Does flying a jet fighter make you a great commander of men? Not necessarily. But if war threatens, John McCain knows what it is to throw young men into harm's way. Yet their experience wheeling and dealing with crooked lobbyists inside the Beltway make Barack Obama and Joe Biden "better qualified" to judge a proper strategy to respond to a surprise attack on a U.S. base overseas?
How is that even relevant? Neither John McCain nor Barack Obama are qualified to create the best response strategy.
The difference is fundamental in how these two will approach leadership. Obama will find he who is most qualified to formulate that response and have him on his staff. He will listen to him, deliberately and methodically, and with the help of his advisers formulate the best plan. This is how he works - by realizing he doesn't have all of the answers and listening to those who might. War time is not a time for knee-jerk reactions. It's a time for careful deliberation and detailed planning. It's a time to be thoughtful, not a time to be mavericky.
This entire article is bullshit.
It's worse than that. I don't mean to criticize any military people that visit TL, but from my experience and from what I've read, Air Force people (all AFs) are actually somewhat disconnected from the rigors of battle and actually have much less of an understanding of what it means to throw men into harm's way than their Army or Navy counterparts do. They dehumanize much more than the other two and you're not going to find any pilots sleeping in ranger graves.
Civilians aren't great judges either, but I think the total world population would probably be a few billion less if we soley followed air force strategy.
On November 02 2008 03:44 Savio wrote: Comparing health systems is very difficult. For example, systems that were designed to provide nationlized access to every citizens will obviously look really good when one of the most key questions is about everyone's access to basic health care.
But it is harder to analyze the effect of increased availability of imaging equipment, increased access to specialists, and other such factors that the current US system has.
So I don't buy it at face value when some study shows the US "performing" below European standards.
I'm not actually arguing that the US system is better, but that the rankings you see online are not as accurate indicators and most people believe.
Infant mortality is one of the most significant health indicators and very easy to compare. According to the CIA Factbook the USA ranks below Greece, Ireland, Slovenia and a whole host of other nations, as well as significantly below the European Union average. According to the United Nations World Population Prospects report, for the period 2005-2010, the USA also ranks below Cuba. The figures are widely available. Of course the USA still has an impressive rate by international standards but it is food for thought.
Blindly comparing raw numbers of infant mortality rates is misleading if not outright dishonest, since these reflect a combination of many factors, not all of which are directly related to quality of healthcare. For example, you would get a much more honest comparison if you control for demographic differences. It is well-known that different ethnic groups in the US have quite widely varying infant mortality rates.
The same can be said for all those international comparisons of secondary education, btw.
Yeah, damn those "raw numbers". Pesky facts are always getting in the way.
You can always produce out-of-context statistics to prove any point you like. That does not constitute an "open and honest examination" but the opposite.
Well thanks for the accusation of outright dishonesty but even apart from the needless insult I am somewhat perplexed by your response.
What needless insult? What I said was that using misleading raw data to prove something is "dishonest at worst". I don't know whether your motive was to mislead on purpose, or whether you were simply unaware of the carelessness and crudeness of your argument. Please learn to tell the difference between a personal insult and a criticism of your reasoning.
I am particularly intrigued by the statement that "different ethnic groups in the US have quite widely varying infant mortality rates" although I am somewhat surprised you think this is news to me. Unless you think it is genetic factors which cause these varying mortality rates I fail to see how this is something which helps whatever case it is you are making.
Whether or not it is news to you is irrelevant. The point is, we don't know to what extent genetic and other factors affect mortality rates, except that the racial disparities point very strongly to the existence of hidden factors that don't reflect healthcare quality.
Care to elborate on that? Because now it sounds like you said that the reason that the US has higher infant mortality rates than Cuba is because that all the hispanics and blacks in the US have so bad genes that their children die all by themselves and not due to insufficient healthcare. _edit_ Apparantly Bobilion interpretated your statement the same way as I did.
Only a person who is at once ignorant about infant mortality rate statistics, too lazy to check on them, and eager to throw dirt at first opportunity, can possibly commit such a "misinterpretation". Mexicans in America have better rates than whites, even though on average they are as poor as, and less likely to be insured than, blacks.
The point is, we don't know to what extent genetic and other factors affect mortality rates, except that the racial disparities point very strongly to the existence of hidden factors that don't reflect healthcare quality.
Please, please tell me in what other way you could possible interpret this statement in any way other than you saying "Certain groups in the US have bad genes, therefore their children will die more than what is normal no matter healthcare" I was curious, I was open to the idea that I missunderstood. But apparantly quite a lot of people draw the same conclusions as I did.
It does not have to be genetic, although we _don't know enough_ to rule out that possibility. The disparities between black and Mexican rates, for example, may be entirely a product of the behavior of the mother while pregnant. This would include things like what food was ingested, sleep patterns, stress levels, drugs, violence in the household, physical activity levels, etc. I'm not saying that the disparities are NOT genetic in origin - we just don't know. You can't account for the vast difference between black and Mexican rates in the US by things like "poverty", because both groups are about equally poor.
