Obama the Myth: the Harvard Years

Posted: October 9, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: No Obama | Tags: , , | 10 Comments

Since I’m being hammered from many sides to look at Obama as the superior candidate by some folks, I’ve decided to really take a look long and hard at the resume of Barack Obama. Because they tell me not to rely on the debate performances or his command of facts and issues, I decided to look at him like a job applicant.  One of my uncles graduated first in his class at Harvard Law School.  Just because I always was enamoured by my Uncle John, I started with the Harvard Law School party of Obama’s resume.  This was the FIRST thing I looked into.  I found that Obama is a job applicant with a short and padded resume and I got this information with very little time spent googling.  The MSM are really a lazy and nefarious bunch.

The first Obama accomplishment we’re presented is the constant repetition of this line that I grabbed from his senate bio.

In 1991, Obama graduated from Harvard Law School where he was the first African American editor of the Harvard Law Review.

That just sounds wonderful doesn’t it? Despite implications by the press and others (I would include his campaign on that), Obama is NOT the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review.  He is the THIRD.  He also didn’t achieve that position in the historical way which is by merit.

Why hasn’t any one done a little more research in to this?  It was completely easy to find that Obama padded his already razor thin resume.  Obama, is fact, the third black editor of the Harvard Law Review.  Academics get fired for this kind of resume lie. I find it reprehensible that Obama gets away with this on a daily basis.

Not only that, I would think that some one interested in promoting the achievements and history of black Americans would want to clarify this publicly. Any women or minority that achieved this kind of positions prior to efforts by the government to end discrimination is something folks should know about and recognize. Isn’t this the purpose of Women’s History Month and Black History Month? Unfortunately, these two gentlemen have know fallen prey to helping the establishment of Obama, the myth.

I would especially think that Harvard would point out that they’ve had blacks acheive the position prior to Obama.  One intrepid journalist asked them to clarify Obama’s resume ‘gaffe’ and published it  here. 

I wrote that letter to the Dean of the Harvard Law School Oct. 20, 2006. I received the answer in a letter dated Nov. 7, 2006. Dean Elena Kagan thanked me for my letter and said she was pleased to clarify a few points about the Harvard Law Review.

She said, “Members of the Harvard Law Review are referred to as editors. Each year there are many editors, but one person is elected president. The first African-American to serve on the Review was Charles Hamilton Houston, who graduated from Harvard Law School in 1922. The second African-American to gain admission to the Review was William Henry Hastie who earned an LL.B from the Law School in 1930 and an S.J.D. in 1933. Barack Obama was the first African-American president of the Review; he graduated from the Law School in 1991.”

How Obama achieved the status of editor is also an interesting story.   As ferreted out by many, and published by few,  in 1990, the Harvard Law Review ceased to be a position achieved by merit.  The first two black men who achieved their post did so because they placed in the top 10% of their graduating class.

Jack Cashill of the World Net Daily wrote this article in September of 2008.   Here’s one of the highlights, although I do suggest you check out his entire column.

To Obama’s good fortune, the HLR had replaced a meritocracy in which editors were elected based on grades– the president being the student with the highest academic rank–with one in which half the editors were chosen through a writing competition.

This competition, the New York Times reported in 1990, was “meant to help insure that minority students became editors of The Law Review.”

It did just that. At the end of his first year, Obama was named along with 40 or so of his classmates an editor of the HLR.

Unlike most editors, and likely all its presidents, Obama was not a writer. During his tenure at Harvard, he wrote only one heavily edited, unsigned note.

NOTE:  I know this isn’t the greatest of sources, but the point is that the rules were changed and that mentioned was based on a news article from a legitimate source.  I’m not all that interested in Cashill’s opining as I am in why they changed the rules and that they did so RIGHT before Obama’s tenure.

This ‘achievement’ is supposedly Obama’s shining moment.  Yet, it appears as much invented and overlooked by the MSM as many of the other things Obama purports and denies.  This may serve the interests of Obama and the folks who want him elected at any cost.  However, the much needed praise paid to his TWO predecessors remains buried so that Obama the myth, can be elected.  Their TRUE achievements remained buried so that a myth can live on.

Protest Voting 101

Posted: October 7, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Action Memo, Hillary Clinton: Her Campaign for All of Us, New Orleans, No Obama, PUMA, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , | 4 Comments

Player Queen:
Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife,
If once I be a widow, ever I be a wife!

Player King:
‘Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here a while,
My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile
The tedious day with sleep.

Player Queen:
Sleep rock thy brain,
And never come mischance between us twain!

