This is a graph from pollster.com of Obama’s favorable vs unfavorable rating going back to Jan 2008. Anyone who’s read what I’ve written about him (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) knows I think he’s an empty suit. An empty, bigoted suit, pressed by the corporations who own him.
I’ve been wondering what’ll happen when people wake up to the depth of the con. Now I know. Nothing will happen. Waking up isn’t part of the plan. If they have to stop dreaming, they’ll just start hallucinating.
Look at those two converging lines.
That loss of rosy faith is not based on the fact that he’s broken every campaign promise he’s made, starting with not ending the war, the torture, the surveillance, the imperial Presidency, going on with not even trying to deliver on health care for all, and continuing through an endless list.
The pollsters say the loss comes from him being a Muslim Kenyan Socialist Nazi gun-hating terrorist-loving radical leftie.
Christ on a bike in a pancake hat.
A man who spent decades going to the most politically connected church in Chicago is not a Muslim. (Original article taken down from Chicago Tribune, May 2008)
A man who’s never since childhood spoken with an aunt, dearly beloved as per his book, an aunt who turns out to be barely scraping by in a Boston housing project, such a man knows less about the Kenyan concept of family than I do, to say nothing of actually having anything Kenyan about him.
A man who throws about a trillion taxpayer dollars (a trillion for God’s sake) at Wall Street without even trying to stop it from being used to pay obscene bonuses is not a socialist. (There was a feeble attempt after it hit the news, but the attempt was so weak, it died in the Senate without a word from him.)
A man whose idea of withdrawing from Iraq is to escalate in Afghanistan doesn’t hate guns.
A man whose concept of breakthrough thinking is begging Republicans to approve of his every word is so far from being a radical I’d call him a milquetoast.
But none of this is why people are losing that warm fuzzy feeling about him. It’s not even that they’re put off, at last, by the way he’s conveniently oblivious to vile misogyny, his own and his followers’. Or his arrogant disregard of gays. Or the cynical use of racism to squelch a few more voices.
It’s that he’s a socialist radical dictator freak.
And judging by the skid marks, these people brake for hallucinations.
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Filed under: Barack Obama, Politics, snark | Tagged: notasocialist, Obama, snark, Socialist |
The Confluence 
And, then there’s this….
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-09-15/is-obama-the-new-nixon/
Lee Seigel is mainlining hopium.
Gaa. And me without my air sickness bag.
A black man who was completely unconcerned about the people living in freezing buildings in his own State Senate district.
This is a man of NO race and NO moral values — he is a narcissistic infantile brat.
How very true NW!
Obama used the poor voters on the South Side of Chicago and he used Race to get himself elected..( among other nefarious tricks ) and when these people cried out for his help….The only color he was interested was the color GREEN!
He couldn’t care less what was happening to the people so long as he got his! Typical Chicago Politician!
The use of the Race Card has been so overplayed. no one is listening and I believe the backlash has begun.
Axelrove and Obama will regret the day they ever used it as a political weapon!
My concern is that when a REAL example of racism comes along…wil there be a outcry ( as should be ) or will people be de-sensitized to the point of not caring.
The hopium is a case of Our Brains, Our Pundits.
Heh
Aaak!
quixote, THANK YOU! I WISH this post would make political commentary spots on TV.
But we know the chances of that happening…
Brilliant article.
Once again, RD’s blog and its bloggers GET IT.
🙂
Conflating Nixon and Obama? Nixon is deservedly a punching bag, but, really, isn’t that going too far? Nixon did shred the Constitution, but he also made some worthwhile contributions. I guess to be fair, B0 does have three more years. Not holding my breath, though.
This is how Lee Seigel is conflating them, though:
If you go to a Tea Party and want attention, either misspell something on your sign or say something racist. (or both)
The media will find you, even if you’re the only one in the crowd.
Who are these people Siegel is talking about, though–who are the people that see Obama as ceaseless change? What I mean to say is– are they just the wingnuts who cry socialism? Some on the left seem rather deluded in thinking Obama is “change” as well.
To be honest, I think he made those people up largely out of nothing but hopium fumes.
who are the people that see Obama as ceaseless change?
