How odd that Pennsylvania got set apart in time from all the other primaries. What luck for Clinton. All this time for something to go wrong for Obama and for exploiting it — like that awful quote everyone's talking about. From the article at the first link:
[D]uring a private meeting with California donors, [Obama said] that economic bitterness had driven some working class people to "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."That's an excellent rephrasing of a damaging statement. But I must say that the original statement sounded like a typical law-school-liberal remark. I think it was quite sincere, and I'm rather sure he believed he was being admirably intellectual and raising politics to a new, higher level. Within a liberal law school environment, that statement would be heard as a thoughtful, compassionate insight. Some of your colleagues might think you were excessively, squishily tolerant of what they see as ignorant, bigoted people, but I don't think they'd push you to be more understanding of the alien culture you were observing.
Obama modulated that assessment Friday night before an audience in Terre Haute:
"People end up voting on issues like guns and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. They take refuge in their faith and their community, and their family, and the things they can count on. But they don't believe they can count on Washington."
He added: "People are fed up, they are angry, they're frustrated and they're bitter. And they want to see a change in Washington."
ADDED: John Hinderacker says:
Barack Obama's arrogance has been evident for some time, and it's no shock, perhaps, to learn that that he shares this bigoted opinion, common among urban liberals, of people who live in "small towns." But to actually express it, in public, at a campaign event, is stunningly stupid.Ed Morrissey says:
The matter-of-fact style in which he spoke this shows the unthinking contempt he has for people he has never engaged — an acceptance of stereotypes without questioning them that shows his own bigotry, not to mention foolishness and poor judgment.
...Obama only really performs well with a script. Once he has to speak extemporaneously, not only does he fare worse as an orator, but he tends to get lost and make unforced errors.
Morrissey seems to think the main problem is that Obama is young and unseasoned. So he'd be better if only he learned how to disguise his real thoughts. I mean look at Hillary here, exploiting Obama's gaffe:
Is that better? A hammy politician buttering you up?
MORE: Glenn Reynolds links to an old Onion piece with Al Gore campaigning in Pennsylvania like this:
"Over the past few days, I have traveled all over your state and met many of you. And what has impressed me most is that no matter where I have gone, my reaction has been the same: 'Oh, God, get me the fuck out of this dump,'" said Gore, who alternately referred to the Keystone State's 12 million residents as "animals" and "ghouls."Read the whole thing.
Glenn collects links here. I especially like Mickey Kaus:
I used to think working class voters had conservative values because they were bitter about their economic circumstances--welfare and immigrants were "scapegoats," part of the false consciousness that would disappear when everyone was guaranteed a good job at good wages. Then I left college. ...Obama is doomed if people come to see him as a leftist. Is he really one, or is he just used to circulating among people who casually say things like that to win favor with each other? If that's all it is, then it's not a Category II Kinsley Gaffe, and we get back to the more mundane concern about his inexperience — his lack of seasoning.
Because Obama's comments are clearly a Category II Kinsley Gaffe -- in which the candidate accidentally says what he really thinks -- it will be hard for Obama to explain away. [He could say he was tired and it was late at night?--ed But he was similarly condescending in his big, heartfelt, well-prepared "race speech" when he explained white anger over welfare and affirmative action as a displacement of the bitterness that comes when whitesare anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition ...Obama's new restatement confirms the Marxist Deskwork interpretation of the race speech, removing any honest doubt as to his actual attitude.
Rather than trying to spin his way out, wouldn't it be better for Obama to forthrightly admit his identity? Let's have a national dialogue about egghead condescension!]
Posts
192 comments:
He was describing typical white people.
Actually, he was describing me. Except for the fed up, angry, frustrated, bitter part.
It seems odd to me that he would repeat "bitter." Even people who are rightfully angry, fed up, and frustrated don't care to see themselves as bitter - a term that better describes Barak's wife and his former preacher.
Oh, and a few liberal lawyers I've met.
Anne Althouse:
Utterly nauseating statement, even in it its supposedly less noxious form.
"Within a liberal law school environment, that statement would be heard as a thoughtful, compassionate insight."
If that is so, and you are certainly a good judge of that, I now understand why so many Americans actually hate and despise their lawyers.
That has often puzzled me in the past (I am a eurozone type with a law background). The law is not a popularity contest, wherever one is, of course, but where I sit we just do not know that sort of thing.
Well, apart from two lawyers with "identity" agendas, there is a former naval pilot in the race isn` t there...
More and more, the real Obamas are leaking out, as opposed to the "show" we've gotten for most of the campaign. A little insight into his Reverend, his wife's "love" of country, his views on rural typical white people, his socialist agenda, the terrorists he likes to hang out with, etc.
It's not such a pretty picture. He's just another very liberal Democratic machine lawyer candidate, with a Clinton (Bill) like gift for campaigning and a nice personna (if you don't ask any hard questions, or look too closely). It's not easy to see him and his wife "bridging any gaps" with us white folk.
I think he was also trying to explain that it was not purely racial issues that might lead PA voters to reject him. That social issues move forward when "real issues" go unaddressed.
Typical liberal analysis, but not as bad as what has come from his opponent.
It's much less cynical than Rendell's assessment of Pennsylvania as a state of possible racists, or previous comments by the Clintonians about dollars dragged through trailer parks.
It's the centimillionaire calling the kettle black.
Guess what?
People with Ivy League educations tend to be condescending to folks in the middle of country, and especially blue collar workers. For that matter, state college grads get about the same treatment.
And I've never met a Harvard law or MBA grad who wasn't a really condescending jerk (or who let ethics get in the way of money or power).
Small sample, but high percentage.
And what better audience to share the news about us gun-toting bible thumpers than in SF?
JFK was a Harvard grad, but he had to crawl into an engine compartment with grease monkees, and put his life in the hands of plumbers who manned his machine guns. His generation of leaders were different for the experience.
It was only last October when Congressman Bernie Thompson (guess the party) recommended to his aides that they get a broad spectrum of vaccinations before going to NASCAR events. I think thats because they might encounter people who weren't from NYC or DC in such threatening venues. That went over well. And yet, no lesson was learned.
Do we want a President and a party that so readily slander a large percentage of the American people?
Meade, if BO is elected, "the fed up, angry, frustrated and bitter part" might come to describe you.
Praise God, Obama is gonna help those poor, ignorant gun-totin’, pickup-drivin’, church-goin’ unemployed crackers in Pennsylvania, comfortin’ theyselves with the notion that they’re better than all-a-them faggots, wetbacks, colored folks, and commies.
To whom was Obama not a transparent phony from the very beginning? One minute of one speech is enough to determine that.
It must be that the real discussion is always about how this or that will play with the morons out there, and the suggestion that finally here is something over the top even for morons.
All it is, is media transformations into their preferred narrative. Everything other idea dies.
Previous message:
Vote for me, because I represent your values. We need to place our hope in change for a better future.
vs.
Vote for me, because I will increase taxes, rework the economy, and give you more stuff (like health care), and then you will change your values to be more like San Francisco, you ignorant, inbred redneck gun-humping, Bible-molesting hillbillies.
Put your hope in change! Put your bitterness into hope for change, instead of into being an inbred, ignorant, hillbilly redneck gun nut Christer. You think you can count on religion, but really you need to count on hope for change.
--- === ---
I have another question. Who smuggled in a recording device in order to sabotage Sen. Obama's campaign? It must have been one of those filthy rich San Francisco liberals, huh?
When B. H. Obama gives a speech outside of the big city, all he sees are grandmother similarities.
I think this is mildly reassuring about his involvement in Rev. Wright's church. Obviously, he viewed their embrace of black liberation theology and the toxic views of the Reverend's bizarre take on Christianity to be nothing more than the completely understandable expressions of their frustrations with their lot in life.
It's good to know BO'B isn't a true-believer in that nonsense.
But only mildly reassuring, because while it gives insight into why he would stay in such a church, it does little to explain his embrace of Rev. Wright as opposed to the typical church member. And having that attitude of condescension isn't really appealing, either.
I've said from the beginning that I suspected Sen. Obama is an atheist. These remarks are consistent with that.
He said economically and politically disadvantaged whites turn to reactionary religion and social issues, instead of looking to economic issues.
Isn't that exactly how he feels about his own church? He only had to join Trinity because, as a community adviser, he wasn't taken seriously until he joined a church.
This is also related to Sen. Obama's lie in his race speech that he blamed turmoil in the middle east on the "perverse" and "hateful" extreme form of Islam.
No, Sen. Obama has a more nuanced explanation for the Middle East than that. He believes people turn to radical Islam because they are poor and disadvantaged. If only the U.S. and other imperialists would stop meddling with the middle east, he thinks, there would be less extremism. That's the only view consistent with his remarks that disadvantaged people get bitter and rely on religion for support.
That's why he wants to pull American soldiers out. If he really, honestly believed that radical Islam is the problem, and that our allies in Iraq are the good guys, and that our enemies in Iraq are the bad guys, he would want to stay and finish it.
Senator Obama has not been honest with the American people. The mask slipped.
The word "bitter" should not be our focus.
Sen. Obama resolved that by addressing it head on.
When Hillary's aides tried to make an issue of it, it fizzled.
Why? Because when Sen. Obama called people bitter, he was giving voice to their frustrations, even if he overstated it. When Sens. Clinton and McCain say "those people aren't bitter," they are doing the opposite. They were minimizing and dismissing Pennsylvanians' frustration, even if in reality that frustration can't be characterized as "bitterness."
It's much better to focus on Sen. Obama's condescension to their values, not on his tapping in to their anger. The Clinton and McCain campaigns should not be telling Pennsylvanians how to feel!
And let's remember the GOP message to the rustbelt states during the Bush administration:
"drop dead"
So McCain has very little credibility either.
(Apparently Bill Clinton is now telling us that manufacturing jobs can come back to America. Yeah, as soon as we match the $60 a month wages of Vietnamese workers.)
I am a recovering DEM and once thought like Obama. I like to think I was altruistic; Obama is just plain calculating in almost every way.
BTW, anyone read the Newsweek artcle about Obama's mother. I found it interesting she was able to afford to get a PHD in American universities. Even though the story indicated she was mostly a single Mom with two kids and only worked here and there. What a great country huh!
Ah yes, many of us once believed it's only because of economic hardship that working-class occupants of the rust belt hold the primitive views they do.
Amazing how your perceptions change once you get past sophomore year.
on ADDED Think of it as spotting being addressed as a woman, which address is what the media narrative demands. Then you don't give either one of them more than a few seconds, and wonder who the hell is listening to them.
The supposed scandal is always falling afoul of some woman's soap opera narrative, can an educated man really respect a family from the backwoods, etc etc etc. Women love this stuff.
A real-life person judges a speaker from his sense of humor. That would be 100% of males and about 60% of females.
The rhetorical question is how does this crap survive at all.
"Obama To Rural Pennsylvanians: Vote For Me, You Corncob-Smokin', Banjo-Strokin' Chicken-Chokin' Cousin-Pokin' Inbred Hillbilly Racist Morons.""