Hamlet:
Madam, how like you this play?

Queen:
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Hamlet Act 3, scene 2, 222–230

 

Puma is a protest movement.  Our blogs outline our strategies.  Our votes are our tactics.    I’m not exactly sure how much clearer I can make this but it appears that we have to repeat these simple facts over and over.  If we don’t, no one gets us.

The nature of our protest vote is that is exactly that a PROTEST.  This means that our friends who can’t understand why we might vote for a candidate that doesn’t have a chance (McKinney or Nader) or a ticket that we may not agree with on many issues (McCain Palin) don’t understand what a PROTEST vote means. Protests voting means your vote is a protest.  It simply doesn’t have to make sense to any one else.

I started thinking about this today due to a post by Masslib on Alegre’s blog and a response by Or what Vahalla said. 

Or what Valhalla said (4.00 / 2)
 

The premise of a protest vote is that it’s not issues-related.

What I meant to say, put more succintly 🙂

This also hit me in the face when I saw a response to my own posting “The No NO Sisterhood”.  A post by Ben Kilpatrick assumed I voted all women during the democratic run-off in Louisiana just because I was woman who votes for women as a means to discriminate against men.

Just voting for women is the same as just voting for the black guy, or the republican guy, or or or

And it’s about as smart a move as all of those.

My vote was a protest against the treatment of women candidates this year.  I did not vote for all women because as a woman, I was voting for ALL women. I voted for all women as a protest.  I did not like the way Hillary was treated. I do not like the way Sarah Palin is being treated.  I will not stand for Helena Morena being treated similarly either.  Already, it is starting.  A blog for the local New Orleans business newspaper picked up one quote from my two day postings concerning the second congressional race and all my comments about Ms. Moreno.  You can read it here.  The only line the blog picked up from me about Helena was that most folks here were calling her the “little white girl in the race” which I view as confusing folks on her mixed white/Latina heritage and belittling her status as a woman by calling her ‘girl’.

I’m still thinking about what kind of protest vote I will make this year when I step in the booth to vote for President.  I know I will not vote for Obama.  I will not vote for the issues, for once, because I am protesting how he got the nomination, I am protesting how the DNC actively and underhandedly promoted him over a much more qualified and able woman, and how he has been given a HUGE pass by the MSM.  I know many of my PUMA friends will vote for McCain Palin, others will just skip the vote, others will still vote for Hillary, and some will vote for third party candidates.

We do not have to explain the ‘logic’ of our vote over and over and over again. It’s not about the issues (like Roe v. Wade), it’s not about the economy, and it’s certainly not about voting party lines.  It’s a protest vote.  As such, it only has to make sense to us!  

I think we need to take some time and rethink why we view our votes as protests this year.  This is especially true if you’re thinking of drinking that koolaid and falling prey to the logic of voting on issues at this point.  Puma ceases to become a protest movement at that point.  It’s effectiveness at supporting reform within the democratic party has no teeth at the point we stop protesting.

There is no such thing for PUMAs as ladies (or gentlemen) protesting too much at this point.  Afterall, it is our democracy at stake.

(cross-posted at The Confluence)

Here we go again …

Posted: September 25, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Human Rights, No Obama, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , | 8 Comments

It’s true.  On issue after issue, I pretty  much disagree with Sarah Palin.  I see nothing positive about hunting or fishing unless you have no other way to eat.  I see killing things for fun as a completely immoral action.  I do not consider a gestating protohuman to be ‘ensouled’ and the same as a walking talking human being or even a walking, eating moose.  I’d rather see Nebraska, Kansas, and North Dakota be turned into fan farms than drill in ANWAR.  I’d also rather see Arizona turned into a one big solar panel that do any more drilling off the Florida coast.  I think the death penalty is something right out of the dark ages and has no place in a civilized country.  I don’t care if gay people marry, they have every right to be as miserable and trapped in dead end relationships as straight folks.  I’m definitely a libertarian on the civil rights issues.  My position on anything like this–even those multiple wife holding Mormon men– is it’s not my business and it’s certainly not the government’s business. If you’re not hurting some one and it applies to a person capable of giving reasoned consent (exceptions for minors and the disabled), it shouldn’t be the subject of a law. I don’t even care if folks smoke marijuana or use heroin as long as they stay put where they are and don’t try to drive a car.  I am pro-science and I think Christianity was invented by the Romans to control slaves.  I think folks that believe in it are victim to the biggest on-going sham in history. That pretty much puts me very much at odds with about everything Sarah believes in.  But you know what?  She has a right to say it, believe in it, and run for vice president without being called every nasty, misogynistic, stereotypical, hateful thing you can call a woman.  Senator Obama delivers lectures to us on racism and his campaign accuses every one of using subtle racist code words.  However, he and the rest of his democratic cronies are more than happy to use not so subtle code words or ads against women and the elderly.    Today’s example from the NY Times Op-Ed page.

