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Cordova
Joined: 14 Apr 2009
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 Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2009 2:58 pm Post subject: |
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| Obama is a product of affirmitave action. Had his father been Italian or Dutch, he'd be just another white guy. For you left wingers out there who love to crow about imperialism, why is Hong Kong doing so well after just 12 years of freedom from Imperial rule? |
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asylum seeker
Joined: 22 Jul 2007
Location: On your computer screen.
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| Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2009 6:05 pm Post subject: |
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| The irony is, if Obama was white, nobody would likely even be debating whether his scores at Harvard were inflated. |
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ManintheMiddle
Joined: 20 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2009 12:47 am Post subject: |
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rollo noted:
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| She was put on the court by Bush senior, is center left on most issues, not an activist judge. |
I hope you're right but time will indeed tell as these appointees have a way of going south once on the bench. She would need to veer toward the center on her rulings to get my backing. But her statement about being better able to discern what is just is ignorant at best, racist at worst.
RufusW suspected:
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| Or the democrats want Rush to be the face of the Repubs... you didn't get that memo? |
Either way it makes Obama a malicious partisan, something he vowed to avoid.
Rufus was also skeptical:
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| Facts please for the bolded parts. |
You dig them up. He was a B- student at Punahou in Honolulu and was admitted to Occidental College in California, hardly a top-flight West Coast institution of higher learning. Two years later he was able to transfer to Columbia University, which is Ivy League, on scholarship (since his family couldn't have afforded it). It is very uncommon for this to occur, especially for White and Asian students, so do the math.
He did indeed earn high marks at Harvard, to his credit, but I noted that.
If you don't think affirmative action played a role in his earlier academic admissions status then Paris Hilton is in love doesn't bar hop either.
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| I suppose Republicans aren't partisan |
I never claimed that, nor is it germane to the discussion. Next....
Fox fretted:
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| Because Obama does it, it reveals a sense of entitlement, yet if George Bush did the same thing |
You've outfoxed yourself: unlike Obama, Bush never claimed to be apolitical in his choice. Indeed he made a point of saying that he didn't want his nominees to be those who legislate from the bench. Obama, on the other hand, would have us believe he is rising above the fray in making this choice. I say bullshit to that but of course liberals eat this stuff up. 
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| anti-Obama and anti-Left hate |
I haven't always been opposed to Obama if you bother to trace the recent history of my posts in this regard. As for the Left, I don't hate them any more than I hate cooked celery. I do despise their relentless and unexamined sanctimony, however. 
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| The fact that blacks overall did poorly on the test in no way demonstrates in and of itself that the test screened out a particular group for no good reason |
That's a load of horseshit. If that were the case, then why were no legal complaints lodged before the exam was given, or even after it was administered but before the scores were released? Previous firefighters had taken a different version of the same exam without complaint elsewhere in Connecticut. The FACT is that they didn't bother to study as much, if at all. And I guess you're unconcerned about the Hispanic firefighter who passed the test, eh?
Your tepid argument reminds me of the persistent claims of race and gender bias in the SAT which has never been proven. And those allegations were made decades ago against an outmoded form of the test. In 1991, for instance, White and Asian test takers from low income families who scored in the 20th percentile still managed to score better than Black test takers from high income families in the 80th percentile, according to then published results from the College Board via ETS. 
All standardized tests are designed to "weed people out;" that's why they're given. Not every Indian can be a chief in the firehouse, or would you prefer that? 
rollo persisted:
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| If he were white there would never be a question of whether he was given a pass. |
And just why is that, Sherlock? Answer: because Whites no longer get a pass in any testing situation and precious few academic ones, unless they're part of legacy admissions (re: GW Bush) or jocks.
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| He simply is not someone who I would lisen to when discussing Obama's academic record or character. |
You're right, but I never said or even implied that.
privateer exclaimed:
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| I can't believe the number of wacko statements and threads about Obama I keep seeing on the Current Events Forum. |
When you're not busy chasing your own shadow with your avatar, try to actually address my concerns and the reasoning that supports them. Otherwise, if you resort to ad hominem attacks, you'll be taken about as seriously as Al Franken on Air America.
