Comment Thank you, sir... (Score 5, Insightful) 910
You were a rare man. Thank you.
You were a rare man. Thank you.
Sure, why don't I just do ALL your fucking googling for you. Sit tight.
Dismissive, condescending, and frankly wasteful. Initiating your response with this tone is probably beneath you.
You must really use sources other than Limbaugh and Trump.
A silly attempt at pigeonholing my opinion. Again, you should think more of yourself than this. How am I supposed to take you seriously when the first three sentences you wrote in reply are this shallow?
If you think the list below is the mark of someone very, very average, you must keep company with some very,very accomplished people - how many of them are in Congress?
I'm not American. I know many, exceedingly accomplished people. Being a member of the U.S. Congress is not much of an intellectual or executive accomplishment, really. Nor, may I add, is being a Junior Senator. There are many very bright politicians, and just as many catastrophically stupid ones. Not a consistent marker of exceptionalism.
But we're talking about Barack Obama here, right? So enough with the subtle ad hominems, ok?
1.) President of the Harvard Law Review - that's not easy to come by. And don't try to claim "affirmative action" for that one - there's no way the rich whites who got passed over would have taken that lying down.
2.) Graduates from Harvard Law School, magna cum laude ( top 10% )
2.) Community organizer - this gets mentioned a lot by the RadicalRightWingNuts, as if it's a bad thing. Isn't that supposedly how the Tea Party got started (aside from the clear evidence it was actually funded by billionaires)?
3.) Author - wrote "Dreams from My Father" shortly after graduating from Harvard. How many politicians have published a book at the start of their careers?
4.) 4 years as a civil rights attorney at Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Gallard. Some details at http://articles.latimes.com/2008/apr/06/nation/na-obamalegal6
5.) Twelve years of teaching at UofChicago Law School ( info below is currently posted at http://www.law.uchicago.edu/media )
Statement Regarding Barack Obama
The Law School has received many media requests about Barack Obama, especially about his status as "Senior Lecturer."
From 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Barack Obama served as a professor in the Law School. He was a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996. He was a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004, during which time he taught three courses per year. Senior Lecturers are considered to be members of the Law School faculty and are regarded as professors, although not full-time or tenure-track. The title of Senior Lecturer is distinct from the title of Lecturer, which signifies adjunct status. Like Obama, each of the Law School's Senior Lecturers has high-demand careers in politics or public service, which prevent full-time teaching. Several times during his 12 years as a professor in the Law School, Obama was invited to join the faculty in a full-time tenure-track position, but he declined.
Yes, I was fully aware of the preceding before I posted, thank you. Yes, that is his resume, in short.
The question here isn't what, but why. There is nothing in the accomplishments listed above that should rationally lead one to anoint somebody a savior.
His articles are average. His books are rudimentary. He is certainly not a compelling orator when off-script. It's the minutia of the man that should give one pause. Again, Barack Obama is utterly average. The question you still need to answer is how someone of such obviously modest gifts has achieved so much?
I'm certainly not arguing his accomplishments as listed, as relatively pedestrian as they are. My point remains; how did such an ordinary man become known as an intellectual giant? How did such an average person rise through the system to become President of the United States?
Worse, how did such an ordinary man acquire such blind devotion in his adherents?
I don't agree about Obama and affirmative action but do you know who the ultimate product of AA is ( yes, there's a double-entendre here ) - former 2-time POTUS George Walker "Fucknuts" Bush. How did he get into Yale? Was it his grades, his SAT scores? Hmm, I wonder.
Do you why Obama was so readily received? Because of Fucknuts' Fantastic Fuckups, which the country is still living with. I can't get into all of them but here's a couple:
1) 2 fucking wars - okay, 9/11 was bad shit but invading Afghanistan was a terrible idea and the Iraq war is just a crime. Instead of 100,000s of troops on the ground in some very unfriendly nations, pay for info, for kill and capture, and use snipers and tactical strikes - when you have good intel. These are terrorists, not a standing army like the Gulf War.
