December 18, 2016

"Now we’re feeling what not having hope feels like."

Said Michelle Obama to Oprah.

Trump's response:



Transcript:
“Michelle Obama said yesterday that there’s no hope. But I assume she was talking about the past, not the future, because I'm telling you, we have tremendous hope and we have tremendous promise and we have tremendous potential. We are going to be so successful as a country again. We are going to be amazing. And I actually think she made that statement not meaning it the way it came out, because I met with President Obama and Michelle Obama in the White House. My wife was there. She could not have been nicer. So I honestly believe she meant that statement in a different way than it came out, because I believe there is tremendous hope and, beyond hope, we have such potential. This country has such potential. You watch. It's going to be so special. Things are going to happen like you haven't seen happen in many decades."
Things are going to happen like you haven't seen happen in many decades.... I think I know what the Trump-is-Hitler contingent will say about that. But everyone will load whatever meaning they want into high abstractions like "tremendous promise," "tremendous potential," and "tremendous hope." I get that it will be big, but big what? You watch. Just wait and see. It's going to be so special. Special, eh? Special. Do I want something special? I might want something normal. I'm a little worried about special.

Of course, Obama's "hope" was always an abstraction that absorbed whatever meaning people saw in it. He's leaving now, having fulfilled some hopes and not others. One hope he has not fulfilled is the perpetuation of his party's power. He's as responsible as anyone for laying the foundation for Trump's campaign. He didn't mean to do that — I don't think! — but he never had the ability to control what was in the minds of the people who responded to his idea of hope, and now there will be a new President, bringing a different version of hope, and the old President's wife chooses to say that "we" are feeling the absence of hope.

Who's that "we"? The Democrats or the woeful people of America who — despite 8 years of Obama — still had to hope. Let's take a closer look at what Michelle Obama said to Oprah:
“So your husband’s administration, every -- everything, the election, was all about hope,” Winfrey said in a clip that aired Friday on “CBS This Morning.” “Do you think that this administration achieved that?”

The first lady responded in the affirmative. “Yes, I do,” she said, “because we feel the difference now.”
All right. That addresses my first question. Obama should already have fulfilled the hope he inspired.
“See, now we’re feeling what not having hope feels like. You know? Hope is necessary. It’s a necessary concept,” Obama continued. 
Now, she's disengaged from Oprah's question. Instead of talking about what President Obama achieved, she's talking about the ongoing feeling that people ought to have. But hope is future-looking and based on continuing need. If Obama had achieved what some of those he inspired were hoping for, would hope still be the important concept? Wouldn't we transition to preserving what we have?
“And Barack didn’t just talk about hope because he thought it was just a nice slogan to get votes. I mean, he and I and so many believe that if you -- what else do you have if you don’t have hope?”
You have all those things you've achieved! Health, happiness, security, understanding!
“What do you give your kids if you can’t give them hope?” said the first lady. 
You give them a safe, secure, loving home, a good education, solid character. What you give them, they have received. They have it. I wonder if I'm arriving at what Trump was groping toward when he said "I assume she was talking about the past, not the future."

Michelle Obama seems to confuse the past and the future in a strange way that relates to a criticism of Democrats one often hears: Their political strategy relies on maintaining economic dependency and feelings of victimhood. To say you must have hope is — think about it — a euphemistic way to say you must continue to feel needy.
"You know, our children respond to crises the way they see us respond. You know, it’s like the toddler that bumps his head on the table...they look up at you to  figure out whether it hurts. And if you’re like, oh, my God, they’re crying. But if you’re like, you know what, babe, it’s okay.... I feel that Barack has been that for the nation in ways that people will come to appreciate,” she said. 
We, the people, are children.
“Having a grown-up in the White House who can say to you in times of crisis and turmoil, hey, it’s gonna be okay."
So Obama has been the good father, calm in a crisis. That says nothing about whether Trump will be an equally good father figure or whether the father/children metaphor is ideal. I think Michelle is drifting back into a comfortable meditation on her husband's much-admired temperament. She doesn't leap into saying that Trump's demeanor is distinctly different from Obama's or that Trump's approach to fatherhood would be bad. There's no reason to think Trump would be an "oh, my God" type of parent, the one model Michelle seems to believe would not work.
"Let’s remember the good things that we have. Let’s look at the future. Let’s look at all the things that we’re building. All of this is important for our kids to stay focused and to feel like their work isn’t in vain. That their lives aren’t in vain. What do we do if we don’t have hope, Oprah?”
None of that is Trump-specific. It's thoroughly abstract. But the main thing I see in her words is a wife's anxiety to protect her husband's reputation. The press has cherry-picked words that seem to denounce Trump as the end of all hope. That's not really what she was saying. I suspect she's upset that all of her husband's achievements will be undone and that he will be blamed for failing to preserve them, for allowing the election to be lost. But that's only an inference, not even a stated abstraction.

228 comments:

1 – 200 of 228   Newer›   Newest»
320Busdriver said...

Obama's legacy is severly tarnished, and most of his damage will be undone.

But you can keep your doc. If you like him.

Laslo Spatula said...

The line that sticks out to me:

"That their lives aren’t in vain..."

People's entire lives are now in vain?

Obama was their only purpose in living?

This only would seem to make sense to adolescents and bureaucrats.

I am Laslo.

Martha said...

Michelle went low when she she should have gone high.

Unknown said...

Trump is NOT Hitler. Of course he's not. But to use that comparison to obscure the anti-Democratic, authoritarian trend in current national ... and global ... politics is, ... in a word, sad.

GWash said...

i dont think you can really kill hope... even in our darkest momments (and if you are poor, non white and not male a moment we seem to be entering), hope is always out there because change is always happening...
2. why do we always expect the other side (no matter which) to go high instead of low?... i feel for the flotus, she along with her husband have been vilified since they rose to prominence, its hard to take the constant drip drip drip of negativety... i guess its trumps and his family's turn now...we'll compare and contrast (blue book phrase) and see how the trumps handle it...

Bob Ellison said...

Can we at some point admit that the person married to the person elected is not important?

Humperdink said...

Putting one's faith and hope in a human being is a fools errand.

Amadeus 48 said...

If Trump's statement is not "It's going to be OK", nothing is. Michelle wants Daddy to say it is going to be OK? Daddy Trump said it.

(Milo Yiannopoulos has been calling Trump "daddy" for a year.)

rhhardin said...

"what are your talking about, Keith? This is going to be 'Let's hope Professor Ritsen meets with a little accident' all over again. We spend nine months hoping that Professor Ritsen would meet with an accident before Leslie made it clear that it was an accident we were supposed to make happen."

Mitchell and Webb

HT said...

She's worried that Trump is about to undo everything Obama did. And in her eyes, and millions of others' those things were steps to progress.

Many other very strong thoughts on this, but to me, it was clear what she was trying to say and could be summed up quite succinctly.

rhhardin said...

It's nice to see the first family sticking together even at the cost of ruining the lives of millions of fellow citizens.

It's the democrat way.

Laslo Spatula said...

I remember Obama with his "Office of the President Elect of the United States" emblem on his podiums before taking Office.

I imagine he is now having an emblem designed for "Office of the Former President of the United States", for when he gives his out-of-Office speeches.

Maybe he will mix it up with a "First Black President of the United States" emblem.

Regardless,I see a lot of speeches in his future: Obama will still be running as a Candidate, only now to jockey for his Position in History.

I am Laslo.



Gahrie said...

“See, now we’re feeling what not having hope feels like. You know?

Some of us were feeling this way eight years ago...but we were adult about it and got on with our lives.

I was very skeptical of Trump.....I compared his rise to the rise of Hitler in the early days, I still think it fits. My fears about Trump centered on the uncertainty of how he would govern. His post election behavior and decisions have given me enormous hope that he will be a Reaganesqe president.

Mark said...

Putting one's faith and hope in a human being is a fools errand.

Precisely. For most in the country, their hope is in the Lord. But Michelle and Barack and much of the left have delusions of godhood, particularly seeing Barack as "the One."

Wince said...

...and the old President's wife chooses to say that "we" are feeling the absence of hope. Who's that "we"? The Democrats or the woeful people of America who — despite 8 years of Obama — still had to hope.

It seems Obama's kept that "we" intentionally vague from the start. Remember this?

"We are the ones we've been waiting for."


- Barack Obama, February 5, 2008.

You see, the challenges we face will not be solved with one meeting in one night. It will not be resolved on even a Super Duper Tuesday. Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. (Cheers, applause.) We are the change that we seek. We are the hope of those boys who have so little, who've been told that they cannot have what they dream, that they cannot be what they imagine. Yes, they can. (Cheers, applause.)

We are the hope of the father who goes to work before dawn and lies awake with doubt that tells him he cannot give his children the same opportunities that someone gave him. Yes, he can.

(Crowd says in unison, "Yes, he can.")

We are the hope of the woman who hears that her city will not be rebuilt, that she cannot somehow claim the life that was swept away in a terrible storm. Yes, she can.

