with others.
You trolls receive the pushback and poor responses you get simply because you bring that upon yourself. You simply make up and spread lies and unsubstatiatable conjecture. You are simply here for dishonest purposes and are unable to engage in honest dialogue. Your claims all fall apart upon the slightest investigation. As a result, you utterly destroy your own credibility and only build up well-deserved ire and contempt.
It really is that simple John. The whole world isn’t against folks like you because of some imaginary “conspiracy”…it is because of your own actions and behaviors, which are utterly lacking in integrity or sincerity. People don’t need to treat cranks and con artists seriously nor pay attention to their nonsense. Simple as that. Act ridiculous and you will get ridiculed. Welcome to Cause & Effect 101.
You come across as the former. You certainly are not the latter.
And yes, there is very little point in paying attention to irrational twits like you.
Irrelevant. Every statement someone makes stands on its own merit. Lack of evidence on a topic is lack of evidence on that topic – period.
What someone else did or said prior to making that unsubstantiated lie is utterly irrelevant and doesn’t change the reality that they are caught lying and making up claims they can’t back up now.
None of that meets any real definition or criteria of “evidence”. Obvioulsy, you utterly lack proper correlative logical thinking skills.
You are simply grasping at inconsequential and irrelevant straws with no direct tie-back to Obama’s own views and actions. You are simply pimping a false meme because you desperate to believe it and push it.
Sorry, but simply pretending in bogeymen doesn’t make them real.
All these irrational fears of perceived “Marxism” exist only within your head. You are simply seeing shadows because you are desperate to see shadows.
Again, you are simply weighting his book as “a big role” in your mind and opinion.
Was his book a factor for SOME? Quite possibly.
Did having a book help increase his profile and fortunes in life? Sure. Nothing atypical or unusual or unexpected about that.
Were there many other aspects to the man’s abilities, platforms and campaigning that were also were hefty factors in his ability to rise quickly and obtain the highest office in the land? Most assuredly.
In otherwords, this whole line of your complaints comes down to nothing that is unusual, atypical or unexpected.
You simply exaggerate the importance of small factors upon which you are obsessively fixated all so you can do nothing but have an excuse to endlessly complain and whine, for the mere sake of complaining and whining.
Nothing you are railing on against or “curious” about is in any way out of line or unexpected for someone who succeeds.
You seem to merely resent his success simply because he succeeded. You come across just bitter and possibly jealous…or just very, very petty and “hating” on someone, simply because you need to “hate”.
I’m glad you are seeing a therapist. Please show them your conversations here and the full context of the responses you engender and pushback you get. Maybe they can help you learn to exist in the real world that will always be beyond your control and be full of people who differ from you and are able to obtain more success than you. Maybe they can help you learn how to act and fuction like a normal adult in society and get beyond spending all your time throwing childish tantrums.
And why is that?
That lame bogus story *DID* come out during the last election cycle. If you were unaware of it, that’s because it quickly crashed and burned after initial coverage and investigations led to an overwhelming consensus conclusion that the claims had ZERO credibility and the claimant turned out to be someone with a really poor reputation for making things up that don’t hold up. He also miserably failed several lie detector tests.
So this dead-horse was tried and died a long time ago. It has no legs to stand on. The only circles that pay attention to such irresponsible salacious dreck are the same petty circles eager to latch onto any unfounded smear they can. Only the same groups of inconsequential nuts chatter about such nonsense.
Sorry, but all your wallowing in the rumor-mill mud here is simply unfounded sleaze-peddling. There is no “truth” at all in this dreck.
But yes, it is completely trivial in the most petty and inconsequential way.
So what. Who cares. You fail the basic requirement in making this line of reasoning here, as you can’t make an argument that it is either a requirement for the presidency nor that all other presidents met whatever unfair and “unique” standard you are trying to judge Obama on.
These are simply petty and meaningless whines. You are just having a childish and unimportant public tantrum for the sake of having a tantrum.
As always, the “messiah” claim is only made by the Obama haters. No one else talks like that. Only bitter and jealous fools. All you are doing here is revealing how bitter, jealous and petty you are. No one cares, princess.
LOL! What a dumb and pointless statement on its face!
Who else is claiming to “speak for Buckley” here other than you? NO ONE.
So, unless you also hear voices in your head and are having conversations between multiple-personalities, you are wasting your time arguing with only yourself on an issue of no consequence or relevance whatsoever.
Sorry, you can pay attention to Buckley or whomever else you want. No one else has to care what they say either. Bill Buckley is entitled to whatever opinions he wishes to hold. Neither I nor anyone else has to neither care nor accept his opinions. Simple as that.
The only pushback you’ve legitimately received on this meaningless tangent is that as soon as you put yourself out there claiming to “know” or “speak” for someone, others can legitimately challenge your claims of association on that mere aspect of association alone and challenge you to “proof” that you “know” someone.
But that is simply calling you out on your own words and claims of association. It has nothing to do with anyone caring what Buckley might have to say at all. Sorry. Simply not relevant nor important. Just some other person with a mere opinion, that’s all.
FAIL Kevin. Simply saying something doesn’t make it so.
Here you are just simply trying to protect your little insecurity-based fantasy bubble and think portraying a situation they way you wish to spin it makes it “so”.
Sorry, but this is a clear case, where the whole interaction between you and Scientist is on open display in a public forum for all to see.
It is obvious that NONE of what you just said matches with the reality of how that conversation has gone down.
Scientist’s prior response to this seems to hold up – there is very little evidence of you two agreeing on much of anything at all.
You claim he’s made innacurate statements and that you’ve “corrected” them. I fail to see any proof of that being the case either.
Seems like he’s done a solid job of calling out and rebutting your meaningless nonsense all along the way.
