The Manchurian candidate strikes again
Bookworm on Jun 09 2009 at 12:04 pm | Filed under: Barack Obama
Hitting on many of the same points I did in my analysis of Obama’s Cairo speech, Frank Gaffney makes the compelling argument that, whether Obama is a believing Muslim or just an ideologue, he has aligned himself in significant ways with the Muslim world, and clearly hopes to drag America in the sharia direction. Even those who were most rosy in their predictions about Obama the Wonderful probably didn’t think they were buying this product.
As for that last point, I am becoming increasingly convinced that Obama is a plant. (And yes, I know I sound completely paranoid, but bear with me.) There are things about this man that just don’t add up:
1. He is touted as the most charismatic, charming person ever to hit the White House yet absolutely no one from his past seems to remember him. Aside from the political operatives who cultivated him, we’ve had virtually no testimonials (positive or negative) from old classmates, colleagues, friends or neighbors. His invisibility is bizarre enough, but it’s especially weird considering his alleged charm.
2. He is touted as the most brilliant wordsmith ever, with the proof being his two autobiographies. Aside from the ego part of two autobiographies from a man who was a no one when he wrote the first and barely a someone when he wrote the second, others have commented on how weirdly out of keeping they are with his other written and spoken work.
When Obama speaks off the cuff, his speech is grammatically incorrect and often incoherent, peppered with ungainly “uhs” and “ums” and “you knows.” He also resorts to ghetto boasting and threats. The only time he sounds good is when he’s reciting a memorized speech, as he did in 2004, when he leaped into national prominence. As for his writing, aside from the two books, he never wrote a note for Law Review, his youthful poetry attempt is appalling, and his one joint note with other law students is stultifying. Something’s wrong here.
3. He is touted as the most brilliant thinker ever, yet he’s incapable of traveling without TOTUS, so much so that he even needs TOTUS in what are supposed to be open-ended question and answer sessions. Scarily, even with TOTUS, he can’t keep things straight. He is also a fount of scary misinformation on every subject known to man (here’s just the most recent example, but you’ll find the bulk of the errors collected in Hot Air’s Obamateurism columns), although its a question whether these errors arise because he’s uneducated (despite those fancy degrees), misinformed, or genuinely committed to falsehoods for political advantage.
4. He, and his acolytes, cried “foul” (well, really, they cried “racism”) when conservatives dared to use his middle name (that would be “Hussein”), when they asked questions about his Muslim youth, and when they pointed to the fact that many of his friends and advisors were radical Islamists or fellow travelers. However, as Gaffney coherently sums up, Obama is giving every indication that he is himself either a Muslim or a fellow traveler.
In other words, nothing is as it seems. Obama’s followers boast of his virtues, but the facts don’t bear them out. His past hints at an angry nobody, with limited talents. His present shows us an angry somebody, with limited talents. As Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland (and might have been honest enough to say of Obama), there’s no there there.
Still, to the extent Obama’s walking around the West Wing and apologizing around the world, how did this nobody scale the heights? Does he have as his true talent a feral opportunism that enables him to float along on political tides, without any single body guiding, pushing or dragging him? Or is there a single intelligence (not his own) that has long been behind this man, shaping him, creating a history for him, and controlling his thoughts and actions in the White House?
And yes, I know this sounds utterly paranoid, but I simply cannot reconcile the touted virtues with the absence of proof of those virtues and, for that reason, I cannot believe that he scaled these dizzying heights on his own.
So, my dear friends, either talk me down from my paranoid mountain top, or direct this conversation elsewhere, or, well, something else….
Related posts:
Email This Post To A Friend
38 Responses to “The Manchurian candidate strikes again”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
In a way he is Reagan. Not the real Reagan, but the Reagan which the Left believes in to this day. That is, a handsome, personable dunce who simply must be a front for the real thinkers. As one coworker of the period put it, “Somebody is writing those index cards he reads from!” When the smoke clears, this is going to look like a bad political novel, and I suspect that BHO will be as amazed as the rest of us.
Your theory fits the facts better than the media p.r.
TREGONSEE – so who is Obama, really? Lincoln? Reagan? God?
Ha! I wrote the above….and followed it with two paragraphs of not-terribly-calm defense of Reagan, before re-reading your post and recognizing that you DO understand that the “amiable dunce” meme was a leftist fabrication.
Be careful how you word stuff! And if you want to know who wrote the note cards, get In His Own Hand (http://www.amazon.com/Reagan-His-Own-Hand-Revolutionary/dp/B000H2MA86/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1244581386&sr=8-1) and you’ll know.