"People end up voting on issues like guns and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage."
Isn't that because "people like" BHO keep requiring them to vote on these issues?
sense of humor for instance Bush calling NYT reporter Adam Clymer an asshole (audio) to Dick Cheney, from which Cheney got the nickname ``Big Time.''
An equivalent slip which redounded to Bush's favor.
Ann,
Best ever description of the morally-bankrupt liberal mindset!
Obama is proving to be more of what even I didn't at first believe he would turn out to be: a pretentious
idiot. Barak is an obviously underqualified pretender to the throne.
One can disagree with - even hate - George W Bush . . .
One can disagree with - even hate - Hillary Clinton . . .
but no one can look at what Obama said in this context and not come away with the obvious conclusion that this man is self-righteously out of touch with real people. Too young, too inexperienced, too full of himself.
Let's begin the re-cap:
Obama's association with Rev Wright(about whom Obama lied) . . .
Obama's association with Tony Rezko . . .
Obama's constantly-changing take on dealing with foreign policy, including Iraq . . .
Obama's resume of actual accomplishment thinner than Charmin 2 ply . . .
. . . and that's just for starters.
Now add an obvious contempt for people who disagree with him.
The next time someone brings up the Kennedy/Obama similarities and talks about America wanting a "change", remind them that John Kennedy didn't run a campaign disrespecting a large portion of America that disagreed with him.
Clymer cont.
which Bush didn't retract but rather said he regretted it had gone out over the air.
How unresponsive to the narrative.
No recasting, no nothing.
Ann --
Just curious: Have you now come to regret the Obama vote that you cast in the Wisconsin primary?
I'm not saying that you erred, given the information that you had at the time -- perhaps for a liberal, at that time, it was the correct choice.
But if you had it to do over again, knowing all that you do now, how would you vote?
As an expat Hoosier, I can see how Indiana could elect an Evan Bayh. But I'll be darned if I can see how they could nominate a Barack Obama.
He should choose Ward Churchill for his Vice President.
When I read Obama's original quote, my first thought was "And this man wants to design our health care system?"
I don't know much about small Pennsylvania towns, but I know something of Ohio small towns. For at least 3 decades, the major suppliers of health care to the citizens of many small towns have been immigrants from the Middle East, Korea, the Phillipines, etc.
Now, does Obama not know that fact or does he really believe that small town people "bitterly" respond to people who "are different than them" while at the same time also entrusting their own health and the health of their children and parents to those same people?
I am only half way through Obama's first book, but the statement seems to fit in with his general view of the world.
It's possible maybe to rationalize the anti-immigrant comment, but to say that guns and religion are lashing out for losing jobs is elitist liberalism to the core.
I think Obama believes in his heart that if people were taken cared for by the state, they would not need religion or guns. However, any reasonable American recognizes that people don't want to be taken care of by the state, which is precisely why they want guns and religion.
Oh, look a worm.
This is not an election, I repeat, this is not an election.
This is a test of neuroscience/psychological sciences/or being Born Free.
For the last 6 months and following 6 months this station will conduct a test of the Presidential Election Process. If this had/would be an actual election, you would have been felt like you were to tune in to your area for living and staying free.
If you choose to tune out to the two parties, you probably are alive and feeling well. Life is a highway, not a voting booth.
Everybody sing:
Row fisherman row
keep on rowing your boat
lots of hungry belly pickney
they a shore, millions of them
living in a bumbo hut
in a little hole sea-port town
three kids on the floor
and another one to come make four
I’ve suspected for a time, and am now convinced, that Obama is deliberately stoking the politics of ressentiment.
Others have confirmed the Nietzschean undertones of the man.
Obama’s strategy is subtle yet very powerful and should not be underestimated.
Best get us'ens a guvment progam for them thar bandages cuz our knuckles is dragging and dag nab it all .....it hurts. Must be them elegal aliens fault. Godd thang I gots me a pickup with a gun rack. Gonna park it right next to Billy Bob's this here Sunday when we go handles us some snakes.
:-)
People are fed up, they are angry, they're frustrated and they're bitter. And they want to see a change in Washington.
That reads more like a projection of the Obama (plural) worldview than any considered analysis of "the masses". The unspoken follow-on of course is always, "...and I will cure these ills when I become Glorious Leader." Not that Clinton (V) is any better.
Aside: Given that Althouse is the long-conditioned result of being employed in an uber-liberal law school in an uber-liberal university in an uber-liberal town, I am amazed she can be as balanced as she is on many topics. Bravo Zulu, AA.
Seriously, I have noticed how very bad Obama is without a script. He stumbles, stammers worse than Bush and says the most disconcerting things for someone who is supposed to be a "uniter" and "changer"
His usual response to being called on his remarks or on the bad decisions he has made is someting along the lines of ......"Well. Oh yeah? You do it too." or obfusicate by casting blame on someone else in a completely unrelated area. Deflect, deflect, deflect. I would say shuck and jive but then that might make me a racist.
I am concerned about his remarks regarding a religion that is not like that practiced under Reverend (Wrong) Wright. His veiled threat to gun ownership was surprising and should be considered a harbinger of a weakened second ammendment. Third, bitterness is trumped by a happy outlook on life among those of us outside the eastcoast, nanny state staffed by elitists who mistakenly believe they know more about our way of life and how to live it than they do.
Keep talking BHO and you will set race relations back 50 years. The so-called mosaic of life that is BHO is on display and it is not encouraging.
"Obama is doomed if people come to see him as a leftist"
But it's growing more apparent by the day -- he really is a leftist, except that most of the time he's been able to repress the Krugmanesque shrillness that is the normal mode of expression for the views he actually holds.
Michelle is a better indicator of the real mood chez Obama.
I live in rural upstate NY, in a farming and blue-collar community much like the parts of Pennsylvania that Obama disparaged. I'm a recovering liberal Democrat who used to share some of Obama's parochial attitudes about country people. I outgrew some of them by leaving college. I finished outgrowing them by moving out here and getting to know my diverse, well-informed, self-reliant, thoughtful, hard-working, capable rural neighbors. They could teach Obama quite a lot if only he were capable of listening to them. He's got a lot of nerve to condescend to them.
"Typical white people" around here may be frustrated, but most of them aren't bitter (nowhere near as bitter as Michele Obama, anyway.) Like most kneejerk liberals, Obama has the source of their frustration exactly backward. They aren't upset because government hasn't intervened to help them with universal health care, guaranteed incomes, or other expensive handouts. Instead, they are frustrated because government won't STOP interfering, with high taxes that drive businesses and jobs away, unfunded mandates that send property taxes skyrocketing, state and federal regulations that hobble entrepreneurs, and other expensive government nonsense that feeds the economic depression holding back our communities. Most people around here don't want the government to take care of them. They want it to back the heck off so that they can take care of themselves.
Obama's remark reminds me of the bewildered liberals who whined, after the 2000 and 2004 elections, that blue-collar voters were stupid because they voted "against their interests" -- that is, for Republicans rather than Democrats. It did not occur to them that a blue-collar voter could possibly know more than they did about what actually was in her economic interests. (Not possible! Not if she didn't go to Yale!) Values such as pride, self-reliance, independence, and genuine religious faith rather than the phoniness of an Obama are not nearly as dead around here as they seem to be in wealthier communities. Yes, some of my neighbors enjoy hunting, too -- and believe it or not, that doesn't automatically make them "gun nuts."
It's liberal Democrats who are the bitter ones when it comes to "typical white people" in rural areas. The Dems are bitter and furious that blue-collar voters, who used to be the Democratic base, have fled the party in droves and are more and more likely to vote Republican. If the party elite would stop condescending to such voters and start listening, it might not be too late to bring some of them back -- but the way things are going, no such eventuality seems likely.
Ann asks if he's "really a leftist."
Heeelllllllooooooo Ann.
He hasn't been hiding it.
Forget looking between the lines. Just look at his proposals.
Maybe you've been spending too much time in academia.
Maybe you've been spending too much time in academia
I think Ann was sucked in like many have been sucked in by Obama, the mesmerizing snake charmer, with promises of panacea-like racial healing.
Meanwhile, almost unnoticed, is the moniker "the most liberal member of the US Senate." He didn't come by that for nothing. It's always been right there for anyone who was willing to look at it.
I've also come to see him as having a major messiah complex. He has no sense of humor and he takes himself over-the-top seriously. It's almost cartoonish.
Daryl: The person who recorded Obama was almost certainly doing so because he was one of the worshipers, and thought everything Obama said was wonderful. It never ceases to amaze me how those who agree with the far left (Obama supporters, all) completely miss the significance of the condescending attitude of their leaders. They didn't drink the Kool-Aid, they MADE the Kool-Aid. The attitudes pre-existed Obama's campaign by decades.
Barack Obama = Michael Ignatieff.
That's my border-straddling take.
Urban intellectual folks, besieged by children assaulting their teachers, dysfuctional public schools, rampant drug use, steet gangs and drive-by shootings, cling to their distrust of religion and anger at the Second Amendment, their rituals celebrating diversity of every kind imaginable, their yoga classes and expresso cafes, and their deep belief in global warming.
It has become clear to me that Senator Obama is a racist asshole. I think that the entire country will come to that conclusion if he wins the primary.
It says a lot that many people will vote for him anyway, and what it says is not at all good.
Trey
Well if we can't go fishing, let's be tossin grenades in the water to fish like the other guys, right?
I was a-settin’ on my porch, a couple days ago
Just chewin’ some tobaccy, and a-whilin’ time away
When I heard from inside the trailer, on my radio,
That nice young colored boy Obama, from Chicago way.
That negro feller talked so sweet, just like an angel’s voice
T’was like he’d almost read my mind, my bitterness he knew
He talked about th’conomy, and how I had no choice
Except to hate them commie faggots, and them wetbacks too.
But since I heard him, I have felt right poorly ‘bout myself
Starting this Sunday, to my church, I never will go back
I won’t watch NASCAR, and I’ll put my guns up on the shelf
And in November, swear to God, I will vote for Barack.
But then Hilllary counters, voters want a candidate that will fight for them. ORLY? Fight? Let me think about that. *thinks* "hmm, I want a candidate to fight for me." Nope. Sorry. Don't want that.
I completely agree that his statement would not cause a ripple of dissension in the liberal academic environment.
It's good he's running, and running as who he really is and not a fake like all the others. America will know him and his ilk when this is done and will choose.
Students with a strong sense of who they are go along to get along with their leftist professors. Sadly, he really believes this stuff. It gives him a sense of identify: He's cool, he's Obama.
I'm probably going to spend an extra year in purgatory, but Omaha1's post is killing me.
Obama just lost me.
My wife and I were attracted to Obama for the reasons everybody knows. We had long discussions about how he was the perfect candidate for the times, and how, even if we might disagree with some of his left-side-of-the-Democratic Party policies (hey, we're Democrats, but of the more Clintonish sort), the next President is going to be constrained in ways that will probably prevent him from doing any real damage, and that his positives as a symbol, etc., far outweighed the negatives from any of his policies we might disagree with, etc., etc.