I have to hand it to Palin, she may be onto something in her batty way: the election is very much about American exceptionalism.

Roger Cohen in Today’s New York Times

When I read “batty”, all I can think of his Archie Bunker calling Edith a ‘dingbat’. It’s the ultimate insult to any woman’s intellgence.

While I’m at it, I’d like to say that any of my gay and lesbian friends and their related activist groups need to start looking (without stars in their eyes) at a candidate that will announce a series of Values Forums and be seen in public over and over again with a homophobic, gay-baiting preacher.  It is also time for Senator Obama to start having a conversation about hating on homosexuals with the black religious community.  He is not holding them to the same standard of supporting civil rights that he expects of white people when it comes to the civil rights of black people. So it’s okay for Obama and this group to hate on gay folks AND it’s okay for Obama and his cronies to hate on women who hold socially conservative positions since racism is the only relevant evil in this race. Is that the deal here?

Also, Senator Obama and his nation of clueless cult members should be more respectful of their elders and stop using ageism in his commercials attacking Senator McCain.  I think portraying the elderly as addled, unable to keep up with technology, and incapable of change is exactly what Obama keeps pulling on Senator McCain.  Any one who spends time teaching at universities, as Senator Obama has, should know that the emeritus professor is the most respected position.  Many, many professors continue teaching and researching way into their nineties.  They may need some additional support from staff, but they continue to be vibrant contributers to their areas way past their retirements.  If Senator Obama thinks that he doesn’t want to be judged on his “funny name” or the color of his skin,  he needs to extend the same level of respect to older Americans.  Not all folks with Hussein in their names are terrorists and not all senior citzens have alzheimer’s disease. The latest mailing I keep getting from the Obama supporters to get McCain to release his ‘real’ medical reports is a thinly veiled whisper campaign made to make folks take notice of McCain’s age.  While there are hate groups out there to remind folks of Obama’s race, there are only Obama supporters out there bringing up McCain’s age and Senator Palin’s sex and fundamentalist beliefs.  Like I said, I disagree on almost every social position possible with the Republican party, but I’ve never seen them say anything blantantly racist about Senator Obama.  However, I see Obama and his supporters spew misogynistic, ageist, and gay-hating terms daily.  I’ve also seen them play the race card at the drop of a hat. This should stop. It’s ugly and it’s un-American.

 UPDATE TODAY:  YET AGAIN …

From Fox New:

Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings on Wednesday warned two minority groups to beware of Sarah Palin because “anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks.”

Hastings, who is black and a Democrat, made the comment in Florida at a panel discussion hosted by the National Jewish Democratic Council.

 source: 

 http://http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/09/25/congressman-warns-jews-blacks-to-beware-of-palin/

The Obama Nation: Increasingly Desperate

Posted: September 21, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: No Obama | Tags: , | 11 Comments

I’m noticing a distinct tone change in the MSM and among many key Obama supporters.  It’s that sound of desperation.  It’s the sound of whining … PULEEZE vote for him!  After all, the world will fall apart if we get another Republican in office.  Today’s New York Times Op Ed page is full of the whine of the Obamanation.

Among the many issues voters need to consider in this campaign is this vital fact: The next president is likely to appoint several Supreme Court justices. Those choices will determine the future of the law, and of some of Americans’ most cherished rights.

John McCain and Barack Obama have made it clear that they would pick very different kinds of justices. The results could be particularly dramatic under Mr. McCain, who is likely to complete President Bush’s campaign to make the court an aggressive right-wing force

source: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/opinion/21sun1.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin

While that’s a really nice argument , we need to remember that it takes two to stack a supreme court.  The President may appoint the justices, but remember, there is that advice, consent, and approval of the senate thing stuck right there in the constitution.  If progressive Senators would’ve grown a pair (or borrowed them from Hillary), we wouldn’t be in this position now.  Obama was going to happily vote for Roberts until an aide told him otherwise.  Think Bork.  He  was stopped.  Hell, Joe Biden could have prevented the appointment of  Clarence “Uncle” Thomas had he acted like he had some sense and a pair! The head of the senate just needs to make sure that the president knows who will get through and who will experience nomination hell and then make it so!  This is why it is important that some one like Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton holds leadership in the Senate.  We will not see this kind of leadership from Senator Reid.