No one who looked at Reagan’s career and accomplishments could honestly continue to believe the media canard…..BW’s post makes a case for Obama’s emptiness that is hard to refute. Where is the counter-evidence?
By the way, doesn’t the whole Reagan bashing thing now look like another version of what one of the radio talkers pointed out — that leftists are constantly “projecting” their own (nasty) characteristics onto their (often innocent) political opponents?
Barack Obama the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.
Oh, Z, you drinker of Kool-Aid, you!
Obama is enough to make any conservative paranoid, but please don’t discover the Bilderbergers! I have a leftist relative who’s gone off the deep end over him. What seems like conspiracy is usually just stupidity.
He had the help of the corrupt and compromised Republican Party of Illinois, along with an incompetent and guillible media willingly and eager to destroy his political opponents for him.
That is, in effect, all you need. There is a reason why the free publication of opposing views is protected by the First Amendment. But there is no freedom of publication when the media suppresses and intimidates away opposing views.
BW…you surprise me.
Why on earth would you confuse clarity of thought with being paranoid.
As if on cue…this article has many more questions without answers.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=100613
I dunno…I’m starting to have warm feelings toward Obama. I feel a tinkle..er, I mean, tingle down my leg.
Danny, that was a piss-poor joke.
uh..oh, Danny.
If it’s a bladder problem see a urologist. If you get the all clear – consult a neurologist.
The Columbia thesis advisor seems to be the only person out of Obama’s past who has stepped forward to vouch for his brilliance, and he is a campaign contributor.
The biggest disconnect is the difference between Dreams of My Father and the rest of Obama’s writings. How can the writer of that book, who could clearly turn a phrase so beautifully, produce such banal prose in virtually all of his future writings? His inaugural address, which he must have been thinking about for months if not years, was instantly forgettable.
Nobody can prove that Obama is a plant. But I challenge the MSM to list the ways that Obama’s behavior would be different if he was NOT a plant acting on behalf of multi-million dollar contributors from the Arab countries and global plutocrats like George Soros.
How can the writer of that book, who could clearly turn a phrase so beautifully, produce such banal prose in virtually all of his future writings?
Two different authors?
Ayers probably wrote Dreams of My Father. One of the AT writers developed that analysis last month. I do not think BO is that intelligent. And I agree that he is angry. Thanks to his mother and grandparents. And his stint in that Madrasa in Indonesia.
I think the little men behind the curtain are Ayers, Soros, and the head of the NYT. History is replete with triumvirates, especially at times of change. The thing about triumvirates is, they often knock each other off.
To restate the obvious, you’re paranoid only if you think someone is out to get you when in fact no one is. Obama is out to get every independent, self sufficient, confident, god fearing, patriotic individual in this country. The definition of an American. He is out to get America and all Americans. He wants to create dependent, needy, fearful, Idol worshiping, slaves who willingly follow the dictates of his masters.
Not if we can help it.
Al
[...] tip: Bookworm Room and Mark [...]
You’re not on a paranoid mountain. We’re all just in a Kafka novel, wondering when we will wake up!
On a serious note – “He also resorts to ghetto boasting and threats.”
In my opinion, those few incidents alone should have turned most voters off. But for some reason they were not made into the news stories that they should have been; think Dick Cheney and the F-bomb or Pres. Bush and Cheney in “he’a a major league A??hole”, and “big time.” The difference being Obama’s comments were intended to be public as they were aimed at voters.
What a poor way for any national leader (or candidate) to act unless he is a third-world dictator. Maybe it is all very Kafkaesque afterall?
I don’t know who first said it, but I think it applies in most cases:
Never attribute to Conspiracy what can be satisfactorily explained by Incompetence.
Joe, that’s Hanson’s Razor. As in VDH.
To pick up on Al’s comment – I remember reading last year way before the election that a person whose profession it is to identify such things went through Obama’s writing and and named Ayres as the author of one of his books – or at least large chunks. Someone with more time than I have right now (new grammy!) could probably find this essay online. When BW mentioned that he really is a terrible public speaker(uh, um, etc) without his scrolling sidekick, I thought this ‘fit’ with facts as we have come to know them about this President.
I’m tired of second guessing my gut instinct about this man as a sham and I’m happy that someone of BW’s intellegence and common sense has echoed my own (and I’ll bet many others) thoughts and put them in very coherant order.
I blame the universities and public education system for long ago abandoning the instruction of the history of this country which has resulted in students lacking the facts to refute – if not publicly, in their own minds – the sliming of America by people like Ayres who is now in a position to write cirriculum, for God’s sake.
