Who Is He?

[karl]

How about http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/columbia.asp

[Tom Wetmore]

Thanks for your judgment of me as being obnoxious...

I've played dodge ball before...

[Tom Wetmore]

I'm really enjoying this discussion it's like playing a video game.

Rather like the Zombie's game on Call of Duty: Black Ops...

[lazarus]

This was my point - the lack of data. Th holes in the narrative. I'm not drawing conclusions from it but I am pointing out that others have. People abhor a vacuum just as much as nature does.

The trouble is Karl that the "lack of data" is simply an unwillingness to check the facts on your part. You cite the George Stephanopoulos story. Its false. Did you check as to whether it was true? Why would you assume that it was true if you are simply asking? Check first then post.

[lazarus]

Rather like the Zombie's game on Call of Duty: Black Ops...

LOL, yeah that's it exactly.

[lazarus]

Tom. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.

A Brit friend of mine said that the difference between Brit humor and American humor is that Americans sometimes have a harder time understanding irony.

[Woody]

If I may jump in - BO is the most deceptive, dishonest and NON-transparent president we have had in the history of this nation. He is the cause of all the conspiracies. There - I've said it.

[lazarus]

Examples please, I just loaded a fresh magazine.

[Woody]

If I have to give you examples - you are a lost cause.

[lazarus]

None have fallen so low, none are so vile, but that they may find deliverance in Christ. egw

[Woody]

Even BO ?

[Tom Wetmore]

Originally Posted By: Tom Wetmore

Rather like the Zombie's game on Call of Duty: Black Ops...

LOL, yeah that's it exactly.

I knew it!!! That was the first thing that came to my mind...

[karl]

If I may jump in - BO is the most deceptive, dishonest and NON-transparent president we have had in the history of this nation. He is the cause of all the conspiracies. There - I've said it.

Interesting that you were asked for examples of BO's lack of transparency. When I asked for examples of his transparency I was accused of being deliberately misleading and transgressing the ten commandments.

Hilarious.

But, let's take the high road and give some examples. This first one is actually funny.

From the Huffington Post:

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama accepted an award for making the government more open and transparent – presented to him behind closed doors with no media coverage or public access allowed.

The discrepancy between the honor and the circumstances under which it was delivered bothered open-government advocates in attendance, they said Thursday. They were even more perturbed when they discovered later that the meeting hadn't even been listed on Obama's public schedule, so there was no way for anyone to know about it.

"To have such a meeting not be transparent is the height of irony. How absurd can that be?" said one participant, Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, which keeps tabs on the White House Office of Management and Budget.

======================

From the WSJ:

By KIM STRASSEL

Among Barack Obama's first actions as president was signing a memo pledging his administration to "an unprecedented level of openness in government." But according to a House hearing and outside watchdog groups, those promises have so far been a giant bust.

Republican Cliff Stearns of Florida, who heads the oversight subcommittee at House Energy and Commerce, yesterday hosted a hearing on White House openness. Mr. Obama pitched transparency during the 2008 campaign partly to draw a contrast with the Bush presidency, which many liberals liked to cast as dark and secretive. Yet to listen to evidence presented at the hearing, the Obama administration is not only less transparent than promised but in many ways more opaque than its predecessors.

Mr. Stearns ran down some of the promises Mr. Obama made as a candidate—televising healthcare negotiations on C-Span, making White House contacts with lobbyists more open—and compared them with reality. The administration promised in 2009 to release visitor logs to the White House. According to a report by the Center for Public Integrity, to date only 1% of 500,000 meetings from the president's first eight months have been released, and thousands of known visitors (including lobbyists) are missing from the lists.

Mr. Sterns also cited news stories that explain how administration officials purposely met with lobbyists at a nearby coffee shop to avoid official records of meetings. The C-Span recordings never happened, of course, and the White House has also hid much of its work behind its "czars."

Equally damning criticism came from some of the outside groups called to testify. Judicial Watch's Tom Fitton, a frequent critic of Bush administration policies (it pushed for Bush visitor logs related to convicted felon Jack Abramoff), said the Obama administration had been even worse.

"To be clear, the Obama administration is less transparent than the Bush administration," he said, noting that his group had filed more than 325 Freedom of Information Act requests, and some 45 FOIA lawsuits in federal court. Even Anne Weismann of the Center for Responsibility for Ethics in Washington—a left-leaning group that tends to assault Republicans while ignoring ethics-tarred Democrats—was forced to acknowledge that the White House hasn't kept its word. "The policies for disclosure are in place, but the applications of the policies do not exist," she said.

Democrats groused that this hearing was unfair since no one from the White House testified. Mr. Stearns noted that the administration had been invited but refused to send anyone, leading him to quip: "The failure to send any witness to a hearing about White House transparency . . . is revealing in its own way about the administration's true attitudes."

[karl]

Obama 2012: From 'Yes We Can' to 'Whatever'

MAYBE IT HAS SOMETHING TO DO WITH HIS FAILURE TO DELIVER ON CAMPAIGN PROMISES?

By Evann Gastaldo, Newser Staff

(NEWSER) – President Obama is officially running for reelection, but somehow his campaign slogan has gone from "Yes We Can" to "You Know, Whatever," Jon Stewart complained last night on the Daily Show. Obama's first campaign video features supporters with a disturbing lack of enthusiasm, saying (and Stewart is, of course, paraphrasing here) things like, "I mean, I don't really like him, I don't really trust him, but what are we gonna do? Learn someone else's name?"

