Thanks, Obama!
Submitted by HenryAWallace on Wed, 11/09/2016 - 11:39am
More than one person has said that it was Obama's trolling of Trump that made up Trump's mind to run for President, especially that bit at the White House Press Correspondents' Dinner held shortly after Obama produced his long form birth certificate and played the Lion King video as his official birth video.
Thanks, Obama!
Gotta say, though, a birther had it coming. However, it was Hillary's campaign that started both the secret Muslim stuff and the birther stuff.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Htt91G2qDwM]
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8TwRmX6zs4]
Their first transition meeting should be fun!
Comments
The Lion King video was funny though!
I agree. I laughed out loud that night.
And, as I said, a birther deserves what he gets from Obama. However, it's usually better to leave that kind of thing to surrogates.
You shouldn't kick people below you on the ladder,
You may meet them again on your way down.
Wherever I've worked, I've made friends first with the people
who are considered the lowest on the totem pole. Maintenance, cleaning staff, supply clerks, copy machine operators, messengers, etc.
It has always stood me in very good stead. They've certainly been very nice to me in return. Also, they're often more interesting to me.
It pays to treat those below you
well. When I was working, we had a very sharp young college age guy who worked part time as a runner and helping do other generral chores such as covering the phones etc.
I often asked him to pick up things for me at other offices and he would immediately do so with a smile. However one of the higher ups said she had problems with him, which surprised me. When he left to take a full time job elsewhere, he came up to me and said "You were always my favorite planner. Do you know why?" I shook my head no. Then he said, "you always came to me personally and thanked me. Being appreciated meant a lot."
Thanking someone personally was such a small thing, but it paid big dividends in his loyalty to me. They say if you want to know what is really going on in an office, talk to the secretaries or clerks or those near the bottom of the pecking order. They know everything and are not afraid to say so. They are also the people who can make you look good. I know our runner did so for me.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
It pays but it also shows something else.
Someone has said that if you want to evaluate a person look at how they treat those working for them. I always found this a good yardstick in my life. People who were dismissive of or discourteous to those below them were usually untrustworthy and shallow; those who treated everyone more or less equally were usually dependable and decent. You may certainly take this as a personal compliment.
-Greed is not a virtue.
-Socialism: the radical idea of sharing.
-Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy, In a speech at the White House, 1962
I could not agree more. Sometimes, people in a large workplace
are treated like furniture by people making a lot more than they make. Treating them like people makes such a huge difference. I didn't do it for the returns. I did it because my parents and aunts and uncles all had hard jobs that were considered lowly.
For example, when I taught, which was my first job out of college (lasted only a year), I went to say hello to maintenance staff my first day before anyone else because my favorite uncle was a janitor for the city. But then, it turned out that my room never had a broken thermostat, never ran out of chalk, never had a dirty window or an overflowing wastebasket, etc.
As with your experience, other teachers complained about such things, both to maintenance and in the teacher's lounge. I never had a single problem, no exaggeration. The head of maintenance would even stop by to make sure everything was okay.
In the business world, my copies got made before anyone else's, my hand deliveries got taken care of first and so on. When I needed a huge task finished ASAP, secretaries who had left even came back from their new jobs to work overtime for me. The littlest gesture paid huge dividends. I can only shudder to think how everyone else treated them.
Actually, I was thinking if Obama had pushed as hard for a
$15 minimum wage as he did for Obamacare, if he had fixed Obamacare so the premiums weren't skyrocketing (i.e. had that pie-in-the-sky public option), improved the bankruptcy laws especially so student debt could be discharged, bailed out the homeowners instead of the banks, regulated the banks so they couldn't teeter on the edge again, urged his DOJ to jail some out-of-control cops for civil rights violations already, stood with DAPL, outlawed fracking, took subsidies away from oil and gas and gave them to wind and solar, rewrote NAFTA with better terms for the U.S., gave up on the TPP or at least made it transparent, outlawed the offshoring of profits, stopped not only boots on the ground but drones in the air, waged peace, and if he couldn't do these things pushed like hell on them so that it was clear that he stood for the PEOPLE not Corporations, then maybe we would have actually been interested in extending his legacy and maybe we would not have feared his successor.
But yeah, the roast thing was a little bit of the problem too.
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EC yeah you right.
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
President Obama will always mean to me
1. Wasted opportunity Huge popular vote, huge majority in the house, sixty in the Democratic Caucus. Not going to see that again any time soon.
2. Betrayal, in the sense of gaining our trust to get elected, then whammo! He wasted so much time initially, as if midterms were light years away. And on what? Cutting fuel subsidies to the poor. Breaking his campaign promise about a strong public option. Shell game with Medicare money and Obamacare money. Waiting on the Cat Food Commission to give him political cover to cut entitlements; and, when it didn't, setting up the likely unconstitutional Grand Bargain Commission and the sequester. Gee. I can't imagine why 2010 saw historic victories for Republicans.
3. THE last straw in Democratic politicians losing the trust and hope of the left of the party--but maybe that actually happened with Sanders. In any case, after Obama came a schism.
If he did those things...
he wouldn't be Obama. Those things you listed are not in his nature.
I'm afraid not. But you have to admit, it would have been a
legacy to be proud of. And being the continuation of all those things that didn't happen and aren't likely to happen does not a good campaign make.
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