This is why you utterly lack credibility here and are seen as nothing but a sad joke. You can’t seem to be truthful or honest about anything and just throw a bunch of childish defensive tantrums and seem to have to embellish everything you say. Your personal “spin” consistently fails to hold up to reality.
Loved your entire experiment, your sharing of it and your analysis, findings and conclusions! LOL! Kudos!!!
For the sake of usage of space mainly, I only recited from your finding #3 on, even though I enjoyed the entire thing.
I also felt #3 was the most important Truism and take-away relevant to the ODS crowd and how and why they behave the way they do, so I did want to ensure that whole point was reprinted in my response.
EXACTLY! Well said!
Yeah, I could have tossed in ascetism, antimaterialism, post-consumerism …. or simplified things by postulating whether any of the trolls could differentiate between any given intellectual concepts. Why limit the flailing to economics?
LOL! Good points. 🙂
Many of these birther trolls seem to have stopped maturing at age five and sadly can’t get past what they feel is their interpretation and brilliant retort of “I know you are but what am I?” Ad nauseam.
Yeah. That pretty much sums up both the mentality on display and the full essense of their tantrums. Quite pathetic and sad.
I highly suspect that folks with this mentality don’t fare so well in real life interactions either, as they seem to utterly lack the social skills and awareness to get along with others or grasp why they can’t make or keep many friends and professional relationships. Imagine going through your entire life, not only being the source of all your own problems, but remaining perpetually in a state of bitter denialism and blaming others for your own failures…
…sounds like an endless nightmare purgatory-style existence if you ask me.
G-I will just re-state what I said above, which Kevin completely ignored. Cashiil’s “argument” is based on supposed similarities between Dreams and Ayers’ memoir Fugitive Days. But, there is no statistical analysis of the two books as a whole in the context of a representative sample of similar books, which is the miinimum required even to raise questions. Now suppose such an an nalysis was done and showed a score wiith statistical significance. That would not in any way establish that Ayers wrote Dreams or even parts of Dreams. In fact, it would far more likely suggest that Ayers read Dreams, which was published in 1995 and was influenced by it, consciously or unconsciously. when he wrote his memoirs, which were published 6 years later, in 2001.
Moreover, for Kevin to imply that we agree on things we do not is quite egregious. If he wishes to confine himself to provable facts, then I would be happy to agree. None of his or Cashill’s assertions come within spitting distance of facts.
Well said. I fully agree, especially all three summary statements below:
This is wrong. This is but one way to verify. There are others such as those that existed before computers.
You think Cashill’s assertions are not close to facts, but at the same time, you are only aware of a small portion of his research. Your way to discount evidence you don’t want to admit is to pretend it doesn’t exist. Have you watched the cspan video?
Yes. Totally uncovincing. Sorry.
As a side note, Cashill spends 5-10 minutes on what he believes is the “media bias” that Democrats (or Democratic presidential candidates) are smart while Republicans are dumb. Now, I’m not one who believes GWB is dumb-incurious, yes, but not dumb. Nor did I find John Kerry particularly brilliant.
But let’s take a few concrete examples:
Sarah Palin-I have no idea what her IQ is. But she was manifestly unprepared for the vice-presidency, as a half-term governor of a very small state (by population) and someone who simply had not read much. “What newspapers do you read? All of them, Katie.” But you don’t have to take my word for it; you can hear it from McCain’s campaign manager, Steve Schmidt. Yet with the choice of about 45 Republican US Senators, 25 or so governors, plus any of the runner-ups in the nomination race McCain chose her.
Rick Perry-Couldn’t remember in approximately 1 minute which cabinet departments he wanted to elimiinate. Not to mention a ton of other gaffes.
Herman Cain-The newspaper interview regarding Libya. It’s truly painful to watch. Not to mention the tax plan from Sim City and the Pokemon quotes.
I would submit that there has not been any serious Democratic candidate anywhere near as ill-prepared as those 3. So, before Republicans complain of how the media portrays Republicans as dumb, they ought to consider not nominatiing unprepared people nor giving them double digit support in primaries and caucuses. Plus they need to stop rewarding ignorance. It isn’t a pre-requisite for a candidate to know who the President of Uzbekistan is (though I do and have read a fair amount about him), but when someone rises in the polls of Republican voters because they DON’T, there is something wrong with that.
Translation-Why use state-of-the-art objective measures when they don’t give me the answer I want? I prefer outdated subjective methods because they give me the answer I want.
Everyone here has read John Drew’s nonsense ramblings and inability to prove anything he says. It’s a measure of how gullible you are that you’d trust John Drew.
“Hey man, this is my crazy, go find your own crazy?”
Not that Kevin is desperate for attention.
As Cashill says in his video, literary analysis on computer today is closer to the certainty of lie-detector tests than DNA.
If it supported his position he would say the opposite.
If barbarian warbands chose leaders the way Reds choose candidates, they’d all be dead. If the danger were more immediate, this revolt against competence foolishness would quickly fizzle.
If you watch the cspan video, you will see that he has done a much more sophisticated analysis than what software can currently do. His analogy between literary analysis and lie-detectors tests is accurate and you’ve not even attempted to disprove it.
While we are on the topic, will you now admit the following sentence of yours is incorrect?
—-
there is no statistical analysis of the two books as a whole in the context of a representative sample of similar books, which is the miinimum required even to raise questions.
—–
You make a lot of mistakes, but you don’t admit it because you just change the topic to something else. I think I’m going to go more slowly and get you to admit your errors as I go along after I correct you so you won’t call me stupid so much. You can think I’m stupid but that is only because you haven’t noticed how many more times I’ve corrected you than the reverse.
I’ll let Lupin’s words speak for me, “Kevin SB is a few french fries short of a happy meal”
I’ll let my words speak for me:
You make a lot of mistakes, but you don’t admit it because you just change the topic to something else. That is what you are doing here: changing the topic to an insult. It is very ironic your name is Scientist when you do not behave in a scientific way.