How's that for a long sentence?
I could understand Obama going to Wright's church, because he wouldn't be the first politician massaging his career by being seen in the pews of a weird church, listening to some idiotic preacher.
I could understand some of Obama's more colorful supporters, including Rev. Wright, because Obama would not be the first politician to have supporters from outer space.
I could even understand some of Michelle Obama's statements, because she sounds like everybody I remember from Berkeley and now here in the tonier precincts of Massachusetts. It might be interesting to have a First Lady who has such a familiar outlook.
But the Inner Redneck in me finally drew the line at Obama's sneering at religion, and, to a lesser extent, his lack of sympathy with the culture and values of a significant swath of the American people. Maybe because it's because I'm Davy Crockett's great-great-great grandson and still have relatives with twangy accents who don't live in Massachusetts, that this little guy in a feed cap gets out of his pickup and taps me on the shoulder from time to time.
Most of the people in proverbial fly-over country who go to church and own guns do so because they believe in God and enjoy hunting. Many like to target shoot, and not a few believe that they should have some other protection for their homes than a 911 call. As someone who knows both worlds, believe me, you'll never convince the garden-variety Cambridgeoid that either a firearm or God has any reason to exist.
God might have some ontological status in this world view, but He will be a nicey version of Spinoza's God, and not some unimaginable, transcendent Being who would allow suffering to exist. Suffering is caused by incorrect politics and economics, and there is a Perfect World out there to be created by the application of rational and compassionate policies, administered, of course, by people like us.
I had sincerely hoped that Obama might be able to bridge the gap between this thinking and the old-fashioned Jacksonian attitudes of all those rubes in the sticks.
Looks like Obama is just another one of the people like us.
Think I'll sit this one out.
"...you'll never convince the garden-variety Cambridgeoid that either a firearm or God has any reason to exist."
That is beautiful, Theo.
Hey -- where are all the usual AngryLeft© commenters?
Right-wingers always end up voting on issues like guns and abortion, and are they going to lose the right to drink beer. They vote on issues like gay marriage and they suffer through their own failed marriages and commit adultery on the sly, and then go on Oprah. They take refuge in their nonsensical faith (while decrying the Muslim faith), and their decaying community, and their dysfunctional family, and the fingers and toes they can barely count on. But they don't believe they can count on Washington, D.C., because it just shows how a city will go to pot if run by and for blacks.
He added: "People are fed up and underfed, they are angry at me for no good reason, they're frustrated and they've swallowed a bitter pill - George Bush - hook, line, and sinker. And they don't want to see a change in Washington or a real blackface minstrel show come to town."
(Apparently Bill Clinton is now telling us that manufacturing jobs can come back to America. Yeah, as soon as we match the $60 a month wages of Vietnamese workers.)
He may not so be far off base as you think.
The dollar's slide against the euro means making goods in Europe for U.S. consumers is more expensive, so German automaker BMW is expanding its operations in America.
Sennheiser, another Germany company which makes often-expensive microphones and headsets, has been manufacturing products in New Mexico for years and may expand U.S. operations further.
Weak Dollar Boosts Foreign Manufacturing in U.S.
Outlook appearing brighter in Detroit
The Largest Foreign Investments In The U.S.
"Hey -- where are all the usual AngryLeft© commenters?"
"Right-wingers always end up voting on issues like guns and abortion, and are they going to lose the right to drink beer. They vote on issues blah blah blah i'm so superior blah blah..."
Ask and you shall receive...
I suppose that if Obama and I were to try to hail a cab on an uptown avenue in NYC than my white skin would give me an edge. But otherwise, I think that socially, financially, and academically there is nothing in Obama's background that makes his life more difficult than mine. The subtext of Obama's campaign is look at what I have overcome to be here today. Well what exactly has he overcome? His background is not as privileged as that of Bush and Kerry, but as American lives go it has not been particularly difficult. The feeling among liberals is that although being beaten upon your broken limbs and kept in solitary confinement for years is no doubt unpleasant, the real pain is being passed over by a cab driver. Rev Wright, Harvard intellectuals, and perhaps Obama believe that America is to be defined by its inequities and Cuba is to be defined by its health care system.
My wife summed this up nicely.
"If Obama had stopped at the word bitter, it would have made some sense."
OhioAnne: right, us Ohio folks do not marry our cousins or carry guns on a daily basis - geez.
Omaha1: you are funny :)
Now, off to polish the Winchester, drink some PBR and drive around in my rusty pickup.
I'm surprised that in 50 posts, nobody mentioned the rank hypocrisy and gross pandering of a his positions. B got the closest.
- So when Obama is in PA, he's for gun rights and the second amendment. When he's in SF, it's "cling to guns"
- When he's in PA, he hasn't ever met a trade agreement he likes and is against the one in Columbia that would increase jobs for US workers, cuz its a trade treaty. When he's in SF (that lives on trade) those PA Yokels are anti-trade.
We now know that the SF view is the real Obama and he's a lying hypocrit. with little experience.
so much for bringing the country together. :(
Well Drill Sgt, he's a politician so I think many people assumed hypocrisy was just a given.
The dollar's slide against the euro means making goods in Europe for U.S. consumers is more expensive, so German automaker BMW is expanding its operations in America.
I'd like to point out those jobs aren't going to go to anti-business Michigan or to a union shop.
I have heard that domestic car production is at nearly record levels, they just aren't made by the big 3 in union shops.
Hey -- where are all the usual AngryLeft© commenters?
Well there is half of the party [myself included] that has been saying this for months. We're sick of being called "low information" voters. What they didn't realize is that Clinton supporters wouldn't fade or fold, only harden. And they also didn't realize is that not only don't her supporters shy away from a fight, that in fact, we enjoy it. You have to admit, against insurmountable odds, with almost every blog, cable station, and pundit trying to kill her campaign, her supporters have not blinked. Or her.
Obama is doomed if people come to see him as a leftist. Is he really one, or is he just used to circulating among people who casually say things like that to win favor with each other? If that's all it is, then it's not a Category II Kinsley Gaffe, and we get back to the more mundane concern about his inexperience — his lack of seasoning.
He's both: leftist and inexperienced and one would have had to be ignorant or suspend disbelief not to have seen that since about 2004.
It's a Jesusland slur.
the country is increasingly polarized on gender, race, education, IQ, SES, income...u name it.
it doesnt matter which side of the looking glass you're in, its a mirror world on both sides.
Intelligent Design theory on one side, Black Liberation theory on t'other.
school vouchers vs food stamps.
Expelled vs Farenheit911.
everyone is entitled to flog their particular memecomplexes.
politics is just fractal tribalism.
no matter the size, the shape if the same.
the shape IS still the same.
I find odd the focus in this post on Obama and Clinton. The comment was attacked first by McCain (so the salience of it is that it may be a general election issue). Furthermore, Obama has a video out of his response (a full response, not the cherry-picked version), in which he responds to McCain and Clinton, and he receives a standing ovation for his comments in a mostly white, working class, older crowd.
While I understand the nasty, elitist spin people are putting on his comments, that frame of the issue has been around for decades. Read Hofstader. Read about Stevenson's campaign. It's just an anti-left frame. Funnily enough, when I first heard the comments, I took them in the way Obama now says he originally intended them. I suppose that's because I don't impose anti-left frames on his language. Kind of like most people.
"You have to admit, against insurmountable odds, with almost every blog, cable station, and pundit trying to kill her campaign, her supporters have not blinked."
It doesn't matter, though, because you can't overcome his lead, and the party knows you're not going anywhere once he wins.
"Or her."
If she blinks or not is irrelevant, since no matter what she does, the outcome for her campaign-- a loss to Obama-- is unchanged.
Her campaign is in Huckabee territory, bravely proceeding on because there is nothing in it for her in getting out but no real chance of victory.
Must be an Arkansas thing.
A bit more about Pennsylvania:
My wife has Pennsylvania Dutch relatives, and, whatever else you might say about it, rural Pennsylvania is one of the most beautiful landscapes in America. Large parts of it have been settled for 300 years, and it has the cared-for look of a European countryside, and not the chewed-up, makeshift appearance of a lot of farmland in this country.
For a view of rural Pennsylvania life, you might want to take a look at this absolutely gorgeous photoblog. The rural people that Kathleen Connally beautifully photographs are not the snaggle-toothed rubes of bicoastal imaginings. They are people of all sorts, trying to get by, but living and working in a world that perhaps imposes something more of Nature's discipline than many of the rest of us need live with.
All this is not to impute any particular political leanings to Ms. Connally, for it is quite possible for rural people to be on the left side of things. There has been a strong tradition of that in this country. It used to be possible to be a firearm-owning, churchgoing farmer who was a Socialist and voted for Bob LaFollette. Such people today would cause our modern Cambridgeoid's head to explode, and any that exist are much neglected by the trendier elites of leftish political parties on both sides of the Atlantic.
I would very much like to see a latter-day Harry Truman emerge—maybe one of those people in Kathleen Connally's blog—who had actually worked on a farm, and knew in his bones the constraints that this world imposes, and understood as well the gifts that God has given us.
Thanks Theo,
Those photos were incredible. I know they are real, but the colors are so vivid, you'd think somebody CGI'd them (a sad cynic: me)
great stuff.
althouse, you should take a gander
I have driven across Pennsylvania many times. I have also driven across Kansas a few times. The two states are not unsimilar. Obama, with a little squinting of your eyes you should see that. Kansas hills are lower and the variety of Pennsylvania trees is just translated in the variety of Kansas grasses. Both have strong German root, too. There are ghost towns in both places. Indians that came and went. Entrepreneurs that came and went. Trains that came and went.
Theo -
Obama's idea of small town PA is 'probly Pittsburgh...
And damn how does that Hawaiian Punahou schooler, Harvard graduate, Chicago Pol know Pittsburgh?
He doesn't.
Pittsburgh was one of the most diverse towns back in the day-probably still is but I haven't been there in awhile maybe Obama knows better.
And- here's a newsflash Indiana is more like PA than Obama cares to admit.
Who wants Hillary or Obama explaining to the world The Real America?
The America they know?
Americans?
There was a democratic strategist bemoaning all of the petty back and forth between the two camps and he actually stated-
We need to get back on OUR message-what is WRONG with America?.
Ya-that's who I want representing America to the rest of the world a President fixated on that -
What is Wrong with America.
Americans-they cling to their guns their religion....
They are bitter since...you all don't really, really like us.
Oh and I don't know why but that "anti-trade" blur at the end of Obama's comment-that's the one that should be the most perplexing.
Let's see the Union guys that were backing him because of their fear of Hillary tap dance around that one.
Deeply ironic on the part of Sen. Obama, that "cling to religion" bit.
Trumpit said...
"Right-wingers always end up voting on issues like ... abortion, and ... gay marriage."