RJjr delivered the classic knee-jerk response on behalf of victims everywhere:
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| I'm starting to wonder if I'm the only person on here who realizes my European ancestry was what got me a job in Korea. I see other guys with European ancestry who also supported workplace discrimination and racism by accepting teaching jobs in Korea, but then do an about face and cry like babies over what they perceive as racial entitlement when non-whites get jobs. |
Oh, come now, you've been wondering this for a long time, and not only wondering but believing with all the blind fervor liberals can summon to a misguided cause. Yes, the Korean who hired you was likely a racist for selecting you over a darker skinned candidate. So why did take the position anyway? Oh, let's not deal in personal ethics as it hits too close to home. Here's a NEWSFLASH fer ya: I'm not crying over spilled milk. I'm pissed because we've got a President who claims bipartisanship, who purports to fairmindedness, who aspires to the greatness of Lincoln (if that isn't arrogant, I don't know what is) and yet nominates someone to the highest court in the land to fill a double quota and play into his growing base of voters. I resent others getting something they didn't earn simply because of their race or gender--which flies in the face of everything MLK stood for, by the way. Now, if I were a Black man expressing this same concern--say like Shelby Steele--what would you say to try to deflect the thrust of my argument?
As for grade inflation, it's been on the rise in American education for at least three decades and those of us who taught before this phenomenon began and since know this is the case. Of course it doesn't happen across the board but if you think Harvard is immune, then I have a nice bridge from London in Arizona to sell to you.
asylum seeker noted:
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| The irony is, if Obama was white, nobody would likely even be debating whether his scores at Harvard were inflated. |
Precisely the case, but not due to White privilege, rather the realities of the admissions scene. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2009 2:32 am Post subject: |
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| ManintheMiddle wrote: |
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| The fact that blacks overall did poorly on the test in no way demonstrates in and of itself that the test screened out a particular group for no good reason |
That's a load of horseshit. If that were the case, then why were no legal complaints lodged before the exam was given, or even after it was administered but before the scores were released? Previous firefighters had taken a different version of the same exam without complaint elsewhere in Connecticut. The FACT is that they didn't bother to study as much, if at all. And I guess you're unconcerned about the Hispanic firefighter who passed the test, eh? |
Are you sure you read what you quoted correctly? I was saying I didn't feel the test was racially biased, and that the whites who did better did better because they studied harder and/or were more qualified, not because they were white. You responded, however, as if I were defending the judicial ruling in question, when I was actually attacking it and saying I felt the test results should have stood. |
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ManintheMiddle
Joined: 20 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2009 5:07 pm Post subject: |
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Fox:
Umbrage on your part at my reaction noted. Sorry, old boy, as the Brits might say. But in fairness, your use of double negatives in that highlighted quote threw me off.
You haven't addressed my other criticisms, however. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2009 2:04 am Post subject: |
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| ManintheMiddle wrote: |
Fox:
Umbrage on your part at my reaction noted. Sorry, old boy, as the Brits might say. But in fairness, your use of double negatives in that highlighted quote threw me off.
You haven't addressed my other criticisms, however. |
Well, in the former case, I simply disagree with you; although I'm ambivalent about Obama's choice to some extent, I don't think he's trying to trick anyone into thinking his choice isn't politically motivated. Rather, I think he's trying to be, as you'd say, "classy." Simply disagreeing with someone isn't very compelling, though, and ultimately I've got no real concrete evidence which might persuade you, so I didn't bother saying it.
In the latter case, you're saying I mischaracterized you as alwys having hated Obama and hating the Left, and I'm simply willing to take your word for it. Arguing with you about your own beliefs would be silly of me; if you say you don't hate the political Left, then okay. As such, I didn't contest your words. |
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agoodmouse
Joined: 20 Dec 2007
Location: Anyang
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| Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2009 3:56 am Post subject: |
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| Minority entitlement means what? |
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Adventurer
Joined: 28 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2009 7:57 am Post subject: |
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George Bush senior appointed Colin Powell. He was qualified, but I am certain George H.W. Bush did want the black vote. I don't get these comments about minority entitlement. The democrats want Hispanic support just as Republicans. When the GOP wanted support from the Christian Right, Bush talked about a ban on gay marriages, though Cheney had a gay daughter, and they knew it would not pass. I would say that's pretty cynical. What's the big deal about getting a person who is a woman and Hispanic?
