Obama and history: it depends on what the meaning of “always” is
A lot of attention was paid recently to Obama’s display of pique at interviewer Brad Watson, who had the temerity to ask the president a couple of slightly challenging questions on Monday.
But far more interesting to me was another statement Obama made during that same interview, when in response to the reporter’s query as to why Obama is so unpopular in Texas, the president answered, “Well, look, Texas has always been a pretty Republican state, you know, for historic reasons.”
A more ignorant comment is hard to imagine. Texas always Republican state? Au contraire. It was only around Reagan’s time that Republicans started winning in Texas. Till then it was reliably Democratic in its presidential choices, with just a few exceptions.
You might think Obama is historically ignorant and unaware of these facts, and if true that would be bad enough. And perhaps that really is the whole explanation for his extraordinary comment.
But I’m not convinced it’s the case. One of Obama’s fields of expertise is the history of the civil rights movement, and he must know that the South was solidly Democratic for a long time.
But if he does know the truth, why would he lie about such a thing? Does he think his answers are irrelevant, and that he just needs to give a response, any response? Is it just a way to deflect a question he’s not interested in actually trying to answer?
Or—and I’ve come to think this may be the most likely explanation—perhaps it depends on what the meaning of “always” is. As a notorious narcissist, Obama’s frame of reference would be himself. Texas became Republican in the 80s, but Obama’s political career didn’t begin until the late 90s, so perhaps as far as he’s concerned the only relevant history starts with his own entry into political life.
I would give any amount of money if the interviewer had the savvy to reply:
“Historically Republican? That would have been news to Pappy O’Daniel and his Light Crust Doughboys…” Then – just dummy up and wait for the look of ignorance and disbelief on the President’s face. Perhaps he could then expound on their musical and political significance to the President’s further education.
Well, look, Obama has always been pretty black, you know, for historic reasons.
Why should it surprise anyone when Obama makes another veiled accusation of racism? He didn’t want to come out and say it, but he got his point across to the faithful.
You might think Obama is historically ignorant and unaware of these facts, and if true that would be bad enough. Probably true. However, I’d just chalk this up to his habit of saying whatever he thinks makes him look good at the moment, regardless of the truth.
And the proper form in this context is “historical” not “historic”. I’m surprised the genius professorial orator didn’t know that.
I’m with ELC – he just says the first thing that pops into his mind that would make him look good at the moment … without any reference to what he said last time.
I have to say, as a historical novelist writing books about 19th century Texas, my jaw about hit the floor when I read that comment about Texas being historically Republican. I am sure the ghosts of thousands of secessionist Texans – who voted for secession in 1860 precisely because a Republican was elected president – are moaning and wailing from their graves.
The only part of my family who were ardent Democrats were the Texans. True Yellow Dog Democrats. They would have voted for a Yellow Dog if it had appeared as a Democrat on the ballot.
I believe by “always” he means since Aug. 4, 1961.
Of course, even by that measure, Texas has not always been Republican.
Why are we surprised at the Stupid Affirmative Action President? Similar results have been observed with other Affirmative Action graduates…
And yeah, we have a MARVELOUS education system, K through Infinity. It’s just that it’s easy to game the system now.
And Obama will keep us in laughs with Stupid (etc.) answers to questions. He doesn’t know any better…
Pace liberals, Obama really is quite a dolt. He apparently knows nothing of world geography (location of Auschwitz, language spoken in Austria), world history (who liberated Auschwitz), economics (examples too numerous to mention) or any foreign language (apart from the call to prayer in Arabic).
He’s an American politico, but even on American geography, history, and politics betrays his ignorance. He doesn’t have a stranglehold on the number of states, he thinks his parents first met on a bridge in Selma four years after he was born, and he thinks Texas was “always” Republican. (Barry, there was that small unpleasantness in the mid-19th century where Texas was most certainly not Republican.)
He’s never published anything of certain provenance, his college transcripts are a more closely held secret than nuclear weapons plans, he thinks asthmatics use breathalyzers, and that inflating tires would solve our energy problems.