You can think I’m stupid but that is only because you haven’t noticed how many more times I’ve corrected you than the reverse.
Since the other thread is shut down, I will note here that the National Review article that KevinSB himself cited says the following-” Roosevelt wrote 18 books on subjects ranging from naval warfare to naturalism, and not one soft-focus psychological self-examination about his tender feelings about his estranged father.” So Kevin’s favorite mag founded by William F Buckley does not buy into Cashill’s fantasy and credits Obama with writing Dreams From My Father.
No mistakes, my friend other than yours.
– KevinSB
I was originally skeptical about Cashill’s comments regarding the role Bill Ayers played in writing Dreams From My Father. Later on, a liberal author – Christopher Andersen – verified Cashill’s thesis and confirmed that Obama turned to Bill Ayers for assistance with the Dreams manuscript. The liberals who are attack you take on the connections between Bill Ayers and Dreams From My Father are just mistaken about the facts. One of the most striking similarities between the work of Obama and the work of Bill Ayers is the way Obama appears to appropriate an old girlfriend of Bill Ayers, Diane Oughton, into is own life. Oughton had green eyes and lived on a family estate that included a lake. It defies possibility to think that young Obama also met a girl with these exact same attributes.
– Scientist
I didn’t see any absolute claim about the authorship of Dreams in that National Review article. If anything, the article is showing what an intellectual lightweight Obama is compared to Theodore Roosevelt. I knew the young Obama and I can report that he wasn’t a genius. His intellect wasn’t anywhere near that of Theodore Roosevelt.
Cashill’s argument is that Dreams contains examples of extraodinarily high quality writing that young Obama would have been incapable of producing.
Cashill also seems to think Ayers was the President’s mentor even though history, credible sources and common sense prove otherwise.
Paid smear artists will continue to spread their bizarre, groundless inanities and the delusional will continue to lap it up. Nothing new there.
“Cashill’s stuff on this was a lot of crap, all conjecture and no concrete evidence.”
http://washingtonindependent.com/60692/the-ayers-wrote-obamas-book-theorist-gets-a-sympathizer
Anderson is now on the record that the role Ayers may have played, as he does not provide much supporting evidence for his claims, was minor at best.
Cashill’s thesis is that Ayers wrote Obama’s book, something not supported by a scholarly evaluation of his claims.
Oops… Somehow John has a hard time addressing facts which disprove his points… I believe that is called confirmation bias?
That study by philocomp.net is flawed in many ways. I already explained some of the reasons why above. Cashill explains why in his book as well. In addition he’s done further research since that page was published. And his research is much more thorough and sophisticated than the few hours done for the philcomp article. Watch the cspan video and you will see. Or read the book.
NR hasn’t investigate the topic. Furthermore, even if they believed he had a ghostwriter, it is simplest to just credit it to Obama rather than get into it. The point of the article had almost nothing to do with Dreams. It is a leap and a mistake to consider that proof of anything.
I watched it. An hour of my life I will never get back. “Cashill’s stuff on this was a lot of crap, all conjecture and no concrete evidence.”
Sorry,rationalize all you want, National Review accepts that Obama wrote Dreams. Take it up with them.
Christopher Andersen is not some RWNJ. He is a respected liberal Democrat. It should be shocking to most people that he confirmed that Barack Obama turned to Bill Ayers for help when Obama was stalled out in terms of finishing Dreams From My Father. According to Andersen’s report, it was actually Michelle Obama who recommended that Barack turn to Bill Ayers for help in finishing Dreams.
Jack Cashill asserted that Bill Ayers participated in writing Dreams long before Andersen confirmed the the connection between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers regarding the creation of Dreams From My Father.
The fact that there is any tangible evidence at all of this coming from a liberal authors should be enough to shock people into the reality that Bill Ayers helped write Dreams From My Father. Ayers, after all, is our nation’s number one unrepentant terrorist. It is creepy to read in Andersen’s account about the closeness of the Obama family to such a vile, hateful, violent person as Bill Ayers.
NR doesn’t have an opinion about whether Obama wrote Dreams. They haven’t read Ayers writings, etc. NR knows as much about Ayers as you know about Donald Young. Don’t confuse ignorance with truth. Understand the distinction? It is a leap and a mistake to consider that aside proof of anything.
To say Cashill has no concrete evidence is simply false. Even if you think the cspan video is not sufficient, it includes plenty of evidence in that hour.
He’s not. However, ultimately his argument as now significantly Dreams was influenced by Bill Ayers is largely subjective. He sees similarities where others don’t. We here who study conspiracy theories are familiar with the mechanisms that lead ordinary people to see false similarity.
The following quote is from a couple of Ayers’ students.
I think you are stuck too.
KevinSB
FYI: Here’s an article I wrote reacting to Jack Cashill’s book, Deconstructing Obama. See, http://anonymouspoliticalscientist.blogspot.com/2011/03/seedy-side-of-obama-story-dr-drew.html
As I write there: “The young Barack Obama I knew would have been excited to meet Bill Ayers, would have been comfortable with Ayers’ anti-American hostility, and would have been more than capable of persuading the jaded ex-terrorist that he was a sincere believer in the necessity of a socialist transformation of the U.S.”
Proof?
I don’t care if he talks for 3 days. Speculation is NOT evidnce.
Well, please provide us with the argument then. The study in quite a compelling manner shows why Cashill was wrong.
Simple. I am awaiting your response.
And he provides no evidence and admits that Ayers at best had some minor advisory roles. What now?
This RWNJ could at least rinse off total garbage like that before pulling it out of his backside and posting it.
