Barack Obama was born of a virgin without original sin and walks among us as a flawless, selfless hero

Literally nobody says that.

All jh said was he was a bit of a narcissist, which probably all politicians are, and he was basically called racist.

He wasn't called racist. Sheesh
And if every politician is a narcissist then it's not really a criticism, then.

jerseyhoya wrote:Barack Obama was born of a virgin without original sin and walks among us as a flawless, selfless hero

You're getting warmer.

pacino wrote:He wasn't called racist. Sheesh
And if every politician is a narcissist then it's not really a criticism, then.

Exactly.

The mighty white part seemed like he was being called out but maybe not

I simply asked for a smilie so I can roll my eyes.

If I randomly brought up what I didn't like about Obama's personality, I'd get people being defensive, but I was responding to a post that said "I can't see how anyone complains about Obama the person." He seems like a mostly decent person who has a few personality things that grind my gears a bit.

I think he's easily the most decent person we've had in the WH since Carter. Reagan had a good temperament, but I'm not sure if he was even aware what was going on in his 2nd term.

jerseyhoya wrote:If I randomly brought up what I didn't like about Obama's personality, I'd get people being defensive, but I was responding to a post that said "I can't see how anyone complains about Obama the person." He seems like a mostly decent person who has a few personality things that grind my gears a bit.

you're one of them Sinistrophobiacs orange ya

I feel bad. I apologize JH. My comment was meant to be light-hearted but it clearly was a poor attempt. Sorry.

jerseyhoya wrote: He seems like a mostly decent person who has a few personality things that grind my gears a bit.

Why, that's what I say about every living human! Just not so grudgingly #besties

Monkeyboy wrote:I think he's easily the most decent person we've had in the WH since Carter. Reagan had a good temperament, but I'm not sure if he was even aware what was going on in his 2nd term.

I feel like GHWB was a decent person, and even GWB, although he is more given to needless bravado than his father was, which comes across even worse because, truthfully, he gives the impression of being sort of a dumb jock (at least insofar as he seemed to lack much in the way of intellectual curiosity), and of course in the "actual" courage department he isn't half the man his father is. His father somehow got labeled as "weak" back in the 90s toward the end of the presidency but if you look at his war record, dude was boss, even though he probably had the privilege and position through his father to have been given less dangerous assignments.

The biggest problem I see with George H. W. Bush is that I think he has that sort of myopic inability to see the problems of or relate to people who don't come from the tremendously privileged background he came from. I don’t even ascribe this to lack of trying or malice, I think he just has that to-the-manor-born sense that he knows what is best and gets befuddled by people who don't seem to understand everything that he understands. It's that moment from the 1992 debate with Bill Clinton where a woman asks a question that she honestly screws up - she confuses the national debt with the recession IIRC - and Bill Clinton just instinctively gets where she is coming from and GHWB kind of tries to correct her usage and then gives a fine but emotionally detached answer to her question, which was really, if translated, something like, "I am angry and scared because everyone I know is doing poorly and having a hard time feeding kids and putting roofs over their heads, what are you going to do about it?". Bill Clinton felt her pain, GWHB was going to try to reduce various tax rates and incentivize investment.

Not a bad guy, just sort of clueless about how the other half lives and what their immediate concerns are.

I read the headlines of these think pieces on Trump (the articles themselves have becoming numbingly repetitive) and I hope one possible benefit of this whole Trump thing is that it will expose the punditocracy for the empty bullshit it is, and Brooks and Kristol and their minions disappear along with all the Op Ed pages they populate. If anyone has anything interesting to say, and backs it up with actual evidence, I'd be willing to read it. But at this point, the comments and the articles are pretty much indistinguishable. We sit in our chairs and make shit up.

I am however, fascinated by the "Trump is Obama's fault" sub genre, which is of course closely tied to "Political correctness is to blame for Trump". I mean, I haven't actually read more than one or two of these articles, but the mental contortions it must take to write such a piece is truly impressive. Because if you think about it, the implication is that Obama is a political strategic genius unknown in this or any other time in how he singlehandedly convinced the Republican Party to destroy itself.

trump is having that crazy sheriff run security at his arizona rally.

What could go wrong?

I do think that a lot of the leftist elitism surrounding the Trump thing isn't the appropriate response. For years, the GOP has used bullshit populism as a veneer over its elitism in order to peel off enough of the New Deal coalition to maintain its electoral viability. What they should have known, and what they should have learned is that real George Wallace style populism beats the BS kind every time. Explicit racism is preferable to dog whistle racism, and so forth.

However, leftist elitist contempt is a pretty dumb response to the opportunity this presents to those who would like to rebuild the New Deal. But I guess it's fun to feel all superior to rednecks and such.

Ironically TV, there's a form of political correctness in what you just wrote. If we want to "tell it like it is," I'm tired of the now decades-old attacks on so-called "liberal" elitism." The fact is that better education, tolerance and at least some attempt at enlightenment are preferable in what we like to think of as a civilized society. That's not to say that those of us who strive for those qualities are better human beings than those who don't, but the quest to build a society based on those goals beats the pants off a society which extols the "virtues" of fundamentalism, ignorance and tribalism. We liberal elitiists are human and have our flaws, too, but at least we strive to be better and, in being better, help to make the world a better place in which to live.

Oh geez...

I don't care if liberals are literally standing on their penthouse balconies, pulling their dicks out, and pissing on the poor souls walking below...nothing is as bad or will ever be as racism, xenophobia, etc.

We need to stop trying to rationalize why Trump's supporters are shitheads and start calling them out for what they are.

TenuredVulture wrote:However, leftist elitist contempt is a pretty dumb response to the opportunity this presents to those who would like to rebuild the New Deal. But I guess it's fun to feel all superior to rednecks and such.

so TV, since you're so smart, what do you have for racism & racists, other than contempt? Pity? "disappointment"? Extermination? Us dumb people "having fun" really need to know