Last, he was obviously a terrible lawyer, publicly opining on local police matters he knew nothing about, and pronouncing KSM guilty in advance of a trial, and declaring he wouldn’t be released in any case. Who in his right mind would hire a lawyer who puts his foot in his mouth like that?
So … just what the hell is he knowledgeable about? Seriously, I’d like to know.
Maybe I’m paying more attention to Obama than I did to other presidents, but I’m not aware of a president who has had such a blatant disregard for the truth as Obama. He is a pathological liar.
The list of outright lies is very long. Most recently, he said coal mining contributes to asthma. There’s zero evidence of that. But he says something that can’t be proven to generate politcal support for alternative energy.
He blamed the bridge collapse in Minnesota a few years ago on poor maintenance, when the investigation determined it was a design flaw that caused the collapse. Again, he flat out lied for political purposes.
When he tried to sell us on the health scam, he lied about greedy doctors engaging in superfluous treatments like removing a kids tonsils because it paid more than giving the kid anti-biotics. He lied about greedy surgeons charging between $30,000 to $50,000 to amputate the foot of a diabetic, but the American College of Surgeons issued a press release the next day saying that Medicare reimburses between $740 and $1140 to amputate a foot.
He will lie about anything for political expediency. I can think of about 10 other examples off the top of my head without even doing any research, but I’m tired of writing.
When he tried to sell us on the health scam, he lied about greedy doctors engaging in superfluous treatments like removing a kids tonsils because it paid more than giving the kid anti-biotics.
Yes, I’d forgotten about that. A lawyer – and a former “community organizer” (aka communist agitator), no less – pointing the finger at others for using others for their own personal aggrandizement.
Proof positive that there is no God, because if there were, Obama would’ve been a pile of smoldering cinders right after saying that.
I’m not going to defend Obama here, but the usual lefty response when called on such things is to correct themselves and say,
“It’s always been CONSERVATIVE” (which is code for racist).
Whenever righties argue with lefties about the south, the righties always point out all the “Democrats” from the south who, say, filibustered civil rights legislation, or voted against it, etc. The lefties quickly note, “Yeah, but they were all conservatives [racists] and are now in their true home, the Republican party.”
Unfortunately, conservatives have never had a really powerful rhetorical response to that, because the truth of the matter is complicated. Let me thus toss out a reference to a few books which have dealt with the subject in painstaking detail, are au courant with all the poly sci methods the lefties love so much, and utterly eviscerate the notion that the south went Republican because of race:
David Lublin, “The Republican South”
Byron E. Shafer and Richard Johnston, “The End of Southern Exceptionalism”
These books are not light reading, but if anyone ever finds themselves in the midst of this debate, which happens often enough, you might want to have some of what they contain at the front of your mind.
Finally, there’s actually a lot of good stuff in Bruce Bartlett’s “Wrong on Race.” Bartlett can be as nutty as a bag of GORP – and his proposal for reparations at the end of “Wrong on Race” is that nutty – but nonetheless, he slays a lot of myths about conservatives, Republicans, and race in that book. His demolition of the old “Nixon-southern strategy” canard is particularly noteworthy.
Some stuff to file away.
After many discussions with progressives, I have learned that all time related issue are relative to 1968 when Nixon won. All comment about to conservatives, republicans, racist, etc. all relate to the “Southern Strategy.” This point is not set in stone since 1972 and 1980 national elections tend to blur in.
So when Obama refers to Texas history, he really means some time in the last 43 years. So always translates into “sometime after 1969.”
For his audience of students, pre-1968 is ancient history, not really relevant, except when it is.
