I noticed Time magazine this week features (inside and on the cover) Sen. Barrack Obama (D- IL). It also suggest that he may just be the right candidate for presidency in 2008.
Am I the only person who thinks this is a crazy idea? Not because I disagree with his politics, or even that I think there might be someone more qualified. I am basing my opinion on one MAJOR factor. His name -Obama - looks and sounds a little too much like Osama.
Of course there is no connection between the senator and the most wanted terrorist in the world, but this is a nation where the average 10th grader can't find Morroco on a map, and when I mention the names Ashcroft, Chertoff or Rumsfeld, people look at me like I am crazy. Yet somehow the same people know exactly who was kicked off of "Flavor of Love" and what the woman's favorite type of ice cream is.
At the polls, if Obama is on a national ticket, people (stupid misinformed one's of course) will get up in arms and say "What the hell is this? They say they can't find Bin Laden, but one of his family members is running for president!"
Ah, I would move to a smarter country, but hell for all the BS, America has got it going on. LOL Seriously, I don't run from a fire, I try to put it out. So America (smart and stupid), I am here with you. and if you are confused, don't worry you don't have to run to the library for information anymore. Just Google it.
Besides, when you listen to him, he can speak coherently AND think AT THE SAME TIME; and that proves he's one of them effete liberal snobs. Fucker probaly stayed awake in most of his classes, too.
Maybe we can get him some pork rinds, a few pharmaceuticals, bleach that hair and pass him off for a surfer or something.
a "liberal" or a pseudo-liberal? The latter being anything but a liberal but is descriptive of 99% of Demos. "Snobs" they are, peddling bullshit to the masses that they have nothing but contempt for. Arrogance and ignorance are twins and trademarks of pseudo-libs. I regularly conduct classes in teaching them humility and when they graduate they know humility is a virtue.
we know you have inferiority issues about civil servants, and college graduates, and probably literate people generally.
But it's alright, Harry, and don't be buying any of this shit about adult ADHD, either. You just need to FOCUS your attention, on reading and informing yourself on your own initiative, and doing it thoroughly. READ THE FUCKING MANUAL, OK!!?? It's just like wiping your ass, very easy and essential to avoid offending those around you.
You just decide it's important, and you do it. Yes, I know it helps to have a Psychiatric Sgt to KNOCK YOUR FUCKING HEAD to FOCUS the shit inside; but you really can do it all by yourself. You just have to decide that doing the work is important and worthwhile, and you prepare yourself, and FIND OUT WHAT THE FUCK YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT before you go whining to the poor clerk at the county recorder; and then you won't need to feel inferior to that gum chewing 19 year old, because you'll know almost as much as she does.
Obama will never get elected...He has not molested any page, snored any cocaine like GWB, or bankrupt any company liek GWB, or been a draft dodger like Bush and Clinton...
Republican will smear his name and will connect him to everything bad in this world...
and you think his name will throw people off? Vanica I see that you are black so wouldn't you like to have a black president? I sure as hell would. Barack Obama would make a fine president or vice president. The type of people who would be thrown off by his name are not going to vote for a Democrat or an African-American anyway.
On a related note, President Bush was in a meeting with some Illinois Democratic politicians and did a double take when he saw their Obama buttons. He actually thought there were Americans walking around wearing Osama buttons! But he has a great name. You gotta love president pussy and vice president penis with former secretary of state asshole.
Cheers,
Tiger
Just curious how you consider JFK to be an ethnic minority?
I'm guessing he's saying that because JFK was from a family of Irish immigrants as oppossed to being descended from the Mayflower Anglo-Saxon stock [like the Cabots, Lowells, Lodges, Saltonstalls and that ilk?}.
Even as confused as the argument is -- not able to make the distinction between ethnic and religious minorities -- it's still wrong. There are more Catholics in the US than any other denomination.
all other presidents were White Anglo Saxon and usually some kind of Protestant or non-Catholic religion.
There was a time when Irish couldn't get jobs but they still managed to get the presidency. I wish we'd get a president of color soon.
The Irish never had trouble getting jobs; they could enlist in the Union Army any time they wanted.
It's never a matter of finding something to do. It's getting paid as much as you want for it.
JFK was like 3rd generation, and his daddy was rich as Croesus. Being Irish was not a bar after the Chinese came along in the 1870s.
