Will There Be Another President O In 2020?

Telstar wrote:

That's Trump's base--either that or it's the spawn of some unspeakable congress between PkrBoy and ALTLEFTDOOFUS. Yikes!

And about 30% of Americans hold the very same views--the same demented religiosity, the same contempt for anything that isn't "White, Christian and Male". Is this a great country or what?

Barack Obama Was My Teacher

A former law student reveals how our 44th president stood out as an educator.

I attended the University of Chicago Law School in the late 1990s, and one of the professors was a man in his 30s. He had two young daughters, two large student-loan debt loads, and three jobs. He was a lawyer in a civil rights firm, a state senator making the 180-mile drive to Springfield, and a teacher at the law school. To find the time to teach classes when the Illinois General Assembly was meeting in Springfield, he would come to the law school Monday mornings at 8 a.m. for a 90-minute class, then come back Friday afternoons at 4 p.m. for the second 90-minute class.

Let me tell you a little bit about that teacher, Barack Obama.
Law professors sometimes behave like the smartest people in the room, if not the world. They pontificate to the class and encourage students to marvel at their eloquence and faculties. Not Professor Obama. He insisted on class discussions and required students to share their views and defend them. Even though he probably was the smartest guy in the room, he never acted like it.

After law school I had the chance to work a little bit with state Sen. Obama before he was elected to the United States Senate in 2004. Although I volunteered extensively on his 2004 Senate primary campaign, I hadn’t had a chance to talk to him since then—until last month, when my brother was asked to speak at the White House student film festival. I went as my brother’s guest, with no idea whether President Obama would remember me from his Professor Obama days.

I was surprised to find that not only did he remember me, but he also was genuinely excited to see me again, and it made me reflect on how our 44th president stood out as an educator.

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Like all great teachers, Obama taught by example. He taught me the value of diligence. I saw him hustle three jobs at once. I saw him run for Congress in 2000, lose, and then return to the race. I saw him shopping at the grocery store at 10 p.m., still wearing his suit after a long night on the campaign trail with a list that our now first lady, Michelle Obama, presumably made. He made it look easy, but I saw how much hard work went into his success. I saw how failure—deep, public, humiliating, no-excuses, question-your-career failure—happens to the best of us. The lesson: Don’t give up.

I went to law school to try to learn how to change the world. Obama’s class on voting rights and the law was about how the “system”—the rules of democracy that decide who gets to run the government—is, like any set of laws, imperfect but absolutely malleable.

He taught us that the system itself can be changed—and it has been changing, constantly, over the years. I learned that changing the system to make our democracy more democratic and our representatives more representative only happens if people engage as part of the current imperfect regime. Getting angry and denouncing the whole system might make you feel good, but it doesn’t result in any improvements. Change happens over years and decades, not weeks or months—but it happens, because lots of regular people worked at it, fully aware of their limitations to implement reform and still committed to trying, one law at a time.

Professor Obama had a passion for making social change, but like the rest of us, he was also navigating an uncertain world. He showed me that I could be a hard-core progressive burning for social justice while tempering that passion with the humility of recognizing that my opinion wasn’t yet shared by a majority of my fellow citizens, much less a majority of legislators. He taught me—by example, as a state legislator—that spending time and energy on making a small change and accepting compromise was a lot better than accomplishing nothing.

Professor Obama taught me that the point of politics is not to gain more power, or to defeat opponents, or to become more famous. The point—and the ultimate measure of success—is whether other people’s lives are improved. That’s it. That goal is worth our time, energy, and effort.

He also taught me that the impact of a great teacher, like the impact of a great leader, lasts forever.

http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/04/30/barack-obama-was-my-teacher

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Deus X wrote:

And about 30% of Americans hold the very same views--the same demented religiosity, the same contempt for anything that isn't "White, Christian and Male". Is this a great country or what?

I saw some jag-off on Twitter today crying that nobody's addressing the "persecution and racism against white Christian males."

Now, I'm not Christian, by a long shot, but I am a white male, and I can say this with total authority: if anybody can't handle life in America being a white male, they'd never handle more than an hour of being anything else, anywhere. And being Christian, if anything, makes life easier. Christians get all the advantages, especially down South. I'm not whining about that -- I get around it -- but Christians pretending to be "persecuted" in the United States is fucking hilarious. Their wish to ban Muslims just adds some irony. I don't think they understand what "persecution" means. Not having everyone bow down and never oppose you on anything isn't "persecution." It's just life. In the Middle East, Christians get persecuted. In America, everything's pretty much geared to 'em. It'd be nice if they'd accept it and enjoy it and kwithabitchin. But, that's no fun. Getting advantages and feeling like the abused minority, that's the best of both worlds. And boy oh boy do they soak in it.

White males are starting to get really embarrassing, with all the whining. Yeah, we have struggles. That's life. Everyone has 'em. It's still easier for us than it is any other race or sex, though. For all their talk of "persecution," if someone offered these white males the chance to trade places with anyone else, say, a black woman, they'd run from that so fast it'd leave a contrail.

Floridatexan wrote:
Law professors sometimes behave like the smartest people in the room, if not the world. They pontificate to the class and encourage students to marvel at their eloquence and faculties.

Was Seaoat a law professor? If not, he missed his calling.

zsomething wrote:I saw some jag-off on Twitter today crying that nobody's addressing the "persecution and racism against white Christian males."

Now, I'm not Christian, by a long shot, but I am a white male, and I can say this with total authority: if anybody can't handle life in America being a white male, they'd never handle more than an hour of being anything else, anywhere.  And being Christian, if anything, makes life easier.   Christians get all the advantages, especially down South.  I'm not whining about that -- I get around it -- but Christians pretending to be "persecuted" in the United States is fucking hilarious.  Their wish to ban Muslims just adds some irony.  I don't think they understand what "persecution" means.  Not having everyone bow down and never oppose you on anything isn't "persecution."  It's just life.  In the Middle East, Christians get persecuted.  In America, everything's pretty much geared to 'em.  It'd be nice if they'd accept it and enjoy it and kwithabitchin.  But, that's no fun.  Getting advantages and feeling like the abused minority, that's the best of both worlds.  And boy oh boy do they soak in it.

The Christian right, particularly the fundamentalist factions, have been banging this "persecution" drum for 50 years that I know of. Listen to some Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell "sermons" from the late '60s and early '70s. They built empires and made millions off this bullshit.

And Amen! to: "if anybody can't handle life in America being a white male, they'd never handle more than an hour of being anything else, anywhere." What a bunch of crybabies.

Got to love the way the very thought of her running burns the cracker barrel boys. Go Oprah!

President shithole found a way to quiet the buzz about President Oprah. No need for Oprah to shut down. She can support another more qualified candidate now that we know what triggers the most fear in their sub human voters.