Obama and his 'Bitterness' Comments

[evince]

I'm just saying it's not hard to paint Democrats as elitist anyway. I could see it happening to Obama.

Yeah that is why they poor and disenfranchised always vote Dem.

 

[Epicurus]

Yeah that is why they poor and disenfranchised always vote Dem.

Ha, but they don't. Working class voters went to Bush in 2000 and again in 2004. You can believe whatever you want, but if you want me to believe it you'll have to prove it.

In fact since Reagan, the working poor have leaned Republican more often than Democrat.

 

[evince]

Yeah sometimes people fall for lies.

They are pretty tired of them right now.

 

[blackascoal]

Is it possible that Obama actually loved her, for her? Could be, she seems to match him in the intelligence department. Then again, if one wishes to give 'ulterior motives' one could claim he wanted someone that would prove he 'was of the people,' as there isn't much of that in his background. Problem with that is regardless of how or where she spent her first 18 years, after that it was Princeton and Harvard, NY law firm and University of Chicago medical board. Pretty hard to say she isn't 'elite', by her own accomplishments.

I do appreciate talking to you and I respect your thoughts even when I don't agree with them .. like now.

While Michelle Obama's accomplishments are "elite", that is not how she or her husband conduct their lives, nor is it their perspective of life or politics.

Some here criticize me because I use links to statements, documentation, and declared facts to support what I say .. I guess facts take the fun out of argument for some .. but, if you read michelle's bio that I posted, you'll find this ..

"When asked about what made her fall in love with him she replied "for the same reason many other people respect him; his connection with people."

So I agree with you that they just fell in love, but it seems connected to their non-elist view of life.

To be honest with you, Michelle sounds like a black woman from Chicago. I know what black pretentiousness sounds like .. and that ain't it my sister.

The issues Barack dealt with in Chicago, and even as a Senator, would not lead one to believe that this man is an elitist.

 

[blackascoal]

I think that we need to begin to understand that with the Republicans having their nomination locked down, and the Democrats still fighting it out, things like this are going to happen. I still say that the Republican party elites must be pissing themselves over their good luck. You are talking about a bunch of old fat guys who eat at very expensive steak houses (paid for by lobbyists) all week. I mean, they've been able to stop using their viagra for the first time in years. The prospect of keeping the white house in a year after the complete and utter failure of con ideology has brought this country to its knees, has hit them like 30 years taken off of their ages.

Anyone other than a Clinton who lost 11 races in a row and who had the math dead against them, would have had to drop out. Anyone who cared about their country or their party, would have dropped out.

So now we are treated to a son of the military elite, married to an heiress who paid for everything he wanted including his congressional seats, and a former first lady, shooting boiler makers and talking about how they understand the people.

It is truly Barnum and Bailey time.

That was good.

I think I love you.

 

[blackascoal]

He should be careful about any future slipups like this.

This is an area where he could be vulnerable.

He is always going to be "vulnerable" to concocted "mistakes."

Nothing racial about that, it's just politics. Ask John Kerry.

However, he will be most vulnerable to concocted mis-interpretations about race. That is inescapable.

They tried real hard with Rev. Wright.

Didn't work.

They also questioned the "patriotism" of both him and his wife.

Didn't work.

Now they're using class and race to go after him .. and I'm sure there are some who will say his "bitterness: comment is also anti-American, thus use race, class, and patriotism all at the same time.

Somehow, I don't think this is going to work either.

There is something very different about the American people today and we stand on the doorstep of more "change" than we can presently see.

The hero in this moment of history is the American people who've rejected the macinations of the neocon driven right, which is manipulated by the corporate will.

This is becoming as fascinating a time in American politics as the era of civil rights. It will be interesting to watch what transpires between now and Nov. 2. Will the American people continue to mature politically or will we continue the path of an invented people?

 

[Annie]

I do appreciate talking to you and I respect your thoughts even when I don't agree with them .. like now.

