1 in 5 Americans STILL think Obama is a Muslim

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Yes, I agree. Yet we could say he spent 45 years in America and 4 years in Indonesia.

However, at 8 my oldest doesn't seem much like child any longer, with her proclaimed, "Evil plans to take over the world," (although she is still a child in many ways). They grow so fast; the "best childhood" years (from my own experience) are 3 to 6 - just after they get out of diapers until they start to become more independent, at around 8 years.

 

Wow. Is this REALLY that important to Americans? Wow.

As far as I can see, this seems like an impossible question to answer. No matter what he does or says, someone is going to say he is or isn't whatever religion he is trying or not trying to be. Even the experts on these Boards can't decide.

Why not judge him on what he does rather than what he is?

If he turns the economy around and gives everyone a job, surely it wouldn't matter if he called himself a Voodoo Witchdoctor. Would people really say "Sorry, I don't want the job that Obama created for me, because he's a Presbyterian son of a Muslim, and God told me to hate those sinners all the way to Hell"?

 

Yes, hence the reason everything is falling apart here; because this is the kind of stupid nonsense that sucks up all the oxygen in the room. I'm afraid it's going to take something drastic to happen before it changes. Hopefully, the "real adults" in the country can manage to keep things running.

 

Is it really that hard to believe that the first candidate ever to need secret service protection before getting nominated might possibly need to worship in private in order to protect himself and his family? Take heart, though. Once Obama caves into the pressure, begins to worship in public, and gets assassinated, at least we'll know for sure that he's Christian.

 

All this talk of "assassination" and "shoot him" really irks me. I won't comment on this topic because it's f***ked!

 

Starfox,
talk of "assassination" and "shoot him" it isn't even far fetched. The Secret Service reports death threats against the President have quadrupled since Obama took office.

The more the conservative opposition demonizes Obama as 'the other' (a Muslim, a Socialist, Communist or imposter from Kenia or Indonesia etc.) the risk that someone literally takes a shot at him increases, simply because if someone is only nutty enough, the political rhetoric from the right, insanely over the top (not to mention, blatantly false) as it is, will provide him with off the shelf arguments to rationalise his deed as 'tyrannicide', and see himself as a patriot. The right is cynically playing with fire, fanning the flames of anger.

Of course, if then something happens the same people who are now vocally demonizing him will proclaim they never wanted that. Think of Bill O' Reilly, who routinely introduced the late Dr. Tiller as 'Tiller the Babykiller', who in O' Reilly's narrative despite his crimes kept escaping justice. O' Reilly then was shocked, just shocked, when one very angry man assassinated him. Yes, who'd have thought that could possibly happen.

 

Not true Drew -- he was the earliest, not the only. Kerry and Edwards had protection during their primaries and Hillary already had protection based on her status as former first lady.

 

America - get a grip and come out of the dark ages. Religion doesn't matter and in all probability doesn't even exist. Sort your heads out.

Yours sincerely,

The Rest of the World

 

Dear England, Britain, UK or whatever you're calling yourselves;

Get your act together. The Lockerbie bomber is still alive and we have oil on our beaches.

Best Regards from the guys who kicked your ass twice,

The United States of America​

To be more on topic -- there are nutcases and ignorant people in every society and in every country. I don't believe one country has a monopoly, but the US certainly does a better job at exposing idiocy.

 

And they have strength in numbers, boosting their statistical chances to generate idiocy at a noticeable scale.

 

Ooooh, touchy. Someone got out the wrong side of bed. Come back when you've won a war on your own, or possessed the largest empire in history, or in fact have any history to speak of at at all . Bosh.

"The sun never sets on the British empire"

 

It is quite weird, I occasionally read yahoo news and every third post says Obama is a muslim, communist, wants to kill America, or something like that. I can understand a part of the spectrum believing that, but it's almost like there is no moderate right... BTW, as per the last gallup poll (that I know of, at least) there are officially more Republicans believing Obama is a Muslim than those beliving he is Christian. Can this really be called "fringe" anymore? I do believe there is a media campaign against the man - not all media, naturally, mostly outlets that are biased by nature - but I am surprised how effective it is proving to be.

I'm trying to remember if Bush was ever so vehemently hated (by Americans, at least), and it's close. I don't really see what Obama did to create such a strong reaction, really. Healthcare "reform" didn't even introduce a public plan. He boosted the military contingent in Afghanistan as he said he would, he decreased it in Iraq as he said he would, and if there is mass collectivization and shooting of dissidents in the US I certainly haven't heard of it.