Dr. Conspiracy:
As a “real” Dr., I should point out that Bill Ayers does not seem to have moved on as you assert. Here is a link of him standing on a U.S. flag in 2001. The article shows how chilling it is that Obama turned to Ayers for help on creating Dreams. See, http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/August-2001/No-Regrets/
nbc
Christopher Andersen is a respected liberal writer. He interviewed people and found evidence that Obama turned to Bill Ayers for help in writing Dreams. The words in Dreams show strong similarities to other things Ayers has written. Andersen has no axe to grind against Obama…he was just reporting what people told him. How is this no evidence? There is more evidence that Bill Ayers helped write Dreams From My Father than there is evidence that young Obama dated a ton of girls prior to meeting Michelle Obama.
– KevinSB
It is comical to see posters here sayin the same stuff about you as they say about me. In nbc’s view, you and I never provide enough evidence no matter how much well-researched, published information we provide. When we present startling evidence to support our views, nbc responds by simply saying it is too little, too small, or not obvious enough. Give me a break! I really don’t know how they can take themselves seriously at this point.
Majority will uses foul language to put us down without dealing with the merits of the argument.
g. simply asserts that you and I are nobodies who should be ignored. It’s comical. You can’t make this stuff up. I would think they would come up with a different response in reaction to different people. I guess that is too much of a stretch for their limited imaginations.
Science responses to whatever I say with a pseudo scientific statement that doesn’t address the evidence or the overall thesis I’m presenting. Same with your comments. It’s really informative for me to look at how they are reacting to your informative, patient comments. I don’t have your patience. 🙂
He makes such claims but provides no evidence or names. Funny is it not. And in a recent interview he admits that at best Ayers played a minor role certainly nothing to indicate that Ayers wrote the book.
What now? as to your standard of evidence, you certainly appear to have a low standard, especially when it comes to negative claims. We have however quite a few people who have come forward, named not anonymously, who have shown how President Obama was quite the lady’s man.
There are none who you can name who have come forward that claim that Ayers wrote Dreams.
A scholar you are not my friend. IMHO of course.
So you claim but now Anderson admits that at best, Ayers’ influence was a minimal as yours on Obama…
Poor pathetic John. Still trying to pass of his inconsequential happening to attend two college parties where Obama happened to also be as “knowing” him.
By that sad degree of separation, that puts anyone who attended 2 or more of his rallies as “experts” on Obama as well, probably even more so, as he was the sole speaker there and therefore the entire time was spent listening to what he said or did at the moment.
Yet no serious person would pay attention to some random person from those audiences claiming they “knew” him either…
Sorry John, in terms of claims to fame, yours is about as weak as they get. You better get back to searching for a guy who randomly bumped into Obama’s grocery cart at some point in the past and wants to analyze Obama based on Ramen noodles in his cart. That way, you can finally have someone with even more tenuous claims. Once you’ve achieved that, you can finally claim having superiority over someone…
Who knows if that is even true?
He probably thinks all Marxists look alike anyway.
– nbc
Please. You are out of touch with reality. Even Bill Ayers claims he wrote Dreams. Don’t you find it odd that Lisa Jack and Sohale Siddiqui claim young Obama had a lot of girlfriends, but that not one has ever been interviewed and none have ever appeared in a photo with young Obama?
Again, I’m applying the same skills that helped me win the William Anderson Award from the APSA – my common sense. My only contribution to this discussion is that 1) when I first saw Obama, I thought he was gay, and 2) I never saw him around a girl myself – ever.
If Obama was willing to lie about having girlfriends in Dreams, I have no doubt he is willing to lie about whether or not he wrote Dreams.
Bill Ayers, by the way, is happy to claim authorship of Dreams From My Father. See, http://youtu.be/OfIZDYm0a54 Why would Bill Ayers even joke about something so significant if it wasn’t true?
So what. What that shows is that Bill Ayers is still a jerk. He may not be as stupidly radical as he was in his youth, but he’s still a fringe character and not paid attention to be anyone other than the fringe.
The world is full of extreme nuts and fools, like Bill Ayers and yourself. No serious people pay attention to them. There is more in common between you and Bill Ayers than there is between either of you and Obama.
Bill Ayers being an idiot and standing on the flag has absolutely nothing to do with anyone other than Bill Ayers, sorry.
g. You’re being silly now. I knew Chandoo from the earlier anti-aparthied rallies while I was a senior at Occidental College. I had been in a relationship with Boss between 1979 and 1981. I was hardly a disconnected stranger regarding leftist student relationships, culture and politics. I founded the group that ended up flying the Karl Marx banner in the Oxy quad.
Absolutely correct. Speculation is NEVER evidence.
Those who rely on speculation just prove by doing so that they don’t have any real evidence or substance behind their attacks.
Relying on tangential speculation and innuendo reveals the utter weakness of one’s claims.
These petty smear merchants don’t have any real “dirt” directly from Obama, so they have to intentionally distract and attack the failings in unrelated people and events and pretend to tie them to someone they are unable to attack directly.
The very technique itself is proof of failure.
Good point. Since all John has displayed is a constant and pathological propensity to lie and embellish his own back story, why do we even treat his one flimsy claim to fame of having met Obama at these two parties as credible at all?
What solid proof is even there that A) these parties took place *and* B) John was even there and C) John and Obama were even in the same room at these parties at the same time???
As others have pointed out, John bases so much of his story on being there because of he alleges he had some girlfriend at the time… yet this alleged “ex-girlfriend” has not come out of the woodwork to confirm these claims either…
> Even if it was true that there was a moon, it isn’t necessarily true anymore.
That actually sounds like a mathematician’s reasoning – indeed testimony from Neil Armstrong only proves there was a moon at the time he went up there.
It might since have been replaced with an identical copy, a Potyomkin village (though the latter would require to have similar mass) or simple psychological imprints (“we see the moon although it isn’t really there”).
It’s also possible you just dreamt you read that Armstrong said he went to the moon, or that such dreams are implants, too.
Congratulations on the most absurd sarcastic straw-man tantrum rant I’ve seen yet.