Jesus Christ man! How racist do you want too be!? I can't believe you honestly believe that white people 'could' be more 'medically fit' than anybody else!? We tried that in Australia with the aborigines (before the whole 'lost generation thing') http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/2123/402/2/adt-NU2000.0015front.pdf Seriously why don't you just start killing black people again. This kind of argument is what makes humanity ashamed of itself!
For Mccain to NOT LOSE this he has to win ALL the toss-up states, which is unlikely and to win the presidency he has to win Pennsylvania which is HIGHLY unlikely. Obama's enjoying a six point lead at the moment, and the last time Pennsylvania was red was 16 years ago.
The New York Times Printer Friendly Format Sponsored By
November 3, 2008 For McCain, Lighter End After Years on the Trail By ELISABETH BUMILLER
PETERBOROUGH, N.H. — Somewhere in a corner of northeastern Ohio, just five days before the presidential election that more than a few pundits have declared he will lose, Senator John McCain sat in the back of his campaign bus telling his favorite Henny Youngman jokes. No one laughed harder than he did.
“It was one after another — ‘Take my wife, please,’ ” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and one of Mr. McCain’s closest friends.
For 90 minutes, as his bus rumbled from the edge of Lake Erie to Youngstown, Mr. McCain kept up the patter with Mr. Graham and his campaign’s high command. He talked about how he once saw the old borscht belt comedian perform in New Jersey. He told stories about Morris K. Udall, the legendary Arizona congressman. And he roared with Mr. Graham about a book he was reading, “A Walk in the Woods,” a comic account of an out-of-shape writer’s 2,100-mile hike of the Appalachian Trail.
No one is suggesting that Mr. McCain is ecstatic that he is behind in the polls or that the cognoscenti, as he puts it, “have written us off.”
But in the frantic last days of his nearly two-year second quest for the presidency, Mr. McCain has liberated himself from the irritable, edgy candidate of a month ago. He has, by all appearances, decided he will get to Tuesday by having a good time.
His aides say he is relieved that the race is almost over and for the most part out of his hands. He is also buoyed — and obsessed, his staff says — with polls that show the race tightening in some battleground states and allow him hope that he might still have a shot.
He is also now in the role that he finds at least familiar, if not comfortable — the scruffy underdog barking at Washington. It was not for nothing that his first stop Thursday was in Defiance, Ohio.
“If we were 10 points up, we’d all be a little bit happier,” said Mark Salter, one of Mr. McCain’s closest aides. “But you throw a lot of stuff at the guy, and he fights all the harder.”
Mr. Graham and Mr. McCain’s other traveling buddy, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, are a frequent part of the road show and will fly home with him to Arizona in the small hours of Tuesday morning. Aides say they are essential to improving the candidate’s mood, Mr. Graham in particular. Mr. McCain’s wife, Cindy, who is now constantly at his side, introduces Mr. Graham at each stop as “my husband’s best friend.”
“He’s like campaign Prozac,” said Nicolle Wallace, a top adviser to Mr. McCain. “They just sit there and laugh.”
Mr. McCain has also been moved these last few days, his aides say, by the panorama of America that has unfolded before him. He has made appearances at high school football fields, town squares and lumberyards, and he held a nostalgic final town hall meeting on Sunday night here in Peterborough, N.H., one of the earliest stops of his first presidential campaign in 2000.
On Friday Mr. McCain marveled to aides about the beauty of the rolling Appalachian foothills on Ohio’s border with West Virginia. On Saturday his motorcade sped through a tunnel of gold leaves in Bucks County, Pa.
Two hours later, the caravan was navigating Midtown Manhattan so Mr. McCain could open “Saturday Night Live” with Tina Fey.
There he good-naturedly mocked his circumstances in a faux QVC segment by saying he could only afford the shopping channel and not a half-hour of prime-time television time for an infomercial like Mr. Obama. “Look, would I rather be on three major networks?” Mr. McCain asked viewers. “Of course. But I’m a true maverick – a Republican without money.”
Whatever happens on Tuesday, Mr. McCain’s aides say he is too much a student of history not to be astonished and humbled by his own place in it.
As a prisoner of war in Vietnam, Mr. McCain mused to his cellmates about becoming president one day. Now he is amazed that a candidate who was left for politically dead a year ago has managed to “lurch” — his own choice of verb from a recent interview — toward the finish line at all. That is not to say that he is about to ease up on his decade-long pursuit of the White House.
“He wants this very badly,” Mr. Graham said.
Mr. McCain’s days now begin earlier than they used to, around 6 a.m., for morning interviews that he races through in 5- and 10- minute bites. Afterward the drill is the same as it has been from the start. He and his aides assemble with coffee in his hotel suite, go over the plan for the day, check out the newspapers and, lately, pore over the campaign’s overnight polls.