Maybe he’s referring to people who call Obama a flip-flopper.
Yep — you have said it all.
I do not like the man — because he is a con man. He has done nothing to change my opinion of him.
His “leadership” style is called chaos. I am an expert in this sort of parenting/leadership because that’s the parenting style of my parents — mother mostly.
Generally the parenting style is also the leadership (or not) style of someone is a position of authority — often placed in that position for reasons other than proven leadership ability.
0zero was placed in the white house . . . . . we are learning every day who owns 0bambam — and it isn’ t the voters nor the 0bots.
We are so screwed.
He said he was a blank slate and people saw in him what they wanted to see. Isn’t the definition of a con man. Tell people what they want hear, show people only what you want them to see.
PT Barnum would have been amazed at backtrack. The problem is that backtrack is all circus and no bread for the average American citizen.
The people who decided to change the American way of life started a long time ago. Put in incompetent show boats like bush, anger the people, start the drain of economy, weaken the country by two wars, bedazzle the people with bs and then another incompetent show boat like backtrack to finish the job. This could not happen without the help of greedy politicians who put power and greed before country.
Corporations have decided there is more profit to be made in the far east than in America. In order to make that profit you have to weaken the only super power left.
WOMEN WITH INTELLIGENCE AND EXPERIENCE,MEN WHO SUPPORT THEM AND COUNTRY BEFORE PARTY ALWAYS
PUMAS,BUBBAS,EQUALISTS AND THOSE PEOPLE RULE
Cry racism, cry wolf
http://www.nationalcenter.org/PR-Racism_Obama_091609.html
It looks like a peni$.
with big ears
hard to type while laughing . . . .
so that’s what those flaps are!
yep, that’s what I see too
Thank you! That is EXACTLY what I see.
Glad I’m not the only one who only saw that. Even all the polls show he’s a dick.
Good one!
That was my first reaction too. But I’m in the middle of teaching Freud’s personality theory right now, so it’s not surprising.
my first thought was, what is wrong with Obama, what is wrong with this graph?
Or a d*ck, is more apt.
oops, just saw that Ralph beat me to it 🙂
I’m glad someone else saw that too! ROFL!
I srsly thought it was a gag graph meant to look like one.
i was wondering how far I’d have to read down in the comments before someone ELSE saw the DICK THERE!
HA – isn’t it ironic!
Obama simply hasn’t come through on the promises that got him elected — and he hasn’t even fought particularly hard for them, either.
No wonder people are upset.
What’s interesting is that Americans don’t have a very high opinion of Republicans either. They’re especially disenchanted with their government. We might have a very interesting period in front of us.
(Excellent post, by the way).
Via Reclusive Leftist:
For about 10 seconds, I actually liked Obama there. Axelrove should pay to put that in a loop on every channel for an hour or so and then watch his poll numbers 🙂
thats probley one a few.. few things that i agree with BO on
uck. Even that turns me off. He is so smug, surrounded by sycophants laughing at how “hip” he is. He knew if he said that it would get the guaranteed laugh, and then he calls himself the “president” in the third person. He just rubs me the wrong way.
No matter what the pollsters say, I cannot believe that people really oppose Obama because they think he is a socialist or some kind of leftie radical. We just can’t be that stupid and shallow. Can we? No.
Almost everyone I know, even former Obots, are aware of his lies and don’t like them one bit. They wouldn’t vote for him again.
a will there be a puma united radio on 2night anyone know
Quixote,
Great post. I totally identify with your frustration.
Re: the socialist tag line. I think you have to back up and check what most Americans consider to be socialist. It is not the classical definition of socialist or even the experiments of it that happened in Europe and the US circa The Grapes of Wrath.
What most Americans think of as socialist is what they experienced or heard of the Soviet Union—it is Animal Farm and 1984 for them. That model is obviously state centralized control and state economic plans (that always failed); it is repressive, authoritarian and incompetent. Even today when you go to Russia you can feel the years of that Soviet experience. A consumer centered free market place there is hardly anywhere.
