Re: Report: Malaysia Airlines flight crashes in Ukraine
It is not racism to bring up affirmative action.
I didn't say it was racism. I said it was playing the race card. One can focus on race without being a racist. I was accused of playing the race card and I replied that I was responding to someone - you - who brought up race first.
It's also not incompatible to be an idiot and be a law professor, or a senior lecturer, which was Obama's title.
The University of Chicago itself has a note on their website (since it became such a Frequently Asked Question) explaining that Obama's title of Senior Lecture is a full equivalent to a professor. Here, don't take my word for it; take theirs:
UC Law School statement: The Law School has received many media requests about Barack Obama, especially about his status as "Senior Lecturer." From 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Barack Obama served as a professor in the Law School. He was a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996. He was a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004, during which time he taught three courses per year. Senior Lecturers are considered to be members of the Law School faculty and are regarded as professors, although not full-time or tenure-track. The title of Senior Lecturer is distinct from the title of Lecturer, which signifies adjunct status. Like Obama, each of the Law School’s Senior Lecturers have high-demand careers in politics or public service, which prevent full-time teaching. Several times during his 12 years as a professor in the Law School, Obama was invited to join the faculty in a full-time tenure-track position, but he declined.
His intelligence, or lack there of, isn't that important to me. Although I'll disagree when people claim he is so smart, after giving no sign whatsoever of that being the case.
I disagree with that. Even though his verbal output is full of verbal ticks, I think he has good argumentation and good logical analysis when he is talking about something, which are, according to psychologists, indirect ways to gauge someone's verbal IQ. I do think he is smart, not just because it is so unlikely to achieve his honors and his position at the U of C without being smart, but due to direct observation.
Some people, for whatever reason, just get whisked along. I am sure that there are many people on these boards that have witnessed people in jobs of some importance, and wonder how the hell an idiot like that was able to get that job. I can think of several people that I've seen along the way that are a complete mystery.
This is a lot less common in high level academics in institutions such as the Ivy League universities and the U of Chicago. Seriously, during my time at Columbia University, I was often in awe of how homogeneously smart the faculty was. Again, Barack Obama was just another unknown student when he earned his distinctions. I can't fathom Columbia University and Harvard University thinking "huh, we got this mediocre student here, Barack Obama, a nobody by the way, coming from some mixed family, an immigrant father who left the country and a mother who died, raised by his middle-class grand parents. Huh, out of the blue, let's just pretend his work is outstanding and give him our highest grades. Who cares for our standards we've been upholding strictly for more than a century? We just feel like whisking along the mediocre kid." My friend, this is HIGHLY unlikely. If he earned the distinctions, it's because his grades and work were outstanding, and if he got hired by the U of C and offered tenured track full professorship in one of the top 5 law schools in the nation, it's because they were very pleased with his work. Remember, this all happened way before any political ambition.
Doing the job effectively and with fidelity to the Constitution and the founding of this country, that is of utmost importance. And that is where his greatest failures lie. In fact, I would classify him as an enemy of the Constitution.
No doubt about it. I entirely agree with this part. I think the constitutional part has a lot to do with trying to get out of the paralysis in Congress but still, it's no justification. I don't like it either.
When he got elected, I decided I wouldn't prejudge him. Although with his background, lack of qualifications, and affiliations, I had solid doubts about his ability to rise up to the task of being POTUS. And he is certainly and overall failure as a president, smart or not.
There's been people even less qualified who got offered senior positions - the most blatant example being Sarah Palin, a barely literate woman who failed college four consecutive times and was only able to land a soft degree when transferred to a fifth, low level college, and couldn't even quote an important national newspaper. Vice-President candidate? Give me a break! But yes, Barack Obama did disappoint and has been a very weak president. Again, it has NOTHING to do with his intelligence.
And, I just must apologize, as I look at the thread topic, since this has drifted a bit away from it.
True.