As far as Obama's scores at Harvard, people do question the capabilities of many African Americans because many African Americans with lower scores than whites are admitted. However, Obama is extremely erudite, intellectual, and was a law professor. Certainly, his academic credentials are stellar.
He sounds the part, and that's very important. John Mc Whorter a conservative who despises affirmative action lamented the fact, basically, that he feels he is a very qualified person, that he is rather educated, but his credentials are sometimes doubted due to his race. I assure you, McWhorter writes in an extremely sophisticated style.
I think people are trying to find spurious reasons to attack Obama. I am not an Obama supporter, mind you. I am not for him or against him.
I just don't think the GOP has or had a better alternative.
This all seems much adieu about nothing, I am afraid. |
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Cordova
Joined: 14 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2009 1:54 pm Post subject: |
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| rollo wrote: |
Obama was the son of two highly educated people who placed a lot of value on education. If he were white there would never be a question of whether he was given a pass. They do not give away grades t harvard law you have to earn them. One professor has stated and this was done before obama ever held elected office that he was one of the most gifted students he had ever taught. The real harm that affirmative action has done. When a minority suceeds many assume it was because they had "help".
Rush Limbaugh who is so anxious to start yelling the N--- word that his head is about to explode, flunked or was thrown out of South WEst Missouri State in his first quarter. Rush or as Jeff Christie as he was know a few years ago, well while Obama was wowing his professors was arested for cruising for underage males in Pittsburgh. He simply is not someone who I would lisen to when discussing Obama's academic record or character. |
Are you out of your mind? He was lower middle class raised by his grandparents after his father abandoned his mother. We still don't know about his academic transcripts. Do you actually believe he got into Harvard on merit? You must be one of those public educated brainwashed masses.
Diversity is our strength. |
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ManintheMiddle
Joined: 20 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Fri Jun 12, 2009 11:16 pm Post subject: |
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agoodmouse inquired:
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| Minority entitlement means what? |
In the U.S., affirmative action and hiring are often characterized as entitlements by those of us who believe it should be done on the basis of merit and demonstrated need. That would include MLK, Jr., by the way, in case you might be thinking it's merely a conservative position.
Minority entitlement simply means that one is deserving of some status because one happens to be a minority. Of course, this notion is not fairly applied. A poor White kid from Appalachia does not qualify nor does a recent Vietnames immigrant who speaks English as a second language. It's reserved for Black, Brown, and Red folks. So often a Black kid whose parents are both professionals has a much better chance of being admitted to a top flight college program merely on the basis of skin color. It's an obscene double standard, inherently un-American, and debases the whole process of earning what one gets.
Adventurer ventured:
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| As far as Obama's scores at Harvard, people do question the capabilities of many African Americans because many African Americans with lower scores than whites are admitted. However, Obama is extremely erudite, intellectual, and was a law professor. Certainly, his academic credentials are stellar. |
And people like you have to keep reminding us of this fact because of those policies and the justifiable suspicions they raise. Obama might identify himself as Black (Tiger Woods, by the way, does not) but that doesn't make him any less half-White.
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| He sounds the part, and that's very important. John Mc Whorter a conservative who despises affirmative action lamented the fact, basically, that he feels he is a very qualified person, that he is rather educated, but his credentials are sometimes doubted due to his race. I assure you, McWhorter writes in an extremely sophisticated style. |
I'm very familiar with McWhorter's work. You cite his bestseller Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America, which ought to be required reading in Black Studies programs but isn't. I've mentioned it several times previously on this forum. Guess you didn't catch those comments. Anyhow, he was a linguist at Cal-Berkeley but felt the leftist heat after publshing that book and so now works at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think-tank. So much for diversity there.
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I think people are trying to find spurious reasons to attack Obama. I am not an Obama supporter, mind you. I am not for him or against him.