And abortion and gay marriage is an issue which has no motivating force on left-wingers at all, right? The left is entirely ambivalent on those questions. You have no strong feelings on them at all. You're really going to try and tell us that? It seems to me that those issues have plenty of motivating power on the left, it's just that you're motivated to seek one outcome on those questions and the right seeks a different outcome on those questions. Is there some pathology that prevents you from realizing that, or is it just cynical rhetoric?
I have a big problem with anyone who wants to fight for me when it comes to politicians. That implies that they can decide what I want and need with no input from me and that once they have fought I will be happy forever more. I would a whole lot rather they get out of the way so I can fight for myself. I am the best judge of what I want and I would rather find a good way to do it myself rather than having Hillary or Bambi fighting for me. They have fought for me for years and all I got out of it was higher taxes and lost jobs because of them and a presumption that I can't decide for myself what I will eat or drink or smoke or talk about. Thanks but no thanks.
It doesn't matter, though, because you can't overcome his lead, and the party knows you're not going anywhere once he wins.
Other than this post not making any sense, and any cursory knowledge of the Democratic primary election process should understand that is factually untrue. Neither candidate can get to the number needed for nomination. Why haven't 300+ superdelegates committed to a candidate yet? It's a cynical ploy to starve her of funding and misinform the electorate to not bother getting behind her. And it looks like it worked on you. It's truly one of the biggest bullshit stories ever told.
I suppose the two things that impress me about Pennsylvania are that it has been settled so long—much longer than Kansas, for example; and that it has trees. I love trees. Others may be less thrilled.
My wife's ancestor showed up as a Johnny-come-lately in the 1750's, but managed to get a town, where some of my wife's relatives still live, named after him.
And I'm not saying that Pennsylvania is some sort of big outdoor reenactors' theme park, like Old Sturbridge or Williamsburg, despite the Amish clinging to their way of life. No, it's a real place with every human problem and condition imaginable, not to mention the usual crap lying around that you do your best to ignore. It's just that rural Pennsylvania has, for me, the most pleasant character of any rural landscape I know in North America, and I feel happy and at home when I visit.
Maybe it's not only the Inner Redneck but the Inner Square that likes those crumbling little towns with Dutchy names and all the churches plunked around the landscape. Go figure.
And yes, at the end of it all is Pittsburgh, still one of the most diverse cities in America, and not a bad one at that. It's probably the best mid-sized city I know, and, surprise surprise, there still is a certain amount of at least somewhat unionized manufacturing around.
What kind of snake oil can a poor politician sell in a state like this? Urban blacks, immigrants and ethnics at both ends, with a lilly-white, churchy population in the middle, farm interests, unionized manufacturing...Aarghh! It's just too damn complicated!
Things are a lot easier in Manhattan or Cambridge or San Francisco, or maybe even Chicago. You know, the real world.
Simple Simon, you numskull, I was quoting what Obama really said, but the Jewish-controlled media changed the quote to foment a stir and increase sales of their (toilet) paper. Why are you arch conservative always so literal anyway. You can't see any nuanced meaning. It's always black or white with you guys. A lousy judge you'd make.
Aren't you that gay guy, Simon, with the bad English accent who's a judge on America Idol? The opinionated, obnoxious, cruel dude who has it in for the hapless contestants? Admit it, fall on your sword, and be buried. The world doesn't need a Scalia wannabe or another bad pop star jurist.
Theo-
PA it's beautiful isn't it?
My dad is an old first generation Croat/American who during the Depression the mob took over the back room of his dad's saloon.
Soon they had my dad running numbers for them-so how did he escape?
He lied about his age and at seventeen signed up for the Army.
He started out with one regiment but got wounded, they sent him back to England to get patched up just in time to join the 28th Mech-aka "the Bloody Buckets" for the Battle of the Bulge.
Anyways almost any summer that he wasn't in 'Nam we would go back to Pittsburgh from whatever base we were assigned to.
I always, always loved The Trees.
Damn it is/was beautiful.
West Virgina too.
Oh and ya your analysis of PA demographics-that's probably what makes it the ultimate swing state.
I always hope for a win there.
A lot of the military call it home for some reason and you should see us at road games for-
The Steelers!
[but ya we're tax evaders-just ask margaret Carlson- so if you get assigned to Florida....]
Trumpit said...
"Simple Simon, you numskull, I was quoting what Obama really said...."
I already knew he was clueless. If you want to reveal yourself as such too, that's for you.
"but the Jewish-controlled media ..."
Ah, anti-semitism, too. You and Cedarford will get along fine.
"Aren't you that gay guy, Simon, with the bad English accent who's a judge on America Idol? The opinionated, obnoxious, cruel dude who has it in for the hapless contestants?"
No: I'm not gay and I'm not a judge on American idol. I do have an English accent, however, and I am an opinionated, obnoxious, cruel dude who has it in for hapless contestants.
madawaskan: I'd root for the Steelers, too, but living as I do in Massachusetts, I'm obliged to be a Pats fan. Sadly, we now have been delivered the stern lesson that pride goeth before a fall, and I'm sure the ghosts of the Mathers and Johnathan Edwards are smirking at all this.
The prairie in all its expressions is a massive subtle place with a long history of contradictin and misunderstanding. But it is worth the effort at comprehension. It is, afterall, at the center of our national identity. Wayne Fields, Lost Horizon
The first time I drove across Kansas it was long and boring. The second time i called it the philosopher's state because you start to think. The third time it had a sense of humor.
I stopped at the historic markings and rest stops and read what was to be read. I stood in the middle of two dirt roads and twirled around trying to find the exact center.
I then looked up some guy who wrote about this state as if it was America. What was once the real prairie has twindled down to some acres in Kansas Flint hills. Here's what this guy has to say about it:
http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1988/3/1988_3_54.shtml
Strolling under the oaks beside the Gilcrease, I thought of all I had seen. The prairie that I had been recovering was not confined to the parks and preserves but was as well, I realized, the land in between, the fields and farms and schools and churches and towns. When the first of our non-Indian ancestors got here, “There was,” Gather has written, “nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made.” That which, half a century earlier, was unsettling in its apparent lack of form had become, by the time Gather was writing, ordered and shaped, its boundaries asserted by surveyors and reinforced by barbed wire, its roads relentlessly following section lines until viewed from the air; the old chaos had become, at last, the most orderly of American landscapes.
If that accomplishment speaks of discipline, the prairie also mirrors back an unspeakable wastefulness, an indulgence of enormous proportions. Within five decades the fifty million buffalo were gone, killed sometimes for just their hides or their humps or their livers or their tongues or for just the killing. With the buffalo went the Indian. This destruction, regardless of what we have made of the prairie, was a binge both wanton and senseless. And the excesses continue into our own time.
The judgment of the prairie persists for a people spoiled by plenty, a people who often appear incapable of restraint, unto whom much has been given and who sometimes seem determined to consume it all. And, too, it reflects a people who can find themselves even in apparent vacancy, can center themselves and each other in a strange new world and make that world productive beyond all precedent.
What we have done in this case could not be undone even if that were a thing to be desired. There has been loss as well as gain in the transaction. And the greatest mistake would be to oversimplify what we have experienced, misunderstand what we ought to have learned about the land, about ourselves, and about our need for limits. But most of all perhaps, we should learn a lesson in humility—that hardest of lessons for Americans to accept. When we got to the last place, the place that denied all our conventional assumptions, the place we said was not America, not even a place; in that place where the old native-born pioneers either turned aside or rushed ahead in search of more reassuring landscapes, we learned with the help of all those newly arrived Scandinavians and Germans and Russians— whose names appear on prairie mailboxes and businesses —all that we yet know, good and bad, about the heart of America.Strolling under the oaks beside the Gilcrease, I thought of all I had seen. The prairie that I had been recovering was not confined to the parks and preserves but was as well, I realized, the land in between, the fields and farms and schools and churches and towns. When the first of our non-Indian ancestors got here, “There was,” Gather has written, “nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made.” That which, half a century earlier, was unsettling in its apparent lack of form had become, by the time Gather was writing, ordered and shaped, its boundaries asserted by surveyors and reinforced by barbed wire, its roads relentlessly following section lines until viewed from the air; the old chaos had become, at last, the most orderly of American landscapes.
If that accomplishment speaks of discipline, the prairie also mirrors back an unspeakable wastefulness, an indulgence of enormous proportions. Within five decades the fifty million buffalo were gone, killed sometimes for just their hides or their humps or their livers or their tongues or for just the killing. With the buffalo went the Indian. This destruction, regardless of what we have made of the prairie, was a binge both wanton and senseless. And the excesses continue into our own time.
The judgment of the prairie persists for a people spoiled by plenty, a people who often appear incapable of restraint, unto whom much has been given and who sometimes seem determined to consume it all. And, too, it reflects a people who can find themselves even in apparent vacancy, can center themselves and each other in a strange new world and make that world productive beyond all precedent.
What we have done in this case could not be undone even if that were a thing to be desired. There has been loss as well as gain in the transaction. And the greatest mistake would be to oversimplify what we have experienced, misunderstand what we ought to have learned about the land, about ourselves, and about our need for limits. But most of all perhaps, we should learn a lesson in humility—that hardest of lessons for Americans to accept. When we got to the last place, the place that denied all our conventional assumptions, the place we said was not America, not even a place; in that place where the old native-born pioneers either turned aside or rushed ahead in search of more reassuring landscapes, we learned with the help of all those newly arrived Scandinavians and Germans and Russians— whose names appear on prairie mailboxes and businesses —all that we yet know, good and bad, about the heart of America.
SORRY,
I command V ed twice on that insert.
Theo-
I'm obliged to be a Pats fan.
Aaaaaargh-well it could be worse-
you could be a Dallas Cowboy fan.
UPDATE vis Instapundit
Patrick Hynes smacks Obama
"Sen. Obama’s explanation and pushback are actually worse than his original offense. By refusing to acknowledge that the lumping of Americans of faith together with racists and xenophobes is empirically insulting, he essentially restates his position and digs in: Religion, racism, xenophobia are just “refuges” (his new word) for people who are not as privileged as he. Really repugnant stuff.
His remarks are now his official position, not a blunder that can be explained away and forgiven. That window has closed. And they bring back to the surface Michelle Obama’s old line: “Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.”
Yep, that’s us: Just a bunch of uniformed racists who hate everyone who isn’t just like us and cling to our God and our guns because we didn’t get to go to Princeton or Harvard Law School. They know us so well."
[...]
Dear Barack, drop the code, why don't you just come out and call us all rednecks?
I agree that the arrogance and contempt for the middle and working classes displayed by the Obamas (and Hillary, for that matter) is absolutely typical of ivy league undergraduate/ivy league law school graduates I have known who graduated from about 1970 on.
I have practiced law in New York for more than 25 years and work with double ivy leaguers every day. The level of contempt for 95+% of Americans and the arrogance is truly breathtaking.
The only exceptions I've found are older lawyers (say pre-1960 law grads) and a very few younger lawyers who came from somewhere "out there" and went ivy other than to escape their "dreary lives" -- remember that a fair number of the students who go to ivy league colleages from the great beyond are the brilliant misfits who can't wait to get out of town, and had contempt for their home town people to begin with.