Mr. McCain tracks every move, particularly anything from his own pollster, Bill McInturff. He avidly listens to campaign aides who say that if the unexcitable Mr. McInturff says he is gaining, it must be so. “We do not have a happy-numbers pollster,” Mr. Salter said. “We’ve got Mr. Buzz Killer.”
By the middle of the day, Mr. McCain likes to have news of the latest tracking polls. “We all kind of know when Rasmussen comes out, and Zogby,” Ms. Wallace said. “So we all watch for it.”
Mr. McCain, in the meantime, is on the phone a half-dozen times each with his campaign manager, Rick Davis, and his top strategist, Steve Schmidt, wanting to know everything they are doing and anything they have heard. “He is an information sponge,” Mr. Salter said.
His low point, his aides say, was the suspension of his campaign in September to make his way to Washington to help negotiate a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, only to have the House Republicans blow the deal up in his face. His slight edge in the polls evaporated, and he was described by friends as mad at himself, his campaign and the world.
Two and a half weeks later he was devastated, aides said, when Representative John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and civil rights leader, invoked the segregationist George Wallace to rebuke Mr. McCain for tolerating insults and threats hurled at Mr. Obama at his rallies.
Mr. McCain took the edge off some of his rhetoric and has in the last few days loosened up in his speeches, although he still lustily attacks Mr. Obama as the tax-and-spend “redistributionist in chief” who can not be trusted to lead the nation in crisis.
But the “get off my lawn” tone of the angry guy across the street has at times become a more neighborly “give me a break.”
“He’s measuring the drapes!” Mr. McCain shouted on a chilly Saturday morning at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Va. The line was a well-worn one from his stump speech about what he calls Mr. Obama’s White House presumptions, but he delivered it laughing, as if he was amusing no one more than himself.
During the day he gets almost no exercise, eats the candy and junk food strewn all over his bus, and naps slumped in his seat in the curtained-off front section of his plane. The national reporters he once called his “base” remain banished in the back; aides say he is convinced that they are all rooting for Mr. Obama.
There would in any case be little time for the rolling seminars he once conducted on the bus. He has local reporters aboard for short hops, but he and Mrs. McCain spend far more time entertaining a shifting cast of Republican governors and members of Congress. Last week on the campaign plane, the group included Gov. Charlie Crist and Senator Mel Martinez of Florida.
Mr. Martinez came through the curtain long enough to spin about what might have been. If Lehman Brothers and the insurance giant A.I.G. had not foundered, he said, “we would still be up seven.”
In the evenings, Mr. Graham and Mr. McCain’s top campaign advisers — almost all are now traveling with him — walk the candidate to his hotel room, where they go over the plan for the next day and then leave him alone. Mr. McCain turns on ESPN and relaxes after rallies that blast out “Life Is a Highway” and other campaign anthems.
“It’s like being in a rock band,” Mr. Graham said. “You do your gig, and you’ve got to wind down a little bit.”
Mr. McCain takes an Ambien if he needs one, but in these last days there is scant sleep on the schedule. He planned to end Sunday with a three-hour flight from New Hampshire to a post-midnight rally in Miami, then rest briefly and head to the airport for an 8 a.m. departure for Tampa.
From there he was to embark on a seven-state, 18-hour odyssey across America: north to Tennessee, northeast to Pennsylvania, then west to Indiana, New Mexico, Nevada and finally home to Arizona, where he will hold a midnight rally on the courthouse steps of the old territorial capital of Prescott, the town where he has ended all his Senate campaigns. He was set to arrive at his condominium in Phoenix sometime after 2 a.m. on Election Day.
Before Monday’s marathon, Mr. McCain said goodbye to New Hampshire, the state that gave him two primary wins and twice resurrected his candidacy. Polls show Mr. Obama with a double-digit lead for the state’s four electoral votes, and it was an odd place to devote five hours just a day and a half before the election.
But Mr. McCain loves the state. In Peterborough’s 90-year-old town hall, he jettisoned his stump speech to answer questions on politically dangerous topics that he has avoided for months. He even had praise for Mr. Obama. “I admire and respect my opponent,” he said.
It was a message tailored to his audience of independent-minded voters, but it was also a display of the old John McCain, or perhaps the new one of the last few days.
“I come to the people of New Hampshire — Republicans, independents, Democrats, libertarians, vegetarians,” Mr. McCain said quietly, to laughter, “and ask again to let me go on one more mission.”
I feel kind of bad for John McCain (assuming he loses), I kind of want to believe that he was a decent guy who just got caught up in drinking the Rove kool-aid.
On November 04 2008 05:36 Flaccid wrote: Holy fuck, that article Savio posted is an insult to even the basest of intelligence.
Shit like:
Does flying a jet fighter make you a great commander of men? Not necessarily. But if war threatens, John McCain knows what it is to throw young men into harm's way. Yet their experience wheeling and dealing with crooked lobbyists inside the Beltway make Barack Obama and Joe Biden "better qualified" to judge a proper strategy to respond to a surprise attack on a U.S. base overseas?