"Perhaps the ennui is the natural result of what happens when campaign promises are exposed to oxygen," Stewart theorized, pointing specifically to Obama's campaign promise to make the White House more transparent. Unfortunately, in reality, "this has been the administration that's prosecuted more whistleblowers in two years than in the preceding 40 years, that meets with lobbyists across the street from the White House so they don't have to disclose they're meeting with lobbyists, and, this is true, censored nearly 200 pages of internal emails about their efforts to make government more transparent." Then there was that pesky transparency award...

[Guest]

How about http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/columbia.asp

Are you serious? This is what you offer as confirmation, or proof of something? (as proof of anything?) The one link from snopes that actually led to something other than a picture of obama, was nothing but a puff piece in USA Today, written in 2008 to try to help him get elected.

This is not objective journalism. In fact it's not even real journalism, much less objective.

In this puff piece for obama, they allegedly went and found obama's room mate and close companion from college. He is identified in BO's book, only as "Sadik" -- "a short, well-built Pakistani" who smoked marijuana, snorted cocaine and liked to party. (can you say birds of a feather?)

"Obama's campaign wouldn't identify "Sadik," but The Associated Press located him in Seattle, where he raises money for a community theater." (Is that a real vocation?)

Anyway, he told the story of how obama saved him one day from a menacing street bum who stomped his foot on the ground. LOL, It gets better. It is actually worth reading if a little humor is what you need. (it cracked me up)

"Not everyone who knew Obama in those years is eager to talk." (no kidding)

"Some explained that they feared inadvertently hurting Obama's campaign. Among his friends were Siddiqi and two other Pakistanis, all of them from Karachi; several of those interviewed said the Pakistanis were reluctant to talk for fear of stoking rumors that Obama is a Muslim." (LOL)

Seriously, if this is the kind of stuff that you think passes for documentation of BO's past, then you are just as blind to the facts as you say we are. Worse even.

Link to the 08' puff piece

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/2008-05-15-3144401415_x.htm

[Tom Wetmore]

A starting point... a suggestion of just one of quite a number of sources...

I can't do your learning for you.

[Guest]

"It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so."

— Ronald Reagan

[Tom Wetmore]

Wow! One of the many things that I know is that every conservative is a freaking genius!

[Guest]

He didn't say everything you know is wrong....

[Gary K]

I suppose that helps resolve the cognitive dissonance of having a president with African ancestry...

I wondered where your ####### statement came from. Now I know.

Moderator Note: We need to avoid inflammatory name calling. Please make the point without using personal insults.

[lazarus]

Sorry, but the concept of an African American president is just hard for some folks to stomach. I does something to their ability to engage in logical thought. That's the only reasonable explanation for previous sane people engaging in such trifling nonsense as the birther issue.

[Dr. Shane]

the concept of an African American president...

Obama became President by receiving a majority of the vote so obviously most people do not have a problem with the concept of an African American president. Most people I have heard disagree with the President do so because of issues and not race.

Obama is ofter referred to as a black President and he is BUT that is because in the US anyone with 12.5% or more minority blood is considered a minority. I don't hear many comment about his mixed blood very often and that is too bad. The key to getting passed racial issues is mixed racial marriages. As a society, we should not do anything to discourage interracial marriages. I am in an interracial marriage and my marriage has opened up the eyes of many in my family and many in my wife's family to understanding the other race better. Our children will also have a better understanding of both races. Obama, as a child of an interracial marriage, has demonstrated a good grasp on understanding both race cultures.

[Gary K]

Sorry, but he concept of an African American president is just hard for some folks to stomach. I does something to their ability to engage in logical thought. That's the only reasonable explanation for previous sane people engaging in such trifling nonsense as the birther issue.

Give it a break since you know nothing about American politics. Obama isn't the first American to run for president to have this controversy swirl around him.

His being controversial has nothing to do with his color. It has everything to do with what he stands for, politically. I thought it was good that a black man was running for office. I still think it's a good thing a black man became president. I just disagree vehemently with this particular black man's ideology. I disagree just vehemently with all white guys who share his ideology.

Is there a black man around, besides Herman Cain, that doesn't think any white man who disagrees them might do so over principle rather than skin color? I'm beginning to wonder.

[bonnie]

Originally Posted By: lazarus

Sorry, but he concept of an African American president is just hard for some folks to stomach. I does something to their ability to engage in logical thought. That's the only reasonable explanation for previous sane people engaging in such trifling nonsense as the birther issue.

Give it a break since you know nothing about American politics. Obama isn't the first American to run for president to have this controversy swirl around him.

His being controversial has nothing to do with his color. It has everything to do with what he stands for, politically. I thought it was good that a black man was running for office. I still think it's a good thing a black man became president. I just disagree vehemently with this particular black man's ideology. I disagree just vehemently with all white guys who share his ideology.

Is there a black man around, besides Herman Cain, that doesn't think any white man who disagrees them might do so over principle rather than skin color? I'm beginning to wonder.

I believe John McCain is white and his citizenship was called into question.

Maybe the reason it didn't get as much play is he was not secretive about his birth.

[lazarus]

Give it a break since you know nothing about American politics.

LOL, Well, you started your comments in such a way that guarantees that you wont get a break. This is going to be fun because folks who start out with such haughtiness in any arena often end up looking silly.

LOL, again. Here we go:

Quote:

Is there a black man around, besides Herman Cain, that doesn't think any white man who disagrees them might do so over principle rather than skin color?

You just can't help yourself can you? Its only two posts into the conversation.

There are many white men who disagree on principle. The vast majority. There is a pitiful fringe that can only articulate their consternation through bertherism and such. Additionally, there are people who couldn't recognize racism even if was wearing a white hood and carried a noose!