So if you accept this definition of “socialist”—I think you can see that people thinking he is a “socialist” authoritarian dictator is not far off the mark. The same is true for the public concept of “nazism”—Americans get the authoritarian/dictator part and the militarism but the economic and philosophical ideas of “national socialism” are lost in the fog.
I think it is interesting to see this because it means that the dictatorship piece of the dictatorship of the proletariat totally overwhelmed any of the economic thinking and what is left from history is the degeneration of each of these into their worst components. And the conflation of the two in the popular culture is a big irony given how opposed they were during WWII in most of the European theater.
This makes so much sense. Equality in poverty. And gray everywhere.
Maybe we get these impressions because we don’t study history or political economy but we do go to the movies. Style over substance.
I just found out that Max Baucus’ bill will allow insurance companies to charge people in my age group 5 times as much as younger people–maybe even 7 times as much!
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/8198
Yeah. Also, I saw something on CNN this morning about funding that Health Insurance Welfare Bill by taking it out of Medicare. I really and truly can’t believe it. I’m going to wait for analysis by someone capable of reading the original sources (dak? katie? ??. I’ve lost consciousness by the third sentence three times in a row, and I give up.)
It wouldn’t be the first time wild rumors surface on the internet. Right? Right?
No, it’s right. They want to fund it by extra taxes, fines for people who can’t/won’t buy insurance, and cuts in Medicare and Medicaid. If this bill passes we are all goners.
This is their version of sending all the old folks out on icebergs to starve. In this case, not even really old people–just baby boomers.
If I was a Failbot (ugh!) I might rationalize that Obama is using 11-dimensional chess and passing a health care reform bill so bad they will have to pass single payer to fix it.
Fortunately I’m not brain damaged.
LOL!
no, unfortunately, from what I can tell (and it’s mentioned in the previous post that BB and I contributed to), they will come from medicare, because taking it as an excise tax on high end insurance benefits hits unions and that’s politically unacceptable to the Obama administration.
I believe some unions were explicitly exempted from the House bills. but the taxes would fall on everyone else.
😯
:coma:
I read the FDL article and listened to the testimony of Wendell Potter. He is becoming one of my true American heroes for his position speaking out so strongly against the insurance companies.
I understand that the Repubs finally backed out of the Baucus bill; with those ratios and the hits on medicare that was probably a very wise move on their part.
I am every day more convinced that single payer is the only thing that has a prayer of working for us. If age becomes the determinant of your health care bill, senior will be absolutely back to their condition before LBJ and Medicare.
Way to go obono.
Well he stated up front back in 2007 that he disliked baby boomers and old people. I knew what to expect. I guess most of the Obots agreed with him on that–at least at the time. They didn’t think he’d actually try to kill us off.
We have long memories. Because that single statement from him really caught my attention. So cutting pensions and retirement benefits and medicare for baby boomers is exactly what I expect idiot 0zero to do.
You know babyboomers didn’t have it easy growing up — and then our generation had a useless war to contend with. We were told to save for retirement — many did and now they are watching their retirement savings slide into the pockets of the bonus class.
I married a pre-boomer who was able to retire just in time. He has medicare and I’m uninsured. Nice.
What poll are you referring to? I’d really like to see a poll that asked people if they thought Obama was a “Muslim Kenyan Socialist Nazi gun-hating terrorist-loving radical leftie”. Now that would be interesting. And don’t forget “Anti-christ”.
pollster.com aggregates all the major polls available at the time. That graph is from Sept 3, if I remember right. On their site, you can see which polls are informing their aggregate numbers.
And, uh, the hyperbole is mine, not pollster.com’s….
Except it’s not really hyperbole, it’s understatement.
IMHO.
I think you also have to step back and realize that the left and the right, especially at their fringes share a lot in common. At the fringes, they both are radical, activist, intolerant of other ideas, focused on purity of thought, fidelity to the true cause. They both disparage centrists because centrists by definition are more pragmatic, more tolerant, more focused on problem solving than implementing ideological positions.
Mr. Broder? Is that you?
I don’t read Broder but I read history.
David Broder preaches the doctrine of centrism.
Any examples of problem solving at the legislative level?
Is that a Sorry OT, but FYI.