Historical revisionism (negationism)
but why bring this up again?
well, ya HAVE to LOVE synchronicity, no?
the fact that THATS the history we get from Zinn, and so forth, and OBAMA is for a REASON..
but where is the synchronicity?
well its in the EXAMPLE of what lengths they go to!!!
and they put up an example of such…
TAKE A LOOK AT THE FACE THAT IS REMOVED FROM THE IMAGE…
in the modified image, you see this
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Commissar_Vanishes_2.jpg
Stalin walking and a nice view of the river next to him. then the art of touching up negatives was very hard VERY hard…
ah… but what does the original image look like?
well, below is the link to the original
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Voroshilov,_Molotov,_Stalin,_with_Nikolai_Yezhov.jpg
and the man walking next to Stalin looks very very much like comrade obama… 🙂
you can see a better image of him over at wiki
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Yezhov
some of us remember what others never knew
Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov or Ezhov
was a senior figure in the NKVD (the Soviet secret police) under Joseph Stalin during the period of the Great Purge. His reign is sometimes known as the “Yezhovshchina”
his title was
People’s Commissar for State Security
In the whole of my long life, I have never met a more repellent personality than Yezhov’s. When I look at him I am reminded irresistibly of the wicked urchins of the courts in Rasterayeva Street, whose favorite occupation was to tie a piece of paper dipped in paraffin to a cat’s tail, set fire to it, and then watch with delight how the terrified animal would tear down the street, trying desperately but in vain to escape the approaching flames. I do not doubt that in his childhood Yezhov amused himself in just such a manner and that he is now continuing to do so in different forms. Bukarin
others didnt see that… just as others dont see obama
however, his nicknames tended to reveal his nature
“the bloody dwarf”
many of our horrible people in our movies are based on real people in russia..
the silence of the lambs acquired his taste back home during starvation, when he learned to eat people under Stalins deprivations.
WAR, with nicolas cage, is really about a russian arms trader.. Viktor Bout.
when you see the movie hostel, the room made of tile, with the rubber on the walls and such… it matches the rooms for questioning that the NKVD used. (and if you know your history well, they combined business with pleasure, in that some of the hotels had such facilities in the basements).
Yezhov was known as a devout Bolshevik and loyalist of Joseph Stalin, and in 1935 he wrote a paper on Stalinism in which he argued that since political unorthodoxy was impossible in a perfect Communist state (such as the USSR), any form of political opposition to Stalinist policies was actually evidence of conspiracy by “disloyal elements” to overthrow the Soviet state, thus requiring violence and state terrorism to “root out” these “enemies of the People”; this became in part the ideological basis of the purges
and so, the whole fact that this system is an INVERSION a hegelian opposite of all that was good in the west. where the west had and still sort of has innocence until proven guilty, and that 10 criminals should go free, rather than one innocent be punished (from the bible and sodom and gommorah).
and the atheist political takes the opposite in everything…
so where west has god, they dont
where the west has innocence until proven guilty, they have guilty until proven innocent (which is why where family court is dominated like that we have an inversion).
what is lying, its saying one thing but meannig the other.
so when obama says hope, he means hopless
when he says change he means to stagnate
when he says peace he means war
when he says prosperity, he means subsistence
when he says increase economy, he means slow it down.
of course people are confused by the one constant, inversion.
you want to make a communist totalitarian state out of free states and people then invert all that is their goodness.
In 1937 and 1938 alone at least 1.3 million were arrested and 681,692 were shot for ‘crimes against the state’. The Gulag population swelled by 685,201 under Yezhov, nearly tripling in size in just two years, with at least 140,000 of these prisoners (and likely many more) dying of malnutrition, exhaustion and the elements in the camps (or during transport to them).
and greenies are inventing reasons and uses for dead bodies… not getting that such is only practical in a factory state… meaning the state is a machine not a servant.
The apex of Yezhov’s career was reached on 20 December 1937, when the party hosted a giant gala to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the NKVD at the Bolshoi Theater. Enormous banners with portraits of Stalin hung side-by-side with those of Yezhov. On a stage crowded with flowers, Anastas Mikoyan, dressed in a dark caucasian tunic and belt, praised Yezhov for his tireless work. “Learn the Stalin way to work”, he said, “from Comrade Yezhov, just as he learned and will continue to learn from Comrade Stalin himself”. When presented, Yezhov received an “uproarious greeting” of thunderous applause. He stood, one observer wrote, “eyes cast down and a sheepish grin on his face, as if he wasn’t sure he deserved such a rapturous reception.” Yezhov may well have also realized the danger he was in from such a lavish display of independent public praise; Stalin was always deeply suspicious of the public popularity and political ambitions of his immediate subordinates, and he was present at the event, observing the scene “silently and without expression” from his private box.