How is that even relevant? Neither John McCain nor Barack Obama are qualified to create the best response strategy.
The difference is fundamental in how these two will approach leadership. Obama will find he who is most qualified to formulate that response and have him on his staff. He will listen to him, deliberately and methodically, and with the help of his advisers formulate the best plan. This is how he works - by realizing he doesn't have all of the answers and listening to those who might. War time is not a time for knee-jerk reactions. It's a time for careful deliberation and detailed planning. It's a time to be thoughtful, not a time to be mavericky.
This entire article is bullshit.
It's worse than that. I don't mean to criticize any military people that visit TL, but from my experience and from what I've read, Air Force people (all AFs) are actually somewhat disconnected from the rigors of battle and actually have much less of an understanding of what it means to throw men into harm's way than their Army or Navy counterparts do. They dehumanize much more than the other two and you're not going to find any pilots sleeping in ranger graves.
Civilians aren't great judges either, but I think the total world population would probably be a few billion less if we soley followed air force strategy.
I think they are both crap. Everyone does that from time to time when scratching an itch.
I think he knew exactly what he was doing in both cases. Notice how both times he pauses mid sentence when talking about his opponent. In that video you posted it was so obvious to the crowd that they started booing him.
It may seem like nothing, but when you take into account the hypnosis that Obama has employed throughout his campaign, you start to get a picture of a narcissistic and manipulative individual.
I must confess, I was not impressed by Sen. Barack Obama from the first time I saw him. At first I was excited to see a black candidate. He looked youthful, spoke well, appeared to be confident, a wholesome presidential package. I was put off soon, not just because of his shallowness but also because there was an air of haughtiness in his demeanor that was unsettling. His posture and his body language were louder than his empty words. Obama’s speeches are unlike any political speech we have heard in American history. Never a politician in this land had such a quasi “religious” impact on so many people. The fact that Obama is a total incognito with zero accomplishment makes this inexplicable infatuation alarming. Obama is not an ordinary man. He is not a genius. In fact, he is quite ignorant on most important subjects. Barack Obama is a narcissist. Dr. Sam Vaknin, the author of “Malignant Self Love,” also believes, “Barack Obama appears to be a narcissist.”
Vaknin is a world authority on narcissism. He understands narcissism and describes the inner mind of a narcissist like no other person. When he talks about narcissism everyone listens. Vaknin says that Obama’s language, posture and demeanor, and the testimonies of his closest, dearest and nearest suggest that the Senator is either a narcissist or he may have narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).
Narcissists project a grandiose but false image of themselves. Jim Jones, the charismatic leader of People’s Temple, the man who led over 900 of his followers to cheerfully commit mass suicide and even murder their own children was also a narcissist. Charles Manson, Joseph Koni, Shoko Asahara, Joe Stalin, Saddam, Mao Zedong, Kim Jong IL, and Adolph Hitler are a few examples of narcissists of our time. All these men had a tremendous influence over their fanciers and followers. They created a personality cult around themselves, and with their blazing speeches elevated their admirer’s souls, filled their hearts with enthusiasm and instilled in their minds a new zest for life. Those men gave their followers hope! They promised them the moon, but alas, they invariably brought them to their doom. When you are a victim of a cult of personality, you don't know it until it is too late.
One determining factor in the development of NPD is childhood abuse. “Obama’s early life was decidedly chaotic and replete with traumatic and mentally bruising dislocations,” says Vaknin. “Mixed-race marriages were even less common then. His parents went through a divorce when he was an infant (two years old). Obama saw his father only once again, before he died in a car accident. His mother re-married and Obama had to relocate to Indonesia, a foreign land with a radically foreign culture, to be raised by a stepfather. He was raised as an only child, full of himself and no others. He never had to share the spotlight with any siblings. At the age of ten, he was whisked off to live with his maternal (white) grandparents. He saw his mother only intermittently in the following few years and then she vanished from his life in 1979. She died of cancer in 1995.”
One must never underestimate the manipulative genius of pathological narcissists.
(Pathology: something abnormal, such as disease.) They project such an imposing personality that it overwhelms those around them. Charmed by the charisma of the narcissist, people become like clay in his hands. They cheerfully do his bidding and delight to be at his service. The narcissist shapes the world around him and reduces others in his own inverted image. He creates a cult of personality; his admirers become his co-dependents.
Narcissists have no interest in things that do not help them to reach their personal objectives. They are focused on one thing alone, and that is power. All other issues are meaningless to them and they do not want to waste their precious time on trivialities. Anything that does not help them is beneath them and does not deserve their attention. If an issue raised in the Senate does not help Obama in one way or another, he has no interest in it. The “Present” vote is a safe vote; he used the “Present” all the time as a member of the Illinois legislature. No one can criticize him if things go wrong. Why should he implicate himself in issues that may become controversial when they don’t help him personally? Those issues are unworthy by their very nature because they are not about him.