All you’ve done is make me suspect that you suffer from Histrionic personality disorder.
I strongly doubt it because William F Buckley was a well-educated and thoughtful man, who had enough knowledge and understanding of history to publicly oppose many of the ill-founded policies of the Bush Administration, including especially the Iraq War, and as a result was despised by the neocons.
I will also note that Buckley was fiercely opposed to Ayn Rand, the Birchers and George Wallace.
Whereas you, on the other hand, appear to be ignorant of both history and economics, and willfully so since you obviously did not even research the links to wikipedia I provided in the Mars diary which refuted your simplistic and incorrect views.
I doubt it will do any good, but you might be interested to learn that the notion of bailouts (defined as a central bank providing loans to help an entity cope with liquidity concerns, when private banks are unable or unwilling to provide loans to said entity) were first advocated in the 1870 by well-known British businessman/writer Walter Bagehot who founded that famous commie rag THE ECONOMIST.
I could similarly take apart each and every of your statement which are equally false.
My advice is: either stick to software (do you see me pontificating about the merits of Linux or whatever?) or find a community college and take a course in economics, and then come back for a serious discussion grounded in facts, not crazy ideas you picked up on the internet.
This time, your mistake is to just ignore evidence that disagrees with your worldview. For you to state that our side has provided no evidence is just flatly false. Here again is a partial list of the evidence:
The experiences of Dr. Drew, Black liberation theology, the Midwest Academy, his years being involved with Saul Alinsky, his childhood mentors, his voting record in both Senates, his impromptu statements on the campaign trail and in his speeches, etc.
The American Jobs Act is a long time in coming. He passed his first stimulus in February 2009, so it is only very recently that he admits needs to improve things. This bill will not greatly improve things, it is partially to keep expiring tax cuts in place. A bill to maintain the status quo is not exactly admitting failure with previous policies. Of course he has to have legislation he can blame Congress for not implementing. Never mind that much of his ideas wouldn’t pass when the Democrats were in firm control of the Congress, let alone now that the Tea Party is a powerful force.
Note that the Republicans would pass any legislation that would actually improve things. We could fix the rising costs in Medicare, move to a flat tax, privatize Social Security, lower the cost of energy, etc. The problem is that Obama doesn’t believe in any of these ideas. His motivation is social justice and environmental justice. He thinks America is big and arrogant, rather than the last bastion preventing global tyranny.
BTW, I brought up Buckley because you guys did first. I was invoking their people after they did, reminding them of their mistake. As you didn’t know this, you missed the point.
I didn’t mean to suggest that bailouts were invented in the 21st century. Only that they are the modern way of implementing Marxism. I should have perhaps said that “Bailouts are THE 21st-century way to implement Marxism in a step-wise fashion.” The point is that you need to have the government own a portion of the means of production before it can own ALL.
You make other mistakes, but until you investigate those topics and learn about Saul Alinsky, the Midwest Academy, Franz Fanon, etc. and then admit that Obama is a Marxist, there is little point getting into the rest.
One of the first mistakes I noticed by you is this. Buckley and Rand did disagree on some aspects, but agree on so many others. Everyone disagree to some amount. But I can confidently say that if you read Buckley’s God and Man at Yale, and Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, you would see a very similar viewpoint. If you don’t have time to read Buckley’s first book, you can read his first article in the National Review:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/223549/our-mission-statement/william-f-buckley-jr
I believe that article alone is sufficient evidence that he agreed with Ayn Rand on the big things.
I know plenty of history and economics to have a discussion with you. I could show you my library one day. I suspect there would be a fair number of the big thinkers of history that you would not be much familiar with: Frederic Bastiat, Edmund Burke, Free To Choose, The Federalist Papers, Adam Smith, etc.
The Iraq war has nothing to do with the current economic crisis. The housing bubble and credit default swaps such having nothing to do with war.
That is my incomplete list of your mistakes.
LMAO! Stop! We’re running out of Irony Meters here! You keep breaking them faster than we can replace them.. ROTFLMAO!!
Seriously, other than now laughing endlessly, you have become such a broken-record joke on the same utter garbage that it bears little mention and other than laughing, you and your nonsense are just completely dismissed.
You keep repeating the same worn out refrains that have been endlessly debunked and shredded all over this forum. There’s not much left to those same dead horses you keep trying to beat…
BINGO! The argument starts and ends there – period.
There’s simply no point in paying attention to anything of their blowhard nonsense, when they can’t even meet the basic entry test for a rational argument.
I’m sure that many idiots talking to Einstein would laugh endlessly. I’m also sure that Einstein would laugh at the questions of idiots.
The fact that you say my points are “dismissed” is an admission that you are being irrational.
I do repeat myself but that is only because it is clear that what I have said doesn’t sink in. You guys are arrogant so it takes repeating an idea for you to really consider it. The conversation would move much faster if you were open-minded about the ideas I’m presenting. All of your personal attacks demonstrate that you are closed-minded, and so it seems that repeating myself is necessary. Fortunately, copy and paste is not hard for me so I don’t mind so much. Things do move very slowly though. Once I can understand what you people who seem quite rational about most things are irrational when talking about Dr. Drew, me, Dr. Cashill, Obama, Donald Young, etc.
I didn’t finish my last thought before sending. To put it another way, once I can figure out why you guys are selectively irrational, I may leave this site, as I don’t consider it my life’s passion to educate people about Obama. Learning why apparently intelligent people are incapable of learning certain topics is interesting, however.
Echo, repetition, a quick revision to your stimulus story, and your bailout story.
Keep revealing your ignorance; the difference in bailouts over time is that, by rejecting gov’t ownership, they have evolved over time in the exact opposite direction of Marxism. Some of the bailouts I listed which could be construed as Marxist predate Marx. Were they Marxist ahead of their time?