(Crowd says in unison, "Yes, she can.")

We are the hope of the future, the answer to the cynics who tell us our house must stand divided, that we cannot come together, that we cannot remake this world as it should be.

We know that we have seen something happen over the last several weeks, over the past several months. We know that what began as a whisper has now swelled to a chorus that cannot be ignored -- (cheers, applause) -- that will not be deterred, that will ring out across this land as a hymn that will heal this nation -- (cheers, applause) -- repair this world, make this time different than all the rest. Yes, we can.

Let's go to work. Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Yes, we can.


Hagar said...

For the Obamas, downstate Illinois is foreign territory.

Gahrie said...

even in our darkest momments (and if you are poor, non white and not male a moment we seem to be entering

I predict that in eight years the economy will be booming, and the standard of living and security of innercity minorities will be greatly improved.

GWash said...

why should i believe trump?.. if he said it's going to ok i would ask ok for whom?.. we all can agree that he is a liar and con artist.. (most people are).. but why should i take what he says as the 'truth'?.. his track record thus far is abysmal.. its ok for you guys that have drunk the orange kool ade but i'm still skeptical... especially looking at the people he is surrounding himself with, this lack of interest in understanding the world around him (beyond his fan base) and the lack of results i see so far.. (noting that he does not yet have control of the levers of power)... his support and admiration for putin should give all of us pause..
watch your wallets..the wolves are at the door..

HT said...

How is the standard of living of innercity minorities (a group probably most on here know nothing about) going to improve?

I assume you will say their security is going to be enhanced by allowing everyone everywhere at any time to own and carry guns.

Laslo Spatula said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Laslo Spatula said...

Althouse: "We, the people, are children."

80s Pop Stars:

We are the world, we are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day
So lets start giving
There's a choice we're making
We're saving our own lives
Its true we'll make a better day
Just you and me


Obama as reprise of Self-Absorbed Charity Jingle.


I am Laslo.

Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...

This only makes sense if some action of Government is essential for an individual's sense of fulfillment or self-worth.

Strange.

HT said...

You go GWash. I will say this -- as someone who lives in a blue area most of the time, but also spends a lot of time in a red state where I was born and raised, people often underestimate the capabilities of their conservative opponents. Seen it time and time again, and it's quite frustrating. Trump is not that curious (I suppose) but he ain't dumb. Not that he won't make dumb mistakes. But though I've loathed him these many years, it's impossible now not to pay attention to him, and from what I can see, he is pretty good at getting to the essence of a question (and then doing what he will with it, including exploiting the hell out of it, etc)

Dust Bunny Queen said...

There IS hope, Michelle. It is just that to YOU the wrong people are now feeling hope. After 8 years of being beat down, told they are worthless racists, losers, bitter clingers.....there is now hope that things may change. That there is a hope of: jobs, success, free expression of ideas, choices that can be made in our own lives,taking the burden off of the middle class to support all the pipe dreams of YOUR administration.

Yes. There is hope. It is just that Michelle and the fascist liberals think that the "wrong" people have hope. That our hopes and dreams are meaningless or worse than that are wrong to hope for. Can't have THAT.

Will the Obamas ever go away? Are we going to be plagued by them as we have been by the Clintons? I HOPE not.

tim maguire said...

"did you acheive hope?"
"Yes, we did."

What does that mean? Pretty brilliant juxtaposition of Trump's "It will be tremendous" right next to "we acheived hope." It's all equally meaningless, equally vacuous. They only difference is Obama's vacuous nothingness is intended to manipulate intellectuals while Trump's vacuous nothingness is intended to manipulate everybody else. I suppose Trump's is more honest. So there's that.

Bob Boyd said...

You know, it’s like the toddler that bumps his head on the table...they look up at you to figure out whether it hurts...

But if you're like, the guy who sold us that table is racist, sexist and homophobic! The guy who built that table is white supremacist patriarchal hater! He knew you'd bump your head. Of course he did! That table was designed to keep you down. Every time you try to get up you bang your head, am I right? And pretty soon you learn to stay under the table and not get up and that's what he wants. It's called the walnut ceiling. The whole furniture industry in white male America is designed that way. Big Furniture! That's what they want! Did that hurt? Damn right it hurt! Now use that anger! Get your brothers and sisters to help you flip that table over. That's called turning the tables! Now stand up and pay back those people who are profiting from your pain and suffering, who are keeping you down! Opps! Watch your head....

Sally327 said...

If only Barack Obama could have run for a third term, his supporters would still have hope. But he couldn't, instead they were stuck with Hillary Clinton who never in a million years would be able to inspire Michelle's kind of hope in anybody and certainly not in the Obama is divinity made flesh crowd. Which they showed by not coming out and voting for her.

Hope caught the first train out of town the day Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy.

Rusty said...


Blogger Bob Ellison said...
"Can we at some point admit that the person married to the person elected is not important?"

We kinda did that in the last election. Ex presidents wives need not apply.

Blogger HT said...
"How is the standard of living of innercity minorities (a group probably most on here know nothing about) going to improve?

I assume you will say their security is going to be enhanced by allowing everyone everywhere at any time to own and carry guns."

Well. Yeah. And better law enforcement. See. The bad guys already have guns and there are some places in the inner city that not even the police will go.

campy said...

I imagine he is now having an emblem designed for "Office of the Former President of the United States",

Not "former," President Emeritus.

HT said...

Well. Yeah. And better law enforcement. See. The bad guys already have guns and there are some places in the inner city that not even the police will go.

Tell me about that, Rusty. Please share your direct experience of the inner city with the rest.

David Begley said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
CWJ said...

OK, I buy the wife's concern part of your analysis that her husband's achievements will be undone. But Althouse, do you believe that she really believes that Barack has achievements beyond demonstrating that a black can be elected President. Just like "hope," "achievements" also just seems to be an abstraction put out there for people to fill in on their own. Outside of family, this couple's achievements seem to be no more than that they exist and are entitled to the benefits that have been bestowed upon them.

Wince said...

Barack Obama's version of "we" seems to be a variation of the hackneyed "us and them" political slogans: "You are either with us or with the status quo against change." "You are either part of the problem or part of the solution."

Despite that dialectical view of history, however, Obama didn't expect in the intervening 8 years that'd he'd become the status quo and a new change agent offering hope would come along.

David said...

Trump was gracious in his response, trying to damp down controversy. That's hopeful, isn't it?

David Begley said...

"And Barack didn’t just talk about hope because he thought it was just a nice slogan to get votes."

No. "Hope and change" was exactly a slogan to get votes. And it worked too.

tcrosse said...

It's a good idea to temper Hope with Skepticism. It's also a bad idea to put too much faith in an individual, particularly one with a gaudy line of patter. In this respect, Trump and Obama are two sides of the same coin.

rhhardin said...

The chief thing about Trump is what he's already demonstrated. He can beat the media, meaning women's TV as policy.

chickelit said...

What an ill-timed message from MO -- especially at Christmastime.

Fight the Glower!!

lemondog said...

Hope and Change

RENEWING AMERICA'S PROMISE

Major headings of the 2008 Democratic party platform. Skim thro and determine for yourself how much (any?) progress has been made in the last 8 years.

I. Renewing the American Dream
II. Renewing American Leadership
III. Renewing the American Community
IV. Renewing American Democracy


Now I have to read the Republican platform......

AllenS said...

Nothing inspires more hope in people than to hear the words: "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance."

Michael said...

Like her husband, Mrs. Obama is not all that smart.

Quaestor said...

I'm trying to mentally list Obama's accomplishments... Pretty damned short list.

Diogenes of Sinope said...

The Leftist know the hoi polloi are sheep, children who can't survive without the Leftist elite taking care of them via omnipotent government. So no Leftist elite leaders means the common people are without hope. They are peasants, serfs, the rabble without an aristocracy to rule them.

campy said...

Like her husband, Mrs. Obama is not all that smart.

Neither is Oprah.

Fernandinande said...

" it’s like the toddler that bumps his head on the table...they look up at you to figure out whether it hurts."

Creepy. No wonder this clownette thought she had the right to tell people what to eat.

Tank said...

Michael beat me to it, she's just not that smart or insightful, and this is just a bunch of meaningless mush.

I am slightly hopeful for the first time in about 14 years, since about a year after 9/11 when I saw which way GW Doofus was going. But I'm not exactly optimistic (globally, individually I'm fine).

Trump may do a good job ... or not. Clinton was what Clinton is ... an incompetent, corrupt, criminal leftist, ie. the enemy, the end of America. Ah, it's probably baked in already (see, not that optimistic).

holdfast said...

The President as "Big Daddy" is a very African concept. See Mugabe, Idi Amin et al. Even Mandela, who turned out to be a much better leader than I had thought a "former" communist and terrorist would be.

Darrell said...

The Obamas are hoping to make America ungovernable for the next four year. That's what anti-American losers do.

MayBee said...

The Obamas love to hear themselves talk, don't they?

MayBee said...

Blogger Bob Ellison said...
Can we at some point admit that the person married to the person elected is not important?