 

Beyond that, even, we're also arrogant enough to export our culture (and thus our idiocy) to every other nation in the world as our #1 export!

I like Sliders' Prof. Maximilian Arturo's take on it better:
"The reason the sun never sets on the British empire is because God doesn't trust the English in the dark."

What did Bush do to be so hated? And, just to clarify things, numerous reports have concluded that Bush was given bad intelligence on Iraq and that nothing criminal occurred. Unfortunately, it's the direction that politics has taken in the US for a number of years. Clinton was hated by the Right. Bush was despised by the Left. Now Obama is being demonized by the Right. Anyone remember how things were under Bush Sr? I was too young to pay attention to politics then.

 

He was perceived as an aggressive warmonger who fudged the intelligence to go to a war that was not necessary, and he and his party antagonized/insulted by proxy (right-wing media in the US) anyone who disagreed. It took some doing to turn the US from a near-universal object of sympathy after 9/11, into the country many people worldwide considered the biggest threat to peace a few years later, but he managed. The war in Iraq, especially after the Downing Street memos and the controversies about Colin Powell's speech to the UN, is widely considered to have been started under a manufactured excuse. The UN watchdogs were ridiculed and dismissed, and everyone who disagreed was painted as traitor or coward even - hey, a lot of people might not like that, either, especially as the ridiculed watchdogs turned out to have been more accurate than the "infallible" intelligence used to start the war. That was only one of the things that made him unpopular, although it is by far the biggest reason.

Overall, I'd say at least as far as the rest of the world goes, it was mostly the posturing and ham-fisted approach to both its allies in Europe and the Middle East, as well as what many considered a war that was willfully started for political reasons. And yes, Clinton was hated. So was Bush. So is Obama. So will be whoever takes up the job next. Yet I think it matters what the reasons for this hatred are, and how grounded in fact they are.

As for those "numerous reports", what I've read does not completely excuse his administration. If anything, some of them knew that their case against Iraq was flimsy and they knew it, but went through anyway - even when some of the countries that had supplied them with information (such as Germany) weren't willing to act on the same information.

 

I'm going to cheat a little and just post what some historians have had to say about the Bush presidency. Here's just a few comments:

I know many may not agree. But I'm not about to rate the Obama presidency as a success either, despite the false accusations of being an "obama fanboy." Some liberals and progressives have proclaimed Obama, "George W. Bush II." We are a crowd of tough love. The worst thing about Bush in my opinion was that he believed in the notion of an imperial presidency, which had almost unlimited power. He was the self-proclaimed "decider." But as John Adams once obeserved that resides ultimately with "the Ameican people."

http://hnn.us/articles/5019.html

 

"1 in 5 Americans STILL think Obama is a Muslim."

If I saw this first I would have been amazed. Unfortunately, I did read about a study that showed that US college graduates from the past few years actually think Beethoven was a dog and couldn't believe IBM started with typewriters. In the age of Google, Yahoo and Bing, they still don't know where to find the answers. Ah well, perhaps there's just too many versions of the "right" answers in the internet.

 

In their defense, Beethoven was a funny movie when you were a kid.

 

Chandos, do you have access to a more recent "evaluation"? The one from 2004 might not be particularly relevant today, considering that it only covered part of Bush Jr.'s first term.

 

Good point. Katrina didn't happen yet, Rove didn't have a special prosecutor chasing him, we weren't hiring Blackwater mercenaries in Iraq, fanboy Tom DeLay had not been arrested for his shady dealings with Abramoff, he didn't think that Harriet Meiers would make a good Supreme Court justice, Cheney didn't set up Scotter Libby to be his fall guy after revealing the identity of a special agent, the housing market was still booming, he had banned most of the research on stem cells, and we had not yet lost 40% of the value of the stock market. (Ah, the memories.)

Here's the thing I don't get. Some are saying that Obama has not given incontrovertible proof that he isn't a Muslim. He has produced a birth certificate from Hawaii, and the newspaper from Honolulu the day after he was born reports that he was born there the day before. If this isn't considered incontrovertible proof, then I assert that no president has supplied incontrovertible proof.

 

This is from the only poll I could find in 2010:

http://readme.readmedia.com/America...th-Presidential-Expert-Poll-1982-2010/1546118

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States

For me, personally, Obama's failure has been in two areas, the biggest being the economy, which he's been all over the place on, with no clear direction. The second, pure politics. They say they don't worry about the 24/7 cable news cycle, but it's clear they are not being truthful - I think they worry and fret over it 24/7, (they are Dems after all).