ah… better not be liked…
and what happened?
he was thrown under the bus Tovarich
he became a victim of the machine that he helped create (as the latvian rifle men did to) and as beria did, and as stalin did, and as kruschev did and as believed lenin did.
the machine they made, swallowed them up whole
ah, so to obama throwing them under the bus, when they are not useful, as in bukarins catechism of the revolutionary, i just a limited (by current power) version of stalinist erasing from history.
they KNOW that a certain percentage of people in any mass group will belive waht is said. the same way that an insurance agent can tell you how many will die in an area, but not whom.
so, its a calculated way to inject confusion into the whole of it ESPECIALLY when we no longer are socially free to discriminate against liars!!! that is, the psychological ground work had been made into which this behavior can be placed and not have it result in the norm… ie… people holding them to their honor, and word… wich is what MERIT does… and why feminism had to get rid if it. (they were the lucky group with the power, and didnt know it, and they gave it to the machine… )
as the song says…
Welcome…
to the machine…
So … just what the hell is he knowledgeable about? Seriously, I’d like to know. Occam
reality as defined or rather re-defined by the soviets and agit prop… his whole life was from that education..
and so, if not the originator of such a history, as yezmenov and stalin and others. being raised like that, he is a walking mental disease vector.
thats why zombie movies resonate, except that each side sees the other as the zombies.
but consciousness raising as a process (remember first on early feminism), is a nice word for brain washing as you replace the real history with this bastardized version. womens studies, black studies, etc..
this was how i knew him off the bat, he had the same desease that ex soviets did, which i mentioned. that his history reflected the period of revision of a time.
then the question was which time… he certainly is not a Khrushchev person, or a Putin person… he is a throwback… to yezmenovs period (i wouldn’t be surprised if he had been shown the image and so forth).
its in this way, that through the “innocents clubs” the feminists, the socialist organizations, community organizations, ngos, etc… they are trained on this false history.
the reason is clear…
the history has to be changed to support the false argument that comes later.
without preparing the way that way, the people would not vote or much listen to him.
but when there is enouhg people who know wrong facts those facts become right as we have more than one definition of validity, or rather more than one proxy we use wrongly.
if you ask people in redistribution of wealth if the majority makes that the right thing to do… and they will say yes.. so when more than 35% get it, you get a solid 35% and the bleeding hearts.
ah, but their morals are now situational.
if you ask the same people if slavery was wrong, they woudl say yes… of course.. reprehensible..
but it was a majority position…
so they say the majority then was wrong..
and so you then say, how do you know when they are right?
and thats when you find out that they are amoral, in that they pick the moral answer or argument that leads them to a win in ISOLATION…
same way they present their ideas..
abortion by itself is one thing
but abortion in a society where they redistribute wealth and have social engineering that changes outcomes and so changes certain groups minds as to what they should do. its eugenics.
nitric acid by itself
sulfuric acid by itself
glycerin by itself
all ok in their proper usage
mix them.. and you should make sure your papers are in order…
so if i was to guess.. he is fully and blindly educated in the last centuries idea of what socialism should be.
soviet stalinist/maoist communism hybrid
each time they think they are going to refine it to get it right, and each time, the only thing they get right, is how to control people more and keep them from breaking out…
power is a sadists own reward….
on another note..
In the early morning hours of April 21st, 2011, my brother witnessed and recorded a MASSIVE firefight and Battle in Mexico, right across from the city of Roma, TX. This battle lasted for hours and included machine gun fire and several explosions from grenades of mortars.
My brother filmed some of the footage of the battle on his phone, which can be seen below
texasgopvote.com/restore-families/security/breaking-news-massive-battle-across-texas-mexico-border-machine-guns-and-explosi-002773
I am sure the ghosts of thousands of secessionist Texans – who voted for secession in 1860 precisely because a Republican was elected president – are moaning and wailing from their graves.