Yes!!!
A whole special with the first lady of the united states? No more!

David Begley said...

How can We the People live without hope? How can we live without the Obamas?

My life is meaningless without Barack as President.

chickelit said...

Art there not in the same country Shepards abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night?

Humperdink said...

Blogger Bob Ellison said...
"Can we at some point admit that the person married to the person elected is not important?"

Yes, yes and yes. Can we all agree the First Lady doesn't need to pick up a cause?

MayBee said...

I think the better message is that hope is within us. It comes from within ourselves and that's where we must seek it.

Humperdink said...

I don't know how I am going live without seeing Obama on TV regularly. However, I am sure he will fix that in early February.

HT said...

I love when the First Lady picks a cause.

Paco Wové said...

"How is the standard of living of innercity minorities (*) going to improve?"

What would a Clinton presidency have done to improve it, if eight years of Obama have done so little?

----
*Snippy passive-aggressive dig edited out as irrelevant

Darrell said...

The headlines are appealing to stupid people that aren't aware the Trump is not President yet.
"Research scientists must beg on-line for funding" "Psychiatric patients make-do without medicines" "Record homelessness appears overnight after Trump's victory"

HT said...

I have no idea what a Clinton presidency would have done to improve it. I am not the one who has made the statement that any particular president would improve the standard of living of those living in the inner cities.

MAJMike said...

LibCong tears are sweeter than honey.

mikee said...

James Earl Carter, the worst president since WWI, before Obama bested him, went into retirement from the presidency as a reviled failure. His signature accomplishments were the expansion of the Soviet Union, the Iranian Islamist Revolution, OPEC's ascendancy and the killing of a swimming rabbit with a canoe paddle. He very justifiably spent the next decades doing good works with Habitat for Humanity to atone for his presidency in the eyes of the public. Then he started interfering with US foreign policy through his work on foreign vote verifications for dictators, support for any anti-American mass murderer who would give him a meeting, and even placing himself in the way as a private citizen in places like North Korea in times of crisis.

However, his wife Rosalynn Carter, former First Lady, did not spend her time defending his administration publicly.

Barack Obama and his wife Michelle have cemented their positions as worst president since at least World War I, and will be very, very hard to displace in the near future.

bagoh20 said...

"There IS hope, Michelle. It is just that to YOU the wrong people are now feeling hope. After 8 years of being beat down, told they are worthless racists, losers, bitter clingers.....there is now hope that things may change."

I think this is the big disconnect of Democrats who are trying to undo the election, and are saying this gloom and doom crap. They are so wrapped up in their own tribalism that they don't even see the millions of people who voted them out. They look around their coffee shops, and boutiques and they don't them, so they have no problem ignoring those people, their votes, their desires, their needs and their rights. They don't consider them even close to equals. They imagine the Beverly Hillbillies, but don't see themselves as the Mrs. Drysdales they all embody.

mikee said...

James Earl Carter, the worst president since WWI, before Obama bested him, went into retirement from the presidency as a reviled failure. His signature accomplishments were the expansion of the Soviet Union, the Iranian Islamist Revolution, OPEC's ascendancy and the killing of a swimming rabbit with a canoe paddle. He very justifiably spent the next decades doing good works with Habitat for Humanity to atone for his presidency in the eyes of the public. Then he started interfering with US foreign policy through his work on foreign vote verifications for dictators, support for any anti-American mass murderer who would give him a meeting, and even placing himself in the way as a private citizen in places like North Korea in times of crisis.

However, his wife Rosalynn Carter, former First Lady, did not spend her time defending his administration publicly.

Barack Obama and his wife Michelle have cemented their positions as worst president since at least World War I, and will be very, very hard to displace in the near future.

Jim said...

1/20/17- the last day in her adult life that MO will be proud of her country. Oh, well, at least she had 8 years.

Quaestor said...

Dr. Althouse:

I've purchased "The Romanovs, 1613—1918" by Simon Sebag Montefiore by clicking one of the Amazon ads on your site. Will that count as portal purchase?

mccullough said...

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here

tola'at sfarim said...

This should get the clinton tab. Only hillary knows what hope really feels like. The boy from hope. The 90's are calling, and they want their campaign ads back.

William said...

It's an absolute fact that there are more corpses, refugees, and torture victims in the Middle East now than when Obama took over. I think it's fair to say that Obama's inaction is to some degree responsible for this. Doesn't matter. You're not really dead unless you've been killed by an American bomb, and you're not really tortured unless you've been waterboarded by Americans.......The Americans who voted for Trump now feel more hope, and those who voted for Hillary less hope. Doesn't matter. The Americans who voted for Trump aren't real people, like the Hillary voters. They're Putin pawns at best, but mostly they're racists.

rehajm said...

This is a good take. Hope is aspirational but hope needs to evolve, either into success and achievement or into resignation or failure.

rehajm said...

unsurprising the Obamas don't understand achievement and results

MikeR said...

Old joke from the early days of Israel:
Man buys a house in one of the new developments. He's all ready to go, walks to the phone company office to get his phone turned on.
"We're very sorry, the phone lines aren't in to that development yet. Nothing to turn on." [no cell phones then]
"What!? I run my business from my home. Phone service is essential. What can I do?"
"We're really sorry. It's going to be months, maybe years."
The man was very sad. "You're sure? You mean, there's no hope?"
The other man pulls himself up severely. "No hope? Never say that. Never say that. Never say, No hope. A Jew must always have hope!
You have no _chance_ of getting a phone, but..."

Unknown said...

now if Obama was successful, there would still be plenty of hope. but hope is also not one dimensional. at the very least, michelle should have hope that trump does not dismantle the Obama extremism in federal government. that she does not feel hope of this negative portends very good things for our country under trump

Paul said...

"she's upset that all of her husband's achievements will be undone "

Well, let's "HOPE"!

AllenS said...

One of Michelle's husband's greatest achievements has been adding $10 trillion to this country's debt.

Success!

exhelodrvr1 said...

She was clearly falling in line with the rest of the Demos and saying that the lack of hope is due to Trump.

Gahrie said...

How is the standard of living of innercity minorities (a group probably most on here know nothing about) going to improve?

More jobs, better education, less welfare and the chance of a better life.

Laslo Spatula said...

Bob of Bob's Used Girls' Bicycle Seat Emporium says:

People, Bob knows that with a new President comes Change. But here at Bob's Used Girls' Bicycle Seat Emporium you can rest assured that we will NEVER change in our commitment to providing you the best quality used girls’ bicycle seats at the very best prices…

There is nothing that embodies Hope more than a young girl riding a bicycle, experiencing the world she rides through as if for the Very First Time. With each used girls’ bicycle seat from Bob's Used Girls' Bicycle Seat Emporium you can experience that Hope, and the sensual smell of sweat and innocence that comes with it…

Remember: you may not have gotten who you voted for, but you will always get what you want at Bob's Used Girls' Bicycle Seat Emporium.*

*Disclaimer: As hard as we’ve tried, we have not been able to find and certify a bicycle seat that belonged to Ivanka Trump. But that certainly means we will never give up trying!

I am Laslo.

Achilles said...

AllenS said...
One of Michelle's husband's greatest achievements has been adding $10 trillion to this country's debt.

Success!


Don't forget quadrupling the physical money supply. In the end Obama printed or borrowed $15-$20 trillion(that we know of) which is more than 5 times our total economic growth during that period.

Michael K said...

" we all can agree that he is a liar and con artist.. (most people are).."

Here is the left's cocoon of denial.

One indicator if what is coming is the price of gold. After a rise last spring, it fell $100/ounce after the election. I made some money when Bill Clinton was elected by buying gold shares as Democrats are usually good for inflation and rising gold prices. Gold started to fall about October and dropped sharply with Trump's election.

The Fed has also decided to inch interest rates up a bit. All of this suggests a boom is coming. Still too early to see but it is the opposite of what we would have seen if Hillary won.

Gun sales in California have spiked as the lunatic Democrats have passed a bunch of gun bans. Gun sales are down in the rest of the country,

Comanche Voter said...


Or let's just that that Michelle Obama is living in an alternate reality--and I don't want to go there.

As for Obama's "much admired temperament", I'm reminded of the temperament of the character played by Ben Gazzara in a long ago movie "The Strange One". Withdrawn, passive, watching a disaster with no emotion--detached really. Of course Gazzara's character was truly vicious, whereas Obama's character (when moved out of its torpidity() is simply haughty and condescending. OOTH he's a preach of a fellow.

Roughcoat said...

For the Obamas, downstate Illinois is foreign territory.

And downstate Illinois -- more properly, the rest of Illinois, down, up, and sideways (i.e. to the west) starts at the Chicago City limits. Apart from Cook County and 2 other miniscule counties, Illinois is a red state, overwhelmingly so.

Just speaking up for my home and home state, the state that gave us Lincoln, Grant, and Reagan. And that provided a good home to my great-grandparents fleeing poverty and starvation in Ireland, and autocratic rule by aristocratic elites in Saxony.

steve uhr said...