I could go on, but the rest of you are much smarter than this ol’ gal, and I visit this site more often than I comment! God bless our disappearing America.
Jack Cashill did an intense study with other ‘literary forensic’ specialists, and there is no way that Obama wrote either book. They match, on the most important levels to that of Ayers work…and not surprisingly, if you look at Ayers’ regular ‘output’ there are gaps when he was obviously working on something else.
Obama has been groomed from the beginning.
These ‘facts’ have been around long before the election and every thing that was brought up was shot down as ‘paranoia’ and ‘racism’. Convenient.
He is a puppet. Right now, there are ‘people’ pulling the strings, but I want to go a step further in this ‘conspiracy’ and suggest an even deeper, darker ‘lurker in the shadows’ and that is on a spiritual level. “WE” as Americans have done a great job of letting God know He wasn’t ‘welcome’ here…first out schools…and so on, as a Gentleman, doesn’t take long to realize that we will get what ‘we’ asked for. And Nature, as we know deplores a void. What better ‘thing’ to fill said void than with a man ‘devoid’ of anything of substance. A smoke and mirrors ‘front’, ‘plant’, ‘puppet’.
Ask these questions, MSM if you dare. HOW did Obama afford Harvard? Where are his transcripts that ‘prove’ he’s so intelligent (doesn’t appear to be in the flesh), where is the birth certificate that proves he is even eligible to BE POTUS? The ‘form’ he’s put up online would not even be accepted in most Hawaiian legal positions. How ’bout his passport info? How did he travel to Pakistan as an American when American’s were NOT allowed in that country? *according to his own words*? What about his Selective Service record?
The fact is, there are too many unanswered questions, and if this man were on teh Right, he’d have been put on the rack till we got them all satisfactorally answered.
Something very scary about him, which I’ve been saying for going on a year now. *tsk tsk*
This sort of analysis is not going to move the country back to conservative principles, IMHO. It’s the kind of statement that rallies the faithful, and we all nod in agreement as we pull the shades and fill our cups with another shot of bitterness.
Al, you may be correct, but is that the rhetoric that will move the middle back, not to the Republicans, but to the conservative concept of limited government, free markets, rule of law and self-reliance?
What is the best strategy to convince the middle that Obama’s way won’t lead to security but to drudgery, not to contentment but to bondage to the state- in some form of nanniism or statism, with the requisite loss of freedom these conditions impose.
What BW has done, IMHO, is walk the fine line between creating legitimate doubts about who Obama is, without crossing over to caricature. I think this is the only strategy that makes sense.
According to Lou Dobbs, 60% of the Americans now receive more from the government that they pay in. If that statistic is true, the process of convincing our fellow Americans that the game is not about continually voting themselves a raise from the federal government, but about sustaining a way of life that has produced a country singularly standing as a beacon to the world.
Reagan was successful as a contrast to the dour view and statist policies that led to 20% inflation, 20% interest rates, produced a new phenomenon called “Stagflation” and the “misery index” and a near 11% unemployment rate before the country finally recovered in 1983. The antidote was Regan’s unwavering optimism and a positive plan to move forward.
When Bill Clinton assumed the presidency, the Democrats were giddy that they had finally reasserted their rightful place as majority party. It was the positive “Contract with America” that American’s responded to and rolled back their ambitions, not the misplaced attempt to pull the curtain back on the personal failings of the man.
Right now, conservatives are back in the desert, wandering aimlessly it appears to me, still finding our way. While we don’t know yet to what extent the American people have bought into the state as nanny, we need to articulate a positive vision that rewards entrepreneurship with a dose of practical compassion.
It is dangerous on our part to not recognize the extent that greed on Wall Street contributed to our problems, along with the usual suspects of the FED and the GSE’s, Fannie and Freddie, and a failed and nonexistent energy policy.
To what extent has the failure over 20 years to pursue real domestic energy sources grounded in reality and our desire for cheap “stuff” led to this point in our history? We are broke and quickly moving from a credit risk to credit danger. We have a balance of trade that has leaked $800 billion a year from our collective wealth, coupled with rising oil prices that suffocated our economy and will do so again.
As I see it, we need to articulate real solutions to problems that appear solutionless, given that a significant minority of our populace are actively seeking to destroy the economy to remake it in their vision. They currently have the upper hand.
Energy policy and health care are still on the table. How we deal with these two issues will define us for decades to come. The TARP debacle and the auto bailout are inconsequential compared to the damage done if we get these issues wrong, IMHO.