While Michelle Obama's accomplishments are "elite", that is not how she or her husband conduct their lives, nor is it their perspective of life or politics.

Some here criticize me because I use links to statements, documentation, and declared facts to support what I say .. I guess facts take the fun out of argument for some .. but, if you read michelle's bio that I posted, you'll find this ..

"When asked about what made her fall in love with him she replied "for the same reason many other people respect him; his connection with people."

So I agree with you that they just fell in love, but it seems connected to their non-elist view of life.

To be honest with you, Michelle sounds like a black woman from Chicago. I know what black pretentiousness sounds like .. and that ain't it my sister.

The issues Barack dealt with in Chicago, and even as a Senator, would not lead one to believe that this man is an elitist.

I don't wish to beat a dead horse, being from Chicago I agree she doesn't sound like the LSD or North Shore crowd, whatever their race. Elitist as in Hyde Park or Pill Hill? Yeah, she does. Forgive the link but it's the point that counts:

http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=MmEyN2RkNzcwYzgyZDY2MDBiY2U5MjJlZGMwNDM2ODg=

Michelle’s Struggle
Mrs. Obama empathizes in hard-hit Ohio.

By Byron York

Zanesville, Ohio — “Everywhere I go, no matter what, the women in the audience, their first question for me is, ‘How on earth are you managing it, how are you keeping it all together?’”

Michelle Obama is sitting with a group of six women around a table in the basement playroom of the Zanesville Day Nursery, here in economically troubled central Ohio. Her talk is of struggle — her own struggle, the women’s struggles, the struggles of women across the country. There are struggles over money, over kids, over jobs, over husbands and ex-husbands. And perhaps most of all, there is the struggle inside.

“It’s a constant sense of guilt,” Obama, dressed simply in a blue sweater with a triple strand of pearls, tells the women of her own dilemma as a working mother. “It’s guilt, feeling guilty all the time.”

So how does she keep it all together? “I’m fine, because I have a strong informal support network,” Obama says. “I have a mother who lives five minutes from me. I don’t know what I would do, even if we weren’t running, I don’t know what I would do as a professional without having that kind of support system. So that keeps me sane.”

But not everyone has a close relative living nearby. And not everyone can afford to keep it all together, especially here in Muskingum County, where, according to the census, the median household income in 2004 was $37,192, below both the Ohio and national average. Out of that, there’s the mortgage. And child care. Health care. Education. Lessons. “I know we’re spending — I added it up for the first time — we spend between the two kids, on extracurriculars outside the classroom, we’re spending about $10,000 a year on piano and dance and sports supplements and so on and so forth,” Mrs. Obama tells the women. “And summer programs. That’s the other huge cost. Barack is saying, ‘Whyyyyyy are we spending that?’ And I’m saying, ‘Do you know what summer camp costs?’”

With all those concerns, one might wonder whether the women should be comforting Mrs. Obama, but she assures them that she’s really O.K. “We don’t complain because we’ve got resources because of our education. We’ve got family structure,” she says. “So I tell people don’t cry for me.”

But there are still problems. As she has many times in the past, Mrs. Obama complains about the lasting burden of student loans dating from her days at Princeton and Harvard Law School.

That answers what we were discussing earlier.

She talks about people who end up taking years and years, until middle age, to pay off their debts. “The salaries don’t keep up with the cost of paying off the debt, so you’re in your 40s, still paying off your debt at a time when you have to save for your kids,” she says.

“Barack and I were in that position,” she continues. “The only reason we’re not in that position is that Barack wrote two best-selling books… It was like Jack and his magic beans. But up until a few years ago, we were struggling to figure out how we would save for our kids.” A former attorney with the white-shoe Chicago firm of Sidley & Austin, Obama explains that she and her husband made the choice to give up lucrative jobs in favor of community service. “We left corporate America, which is a lot of what we’re asking young people to do,” she tells the women. “Don’t go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers that we need, and we’re encouraging our young people to do that. But if you make that choice, as we did, to move out of the money-making industry into the helping industry, then your salaries respond.” Faced with that reality, she adds, “many of our bright stars are going into corporate law or hedge-fund management.”