Wouldn't you know that in the Grating Communicator's latest attempt to explain away all this, we're treated to another repetition of the "typical" tic and another repetition of the "distraction" tic?
Obama's lack of originality is striking. He's Carter all over again, call him Carter II. The Democratic Party has been about reconciling Americans to the diminished dream ever since the party was McGovernized. After all, if America isn't A City On A Hill, if Amerika is Evil Incarnate, than it ought to be diminished. Behind the hope and change smokescreen stands an avenger. Obama will reconcile us all right. He'll reconcile us to our just punishment -- with a whip. Oh yes, good times ahead.
All these things are relative. Sure Obama is an abomination. But how much better is having Clinton and his cuckold-sidekick in the White House again?
Obama recognizes that people are fed up with and don't rely on or trust Washington, D.C. He is so deluded as to think he is worthy of inspiring a reversal of that reality-based attitude.
He supports a total ban on handguns and the reauthorization of the Federal Assaust Weapons Ban. As a Quaker I'm all for We the People reducing our reliance upon deadly weapons, but the idea that the armed gang known as the government has the right to keep everyone else from bearing arms is profoundly tyrannical.
I'm still convinced that Obama is a lesser evil than Clinton and his doormat-in-chief, but I'm rethinking whether he'd likely be a lesser evil than McCain, who comes across as a loose cannon nut job dirty old man with an itchy-trigger finger. (From a family values perspective, Obama appears to be a far better model than McCain.) War is the health of the State, and a prime consideration for me in weighing Obama versus McCain has been who would be less likely to continue "our" war-mongering. I think it's clear Obama would be. And come to think of it, the President has a far smaller role in determining domestic policy on gun control than It does on foreign policy, so from this perspective it continues to appear that Obama would be a lesser evil than McCain.
But this is all academic for me. I'm a total scofflaw. I won't be voting for any of the bastards.
Rob:
Ivy leagers think state college grads are barely human and blue collar workers are subhuman. Adds so much to their charm.
and
The Steelers are a real football team, not the super-model-loving cheaters from the east coast.
Somebody needs to inform Obama that when Yassir Arafat got away with saying different, mutually contradictory, things to different audiences he was greatly aided by the fact that he was speaking two different languages. English to one audience and Arabic to the other. Perhaps Obama things "Pennsylvannia Hick" is a different language than "San Francisco Sophisticate". Upon closer examination, he might find that they are both English, and realize anyone from Pennsylvannia can read his quotes from San Francisco without benefit of a translator.
Uhhh....yup.....uhe,uhe.....
"Other than this post not making any sense,"
My bad. I wrote it at too high of a grade for you it seems. I will make sure to use just small words this time.
And I will type slow for you.
"Neither candidate can get to the number needed for nomination."
That is not the point. She needs too many to have a shot at get there once it is past the states and to the (dang, I have to use one big word, do I not) superdelegates.
"Why haven't 300+ superdelegates committed to a candidate yet?"
For the same reason Huck did not quit. He might make a bad bad bad boo boo or break a law or get sick or who knows what. But if he does not, she has no chance.
"It's a cynical ploy to starve her of funding and misinform the electorate to not bother getting behind her. And it looks like it worked on you."
They are past my state's vote so if I back her or not is not worth a thought. But it still does not mean a thing. She has no chance.
"It's truly one of the biggest bullshit stories ever told."
Good luck to you. I hope your gal has more luck than my guy (Giuliani) did.
At this point I do not care for any of the three, but I do think I like BO'B the least the more I get to know about him.
"The Steelers are a real football team, not the super-model-loving cheaters from the east coast."
Hey baby, my Giants smashed those super-model-loving-cheaters and are the Champions of the world. A little respect for the real old school true football team from the east coast.
Also, the Red Sox suck.
By the way, I am a big time Manny Sanguillen fan.
EDH said...
"People end up voting on issues like guns and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage."
Isn't that because "people like" BHO keep requiring them to vote on these issues?
Correct. And it brings up the key phrase Obama used in his elitist sneer to like-minded wealthy SF Democrats about lesser Americans "clinging to" such things as guns, racism, hatred of immigrants, and religion. The phrasing conflates all 4 as problems of the past - and only explainable by lack of lesser Americans being as enlightened as wealthy SF Democrats. Which is why the enlightened thing is to aggressively go after the rubes and shove down their throats for their own good - gun control, gay marriage, Open Borders, ACLU lawsuits against Christianity while hicks are all supposed to do nothing but love Jews, Muslims to overcome their bigotry, affirmative action, etc..
Then when people push back, condescend and say they are only "clinging to" such bad ideas from exploitation and bitterness about not being sophisticated.
When of course, as EHD says, the only reason they are issues in the 1st place is people are reacting to attacks on their culture and values.
*************
With the obligatory talk from far right conservatives about how rural and small town folk actually love Bush's letting millions of illegals in, wrecking small town economies with China deals, NAFTA, subsidizing job outsourcing so Bush (and Clinton before him) can serve the profit goals of their Corporatist Masters - lets put an end to the myth that people want no government, just an altruistic Owner Class in charge.
Bullshit.
There IS great anger in the American middle class directed at both Democrats and Republicans selling them out. There IS great concern about their kids having less of a future than they did. There IS a growing lack of trust in smug Democrats saying they can be educated to be happy and gain new exciting High Tech jobs that mostly migrated to Asia, a lack of trust in smug Republicans saying that collapse of industry is all the fault of lazy union workers, and Bush saying tens of millions of illegals and H1-B Visas are needed to do the jobs from surgeon to computer engineer to meat cutter to construction worker "No American wants to do".
That growing anger and lack of trust in both Parties, however, has little to do with rural, hispanic, ethinic white, and smalltown values under assault from Elites like the Obamas - They existed well before NAFTA, Open Borders, race to the lowest wage worker, free trade, offshoring, outsourcing from the Ruling Elites paying off both Parties - began royally fucking over middle America.
They stem not from bitterness, but from values that formed when Middle America was vibrant, confident in a better future for themselves and their descendents.
The anger, distrust, and yes, even bitterness - about both Parties in government ignoring them is still a real issue..
The analysis about Republicans fucking over Ohioans, Kansans, Pennsylvanians so their wealthiest can live high on the hog is fundamentally correct. But mirrored by what the same fatcats who only prefer the Democrats as a distinction pay off Dem politicans to do..
****************
Omaha1 - Great post!
Well, as someone who has been around here long enough to remember when the Pats were the worst collection of stumblebums in the NFL, and the team was owned by a disfunctional clan of potato-faced, drunken Irish louts, I can tell you that their transfiguration has had an almost miraculous, Biblical character.
Biblical, too, has been their fall, with I'm sure the ghosts of Cotton Mather and Johathan Edwards looking on in the smug satisfaction that punishment for the sin of pride has been meted out.
It remains to be seen what will become of Captain Ahab...er...Coach Belichick.
For all that, the Red Sox remain the repositories of all that is good, true, graceful, and beautiful in this world.
Enig says:
"And I will type slow for you."
And continues:
"That is not the point. She needs too many to have a shot at get there once it is past the states and to the (dang, I have to use one big word, do I not) superdelegates."
Did you wake and bake this morning?
Ann observed: "Within a liberal law school environment, that statement would be heard as a thoughtful, compassionate insight."
Wow. That's depressing.
"Within a liberal law school environment, that statement would be heard as a thoughtful, compassionate insight." Indeed. A good portion of my law school class would have thought so. That same portion of my law school class, not withstanding their thoughtfulness and compassion had no idea how ridiculous and condescending that same statement would have sounded to the average Joe or Jane who works for a living. So is Obama a leftist? Undoubtedly, and for the same reason Clinton is a leftist: they see people making decisions that are objectively bad, and yet don't have the humility to understand that if THEY made all the decisions it wouldn't necessarily make everyone's lives better. They are unable to accept the wisdom of the crowd, and that obtaining the best results for the most people often leaves people having made grave, self-destructive mistakes. Leftists suffer, if from nothing else, enormous moral condescension. Both Sens. Clinton and Obama have made theirs more than obvious. How different was Obama's comment than Hillary's, "We're going to take things away from you for the common good."
Trooper-
I am a big time Manny Sanguillen fan
Oh man! that reminds me-I gotta drive to Chi-town and beat the schmerde outta my little brother for defacing my Roberto Clemente card.
Roberto Clemente was one of the best players I ever saw. What an arm! He never got his due. He was one of the first Latin stars and
his heroic death showed what kind of man he was. They don't make sports heros like that anymore.
Aside from the First Church of Red Sox Nation, the creed we all agree on around here in Boston, if you're interested in more about religion and modern "political economy," to use the old-fashioned term, I recommend this thoughtful article.
The evil that is the Red Sox is very attractive to the naïve. They want to upset the natural order of the universe. To make claims of virtue in a lifestyle of vile vice. They claim to be scrappy insurgents when in fact they are really just pale imitations of the true Empire. They have achieved a momentary supremacy, but their time will be fleeting and their comeuppance is upon them. The Empire has enlisted a new and vibrant cohort of warriors who will smite them and return them to their natural state of cowering disgruntlement. Their culture is a culture of complaint and malice. Tradition and virtue will right the earth on its axis and all may breathe easy as the Yankees will return the world to normalcy. The curse of Don Mattingly is over. Joba Rules! All will be well with the world as the New York Yankees will regain their rightful title as Champions of the World.
Manny Rameriez can go home early to the Dominican to enjoy the cockfights with Pedro Martinez.
Remember, repeat this simple phrase:
The Red Sox suck.
Uhh...he spoke the truth. People who think he's arrogant and elite are arrogant and elite enough themselves to think that they a) can get away with feigning no right to analyze other people, or b) are those very people being analyzed and don't like to be called out for being the way you are. And if you're in the latter group and have some rational reason, other than what Obama put forth, to cling to your guns, your religion, or your hatred of gays, then you've got some other issues to work out on your own time. Leave Obama alone!
Law school graduate, Zachary?
It's the "guns" that's really got me scratching my head. Why did he feel complelled to throw that one in there?
Zachary Paul Sire said...
"Uhh...he spoke the truth ... Leave Obama alone!"
Oh, well I guess we will now that we've been asked! Sheesh. You're either new to politics, very young - yep! - or both. Dry off your ears.
Wow. People sure are building tomes of projection upon a couple words. These people quoted are putting words into Obama's mouth and otherwise bearing false witness against him.
This is how they build false narratives and characterizations of Dem candidates.
To listen to conservatives, really everything is fine with working people in this country and anyone mentioning their problems and concerns should be denounced.
Obama is right to speak of frustrations with our government. it's badly offtrack.
Zachary: if you're in the latter group and have some rational reason, other than what Obama put forth, to cling to your guns, your religion, or your hatred of gays, then you've got some other issues to work out on your own time. Leave Obama alone!
Geez I hope thats parody.
Else, please turn the sharp end away from yourself...
Alpha: People sure are building tomes of projection upon a couple words
*falls over laughing*
Precious.