Also, overturned laws go back to the states.  The bottom line is, if you want to live in a state that resembles the christian version of the taliban nation, move to nebraska.  If you want rights and civil liberties, move to california, new york, or minnesota.  I think you see what population patterns suggest here.  You live in nebraska, you live among cows. You live in minnesota, you live among university attending people.

The next whine I’m hearing over and over as Obama’s numbers vacillate but never reach that 50% number is that we’re just not ready for a black president.  This is despite the fact we have black governors, black mayors, black representatives, and black senators in places where there are indeed, white voters.  Just ask me!  ALL of my local government leaders and representatives are nonwhite. I’d never vote if I had an issue with black or minority candidates. Democrats think that only by gerrymandering the country and the primaries, we’ll finally get a black president because americans follow their lesser angels.  I will grant you, there are some racist hold-outs all over the country, but they are not the majority. 

A lot of these “They are RACIST!”  whines come from folks that think they know places like the South and the midwest and then slime us with some outrageous caricature.  Obama’s own characterization of us as bitter folks clinging to religion and guns shows exactly how unaware many folks are about the nature of the citizens of this country.  With the exception of a few nasty people, most americans are willing to give just about any one a fair shake until you insult them and their intelligence.  We all might not be Harvard-educated, but we have our own set of skills and sense by which we get by in life.  Why can’t we just call it what it is.  We’re rejecting Obama not on his race, but on his merit.  He is pathetically short on merit.  McCain may be a crusty old goat with a temper, but he’s a crusty old goat who put his time in the military and the senate and paid his dues.    Americans like some one who shows stick-to-itness.  The only long term commitments Obama has made are to his very irregular friends and associates.  Folks that just about no one can imagine putting into their address books, let alone clinging to for years.  Well, I don’t cling to a bible or a gun, and I sure don’t cling to a former weatherman who bombed the pentagon and is sorry he didn’t do more effective bombing.  Nobody gets Obama because of his ‘not us’ element, none of us get Obama because he shows poor judgement in the selection of his friends and associates.  If there’s one old slogan Americans do cling to it’s “Birds of a feather, flock together.” If you want to mistake that and intrepret it for racism, I’d suggest you develop some critical thinking skills.  That old saying is far deeper than that.

Then there is the whine, you lost, just get over it and get on the bus! Pelosi is the head whiner on this one.  She is also the one that ensured the roll call at the DNC broke every rule in the book.  “Stop the Hate” Brazille has also taken this tact.  She being one of the main instigators of the gerrymandered primary system that delivered one more weak and unsuitable candidate to us.  Listen, I voted for Mondale, I voted for Kerry, and I even voted for Dukkakis! I’m way pass the fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me … I’m into some other zone here on being fooled that the DNC-delivered candidates will get elected outside of those solid blue states.  The deal is, we didn’t lose, and that makes us not get over it.  I didn’t even have a chance to get my voice heard before Iowa handed me John Kerry.  I didn’t like it.  I thought he’d lose.  I did get on board, because the process delivered the outcome in a way with which I could not argue. It sucked but it was a process no one gamed.  I also thought Kerry was capable of doing the job, even though I figured he wasn’t going to be a Truman, a Jefferson, or a Roosevelt.  Obama was the result of gerrymandering and tricks AND he’s not capable of doing the job.  Biden probably is … but if that’s the case, put Biden up there on top.  What?  He never garners any votes?  Go figure!  What is this?  Win the presidency by putting a silver tongued puppet up there then let the VP run the show?  Didn’t we get enough of that with Dubya and Cheney?

So, anyway, stop the whining!  I’m still note voting for him!

Dead Enders and Picking on Poor Ol’ Barrack

Posted: August 15, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Hillary Clinton: Her Campaign for All of Us, No Obama | Tags: , , | 8 Comments

Puma has been receiving a lot of media attention recently.  Some of the most interesting came yesterday when the MSM tried to determine the role of PUMA in seeing that Hillary Clinton’s name was properly placed in a roll call vote from the floor of DNC convention.