What she doesn’t mention is that the helping industry has treated her pretty well. In 2006, the Chicago Tribune reported that Mrs. Obama’s compensation at the University of Chicago Hospital, where she is a vice president for community affairs, jumped from $121,910 in 2004, just before her husband was elected to the Senate, to $316,962 in 2005, just after he took office. And that does not count the money Mrs. Obama receives from serving on corporate boards. She would have been O.K. even without Jack’s magic beans.

So her struggle appears to be somewhat different from the struggles of the women sitting at the table. In addition to its below-average median household income, Muskingum County’s unemployment rate has risen in recent years. And it is not filled with Harvard-educated lawyers. According to census data, just 12.2 percent of adults in the county have a bachelor’s degree or higher — well below the Ohio and national average. About 20 percent don’t even have a high school degree. They won’t face the wrenching choice of whether to go into hedge fund management or the helping industry.

None of the women at the table has had it particularly easy, but as each tells her story, one, Heather Snoddy, a hairdresser in Zanesville, remains silent. At the end, after hearing from everyone else, Mrs. Obama looks toward Snoddy and asks if there is anything she wants to say. “The only thing that we’re concerned about in our family is bringing more jobs to this area,” Snoddy says. Her husband works in Columbus, nearly 60 miles away. “We are so fortunate and grateful that he has a job there,” Snoddy adds, but the price of gas adds to the problem of an already-difficult schedule. “He leaves at 4 A.M. to be at work by 5:30, and doesn’t get home until 5 at night. With my job, I’m not home sometimes ‘til 8 or 9, because my job works better because I serve people who have been working all day. So when it comes down to it, we only have one family day a week, on Sunday, that all of us are together.”

Mrs. Obama nods in agreement and says she and her husband do much the same thing. “We do that split day,” she says. “‘O.K. — you’ve got them, I’ve got them.’ When we’re together, we’re like, ‘Oh, everybody’s here — isn’t that strange?’”

I talk to Snoddy afterward, and she is genuinely touched by her time with Mrs. Obama. “I just thought it was an amazing experience, that she actually took the time out of her schedule to come and speak with us,” Snoddy tells me. “It really does make you feel like your opinion matters and that they really are listening to what we have to say. She was a wonderful woman.” I ask whether Snoddy felt Mrs. Obama could understand her life. “Yes, I feel like she can relate to us as working-class mothers, being a mother herself,” Snoddy says, “even though she has the higher education, which is wonderful. I do feel like she can relate to us, just because she takes the time to come and meet people and understand what it’s about.”

Now the woman quoted here is no different than most others that have had direct contact with Presidential candidates or their surrogates. The people at wherever came to hear and got even more from someone they were inclined to vote for. Yet from the conversation I hear nothing different from Michelle than we'd here from a Barbara, Cindy, or Laura. Ok, all of them are different than Teresa or Hillary, but heh, who isn't, elitist or not?

 

[Cancel7]

What he should do then, is "rue" the remarks made in Zainesville where people make on average 30K or so a year that they spend 10K a year on piano lessons, etc for their kids.

It would be hard for those people not to feel that he is a bit "elite"...

But Damo, think about what you are saying. Back in 92, Sr didn't know the price of a gallon of milk. Rudy got caught out by the same question earlier this year. He didn't know the answer. You have a guy who is the military son, rather than bush the senator's son, in CCR "Fortunate Son". He then married an heiress. You have a woman who was first lady of Arkansas and then first lady of the United States.

You point out the "just folks" person here, ok? These people ARE the elite of our society, and always will be. It is how our system is set up. Why do Americans insist on playing this charade? None of them are just like you, or just like me.