I just don't think the GOP has or had a better alternative. |
What is spurious in my reasoning and bones of contention? These are legitimate critiques especially given his pretense to bipartisanship and fair mindedness, which was just a campaign trail charade. One needn't be a GOP liner to oppose such hypocrisy. |
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RufusW
Joined: 14 Jun 2008
Location: Busan
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| Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2009 8:28 am Post subject: |
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| ManintheMiddle wrote: |
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| I just don't think the GOP has or had a better alternative. |
What is spurious in my reasoning and bones of contention? These are legitimate critiques especially given his pretense to bipartisanship and fair mindedness, which was just a campaign trail charade. One needn't be a GOP liner to oppose such hypocrisy. |
Go on then..... who was a better GOP candidate than Obama? jus' asking.... |
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ManintheMiddle
Joined: 20 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2009 6:19 am Post subject: |
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Here's an interesting take on Obama's entitlement from last September. While I don't necessarily agree with the linkage in the article, it does reveal some interesting facts about Obama's supposedly sterling academic record:
Why Obama is mum about Harvard
Jack Cashill, World Net Daily
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September 11, 2008
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On the surface, at least, Barack Obama's single most impressive accomplishment has been his 1990 election to the presidency of the Harvard Law Review.
This position also provided Obama his only real executive experience as he supervised the law review's staff of 80 editors.
One has to wonder, then, why neither he nor wife Michelle emphasized this singular honor during the up-by-the-bootstraps biographical sections of their respective speeches in Denver.
In fact, neither of them so much as mentioned Obama's time at Harvard, this despite his vulnerability on the executive experience charge.
Their silence likely derives from one verifiable fact: Obama's record at Harvard was no more authentic than John Kerry's record in Vietnam.
Kerry was justifiably swift-boated because he fraudulently positioned himself as a war hero. Obama seems to have learned from Kerry.
In the age of the Internet, the less said about a dubious credential the better, and Obama's law presidency credential is dubious on any number of levels. For starters, Obama did not do nearly well enough at his previous stop, Columbia University, to justify admission to Harvard Law.
According to the New York Sun, university spokesman Brian Connolly confirmed that Obama graduated in 1983 with a major in political science but without honors.
In the age of affirmative action and grade inflation, a minority in a relatively easy major like political science had to under-perform dramatically to avoid minimal honors. Obama apparently did just that.
The specifics we may never know. As the New York Times concedes, Obama "declined repeated requests to talk about his New York years, release his Columbia transcript or identify even a single fellow student, co-worker, roommate or friend from those years."
Would that Bristol Palin could get off so easily!
There are any number of possible reasons for Obama's reticence about Columbia: his grades, the courses he took, his writing samples and, of course, his associations.
At that time, for instance, both Bill Ayers and Obama fell within the orbit of left-wing Columbia superstar Edward Said. Just recently out of hiding, Ayers was attending the Bank Street College of Education, which adjoins the Columbia campus.
Five years after leaving Columbia, Obama decided on law school. His lack of resources did not deter him from thinking big. Nor did his B-minus effort at his Hawaii prep school or his equally indifferent grades at Columbia.
As Obama relates in "Dreams From My Father," he limited his choices to only three law schools � "Harvard, Yale, Stanford." (It must be nice to be Obama.) He does not mention his connections.
Harvard Law School is notoriously difficult to get into. Annually, some 7,000 applications apply for some 500 seats. Applicant LSAT scores generally chart in the 98 to 99 percentile range, and GPAs average between 3.80 and 3.95.
If Obama's LSAT scores merited admission, we would know about them. We don't. The Obama camp guards those scores, like his SAT scores, more tightly that Iran does its nuclear secrets.
We know enough about Obama's Columbia grades to know how far they fall below the Harvard norm, likely even below the affirmative action-adjusted black norm at Harvard.
As far back as 1988, however, Obama had serious pull. He would need it. As previously reported, Khalid al-Mansour, principle adviser to Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, lobbied friends like Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton to intervene at Harvard on Obama's behalf.
An orthodox Muslim, al-Mansour has not met the crackpot anti-Semitic theory he could not embrace. As for bin Talal, in October 2001, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani sent his $10 million relief check back un-cashed after the Saudi billionaire blamed 9/11 on America.
For an insight into the Khalid al-Mansour connection, see see this video.
These are not connections that Obama would like to see broadcast, which further explains his shyness about the Harvard experience.