EXCLUSIVE: W.H. collects Web users’ data without notice
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/16/obama-wh-collects-web-users-data/
The White House is collecting and storing comments and videos placed on its social-networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube without notifying or asking the consent of the site users, a failure that appears to run counter to President Obama’s promise of a transparent government and his pledge to protect privacy on the Internet.
Defenders of the White House actions said the Presidential Records Act requires that the administration gather the information and that it was justified in taking the additional step of asking a private contractor to “crawl and archive” all such material. Nicholas Shapiro, a White House spokesman, declined to say when the practice began or how much the new contract would cost.
In a June 5, 2008, article in PC Magazine, Mr. Obama said, “The open information platforms of the 21st century can also tempt institutions to violate the privacy of citizens.
oy!
Hey, does the grapg remind you of something? It has got to do about a mans’ appendage below the waist. 🙂 :))
a skinny one with big ears
Oh my! The Failbots have uncovered a bona fide racist POS in Georgia, thereby conclusively proving that all white people who don’t support Obama are racists.
http://www.wsbtv.com/news/20940073/detail.html
The Failbots are also excited that Birther Queen Orly Taitz lost in court for the umpteenth time.
As for the flaming shit pile that is health care reform, the Failbots could care less.
Glad to know those are ears.
I figured the rabbi’s hand had slipped.
Davy Sirota at Open Left:
But he was so much been than Hillary would have been, right Davy?
Davy has amnesia – he’s forgotten he was one of the leading and loudest Failbots last year.
Um, yeah, you know if he wanted to um, pass legislation instead of being a famous person, then maybe he would um, you know, have actually found something he cared about and worked and created a record, in the Sen or in IL. His um, uh, ya know, record would probably indicate whether he like to do the hard, unglamorous work of trying to pass legislation.
I love how these morons vote for Chance the Gardiner meets Forrest Gump meets the Candidate for no reason other than he’s cool and male and then they’re bemused that he’s still Forrest and not a dedicated hardworking wonky genius. It’s not even his fault, he ran because he knew he could win thanks to dumbasses like Sirota, they need to quit blaming him and start blaming themselves.
They act like hr 3200 was on another plane than Baucus. Iy actually isn’t. The meager, business-like PO in HR3200 is not serious.
Frankly, the y should just raise Medicaid to 150% FPL, nationalize it, fund it, include adults without kids, pass it, and move on. That will cover 50% of the uninsured.
Baucus as early as last spring suggested a Medicare buy in for 55-64 years olds. Do that too.
But drop exchanges, the paltry public option that isn’t, the mandates, the Medicare cuts, and move the hell on. Obama has already decided not to be the President who will solve health care.
{applause}
Exactly. But that would be logical, humane, and cheaper. It would work and actually help people. We can’t have that, can we?
Exactly.
“The discoveries of healing science must be the inheritance of all. That is clear. Disease must be attacked, whether it occurs in the poorest or the richest man or woman simply on the ground that it is the enemy; and it must be attacked just in the same way as the fire brigade will give its full assistance to the humblest cottage as readily as to the most important mansion. Our policy is to create a national health service in order to ensure that everybody in the country, irrespective of means, age, sex, or occupation, shall have equal opportunities to benefit from the best and most up-to-date medical and allied services available.”
– Prime Minister Winston Churchill, March 1944, arguing for the establishment of a British National Health Service.
Great quote. Churchill puts it in a way that makes it so clear. We should put up signs all over the country with his words on it. Then maybe people would start to get it.
That just makes me want to cry.
wow, here’s something you don’t see every day …
Sword-wielding Hopkins student kills intruder
Intruder was repeat offender, released from prison Saturday
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bal-md.samurai16sep16,0,114199.story
Mr. Pontolillo should change his name to Ben E. Hana
He must be an anime fan!
William Jacobsen:
I disagree. It’s progressives, not liberals, who are using the race card.
Self-described liberals and progressives are both using the race card.
If they were liberals they wouldn’t be playing the race card.
I agree, but it’s what some call themselves and it really pisses me off.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8260200.stm
I thought Chevaz and backtrack were BFFs
First a deal with Russia and now a deal with China
This deal does not help this country.