Let us look to policy. Policy affects people. Policy affects people like me. People like you. Policy affects just folks. Find the person whose policy you believe would best impact you and your life and stop this nonsense of the elites of our society shooting boilermakers in pubs.

 

[Cancel7]

That was good.

I think I love you.

I blushed!

 

[Annie]

But Damo, think about what you are saying. Back in 92, Sr didn't know the price of a gallon of milk. Rudy got caught out by the same question earlier this year. He didn't know the answer. You have a guy who is the military son, rather than bush the senator's son, in CCR "Fortunate Son". He then married an heiress. You have a woman who was first lady of Arkansas and then first lady of the United States.

You point out the "just folks" person here, ok? These people ARE the elite of our society, and always will be. It is how our system is set up. Why do Americans insist on playing this charade? None of them are just like you, or just like me.

Let us look to policy. Policy affects people. Policy affects people like me. People like you. Policy affects just folks. Find the person whose policy you believe would best impact you and your life and stop this nonsense of the elites of our society shooting boilermakers in pubs.

Which is what I've been saying all along.

 

[Damocles]

But Damo, think about what you are saying. Back in 92, Sr didn't know the price of a gallon of milk. Rudy got caught out by the same question earlier this year. He didn't know the answer. You have a guy who is the military son, rather than bush the senator's son, in CCR "Fortunate Son". He then married an heiress. You have a woman who was first lady of Arkansas and then first lady of the United States.

You point out the "just folks" person here, ok? These people ARE the elite of our society, and always will be. It is how our system is set up. Why do Americans insist on playing this charade? None of them are just like you, or just like me.

Let us look to policy. Policy affects people. Policy affects people like me. People like you. Policy affects just folks. Find the person whose policy you believe would best impact you and your life and stop this nonsense of the elites of our society shooting boilermakers in pubs.

Yep. And we heard about it, didn't we?

You act as if the exact same thing wasn't propounded upon by the media even stronger than you seem to get from Obama. How we all had to hear how he was "amazed" by the scanner...

Most people wouldn't even know what remarks I was talking about from Zainesville. Seriously, the guy isn't getting treated worse by the media than Bush was at that time. It is quite different in fact.

As it stands, I don't give a rats butt about "elitism" (which had to be obvious even to you and BAC with the /sarcasm at the end of my first post in the thread). However, when speaking of just campaign strategy, I think the dude is going to have to be careful about this because he started off his message as being the "positive" campaign. This can quickly change that tone if he lets it.

 

[Cancel7]

Yep. And we heard about it, didn't we?

You act as if the exact same thing wasn't propounded upon by the media even stronger than you seem to get from Obama.

Most people wouldn't even know what remarks I was talking about from Zainesville. Seriously, the guy isn't getting treated worse by the media than Bush was at that time. It is quite different in fact.

How am I 'acting" like anything? I wasn't even addressing anything you state here, because it is not relevant. Who cares?

You sound very bitter here.

The actual point of my post, stands.

 

[Damocles]

How am I 'acting" like anything? I wasn't even addressing anything you state here, because it is not relevant. Who cares?

You sound very bitter here.

The actual point of my post, stands.

No, you were addressing my comment and saying "See they are too!" as your defense. Which is fine. I'm sure you remember making all sorts of sarcastic comments about Bush and Grocery scanners.

My point is, he made his campaign about being positive and being of the people. Each of these do not help him.

 

[Cancel7]

No, you were addressing my comment and saying "See they are too!" as your defense.

My point is, he made his campaign about being positive and being of the people. Each of these do not help him.

I DON'T NEED A DEFENSE.

If you want to float around in a cloud of stupidity and pretend that any presidential candidate is more or less of an "elite" than another one, feel free!

You have no point as far as I can tell, but keep at it, I'm done with y ou here.

You are not even rational lately. I literally never have any idea wtf you are talking about any more, and judging by arguments I see you get into; I'm not alone.

 

[Damocles]

I DON'T NEED A DEFENSE.