Obama’s election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review led to a contract and an advance to write a book about race relations. The University of Chicago Law School provided him with a fellowship and an office to work on his book. The book took him a lot longer than expected and at the end it devolved into…, guess what? His own autobiography! Instead of writing a scholarly paper focusing on race relations, for which he had been paid, Obama could not resist writing about his most sublime self. He entitled the book “Dreams from My Father.”
Not surprisingly, Adolph Hitler also wrote his own autobiography when he was still nobody. So did Stalin. For a narcissist no subject is as important as his own self. Why would he waste his precious time and genius writing about insignificant things when he can write about such an august being as himself? Narcissists are often callous and even ruthless. As the norm, they lack conscience. This is evident from Obama’s lack of interest in his own brother who lives on only one dollar per month. A man who lives in luxury, who takes a private jet to vacation in Hawaii, and who has raised nearly a half billion dollars for his campaign (something unprecedented in history) has no interest in the plight of his own brother. Why? His brother cannot be used for his ascent to power. A narcissist cares for no one but himself.
This election is like no other election in the history of America. The issues are insignificant compared to what is at stake. What can be more dangerous than having a man bereft of a conscience, a serial liar, and one who cannot distinguish his fantasies from reality as the leader of the free world?
I hate to sound alarmist, but one must be a fool if one is not alarmed. Many politicians are narcissists. They pose no threat to others. They are simply self-serving and selfish. [Witness Al Gore’s Income Tax; it reveals that he gave away NO MONEY to charities, not even to a church!] Obama evinces symptoms of pathological narcissism, which is different from the run-of-the-mill narcissism of a Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton, for example. To him reality and fantasy are intertwined. This is a mental health issue, not just a character flaw. Pathological narcissists are dangerous because they look normal and even intelligent. It is this disguise that makes them treacherous. [Look up the word ‘treachery.’]
Today the Democrats have placed all their hopes in Obama. But this man could put an end to their party [and to this great nation]. The great majority of blacks have also decided to vote for Obama. Only a fool does not know that their support for him is racially driven.
Let us call a spade a spade [No pun intended.]. This is racism, pure and simple. The truth is that, while everyone carries a misconceived collective guilt towards blacks for wrongs done centuries ago by a bygone people to a bygone people, the blacks carry a collective rancor, enmity or vendetta towards non-blacks, and to this day want to “stand up” to the white man. They seem to be stuck in 19th century [encourage by race baiters like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and others].
The downside of this is, that if Obama turns out to be the disaster I predict, he will cause widespread resentment among the whites. The blacks are unlikely to give up their support of their man. Cultic mentality is pernicious and unrelenting. They will dig their heads deeper in the sand and blame Obama’s detractors of racism. This will cause a backlash among the whites. The white supremacists will take advantage of the discontent and they will receive widespread support. I predict that in less than four years, racial tensions will increase to levels not seen since the turbulent 1960s. Obama will set the clock back decades. America is the bastion of freedom. The peace of the world depends on the strength of America, and its weakness translates into the triumph of terrorism and victory of rogue nations. It is no wonder that Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, the Maoist Castroists, the Hezbollah, the Hamas, the lawyers of the Guantanamo terrorists, and virtually all sworn enemies of America are so thrilled by the prospect of “their man” in the White House. America is on the verge of destruction. There is no insanity greater than electing a pathological narcissist as president.
He gets away with it because its so ridiculous that people can't even bring it up. But thats what we've been dealing with for the last 8 years, haven't we? Bush has been so blatantly breaking the law that people can't even accuse him without being laughed at.
You gotta be kidding... For every "narcissist" that leads his nation to "death and disaster", there's one who actually does a whole lot of good. What, Jesus was a dangerous hypnotist who shouldn't be followed? It's just good public speaking and there's nothing wrong with it.
On November 04 2008 17:03 The Storyteller wrote: You gotta be kidding... For every "narcissist" that leads his nation to "death and disaster", there's one who actually does a whole lot of good. What, Jesus was a dangerous hypnotist who shouldn't be followed? It's just good public speaking and there's nothing wrong with it.
I'm not planning on getting into a debate over my post, I just posted it so people see the reasons why I stopped favoring him to win over McCain.
My fundamental position is that using hypnosis in this way is extremely nefarious. If we don't agree on that then I will agree to disagree.
I must confess, I was not impressed by Sen. Barack Obama from the first time I saw him. At first I was excited to see a black candidate. He looked youthful, spoke well, appeared to be confident, a wholesome presidential package. I was put off soon, not just because of his shallowness but also because there was an air of haughtiness in his demeanor that was unsettling. His posture and his body language were louder than his empty words. Obama’s speeches are unlike any political speech we have heard in American history. Never a politician in this land had such a quasi “religious” impact on so many people. The fact that Obama is a total incognito with zero accomplishment makes this inexplicable infatuation alarming. Obama is not an ordinary man. He is not a genius. In fact, he is quite ignorant on most important subjects. Barack Obama is a narcissist. Dr. Sam Vaknin, the author of “Malignant Self Love,” also believes, “Barack Obama appears to be a narcissist.”