And what seems to be your calling card, an accusation of “other” unnamed mistakes. Having trouble spelling them?
Scientist introduced Buckley to the discussion, to shame you by how badly you’ve failed him.
“Republicans would pass any legislation that would actually improve things.”
Excellent fallacy! Part false assumption, false association, and misleading generalization!
“The problem is that Obama doesn’t believe in any of these ideas.”
No kidding. You have discovered the concept of opposition.
“He thinks America is big and arrogant …”
Source? I thought the story was that Obama was the arrogant one?
He does have a penchant for blowing people up on our behalf. If that be arrogance.
“… rather than the last bastion preventing global tyranny.”
Alright! Apocalyptic paranoia! Which global tyranny are you anticipating?
Your reply to Lupin was hilarious, and tempting, but I leave it to him.
What an act! I dub it, Sincerity Trolling.
So far, nothing you’ve listed meets any actual objective definition of “evidence”. Sorry.
LMAO! FAIL! Sorry, mere insinuations and personal speculation by an obviously damaged and bitter crankpot, based solely on a few brief and random encounters of happening to be in the same room with someone else over 30 years ago are about as far from the definition of “evidence” as it gets.
Sorry, but your simple gullible susceptibility to any fish tale or rumor mill gossip that floats through the tabloid sewer is *NOT* remotely “evidence” in any shape, form or manner at all.
By using such clearly ludicrous examples, you only further demonstrate that you have entirely no idea what you are talking about and can’t even use basic words in the English language properly. What a joke!
You can connect that directly to Rev. Wright, but not directly to Obama himself or any of his actions. Sorry. You seem to really be getting O/T from proving “marxism” and already derailing to other bogeymen fairly quickly…
Don’t see any Obama connected Marxism examples here either…
Oh, what foolish nonsense! The whole “Saul Alinsky” bogeyman smears were originally a planned front of attack on HRC, when she was the anticipated nominee in the last contest, because she happened to write a college paper on him. It just demonstrates how utterly weak and lazy the smear machine is out there that they simply treat a different candidate as some blank space in a Mad Lib book and fill in the same smear for him.
Utterly bogus and laughable on its face. Simply no connection there at all.
Furthermore, this seems to be a weird obsessive bogeyman term on the right that just shows a bunch of crusty old folks, hopelessly stuck in the distant past and still thinking they are arguing the 1960’s over half a century later. Then again, you folks still act like we’re fighting WWII and the Cold War…so it sure shows that long-dead horse thought-patterns are common amongst you tools. Seriously, the only people who ever seem to talk about Alinsky are all on the far right. What a joke!
*yawn*. This is getting boring. Now you’re back to clinging to grasping at tenuous associations and childhood influences that have no actual correlation to the behaviors or actions of the man elected and serving as President. Still no evidence of “Marxism” happening in his governance, sorry.
Don’t see any actual Marxism there either. Sorry.
Only when tools like you twist words and their intent to pretend to see “Marxism”. But again, no. As usual, you lazily resort to nothing but meaningless generalizations and have yet to give any specific, concrete examples that would meet the basic criteria of being actual “evidence” whatsoever at all.
So yeah, so far you’ve still got a 100% FAIL record on the topic. Meaningless generalizations don’t ever count as “evidence”. You need to learn to cite specific examples and build a credible argument to support them. Until you can do that, you’ve failed to even build the foundation of a case.
JPotter: “Republicans would pass any legislation that would actually improve things.”
Excellent fallacy! Part false assumption, false association, and misleading generalization!
It is all true. The one who is being is not interested in doing things that would improve the economy is Obama:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/285344/obama-blames-rich-rich-lowry
Oh, what a distorted load of nonsense!
First of all, his opposition in Congress has been there from the very start of his Presidency and they’ve fought every reform idea he’s had every step of the way. So they and many of the special interests out there are the ones who’ve been blocking, thwarting and watering down reforms over the past several years endlessly.
The Democrats were never “firmly” in control. Even prior to 2008, they never had a “supermajority” in the Senate and Lieberman along with several others constantly got in the way and often held the process and the legislative conditions hostage for their own personal petty gains.
The only area they had firm control of in 2008-2010 was the HOR. Look at the record and see how many, many bills and stronger versions of bills were passed under Nancy Pelosi, which then just stalled when it got to the Senate, mired in being held hostage by this incessant and unprecedented abuse of filibustering.
Compare her amazing record of passing bills through her HOR with the Tea Party infested ineptitude of Boehner’s current term. Night and day.
I have yet to see a credible GOP plan on any of these topics that actually “fixes” or “improves things” instead of just making them worse. Heck, few of the ideas are even workable in any of their current proposed forms at all.
In terms of our long term debt problems, it absolutely does. One of the biggest factors in that equation.
ROTFLMAO!!!
So…now you have the audacity to compare yourself to Einstein, eh?
Your delusions of grandeur and desperate need to make a plea to impress others continues to expand, doesn’t it! Yet another demonstration of your pathological need for exaggeration on display.
HINT: When someone has to keep trying to proof themselves to others and gets more and more grandiose in trying to convince others that they are “smart”…it is a sign of desperate failure and severe insecurity on full display.
The obvious irony here is that all you do is come across weaker and less “intelligent” in your obvious desperation here. Sorry, but you’re simply not convincing anyone and you certainly are only hurting your case.
Again – I highly recommend you take these full back & forth exchanges and share them with your therapist. He/she should be able to help you learn how to relate to others and deal with your insecurities and irrational fears better.
Nope. What you simply seem incapable of grasping is that people simply don’t pay attention to what is said or done by non-credible sources or those that come across crazy.
I know that the truth hurts and you aren’t strong enough to deal with it and therefore have to rely on living within your emotional walls of denial, but that’s simply how real-world social dynamics work.