After watching Trump's "thank-me" rally in Mobile yesterday in its entirety, I expect his presidency to go down in history of one of the worst. Nothing about policy (other than we are gonna build the wall), nothing substantive about healing the country, nothing inspiring or even intended to inspire. Instead, he talked about whether Time's Person of the Year should be called the Man of the Year and other such drivel.

Most of all it was boring. It seemed to go on forever, and you had no idea when it might end because it was just one trivial comment after another with no theme or direction (other than "I'm great," of course).

Bruce Hayden said...

Yes, it is likely that much of what Obama did will be very quickly undone. And, that is completely on him. He refused to work with the Republicans, even when they regained a majority in first the House, and then the Senate. Because "we won". And, a significant lack of experience in actually doing deals and compromise. What he did by the pen, can mostly be undone the same way, and, likely much more quickly (there are places where his people went through the APA Notice and Comment process, and those will be harder to roll back). If he had worked with the Republicans, esp. on ObamaCare, the Stimulus, etc., he might have a durable legacy (ignoring the corpses his horrendous foreign policy caused in the Middle East), if he had reached over the isle. He didn't, and so he won't, except as one of the worst Presidents ever.

Mrs. Obama has really been the real ideologue in the family. Her husband has seemed more interested in playing golf than actually doing his job. To the left, to a great extent, symbolism is more important than results. And, that is why I think that she was proud of her country only as long as her husband was in charge. And, might be again, if a liberal Black person were again elected. What rational hope has she lost here? That America can continue to decline? More young black men get killed, mostly by each other? That Blacks remain mired in poverty? That drug addiction continues to surge? My point is that her lack of "hope" is irrational, and, thus, completely emotional.

Barry Dauphin said...

Within a couple of weeks of the inauguration, I suspect there will be a drumbeat in the media "what is trump doing about Syria"? The current public angst about Aleppo is merely the precursor.

Paco Wové said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Pettifogger said...

The Left has precisely the same (forlorn) hope I have had for the last eight years: That the country will still be salvageable when an election turns the table. I now have the hope (but not the conviction) that the country is still salvageable and that Trump will prove to be the president we need.

I also now hope the Lefties' hope is not realized. So we all have hope. Whether those hopes are reasonable is another question.

David Baker said...

People should know how Michelle Obama got her Harvard law degree. And why she wound up as essentially a copyright/trademark file clerk at Sidley. Which gave her plenty of time to court Barack.

Michael K said...

" I expect his presidency to go down in history of one of the worst."

I'm sure you do and I expect you will be disappointed. For one thing, Obama has left a pretty high bar to be worse than his.

Paco Wové said...

"I am not the one who has made the statement that any particular president would improve the standard of living..."

Fair enough. I admit I managed to conflate bits of your comment with GWash's previous one, in which was lamented "our darkest momments (and if you are poor, non white and not male a moment we seem to be entering)". I've seen this a lot from the losing side recently. Teeth are gnashed and garments rent at the thought of vague, unspecified horrors being loosed upon (insert favored lefty victim group here). I'm trying to get specifics on what horrors these are, and how they would differ from the horrors of any other president with an (R) after his name. I have to say that my spouse (admittedly white and non-poor, but *definitely* not-male) seems pretty sanguine about the whole Trump thing.

(Edited for excessive negation.)

tom swift said...

Hope?

School kids can hope for edible lunches.

dbp said...

Bob Boyd at 8:42

+1 "walnut ceiling" LOL!

All this griping by the Obamas reminds me of a recommendation/prediction I made from around 4 years ago. I was thinking that Obama should not run for reelection, why? 1. He wasn't going to accomplish much of anything in a 2nd term. 2. Given that he would be term limited on reelection, the value of speech-making once he left office would be very little compared to what he could get as a potential future president.

I think prediction 1. has borne itself out. As for 2. I am sure Obama will make good coin running his mouth, but lets face it, He is utterly irrelevant from now on.

If I was either Obama right now, I would feel hopeless too. There is nothing either of them can do to prevent Trump and the incoming Congress from reversing most of Mr, Obama's "accomplishments".

320Busdriver said...

Kissinger seemed full of hope on FTN just now. He described some of the possibilities derives from the "vacuum" Obama created abroad.

What is Obama's signature achievement? Giving us Trump?

Howard said...

I think Michelle is speaking directly to the people of Aleppo.

Sebastian said...

"The press has cherry-picked words that seem to denounce Trump as the end of all hope. That's not really what she was saying. I suspect she's upset that all of her husband's achievements will be undone and that he will be blamed for failing to preserve them, for allowing the election to be lost." Yes. But what she was really saying is that if people want hope, they have to stick with the O's. It was the opening salvo in their game to threaten a Michelle run for office -- to restore hope, you know -- as a way to start shaking down the money men. Predicted here months ago. The O's do have hope -- for a billion-dollar foundation and a 100-million fortune, at least. Michelle will be the black Hillary. Unless Oprah runs. She can save the Dems. Best they got.

@su: "I expect his presidency to go down in history of one of the worst. Nothing about policy . . ." Might happen. But his appointments signal a lot of "policy" to come. I hope.

Sebastian said...

@dbp: "He is utterly irrelevant from now on . . . There is nothing either of them can do to prevent Trump and the incoming Congress from reversing most of Mr. Obama's "accomplishments"." In the short run, he is irrelevant. But he is still the most prominent Dem. He won't be irrelevant long and there is something they can do to reverse the reversal: have Michelle threaten to run for office.

William said...

Being calm in a crisis is actually different than doing nothing in a crisis, which was Obama default position.

Laslo Spatula said...

Man, I've pimped them all, and I’ll tell you straight up: Hos with Hope are one of the biggest problems you can have…

They think being a Ho is only temporary, that they won’t end up being a fifty-year-old crack-whore sucking cock with their toothless gums and sore-cracked lips to transients at some shit-hole hotel that smells of piss and burnt toast. I get rid of them well before then — I like my girls young, that’s where the money is — but I know where they’ll end up, provided they don’t die from the drugs and the cheap alcohol and the street-beatings first…

One of the problems with a Ho with Hope: the bitch won’t ever give up the anal, no matter how much the dude is willing to pay: that’s taking money out of MY pocket, you feel me…?

You take the Pimp Hand to these girls and it don’t even faze them none: they’re still seeing rich husbands and unicorn-shit in their future. It can take years for the Hope to get fucked out of them, and by that time their freshness is long gone and you can’t get more than Fifty for them, no matter what kinky shit they’ll now do…

I usually try to hurry the process by giving them the sweatiest oily fat dudes to break their Spirit: having a greasy four-hundred-pound blob of diabetic blubber pound you doggy-style can shatter them some illusions, word that. Dude: you four-hundred pounds with day-old shit-stains on your pants? I’ve got the Girl for YOU…

For those of you who ain’t Pimps, consider that this lesson still applies in YOUR world: chicks with Hope will fucking wear you down…

I am Laslo.

Bruce Hayden said...

Gun sales in California have spiked as the lunatic Democrats have passed a bunch of gun bans. Gun sales are down in the rest of the country,

The latter was interesting. I bought a new handgun the day before the election (doing my part to not elect Crooked Hillary, in a kinda reverse Murphy's Law sort of way). The place I bought it had record sales up through the election, selling 20 or so guns a day, when they rarely sell more than one or two (they are primarily a shooting range, and firearm sales are just a side line). And, then, the day after the election, their gun sales cratered. And, have limped along, maybe worse than usual (thanks to all the advance purchases right before the election).

One of the nice things about your move to AZ is that guns and the like are no longer going to be much of an issue (even in left leaning Tucson). We are buying a place (expect to close next week - it is frankly absurd Snow Birding in CO for the winter from MT in the summers, esp when, like yesterday, I spend a couple hours shoveling snow) in the PHX area, and was encouraged that we have several big box sporting goods stores within a couple miles of us, including a Cabela's - just wish that we had lived there right after Thanksgiving when they were selling 9 mm for $5 or so a box (with the mail-in rebate), with a 60 box maximum. Something absurd like that. Roughly half the price of Perfecta that I am finding in better quantities in Walmarts now, and 40% of what I had been paying for it in bulk at that range. Cabela's also sells Magpul Glock magazines at roughly half the price of factory magazines. And, the other big box sporting good store is the chain where I first saw just massive amounts of 30 round AR magazines (but essentially no 10, or 15 round sizes), dirt cheap.

dbp said...

Michelle could follow the (ultimately unsuccessful) Hillary template, but first she needs to get elected to office somewhere. They have said they want to stay in the DC area until Sasha finishes school, so Michelle could run for Senator in VA or MD. Tim Kaine is up in 2018 and will run for re-election. In MD, the incumbent Cardin will be 75 in 2018, so that is a possibility. Of course, by 2018 Sasha will be done or almost done with school and so the Obamas can move to IL or HI (or stay in the DC area) but in three years they will already be mostly forgotten historic footnotes.

mockturtle said...