Since they’re Democrats, will they get up and vote in 2012?
Fifty seven states
Speaking Austrian
Texas has always been Republican
Profit earnings ratio.
It’s not difficult to see why Obama never authorized releasing his SAT, LSAT scores, or college transcripts.
The Myth of the Racist Republicans has some good ammo to use against the Dhimmis. The first inroads of the Republican Party in the South were in the border states during the Eisenhower years, not in the Deep South after passage of the Civil Rights Bill of 1964.
Personally, I think getting the truth out of Obama is about as likely as getting truth out of one of those doped up, totally crazy, feral psychos you sometimes see being interrogated on police dramas. Face it, he doesn’t really care, he just lies his ass off and, so far, no one has seriously challenged him on any of those lies, and look how far his lies have taken him!
P.S.–On Revisionism–One day during the Cold War, out of the clear blue sky, our university library–which had a copy of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia–received an envelope from Moscow containing two new pages and a razor blade, with instructions to carefully cut out two specific consecutive pages in a specific volume of that Encyclopedia, that featured a picture of some high Soviet official who was now out of favor–who was now an “unperson,” to carefully inset the new pages into the volume, and to mail the now purged old pages back. After we had our fun with it, this envelope and its contents went into the circular file.
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
Gringo – great essay, thanks for the link.
Barb … (giggle)
The BHO POV: If I say it, it must be true, and if it isn’t true it should be true. No one in all the 57 states and 1,023 nations of the world is smarter than me, in fact no one who has ever lived in all the inhabitable planets of the universe is smarter than me. If I lie, it is only a lie because reality has dared to not conform to my reality. Anything that contradicts me is the fault of Bush and all those other gun clinging, honky, Jew loving bible thumpers. All that is light and beautiful exists because of me, all that is dark and terrible is the work of my enemies.
I never thought it possible, but over the last 5 months BHO has become more annoying day by day.
[the post that says my brother was a quote, i dont have a brother. i thought i added italics… sorry]
Really, Neo. I am surprised at your lack of historical perspective. Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson, who ran the country for Eisenhower when he was otherwise occupied, were NOTORIOUS Republicans.
So … just what the hell is he knowledgeable about? Seriously, I’d like to know. Occam
He knows how to sell bulls**t to the naive and uninformed.
it was also unintelligent for him to add “for historical reasons”. what other types of reason would such a pattern be, President? Chemical reasons? Biological reasons? Physical or perhaps astronomical reasons? Historic reasons. Hah.
BHO is not intelligent. An intelligent person is someone who consistently has good judgment and common sense when confronted with reality. Mr. O gets an F- every time.
Proof positive that there is no God, because if there were, Obama would’ve been a pile of smoldering cinders right after saying that.
“Whom the gods would destroy, they first make proud.”
It’s simple: he has no morals, no scruples about lying most brazenly, as he’s proven time and time again.
He just tells whatever lie suits him and his purposes. Amazing, but watching his behavior like a field scientist would will yield the answer. And he knows the MFM will give him cover, with a positively canine, wriggling obedience.
C’mon people, Obama does not lie. He just lives in the moment. Of course his moment is more labyrinthine than Stalin’s Party line. But you have to break a few windows to raise a Potemkin village idiot.*
* From the quotations of George Stalin as remembered by Constitutional Law Perfesser Jugears McF*ckstick.
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I noted a webzine called “The Good Men Project”, which is a pretty uppity title all by itself. It was started by a couple of guys to “allow” men to tell the stories that…etc, their lives, and so forth.
No discussion of who was stopping them prior to the mag’s inception.
Like zero, young guys think if something occurs to them for the first time, it’s the first time it’s occurred to anybody. And the more energetic of them set out to tell us.
Now, of course, if you already know, or know better, even as a youngster, you don’t do that. Zero doesn’t know much or know better than practically anything.
So, if it occurs to him for the first time, it’s new to everybody.
Or he’s a flat liar.