Vaknin is a world authority on narcissism. He understands narcissism and describes the inner mind of a narcissist like no other person. When he talks about narcissism everyone listens. Vaknin says that Obama’s language, posture and demeanor, and the testimonies of his closest, dearest and nearest suggest that the Senator is either a narcissist or he may have narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).
Narcissists project a grandiose but false image of themselves. Jim Jones, the charismatic leader of People’s Temple, the man who led over 900 of his followers to cheerfully commit mass suicide and even murder their own children was also a narcissist. Charles Manson, Joseph Koni, Shoko Asahara, Joe Stalin, Saddam, Mao Zedong, Kim Jong IL, and Adolph Hitler are a few examples of narcissists of our time. All these men had a tremendous influence over their fanciers and followers. They created a personality cult around themselves, and with their blazing speeches elevated their admirer’s souls, filled their hearts with enthusiasm and instilled in their minds a new zest for life. Those men gave their followers hope! They promised them the moon, but alas, they invariably brought them to their doom. When you are a victim of a cult of personality, you don't know it until it is too late.
One determining factor in the development of NPD is childhood abuse. “Obama’s early life was decidedly chaotic and replete with traumatic and mentally bruising dislocations,” says Vaknin. “Mixed-race marriages were even less common then. His parents went through a divorce when he was an infant (two years old). Obama saw his father only once again, before he died in a car accident. His mother re-married and Obama had to relocate to Indonesia, a foreign land with a radically foreign culture, to be raised by a stepfather. He was raised as an only child, full of himself and no others. He never had to share the spotlight with any siblings. At the age of ten, he was whisked off to live with his maternal (white) grandparents. He saw his mother only intermittently in the following few years and then she vanished from his life in 1979. She died of cancer in 1995.”
One must never underestimate the manipulative genius of pathological narcissists.
(Pathology: something abnormal, such as disease.) They project such an imposing personality that it overwhelms those around them. Charmed by the charisma of the narcissist, people become like clay in his hands. They cheerfully do his bidding and delight to be at his service. The narcissist shapes the world around him and reduces others in his own inverted image. He creates a cult of personality; his admirers become his co-dependents.
Narcissists have no interest in things that do not help them to reach their personal objectives. They are focused on one thing alone, and that is power. All other issues are meaningless to them and they do not want to waste their precious time on trivialities. Anything that does not help them is beneath them and does not deserve their attention. If an issue raised in the Senate does not help Obama in one way or another, he has no interest in it. The “Present” vote is a safe vote; he used the “Present” all the time as a member of the Illinois legislature. No one can criticize him if things go wrong. Why should he implicate himself in issues that may become controversial when they don’t help him personally? Those issues are unworthy by their very nature because they are not about him.
Obama’s election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review led to a contract and an advance to write a book about race relations. The University of Chicago Law School provided him with a fellowship and an office to work on his book. The book took him a lot longer than expected and at the end it devolved into…, guess what? His own autobiography! Instead of writing a scholarly paper focusing on race relations, for which he had been paid, Obama could not resist writing about his most sublime self. He entitled the book “Dreams from My Father.”
Not surprisingly, Adolph Hitler also wrote his own autobiography when he was still nobody. So did Stalin. For a narcissist no subject is as important as his own self. Why would he waste his precious time and genius writing about insignificant things when he can write about such an august being as himself? Narcissists are often callous and even ruthless. As the norm, they lack conscience. This is evident from Obama’s lack of interest in his own brother who lives on only one dollar per month. A man who lives in luxury, who takes a private jet to vacation in Hawaii, and who has raised nearly a half billion dollars for his campaign (something unprecedented in history) has no interest in the plight of his own brother. Why? His brother cannot be used for his ascent to power. A narcissist cares for no one but himself.
This election is like no other election in the history of America. The issues are insignificant compared to what is at stake. What can be more dangerous than having a man bereft of a conscience, a serial liar, and one who cannot distinguish his fantasies from reality as the leader of the free world?
I hate to sound alarmist, but one must be a fool if one is not alarmed. Many politicians are narcissists. They pose no threat to others. They are simply self-serving and selfish. [Witness Al Gore’s Income Tax; it reveals that he gave away NO MONEY to charities, not even to a church!] Obama evinces symptoms of pathological narcissism, which is different from the run-of-the-mill narcissism of a Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton, for example. To him reality and fantasy are intertwined. This is a mental health issue, not just a character flaw. Pathological narcissists are dangerous because they look normal and even intelligent. It is this disguise that makes them treacherous. [Look up the word ‘treachery.’]
Today the Democrats have placed all their hopes in Obama. But this man could put an end to their party [and to this great nation]. The great majority of blacks have also decided to vote for Obama. Only a fool does not know that their support for him is racially driven.