One of the things that struck me recently was BW’s link to the Pakistan situation. According to the link, Pakistan is moving aggressively against the Taliban into what may become a pincer move with American forces on the Afghan border. How can this be happening, when only months ago we were reading that the Taliban was moving to consolidate control with Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal as the grand prize?
The Taliban overreached. Was the strategy of the Pakistan government to allow the Taliban cruelty to drive the people to the central government and away from the jihad version of the mafia, or was it just fortunate “luck”? Either way, just as in Iraq, it was when the people had enough of the ‘new’ way that they fought back.
It seems to me that we should remind the American people of each reversal of position the Obama administration has made in only five months, call them on it each time it happens in the future and point out that it is always easier to campaign than to govern, and that we are equipped to govern. What will make this task difficult is overcoming the media filter’s grip on the national narrative.
I remember right after the election, several threads on this blog about what the conservative movement should be- to what extent the party should reflect social values, vs. economic ones. The media filters want to drive a wedge between the two elements of the conservative movement. It is up to us to make sure they don’t succeed.
[...] – who is by no means a conspiracy-loving sort – is beginning to wonder why it is our president has no paper trail at all, (thank you, ntellectually incurious pressi) and why the man who campaigned on [...]
Al, you may be correct, but is that the rhetoric that will move the middle back, not to the Republicans, but to the conservative concept of limited government, free markets, rule of law and self-reliance?
No amount of rhetoric is going to make people do what they don’t want to do.
where unimpressed
Were.
[...] Obama’s true face will soon begin to be seen by Americans. And I don’t think they will like the real Obama or those that pull his strings… Sphere [...]
I see that our ever-eloquent Helen, the blackest white lady that ever wuz, has decided to do a snarky driveby, couched in her own private language.
Here’s my response:
The imp error haz know close.
LOL (<–Martel laughs, Helen-style, at his own joke.)
Actions speak louder than words. O’s actions are a combination of the disasterous fiscal policies of Carter (creating crisis), and the power grabbing of ’30s era Hitler. The combination of magnified crisis, and power -extra constitutional power- consolidation is alarming. Those who KNOW it can’t happen here, have not read any history. Human nature is what it is. Tyrany CAN happen here, unless good people guard against it.
Additionally, he continues showing himself to be completely untrustworthy regardless of your hopes/expectations: whatever he says he ends up doing just the opposite. Many people & groups that supported him in the election are now disapointed by what he’s actually done in office. You may well say this is true of all politicians, but never has it been quite as universal as with this man. There comes a point at which a person’s actions can no longer be directly related to thier words …except as a negation.
As to the idea of a plant, or manchurain candidate, I have never been satisfied as to why those who would like to see his birth certificate should be pillaried as nutcases. It seems straight forward enough to require someone to provide common documentration showing compliance with one of the few constitutional requirements for holding such a powerful office. We all show proper ID for all kinds of activities (some quite trivial), so why in the world would this be an unreasonable request for a candidate for President?
I want to reply in drive-by mode to Helen, but someone so burdened by white guilt is obviously suffering from incurable university-of-the-left inspired demons and I give up – but I’m glad Charles didn’t.
I agree with Oldbill. Little League requires more certification than does the presidency. (Original birth certificate; other forms of current residency).
Check out this video of Obama stammering through a non-answer of what to do about North Korea. God help us.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqMdROiM8wU&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fpajamasmedia%2Ecom%2Frichardfernandez%2F&feature=player_embedded
Hat tip to the Belmont Club
There is no rule of law. There is only the rule of Obama.
gpc31:
Our stammering leader looked like a deer caught in headlights.
Charles Martel:
That’s what we love about you – you are so damn glib!
Brian E is right that the most effective way to rally the troops and turn this herd of lemmings away from the cliff is to develop and broadcast a positive message. Obama had a positive if vacuous message in “Yes we can.” That message succeeded because the media-liberal-political complex forced it down the electorates’ throats while snuffing out critical discussion.
One of the things I find bothersome is that so many of us buy much of the lib propaganda.
The phrase “Greedy Wall Street Brokers” is just as invalid as “Lazy Mexicans” or “Wellfare Abusing Blacks”. Greedy Wall Street Brokers did not cause the economic meltdown.The meltdown was caused by the enactment of financially irresponsible banking policies by the Democrats in Congress, and the thuggish enforcement of those policies on the banks by the Dems in government and their friends in the Liberal “non profit” community organizing groups. Just read Chris Cantrell’s discussion of Thomas Sowell’s book in yesterday’s AT.