I get that it will be big, but big what? You watch. Just wait and see. It's going to be so special. Special, eh? Special. Do I want something special? I might want something normal. I'm a little worried about special.

You would have been at odds with our founding fathers [and mothers] who took the risk of separating from England when they knew things would get messy for a while. Much as I love England, I love America much, much more.

bagoh20 said...

I have the most hope I've felt in decades. Trump is not the kind of small government ideologue I've wanted, but I'm seeing a highly pragmatic administration developing that is not afraid to take risk with sacred cows, and that is essential. I see an administration that may finally see the massive debilitating waste of big government for what it is: shackles on the American people. You want to make America great again? Simply free her people from much of the government that envelops them like a cloud of chloroform all day, every day. They know what to do, and how to do it if they are simply left alone with minimal regulation and taxation. Their unleashed creativity and productivity will solve problems better than any top down government program ever will.

Mick said...

Workforce population CRASHING.
Black youth employment CRASHING
Homeownership percentage CRASHING
National Debt DOUBLING MORE THAN ALL PREVIOUS POTUS' COMBINED
Real Unemployment 20% (not the 4.6% "Real Fake News" advertized)
Food Stamp participation AT 15% of population.
Overrun with illegal aliens, spreading disease.
Diminished image on the world stage
Started wars all over the middle east
Sides with Jihadists in Syria
Tries to start war with Russia
Democrats got blown out in POTUS race running on The Usurper's record
Birth Certificate posted on whitehouse.gov deemed to be a total fraud by a 5 year investigation team made of of document experts on 2 continents.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuhF-Ok3djI&app=desktop


So where is the "Hope"? Looks like a major FAIL to me. But the knowledgeable "law prof" voted for this complete fraud, who is not a natural born Citizen, as required by A2S1C5.
MAJOR FAIL.

mockturtle said...

There you go, again, Laslo! Turning over those slimy rocks. Good work. Sad work but good and essential work.

bagoh20 said...

" Do I want something special? I might want something normal. I'm a little worried about special. "

That's exactly the what the Trump vote was against. Normal is the very hot water we have become accustomed to. Trumpism was some of the frogs pointing to the thermometer and climbing out.

tcrosse said...

If MO wants to run for POTUS, she'll still have to get past HRC, who is greasing up the big donors even now. Right now Hillary is hanging around in the woods (where presumably she has constructed a gingerbread house). But the only cure for Presidential ambition is embalming fluid.

mockturtle said...

Trumpism was some of the frogs pointing to the thermometer and climbing out.

Excellent, bagoh!

JaimeRoberto said...

When I was a kid my father banned the use of the word "hope" in our house, because hope doesn't get the job done. Don't hope you get a job. Go get a job. Don't hope you'll get a good grade. Study and work so you get a good grade. Stop hoping and start doing.

Unknown said...

I don't understand your parsing of her statements and I think you are being overly generous. Of course she was talking about Trump, and insulting those who voted for and/or have a positive view of the incoming administration. There's no other reasonable interpretation IMO. And it's not only insulting, but in light of the riots and overwrought responses to the election, it is irresponsible for her to sow more discord and fear. I've never been a big critic of Michelle Obama but I think this was terrible.

SteveR said...

If the definition of "hope" is creating more government (programs) to fulfill the shortcomings of people's lives that actually work than they have failed. If going forward, people feel this will not be taking place, than they won't feel hope.

But real hope is not that. Is Trump going to be able to deliver? We'll see, but Hillary was not able to offer anything different. If you wanted no "change" she was the One. The MSM, academia and the political elite had the hope of maintaining relevance and power.

So the EC victory is showing how that changed: Ohio, Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Iowa flipped. LA, NYC, Chicago deeper in. Get on the train or get off the track.

mockturtle said...

"...feeling....feels..."

Let's have more thinking and less feeling for a change.

Luke Lea said...

Ann: "Of course, Obama's "hope" was always an abstraction that absorbed whatever meaning people saw in it."

One of his most stirring lines was, "There is no Red America, there is no Blue America, there is is only a United States of America." Somehow I heard that as "There is no white America, there is no black America, there is only a United States of America." Did he ever actually say that?
Anyway, I and I think a lot of other people thought that he, a man with a black father and a white mother, hence a man who was half white and half black, and who had not only worked as a community organizer in Chicago but who grew up and was educated in a largely white world -- that this unique and rhetorically gifted individual, despite his lack of political experience, was going to heal the racial divide, which he would (and could) do by not taking sides in the various racial disputes that are constantly arising in our country. Instead he would see the issue from both sides the way Lincoln saw the Civil War from both sides,being, like Lincoln, in the perfect position to explain each side to the other.

Certainly he had a golden opportunity to do just that and unless I am mistaken I think millions of white Americans, including most of those who voted for him, thought so too. Yet when the opportunities came he blew them all: first with the Skip Gates-officer Crowley episode in Cambridge, Mass (officer Crowley being a model officer on issues of race right out of Central Casting; then later with the Trayvon Martin-Robert Zimmerman episode, and more recently with the Michael Brown-Darren Wilson episode in Ferguson, MO and the Freddy Gray episode in Baltimore. Maybe the first clue, if only we had taken in seriously, was when he threw his white grandmother -- the woman who had raised him! -- under the bus in the aftermath of the Rev. Wright controversy.

The irony is that Trump may actually bridge the racial divide in this country by appealing to the class interests that unite all working-class Americans regardless of race. We'll see if he can pull it off, in which case there will be a fundamental realignment of the political parties in this country, with a new Republican coalition that may dominate our politics for decades to come like the Democrats did under FDR's New Deal.

I guess I am getting carried away.

Charlie said...

Worse, "We, the people, are toddlers."

Darrell said...

I have hope that I will never hear from the Obamas again. It is slim hope.

Michael K said...

"One of the nice things about your move to AZ is that guns and the like are no longer going to be much of an issue (even in left leaning Tucson)."

About five years ago, when my daughter was still at U of A and I was there all the time, I went into a gun shop that had a gunsmith to get him to work on a little Walther PPK that was jamming. The kid at the counter, when he saw my California drivers license, backed away like I had a rash. He didn't even want to talk to me. The older guys explained to him that even people from California were often sane and could be dealt with.

My escrow closes next week and we are moving in January after some painting inside the house.

Jupiter said...

"But the main thing I see in her words is a wife's anxiety to protect her husband's reputation."

The main thing I see is a woman who never worked a day in her life wondering who's gonna pay for her next 200-million-dollar vacation.

wholelottasplainin said...

Moochelle, about to become a black multi-millionaire w/o having done a thing to earn that kind of money, says this "no hope" bullshit to a black female billionaire.

That kind of talk makes millions of ordinary Americans want to puke their guts out.

Get thee gone!!!!!

Michael K said...

"What is Obama's signature achievement? Giving us Trump?"

You know, I think that may be it. It's like the old days before antibiotics. The day the fever broke used to be called the "crisis." If the fever broke and you were still alive, you were gonna get well.

I don't know that Trump and what I hope he will do, could ever have been elected without the disastrous Obama two terms.

I was a Romney supporter but he could not bring himself to break the crockery that Trump will break.

One kind of random example is that, after France was defeated, the exiled Free French designed a whole new Social Security system that is still the best health care system in the world. The guy who did it was a former health minister in the Third Republic but they could not get such a radical change done. When the Germans took over, they threw out the entire French health care system that existed. The minister who designed the reform was a Jew and he had to flee to England.

When the war ended, the whole French government had to be reinvented by DeGaulle and his team that had been in England.

Maybe Trump will preside over some real reinventing. At least I hope so.

HT said...

"The irony is that Trump may actually bridge the racial divide in this country by appealing to the class interests that unite all working-class Americans regardless of race."

Trump certainly comes from a much more reliable and solid power base, and knows how to manipulate situations (I think) better to gain an advantage, so there's a chance you could be right. None of us really knows either him or how he will govern, yet.

"I guess I am getting carried away." Maybe, maybe not. You are dreaming to think Obama would have gone any other way on the cases you listed.

HT said...

JaimeRoberto said...

When I was a kid my father banned the use of the word "hope" in our house, because hope doesn't get the job done. Don't hope you get a job. Go get a job. Don't hope you'll get a good grade. Study and work so you get a good grade. Stop hoping and start doing.
12/18/16, 10:53 AM


I like that!

FullMoon said...

Real life hope, not pie-in-the-sky, by and by:

Jack LaLanne, the legendary fitness guru was known for his insane physical feats.

1955, age 41: Swam from Alcatraz Island to Fisherman’s Wharf—a distance of 1.23 miles—while handcuffed.
"I did it to give the prisoners hope. Everybody should have hope"

Lewis Wetzel said...

Simply prioritizing economic growth over the environment and SJW issues would be enough to win Trump a second term and discredit the politics of misery championed by the Democrats.

wholelottasplainin said...

What is best in life?" "To crush your enemies -- See them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women!"

That perfectly sums up the attitude of Trump voters as they observe the Democrats' weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Especially boorish h8ters like GWash, whom "we can all agree" is shy a working set of neurons.