/wait for it, wait for it..
"I'm not a provincial bigot, some of my best friends are Rednecks", by:
A) Alpha Liberal
B) Barrack Obama
C) Zachary Paul
D) All of the above
AlphaLiberal said: "Wow. People sure are building tomes of projection upon a couple words."
I thought it was Obama who said "Words matter." Guess I musta thought wrong. Probably because I live in the country, too far away from all those Starbucks.
Also I want to see if I can "get away with feigning no right to analyze other people." Sounds like a neat trick, if only I can pull it off!
I'm still trying to figure out which of Obama's words are so loathsome. I actually agree with him that people are bitter. Just go to almost any blog, pick up any newspaper, it's a no-brainier. I think Obama's generally an incompetent, but yes, people are angry, they are bitter, they are not generally hopeful.
Trooper:
Why are you a fan of Sanguillen? Because he never saw a pitch he would not swing at?
You remember Clemente was almost the same..Clemente never saw a pitch he could not hit if he swung at it.
I am glad to see Mrs. Whatsit commenting again!
Also, she may enjoy the fact that my son and I will be reading (in my case, re-reading for the x time) "A Wrinkle in Time" together this summer.
I actually agree with him that people are bitter.
Yes Richard, but those aren't the people he's talking about. Obama buys into the "Jesusland" nonsense re rural folk.
"By refusing to acknowledge that the lumping of Americans of faith together with racists and xenophobes is empirically insulting, he essentially restates his position and digs in: Religion, racism, xenophobia are just “refuges” (his new word) for people who are not as privileged as he."
All us "unenlightened folk" out here in the Heartland have had that bigotry directed at us for some time. We recognize it. And so, we know who Obama is now: A Fraud.
Richard, what I understood Obama to be saying is that people are bitter because government has failed them, and in their bitterness have turned to guns, religion, and antipathy toward people who aren't like them. While I wouldn't characterize that as loathsome, it is, in my opinion, a) factually incorrect, and b) condescending.
"Why are you a fan of Sanguillen? Because he never saw a pitch he would not swing at?
You remember Clemente was almost the same..Clemente never saw a pitch he could not hit if he swung at it."
That's the way it should be. Swing the freakin' bat. Just like Yogi and Thurman did it, man you got to swing the bat to get a hit.
Plus Manny has Manny's BBQ in the stadium. I was only there once but it was very cool. He was there in a lawn chair signing autographs and talking with the fans. Of course he didn't think they were gun totin' bible thump’n discontents....he didn’t look down on them even though he had been a baseball star… or that he had more dough….he just thought they were people.
Or as he called them "Peoples." "My
Peoples!"
"Did you wake and bake this morning?"
If only. However, it isn't legal and that matters.
I could ask the same about someone, like you, who seems to think the best way to try to convince on-the-fence voters to go for their preferred candidate is to call them stupid. You are backing the wrong candidate; Obama shares your condescension and blindness.
As for the insults, you started it, if you recall; I just returned the favor. All I did was point out that there is no credible path to the nomination for Hillary.
I would prefer if she did get the nomination. It would make staying at home and not voting, which is my current intent, much easier.
To listen to conservatives, really everything is fine with working people in this country and anyone mentioning their problems and concerns should be denounced.
Another intersting facet about Obama's statement is the idea that these people have been squatting in these towns for 25 years waiting for steel-mill jobs to come back. I am not sure what Obama thinks they are doing? Are they all living on the dole going to church, shooting their guns, and screaming about immigrants? Or perhaps some of them moved and/or found new jobs.
Apparently Wal Mart thinks people in these towns have jobs because they keep opening new stores in such towns selling plasma TVs
Yes, Sanguillen was awesome. Great personality and seemed to hit better as the pitches got farther out of the strike zone.
Also, his batting helmet was different from everyone else's...kind of dark gold and fuzzy. Strange.
As the comments above illustrate, the meme that is emerging as the anti-Obama creed is one of arrogant liberal elitism. Shocking, since that liberal elitism tag is applied to any Democrat who runs for president. The tag turns war heroes into French cowards, bigots into heroes, Democrats into Republicans and disasters into two-term presidencies. Best of all, this meme is pushed by liars, like Senators Clinton and McCain, who fit the stereotype more than the Americans they arrogantly condemn.
Let us not talk falsely now. Bigotry is bigotry. Those votes for marriage amendments? Bigotry. The anti-immigrant backlash? Bigotry. If you don't want to be called out as a bigot, the solution is pretty simple: stop being one.
Oh, and let me make it easier for you, GM.
If you think that Hillary has a realistic path to the nomination, make persuasive arguments towards that point. Don't just flail about in a profane attempt to intimidate people into falling into line (it doesn't work; you just aren't tough online).
So let's hear it. How exactly will Hillary be able to win such an overwhelming number of Superdelegates as to wrest the nomination away from BO'B? How is she going to convince, not just a majority of them, but an overwhelming majority of them, that they should ignore the obvious spin that he, and many in the media, will make-- that doing so would overturn the will of the voters? How will they be able to ignore the fact that his delegate total would be higher if he had actually ran a full campaign in Michigan and in Florida? How will they be able to face the spin, that will undoubtedly be offered by Obama and some in the media, that doing so would flame racial tensions?
Don't just say it is bullshit to say Hillary has no chance to win. Make intelligent remarks to say, "yes she can!"
If you can't, then it doesn't speak well for your position.
Now that Barry O' let the mask slip off, I am really disappointed. His pandering to his fellow elitist snob Ivy League weenie college boys has pissed me off. With faith in God our forefathers fought for our freedom from effete Europeans with their guns. Hillary has yet to insult the electorate to the same extent. But, considering hell has yet to freeze over, I'm going to have to vote McCain in the fall.
it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
Concerned Citizen -- You are very bigoted against all the people you perceive as bigoted. Should they really be treated any differently than anyone else? Shouldn't they have full rights in the marketplace of ideas?
And, if they want to run their communities in such ways that you disagree with but which do not run afoul of the actual, you know, words of the federal and state constitutions, why should they not be able to?
After reading the comments here as well as Obama's remarks. I can't help but wonder if part of the problem the liberals/leftys have in presidential politics is they preach of how the values of "flyover country" have failed the Americans who have lived there. There's a pretty large implied insult there, and the libs seem to be unable to see it.
At least conservatives campaign in favor of those values albeit with a certain amount of hypocrisy on the part of some of them).
They have every right to be bigots, just as I have every right to deem them bigots, SevenMachos. Unlike the right wing, I have been aware of the First Amendment for some time.
Not all decisions are equal. Using the law to bash minorities who do nothing to injure you is an abuse of the law. Saying you have the power to do so does not make it right.
Concerned Citizen, you are a bigot.
Also, please indicate to us the incidents in the past that show the right wing trampling on First Amendment rights. Is it anti-hate speech legislation? Is it attempts to bring back the Fairness Doctrine? Is it curbs on campaign finance? Please, Citizen, show us the groundswell of support on the right for these attempts to muzzle speech.
I agree that saying the power to do something does not make it right, in the sense that no one could disagree with such a vacuous, empty, undergraduate-esque platitude.
As to the issues you appear to cite, gay marriage and full rights for illegal immigrants, there are very good and very visceral arguments against both. Many on the left make them all the time. The fact that you wish to simply call people bigots because they disagree with you rather than attempting persuasion is a losing strategy.
Ultimately, though, whine all you want. Obama is going to get trampled in the general election. Were I a Democrat, I would think long and hard about my support for him.
Not all decisions are equal. Using the law to bash minorities who do nothing to injure you is an abuse of the law. Saying you have the power to do so does not make it right.
Sloanasaurus said...
"Another intersting facet about Obama's statement is the idea that these people have been squatting in these towns for 25 years waiting for steel-mill jobs to come back."
Not to mention the assumption that it's the role of government - not only government generally, but the federal government in particular - to solve such "problems." Last night he blathered that people don't trust DC to fix their problems. What's wrong here isn't that the feds aren't fixing people's problems, it's that people look to them to do so.
Isn't it a little strange for someone with his views on trade to be saying that people take refuge in protectionism? The last time I checked, he was against free trade.
Why thanks, reader_iam. A reader you are, indeed.
Enjoy your summer reading with your son. My kids have outgrown A Wrinkle in Time, at least temporarily, so these days I have to re-read it by myself. It's pretty good that way, too, fortunately.
I don't cling to my guns, I hold them with a firm (but not too tight) grip and hit what I am aiming for.
Trooper:
If the Steelers couldn't win it, then go Giants!
Roberto Clemente was fabulous, but most of these kids wouldn't remember.
Concerned Citizen said: If you don't want to be called out as a bigot, the solution is pretty simple: stop being one.
Good plan, CC. You go first.
Hey Save, do you remember the Pirates theme song that year:
We are family
I got all my sisters with me
We are family
Get up ev'rybody and sing
Ev'ryone can see we're together
As we walk on by
(FLY!) and we fly just like birds of a feather
I won't tell no lie
(ALL!) all of the people around us they say
Can they be that close
Just let me state for the record
We're giving love in a family dose
Except for granny. She's a racist.
EnigmatiCore said...
"How exactly will Hillary be able to win such an overwhelming number of Superdelegates as to wrest the nomination away from BO'B?"
The framing of the question implies, incorrectly, that the nomination is Obama's to lose (or for Hillary to "wrest ... away." The question is how Hillary persuades the superdelegates to nominate her, and the answer is pretty simple: she need only do enough to give them cover to do what they already want to do. The superdelegates don't want to give Obama the nomination - they want to win in the fall, and every week brings more evidence that nominating Obama loses them the election. If Hillary can keep the race close, if she can continue to look like a viable contender and can get momentum on her side, that gives the superdelegates cover to exercise their trustee function and give the nominee to the candidate they know is better-equipped to win. It will be close, of course, because so many people have repeated so many times the absurd position that the superdelegates are bound to honor the choice of the primaries and caucuses, a statement in undeniable tension with the existence of the superdelegates (their existence would be nugatory if their sole function were to rubber-stamp the majority decision). That makes superdelegates very nervous. But as long as Hillary can give them cover by remaining in contention, they'll discharge their legitimate role, follow their preference, and nominate Hillary.
With that said, could I admit that I'm getting pretty sick of my brethren using these snide, derogatory little nicknames for Obama. It's petty and childish when the left do it to Bush, and we should rise above such petty childishness.
A Concerned Citizen said...
"I have every right to deem them bigots ... I have been aware of the First Amendment for some time."
The First Amendment doesn't give you any rights. It just prevents the government from infringing on particular antecedent rights. You don't have a "right" in the sense of natural rights to call someone a bigot, it's just that the government can't prevent or punish you for doing so. Doesn't mean you have a right to say it or can't or won't be punished by some non-governmental entity for saying it. Be sure your bosses agree with you or be careful what you say on the internet, lest you find yourself out of a job.
Garage Mahal - Neither candidate can get to the number needed for nomination. Why haven't 300+ superdelegates committed to a candidate yet? It's a cynical ploy to starve her of funding and misinform the electorate to not bother getting behind her. And it looks like it worked on you. It's truly one of the biggest bullshit stories ever told.