Who would listen to a wild-eyed street bum’s advice on being a successful millionare or take color theory lessons from someone who’s been blind since birth? Who would pay attention to someone claiming that Mole People were going to mount a full scale attack on the US “any day now”…
…Some things are simply not credible on their face and some people simply have no justified credibility to be taken seriously on certain topics. Therefore, they are simply dismissed, because there is no real value or point in paying attention to them…other than for twisted entertainment value. You happen to fall under all those categories.
You’re a funny guy Kevin. I guess you have found out that intelligent people do not blindly accept your musings?
FAIL. Repeating nonsense doesn’t make it any more true or believable.
Trust me, we heard you the first several times. We’ve already evaluated what you had to say and judged it to be complete bunk.
What is the definition of insanity…doing the exact same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
Sorry. Not going to happen. You’re just wasting your time.
In terms of “closed-mindedness”, you better believe I’m going to 100% reject fantasy nonsense. I’m not going to pay attention to the Flat Earth Society folks or someone passionately trying to convince me that the moon *really is* made of green cheeze either…
Hate to break it to you, but that’s the category of buffoonery you’ve fallen into here as well. So yeah, you’re past the point of being a dead-end and going nowhere here. Absurdity succeeds in invoking lots of laughter…but beyond the bizarre entertainment value, nope. Nothing to be taken seriously at all.
This is meant out of serious intent to help a fellow human being and not as an attack:
When I keep suggesting you take this entire conversation to your therapist, I mean that with serious intent as advice to help you.
That is the one area I do give you credit on – there is nothing wrong with people who know they have areas to work on doing the right thing and trying to get professional help on it. I’d say that’s the one admirable thing I’ve heard from you so far that demonstrates a glimmer of a serious person trying to better himself instead of just a hopeless loon spiraling endlessly downwards.
Think about it – your therapist is on YOUR side and there to help you. That is not a hostile envioronment, such as you’ve earned yourself here. Taking this full back & forth thread to them will give you a neutral person, whose entire intent is to help you, who can help explain it to you.
In all sincerity, you’re chances of being able to get the answers you seek to that particular question are thousands of times better by pursing that direction than continuing to flail about here, where you only are viewed less and less seriously with every post you make.
KenvinSB –
A word of serious advice – the world is full of enough real and serious problems requiring attention and deserving of criticism out there.
It is simply not necessary and entirely unhealthy for you to have to fall into the trap of irrational paranoia and add to that worrying about all these irrational and imaginary bogeyman fears that you wrap yourself in.
Unfortunately, your own defense mechanisms seem to be your own worst enemy and are only harming you and not helping. You really should spend less time sucked into sewage on the internet and more time surrounding yourself in the daylight of the real world and with people that can help you better relate there.
Oooh… and let’s add Ronald Reagan to that list. …was he a “marxist” too?
Who can forget the S&L Bailouts?
That is the most similar prior comparison…
“. . . as I don’t consider it my life’s passion to educate people about Obama.”
Whew. [smh]
Pass.
Wow, that is an incredibly ignorant statement.
When Obama took office and the Democrats took control of both houses of Congress in January, 2009 the Dow Industrial Average stood at approximately 8000. Two years later, when the Republicans took control of the House, the Dow stood at 11,600. Thus the Dow rose 32% in two years under Democratic control.
Today, roughly a year after the Republicans took control of the House, the Dow stands are 12,414.That is an increase of 6.5%
To recap:
Under Democratic control, the Dow rose 32% over two years.
Under Republican control of the House, the Dow rose 6.5% over one year.
Commie KevinSB: The stock market is inflated
Blah, blah blah, Pinko Kev. I told you I have heard every one of your excuses before and many others. Losers make excuses, winners make money.
Commie KevinSB: You can thank the tea party for the good results of the stock market by installing Speaker Boehner.
From Jan 20, 2009 when Obama had a Democratic Congress until Jan 3, 2011 when the Republicans took over the House, the S&P 500 was up 58%
From Jan 3,2011 to toady, it is up 1%.
58% up under Pelosi, 1 % under Boehner.
The facts are just devastating to your case. Better stick to conjecture and innuendo, my friend.
By the way Commie Kevin are you a capiitalist? Do you actually invest?
Capitalist Scientist
Here is Buckley on TV eviscerating a new hole into Ayn Rand.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KmPLkiqnO8
My favorite quote (on Atlas shrugged): “I had to flog myself to read it.”
Let me suggest that owning a lot of books, even reading them, and actually UNDERSTANDING them are vastly different things.
You say things that are patently false, even ridiculous. If you think I’m the one who is in error, try having a conversation with any professional economist, even someone from the Chicago school (which I personally don’t agree with) and he’ll tell you’re full of sh*t.
This isn’t a matter of opinion either. Like with computers either you know what you’re talking about, or you don’t. If I was to talk about software, I’m sure I’d be spouting gobbledygook — which is why I don’t.
We don’t blame you for not liking Obama or even being opposed to his policies. I myself don’t agree with him on numerous topics (but from the left), Just accept that you don’t know much about economics history.
I “avoided” this question because it is off-topic. Anyway. I don’t think it is illegal, but I do think it is un-American and something that will hurt the economy, decrease liberty, and is evil.
Speaking of Marxism, here is a great quote by Ronald Reagan: “Communists are people who read Karl Marx. Anti-communists are people who understand Karl Marx.”
I would be happy to create a law that outlawed Marxism, but I see it as more a challenge of just rolling back the US federal government step by step. I think it is more important to explain to people that we need to privatize Social Security. That is a more specific way to make the US less Marxist. It is a step-wise process. Note you can also call it pro-Constitution. The Constitution was meant to outlaw Marxist-collectivist thinking. It predates it of course, but the term has had other names along the way. Collectivism goes back a long time. I just use the term Marxism because his writings crystallized it for many generations including this one.