Levi Starks said...

"The life of man is but a succession of vain hopes and groundless fears"
Quoting Montesquieu from a book I've been reading in front of the wood stove this morning instead of being on line.
Aren't both political parties guilty of exploiting exactly this?
The more ardent the support, the more exploited are the participants.

Trumpit said...

The former Labor Secretary, Robert Reich, used the word 'nihilistic' to describe Trump, or his cabinet picks. I thought, at first, what he said was 'neolithic.'

Nihilistic:
1.rejecting all religious and moral principles in the belief that life is meaningless

Neolithic:1.
archaeology

of, relating to, or denoting the later part of the Stone Age, when ground or polished stone weapons and implements prevailed.

Certainly Trump is a PRIMITIVE (of, relating to, or produced by a people or culture that is nonindustrial and often nonliterate and tribal ), hence his Stone Age quality. Trump's life is meaningless, in my opinion, in spite of the enormous destructive power he will wield. Rather than call him immoral(true but trite), he is detached from reality, so amoral is more like it, which leads to his being devoid of substance and meaning. Is a fertilized egg, a person, a polar bear, or a dog? Far from it.


Steven Wilson said...

Everything was foreseeable if you know anything about economics and if you paid attention to the Reverend Wright.

The only truthful thing he said was that he was a blank slate. It didn't help that there wasn't a quality candidate opposing him, but Barack Obama could very easily be translated as "SLOW MOTION TRAIN WRECK."

There was a column in the Telegraph I believe on the occasion of Obama's inauguration that was titled "This Will End in Tears."
That the crying was so spectacular and prolonged following Trump's election was only a series of exclamation points. Will Trump be able to accomplish much, I shrug.

The systemic rot is so entrenched we may be doomed to limp along until the final collapse within a generation. The most ominous thing about this man wasn't himself but an electorate that would elect and re-elect him. While Obama seems to feel the people have failed him, I think the truth of the matter is that the people have repeatedly failed themselves.

I could go on for hours, but it's so damned depressing.

It would be nice to have my fellow citizens understand that neither liberty nor prosperity is a zero sum game. But...



walter said...

GWash said...the lack of results i see so far.. (noting that he does not yet have control of the levers of power).
--
Classic.
Ann, you can't parse your way past the fact she connected lack of hope with "now".
Everyone knows what she means.
She just bumped her head on the table. Someone tell her it's ok.

Bay Area Guy said...

Of course, Leftists don't have any hope! With the Trump victory, their long-term strategy to slowly erode and undermine Western Civilization has been momentarily disrupted.

That's a good thing.

Myself, I've got a spring in my step, a song in my heart and oodles of hope! Merry Christmas.

Darrell said...

Michelle's wigs cost $8,000-$30,000 a pop. How many did she buy--most likely at taxpayers' expense in the last eight years? A hundred? She can hope that the taxpayers never ask for the money back.

RMc said...

After watching Trump's "thank-me" rally in Mobile yesterday in its entirety, I expect his presidency to go down in history of one of the worst.

1) You watched an entire speech by somebody you don't like just to pronounce you didn't like it?

2) You really think you can predict the next four years based on one speech?

HT said...

1) You watched an entire speech by somebody you don't like just to pronounce you didn't like it?

What a stupid comment!

Michael K said...

Trumpit being hilarious.

Trump's life is meaningless, in my opinion, in spite of the enormous destructive power he will wield.

Your opinion of Obama, I'm sure, is that he is the hope of the world. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but he has one month and one week to do it.

The chief accomplishment of Obama has been to wreck things to the point that a Trump type could win.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

"Michelle Obama seems to confuse the past and the future in a strange way that relates to a criticism of Democrats one often hears: Their political strategy relies on maintaining economic dependency and feelings of victimhood. To say you must have hope is — think about it — a euphemistic way to say you must continue to feel needy."

You're on a roll these days, Ann.

chickelit said...

Luke Lea wrote: Certainly he had a golden opportunity to do just that and unless I am mistaken I think millions of white Americans, including most of those who voted for him, thought so too. Yet when the opportunities came he blew them all...

My theory is that in those moments, he listened to the angrier side...the Holders, the Jarretts, and yes, Michelle. It is a great great pity that he did so. He blew it big time on a scale that won't be seen again for a very long time.

roesch/voltaire said...

That's a new one for me that I can't find in the dictionary or in usage that hope represents neediness instead of an expectation of positive outcomes in the future. Perhaps she, and others, feel there is little hope with Trump because as many have pointed out"
“His widely reported symptoms of mental instability — including grandiosity, impulsivity, hypersensitivity to slights or criticism, and an apparent inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality — lead us to question his fitness for the immense responsibilities of the office,” it continues. “We strongly recommend that, in preparation for assuming these responsibilities, he receive a full medical and neuropsychiatric evaluation by an impartial team of investigators.”
In the mean time I have made my vacation money investing in Fannei Mae after the Goldman Sachs appointment.,

walter said...

hair today, gone tomorrow

She should have invoked the unbridled "hope" embodied by O's Nobel. He had to accept it for our sake..

cubanbob said...

After the last eight years my wallet is gidy with hope.

Hyphenated American said...

Poor Michele cannot comprehend how the nation can survive without her family in the White House. Such humility....

mockturtle said...

Hope is what we, by electing Trump, have given Europe.

Hyphenated American said...

"nothing substantive about healing the country,"

Are you saying that the country is sick after 8 years of Obama's presidency? That's racist.

Bill Peschel said...

This caught my eye, as some commenters above have mentioned:

"You know, it’s like the toddler that bumps his head on the table...they look up at you to figure out whether it hurts..."

It speaks volumes that a woman with two children would think that a toddler doesn't react to pain, but has to look to an adult "to figure out whether it hurts."

That speaks not only of enormous and unearned self-regard, but an application of the personal to the political. It explains a lot about Obama that he can't "feel our pain." Why should he? He's doing fine, so you're not feeling any pain at all.

GWash said...

jay e. you are welcome to your opinion about what the best in life is... unfortunately (or fortunately for the rest of the world you probably are not in control of much more than your life and since i haven't heard of you before this moment, i guess you aren't really crushing it most of the time... i'm not a hater, but i am a realist and if you dont see the danger of people who feel as you do, especially those admiring trump and the person he finds so much in common with - putin , then we will just have to disagree... my christian upbringing calls me to higher ideals than that... let us not forget that MORE than half of the voters in this past election did not vote for trump or for crushing his enemies... we'll see how all of this plays out ... my point here is that he is not impressive so far and i still stand by my opinion of him that he is a liar and a con... just ask anyone who knows him.. watch your wallet the wolves are coming and they are waiting to crush you..

Humperdink said...

HT said: "I love when the First Lady picks a cause."

Yeah, I especially love it when a First Lady", with no degree in nutrition, who is so wide she needs a back-up alarm, tells the nation's parents what to feed their children.

She might want to stick with becoming a fashion statement *cough*.

tcrosse said...

It must be infuriating to be made a fool of by such a troglodyte as Trump. Imagine that this moron managed to win the election while getting fewer votes and spending half a much money as qualified and intelligent HRC ! No wonder all the name-calling, billingsgate and invective !

walter said...

Laslo Spatula said: I imagine he is now having an emblem designed for "Office of the Former President of the United States", for when he gives his out-of-Office speeches. Maybe he will mix it up with a "First Black President of the United States" emblem.
--
Considering the weak bench of the Dems, I imagine some consideration is being given to prepping for a Michelle run. Maybe he can lend her those foam pillars.

Quaestor said...

I've garnered more grins from this video clip than just about anything in a long while. I watch it often, and it hasn't aged yet.

Maddow is just too easy to scoff it, and poor Chris Matthews has reached that point that mockery of him is simply sadistic, like skinheads kicking the beejeezus outa some ancient wino passed out in a doorway, but watching The One seal his presidency with a delicious dose of self-inflicted humiliation — awesome.

M Jordan said...

Trump showed trolling brilliance here. An absolute home run. He flipped the script from "Obama offered hope" to Obama's era was hopeless. But he did it without seeming mean and petty, something Michelle Obama could not do. Now if Michelle comes back to clarify, she makes herself look even worse than the original statement does ... which is despicable. It was worse than her, "I've never been proud of America till now' comment."

What a bunch of terrible losers the Obamas and Democrats have turned out to be. Truly off the charts terrible.

Darrell said...

just ask anyone who knows him

Funny, when I listen to people that know Trump personally, they say he's a great guy--a guy that you can always count on. People like Paris and Nicky Hilton who say he was like a second father and always there for them. . And hundreds more. Sure if you billed him for work you didn't do, he would be a stickler about that and not pay you. But for the guy who got his mortgaged paid off by Trump because he helped to change a tire, meeting Trump was a blessing.

cubanbob said...