It has been pretty amazing, wich is a kinder word for bullshit that Mahal used, to watch the whole liberal pundit class, celebrity glitterati, wealthy owners of media and their flunkies all line up with Obama.
First to have nothing but raves about him and avoid the criticism others in the race got, then to extoll him as the Great Speechgiver Who Transcends Politics, then as the Certain Candidate who will lead them to the Promised Land - that The Bitch is trying to stop.
Through her SELFISHNESS - they maintain she prevents Healing, the World Loving Us Through Liking Obama, most problems soved, and of Course - Racial Redemption. For guilty Jews who see him as Black Messiah, for "with it" youth that "get it", blacks told that Obama is the only choice of loyal blacks...And of course the Identity Politics Players that inform us that a woman is worth 3 extra points for diversity, but a black is worth 8 points and should win over the woman for voters to be morally correct. (except 0 points for a woman who is also black AND ...Republican)
So they have a narrative that demands she recognize her place and quit, despite neither having the votes.
But with all her many flaws, Hillary is now a pretty well understood pol, like her or hate her. But voters have not seen all there is about Obama - and in recent weeks, he has had some pretty bad stuff revealed about him and his attitudes that might have affected earlier Primary votes while his enablers had the Full Teflon Coating intact.
And the response by desperate Obama-backers to bad news is to redouble efforts to demand Hillary quit.
This line of attack might be more effective against Barack Obama if it weren't obviously a crock of bullshit.
Trooper :
I remember that song and my losing World Series bet.
The Orioles were on their way to sweeping the Priates ( I bet on the O's) then Chuck Tanner's mother went and died and gave the Pirates an emotional dose of momentum. They went on to win the last 4 of 7 games. I remember cursing that the lady had not lived a couple more days so I could have won my bet. Think it was $50.
I was at PNC Park once but did not go to Manny's BBQ.
AJ, it's my fondest wish to go to every major leauge park. This is the last year for Yankee Stadium so it's pretty emotional for me. But things change and we have to roll with the punches. But I will be making the trek uptown about 10 times this year. Hopefully including game 7 now that we beat the curse of Don Mattingly.
Is it too much to simply think that this was a verbal slip from someone who has probably been sleeping four hours a night for the last six months? Had he not used the word cling would this all have been different? Probably. Give the guy a break, it was a setting where he probably slipped up on carefully formulating his words. I don't see a pattern of elitism in Obama. Of course, trust Hillary to milk it for what its worth.
Martin said...
"Is it too much to simply think that this was a verbal slip from someone who has probably been sleeping four hours a night for the last six months?"
If Obama makes errors in judgment when he's tired, that's relevant information. How much sleep are you expecting him to get as President?
"Had he not used the word cling would this all have been different? Probably."
I don't see why. What difference do you think that would make to the inferred meaning of his comment?
So let's hear it. How exactly will Hillary be able to win such an overwhelming number of Superdelegates as to wrest the nomination away from BO'B?
Hillary's case for staying in was just proven Sunday with Obama's humongous gaffe. Republicans are going to eat him alive -- there is a ton of material to work with -- in fact, they don't even have to make most of it up. MI & FL has to be settled one way or the other, record numbers turned out in both states, they did vote, it was ratified by both states as valid. She is then dead even. More self described Democrats in exit polls have voted for her. Not even counting MI & FL, 400k of his 700k popular vote lead came from Cook County alone in IL. She's won every big state besides IL.
Why do you persist to buy this bullshit spin that pledged delegate "leaders" win the nomination? Even by 1? 5? 25? You're saying to me that if in the end more actual people have voted for her that she doesn't have a case to make? His strength with independents and Repubs is eroding with the leftist radical liberal portrait thats being painted, and remind me again the last leftist President we elected.
Derek Jeter just announced that his granny isn't scared of black people but she is a a little leery of Samoans.
Hey it's a rain delay, they have to talk about something.
Zachary: "Leave Obama alone!"
Fen's Response:"Geez I hope thats parody."
Fen,
The resemblence between Britney's fans on the one hand and Obama's supporters or Hillary's supporters upon the other really is quite striking, isn't it? >_>
I guess the ultimate difference is that Britney's fans are distinguished by a greater emotional maturity than the supporters of the other two tend to show. For that matter, it's entirely possible that Miss Spears would make a saner President than the other two would as well. ^_~
Does that me that Obama is going to flash his cootch when he gets into the limo?
Simon, the Phi Beta Kappa roster doesn't indicate my age. How do you know that I didn't return to college when I was 50 years old? How do you know that I haven't been studying politics since I was a teenager?
I'd say your judgment of my political beliefs based on your (inaccurate) assumptions is somewhat...
Obama-esque!
How arrogant and elite of you!
Mr. Barbarian--
What's up with this:
">_>", and "^_~"
Internets sign language?
I've got more driveway to dig up with a pick-ax and shovel before I lose the light, so I'll be back later to read the comments. They ought to be interesting.
Ann said of Hillary: "Is that better? A hammy politician buttering you up?"
Yes.
She did a great job.
And it's not that people don't understand that she's buttering them up. Sure they know that. I know that, too. And I don't even like her. Scary beyond all reason, and maybe evil too, but not *stupid*. And she demonstrates that she *does* understand her audience and their lives well enough that she at least as the option of telling them what they want to hear. Her understanding of real people is at least good enough that she can fake it.
Obama? He just says that what he said was true and then tried to give a better version that *still* said that people hung on to religion and guns because the government let them down and they are bitter.
Can anyone imagine explaining to someone that they are "bitter" and having it go over well?
"What's up with this:
">_>", and "^_~""
Emoticons!
Obama spit in the face of the voters he needs to be elected. Get real, between his Rev, wife, and of his own words he has made it clear he looks down upon the non african working man. All politicians are elitist bastards, but the pros keep it to themselves. This Dude is the same old, and not ready for prime time. McCain will take MI, PA, and Ohio on these comments. Regardless of the "accuracy" of his comments they pose a serious challenge to his claim of electablity. If you want to argue that a not ready for prime time player will improve our dismal state of affairs, fine. But mocking the social, religious, and recreational activities of the working class hurts Obama's run. Period.
For the deadenders among us, he has conceded the mistake, and is counting on media spin to turn the tide. It might, but failure to acknowledge the gravity of this error is a sign of ignorance. The Senator knows he screwed up, odd that many of his supporters are unable to see the same.
Trooper, any prediction on when Jeter shifts from SS? And where he goes? Seeing AG in his place, I assume the shift is pending over the offseason. If Girardi and Cash want to keep their jobs it has to happen.
I think it will be to first base. They would never move him to put Arod there, but to tighten up the defense they might ask him to move to first for the good of the team.
Cite Mickey Mantle and Ernie Banks as examples of great players moving positions for the good of the team. It might not happen next year, but it will sooner or later.
"Hillary's case for staying in was just proven Sunday with Obama's humongous gaffe"
I have seen no evidence of a shift among Democrats who I know or the ones who inhabit blogs I have read the last few days.
I have seen some evidence of independents or liberal Republicans rethinking their views, but those people are not Democrats (and especially not Superdelegates).
Perhaps in coming days we will see some evidence that Superdelegates will decide to notice the damage that has been done with independents and other crossover voters.
But even if 'they' do, it will have to be not just by a solid percentage amount. It will need to be overwhelming.
As to why I persist-- I see no evidence to suggest that such an overwhelming decision is in the making. Obama is more liberal than Hillary, which is in his favor with the Superdelegates. He is more charismatic, which is in his favor with the Superdelegates. He is of color, and there is just about no chance that Democrats are going to risk alienating the constituency that brings them election after election. Especially when a good percentage of the Superdelegates are also of color.
#56: About Obama, exactly.
My question for those who say it's "bullshit:" Did he or did he not utter the following words in San Francisco?
And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
You know, they used to say Harry Truman only opened his mouth to change feet, but can you imagine Truman saying anything like this, ever?
President Dewey would have been very grateful if he had.
Enigmaticore: You make good points. However, I'm a Democrat, and I will not now vote for Obama. I will sit the election out rather than vote for a Republican, but Obama lost me with this one. Of course being in Massachusetts, it is profoundly unimportant if or how I vote, blue as this place is.
Is it too much to simply think that this was a verbal slip from someone who has probably been sleeping four hours a night for the last six months?
Yes, its too much.
I'm reminded of similar pieces of bigotry & hatred. Of those that stand out, there is:
1) after Florida 2000, some Democrat operative writing an editorial blaming the Kerry loss on all us "dumb hicks in redneck land", some filth about the electorate that enabled the beating of Mathew Sheppard.
2) and another after 9-11, I think by Micheal Moore, complaining to Al Queda that they bombed the wrong target, that they should attack "red states" not "blue city-states".
So yes. Obama's was not a mere slip of the tongue. We know exactly where he's coming from.
/I'm off for a night on the town - if anyone can find and link to the two examples I mentioned above, I'd greatly appreciate it. Else, I'll post them next week when I have more time.
ConcernedCitizen: The anti-immigrant backlash? Bigotry.
The anti-illegal immigrant backlash.
But I'll play your stupid game:
"Opposition to the liberation of Iraq? Bigotry toward arabs. Go back to your fever swamp, you racist pig"
/gee that was easy...
Trooper:
Been to maybe ten stadiums incuding Dodgers, old Candlestick, Atlanta, Fenway,Yankee (saw Scott Rolen hit one into the black seats), Metrodome (saw them beat your Yankees, Bernie struck out to end the game), Cleveland, PNC, Camden Yards (my favorite), Kansas City (I liked it), Toronto Sky Dome (also saw the Yankees there), Phils of course and oh yeah the Tucson Sidewinders minor league (they gave everyone a kazoo). How many is that? 13 including the Sidewinders.
Have driven by Wrigley and Phoenix new stadium and the old Seattle ballbark.
Never been to Shea - hope to see a game there this year before it closes.
"Obama is doomed if people come to see him as a leftist"...I don't think the issue here is really leftism. George Orwell was a leftist, but he felt great respect and love for the people of Britain. I don't see much evidence that Obama and his circle feel that way about the people of the United States.
David, I agree that having contempt for the common people is not equivalent to leftism, but I am saying that the quote evinces leftism, and that he is doomed if he is perceived as a leftist. What''s leftist about it is not the contempt but the idea that they have a false consciousness and so forth.
Will the real Barack Obama please stand up? I mean, which one is he today? Perhaps the cadenced affected speaking preacher, or the denier of everything Pastor Jeremiah, or the populist hope and change candidate, or is he the avowed leftist socialist whos little snarky, smarmy, elitist, little intellectual verbal swarf that he took on the unwashed white masses who cling to their guns and god? If I didn't know any better, I swear I heard Howlin' Howie Dean with his God, guns, and gays speech about little America.
I was just waiting for Senator pretty boy to pop out and correct Obama about his two Americas. What a douche and it's faux-effete, shallow thinking morons like Alpha-limp that stand up for this grossly incompetent empty suit. Have at thee knave!!!