WOMEN WITH INTELLIGENCE AND EXPERIENCE,MEN WHO SUPPORT THEM AND COUNTRY BEFORE PARTY ALWAYS
PUMAS,BUBBAS,EQUALISTS AND THOSE PEOPLE RULE
But Chavez might have a problem with another W term.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8260200.stm
Gee it looks like backtrack may even have to do some work along with threats to get things passed.
My question is ” who is congress more afraid of, a chicago thug or the angry people they are supposed to represent?
WOMEN WITH INTELLIGENCE AND EXPERIENCE,MEN WHO SUPPORT THEM AND COUNTRY BEFORE PARTY ALWAYS
PUMAS,BUBBAS,EQUALISTS AND THOSE PEOPLE RULE
An empty, bigoted suit, pressed by the corporations who own him.
bravo!
Different people dislike him for different reasons. Some good, some bad.
Some people really do dislike him out of racism. Others because they are hyper-partisan Republicans and don’t like any Democrats, especially Democratic Presidents. Some are misinformed and think he really is a Socialist, and hate him for that. Some are more informed and think he is a State capitalist of the worst kind, pretending to be a liberal or radical or social democrat, and that’s why they hate him.
Some hate him because they mistakenly think he is a Muslim. Others, again, more informed, hate him because, his 20 years in “Pastor” Wright’s playpen of racism and crackpot conspiracies theories to the contrary notwithstanding, he is NOT really a Christian, but only pretending to be one for political gain. His story of being “saved” is as false as a three dollar bill. He “interviewed” the various Black clergymen in Chicago, and chose Wright specifically because his “church” was politically connected and seen as “Afro centric.” He said (in the Greatest Speech on Race, or Anything Else, Evah!), he could never cut Wright out of his life, no matter what Wright said, but when Wright said something mildly uncomplimentary about him, he cut Wright, and his church, out of his life without a second thought or a backward glance. As far as I can tell, this “Christian” has not been to church since. Certainly, he and his family have not joined another church.
As for him being a Kenyan. Well, his father was a Kenyan (not an African American, not a Black American, not an American immigrant, not any kind of American, actually), so I don’t see how it is in error to describe him as such. He is, by birth, as much Kenyan as he is American. He may, in fact, have no Kenyan values. After all, it’s not his fault his bigamous, alcoholic father abandoned him and his mother shortly after he was born, and played no real part in his life. But I still don’t see the error in calling him a Kenyan. Not that that’s any reason to “hate” him, although it might legitimately give one pause in the decision to make him President of the USA.
Gun hating? No, not for the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, but yes for ordinary American citizens. Except, of course, that he’s changed his mind on that issue since he filled out that questinaire, and now supports gun rights. Or, his aid filled it out wrong, and he always supported them. Or.. . can’t he just vote “present” on the issue and move on. No? Well, then I guess pro and anti gun control folks both have valid reasons to dislike him. If he can’t make up his mind, or be honest, then he has to face the old saw of “please all and you’ll please none.”
You say:
“None of this is why people are losing that warm fuzzy feeling about him. It’s not even that they’re put off, at last, by the way he’s conveniently oblivious to vile misogyny, his own and his followers’. Or his arrogant disregard of gays. Or the cynical use of racism to squelch a few more voices.
“It’s that he’s a socialist radical dictator freak.”
But, if anyone bothered to poll me, I would say I don’t support him because of his misognyny, his disregard of gays and lesbians, his cynical and divisive use of the “race card,” and, his, yes, “dictatorial” contempt for civil rights and civil liberties, his war mongering, his astrotrturfing, his entirely fraudulent and over hyped “life story,” his total sellout to Wall Street and the banks, his lack of environmentalism, his crappy, useless, pro insurance company “healh care reform,” his abandonment of labor, and on and on.
And I don’t doubt that many here feel the same way. There is no question that all of this is reflected in the polls. He had a 70% approval rating on Jan 20. I guess pretty much everyone who voted for him, and then some, said they supported him. Since then, he has alienated a lot of those who didn’t vote him and a lot of those who did vote for him. Some of these people dislike him for the mostly false reasons you suggest. But plenty of us dislike for good reasons too, and that must be reflected in the polls as well.