Another way to rollback Marxism is for the government to sell ALL of its shares of ALL of its banks. Obama has not done that. Something that Obama will never do. He thinks the government should be invested in banks. He fears that if he forces them to sell that these banks could suffer and the stock market would suffer. Obama doesn’t care about jobs,
Some things are too late to fix. The auto companies were handed to the Unions, which is like having the fox guard the hen house.
If you look at Obama’s results, rather than his intentions, you will see that he’s done a failingjob. Every economic metric other than the stock market is down. Our country was in bad shape when he came into office, and he is adding fuel to the fire. Very little good will come from the 2,700 pages of Obamacare. Dodd-Frank helps the big banks, makes permanent the idea of “too big to fail”, squeezes out the little banks, decreasing competition, etc.
I could go on like this for days about his economic record. Here is an interesting list of all the ways Obama has been historic:
http://bit.ly/xYmy4H
So would unfettered capitalism…
That depends on what you consider by failing… It’s all relative my friend.
I don’t want anarchy. We are as far from an unfettered free-market as we are from cavemen. The history of humanity is mostly collectivism and the 20th century has added a lot of big-government
I never say unfettered, I don’t want the government to be administering a welfare state. Here is a good article about healthcare. It explains why the problem is not this mythical unfettered free market, but the government distorting the market. You can’t properly fix a problem without understanding it. http://bit.ly/AAkhpU
He who believes Ayers was seriously claiming authorship of “Dreams” displays a dreadful case of confirmation bias. It is no surprise they believe other nonsense and conspiracy theories. (privatize social security? Obama tuning the auto industry over to unions?)
P.S. – why don’t you check the auto industy’s recent financial statements? Or check Ayers bank statements to see if he is getting big royalties?
Says the scoundrel… 😉
Come on Kevin, you are making some poorly informed claims. As to the Constitution, what is your position on president Obama and his eligibility for example.
Ah, the doctrine of limited powers which ignores the promoting of the general welfare component. Yes, funny how we now have corporations that are being treated as individuals and not as guided by a contract with the State to benefit our nation, a contract which could be taken away when violated…
It would be helpful to better understand our Founding Fathers’ positions on many of these issues rather than pretend that there is a mandate for keeping government out of important areas of regulation, etc.
The idea that government has to step aside when the corporations, the bankers and others how have little interest in the well being of our Nation take over, would run quite counter to our Nation’s founding documents.
Wait… “Illegal is illegal?” So… Going 73mpH in a 70mpH zone is equivalent to posessing a gram of cannabis, which is equivalent to raping and murdering a jogger, which is equivalent to crossing the border without authorization?
I’m confused. I thought there were degrees of “illegal.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if this son of McCarthy was taking down the names of his perceived unAmerican enemies to one day oversee their quick kangaroo trials and prison sentences.
He must think that not nearly enough lives were destroyed during the McCarthy era.
The birther troll has already stated he thinks the President’s certified by the state of Hawaii birth certificate is a forgery.
“I have more respect for the Constitution than you do.”
A statement like that automatically precludes anyone from being taken seriously.
But then, I’ve lost count of his credibility killers by now.
What income tax bracket are you in?
The first American to advocate for the United States Government to own shares of a private corporation (a bank) was Alexander Hamilton. And the Federal government borrowed the money to buy the shares.
Each issue needs to be considered separately. You are stating that Marxism something like the color yellow. That is total nonsense.
That my friend is a totally unsupported position. It’s through Unions that workers can provide some balance here as capitalism leads to an undermining of the power of the worker to organize and compete effectively in the market place. This becomes even more unbalanced when workers become ‘tied’ to their company because of health insurance, limited mobility etc.
Capitalism does not protect the worker but rather protects at best the ability of a company to have access to labor. Capitalism does not care about the working conditions of the laborers, which is why we have OSHA, capitalism does not care about the external pollution of the company which is why we have the EPA. Is it no surprise that corporations are actively working to remove what they claim to be excessive regulations?
It was lack of regulation which caused the unfettered and uncontrolled practices that led to the collapse of our financial system.
You are right, America should not have classes, but it does, and the middle class is not the same as the proletariat which refers to the lowest class, also the working class. Sorry my friend an expert you are not. The middle class is often well informed, upward mobile, and has the ability to be more powerful in its labor relations with corporations, and thus the middle class becomes a political obstacle which is why the Republicans have moved to its destruction as a middle class forms a powerful stabilizing force to corporations.
America should not have classes but the distinction between the haves and have-nots continues to grow and while the upper class has grown in triple digits, the middle class has suffered. The American dream has been destroyed by failed economic policies and a political system which is intent on its destruction, as capitalism requires it.
Sorry my friend, the facts speak for themselves.
Just so I understand the rules, insults are only o.k. when you do it?
That’s the same mentality of Gingrich cheating on his wife while prosecuting Clinton for his affairs.
O.K. Never mind. Now it makes sense.
I think that I quite well understand the Republican agenda… But perhaps you could provide me with some examples that support your claims?
– nbc
In my experience, the Democrats went out of their way to make it harder for me to get into the middle class.
[Rest of the comment deleted. Dr. Drew, this blog is not about your life story and it is not about liberalism, or conservatism, or political science or economics. Look up at the top. It says “Obama Conspiracy Theories.”
I have trashed 4 of your comments, rather than allowing them to appear because they lack relevance to this web site. The same can be said for comments in the future. Doc]
Imagine someone asked if I liked red roses and I said “yes”.
You would interject that I should define what shades of red. How can I say I like red roses when there are so many shades of red? If someone wants to know what shades of red I like, he would have to be more specific.
I answer the questions asked, and the questioner has to ask good questions. Don’t blame me for answering questions you think are not precise. You are blaming me for a mistake by the questioner!
I can see how you don’t really know what Marxism means and therefore couldn’t answer the question, but that is your fault.
I have my opinion of what Marxism means, and I was using it.