I agree that having contempt for the common people is not equivalent to leftism...
Indeed, Louis XIV had plenty of contempt for the common people.
But I just love the words, "false consciousness." No subtle clues there as to the intellectual underpinnings of the analysis, eh? But no need to worry. Those proles wouldn't understand anyway.
Zachary Paul Sire said...
"Simon, the Phi Beta Kappa roster doesn't indicate my age. How do you know that I didn't return to college when I was 50 years old?"
Doubt it. Want to claim that that's actually the case?
"How do you know that I haven't been studying politics since I was a teenager? "
If you have been, that transforms your comment above from comedy to tragedy.
"How arrogant and elite of you!"
That's not nearly the damning rejoinder that you evidently think it is. I'm not a populist. As Sid Vicious memorably put it, "I've met the man in the street, and he's a cunt."
If Obama makes errors in judgment when he's tired, that's relevant information. How much sleep are you expecting him to get as President?
I see the makings of a great ad campaign. "When the phone rings at 3 a.m., God knows what he'll say!"
Saying people are fed up with Washington is not elitist or Marxist. It is populist and American.
That said, Obama needs to talk more about the Second Amendment securing an individual right.
I think $109 million Hillary's campaign has officially jumped the shark:
http://news.aol.com/political-machine/2008/04/12/who-would-you-rather-have-shots-with/
Uhh...he spoke the truth.
Zach, if you think small-town people like guns and religion because of long-term economic problems... well, I don't know what to say. That's just sad. The people of small-town America have been pro-gun, pro-religion, and anti-foreigner for, hm... the last 400 years or so? Something like that.
Mortiner: Saying people are fed up with Washington is not elitist or Marxist. It is populist and American.
Uhm, what channel are you watching Mort? Thats not what we're talking about. Maybe you're on the wrong thread?
Obama just played the Redstate Jesusland Redneck Racists Clinging to Guns & God card. You're cool with that? With four years of it?
Somehow, I think America isn't. Obama is over. This was his "Christmas in Cambodia, SEARED into my memory" speech. But please, go ahead and nominate him now.
On another note, while Obama was regaling the left coast with stories of crazed rednecks, Bill Clinton was in North Carolina announcing that manufacturing jobs could be brought back to NC.
Sure, if wages can be cut to $60 a month, the jobs will come flowing back from Viet Nam and Bangladesh.
Bottom line, once the election is over whoever is elected president is going to whore themselves to the rich.
The Republicans will be openly proud of being whores, while the Democrats will thump their chests, throw around some tax credits and declare themselves to be righteous, on the way to the fundraisers.
(Had a crisis last night, the Red Sox game almost caused me to miss the start of the NASCAR race. How can us bitter rednecks survive without seeing the green flag?)
Here's the money quote from the arrogant Barack Obama:
"Everybody just ascribes it to 'white working-class . . . don't want to vote for the black guy,' " Obama said at the fundraiser.
"Here's how it is: In a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long. They feel so betrayed by government that when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it. And when it's delivered by -- it's true that when it's delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama, then that adds another layer of skepticism"
Quoted from the biggest wet-kiss-on-the-Obama-ass article yet from the Washington Post. Chiropractors everywhere are having multiple orgasms when reading the twists and turns the article's reason-challenged authors employ in an attempt extricate Obama's feet from his mouth while also trying to paint this as bad for both McCain and Hillary.
So Obama's main point is even beyond the premise that Ohio and Pennsylvania voters aren't only bitter and stupid - they're mainly racist! And he says that's because of the Because of the failures of the Clinton and Bush administrations!
Please! Please! Just keep getting the man talking away from the script. Perhaps we can start with 3 questions posed for Obama by Michael Medved:
1)“Senator, do you really believe that religion is something people ‘cling to’ in bitterness, or is it something they embrace in joy?
2)“Senator, do people cling to guns out of bitterness, or own them proudly as a means to protect their families, in celebration of a Constitutional right?
3)“Senator, is ‘anti-trade sentiment’ merely a product of bitterness for struggling blue collar Americans or is it, I’ve you’ve suggested elsewhere, a sentiment you actually share?”
And here's mine:
"Senator, exactly what is the difference in your explanation regarding the embrace of religious faith by the economically deprived and it's explanation by Karl Marx?"
"Bottom line, once the election is over whoever is elected president is going to whore themselves to the rich."
How does it feel to be a walking cliche?
That said, Obama needs to talk more about the Second Amendment securing an individual right.
Talk about it? Obama needs to come out and say that he supports peoples rights to own guns and that even without a 2nd Amendment he would support this right. He needs to convince them that he is telling the truth and why the F he got from the NRA should be ignored.
I think the superdelegats have just made their decision. Garage is right on this topic.
"(Had a crisis last night, the Red Sox game almost caused me to miss the start of the NASCAR race. How can us bitter rednecks survive without seeing the green flag?)"
They cut away with two out in the bottom of the ninth to go to the race. I didn't care because I always listen on the radio and almost never watch on TV.
AJ, I always had a sneakin' affection for those '70's atrocities Three Rivers and the Vet in Philly. Minor league parks are also a lot of fun. The Met's minor league park at Coney Island at Keyspan Park is a lot of fun and gets all of the ink, but the Yankee minor league spot in Staten Island is great and has an unbelievable view. Well worth a trip.
Richard Fagin said... They are unable to accept the wisdom of the crowd, and that obtaining the best results for the most people often leaves people having made grave, self-destructive mistakes.
Does this also mean leftists are maternal, or just controlling?
I ask because my wife and I are arguing over a decision one of my sons has made (he's 21); I agree its a stupid decision, and have explained to him why its a stupid choice; he insists on going through with it. So be it; he needs to learn the hard way apparently.
My wife wants me to somehow take his ability to make this decision away and prevent him from making this mistake, although I have explained he is an adult, her response is he is still her baby, and she doesn't want to see him hurt, and is ready to negate his ability to make any choice that may hurt him.
I find this to be a parallel to government; the left feels they are the only ones qualified to control the rest of us, to prevent the child from deciding to hurt themselves, and the right allowing us to make the bad choice, because as adults we have the right to be stupid, if, after counseling, we intend to be stupid.
ed red: Irrespective of the whole lefty-righty thing, tell your wife that experience provides lessons that live in the memory for a lifetime, and that while the young and the dumb can be excused their mistakes, people much older than 21 have no such excuse. Therefore, let Junior screw up now, learn his lesson, and forgive him.
Uhm, what channel are you watching Mort? Thats not what we're talking about. Maybe you're on the wrong thread?
I'm watching the channel with the actual statements Obama made.
The one where Obama said:
"...they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Mort, you see nothing wrong with that statement? Do you actually agree with it?
Mort, you see nothing wrong with that statement?
What I see wrong with it is that you lifted it out of several paragraphs of analysis that show what he actually meant and refute your interpretation of cling.
Right. I quoted him in context. I guess that's what you would call "swiftboating".
Right. I quoted him in context.
No, you took a selective snippet out of his comments. Every newscast has shown the whole of his statements. You didn't even quote a whole sentence. That's the very definition of out of context. You're despicable.
Mort, you're accusing Fen of lifting the quote out of context, a context that "refute[s] [Fen's] interpretation of cling." What exactly do you think Fen's "interpretation" of "cling" is, and what in the surrounding context "refute[s]" it? I don't see where the misrepresentation comes in.
No Simon. Obviously, we have misinterpreted the words of the Messiah. If only there was a modern-day Martin Luther to translate the Word for our ignorant ears. Sigh.
BTW Mort, I'm not lifting the quote out of context, I'm providing the portion you have been ignoring this thread.
Simon,
I'm not "accusing" Fen of anything. The beginning of his quote begins with an ellipse. As I wrote "You didn't even quote a whole sentence. That's the very definition of out of context."
If you don't like Obama's comments, fine, but even Meet the Press, where his statements were criticized at length by most panelists, featured the whole of his statements and the whole of his response to the criticism.
People are not stupid. The point of focusing on "cling" is to suggest Obama is painting a picture of pathetic, desperate people; the whole of his statements makes obvious that isn't the picture he is painting.
You can reject the substance of his sociological analysis and disagree with him on gun rights all you want; that's no reason to distort the man's actual words. I think treating people like they can't understand what Obama meant is elitist and condescending and it's intellectually repugnant.
If I wrote:
Dark
Red
Car
And you ignored the first two paragraphs and said, "He was talking about a yellow car; look, he said '...Car'," I would have the same reaction. I'm not stupid, if if you think I'm going to fall for some ridiculous deconstructionist bullshit, you can go fuck yourself.
And I am a gun club member who has gone hunting, has worked on Second Amendment litigation, has roots in Pennsylvania, and grew up in a union household. And I didn't make $109 million last year.
Mortimer Brezny said...
"Simon, I'm not "accusing" Fen of anything. The beginning of his quote begins with an ellipse."
It begins with an ellipsis, and in any event, I'm still not sure how that's an answer. One more cynical than I might think that your abstraction to an example of how an ellipsis can, as a general matter, be used to distort is, was a cunning way to avoid answering my question - which might be reprhased as being, how did Fen's use of an ellipsis, specifically, distort what Obama said, specifically. Your accusation boils down to a claim that Fen misrepresented Obama's statement, and my question is in what way. What is it, specifically, in the context that was omitted changes the import of the text that Fen quoted?
Reasonable people can agree or disagree with what Obama said, but I don't see any misrepresentation of what Obama said in Fen's comment.
The *context* seems to be... these people don't respond to me because I'm a 40-whatever year old black man. And the reason they feel that way is... bla bla bla bla.
This is better?
/via Instapundit
Roger Kimball: "And so it was with Obama’s bitter, small-town, gun-toting, God-fearing, xenophobic, unemployed isolationists. Really, he says now, he meant all that in a Pickwickian sense. What do you think? I think we all know exactly what he meant. He meant that he regarded most Americans as bitter, small-town, gun-toting, God-fearing, xenophobic, unemployed isolationists who needed help. That is bad enough. Even worse, however, is the disgusting pretense that he actually meant something more emollient. Most of us have gotten used to being treated with contempt by politicians. But Obama has upped the ante. It isn’t pleasant. But it is, at any rate, useful to know just how stupid he thinks we are. I for one will not forget it."
What is it, specifically, in the context that was omitted changes the import of the text that Fen quoted?
If you're smart enough to notice that I absentmindedly wrote "ellipse" while thinking of ellipsis, then you're smart enough to know that I know what the difference between an ellipse and an ellipsis is, and you're smart enough to know that I responded to your question in my comment above, and you're smart enough to know that your feigned misunderstanding is exactly the kind of despicable behavior that I am decrying.
Oh. And nitpicking on my absentmindedness? Totally condescending.
Hmmm. Interesting to contemplate the reasons why this conversation is still going on here, on this thread, as opposed to being transferred to another (one or two), with their invitations to expand the prism.
Interesting, but not surprising.
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