It was being CATHOLIC that was a problem with the Kennedys; people were afraid that the Pope would give him orders through a secret decoder ring. Not entirely unreasonable given the Pope's view (ie, my way or the highway). The Kennedys solved that by being pretty; every man wanted to fuck Jackie, and every woman wanted to fuck Jack.
THAT is the solution to racial and nationalistic problems: Halle Berry and Selma Hayek are doing more to solve this issue than anybody I can think of. Lenny Bruce used to say, 'who are we talking about marrying, Lena Horne? or Kate Smith?'
Merde!, Jack - you beat me to the punch with this. How do you post so quickly? I had planned to note that white [or pinkish?] are both colors and every US Prez has beeo one.
Don't forget the secret tunnel under the Atlantic designed to siphon off the US gold supply to the Vatican [this may be BS - I've never read this charge,, but only heard it referred to, many times, from especially bothersome RC priests in HS way back circa 1972-74. I was not considered a prize student because of my deportment, which they universally found to be somewhat lacking. Oh, well].
This sort of thing really brings out the curmudgeon in me. Obama may be a man of rare gifts, but as a national politician he's still an unknown, no legislative record, no strong identificaion with any particular issues, etc... Just a few high profile speeches -- and as the saying goes, talk is cheap. He's just the latest ethnic minority flavor of the month -- the media will get tired and eventually move on to their next creation. I've seen this before, I'm almost tempted to say it's inevitable.
Ask yourself this -- if Obama was a plain vanilla white guy, with everything else being exactly the same, would he be mentioned as a 2008 possibility [and we can't call him a "dark horse" -- it would be misconstrued as racism]? I think the question practically answers itself.
On the other hand, he's got one great advantage that I see - electoral cycle timing. Elected in 2004, he has to run for re-election in 2010, 2016, 2022, 2028. That gives him a more than decent shot to build a substantive record for the race in 2012 without having to jeopardize his Senate seat. In 2016 the Presidential election and his Senatorial re-election coincide, so if he ran as the Democratic candidate for president in 2016 he would have to forfeit his Seante seat. Or perhaps not -- Illinois law may allow him to run for the Senate concurrent with his run for the Presidency [as in 2000 Lieberman ran for VP and Senator concurrently, as did Lloyd Bentsten in 1988].
But also you have to note which party occupies the White house at what time. Assuming a Democratic Presidential victory in 2008, that knocks him out in 2012. In 2016 the electorate is probably going to be loking for a change, assuming a two-term Democratic president, and probably elect any decently presentable warm GOP body no matter what, so he's better off staying in the Senate. He continues to build his Senatorial record, and he has free shots at the race in 2020 and 2024. Of course, by then, he'll be well into his 60s and possibly/probably considered part of a political generation whose time has past.
President Barak Obama? I'm not betting on it myself. But you never know...
Best of luck in any case.
Look at recent history. Obama has a better national profile and visibility right now than George W. Bush or Bill Blinton did two years prior to their election as President. It's not out of the question.
I agrree, and this will prove to be intersting as it unfolds.
There's also the opposite to consider -- Obama becomes a "trailblazer" but burns out early and someone else harvests the fruits of Obama's political labors. Or constant and too-early [over?]exposure backfires and alienates the punditocracy in the media and the hoi polloi electoral masses as well?
I still think slow and easy and long ternm is the strategy to go with, but look where I am and look where Obama is. Whatta I know?
Thanx fer the link, I will persue this with great interest over the coming daze. I've seen what I take to be the hype, let me see now if there's any substance which might lead me to reconsider things.
A cursory inspection did NOT reveal, sadly, the correct position on my favorite issue. Had I seem something like "Isreal's interests are not the North Star by which to fix America's foreign policies in the Middle East," I's be changing my underpants right now rather than composing this.
Alas, i fear no such words will ever flow from Barak's tongue -- he's got that massive Skokie voting bloc to deal with, as a political party the Democrats are probably more in thrall to AIPAC and like-minded groups than is the GOP, and as an African-American, it's suicidal politically for him to give throat to that argument [you know, the black anti-Semitism charge].
He could still conceivably earn my puny vote. But all the while I would be thinking "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how'd you like the play?"