Let us call a spade a spade [No pun intended.]. This is racism, pure and simple. The truth is that, while everyone carries a misconceived collective guilt towards blacks for wrongs done centuries ago by a bygone people to a bygone people, the blacks carry a collective rancor, enmity or vendetta towards non-blacks, and to this day want to “stand up” to the white man. They seem to be stuck in 19th century [encourage by race baiters like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and others].
The downside of this is, that if Obama turns out to be the disaster I predict, he will cause widespread resentment among the whites. The blacks are unlikely to give up their support of their man. Cultic mentality is pernicious and unrelenting. They will dig their heads deeper in the sand and blame Obama’s detractors of racism. This will cause a backlash among the whites. The white supremacists will take advantage of the discontent and they will receive widespread support. I predict that in less than four years, racial tensions will increase to levels not seen since the turbulent 1960s. Obama will set the clock back decades. America is the bastion of freedom. The peace of the world depends on the strength of America, and its weakness translates into the triumph of terrorism and victory of rogue nations. It is no wonder that Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, the Maoist Castroists, the Hezbollah, the Hamas, the lawyers of the Guantanamo terrorists, and virtually all sworn enemies of America are so thrilled by the prospect of “their man” in the White House. America is on the verge of destruction. There is no insanity greater than electing a pathological narcissist as president.
He gets away with it because its so ridiculous that people can't even bring it up. But thats what we've been dealing with for the last 8 years, haven't we? Bush has been so blatantly breaking the law that people can't even accuse him without being laughed at.
Things are getting surreal.
You might have a point there, though I can't really see it that clearly. The article you posted seems to be some kind of badly written conspiracy theory.
Comparing an up-and-coming presidential candidate to Hitler is just bad taste -_-
I must confess, I was not impressed by Sen. Barack Obama from the first time I saw him. At first I was excited to see a black candidate. He looked youthful, spoke well, appeared to be confident, a wholesome presidential package. I was put off soon, not just because of his shallowness but also because there was an air of haughtiness in his demeanor that was unsettling. His posture and his body language were louder than his empty words. Obama’s speeches are unlike any political speech we have heard in American history. Never a politician in this land had such a quasi “religious” impact on so many people. The fact that Obama is a total incognito with zero accomplishment makes this inexplicable infatuation alarming. Obama is not an ordinary man. He is not a genius. In fact, he is quite ignorant on most important subjects. Barack Obama is a narcissist. Dr. Sam Vaknin, the author of “Malignant Self Love,” also believes, “Barack Obama appears to be a narcissist.”
Vaknin is a world authority on narcissism. He understands narcissism and describes the inner mind of a narcissist like no other person. When he talks about narcissism everyone listens. Vaknin says that Obama’s language, posture and demeanor, and the testimonies of his closest, dearest and nearest suggest that the Senator is either a narcissist or he may have narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).
Narcissists project a grandiose but false image of themselves. Jim Jones, the charismatic leader of People’s Temple, the man who led over 900 of his followers to cheerfully commit mass suicide and even murder their own children was also a narcissist. Charles Manson, Joseph Koni, Shoko Asahara, Joe Stalin, Saddam, Mao Zedong, Kim Jong IL, and Adolph Hitler are a few examples of narcissists of our time. All these men had a tremendous influence over their fanciers and followers. They created a personality cult around themselves, and with their blazing speeches elevated their admirer’s souls, filled their hearts with enthusiasm and instilled in their minds a new zest for life. Those men gave their followers hope! They promised them the moon, but alas, they invariably brought them to their doom. When you are a victim of a cult of personality, you don't know it until it is too late.
One determining factor in the development of NPD is childhood abuse. “Obama’s early life was decidedly chaotic and replete with traumatic and mentally bruising dislocations,” says Vaknin. “Mixed-race marriages were even less common then. His parents went through a divorce when he was an infant (two years old). Obama saw his father only once again, before he died in a car accident. His mother re-married and Obama had to relocate to Indonesia, a foreign land with a radically foreign culture, to be raised by a stepfather. He was raised as an only child, full of himself and no others. He never had to share the spotlight with any siblings. At the age of ten, he was whisked off to live with his maternal (white) grandparents. He saw his mother only intermittently in the following few years and then she vanished from his life in 1979. She died of cancer in 1995.”
One must never underestimate the manipulative genius of pathological narcissists.
(Pathology: something abnormal, such as disease.) They project such an imposing personality that it overwhelms those around them. Charmed by the charisma of the narcissist, people become like clay in his hands. They cheerfully do his bidding and delight to be at his service. The narcissist shapes the world around him and reduces others in his own inverted image. He creates a cult of personality; his admirers become his co-dependents.