GWash the difference between Leftist voters and the sane voters is the sane voters see the president as the hired help to do a job and you guys see him as a messiah. Trump campaigned to turn the economy around and from there to continue on a growth path of 4%. If he does that, he is a success. If he doesn't, he isn't. Trump for all of his grandiosity and pomposity is really rather modest in what he claims he can achieve unlike whatshisname who said that upon his accession the waters will recede and the earth will heal.

GWash said...

nice walter, i think it is more something to be proud of that this nation found it possible to elect a black man president twice... must burn your racist shorts that that actually happened.. we'll see how this all unfolds and i have hope that it will be alright (i'm a white man so my stock is on the rise).. but it is impossible to govern without consensus and so far trump is not building consensus...

MacMacConnell said...

@hale_razor
"Obama won and visited S Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, & France to confess America's sins. Trump won and visited PA, FL, NC, OH & WI to give thanks."

Obama's legacy will be his vagina.

walter said...

Ah..I'm a racist. Yawn..

buwaya said...

Quaestor,
Ditto,
I have "The Romanovs", Montefiore, on my pile.
Looks good.

Big Mike said...

I expected "Change" back in 2008 when Obama was elected, because change itself is easy -- what's hard is changing things for the better. I honestly can think of precisely one place where Obama changed things for the better. As a small part of Obamacare regulations more people were made eligible for Medicaid. Other than that, we've lurched from one disaster to the next. Part of the lurching is due to Obama's near total lack of managerial skills (e.g., putting Sebelius in charge of the Obamacare rollout!) and part seems to be due to an inability to live in a real world.

Trump was not my first choice back during the primaries -- or even the second or third -- but the bar set by his predecessor is so low ... Trump will make mistakes, but I think he'll do a lot of good. If he overturns nearly everything Obama did, he will be great!

iowan2 said...

The media calls these things interviews,they aren't. They are a carefully crafted duet, with each singing their respective parts.

I would love to interview flotus, do a follow up question and ask exactly how after 8 years of, according to the Obama's, the most accomplished presidency in history, how could all of that work unravel with the simple change of power? Maybe because the President failed to write into law his accomplishments? Maybe the Representative Republic that is America protects itself from a charismatic ideologue, by requiring the executive to sell his agenda to congress, for it to endure.
With the exception of ObamaCare that has imploded onto itself because of its massive flaws, All of Obama's actions can be undone in a fraction of the time it took for him to implement them. The people have spoken. By turning out Democrat policies across the nation. Places like Chicago that seem robust, are sitting on a ticking time bomb of unfunded liabilities that the Federal Govt will be forced to bail out.No matter how much I don't like it, failed democrat policies will cost the nation.
I would love to have flotus engage someone like George Will and defend her positions. The notion that flotus is somehow learned about what she says defies all facts in evidence.

Anonymous said...

The angst of being married to The Incredible Shrinking President

Hagar said...

I suspect Michelle is a fairly normal woman who has been a good soldier and gone along with the causes she is supposed to espouse and have read off the speeches they gave her to read.
I have not seen much actual enthusiasm on her part for this stuff for the last several years.
She does spend outrageously of taxpayers' money, or it is being arranged for her, but note that she has no power to command any of this, and her husband is supposed to have a chief of staff that should see to it that this sort of politically damaging things do not happen.

HT said...

GWash said...

nice walter, i think it is more something to be proud of that this nation found it possible to elect a black man president twice... must burn your racist shorts that that actually happened.. we'll see how this all unfolds and i have hope that it will be alright (i'm a white man so my stock is on the rise).. but it is impossible to govern without consensus and so far trump is not building consensus...

12/18/16, 12:34 PM


I'll say it again: you go GWash (you are in DC, I assume?). Here's what I was thinking just a nanosecond ago about consensus: though the Reps didn't give it to Obama, we will give it to Trump, because alas it is our patriotic duty.

Hagar said...

i think it is more something to be proud of that this nation found it possible to elect a black man president

Is not this statement deeply insulting to all Black people everywhere?

Unknown said...

I respect Trump's low key response. This is not about defeating and humiliating the Obamas--defeat them with effectiveness and the unleashing of potential. We have endured eight years of a rock star president, a personality constantly in your face. I refer to Obama to friends as the King of Pop. Since the death of Michael Jackson, Obama ascended to the throne of pop culture king. Who wants the King of Pop running the country? I admire what Althouse said regarding Trump that nothing special is necessary. Normal is enough. Good enough is enough. However we have been driven so far off track that normalcy--functioning without the constant imposition of the federal government, without the media stirring up fake news and controversy--that normalcy does appear as special, extremely special. Am I the only one who would find it relieving, miraculous, to live in a country where the president is not constantly trying to interject himself into my life? I do not want the president to see it as his job, or his wife's, to be my hero and supply me with hope.

HT said...

Trump said, "Our country is in trouble."

On that, we can all agree.

buwaya said...

Hmm, GWash,

Trump is now being good pals with the likes of Bill Gates, who opposed him, etc. And there are a host of diverse characters that have been invited up the now famous Trump Tower elevator.
The bare news of what is verifiably occurring is available, its just that the bulk of official opinionators mainly ignores it, and that only a bit of it is featured as lead items in the popular news.
And that, btw, is the secret of Drudge's success, in that he takes the same news being reported through the usual channels, and changes the editorial emphasis. Drudge makes it obvious just what proportion of news is being editorially manipulated and how it is manipulated, by taking the same material and simply presenting it differently.
As we know,
The whole perception thing is manufactured, made up by the MSM through selective reporting, such as the slew of alleged racist incidents, while avoiding the numerous genuine physical attacks on Trump partisans.

Quaestor said...

I just learned that Ron Reagan is a "political analyst" for MSNBC — that means he gets paid, folks. And I ask myself, Quaestor, is MSNBC just some kind of surrealist performance art, a kind of long running meta-comedy that it its own punchline?

If true does Ron Reagan really get paid? I mean, if MSNBC is a gargantuan jest then Ron Reagan ought to be paid in something appropriately self-parodying, like Venezuelan bolívars, because man that guy is dumb — I mean not just foolish and stupid, I mean numbingly dumb, so dumb your gag reflex gets paralyzed. There must have been some decent brain genes in Ronald Reagan's genome, but somehow both his worthless spawn got none of it. If your game for a brush with death by tedium try out some of his vids on youtube.

Michael Reagan is also dumb as bag of rocks, but he at least has the excuse of being adopted.

Lewis Wetzel said...

"Blogger GWash said...
nice walter, i think it is more something to be proud of that this nation found it possible to elect a black man president twice."

Obama is not the descendant of American slaves. His mother was white, his father was a Kenyan -- from the opposite side of the African continent where most New World slaves were taken (and the vast majority of these slaves ended up in the Caribbean and South America, not North America). Obama is the son of Marxist academics, he spent his childhood living thousands of miles from the American mainland or in other countries. In the US, he has spend virtually all of his life in urban liberal enclaves on the costs or in Chicago. No American president, in my lifetime, has had a life further from the American mainstream than Obama. Among American Blacks, even, he is an exotic, fringe character.

Quaestor said...

i think it is more something to be proud of that this nation found it possible to elect a black man president twice.

Sorry, GWash, that's racist. No kidding.

Etienne said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
madAsHell said...

Gun sales are down in the rest of the country,

I'm not so sure about that. Here are the FBI background checks for firearm purchases. Looking back over the last 8 years, the number of background checks has doubled, and did not diminish in November.

I understand that background checks do not completely correlate with firearm sales, but I think if there is a background check, then at least one firearm was sold.

I really don't expect the numbers to drop until January.

So, maybe Obama's only legacy is selling lots of firearms. I know I helped build that legacy.

GWash said...

Lewis, that fine distinction may be valid in the black community but as far as many white people are concerned he is black... the bloggers here consider him black and walter said as much... it seems that your take is that he somehow marxist and thus a danger to the great republic we all revere... my feelings about trump is that he is an internationalist billionaire a member of the billionaires without borders club of which putin is also a member... and much of trumps cabinet... i'm just saying that trump and his associates could care less about you (unless you are a member of the 'bwb'club too) we'll see he is not impressing now but change is possible - watch your wallet !

walter said...

GWash said...bloggers here consider him black and walter said as much
-
What exactly are you referring to?

Paddy O said...

That's not something a person can say as a Christian.

Paddy O said...

"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." 1 Corinthians 13:13.

Jose_K said...

A chavista minister said it:" we wont take the people out of poverty because they would became "escualidos"( derogatory term for the middle class opposition)

Fred Drinkwater said...

JaimeRoberto:
"Hope..."
One of the rude, blunt things I say to startup founders when they say "we hope to reach x percent of the market" or similar is this (also from my father)
"Hope is not a plan."

Unknown said...

In Catholicism Paddy O, we refer to these as the Theological Virtues.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

its hard to take the constant drip drip drip of negativety

Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Try being a Republican and see about that drip. You guys have no self-awareness at all. Just like FLOTUS!