Every one was buzzing about the AP article yesterday as well as the appearance of Will Bower and Darraugh Murphy on MSNBC.  What really got to me yesterday was one comment by Anderson Cooper to Candi Crowly late last night.  Candy and Anderson were analyzing the impact of the Hillary Floor vote which the Obama campaign tried to twist into, well ‘it was always our intention’ and ‘we were okay with this all along’ moment.  David Gergen on the same program said that the decision made it look like Obama could be bullied into anything.  Anderson and Candy began to use the term ‘dead-enders’.  I guess I was some what used to this word after having been compared to Japanese soldiers holding up in remote places after World War 2 earlier.  However, Anderson did the term one better. He side joked to Candy about the last time they were using the term dead-ender.  I’m not exactly sure what all he was intending to imply, but being compared to Sunni insurgents and the infamous Donald Rumsfeld/Dick Cheney neocon excuse for why Iraq just wouldn’t settle down and be happy after being invaded was an interesting metaphor.  It took me aback.

Yesterday’s AP article was perhaps the first time the press really started looking at PUMA as something more than a group of disgruntled Hillary dead-enders.

Obama needs Clinton’s supporters to beat Republican John McCain. Polls show that he has won over most of them. But some simply don’t like Obama or still feel Clinton was treated unfairly during the primaries.

These groups are not affiliated with Clinton, who has endorsed Obama and campaigned for him. Representatives from the Clinton and Obama campaigns said they are working to unify the party because Obama will champion issues important to Clinton supporters, such as reforming health care, improving the economy and ending the war in Iraq.

“Senator Clinton understands and appreciates that there are supporters who remain passionate, but she has repeatedly urged her supporters to vote for Senator Obama,” Clinton spokeswoman Kathleen Strand said.

Within the PUMA movement itself there are a variety of differing opinions on where to go from here.  This is because PUMA is somewhat bigger than Hillary at this point.  It’s not just our support of Clinton and her treatment, but the cavalier way the DNC has tossed aside the one-man-one vote principle, adopted wholesale the Obama Agenda by disallowing and ruling off limits certain topics in the platform drafting process, allowed the caucus process to be pirated, and set up weights on election results that so obviously put an unqualified lightweight on a fast track.  I don’ think we’re so much dead-enders for Hillary, but dead-enders for the Democratic Process and the American value of dissent.

I was listening to Proud Military Mom describe her frustration with the platform committee on River Daughter’s Internet show.  She said many tried to discuss a future democratic party that relies on primaries and not caucuses because of their un-democratic outcomes and obvious openness to fraud.  All discussions, she reported, were ruled out of order. She said the committee was there basically to rubberstamp the Obama agenda which had been part and parcel of this latest Obama book deal.  Now the profits from this book deal are supposed to go to charity.  One has to wonder if some of the charities will be Father Pfleger and Reverend Wright’s payment for staying out of the limelight until Barrack has convinced every one that his 20 years in learning to be black in that community was not the transformational process he bragged about in his book.  After all, as the product of Ivy league schools (legacy and affirmative action points given) and an elite Hawaiian prep school, we all know exactly how he suffered a ‘black like me’ existence.

This gets me back to the dead-ender label.  If you actually read PUMA blogs and follow those most active in forming the PUMA agenda, the focus is rapidly switching to Barrack’s shortcomings and the DNC subversion of the process.  I think most of us are well-aware that Hillary’s been forced into sack cloth and ashes.  Even CNN reported this week that she’s the FIRST EVER person defeated in the primary to actually support, campaign for, and travel with the presumed winner of the primary prior to the convention.  Let’s not forget, Barrack pulled off a relatively insignificant lead in delegates.  Let us also not forget, the delegate lead was based on some whacky formulation where Rhode Island wound up counting more than Pennsylvania and states, like Texas with its Two step, granted more electoral representation to relatively few voters attending caucuses than thousands and thousands more that turned up for primaries.

These PLUS the overwhelmingly bad treatment by the press for Hillary with the insipid silence of the DNC led to PUMA.  Most PUMAs want to remain democratic.  We are not a republican movement.  We want the values of the Democratic Party.  However, we will not sell out to people that set up rules that basically violate those values, and then be subjected to extortion with threats of Republican pre-occupation of misogyny and gay-baiting.  The Democratic Party has not stood up for women and gay rights in an honest way for years.  They have no right to black mail us now with further erosion of our rights when they have consistently backed away from fights with republicans on these very issues.  Fights they could have easily won.

I hope the press continues its current fascination with the PUMA movement.  I hope the PUMA movement continues to show that it’s not about being a Hillary dead-ender.  It’s the DEMOCRACY stupid!!! Maybe, in that way, Anderson Cooper is correct.  We are an insurgency fighting for our survival in country invaded by a party system interested in self-preservation and disinterested in doing what’s right.

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