2.) Turning a surplus into a huge deficit and just buggering the debt. Bad enough that the 2 wars was bleeding the Treasury but tax cuts for the wealthy? Stupid beyond words.
What does any of this have to do with Barack Obama and his abilities? Wasteful.
I'll give you and example of what I'm trying to say here.
I despise Conrad Black. He's a pretty evil guy, and I don't use that word lightly. Not a fan.
However, if you put Barack Obama in a room with Conrad Black for a few hours, Mr. Black would simply devour him. Black is an exceptional intellect. Obama is not.
In practice, I would prefer to be governed by neither, of course. Both men have little understanding of the real world in which 99% of us live.
Having spent most of my adult life in at least peripheral contact with academia, now more than ever I believe in the "first four hundred names in the phone book" philosophy of government.
"I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University."
--William F. Buckley, Jr.
Barack Obama is the worst of that. An academic that didn't come by even that meager title honestly.
If you find that impossible to believe, then I suggest that it's perhaps you that has little real-world experience on a current-day university campus.
It happens every day.
Cheers.
I would really like to see you prove that.
It was utterly obvious from his initial coronation at the Democratic convention in '04 that he was a talking head and nothing more.
He's not dumb. But he's very, very average. The thing about his pre-presidential resume, was that he didn't really have one.
The average restaurant manager or small-business owner with couple of years under their belt, has more executive experience than Obama had prior to running his campaign.
It's not just that he's a product of the advantages gained by Affirmative Action; it's that he is the ultimate product of said advantages.
Watching the mythos be manufactured and marketed, and most distressingly seeing tens of millions of people just like me fall for it completely, with a religious fervor... it was an informative first-hand lesson in how the whole mess of religion must have started in the first place.
A part of us is willing to suspend disbelief at a moments notice, as long as the reward is somebody telling us everything will be ok. Don't you find that terrifying?
Obama is far more of a product than any previous U.S. president, and that's saying something.
2c
If you watched the originals and didn't get the message that it's all mankind's fault, you seriously missed the point...
So what you're saying is... wait, the beach... the buried monument...
I'm home.
All the time it was... we finally really did it.
YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP!
OH, DAMN YOU! GODDAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!
...That hides a shining car!
A brilliant red Barchetta,
From a better vanished time.
I fire up the willing engine!
Responding with a roar!
Tires spitting gravel,
I commit my weekly crime!
Sing it with me now!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAvQSkK8Z8U
This dude loves Rush. I love Rush.
It's all coming together.
My display is all-encompassing; surrounding me in all directions as I turn about. From the ridge of my brow, to the the ground that lay before me. My display is all that is around me.
This day, I choose to live.
I CHOOSE TO LIVE!!!
... I want you... to remember, Clark...
I want you to remember... my hand... at your throat...
Suddenly, Canadians
I believe it would take a pint of skin. Give or take.
I don't recall there being a referendum on whether the general public would like to inhale synthetic DNA daily. I might have been sleeping.
Needs to be said, however trite, but tech like this is far, far beyond anything Orwell imagined.
Is it wrong that as fast as things as changing these days, part of me still hopes for one of these '1000x faster in 5 years' technologies to live up to its full promise?
I know it's coming; if not this tech than surely another one... I guess one hopes to live in interesting times, and I still dream for the day I wake up and there's a computer for sale that shatters Moore's Law. A computer 1000x faster than what was available the day before.
Faster, please.
(and thank you)
The Sky is Falling! The Sky is Falling!
Technological limitations aside, this is the first time in several hundred years that we have had a further shore to sail to... a place where no man has gone before, as the saying goes.
That has to count for something.
For me this is the most profound discovery in the history of us. Without hyperbole. The only thing I can see superseding it is, of course, the confirmation of life itself out there.
I think we need a further shore... and I'm glad I lived to see a new one.
Is there anything easier to find for free online?
Real Programmers don't eat quiche. They eat Twinkies and Szechwan food.