And it's SOOOOOOOOOOOO hard to be soooooooooooo revered by pop culture that SNL can't even find one funny skit in the Obama oeuvre. It's so hard to be compared to a savior, a messiah, the embodiment of Hope and Change itself! It's so hard to have every mainstream media profile be a fawning love fest. That is so HARD! How did these freaking snowflakes ever deal with such stress! Thank God they weren't GOP or they would have completely imploded under the scrutiny!

Michael K said...

let us not forget that MORE than half of the California voters in this past election did not vote for trump or for crushing his enemies...

FIFY

i think it is more something to be proud of that this nation found it possible to elect a black man president twice.

Here is the explanation for Obama's persisting approval rating in spite of his disastrous record.

Virtue signaling by the leftists. And by a significant number of LIVs.

Original Mike said...

"I suspect she's upset that all of her husband's achievements will be undone and that he will be blamed for failing to preserve them,"<

The blame will fall squarely in his lap. His arrogance and refusal to compromise will make his "achievements" ephemeral.

buwaya said...

The supporters of the Clinton campaign were also the "billionaires without borders club", or rather, much moreso than Trumps supporters. The billionaires have preferred Democrats for the last couple of decades, and never more than this year. Trump could only get a handful of these to back him, and those came in very late.

The Clintons are in the hundreds of millions club if not the billionaires club. I think it will emerge that the Obamas are or soon will also be in the hundreds of millions club.

Paco Wové said...

"we will give it to Trump, because alas it is our patriotic duty."

Oh, my. That is a funny one. Like Mike said, no self-awareness at all.

HT said...

What the hell Paco wove, they already are. Get a grip.

Lewis Wetzel said...

GWash wrote:
" . . . it seems that your take is that he somehow marxist and thus a danger to the great republic we all revere"
If you are going to respond to me, gwash, respond to what I actually wrote and not what you have imagined I wrote.

Francisco D said...

The hopes I have in my life (e.g., a prosperous retirement in Tucson where I might run into Michael K.) are things I have worked for since I was a teen ager. Politicians can either create barriers or remove them, but I am going to fulfill my hopes anyway.

I voted for Trump because I expected him to remove impediments to my success.

And because he was not a charter member of the Clinton Crime Family.

The rest just sounds like blather to me.

Michael K said...

My hopes for Trump tend to run along these lines.

If the government cannot fire these people, then it can assign them to other tasks in other places. By fortuitous coincidence, the recent several years have seen downsizing in two sectors known for having very large buildings, many of them located in remote and out-of-the-way areas. Those two sectors are manufacturing and retail. Places like rural Ohio, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Arkansas, and upstate New York -- not to mention northern Maine, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and even Alaska -- are littered with abandoned K-Marts, JC Penney's and Sears stores, as well as abandoned factories of all sorts. These buildings can be leased for a song. Hundreds of federal employees can be assigned to each such location.

Send each such employee a memo: "Starting Monday morning at 9 AM, your job will be located at the former Sears Hometown store, 2308 11th Avenue West, Williston, North Dakota. If you report for work, you will await such assignments as may be given to you at that location. If you do not show up, your pay will be continued until your unused vacation and sick leave are exhausted, and then your pay will stop."


Personally, I like Detroit and St Louis as they are centrally located allowing the federal employees to service their "customers" more efficiently.

Closed military bases are also a good idea as they often include base housing for families.

traditionalguy said...

I get the impression Michelle wants to tell us the truth about how the Progressives see politics. To a Progressive, mere setting of a goal that can be called progress we can pretend to strive for is the one all purpose lever to attain power and wealth for themselves. That is all they do. And instantly their acts convert over to the end justifies the means...and voila we get a glorious Cuba, Venezuela and a close to dead USA.

Their error is thinking success is one smiling and trim Matador ( Obama) waiving a red cape of lies to attract the Bull to charge the wrong way over and over, lie after lie, until it is dispatched by hidden spears and eaten. A great art form. Hurray for Matador Obama.

The Hope she means is the red cape of lies wielded by the Obama team. It's been exposed by a mass public re-education campaign given to the once easy to fool bulls. The fight is over and the media that helped the matador kill us has been exposed too by the Master Communicator of reality.

traditionalguy said...

Or exposed by what Scott Adams call a Master Persuader. Vive ElTrump

Lewis Wetzel said...

It is trivial to show that "appeal to the future" (aka "appeal to progress") is really appeal to power.
It is an axiom that economic growth improves the lives of people across the income spectrum. Even Democrats used to know this. Now virtually all Democrats (and more than a few Republicans) deny that axiomatic truth.

Achilles said...

GWash said...
nice walter, i think it is more something to be proud of that this nation found it possible to elect a black man president twice... must burn your racist shorts that that actually happened..

Being proud of someone because of their race is explicitly and definitionally racist.

we'll see how this all unfolds and i have hope that it will be alright (i'm a white man so my stock is on the rise)..

The left is proud of their racism. The brought us slavery. They passed and implemented Jim Crow. They are now using affirmative action and lowered expectations paired with lawlessness and crime to keep Black people on the poverty plantation.

They shove black kids into shitty public schools that they purposely re-segregated so their kids don't have to go to school with all those black/poor kids they are really really super serial trying to help.

but it is impossible to govern without consensus and so far trump is not building consensus...

You people are so full of shit. You don't care about anyone or anything other than your ability to control peoples lives and tell them what to do.

Seriously fuck off. We are going to pull this country back from the cliff you tried to push us over. Nobody likes you. There aren't really that many of you. Over the next 8 years Black people, poor people, Hispanic people et al. are going to see what happens when the leadership in DC actually cares about their welfare rather than lying to them constantly with blatherings about hope.

You are not good people. We don't need to have "consensus" with a bunch of power hungry control freaks who are trying to destroy the fabric of freedom in this country. God I can't wait to watch the real estate market in DC crater and all of those awful bureaucrats have to go out and get real jobs that actually produce things people want.

Jupiter said...

Francisco D said...

"I voted for Trump because I expected him to remove impediments to my success."

Indeed. The difficulty here, is that there are a lot of Americans who believe that it will take more than the removal of impediments to make them, or those they care about, successful. The worrying aspect is that they may well be correct.

Lewis Wetzel said...

The deep pit of madness the liberal Left has descended into now requires them to believe that being color blind -- not taking race into account -- is, in fact, racist. They will believe that up is down, good is evil, etc., they will believe anything at all if it promises to give them power over the lives of others.

walter said...

Since we're parsing everything, maybe Gwash was merely saying my shorts are racist...

HT said...

Achilles, your hyperventilating your butt hole up through your mouth is great fun!

God I can't wait to watch the real estate market in DC crater

You and me both.

Rusty said...


Tell me about that, Rusty. Please share your direct experience of the inner city with the rest.
Tell us about yours.

HT said...

Why? I didn't say it.

PB said...

Maybe with Barack leaving office she's hearing the final nail in the coffin of Kwanzaa.

David said...

The Bears had hope today in the 4th quarter. Almost to the end of it.

Francisco D said...

Jupiter,

It depends on how you define success. I perform state SS disability assessments as part of my job. For most of those individuals, getting on the government dole is success. For some, it is getting better so that they can return to work.

The bureaucrats in DC seem to want to put everyone on the dole. That is not the case in Iowa where they are very tough.

Maybe the answer is moving the bureaucrats out to flyover country. They live in an incredible bubble.

My political perspective was changed by Ronald Reagan and Ayn Rand over 30 years ago. I was a liberal who voted for McGovern and Carter. Ayn Rand helped me feel less guilty about being an achiever. RR helped me appreciate that I was blessed to be born in the USA.

chickelit said...

God I can't wait to watch the real estate market in DC crater and all of those awful bureaucrats have to go out and get real jobs that actually produce things people want.

This is the Donald's secret plan according to the Left: (1) crater the real estate market in D.C.; (2) buy up all the distressed properties at bargain prices; (3) leverage DoJ to ease eminent domain laws; (4) redevelop using cheap Mexican labor; (5) sell!!!

/sarc

Francisco D said...

David,

As A lifelong Bears fan, I was proud of them today. They are in a rebuilding process, but I like their competitive spirit. Its a far change from the tragic Jerry Angelo, Phil Emery and Marc Trestman years.

Big Mike said...

If the government cannot fire these people, then it can assign them to other tasks in other places.

I think they should count snow ptarmigans in winter in Alaska. Central Alaska. Outdoors.

SukieTawdry said...

You say Obama has fulfilled some hopes. Which hopes exactly?

GWash said...

achilles you are a psychotic ahole... nobody likes YOU (expect those here who will run to your defense) and you should have your medication checked..
1. being proud of your ancestry is not explicitly racist, it is a cunard that racists use to justify their own racism...
2. the 'left' DID NOT bring us slavery.. another indication that you are not in touch with the reality the rest of us are in
3. over 3 million people more voted 'anybody but trump' last month than voted for trump
4. if you knew anything about working with people you might understand consensus... i would venture out from your hiding place more often and get to know some people
5. climate change is real, man made and settled science.. since our last dialogue i dug deeper in the literature and found this is still true...
6. i will ignore your condescending insults as a product of your psychosis... and i wish you well in your recovery

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