I never felt warm or fuzzy about the guy. In fact, I hated him from Jump Street and thought he was a con man. But, many people, including many good people, did, and at least some of them are now changing their minds, despite what you say, are changing them for the right reasons.
Some people dislike him because he’s a DINO
BTW – you did notice the “snark” tag, didn’t you?
Sorry, I missed that! My bad.
Still, I guess don’t really understand how your post is “snarky.” Who are you “snarking,” the “pollsters” who attribute his dicline to the “wrong” reasons
(ie the mistaken notions of what he is)? OK, but the pollsters are at least partly correct. Some people, perhaps a growing number, really do dislike him for the “wrong” reasons .Or are you snarking those on the left who bought into him before, but are now changing their minds?. Because if you are, then I repeat, most of those folks are changing their minds for the “right” reasons. And, given that, I’m not sure what you’re “snarking” them for.
I’m snarking about the fact (?) that he’s losing popularity for all the wrong reasons.
I’m snarking about the fact that there really doesn’t seem to be any hope left. To dig yourself out of a hole, it’s an absolute requirement to have some idea of which way is up.
I’m snarking about the fact that even though it gradually seems to be dawning on people that there’s a problem here somewhere, their solution is to demand to be dropped into it head first.
Sadly, some people just don’t “get” snark. Even if you explain it to them. Some people are just humorless.
That has also been my experience. Slowly but surely, lots of minds are changing for the right reasons.
I’m pretty certain the people who think Obama is a Muslim terrorist socialist NEVER supported him in the first place. So I don’t buy this post either.
Oh, hahaha! At first I thought the poll graph slide was a joke as it’s sort of in the shape of a penis until I realized it was for real. LOL!
Now that I put on my glasses, it could be an arrow pointing the way to the next prez. Good stuff.
FYI
“…Marcel Reid, for example, was one of eight national Acorn board members who were removed last year after demanding an audit of the group’s books. She notes that Acorn received $7.4 million in contributions from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) between 2005 and 2008 but actively fights unionization efforts by its own employees. Ms. Reid also notes that Acorn was sanctioned by the National Labor Relations Board in 2003 for illegally firing workers trying to organize a union.
In 1995, Acorn unsuccessfully sued California to be exempt from the minimum wage, claiming that “the more that Acorn must pay each individual outreach worker . . . the fewer outreach workers it will be able to hire.” The decision to file that lawsuit was made by Wade Rathke, who founded Acorn in 1970 and was its long-time leader. He was forced by the group’s board to resign last year after it found that he’d engaged in a cover-up of a nearly $1 million embezzlement of Acorn funds by his brother Dale, then the group’s chief financial officer….
http://womenstate.blogspot.com/
Wasn’t Lee Siegel the guy who was caught fabricating letters to his editors waxing rhapsodically about what a fine writer Lee Siegel was? Yes, yes, I believe he was. Siegel is also famous for his slumber-inducing paeans to baseball caps and other profound “think pieces”. You’d think he’d be ashamed to ever show his weaselly face around again, but in ProgBlog Land of Obenchantment, it’s all par for the course I guess.
I wasn’t hallucinating. A quick Google search confirmed my recollection and also reminded me that to add insult to injury, the phony name Siegel used for himself was “sprezzatura,” which at the time made me throw up in my mouth and now just makes me gag a little:
“Siegel, who had been writing a culture blog for The New Republic, had started using the pseudonym ‘sprezzatura’ on the blog’s forums to praise himself and savage his critics. In response to readers who had criticized Siegel’s negative comments about TV talk show host Jon Stewart, ‘sprezzatura’ wrote, ‘Siegel is brave, brilliant, and wittier than Stewart will ever be. Take that, you bunch of immature, abusive sheep.’
“After a reader expressed suspicion that ‘sprezzatura’ was Siegel himself, he fired back, “I’m not Lee Siegel, you imbecile.'”
HA HA HA.
Oops: http://www.reason.com/news/show/36947.html