There is more. Obama did not make the Harvard Law Review (HLR) the old-fashioned way, the way HLR's first black editor, Charles Houston, did 70 years prior.
To Obama's good fortune, the HLR had replaced a meritocracy in which editors were elected based on grades � the president being the student with the highest academic rank � with one in which half the editors were chosen through a writing competition.
This competition, the New York Times reported in 1990, was "meant to help insure that minority students became editors of The Law Review."
It did just that. At the end of his first year, Obama was named, along with 40 or so of his classmates, an editor of the HLR.
Unlike most editors, and likely all its presidents, Obama was not a writer. During his tenure at Harvard, he wrote only one heavily edited, unsigned note.
In this note for the third volume of the 1990 HLR, he argued against any limits on abortion, citing the government's interest in "preventing increasing numbers of children from being born in to lives of pain and despair."
Obama's timing, however, was better than his writing. In the same spring 1990 term that he would stand for the presidency of the HLR, the Harvard Law School found itself embroiled in an explosive racial brouhaha.
Black firebrand law professor Derrick Bell was demanding that the Harvard Law School appoint a black woman to the law faculty.
This protest would culminate in vigils and protests by the racially sensitive student body, in the course of which Obama would compare the increasingly absurd Bell to Rosa Parks.
Feeling the pressure, HLR editors wanted to elect their first African-American president. Obama had an advantage. Spared the legacy of slavery and segregation, and having grown up in a white household, he lacked the hard edge of many of his black colleagues.
"Obama cast himself as an eager listener," the New York Times reported, "sometimes giving warring classmates the impression that he agreed with all of them at once."
In February 1990, after an ideologically charged all-day affair, Obama's fellow editors elected him president from among 19 candidates. As it happened, Obama prevailed only after the HLR's small conservative faction threw him its support.
Curiously, once elected, Obama contributed not one signed word to the HLR or any other law journal. As Matthew Franck has pointed out in National Review Online, "A search of the HeinOnline database of law journals turns up exactly nothing credited to Obama in any law review anywhere at any time."
One more thing: The 1990 Times article about Obama's election notes that the president of the HLR usually goes on to serve as a clerk for a Supreme Court justice.
Not the Mansourian Candidate. Here, oddly, his ambition deserted him. He told the Times that he planned "to spend two or three years in private law practice and then return to Chicago to re-enter community work, either in politics or in local organizing."
In this unlikely surrender to Chicago politics, the realist sees insecurity at best and, at worst, the quid for al-Mansour's quo. |
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RufusW
Joined: 14 Jun 2008
Location: Busan
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| Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2009 6:38 am Post subject: |
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| Wow, I stopped reading when he said Kerry deserved to be swiftboated. |
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ManintheMiddle
Joined: 20 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2009 10:42 pm Post subject: |
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Rufus:
I can understand your unwillingness to get past his statement about Kerry. I also had trouble with that. But it doesn't negate the other information he divulges. When I have time, I'll dig up a better article on this subject.
I wouldn't even raise the issue if Obama's ardent supporters weren't in the habit of touting his brilliance ad nauseum. The truth isn't so brilliant; he has been blessed by great timing, solid talent, and the facilitation of others. Yet many in his camp would have you believed he dazzled everyone along the way. These allegations strongly suggest otherwise. I think there is little doubt he benefited from affirmative action. Where he does have a leg to stand on is in graduating magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. It is there (and not as the editor of the Review or his previous academic life) that he really came "into his own."
If I were Obama, I'd find their unwarranted praise more than a little patronizing. I can't tell you how often I've heard liberals praise Blacks in this manner. |
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RufusW
Joined: 14 Jun 2008
Location: Busan
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| Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 3:33 am Post subject: |
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I did actually read the article and a couple of others from him. It's interesting but I think he pushes the point about a letter of support getting him in to college a little far. He also tacks on needless stuff like Obama not actually writing 'Dreams of...'.
Aren't there quite a few similarities between entitlement via wealth/nepotism (Bush) and entitlement via race (Obama)? Both rely on what position the person it born into, not their own achievements. Conservatism explicitly supports the former but will argue the latter is unfair/unnecessary.
I'm sure a good case can be made for affirmative action. |
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