If you want to float around in a cloud of stupidity and pretend that any presidential candidate is more or less of an "elite" than another one, feel free!

You have no point as far as I can tell, but keep at it, I'm done with y ou here.

You are not even rational lately. I literally never have any idea wtf you are talking about any more, and judging by arguments I see you get into; I'm not alone.

If you didn't need a defense then why did you try to defend?

Your defense was "Bush was 'amazed' by scanners!"

You are not being coherent. First you give a defense then say there is no need for a defense.

While all I have said is that the man set his campaign standard as the optimistic campaign and each one of these things hurts his campaign. It changes how people view him from what he carefully built to something less so....

While you attempt to say I am irrational, I present a case of my opinion based on political strategy (not party) and point to the original "yes we can" message and the different message negative comments like this present.

 

[Cancel7]

If you didn't need a defense then why did you try to defend?

Your defense was "Bush was 'amazed' by scanners!"

You are not being coherent. First you give a defense then say there is no need for a defense.

While all I have said is that the man set his campaign standard as the optimistic campaign and each one of these things hurts his campaign. It changes how people view him from what he carefully built to something less so....

While you attempt to say I am irrational, I present a case of my opinion based on political strategy (not party) and point to the original "yes we can" message and the different message negative comments like this present.

No as usual you have no idea what I was talking about. I'm not worried about Obama's remarks. Obama can take care of himself, far better than most people believe. Lick your chops all you want...he's going to clean clocks and McCain's is going to be one of them.

I was simply discussing how absurd I find the whole thing. Shooting boilermakers in pubs. I guess now I have seen everything. If you need that in your candidate, by all means. Help yourself.

 

[Damocles]

No as usual you have no idea what I was talking about. I'm not worried about Obama's remarks. Obama can take care of himself, far better than most people believe. Lick your chops all you want...he's going to clean clocks and McCain's is going to be one of them.

I was simply discussing how absurd I find the whole thing. Shooting boilermakers in pubs. I guess now I have seen everything. If you need that in your candidate, by all means. Help yourself.

People don't care about Boilermakers because people already view Clinton as the loser.

Nobody cares what the loser does.

However, what I "need in a candidate" is different than speaking about strategy and how things appear to people.

 

[Cancel7]

People don't care about Boilermakers because people already view Clinton as the loser.

Nobody cares what the loser does.

However, what I "need in a candidate" is different than speaking about strategy and how things appear to people.

Regardless, I was not defending Obama, I was simply saying how absurd I find American's need to pretend that any Presidential candidate is just like them. It's stupidity.

I never even addressed Obama's remarks, which for the record, I do not find elitist at all. I think he has been bringing up subjects that for too l ong politicians have been afraid to touch. I think he makes a lot of sense.

 

[blackascoal]

Regardless, I was not defending Obama, I was simply saying how absurd I find American's need to pretend that any Presidential candidate is just like them. It's stupidity.

I never even addressed Obama's remarks, which for the record, I do not find elitist at all. I think he has been bringing up subjects that for too l ong politicians have been afraid to touch. I think he makes a lot of sense.

Presidents "just like them" is as dumb as having a beer with Bush.

I don't want a president just like me .. who couldn't be president .. nor do I need to have a beer with him/her.

I want a president with brains who understands our socio-ethical responsibility to ourselves and the world.

 

[Onceler]

"However, when speaking of just campaign strategy, I think the dude is going to have to be careful about this because he started off his message as being the "positive" campaign. This can quickly change that tone if he lets it."

It's out of his hands. The media makes those decisions. I don't expect people who talk for 12 hours a day to nuance every syllable perfectly.

I'm sure Obama regrets the phrasing, since Hillary jumped on it & the media found themselves a fun new distraction to report on, but what he said wasn't exactly untruthful, and I personally don't see it as "elitist." Is the truth elitist? It doesn't matter, though; he can only run as positive a campaign as he can. If the media wants to hype up comments like this and make them disproportionate to his overall message, it's simply out of his hands.