We need a leader with a positive message. I guess my angry rhetoric is partially a result of the lack of such a leader. But it is still true.
Sarah has always looked good.
Al
Al and BrianE: I’ll buy the “positive message” meme, SO LONG AS the positive message includes the information about what the results of Obama’s policies “positively” WILL BE, if we adopt them.
The health scheme is the big one on the horizon right now. We have ABUNDANT empirical evidence of what is going to happen if his plan is adopted — Medicare, Canada, Great Britain. Why there aren’t half a dozen Republicans giving a speech EVERY DAY (it could be different guys each day) on this subject, and “positively” explaining to the American people what is about to happen to their medical care, is something I cannot understand.
The AMA has JUST gotten out there with a rejection of Obamacare – where the h**l have they been? Where are the pharmaceutical companies, the hospital representative groups, and so on and on. Our problem isn’t that the message has been negative, it’s that NO message is being given. Much as I love the alternative media, the blogs telling the truth about this stuff hardly count in terms of turning back the tide.
It would be a mistake to gloss over the fact that positive messages make people receptive only in cases of truly terrible circumstances, such as the Carter generated economic disaster when Reagan was campaigning.
The easiest and most assuredly reliable means of making people love one thing is to give them reasons to hate and fear another.
Planning a strategy around “positive messages” while blinding yourself to the fact that no positive message was ever conceived in a vacuum devoid of negative consequences and beliefs, would result in an ultimate disaster.
Obama avoided this, because he had his saboteurs, traitors, and character assassins working in the background on his political opponents. If that is the “positive” way to victory people want to advocate, they must bear with the consequences of just what Obama’s “positive’ message was derived from.
People made the same mistake with Iraq. They thought that if they just played patty cake and was “positive” about “democracy” and “freedom” that the Iraqis would come on board. While certainly many Iraqis did come on board, the Sunnis did not. And the Sunnis did not, because they had not been made to feel the terror and the damnation of what real “negativity” and “occupation” was. They had no context from which to make informed judgments about America. Al Qaeda gave them that context. It was not just a bunch of sappy happy kids floating around US Marines that gave us victory.
People should not forget that.
>>…Sunnis did not, because they had not been made to feel the terror and the damnation of what real “negativity” and “occupation” was.>>
The Sunnis did not because they had the power under Saddam. People don’t give up power easily. We have the expression “he’s on a power trip”…it’s real. It’s a form of mental disease, imo. Until the Sunnis were made to understand that they absolutely did not have the power any longer, they were not amenable to negotiating. Once they realized that the power was gone, they negotiated to get the best deal they could. They also realized that having lost that power, that unless the US military stood between them and the Shia that they had abused for so long, they were toast.
The goal of people like Helen in the US is to stir up the same kind of power conflict between blacks and whites. It hasn’t worked so far for two reasons: first, blacks actually can enter the middle class if they’re willing to work; second, those who are not willing to work seem reasonably content on the dole. Sure they want more, but they’re willing to settle for less if it means they can get it without effort. At this point, I think the next point of conflict is between the mexicans and the blacks. They compete for the same jobs, and the mexicans – having been oppressed by _real_ poverty – are willing to work the hard jobs. Blacks _used_ to be in this category, but aren’t willing to do the hard jobs any more, so they’re being replaced by mexicans. I’d think, myself, that the blacks would be the most active group in wanting illegal immigration stopped, but for some reason, they just don’t seem to care very much. I guess they’re confident that their no effort bennies are going to keep coming – and maybe even get better.
One other aspect of the conflict between blacks and Mexicans is the consequence of the neo-genocidal policies of the white liberal elite in this country. With an abortion rate of 35% and a bastardy rate of 70%—spurred on by Margaret Sanger’s stealth racists at Planned Parenthood and almost 50 years of a welfare system that denigrates fatherhood—blacks are looking on in dismay as their numbers stagnate and Mexicans’ numbers grow robustly.
I don’t know how many “doh” moments blacks need before they wake up and realize that the same party that fought for years to keep them under Jim Crow has now labored for two generations to strip them of their manhood, respect for marriage, work ethic and appreciation for education.
But I suppose that as long as race hustlers like Obama, Wright, Sharpton and Jackson can live high on the hog, and as long as there are white con artists who can lure in gullible types like Helen to accept the idea of black inferiority by explaining away black pathology as some sort of colorful, intuitive, separate form of reality, racism in this country is going to have a great shelf life.