Narcissists have no interest in things that do not help them to reach their personal objectives. They are focused on one thing alone, and that is power. All other issues are meaningless to them and they do not want to waste their precious time on trivialities. Anything that does not help them is beneath them and does not deserve their attention. If an issue raised in the Senate does not help Obama in one way or another, he has no interest in it. The “Present” vote is a safe vote; he used the “Present” all the time as a member of the Illinois legislature. No one can criticize him if things go wrong. Why should he implicate himself in issues that may become controversial when they don’t help him personally? Those issues are unworthy by their very nature because they are not about him.
Obama’s election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review led to a contract and an advance to write a book about race relations. The University of Chicago Law School provided him with a fellowship and an office to work on his book. The book took him a lot longer than expected and at the end it devolved into…, guess what? His own autobiography! Instead of writing a scholarly paper focusing on race relations, for which he had been paid, Obama could not resist writing about his most sublime self. He entitled the book “Dreams from My Father.”
Not surprisingly, Adolph Hitler also wrote his own autobiography when he was still nobody. So did Stalin. For a narcissist no subject is as important as his own self. Why would he waste his precious time and genius writing about insignificant things when he can write about such an august being as himself? Narcissists are often callous and even ruthless. As the norm, they lack conscience. This is evident from Obama’s lack of interest in his own brother who lives on only one dollar per month. A man who lives in luxury, who takes a private jet to vacation in Hawaii, and who has raised nearly a half billion dollars for his campaign (something unprecedented in history) has no interest in the plight of his own brother. Why? His brother cannot be used for his ascent to power. A narcissist cares for no one but himself.
This election is like no other election in the history of America. The issues are insignificant compared to what is at stake. What can be more dangerous than having a man bereft of a conscience, a serial liar, and one who cannot distinguish his fantasies from reality as the leader of the free world?
I hate to sound alarmist, but one must be a fool if one is not alarmed. Many politicians are narcissists. They pose no threat to others. They are simply self-serving and selfish. [Witness Al Gore’s Income Tax; it reveals that he gave away NO MONEY to charities, not even to a church!] Obama evinces symptoms of pathological narcissism, which is different from the run-of-the-mill narcissism of a Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton, for example. To him reality and fantasy are intertwined. This is a mental health issue, not just a character flaw. Pathological narcissists are dangerous because they look normal and even intelligent. It is this disguise that makes them treacherous. [Look up the word ‘treachery.’]
Today the Democrats have placed all their hopes in Obama. But this man could put an end to their party [and to this great nation]. The great majority of blacks have also decided to vote for Obama. Only a fool does not know that their support for him is racially driven.
Let us call a spade a spade [No pun intended.]. This is racism, pure and simple. The truth is that, while everyone carries a misconceived collective guilt towards blacks for wrongs done centuries ago by a bygone people to a bygone people, the blacks carry a collective rancor, enmity or vendetta towards non-blacks, and to this day want to “stand up” to the white man. They seem to be stuck in 19th century [encourage by race baiters like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and others].
The downside of this is, that if Obama turns out to be the disaster I predict, he will cause widespread resentment among the whites. The blacks are unlikely to give up their support of their man. Cultic mentality is pernicious and unrelenting. They will dig their heads deeper in the sand and blame Obama’s detractors of racism. This will cause a backlash among the whites. The white supremacists will take advantage of the discontent and they will receive widespread support. I predict that in less than four years, racial tensions will increase to levels not seen since the turbulent 1960s. Obama will set the clock back decades. America is the bastion of freedom. The peace of the world depends on the strength of America, and its weakness translates into the triumph of terrorism and victory of rogue nations. It is no wonder that Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, the Maoist Castroists, the Hezbollah, the Hamas, the lawyers of the Guantanamo terrorists, and virtually all sworn enemies of America are so thrilled by the prospect of “their man” in the White House. America is on the verge of destruction. There is no insanity greater than electing a pathological narcissist as president.
He gets away with it because its so ridiculous that people can't even bring it up. But thats what we've been dealing with for the last 8 years, haven't we? Bush has been so blatantly breaking the law that people can't even accuse him without being laughed at.
Things are getting surreal.
You might have a point there, though I can't really see it that clearly. The article you posted seems to be some kind of badly written conspiracy theory.
Comparing an up-and-coming presidential candidate to Hitler is just bad taste -_-
The article itself seems to be manipulative. However, I read through it myself and have come to my own conclusions on it.
Wow there are a lot of political nutters, even here.
John McCain seems like a decent guy who can't get a break. He should've been the 2000 candidate, but the religious right smeared him with accusations that he fathered an illegitimate black child so Bush could beat him in South Carolina and steal the nomination (and potentially the presidency with that fishy business in Florida), and he was very angry. He had to kiss and make up with them though, as well as their poster child Bush, because he needs their support to have any chance of winning. It's unfortunate that he has to compromise his truly maverick moderate self to pander to the far right members of his party to have a chance at being president. I think John McCain style moderate Republicans are good, but the crazy evangelical Christian far right have hijacked the party and are doing a lot of dirty things to keep themselves in power.
Barack Obama also seems like a decent guy as well, and he's winning, so no need to feel sorry for him.
EPT
